Views of Ir. Hj. Othman bin Hj. Ahmad

Dangers of outsourcing: Facebook coding theft

2012-01-30T18:07:00.001+08:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3?op=1

This shows clearly why outsourcing is very dangerous to the health of a company, especially high tech innovative companies. Also a lesson in trusting people with bad records. A thief is always a thief. How about facebook users? Do we still want to trust Mark Zuckerberg after what he had done to those around him?

At Last-- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded

Nicholas Carlson | Mar. 5, 2010, 4:10 AM | 2,281,943| 242

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Theorigins of Facebook have been in dispute since the very weeka 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvardsophomore on February 4, 2004.

Thencalled "thefacebook.com," the site was an instant hit. Now, sixyears later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world,visited by 400 million people a month.

Thecontroversy surrounding Facebook began quickly. A week after he launchedthe site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolenthe idea from them.

This allegationsoon bloomed into a full-fledged lawsuit, as a competing company founded by theHarvard seniors sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legalodyssey that continues to this day.

Newinformation uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of thecomplaints against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, onat least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook's servers tobreak into Facebook members' private email accounts and read their emails--atbest, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company's systems and changed someuser information with the aim of making the site less useful.

Theprimary dispute around Facebook's origins centered around whether Mark hadentered into an "agreement" with the Harvard seniors, Cameron andTyler Winklevoss and a classmate named Divya Narendra, to develop a similar website for them -- and then, instead, stalled their project while taking theiridea and building his own.

Thelitigation never went particularly well for the Winklevosses.

In 2007,Massachusetts Judge Douglas P. Woodlock called their allegations "tissuethin." Referring to the agreement that Mark had allegedly breached,Woodlock also wrote, "Dorm room chit-chat does not make a contract."A year later, the end finally seemed in sight: a judge ruled against Facebook'smove to dismiss the case. Shortly thereafter, the parties agreed to settle.

But then,a twist.

AfterFacebook announced the settlement, but before the settlement was finalized,lawyers for the Winklevosses suggested that the hard drive from MarkZuckerberg's computer at Harvard might contain evidence of Mark's fraud.Specifically, they suggested that the hard drive included some damning instantmessages and emails.

The judgein the case refused to look at the hard drive and instead deferred to anotherjudge who went on to approve the settlement. But, naturally, the possibilitythat the hard drive contained additional evidence set inquiring minds wonderingwhat those emails and IMs revealed. Specifically, it set inquiring mindswondering again whether Mark had, in fact, stolen the Winklevoss's idea,screwed them over, and then ridden off into the sunset with Facebook.

Unfortunately,since the contents of Mark's hard drive had not been made public, no one hadthe answers.

But nowwe have some.

Over thepast two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar withaspects of this story -- including people involved in the founding year of thecompany. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs andemails from the period. Much of this information has never before beenmade public. None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark orthe company.

Based onthe information we obtained, we have what we believe is a more complete pictureof how Facebook was founded. This account follows.

And whatdoes this more complete story reveal?

We'lloffer our own conclusions at the end. But first, here's the story:

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"We can talk about that after I get all thebasic functionality up tomorrow night."

In thefall of 2003, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and DivyaNarendra were on the lookout for a web developer who could bring to life anidea the three say Divya first had in 2002: a social network for Harvardstudents and alumni. The site was to be called HarvardConnections.com.

The threehad been paying Victor Gao, another Harvard student, to do coding for the site,but at the beginning of the fall term Victor begged off the project. Victorsuggested his own replacement: Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard sophomore from DobbsFerry, New York.

Backthen, Mark was known at Harvard as the sophomore who had built Facemash, a"Hot Or Not" clone for Harvard. Facemash had already made Mark a bitof a celebrity on campus, for two reasons.

The firstis that Mark got in trouble for creating it. The way the site worked was thatit pulled photos of Harvard students off of Harvard's Web sites. It rearrangedthese photos so that when people visited Facemash.com they would see picturesof two Harvard students and be asked to vote on which was more attractive. Thesite also maintained a list of Harvard students, ranked by attractiveness.

OnHarvard's politically correct campus, this upset people, and Mark was soonhauled in front of Harvard's disciplinary board for students. According to a November 19, 2003 Harvard Crimsonarticle, he was charged with breaching security, violatingcopyrights, and violating individual privacy. Happily for Mark, the articlereports that he wasn't expelled.

Thesecond reason everyone at Harvard knew about Facemash and Mark Zuckerberg wasthat Facemash had been an instant hit. The same Harvard Crimson storyreports that after two weeks, "the site had been visited by 450 people,who voted at least 22,000 times." That means the average visitor voted 48times.

It was for this ability to builda wildly popular site that Victor Gao first recommended Mark to Cameron, Tyler,and Divya. Sold on Mark, the Harvard Connection trio reached out to him. Markagreed to meet.

Theyfirst met in an early evening in late November in the dining hall of HarvardCollege's Kirkland House. Cameron, Tyler, and Divya brought up their ideafor Harvard Connection, and described their plans to A) build the site forHarvard students only, by requiring new users to register with Harvard.eduemail addresses, and B) expand Harvard Connection beyond Harvard to schoolsaround the country. Mark reportedly showed enthusiastic interest in theproject.

Laterthat night, Mark wrote an email to the Winklevoss brothers and Divya: "Iread over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn't take too longto implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionalityup tomorrow night."

The nextday, on December 1, Mark sent another email to the HarvardConnectionsteam. Part of it read, "I put together one of the two registrationpages so I have everything working on my system now. I'll keep you posted as Ipatch stuff up and it starts to become completely functional."

These twoemails sounded like the words of someone who was eager to be a part of the teamand working away on the project. A few days later, however, Mark's emailsto the HarvardConnection team started to change in tone. Specifically,they went from someone who seemed to be hard at work building the product tosomeone who was so busy with schoolwork that he had no time to do any coding atall.

December 4: "Sorry I was unreachable tonight. I just got about three ofyour missed calls. I was working on a problem set."

December 10: "The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven't gottena chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really, so I thinkit's probably best to postpone meeting until we have more to discuss. I'm alsoreally busy tomorrow so I don't think I'd be able to meet then anyway."

A week later: "Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I'vebasically been in the lab the whole time working on a cs problem set whichI"m still not finished with."

Finally,on January 8:

Sorryit's taken a while for me to get back to you. I'm completely swamped with workthis week. I have three programming projects and a final paper due by Monday,as well as a couple of problem sets due Friday. I'll be available to discussthe site again starting Tuesday.

I"m still a little skeptical that we have enough functionality in the siteto really draw the attention and gain the critical mass necessary to get a sitelike this to run…Anyhow, we'll talk about it once I get everything else done.

So whathappened to change Mark's tune about HarvardConnection? Was he so swamped withwork that he was unable to finish the project? Or, as theHarvardConnection founders have alleged, was he stalling the development ofHarvardConnection so that he could build a competing site and launch it first?

Our investigation suggests the latter.

As a part of the lawsuit against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the above emailsfrom Mark have been public for years. What has never been revealed publicly iswhat Mark was telling his friends, parents, and closest confidants at the sametime.

Let's start with a December 7th (IM) exchange Mark Zuckerberg had with hisHarvard classmate and Facebook cofounder, Eduardo Saverin.

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"They made a mistake haha. They asked me tomake it for them."

FormerPayPal CEO Peter Thiel gets a lot of credit for being the first investor inFacebook, because he led the first formal Facebook round in September of 2004with a $500,000 investment at a $5 million valuation. But the real"first investor" claim to fame should actually belong to a Harvardclassmate of Mark Zuckerberg's named Eduardo Saverin.

To picture Eduardo, what you need to know is that he was the kid at Harvard whowould wear a suit to class. He liked to give people the impression that he wasrich -- and maybe somehow connected to the Brazilian mafia. At one point,in an IM exchange, Mark told a friend that Eduardo -- "head of theinvestment society" -- was rich because "apparently insider tradingisn't illegal in Brazil."

EduardoSaverin wasn't directly involved with Facebook for long: During the summer of2004, when Mark moved to Palo Alto to work on Facebook full time, Eduardo tooka high-paying internship at Lehman Brothers in New York. While Mark wasstill at Harvard, however, Eduardo appears to have bankrolled Facebook'searliest capital expenses, thus becoming its initial investor.

In January, however, Mark told a friend that "Eduardo is paying for myservers." Eventually, Eduardo would agree to invest $15,000 in a companythat would, in April 2004, be formed as Facebook LLC. For his money,Eduardo would get 30% of the company.

Eduardowas also involved in Facebook's earliest days, as a confidant of Mark Zuckerberg.

InDecember, 2003, a week after Mark's first meeting with the HarvardConnectionteam, when he was telling the Winklevosses that he was too busy with schoolworkto work on or even think about HarvardConnection.com, Mark was telling Eduardoa different story. On December 7, 2003, we believe Mark sent Eduardo thefollowing IM:

Checkthis site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go toharvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a datingsite. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. SoI'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comesout.

This IMsuggests that, within a week of meeting with the Winklevosses for the firsttime, Mark had already decided to start his own, similar project--"thefacebook thing." It also suggests that he had developed a strategyfor dealing with his would-be competition: Delay developing it.

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"I feel like the right thing to do is finishthe facebook and wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have theirthing ready and then be like look yours isn't as good"

A fewweeks after the initial meeting with the HarvardConnection team, after Marksent the IM to Eduardo Saverin talking about developing "the facebookthing" and delaying his development of HarvardConnection, Mark met withthe HarvardConnection folks, Cameron, Tyler, and Divya, for a secondtime.

Thistime, instead of meeting in the dining hall of Mark's residential hall,Kirkland House, the four met in Mark's dorm room. Divya is said to have arrivedlate.

In Kirkland House, the dorm rooms aren't laid out in cinder-block-cube style:Mark's room had a narrow hallway connecting it to his neighbor's. As Cameronand Tyler sat down on a couch in Mark's room, Cameron spotted something in thehallway. On top of a bookshelf there was a white board. It was the kind Webdevelopers and product managers everywhere use to map out their ideas.

On it,Cameron read two words, "Harvard Connection." He got up to go look atit. Immediately, Mark asked Cameron to stay out of the hallway.

EventuallyDivya arrived and the four of them talked about plans for Harvard Connection.One feature Mark brought up was designed to keep more popular and sought-afterHarvard Connection users from being stalked and harassed by crowds of people.

In thissecond meeting, Mark still appeared to be actively engaged in developingHarvard Connection. But he never showed the HarvardConnection folks anysite prototypes or code. And they didn't insist on seeing them.

During the weeks in which Mark was juggling the two projects in tandem, he alsohad a series of IM exchanges with a friend named Adam D'Angelo (above).

Adam and Mark went to boarding school together at Phillips Exeter Academy.There, the pair became friends and coding partners. Together they built aprogram called Synapse, a music player that supposedly learned the listener'staste and then adapted to it. Then, in 2002 Mark went to Harvard and Adam wentto Cal Tech. But the pair stayed in close touch, especially through AOLinstant messenger. Eventually, Adam became Facebook's CTO.

Through the HarvardConnection-Facebook saga and its aftermath, Mark kept Adam apprised of hisplans and thoughts.

One purported IM exchange seems particularly relevant on the question of howMark distinguished between the two projects--the "facebook thing" and"the dating site"--as well as how he was considering handling thelatter:

Zuck: Soyou know how I'm making that dating site

Zuck: Iwonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing

Zuck:Because they're probably going to be released around the same time

Zuck:Unless I fuck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I toldthem I'd have it done.

D'Angelo:haha

Zuck:Like I don't think people would sign up for the facebook thing if they knew itwas for dating

Zuck: andI think people are skeptical about joining dating things too.

Zuck: Butthe guy doing the dating thing is going to promote it pretty well.

Zuck: Iwonder what the ideal solution is.

Zuck: Ithink the Facebook thing by itself would draw many people, unless it werereleased at the same time as the dating thing.

Zuck: Inwhich case both things would cancel each other out and nothing would win. Anyideas? Like is there a good way to consolidate the two.

D'Angelo:We could make it into a whole network like a friendster. haha. Stanford hassomething like that internally

Zuck: Well I was thinking of doing that for the facebook. The only thingthat's different about theirs is that you like request dates with people orconnections with the facebook you don't do that via the system.

D'Angelo:Yeah

Zuck: Ialso hate the fact that I'm doing it for other people haha. Like I hate workingunder other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebookand wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have their thing ready andthen be like "look yours isn't as good as this so if you want to join mineyou can…otherwise I can help you with yours later." Or do you think that'stoo dick?

D'Angelo:I think you should just ditch them

Zuck: Thething is they have a programmer who could finish their thing and they havemoney to pour into advertising and stuff. Oh wait I have money too. My friendwho wants to sponsor this is head of the investment society. Apparently insidertrading isn't illegal in Brazil so he's rich lol.

D'Angelo:lol

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"I'm going to fuck them."

EduardoSaverin and Adam D'Angelo were not the only people Mark discussed his HarvardConnection - Facebook situation with. We believe he also had many IM exchangesabout it with relatives and a close female Harvard friend.

InJanuary 2004, Mark met with the Winklevoss brothers and Divya Narendra for whatwould be the last time. The meeting was on January 14, 2004, and it was held atthe same place Mark met with the HarvardConnection team for the first time --in the dining hall of Mark's residence, Kirkland House.

By thispoint, Mark's site, thefacebook.com, wasn't complete, but he was working hardon it. He'd arranged for Eduardo Saverin to pay for his servers. He had alreadytold Adam that "the right thing to do" was to not complete HarvardConnection and build TheFacebook.com instead. He had registered thedomain name.

Hetherefore had a choice to make: Tell Cameron, Tyler and Divya that he wantedout of their project, or string them along until he was ready to launchthefacebook.com.

Marksought advice on this decision from his confidants. One friend told him, in somany words, you know me. I don't ever think anyone should do anything bad toanybody.

Mark andthis friend also had the following IM exchange about how Mark planned toresolve the competing projects:

Friend:So have you decided what you're going to do about the websites?

Zuck:Yeah, I'm going to fuck them

Zuck:Probably in the year

Zuck:*ear

And so,it appears, he did. (In a manner of speaking).

OnJanuary 14, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg met with Cameron, Tyler, and Divya for thelast time. During the meeting at Kirkland House, Mark expressed doubts aboutthe viability of HarvardConnection.com. He said he was very busy with personalprojects and school work and that he wouldn't be able to work on the site for awhile. He blamed others for the site's delays.

He didnot say that he was working on his own project and that he was not planning tocomplete the HarvardConnection site.

After themeeting, Mark had another IM exchange with the friend above. He told her, ineffect, that he had wimped out. He hadn't been able to break the news toCameron and Tyler, in part, he said, because he was "intimidated" bythem. He called them "poor bastards."

So thenwhat happened?

Threedays earlier, on January 11, 2004, Mark had registered the domainTHEFACEBOOK.COM.

OnFebruary 4, he opened the site to Harvard students.

OnFebruary 10, Cameron Winklevoss sent Mark a letter accusing him of breachingtheir agreement and stealing their idea.

In lateMay, after going through two more developers, Cameron, Tyler and Divya launchedHarvardConnection as ConnectU, a social network for 15 schools.

On June10, 2004, a commencement speaker mentioned the amazing popularity of Mark'ssite, thefacebook.com.

In thesummer of 2004, Mark moved to Palo Alto to work on Facebook full time and soonreceived a $500,000 investment from Peter Thiel.

InSeptember 2004, HarvardConnection, now called ConnectU, sued Mark Zuckerbergand the now-incorporated "Facebook" for allegedly breaching theiragreement and stealing their idea.

InFebruary 2008, Facebook and ConnectU agreed to settle the lawsuit.

In June2008, ConnectU appealed the settlement in California's ninth district, accusingFacebook of trading its stock without disclosing material information. Thisappeal is on-going.

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The $65 million question

When wedescribed the specifics of this story to Facebook, the company had thefollowing comment:

"We’renot going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources who seek torewrite Facebook’s early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg with datedallegations. The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvardfor Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growthfrom a college website to a global service playing an important role inthe lives of over 400 million people."

On thelatter point, we agree. What Mark Zuckerberg has accomplished withFacebook over the past six years has been nothing short of amazing.

So,having revisited the founding of Facebook with additional information, what dowe conclude?

First, wehave seen no evidence of any formal contract between Mark Zuckerberg and theWinklevosses in which Mark agreed to develop Harvard Connection.

Second,any agreement the parties may have had--as well as most of the purported IMsand emails we have reviewed from the period--appear to have been at the levelof, as Judge Ware described them, "dorm-room chit-chat." (Albeitinteresting and entertaining chit-chat.)

Third,only a week after beginning development of Harvard Connection, which hereferred to as "the dating site," Mark had begun work on a separateproject -- "the facebook thing." Mark appears to have considered theproducts as competing for the attention of the same users, but he also appearsto have regarded them as different in some key ways.

Fourth --and because of this foreseen competition -- Mark does appear to haveintentionally strung along the Harvard Connection folks with the goal of makinghis project, thefacebook.com, have a more successful launch.

Bottomline, we haven't seen anything that makes us think that, whatever Mark did tothe Harvard Connection folks, it was worth more than the $65 million theyreceived in the lawsuit settlement. In fact, this seems like a huge sumof money considering that the entire dispute took place over two months in 2004and that, in the six years since, Mark has built Facebook into a massive globalenterprise.

Thatsaid, in the course of our investigation, we also uncovered two additionalanecdotes about Mark's behavior in Facebook's early days that are moretroubling. These episodes -- an apparent hacking into the email accounts ofHarvard Crimson editors using data obtained from Facebook logins, as well as alater hacking into ConnectU -- are described in detail here.

Apple is not a firm of endearment

2012-01-30T12:39:00.001+08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?pagewanted=print#

Despite not being a firm of endearment, it is still the most profitable. Despite charging hisg prices for its products, it still mistreats its workers, or rather its contractors.

You may think that conditions in China does not affect us in Malaysia but better think again. They will take away our jobs and salaries. Do you want to work as slaves in these factories and therefore can we fairly compete with these Chinese firms?

We cannot so if you do not want to lose your electronics jobs, then don't support Apple. It is safer in jobs that have nothing to do with electronics.

After watching the film, Social Network, I realise how immoral Mark Zuckerberg is. With this kind of personality behind Facebook, I don't think it will have a long term future. Its success is only due to Harvard students. There is nothing so special or unique about Facebook.

By giving away a lot of things for free, Google should be a model of a firm of endearment where all stakeholders are happy with them, especially their workers. We should all support Google+ then. Abandon Facebook. When their founders are unethical, we should not expect the company to really care about the interests of its customers.

Facebook is innovative in leading the way in Social Networking and help revolutions. Or was it Twitter? Or the Google executive? We should reward Facebook for that but in the long term, we should go for more ethical companies such as Google. Then go to Google+. It should be better and safer than Facebook. Facebook is already riddled with so many controversies with its security and privacy systems.

In the same way, we should abandon Apple. Go for Android. Whatever Apple has, we can always duplicate in other brands. Google may not be innovative enough at the moment, so we should learn and reward Apple for it, but it won't last forever.

I notice that it is the cruel people who are more innovative. The nicest people tend to be boring. But for long term relationship, we must stick to the nicest people on earth. It is for our longterm good.

Preventing workers from joining competitors is illegal

2012-01-29T01:13:00.002+08:00

Preventing workers from joining competitors is illegal. It is shown by this article. Supported by one of the CEOs.

"a 2007 note from Palm's chief executive to Apple's Steve Jobs, saying that an anti-poaching agreement would be "likely illegal."

And these CEOs deny having an anti-poaching agreement, which imply they all agree that anti poaching agreement is illegal, but their defence that there is no written agreement is not valid. An agreement need not be in writing all the time.

Not even an agreement that will be illegal but also laws preventing workers from moving to other better paying jobs are also illegal.

This is just a concept of justice which is applicable to all justice systems all over the world, including Malaysia. Unless we don't want to follow a just system, instead follow the Malaysian way. Unfortunately, the constitution and the United Nations that Malaysia had become a member, require Malaysia to follow a just system. Unless Malaysia want to break the constitution, the highest law in Malaysia. Not even judgments made by corrupt judges can override the constitution. Sooner or later, these judges will get their just punishment for ignoring the constitution.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-apple-lawsuit-idUSTRE80Q27420120127

Steve Jobs told Google to stop poaching workers

By Dan Levine

Fri Jan 27, 2012 6:40pm EST

(Reuters) - Apple's Steve Jobs directly asked former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt to stop trying to recruit an Apple engineer, a transgression that threatened one junior Google employee's job, according to a court filing.
The 2007 email from Jobs to Schmidt was disclosed on Friday in the course of civil litigation against Apple Inc, Google Inc and five other technology companies. The proposed class action, brought by five software engineers, accuses the companies of conspiring to keep employee compensation low by eliminating competition for skilled labor.
In 2010, Google, Apple, Adobe Systems Inc, Intel Corp, Intuit Inc and Walt Disney Co's Pixar unit agreed to a settlement of a U.S. Justice Department probe that bars them from agreeing to refrain from poaching each other's employees.
According to an unredacted court filing made public in the civil litigation on Friday, the now-deceased Jobs emailed Schmidt in March 2007 about an attempt by a Google employee to recruit an Apple engineer. Schmidt was also an Apple board member at the time.
"I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this," Jobs wrote.
Schmidt forwarded Job's email onto other, undisclosed recipients.
"Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?" Schmidt wrote.
Google's staffing director responded that the employee who contacted the Apple engineer "will be terminated within the hour."
He added: "Please extend my apologies as appropriate to Steve Jobs."
Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said on Friday the company, "has always actively and aggressively recruited top talent."
Apple representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The tech defendants have asked a U.S. judge in San Jose, California to quickly dismiss the civil lawsuit, arguing that the companies engaged in bilateral anti-poaching deals to protect collaboration. The companies did not participate in an "overarching conspiracy," they argued in filings.
But at a court hearing this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said the civil lawsuit will proceed, although it may be split up into multiple potential class actions.
Among the revelations stemming from the civil litigation is a 2007 note from Palm's chief executive to Apple's Steve Jobs, saying that an anti-poaching agreement would be "likely illegal.
The latest court filing also refers to a 2007 note from Intel chief executive Paul Otellini discussing that company's agreement with Google.
"Let me clarify. We have nothing signed," Otellini wrote. "We have a handshake 'no recruit' between eric and myself. I would not like this broadly known."
Intel representative Sumner Lemon said on Friday the company, "disagrees with the allegations contained in the private litigation related to recruiting practices and plans to conduct a vigorous defense."
The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is In Re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, 11-cv-2509.
(Reporting By Dan Levine; editing by Tim Dobbyn and Andre Grenon)

2012-01-17T21:05:00.000+08:00

It is the large amount of content, either songs or applications that made Apple products so powerful. Similarly for Microsoft products. Unfortunately, Microsoft has forgotten how it managed to be so successful when it abandoned its content publishers.

For a worst disaster, is the OLPC program. It tried to develop a program to help publishers publish ebooks for this book but it was shot down. It is a pity indeed. Without any education available, OLPC will be useless an an educational tool. You can equip it with fancy emails, browsers and brilliant educational tools and software, but without any content, they are useless indeed.

Teachers are asked to scan their own notes and then learn how to use these educational software in order to present these lectures. I had an experience in one such software at UMS. I still have the manual for it but now I can't even remember its name. It is simpler to just use emails for interactive e-learning. I believe it is based on Mundus but had been renamed because it was modified for UMS.

The way to solve this problem is actually very simple but people just don't believe what I say. Suffice to say that, you can solve it by copying Apple. Do what Apple has done. Apple didn't solve it by providing the tools for conversion. They simply make it available to publishers and documenting it well. Of course they improve it, but these improvements are very subjective. Most of the tools are already available. Just package them together and made available as a one stop methodology to create software for Apple in a fixed standard way.

But Apple made them available in a central store that everyone can access. Even now, I can download any song that I want but I have to search for them. Most people don't have the expertise and time to search for these songs.

The hackers that use the Windows, Androids and OLPCs, may be good at looking for songs and ebooks, but for the majority of users, they don't have the time and willingness to do it the hard way. Apple solved it for them. Does Apple use any special tool? No. They just choose proven and tested tools, and package and document them to be a standard for everyone to follow.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/apple-digital-destroy-textbook/

Apple To Announce Tools, Platform To ‘Digitally Destroy’ Textbook Publishing

3
inShare

By Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Email Author
January 17, 2012 |
7:14 am |
Categories: Books, Media

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

Along with the details we were able to gather from our sources, we also spoke to two experts in the field of digital publishing to get a clearer picture of the significance of what Apple is planning to announce.So far, Apple has largely embraced the ePub 2 standard for its iBooks platform, though it has added a number of HTML5-based extensions to enable the inclusion of video and audio for some limited interaction. The recently-updated ePub 3 standard obviates the need for these proprietary extensions, which in some cases make iBook-formatted e-books incompatible with other e-reader platforms. Apple is expected to announce support for the ePub 3 standard for iBooks going forward.

GarageBand for e-books

At the same time, however, authoring standards-compliant e-books (despite some promises to the contrary) is not as simple as running a Word document of a manuscript through a filter. The current state of software tools continues to frustrate authors and publishers alike, with several authors telling Ars that they wish Apple or some other vendor would make a simple app that makes the process as easy as creating a song in GarageBand.
Our sources say Apple will announce such a tool on Thursday.
And Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis agrees that such a move would be very likely. MacInnis previously worked on education projects at Apple before leaving the company in 2009 to pursue his own ideas about creating interactive digital books. Inkling currently offers a variety of digital textbooks with interactive features, including the ability to share notes with classmates and instructors, via an iPad app.
“When you think about what Apple is doing… they are selling tens of thousands of iPads into K-12 institutions,” MacInnis told Ars. “What are they doing with those iPads? They don’t really replace textbooks, because there’s not very much content on offer,” he said.
Don’t expect that content to come directly from Apple, however. “Practically speaking, Apple does not want to get into the content publishing business,” MacInnis said. Like the music and movie industries, Apple has instead built a distribution platform as well as hardware to consume it—but Apple isn’t a record label or production studio.
But what Apple does provide is industry-leading tools for content production, such as Logic or Final Cut Pro, to help create content. The company also produces tools like GarageBand or iMovie that make such production accessible to a much wider audience.
Will Apple launch a sort of GarageBand for e-books? “That’s what we believe you’re about to see,” MacInnis told Ars (and our other sources agree). “Publishing something to ePub is very similar to publishing web content. Remember iWeb? That iWeb code didn’t just get flushed down the toilet—I think you’ll see some of [that code] repurposed.”

Mobile, social learning

Technology-in-education expert Dr. William Rankin also believes digital books will expand with tools that will enable social interactions among textbook users. Rankin, who serves as Director of Educational Innovation of Abilene Christian University and has extensively researched the use of mobile devices in the classroom, was one of three authors of a white paper on the effects of digital convergence on learning titled “Code/X,” published in 2009.
In that document, Rankin and his colleagues laid out their vision for the future of learning, which included an always-on, always-networked digital device called a “Talos.” That device turned out to be very similar to the iPad that Apple announced just six months later.
“What we saw coming was a change in the kinds of places that learning would happen,” Rankin told Ars. Since the device would always be with the student, it would give her access to information anytime and anywhere. “For that, you need a different kind of book.”
Such digital texts would let students interact with information in visual ways, such as 3D models, graphs, and videos. They would also allow students to create links to additional texts, audio, and other supporting materials. Furthermore, students could share those connections with classmates and colleagues.
“What we really believe is important is the role of social networking in a converged learning environment,” Rankin told Ars. “We’re already seeing that in Inkling’s platform, and Kno‘s journaling feature. Future digital texts should allow students to layer all kind of other data, such as pictures, and notes, and then share that with the class or, ideally, anyone.”
Exactly how what Apple announces on Thursday will impact digital publishing isn’t certain, however.
“Think about how meaningful simply authoring and publishing to an iPad will be for K-12,” MacInnis said. “However, it might not be great for molecular biology.”
MacInnis sees Apple as possibly up-ending the traditional print publishing model for the low-end, where basic information has for many years remained locked behind high textbook prices. Apple can “kick up dust with the education market,” which could then create visibility for platforms like Inkling. This could then serve as a sort of professional Logic-type tool for interactive textbook creation complement to Apple’s “GarageBand for e-books.”
“There will be a spectrum of tools and consumers, and we will continue to fit on that spectrum,” MacInnis opined. “I don’t know if the publishing industry will react to it with fear or enthusiasm.”

Steve Jobs’ pet project

We know that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was working on addressing learning and digital textbooks for some time, according to Walter Issacson’s biography. Jobs believed that textbook publishing was an “$8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction.”
According to our sources close to his efforts, however, Jobs’ personal involvement was perhaps more significant that even his biography purports. Jobs worked on this project for several years, and our understanding is that the final outcome was slated to be announced in October 2011 in conjunction with the iPhone 4S. Those plans were postponed at the last minute, perhaps due to Jobs’ imminent death.
Despite the delay, however, ACU’s Rankin believes the time is right for a change to happen in the field. “We’re headed toward a completely digital future at ACU,” he told Ars. “A recent study showed that 82 percent of all higher education students nationwide will come to campus with a smartphone. We need to have resources and tools ready for these mobile, connected students.”
Photograph by Casey Fleser

Anwar's view on gay is the true Islamic view

2012-01-16T23:24:00.001+08:00

What was Anwar's view on gay?
Anwar never condon gay rights. What he said was that the punishment
for gay should not be draconian. How can having anal intercourse be
punished more than adultery, corruption and murder altogether?

It is just so absurd when a murderer is jailed for only 8 years
whereas a gay is jailed for 24 years????

Hassan's views is typical of the extermist muslims represented by
Taliban and others. They used to dominate PAS but not any more.

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v6/newsbusiness.php?id=640414

"Anwar's " view on gay rights is why I can't work with him" - Hasan
0 comments
KUALA LUMPUR: Former Selangor PAS commissioner Datuk Dr Hasan Ali said
Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's stand regarding gay
rights has been among the reasons why he (Hasan) cannot work with him.

He said that the stand was not only evident from Anwar's recent
interview with BBC, but had also been Anwar's "personal view."

Hasan said it was for that reason that Malaysians should reject
Anwar's struggle, in particular his quest for Putrajaya.

"Because if gays, lesbians, homosexuals and transsexuals are legalised
in Malaysia, God forbid, I think Malaysia will be in disarray and
chaos.

"Anwar's views are not only (reflected) in the BBC interview; if we
look back, that has been the view held by Anwar," he said.

In the interview with BBC, Anwar was asked whether he was prepared to
take "the idea of anti-discrimination as far as gay rights" were
concerned. Anwar replied that "we will have to review some of our
archaic laws".

"We Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia generally believe and are
committed to support the sanctity of marriage between man and woman,
but we should not be seen to be punitive and consider the archaic law
as relevant," Anwar said, adding, "we do not promote homosexuality
within the public sphere or domain."

Hasan said: "That is the one reason why I should not be together with
Anwar Ibrahim, I think my stance is very legitimate," he said.

On Anwar's labelling of him as "power hungry," Hasan, who is Gombak
Setia assemblyman said: "Who is more power hungry? You know better the
person who went around gathering people including from Sabah and
Sarawak (to defect to Pakatan) to seize Putrajaya.

"...and said that he can still be prime minister even if he was
jailed," he said.

Anwar, commenting on the recent sacking of Hasan from PAS, was quoted
as saying that it was better to clean up Pakatan from those who are
greedy in terms of power and money, and not those with contradicting
ideologies. - Bernama

Read more: "Anwar's " view on gay rights is why I can't work with him"
- Hasan - Latest - New Straits Times
http://www.nst.com.my/latest/anwar-s-view-on-gay-rights-is-why-i-can-t-work-with-him-hasan-1.33054#ixzz1jdPjCBte

SBPA: 10 % increase, after that ZERO?

2011-12-21T23:19:00.001+08:00

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/244797

If your mark is less than 70%, you have the option to retire early. In
TM and Petronas, it is called redundancy.

This forced signing or signing without being given time and
information to consider, reminds me of the Jabatan Telekom. It was a
mistake for us to sign to remain with TM. We should all opt for early
retirement. Then we can get all our pension immediately. When you join
TM instead of opting for retirement, you can only get your pension
after the age of 50.

In this SBPA, your salary may increase by up to 13%, but after that
your salary may not increase at all. It may be based on your work
performance, but as is practised in TM, there is a practise of forced
ranking, where there must be about 10% of those whose salary cannot
increase, no matter what your performance is.

You may pity those whose salary is low, but if your volunteer for the
10%, you will be deemed as a deadwood, and will not be considered
worthwhile. Worst, there are many people who will deliberately ask for
such ranking so that they will be removed. This usually happens to the
best and most hard working. Simply because they deem themselves
capable of surviving outside the company.

Also it happens to the most experienced workers. Their salaries are
already high that they don't need any increment. What kind of people
do you think these are?

The result is that, the best workers, because they can survive better
outside, and the most experienced, because they already have enough
money to be independent, will opt out. As more and more of this kind
of people leave, what is left are just hard working idiots, who do not
take no for an answer. What do you think will happen to the
intelligent workers? Do you think they want to work for this company,
especially in Malaysia? When salaries are much higher outside
Malaysia.

Here we are complaining about Malaysians not wanting to work in
Malaysia, and yet the environment in Malaysia is what it is now. Only
the most stupid ones will want to return to Malaysia. They may be
idiots but they want to serve their country and family.

You may argue that these performance appraisals will be fair and if
not fair, can be contested in court. With all the forced ranking in
TM, there is not a single court case that I have heard. The easiest
and most cost effective is just to leave TM. In the current court
environment, it is not wise to go against the government.

Advanced salary payment is compulsory in Islam

2011-12-19T18:22:00.001+08:00

It may be controversial and not practised in many muslim nations but
this hadith shows that advanced payment is what is required in Islam.

The interpretation that it is allowed to pay at the end of a month is
against the spirit of this hadith.
The basic idea is that it has to be done minutes after the work is
done, and any work, even in the middle of the day.
The only way to achieve this is to pay the workers in advance. It is
not practical to wait until the job is finished completely as a job
can be made up of many steps.

Even if we agree to accept monthly wages that are paid at the end of
the month, it does not mean that we have obeyed the teaching of
Prophet Muhammad i.e. Islam.
To be paid weekly wages as is common in western societies is better,
because the delay is only for 1 week, but still not compliant fully
with the true Islamic way of doing things.

To comply exactly with minimal loss is to pay daily, which is too time
consuming. The better way is to pay in advance. I start doing it with
my work. Usually to pay for any spare part that may be required. We
all can contribute to helping our workers by showing our appreciation
by paying them in advance.

You may argue that we will lose if they don't work properly, but even
if we delay payment, there is no guarantee that the work will be
perfect, in fact there is more chance that the work will not be good.
The chance that the work will not be complete is always there, but you
know that this kind of workers cannot be trusted. It is better for us
to lose some money than allow them work for us.

In permanent workers, there is no justification of us not paying them
in advance. If they run away, we can always sue them, and demand
payment back for the advance wages since we have all the details of
these workers. They are indebted to the employers which is even better
for the employers in tying the loyalty of the workers. It also
encourages them to work to their best.

Delaying payments as is the normal practise in Malaysia, the delay can
be more than 3 months nowadays, is just unfair and unIslamic. So much
for a government that claims to be Islamic. Similarly for all Muslim
nations in the world. The nations that practise the Islamic way of
paying wages as the advanced non-Islamic nations, that way wages
weekly.

The oppostion parties that claim to follow the Islamic teaching should
start by paying wages in advance instead of at the end of the month.
There is no loss of revenue at all. Just one month advance payment.
PAS led states in Kelantan and Kedah, as well as PKR states in
Selangor should start. Penang's DAP should follow.

BN's performance in paying workers salaries is very poor. Not only
workers, suppliers are also so badly treated. This is one reason for
the inflated prices of government contracts. I just hope that they
should strive to resolve the late payment of workers with honesty
instead of giving excuses. If the British colonial masters were able
to pay promptly, why can't independent Malaysia?

This delay of payment to suppliers and workers, especially part time
workers is just troubling and has become endemic in the Malaysian
government service. We have lost a lot of talent and opportunities
this way, as well as incurring extra costs when they charge more
because of the certainly in the delay of payment.

http://my.opera.com/40%20HADITH/blog/index.dml/tag/Hadith%20Qudsi%2021

Ibn Maajah (2443) narrated that 'Abd-Allaah ibn 'Umar (may ALLAH be
pleased with him) said: The Messenger of ALLAH (peace and blessings of
ALLAH be upon him) said: "Give the worker his wages before his sweat
dries." Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Ibn Maajah.
What this means to hastening to give him his dues as soon as the work
is done. Similarly, when the agreed-upon period ends (which is one
month in the case of most employees nowadays), then it is obligatory
to hasten to give him his dues.

Competing for perfection

2011-12-18T00:35:00.001+08:00

It is human nature to compete. I also like to compete but in
competitions, someone is bound to lose. It is painful to see your
acquaintances lose. It is also painful for us to lose. Now I realise
that I console myself in my losses by not competing with my opponents
but rather with perfection, the imagined opponent. I use my human
opponents as a sparring partner.

It may be a lousy excuse for losing but it certainly reduces stresses
somehow. However, when you compete, the stress of competition is what
you are looking for. The high of winning is something that we enjoy,
but there are bound to be lows when we lose. I think I use perfection
as a good scapegoat and excuse.

I used not to believe so much in talent, believing that hard work will
overcome all. Now I no longer believe this. Hard work alone will not
make anyone excellent. There must be talent supported by interest. You
may have the talent, but without any interest in exploiting the
talent, the talent will be wasted.

One of my obvious talent was in studying. I had been the top of my
class since primary 2. In my secondary school at Sung Siew Secondary
School, Sandakan, I was even consistently the top of the school
because our marks are compared across the whole school. Contrary to
what other students say, I do not consider myself as a hard working
student. I see other students who work much harder and yet fail. It
could be due to their lack of talent. My techniques of competing for
perfection as a helper.

It may appear that working for perfection means that you have to work
harder but I don't feel the pressure. In order to achieve 100%, you
should work for more than 100%. Even if you fail, you still get close
to 100%. You may think that it is impossible to achieve more than 100%
but in school, it is possible because each examination is constrained
by a syllabus. What you have to do is to study for more than 100% by
covering a wider syllabus using different text books or books. If you
rely on just one textbook, then your options will be limited.
Examination questions may come from other books or sources.

I notice that students who work hard and fail, tend to concentrate on
working on the same source of information. Spending a lot of time
doing the same thing over and over again, hoping to memorise the
information. I don't think it will work. It is like aiming for 100%
coverage. The chance of failure to achieve 100% is much higher, than
if you aim for 200% coverage in different topics and points of view.

I used to employ this technique for Telekom Malaysia projects.
Unfortunately it was deemed as illegal. They stick to 100% target, and
always failing to reach 100%, because perfection is actually
impossible. If you aim and prepare for 200%, your chance of achieving
100% of the target will be very high. Failure to achieve 100% of the
target may be disastrous for the company, and yet, they keep on making
the same mistakes. Working very hard to reduce these mistakes, in
order to achieve a higher performance. The aim may be noble, but the
cost in terms of human resource will be high and worse, no matter how
hard you work, you will never achieve perfection. Do we lose more than
what we hope to achieve by bending the rules?

It is just like buying 2 cars instead of 1. The cost may be high, but
the chance of failure is extremely low. The cost may appear to be
high, but these cars belong to you. Where is the loss if both cars
still belong to you? Some planners will consider it as a waste because
they believe that they can still achieve zero downtime with just one
car if only we look after the car well enough. This is despite facts
pointing out that failures of this technique. Cars need to be sent for
repair, may involve in accidents etc. They would rather ask people to
reduce maintenance time rather than invest in more cars. the bottom
line is that, they are not willing to aim for perfection despite all
their promises.

If you really want something, you will try all means. Otherwise,
you'll give all sorts of excuses. The rewards of failures to
attempting the impossible perfection can be satisfying. We may fail to
be the best in Malaysia, but Sung Siew was the best in Sabah in 1974,
the first time that the school was top ranked. My classmates also got
high ranking because we help each other instead of destroy each other.
And that was not the first time it happened. It happened in my primary
school. Prior to my time, the highest state wide score was 63%. In my
time, the 63% was achieved by the 10th student. The highest was 88%.
The presence of that 88% student managed to encourage the others to
achieve higher.

You can argue that it was just coincidental that there was a bunch of
good students that year. It just does not make sense because the
previous years, the same batch of students from a small community
sharing the same livelihood, i.e. inside the police barracks, can
suddenly produce brilliant students in that particular year. The only
sensible explanation was that there was a sudden urge for students to
maximise their talent for studying.

I don't recall cooperating with my classmates, but my willingness to
ask lots of questions could be one factor why my classmates also
improve. During the secondary school, I discuss with a few close
friends, which became among the top students. He wasn't such a good
student before I met him. These friends are mostly chinese.

A few years before, I was doing my bridge class at Kudat town. My
father wanted to send me to a missionary school but I ended up in a
class with almost all chinese except I and another native. We became
close friends. He wasn't such a good student, but I was the top of the
class defeating all the chinese. Natives are not well known for
beating chinese students in studies, but my example probably inspired
him to improve himself. He wanted to become a doctor and he actually
achieved in. I heard, he was the top student in the school when I left
for Sandakan.

He certainly has the vision. My other even closer friends are not so
ambitious but they are aware of my achievements from a distance. By
making myself as an example who can achieve the seemingly impossible
perfection, many students have risen much higher than their normal
self, fulfilling their potentials. I didn't brag about my school
results probably because of the need for humility. It is probably a
mistake. I didn't do it because in a working environment, it is not
important to be such a good student and I thought people already know
from my CVs and the broadcast announcements.

I realise that it may be a mistake. One colleague who had worked for
me for years and nearing retirement, suddenly became brave and pointed
out that I was proud because I was the best student in my school. I
never bragged about it, but I was not just the best in school but the
whole State of Sabah. When I left TM, I started telling my other close
colleagues about my prowess as as student. Nothing for me to gain any
more so I won't be accused of snobbery.

How about success in real life. Just because you are successful in
school does not mean that you'll be successful in the working
environment. Others may have the talent for being successful in their
careers but it should not stop them from aiming for perfection.
Unfortunately, I don't have the vision to achieve higher because I am
not prepared to make the sacrifices to achieve it. Maybe my pursuit of
perfection has failed me.

I may have failed but others should try to achieve perfection as well.
Many will fail, as shown by my example, but a few is bound to succeed.
If nobody tries to be perfect, we will never be progressive enough. At
least people don't destroy each other. They all seek the perfection
competitor instead of their colleagues.

Targeting US15,000 per capita income

2011-12-17T20:56:00.001+08:00

http://www.nst.com.my/local/general/psd-to-review-civil-servants-salary-1.20399

This is a good move by the government that even opposition parties
never wanted to make. This is the first concrete news but alas, this
may just be a target, like vision 2020. Instead of getting nearer to a
developed status, Malaysia is going down the drain when states like
the Indonesian Kalimantan has a per capita income of 100% higher than
Sabah, one of the Malaysian state, the 2nd largest state with lots of
resources in timber, oil palm, petroleum and cocoa.

It is not clear how much is the increase. The basic may appear to
increase by RM225 per month, for one particular salary sacale, but
most of the government salary comes from allowances. It is not clear
if these allowances are reduced or even removed completely. After all,
it was just an allowance, that can be taken away at any time.

Why the lack of transparency now? Is this just an election promise of
nothing? When the BN wins the election, their most important backers,
the employers and businessmen will revert to their mantra that NO
SALARY INCREASE WITHOUT ANY INCREASE OF SKILL AND PRODUCTIVITY!!!

The ass-licking economists will also want us to believe that
Kalimantan Indonesians just increase their skill and productivity
overnight by 100% over Sabahans. As long as Malaysian still respect
these idiotic economists and managers, Singapore and Brunei will
continue increasing their bank accounts while Malaysians will continue
to have their bank accounts decreasing.

There are many cases where you just don't trust your intuition and
common senses, but rely more on facts and real examples, such as the
case of Singapore and Brunei, and even historical Malaysia, especially
Sabah. Sabahans, from the richest in the world under the British
colonial masters, to become among the poorest in the world under
Malaysia.

17 December 2011 | Last updated at 12:49PM
PSD to review civil servants' salary
By KOI KYE LEE
PUTRAJAYA
kklee@nst.com.my | 0 comments
Allowances and salary adjustments will be done in stages

A review of civil servants' allowances and salary adjustments is
expected following the Jan 1 implementation of the New Civil Service
Remuneration Scheme (SBPA).

Public Service Department (PSD) director-general Tan Sri Abu Bakar
Abdullah said this was an "ongoing process" to keep the structure
"current with the times".

"However, that is for the future as what we are concentrating on right
now is the SBPA."

He said the study would depend on the government's finances.

He added that the department took the first step -- implementing the
new remuneration scheme -- given the government's favourable state of
finances.

A per capita income of US$15,000 (RM47,550) is expected by 2020 when
Malaysia reaches the status of a developed nation.

"Since the nation is moving on track towards the vision, this is the
master plan of the government for the civil servants with regards to
their income, so that they will be able to live comfortably."

Earlier, Abu Bakar was quoted in an online news portal as saying that
it had been confirmed that the department would be reviewing the
allowances and salary adjustments in stages starting from next year,
following the implementation of the SBPA.

The new system, part of the 2012 Budget, has created four hierarchies
in the civil service: the premier, top management, management and
professional, as well as the implementation groups.

Meanwhile, the government will introduce a new scheme for pharmacology
lecturers in public higher learning institutions under the SBPA next
month.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said under
the Pharmacology Lecturer Service Scheme (DUF), all pharmacology
lecturers would be given a starting salary equivalent to the
University Lecturer Service Scheme (DS).

He said the same criteria to assess university lecturers would be used
for the promotion of pharmacology lecturers right up to First-Level
Special Grade (Gred Khas Turus Satu). "Previously, through the
Malaysian Remuneration System (SSM), there was no special service
scheme for pharmacology lecturers as they are only appointed under the
DS scheme.

For this reason, he said it was difficult for the public higher
learning institutions to conduct assessments for promotions for
pharmacology lecturers based on pharmacist career path under the
Health Ministry, as it involved a different scheme.

Khaled said this in his speech before launching the Potential Centres
of Excellence 2011 and presenting a mock cheque of RM260 million of
the RM200 book voucher to student representatives.

Read more: PSD to review civil servants' salary - General - New
Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/local/general/psd-to-review-civil-servants-salary-1.20399#ixzz1gnJnC7C6

Stealing from the public if you devalue

2011-12-17T20:19:00.001+08:00

According to the Nero: Ancients Behaving Badly, Discovery History
program, the Romans would have lynced their emperor if they find him
devaluing their currency by diluting the silver coins. Actually Nero
did devalue the Roman currency by using a core that is only 80% pure
silver. This devaluing of currencies is much easier when paper
currencies are used. Only the strongest economies such as Germany and
Singapore defends their currencies. Brunei, by tying with Singapore,
also enjoy the benefits of a currency that does not devalue. Most
other nations devalue their currencies as a financial planning move,
supported by many economists. I agree with the ancient Romans. It is
just bloody theft of public money if you devalue the national
currency. It has never led to prosperity to the nation. Only miseries
and poverty as shown by Malaysia and Indonesia.

US Corporations pay NO tax but pay more Lobbying

2011-12-14T14:04:00.003+08:00

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/264481/20111209/30-major-u-s-corporations-paid-lobby.htm

30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010

By Ashley Portero: Subscribe to Ashley's RSS feed

December 9, 2011 6:24 AM EST

By employing a plethora of tax-dodging techniques, 30 multi-million dollar American corporations expended more money lobbying Congress than they paid in federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010, ultimately spending approximately $400,000 every day -- including weekends -- during that three-year period to lobby lawmakers and influence political elections, according to a new report from the non-partisan Public Campaign.

(Photo: Public Campaign)
The Public Campaign, a non-partisan research and advocacy organization, reports 30 major U.S. corporations spent more money lobbying Congress than they did on federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010.

29 Major Corporations Paid No Federal Taxes, 2008-2010
Of the 30 companies analyzed in the report, which include corporate giants such as General Electric, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo (WFC), Mattel (MAT) and Boeing (BA), 29 of them managed to pay no federal taxes from 2008 to 2010. Only FedEx, which raked in about $4.2 billion in profits during that period, paid a three-year tax rate of 1 percent -- totaling $37 million -- far less than the statutory federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

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The Public Campaign report expanded on a newly released analysis on corporate tax dodging by the liberal-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice, a non-profit research and advocacy group, as well as lobbying expenditure data provided by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Citizens for Tax Justice, the sister organization to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, reports that 68 of the 265 most consistently profitable Fortune 500 companies did not pay a state corporate income tax during at least one year between 2008 and 2010, while 20 of them paid no taxes at all during that period.
"Our report shows these corporations raked in a combined $1.33 trillion in profits in the last three years, and far too many have managed to shelter half or more of their profits from state taxes," Matthew Gardner, Executive Director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the report's co-author, said in a statement. "They're so busy avoiding taxes, it's no wonder they're not creating any new jobs."
According to the report, titled "Corporate Tax Dodging in the Fifty States, 2008-2010," state corporate tax revenues have been declining for 20 years, due to the passage of multiple state tax subsidies, as well federal tax breaks that further reduce state corporate income tax revenues since states usually accept corporations' federal tax. Moreover, Gardner said multi-state corporations are constantly "devoting their money and legal firepower to coming up with tax avoidance schemes."
Between 2008 and 2010, the 265 companies analyzed paid state income taxes equal to only 3 percent of their U.S. profits, half of the statutory 6.2 percent state corporate tax rate. As a result, these companies avoided a total of $42.7 billion in state corporate taxes over three years.
"As recently as 1986, state corporate income taxes equaled 0.5 percent of nationwide Gross State Product (a measure of nationwide economic activity)," states the report. "But in fiscal year 2010, state and local corporate income taxes were just 0.28 percent of nationwide GSP, equaling the low-water mark set in 2002."
Companies' Laying Off Workers While Receiving Tax Rebates, Raising Executive Pay
Among the 20 companies who paid zero or less in state corporate taxes are utility provider Pepco Holdings, the pharmaceutical company Baxter International, and Intel Corporation (INTC).
Baxter International (BAX) and Intel are among the corporations that Public Campaign reports did not did not pay federal incomes during the same three-year period.
Of those companies, General Electric (GE) spent the most on lobbying, expending about $84 million on lobbying while paying a federal income tax rate of negative 45 percent on more than $10 billion in U.S. profits. PG&E Corp. followed General Electric, spending almost $79 million on lobbying, while paying a negative 21 percent tax rate on $4.8 billion of U.S profits, and Verizon Communications, which spent $52 million on lobbying while paying a negative 3 percent tax rate on $32.5 billion of profits.
A negative effective tax rate means that a company enjoyed a tax rebate, usually obtained by carrying back excess tax deductions and credits to an earlier year, thereby allowing the company to receive a tax rebate check, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
U.S. House Deputy Whip Kevin Brady, R-Tex., is currently making a last-ditch effort to include a corporate tax repatriation holiday on legislation to extend a payroll tax cut, an extension that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said could put an extra $1,500 into the pockets of middle class families each year. While those in favor of the corporate tax repatriation provision -- which would give U.S. businesses a temporary tax break on as much as $1 trillion in overseas income -- insist it would boost the nation's sluggish economy and make it easier for corporations to create jobs, the Congressional Budget Office reports tax repatriation holidays ranks dead last among 13 policy options for creating jobs. The CBO estimates that over the 2012-2013 period, a repatriation holiday would, at best, create the equivalent of one-full time job for every $1 million in federal costs.
Even while dodging most of their state and federal taxes between 2008 and 2010, Verizon (VZ) laid off more than 21,000 U.S. employees, while Boeing, Wells Fargo, General Electric, American Electric Power, and FedEx also let go of thousands of workers. Because companies can be reluctant to make data changes in U.S. employment available, Public Campaign reports it was not able to find up-to-date employment statistics for many of the companies evaluated in the report.
Moreover, as it was laying off employees, General Electric gave their top executives a 27 percent pay raise between 2008 and 2010 -- executives received more than $75 million in compensation in 2010. Wells Fargo increased executive pay by a whopping 180 percent, upping executive compensation from $17.8 million in 2008 to almost $50 million in 2010, while Boeing, FedEx and American Electric Power also instituted lavish executive pay raises while laying off thousands of lower-level workers.
In fact, 2010 year was a record year for executive compensation. The CEO's of some of the largest U.S. corporations made, on average, $11.4 million in 2010, about 343 times more than workers' median pay, according to an analysis by the American Federation of Labor, the widest gap between executive and employee pay in the world. CEO pay has skyrocketed since 1980, when chief executives were only paid about 42 times more than the average blue collar worker.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the median household income fell $3,719 between 2000 and 2010, when measured in 2010 dollars.
Public Campaign released its report on Wednesday, just as thousands of unemployed Americans from across the nation swarmed K Street in Washington, D.C., the lobbying center for some of the world's most profitable corporations. The march was part of "Take Back the Capitol," a four-day series of events aimed at persuading Congress to pass comprehensive job creation measures that will benefit their constituents, rather than special interest groups.
To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail: a.portero@ibtimes.com
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.com

2011-12-14T13:56:00.001+08:00

30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010

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By Ashley Portero: Subscribe to Ashley's RSS feed

December 9, 2011 6:24 AM EST

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(Photo: Public Campaign)
The Public Campaign, a non-partisan research and advocacy organization, reports 30 major U.S. corporations spent more money lobbying Congress than they

did on federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010.

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Despite a growing federal deficit and the widespread economic stability that has swept the U.S since 2008, the companies in question managed to accumulate profits of $164 billion between 2008 and 2010, while receiving combined tax rebates totaling almost $11 billion. Moreover, Public Campaign reports these companies spent about $476 million during the same period to lobby the U.S. Congress, as well as another $22 million on federal campaigns, while in some instances laying off employees and increasing executive compensation.
29 Major Corporations Paid No Federal Taxes, 2008-2010
Of the 30 companies analyzed in the report, which include corporate giants such as General Electric, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo (WFC), Mattel (MAT) and Boeing (BA), 29 of them managed to pay no federal taxes from 2008 to 2010. Only FedEx, which raked in about $4.2 billion in profits during that period, paid a three-year tax rate of 1 percent -- totaling $37 million -- far less than the statutory federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

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Uselessness of school tests

2011-12-09T16:46:00.001+08:00

A successful adult failed high school standardised test. It shows that these tests don't really measure the abilities that are required to make yourself a success.

This is the problem when pure academicians, who are not exposed to industrial and commercial lives are asked to evaluate students.

I used to work in industry for more than 25 years. The skills that are required for survivals are not advanced maths but basic fundamentals. I notice that students are very weak in basic fundamentals. They can only aswer questions that appear to be tough but have actually been trained before, making them more tests of memory instaed of understanding of the fundamentals.

The best way to find out is just to sample a few tests, and give them to successful real people in various fields. Let us find out which aspects of the questions are important for them. I want to see the results for myself.

For now, I am simplifying tests so that I can test for fundamentals instead of pure memory. But I notice that short term memory is vital towards surviving in the real world because you need to understand what you read. If you cannot follow instructions, then you cannot do things required by your customers. You also cannot read instruction manuals.

We need a new set of students who can understand what they read, instead of being able to memorise standardised sets of questions. Based on my experience for the past two years, those students who are good at understanding and short term memory, are also good at University Level examinations. Funnily they are not so good at current STPM or SPM examinations. However I have not met any of Malaysia's top students in my class.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html

Posted at 04:00 AM ET, 12/05/2011

When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids

By Valerie Strauss

Update, 4:40 p.m. Tuesday:
Revealed: The school board member who took standardized test
Original post:
This was written by Marion Brady, veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author.
By Marion Brady
A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.
By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.
He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.
“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.
He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.
“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.
“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.
“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”
Here’s the clincher in what he wrote:
“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.
“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?”
“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”
There you have it. A concise summary of what’s wrong with present corporately driven education change: Decisions are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.
Those decisions are shaped not by knowledge or understanding of educating, but by ideology, politics, hubris, greed, ignorance, the conventional wisdom, and various combinations thereof. And then they’re sold to the public by the rich and powerful.
All that without so much as a pilot program to see if their simplistic, worn-out ideas work, and without a single procedure in place that imposes on them what they demand of teachers: accountability.
But maybe there’s hope. As I write, a New York Times story by Michael Winerip makes my day. The stupidity of the current test-based thrust of reform has triggered the first revolt of school principals.
Winerip writes: “As of last night, 658 principals around the state (New York) had signed a letter — 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began — protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.”
One of those school principals, Winerip says, is Bernard Kaplan. Kaplan runs one of the highest-achieving schools in the state, but is required to attend 10 training sessions.
“It’s education by humiliation,” Kaplan said. “I’ve never seen teachers and principals so degraded.”
Carol Burris, named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, has to attend those 10 training sessions.
Katie Zahedi, another principal, said the session she attended was “two days of total nonsense. I have a Ph.D., I’m in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations.”
A fourth principal, Mario Fernandez, called the evaluation process a product of “ludicrous, shallow thinking. They’re expecting a tornado to go through a junkyard and have a brand new Mercedes pop up.”
My school board member-friend concluded his email with this: “I can’t escape the conclusion that those of us who are expected to follow through on decisions that have been made for us are doing something ethically questionable.”
He’s wrong. What they’re being made to do isn’t ethically questionable. It’s ethically unacceptable. Ethically reprehensible. Ethically indefensible.
How many of the approximately 100,000 school principals in the U.S. would join the revolt if their ethical principles trumped their fears of retribution? Why haven’t they been asked?

One condition where Eistein's Laws are violated

2011-12-06T17:45:00.001+08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29

Theabove link is for the inflation theory which is part of the Bing Bang theory. I found out about it from the discovery channel, called Beyond the Big Bang.

It is derived from the fact that the universe are all of about the same temperature despite being thousands of light years away.

The inflation theory assumes that matter can travel much faster than light during the initial big bang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvx2sVa6Uzw

Election Commission obvious criminal violations

2011-12-05T13:27:00.001+08:00

http://malaysiakini.com/news/182546

A retiree exposes gerrymandering in Sabah

Nigel Aw
11:53AM Nov 27, 2011

A retiree arrested the attention of opposition members at the public hearing by the parliamentary select committee (PSC) on electoral reform, when he told them to forget about marching to Putrajaya under the current electoral system.

Armed with printouts of his presentation slides, Ng Chak Ngoon (right) who described himself as a retiree, presented the panel with a graph that showed 222 lines with every one being taller than the other as it progressed.

The graph, said Ng at the hearing in Kota Kinabalu yesterday, which saw several others testifying, was plotted against the population size of all the constituencies in ascending order for the 2008 general election.

"All on the left (in blue) are won by BN, on the right (in red) are all won by the opposition. The BN constituencies are very small and the opposition constituencies are very big. So what is happening here?

"It's not by chance that all the people in big constituencies like the opposition and all those people in the small constituencies like BN. I would think there is a design here for the Election Commission (EC) to sub-divide all the BN areas into smaller areas to increase their number of MPs," he said.

Ng added that the smallest constituency, BN-held Putrajaya only had 6,008 voters but Opposition-held Kapar had a staggering 112,224 voters, 17 times more than Putrajaya.

‘Kapar can have 17 MPs'

"If we break down Kapar to the size of Putrajaya, you would have 17 MPs from Kapar instead of just one."

If all the seats are made into equal size, Ng added, the last general election would yield a result where BN and Pakatan Rakyat would only have a difference of seven seats in Parliament as opposed to the actual results of 140 to 82 seats.

He further estimated that if a party relied on all the small seats to win power, it would only require 15.4 percent of the total votes to form a majority in Parliament.

"If the opposition thinks they can march to Putrajaya, forget about it."

At this point, PSC member Anthony Loke who is DAP's Rasah MP quipped: "Very demoralising."

Explaining further, Ng said the smallest constituency in Malaysia was 13 percent of the national average while the largest was 288 percent, in contrast to the UK's which smallest and largest constituency are 77 percent and 153 percent of the national average respectively.

"If the EC is sincere, it should redraw all the constituencies, this is not gerrymandering, this is outright cheating."

PSC member Dr Hatta Ramli later concurred, pointing out that the Baling parliamentary constituency, supposedly a rural seat, had an unusually large number of constituents at around 70,000.

"This was because PAS has won the seat before," said Hatta, who then asked if Ng thought this was ethical.

"Unethical is a mild word, Can I answer outside?" replied Ng in reference to parliamentary rules that require members in the hearing to abide by appropriate language.

State by state breakdown
Ng later proceeded to present similar graphs with a state by state breakdown at which PSC member Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said: "Can you rate Kangar?", in reference to his own constituency.

"If you have Negeri Sembilan's, I would like to see my chances of winning," added Loke.

At this, Ng quipped: "I'll have to charge you for consultancy."

When asked by PSC member Fong Chan Onn (right) on how the panel can accommodate the increase of seats for Sabah and Sarawak to meet the Malaysian Federation agreement of 34 percent into his recommendations, Eng replied: "What is your objective?

"To win the election or to have an equitable dispersion of votes? If these are conflicting desires, obviously we cannot come to a compromise. BN has to answer that question, not me, I'm a retired man."

View comments (68)

Another advantage of NO SUBSIDY

2011-12-05T09:57:00.001+08:00

Sabah water supply polluted, says academician

by Jenne Lajiun. Posted on December 5, 2011, Monday

KOTA KINABALU: Malaysians are very lucky to be blessed with the abundance of water within their midst.
They are lucky because water comes from within the country’s border, hence no one can control its supply, said academician Mark K. Brindal during his visit to the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) to give a talk on the Australian experience on water issues recently.
Brindal, who is attached to the Environment Institute for the University of Adelaide and is also South Australia’s ex-minister of water resources, said however that having an abundance of water flowing along our rivers does not necessarily translate to having enough water to cater for the nation.
There are two reasons why water scarcity occurs. One is due to the lack of it, and the other is due to having low and even bad quality water supply due to pollution. And what is happening in Malaysia, and in Sabah, generally, is the latter.
“The problem with most Asian region and also in Malaysia, I think, is the quality problem. You put sewerage in your water.”
The direct dumping of sewerage, toxic and other waste direct into water bodies must be stopped. Such actions will cause further contamination of its rivers, he said.
“(And) If we destroy the river, we destroy ourselves,” he said.
He cited that India is facing a similar problem with its Ganges River.
The Ganges, he said, is a sacred river, but the way it has been managed is killing the river.
“The Ganges river is one of the world’s most polluted rivers.”
Brindal went further to explain the results of drinking water from apolluted source: “Half the people in the world’s hospital beds today are occupied by people suffering from water borne diseases. Water borne diseases are the biggest common diseases of humans today and the single biggest cause of child mortality.”
“A lot of people have that problem in Asia. It is not because there is not enough water. It is a problem of not having clean water. It is not a problem of water quantity but of water quality.”
He added that in more developed countries like Australia, water borne diseases are not a problem.
“Our problem is different: Ours is a dry country, and in summer, our rivers are dry. Our government controls the water. You cannot take water unless you have permission and have the license to do so. You can take for human and animal consumption, but not for crops. In Australia, you can own water the same way you can own land, so what we have is the private ownership for water,” he said.
The practice, he said, has made some people very wealthy. Yet the biggest lesson from the whole experience would be this: “Before, you didn’t care whether you use water efficiently or not. Now, water is an input. By selling water, you can maximise profit. Because water having value, you get people to utilize it better and this was very important during the drought. In the drought, our rice farm cannot grow rice
because there is not enough water, so what the rice planters did was to sell the water they had to those planting grapevines and fruit trees and got loads of money from it. And they were able to survive the drought. That was what’s right about the system.”
In the context of Malaysia, where the issue relevant to water supply is connected to issues of water contamination, the underlying solution might be for the Malaysian policy maker to create property rights, not with water, but with land.
“The thing about rights issue is that you can put property
responsibility with the land.”
He explained that in this case, farmers who own lands, could be given, either through legislation or incentives to actually deal with the pollution on their own farm and not allow their ‘pollutants’ to leak into rivers and other water body during heavy rainfall and so on.
“That way, the nation can get clean rivers without any cost to the government.”
Nevertheless, he cited that it would still be difficult (for government) to deal with non-point source like farms that can stretch for hundreds of miles.
On the Kinabatangan River pollution issue, what Brindal suggested was for the Sabah government to work with UMS and to use the unversity’s resources.
UMS has just established its own water research unit and according to Brindal, the unit is well positioned to address water pollution in Sabah as the people heading it are those who understand the chemistry of water and have the expertise.
“Even though it’s just starting, they got the right people to start fixing the biggest problem straight away.”
He also suggested for the government to use the service of the
university to approach those involved in farming oil palms, in
particular the smallholders, to find and adopt better farming methods and education.
“They may not be formally educated, but most of them are clever and have great wisdom in their land and in the way they use their land. They are not unintelligent … so I am advocating that the government use the service of university, which is a community resource, and reach out to the people. The government would need to fund these activities.”
With education and better awareness, changes in attitude will usually occur within five years, he said.
“In 10 years, you will start seeing measureable result, and within 20 years, you will be able to transform a river,” he said.
He added that some people might think the 20 years period is too long.
He argues, “Twenty years is less than one generation. We have taken maybe 60 years to wreck a river, and if we take 20 years to fix it, I think that is reasonable. Unfortunately, everyone in this modern world wants everything fixed within two minutes. The problem with environment is you can’t fix it in two minutes. It took us years to muck it up, and if we take 20 years to fix it, we probably have done it very quickly.”

US spent Trillion US $ just to overthrow Saddam

2011-12-04T08:42:00.001+08:00

Now Iraq is free to join with Iran. Already proven by Iraq's refusal
to sanction Syria for its crimes against humanity.

Theories that US invaded Iraq just to steal its petroleum resources is
therefore completely false.

By insisting on a democracy instead of dictatorships unlike other
regions in the gulf states, US is playing with fire with its selfish
interests, but has managed to hold a high ground on morality and
justice for humanity.

Unfortunately US has not shown a good example for Iraqi administrators
to follow by ignoring human rights issues. Democracy and justice
cannot survive when human rights are ignored. It has been proven in
many nations but unfortunately US is abandoning human rights even for
its own citizens. Sooner or later, US will no longer be democratic and
respectful of justice, and it will also end the economic might of the
most wealthy nation on earth and subsequently its military might.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-12-03/iraq-troop-withdrawal-maliki/51620706/1

Iraq's PM says country ready for U.S. troops to leave
Updated 2h 25m ago

Comments 4

BAGHDAD (AP) – Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that his security
forces are ready to protect the country once the American military
withdraws by the end of this year, and played down any suggestion that
Iraq would become a follower of Iran.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks November 26, 2011, at a
conference in Baghdad.

By Sabah Arar, AFP/Getty Images

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks November 26, 2011, at a
conference in Baghdad.

Enlarge

By Sabah Arar, AFP/Getty Images

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks November 26, 2011, at a
conference in Baghdad.
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Nouri al-Maliki told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview
Saturday that he has "no concerns whatsoever" about security after all
American troops withdraw by Jan. 1. Iraqi security forces have proven
themselves capable and able to protect their own country, he said.

"Nothing has changed with the withdrawal of the American forces from
Iraq on the security level because basically it has been in our
hands," he said.

The prime minister said Iraq has been largely responsible for security
ever since the American military pulled out of the cities in 2008 and
withdrew to bases outside the cities, leaving the Iraqi military
largely responsible for their own internal security.

He said he was not worried about the type of sectarian warfare that
almost destroyed Iraq in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion.

"I assure the world that the Iraqi forces and the general situation in
the country hasn't changed and will not change," the prime minister
said.

The prime minister also dismissed fears that Iraq would fall under
neighboring Iran's sphere of influence, once the American military
leaves Iraq. Some U.S. officials have suggested that Iranian influence
in Iraq would inevitably grow once American troops depart.

Both countries have Shiite majorities and are dominated by Shiite
political groups. Many Iraqi politicians spent time in exile in Iran
under Saddam Hussein's repressive regime.

Al-Maliki vowed that Iraq will chart its own policies in the future
that conform to Iraqi national interests.

"Iraq is not a follower of any country," al-Maliki said. He pointed
out several areas in which Iraq had acted against Iran's desires,
including the signing of the security agreement in 2008 that required
all U.S. forces to leave Iraq by the end of this year. Iran had been
pushing for all American troops to be out of the country even sooner.

"Through our policies, Iraq was not and will not be a follower of
another country's policies," he said.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To
report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent
Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments
to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state
for verification. To view our corrections, go to
corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted 2h 26m ago | Updated 2h 25m ago
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Steve Jobs died from side effects of Modern Medicine, not Cancer

2011-11-01T00:46:00.000+08:00

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/10/31/why-steve-jobs-magic-doesnt-work-in-medicine/

The above article seemed to imply that modern medicine could help cure Steve Jobs, but the real reason for the death of Steve Jobs is not due to the cancer but to the infection caused by Chemotheraphy. Chemotheraphy destroys white blood cells. You need to have a bone marrow graft in order to recover your immune system.

Read the comments by his sister just before Steve Jobs died. It was difficulty in breathing. In fact respiratory disease seems to be the most common cause of deaths to Cancer patients that undergo Chemotheraphy. I just found out about this from our colleague here.

Of course, after one year of conventional cancer treatment, Steve Jobs failed, but going into modern treatment does not guarantee that he will survive. No matter how big the tumour is, there is still risk that you may die of respiratory diseases such as H1N1, TB or Pneumonia. There are success stories such as Lee Hsien Lung, Dick Chenney and Hugo Chavez, but these people can recuperate well by isolating themselves. Early treatment also means that the dose may be so low that immune system damage is not that extensive.

Can we avoid chemotheraphy? Unlikely. Once you cut your tumour, in order to avoid the spread of cancer cells, you must take chemotheraphy. Early treatment improves your chances but not so much. Most are in the 90% chance, which is considered very good in modern cancer treatments, based on my experienced doctor's comment.

Even after you finished a successful but painful chemotheraphy, you still cannot guarantee that you are fully recovered. Modern medicine does not seem to suggest diet as an important ingredient towards controlling cancer because modern medicine requires exhaustive tests that require decades and billions of dollars to prove. It is too late for many cancer patients to wait. We can rely on some fragmented and inconclusive research results of the various cancer treatment alternatives, before you go for the currently known and proven cancer treatments that are well known to be not so effective still.

Use USB drives for XBOX360

2011-10-23T09:06:00.001+08:00

http://kotaku.com/5510407/xbox-360-consoles-now-have-usb-memory-support

microsoft

By Luke Plunkett
Apr 6, 2010 5:30 AM

25,992 378

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Xbox 360 Consoles Now Have USB Memory Support

The calendar says April 6, and that means, as promised, your Xbox 360 consoles now have a little upgrade waiting for you: the ability to save data to removable USB memory drives.
While Microsoft's own first-party USB sticks, due next month, are pricey, it's important to remember that you don't need to use them. You can use any flash drive, so long as you're aware that the maximum amount of data moved or stored is 16GB on any one device.
So go on, have a play around, get those all-important Mass Effect saves off your Xbox 360's over-priced hard disk and put them somewhere a little safer. Let us know how you find it!

Discussion Threads

2 Questions:
a.)Can I connect to XBL and play online if I buy an Xbox 360 Arcade and use just a flash drive(s)? Is 16GB enough needed to store all the updates and required files? I need a new 360 and I'm on a low budget.

b.)Can't you technically use a total of 48GB worth of flash drive storage since there's a third USB port on the back? I don't remember if they said 2 flash drives was the limit.

promoted by Komrade Kayce

@Chowderholic:

a) Actually, the arcades come with 512mb built in, so you wouldn't even need a USB.

But I would recommend that USB anyways because for a lot of games theres free DLC and stuff that you might want, 512 isn't going to cut it.

b) I think I remember a 2 flash drives limit somewhere, but unsure.

@Chowderholic: The maximum allowed is 32 gigs by using 2 sticks of each at least 16 gigs. The maximum per stick is 16 gigs.

@Chowderholic: 2 Answers:
a.)Yes you can connect to XBL and play online with an Xbox 360 Arcade and a flash drive of just 16 GB. The new Arcade consoles ship with a built-in flash storage of 512 MB, which contains the NXE update. A friend of mine had been playing Street Fighter 4 online with just a 256 MB Memory card after the NXE update. However, if DLC is required to play the game online, for example Burnout Paradise requires a 2 GB download, then you will have to have downloaded those files first.

b.)No. 32GB is the max. Microsoft stated that only 2 flash drives can be connected to the Xbox 360 at a time. However, You can format more than 2 flash drives for your Xbox 360, but you'll have to swap them constantly if you wanna use more than 32 GB.

@Komrade Kayce: Yeah. Despite the 3 USB ports, only two are allowed at a time. I read that a while ago.

@Chowderholic: the USB port on the back cant be used for expandable memory and is only used for the wifi adapter and the HDD transfer kit.

Also i guess u would be fine as the lowest original size of the HDD was 20GB. using 2 memory sticks wouldnt be a problem either i guess.

promoted by battra92

@Chowderholic: I am considering doing this as well.

Dell has the Arcades for like $160 right now.

I really wish I could trust the 360 because there are a few games I do want (Death Smiles for instance) but I suppose I can live without it for a little while longer ...

@Chowderholic: Two simultaneous drive limit.

@battra92: Wait. Let me get this straight. You are considering buying an Xbox 360 from Dell? Will it blue screen after it red rings?

@Chowderholic: The german article says two at a time, but you can swap out with dozens of sticks. Probably effectively unlimited.

@SpamalotFTW: usb port on the back works fine. i have a usb hard drive hooked to it. 360 will only recognize 2 usb expandable selections no matter where they are hooked at

@SpamalotFTW: I can vouch from personal testing that the USB port on the back of the 360 is compatible with the Xbox LIVE Vision Camera

@SpamalotFTW: A single 16GB memory stick is plenty of space compared to a 20GB HDD, as the 360 takes a tonne of the HDD space for caching and suchlike, leaving you about 13GB. No such problem with a memory stick.

@SpamalotFTW: You can also charge controllers with the back USB port. I do it all the time.

@SpamalotFTW:
"only used for the wifi adapter and the HDD transfer kit."

You can use the back usb port for anything. It's the same as the front 2.

@SpamalotFTW: Unless something has changed in the recent update, you're wrong. I've had a USB drive plugged in the rear port for years.

@SpamalotFTW: This is wrong. I'm using my 16GB Mushkin Mulholland just fine in the back USB port of my 360.

@scrapking: It takes roughly 7 gigs for backwards compatibility as that was the minimal capacity of an Xbox1 drive.
Using a memory stick won't serve as a substitute for a hard drive performance-wise nor in terms of backwards-compatibility.

We are never sure who is the right side but we know for sure who the wrong side is

2011-10-06T07:31:00.000+08:00

We know for sure Gadafi is the wrong side for killing innocents and making Libyans poor despite its oil wealth. As for the future, we can never be sure of anything but we can try but we must also be allowed to change it. This is the beauty of democracy, as long as it still exists.

For Sabah, it is very sure that BN is the wrong side. It had made Sabah, the most resourceful state in the world to become the poorest in the world. Despite more than 10 years of promises, as recent as the announcement that the 2-year waiting list for surgeries in over, people are still dying waiting for urgent surgeries. Urgent surgeries are still being done at hospital beds with the resulting high loss of lives due to infections. How many of them are our relatives and friends. This does not take into account those who died waiting for urgent surgeries.

With all the BN lies and false promises, I only knew about it when my own mother-in-law was affected. A few months ago, our colleague at UMS died, and I was no naive as not to know the real reason. I didn't know the implication of surgery at his bedside, because he appeared to be doing well. But his head swell. A few months later, I have to undergo similar brain surgery, and among the compliations is the swelling of the brain as a result of infections. Only now I realise the connection.

IF you think you have money and therefore survive. Think about it. SMC now only borrows equipment from the government for all its surgeries. Damai specialist has 2 surgeons but not sure how many operating theaters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/reese-schonfeld/libya-its-all-over-but-th_b_996180.html

Libya: It's All Over But the Doubting

Posted: 10/5/11 11:53 AM ET

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United Nations , Benghazi , Libya , Qaddafi , Tripoli , Wikipedia , John Burns , Belgrade , Dawn Of Freedom , g8 , Jamahiriya , Misrata , Nato , Paris , Sir David Richards , Zohra Al-Tayef , World News

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It's more than six months since the United Nations declared the airspace over Libya to be a "no-fly zone" and authorized Member States "to take all necessary measures... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack from the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya..." That seemed to me to authorize the NATO air attacks on Gaddafi's military forces surrounding Benghazi who were threatening the massacre of that city's civilian population. The air attacks worked, and Gaddafi's forces retreated.
It did not seem to me that such attacks would be sufficient to drive Gaddafi from power. So, I wrote in April that the war in Kosovo had ended only after NATO and the US had:

Bombed and destroyed much of Belgrade's infrastructure, including, according to Wikipedia, "bridges, military facilities, official government facilities and factories." Among the targets were "power plants, water plants, and the government broadcasting TV tower.

At the time I wrote the piece, NATO was claiming that its air strikes had been aimed only at carefully selected targets; Tripoli was largely unscathed, while Misrata was being destroyed by Gaddafi's artillery and mortars. I suggested that in order to win the war, that NATO must inflict pain upon those who support Gaddafi, civilian or not.
In May, General's top military commander, Gen. Sir David Richards, said that Gaddafi "could remain clinging to power unless NATO broadened its bombing pockets to include the country's infrastructure."
A week later, the G8 announced in Paris that any settlement in Libya must include Gaddafi's removal, and said that despite the 90 day deadline of the UN authorization, military operations would continue "as long as necessary".
Later that week, NATO air strikes on Tripoli began. John Burns reported in The New York Times that the attacks "caused thunderous explosions and fireballs that leapt high into the night sky [causing] people and neighborhoods a mile or more away to cry out in alarm... 'We thought it was the day of judgment,' one enraged Libyan said." At the same time, NATO spokespersons at press briefings assured reporters that civilians were not targeted but, if any were injured, it was in error. Time after time, press conference after press conference, reporters asked spokespersons if NATO was acting within its UN mandate. Time after time, bombing after bombing, NATO stuck to its story.
Now, five months later, NATO is still bombing Gaddafi loyalists in a final effort to achieve victory for the Libyan rebels. Just last week, Reuters reported that a "foray by the former rebels, backed by a heavy bombardment by NATO war planes, brought them to a traffic circle more than a mile from the city center." This is tactical bombing, far from what had been authorized by the UN five months ago. A Gaddafi spokesperson told Reuters "that NATO bombings in Surt are killing hundreds of people."
Gaddafi spokesmen do not necessarily speak the truth about casualties, but there is no question that some civilians have died from NATO bombings. There is no doubt that Western mercenaries have helped train and tactically advise rebel forces, and there is no question about NATO supplying arms to the rebels. Now the war is winding down, but there is no doubt that the Qaddafi forces would've triumphed if it had not been for NATO's intervention.
The only doubts are about what will happen next. Will Gaddafi's rule be replaced by democracy, by Islamic theocracy or by tribal rivalry? Can Libya remain a united country? Today's New York Times quotes Zohra al-Tayef, a counselor at Dawn of Freedom, a still deserted school in Tripoli, as saying that "teachers would have to undo years of efforts by the former government to sew divisions between tribes and regions." I'm sure the United Nations did not consider all these possibilities before authorizing NATO "to [in Libya] take all necessary measures... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas." Otherwise, Zohra al-Tayef would not have said:
"May God let the right side win," adding, "We don't even know what the right side is."
I doubt that the UN or NATO really knows what the right side is either.

iPhone can make or break a TelCo

2011-10-04T08:28:00.000+08:00

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1011947669930389848

Report: Sprint Makes Multibillion Dollar Bet on the iPhone

By Christina Bonnington
October 3, 2011 |
6:57 pm |
Categories: Telcos and ISPs
Follow @redgirlsays

If there’s one device that could save Sprint from a losing battle for customers with wireless giants Verizon and AT&T, it’s the iPhone.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told the company’s board that the carrier agreed to purchase 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Today, a purchase of that size amounts to $20 billion US.
Such a large bet on Apple is telling of the drastic measures Sprint is willing to take in order to remain a contender in the wireless carrier arena. The purchase will take a huge chunk out of Sprint’s projected income, but perhaps could help the carrier bounce back after its merger with Nextel in 2005.
Sprint’s lack of carrying the iPhone has been the biggest reason customers leave or switch from Sprint’s network, the Journal reports Sprint CEO Dan Hesse saying. The carrier plans to subsidize each iPhone to about $500 in order to attract buyers and stay competitive with rivals. Currently on AT&T and Verizon an unsubsidized iPhone costs $650.
Spokespersons from Apple and Sprint declined to comment on the rumor.
AT&T was the first carrier to offer the iPhone since the device first launched in 2007, while Verizon joined the club earlier this year. Sales from the iPhone and iPad continue to provide Apple with record profits, which Sprint is hoping to take advantage of. The phone has continued to top the charts with regards to both sales and consumer satisfaction. Mounds of evidence have been stacking up that Sprint will get the iPhone come Tuesday’s press event.
Sprint needs a hit. The carrier’s stock has dropped 80 percent since the iPhone debuted on competing networks. Sprint currently serves only 52 million subscribers (Verizon, for comparison, serves over twice that many).
But now Sprint has a chance to bite into its larger competitors, as consumers will have a third option when it comes to choosing a carrier for their iPhone.
If the next iPhone is 4G, then Verizon, followed distantly by Sprint, would be the speediest option. Tests performed by RootMetrics found that Verizon’s 4G speeds were greater than 10 Mbps about 90 percent of the time, AT&T primarily achieved data speeds of 500 or less Kbps or 1.5 to 3 Mbps, while Sprint’s data speeds varied, but primarily fell in the 5 to 10 Mbps range.
After data-hungry iPhone users began clogging up their networks, both Verizon and AT&T abandoned unlimited data plans. AT&T’s biggest option for iPhone power-users, which provides 4 GB of data per month and unlimited calling and messaging, will currently run you $135 per month. On Verizon, you can get a plan with unlimited voice and messaging and 10 GB of data per month for $170 per month (but if you’re not going to be using data quite so much, it’s $30 to $50 less for a lower data plan).
Sprint, however, still offers an unlimited data package. The plan includes voice, SMS and data service for $100 a month plus a $10 smartphone fee. It’s still a pricey phone, but Sprint’s most expensive plan is still cheaper than comparable ones on AT&T and Verizon.

Android phones still don't get it! It is useability rather than power

2011-10-01T09:10:00.000+08:00

After going through the latest android phones including 3D HTC and LG offerings, I notice that Android phones have improved by leaps and bounds. Samsung has improved a lot by reducing the thickness and weight of its phones. Not sure about its scratch resistant glass though.

Most other androids pride in dual core speed but as long as we can browse the internet comfortably, there is little need for slightly higher speed. Just because it is double core does not mean that the internet speed will be higher.

iPhone4 has HDR photos which means that you DO NO NEED FLASH. How many Android offers such a feature? How many have managed to get 960 x 640 resolution which allows us to read more pictures and characters on screen? None. The highest I have seen was 960 x 540.

The coming HTC 3D 4G has 1024 x 720, which is 720p resolution, similar to the Astro Beyond. Don't be fooled by the 1080p video taking. It only takes 1080p video, but cannot display it at 1080p.

Don't be fooled by displays of low resolution pictures, or brilliant colours. What you need is just a way to get information, which is sharpness of high resolution pictures and maximum number of text per screen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8799059/iPhone-5-eBay-expects-iPhone-4-sales-rush.html

iPhone 5: eBay expects iPhone 4 sales rush

The launch of the new Apple's iPhone 5 in October will push sales growth in the online market for previous iPhone models, according to eBay

Home screen of Apple iPhone 3GS Photo: Alamy

By Gianluca Mezzofiore

4:33PM BST 30 Sep 2011

7 Comments

Sales of old Apple's iPhone models are expected to rise up to 70 per cent in the aftermath of the new iPhone 5's launch, eBay has announced. As it happened last year, when the iPhone 4 went on sale, earlier iPhone models will be accessible at a lower price and online customers are ready to exploit the chance to get one.

According to eBay, more than half a million iPhones have been sold online since they have been introduced on the market. In the last year, an average of one iPhone per second has been sold via eBay UK.

“Our figures show that savvy shoppers are ready and waiting to get their hands on the iPhone 4 at a cut down price," Angus McCarey, Retail Director for eBay UK said. "The UK leads Europe in terms of smartphone adoption, which is helping to drive the triple digit growth of mobile shopping on eBay. Mobile is fundamentally changing retail as shoppers can now browse and shop on and offline in a seamless way.”

The smart phone market on the whole should see a surge in sales as the iPhone 5 goes on sale, eBay reports. During last year’s festive season, sales of the iPhone 3G exceeded the iPhone 4 as shoppers look for great deals rather than the most up-to-date model.

The IPhone 5 is expected to be relased on October 21, the weekend that iPod celebrates its 10th birhday, according to new rumours. The date is based on what appears to be a leaked note from a branch of Best Buy in the US. Other rumours are based on leaks from Asia, where the phone is assembled. The iPhone has traditionally been annonuced in June, at Apple's WWDC event in San Francisco. This is the first time that the announcement has been pushed back to the autumn.

True justice at work: Illegal arrest

2011-10-01T08:51:00.002+08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8800492/Banned-preacher-can-seek-damages-over-illegal-arrest.html

Banned preacher can seek damages over illegal arrest

A banned Islamic preacher who entered Britain illegally following a Home Office blunder is entitled to seek damages after being detained unlawfully, a judge has ruled.

Sheikh Raed Salah was able to walk through immigration at Heathrow Airport unchallenged despite being banned by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, days before Photo: EPA

By James Orr

11:28PM BST 30 Sep 2011

Sheikh Raed Salah, a Palestinian activist, could receive thousands of pounds for being wrongfully imprisoned shortly after entering the country in June this year.

Mr Salah, 52, was able to walk through immigration at Heathrow Airport unchallenged despite being banned by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, days before.

His exclusion order had been sent to the wrong terminal at the airport allowing him to arrive unopposed. He was arrested three days later when the error was discovered.

Yesterday, the migration watchdog, Migration Watch UK, condemned the judge’s decision. Sir Andrew Green, its chairman, said: “It is quite extraordinary that someone who had no right to be in Britain in the first place should be able to claim damages for his arrest.”

Mr Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, flew to Britain on June 25 for meetings including an engagement at the Houses of Parliament. He was detained at his London hotel and taken to Paddington Green police station where he was held for 21 days.

The father of eight has now been granted the right to seek damages for “false imprisonment” after his lawyers said he had always planned to leave the country and his detention was therefore unnecessary. He also claimed his human rights were breached because the reasons for his detention were not explained in his own language.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Nicol, sitting at the High Court in London, ruled that Mr Salah was not given “proper and sufficient reasons” for his arrest on June 28 — “nor was he given them until some time on the 30th”. As a result he is entitled to damages for wrongful detention.
The amount of damages to which Mr Salah will be entitled could be several thousand pounds, said lawyers.
Judge Nicol rejected the claim that his detention as a whole was contrary to the statutory power to detain and contrary to the Home Secretary’s policy on detention pending deportation. Mr Salah is due to appeal against Mrs May’s decision to deport him in separate proceedings.
In the past, Mr Salah has been accused of inciting anti-Semitic violence. He has always denied the accusations.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We are pleased that the court has found that the Home Secretary used her powers correctly. The court decided that there was a technical problem when Mr Salah was initially detained.”

Islamic law is Hudud Law, and is allowed in Malaysian constitution

2011-10-01T08:36:00.000+08:00

If the constitution allows for the death penalty, let alone cutting off hands of thieves. It is also clearly stated in the constitution that syariah law is mandated for Muslims. Syariah law is hudud law.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/10/1/nation/9614485&sec=nation

Constitution does not allow for hudud, says Bar Council

PETALING JAYA: Both the Federal Constitution and the current legislative framework do not allow for hudud to be implemented by any state, said the Bar Council.
Expressing its concern over the recent “political posturing” in reviving the possibility of implementing hudud, its president Lim Chee Wee called on all parties to instead uphold the Federal Constitution as the supreme law of the land.
“Hudud cannot be implemented within the current constitutional and legislative framework,” he said.
“The Malaysian Bar calls upon all parties to uphold the Federal Cons-titution as the supreme law of the land and cease all rhetoric on the implementation of hudud, which has inevitably caused confusion and division.
“They should focus instead on strengthening the rule of law and democratic process,” he said, adding that a Supreme Court ruling in 1988 had confirmed Malaysia as a secular state.
The Federal Constitution, he said in a statement, only allowed the states to enact laws creating offences by persons professing Islam, against the precepts of Islam, and the respective punishments for such offences.
Senior lawyer Roger Tan said the power to legislate punishment for criminal offences was with Parlia-ment.
“To me, this is a very important issue as it is against the intention of our forefathers. If any non-Muslim does not respond strongly against PAS proposal, it is an act of acquiescence to the insidious attempt by the party to convert a secular state into a theocratic state,” he added.
Wangsa Maju MP Wee Choo Keong called for politicking to stop as DAP and PKR had entered with open eyes into a relationship with PAS.
“PAS has made it very clear from the start that it planned to make Malaysia an Islamic state should it come to power.
“It has never said that it will forgo this. Do not play political games,” said the Independent MP.

BN insulted by the truth that Johor is not safe!

2011-10-01T08:30:00.000+08:00

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/161905

Guan Eng apologises to Johor Sultan (Update)

Posted on 30 September 2011 - 01:45pm
Last updated on 30 September 2011 - 04:45pm

GEORGE TOWN (Sept 30, 2011): Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has apologised to the Sultan of Johor and the people of Johor, for a statement made by him against the state.
Lim, who has been attributed to have said that the crime rate in Johor is higher than in Penang to a gathering of foreign correspondents in Singapore, however stressed that he has been misrepresented by the Barisan Nasional-controlled (BN) media and will pursue the matter in court.
Speaking at a special press conference called at his office in Komtar here today, Lim noted that Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar had said he was offended by the statement made by Lim against Johor.
"Out of respect to the Johor Sultan, I wish to fully apologise to the Johor Sultan and his subjects, the people of Johor,” he said, reading a prepared statement. “I have no intention whatsoever to discredit Johor or any other state.”
He did not field any questions during the brief press conference, citing legal considerations.
Lim also agreed with the Sultan who said that politics should be left to politicians and the people should not be dragging rulers into politics.
“I feel that what I had said has been misrepresented by the BN-controlled media,” he said.
“I will pursue this matter in court to determine the truth of where I had made the speech, what was actually said, how and in what context it was made,” he added.
A Bernama news on Sept 23 reported that Lim was alleged to have said in a Radio Australia interview that Johor was not a safe state where the chance of being kidnapped was high, compared to Penang.
However, Radio Australia’s transcript and audio recording of the interview put up on its website did not contain any such remark.
Lim’s office responded by writing to Bernama for a full withdrawal and unconditional public apology over the apparently incorrect report.
TV3, however, on its prime time news on Sept 26 played an audio recording of a similar comment ascribed to Lim and allegedly made at the luncheon with foreign correspondents in Singapore on Aug 12. The news led to criticisms against Lim from various leaders.
Lim today pointed out that to date, except for the purported audio tape broadcasted by TV3, there was no press report of what he had spoken in Singapore or Australia.
“I have access to the tape of my interview with Radio Australia. I am still trying to locate the tape of what I said in Singapore which was made privately in a closed-door session.
“I have instructed my lawyers to immediately file a suit in court against the BN-controlled media, beginning with Bernama,” he added.

Related story:

Why dictators love to make people POOR

2011-09-23T10:49:00.000+08:00

It is the poor people who love dictators. This is shonw in Libyan and Malaysian poorest regions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/poor-libyans-look-to-revolution-for-roads-and-plumbing-not-just-democracy/2011/09/22/gIQA1F12nK_print.html

Poor Libyans look to revolution for roads and plumbing, not just democracy

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, September 23, 1:11 AM

MAHROUQA, Libya — The men who lined the potholed road were so overjoyed that they cheered, sang, danced and wept as Libyan fighters from the country’s new leadership for the first time rolled into this impoverished hamlet deep in the southern deserts.
But while Libya’s new rulers focus on replacing Moammar Gadhafi’s regime with a democratic government, many here hope the revolution will first bring amenities that have long been rare in this sun-baked inland region: Paved roads, medical care and flush toilets.
“We’ve been waiting for them for a long time,” said Mohammed Saleh, 43, who flashed a V-for-victory sign as the fighters passed his simple concrete house late last week. “Now we expect the electricity and the water to come back on.”
The uprising that toppled Gadhafi’s regime last month was fueled in part by widespread frustration with how little the country’s oil wealth has translated into better lives for Libya’s 6.5 million people.
Aware of the potency of economic grievances, the leaders of the National Transitional Council, the closest thing the country has to a government, have vowed to use Libya’s resources for the general good. Council head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said recently he seeks to create a “state of prosperity” where even the unemployed would receive salaries.
The council’s ability to fulfill such promises will largely determine its success at extending its control over the country, especially in areas where support for Gadhafi remains.
Libya boasts Africa’s largest proven oil reserves and produced 1.6 million barrels daily before the anti-Gadhafi revolt erupted in mid-February. Last year, Libya raked in $40 billion from oil and gas exports — a fortune from which many Libyans say they’ve seen little benefit.
Libya expert Ronald Bruce St John said Gadhafi’s regime wasted money over the years in countless ways: Spending lavishly on ill-designed building projects; stocking unsustainable arsenals; and bankrolling the lavish lifestyles of Gadhafi’s family members and associates.
At the same time, the regime failed to invest in education, develop the economy and build strong communications and transportation infrastructure.
“This is the major development failure of the Gadhafi regime,” he said.
Before the uprising, Libya ranked 53 out of 169 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index, just behind Uruguay, Palau and Cuba, countries with no significant oil wealth. Most Gulf Arab nations ranked higher, with per capita incomes more than twice as high — though Libya slipped in ahead of oil giant Saudi Arabia because of a longer life expectancy and longer schooling, despite the kingdom’s higher per capita income.
Even in the relatively affluent coastal cities where most Libyans live, residents bemoan their bumpy roads, bad schools and poor infrastructure.
But the complaints ring louder further south in Libya’s desert stretches, in areas like the parched Wadi al-Shati region some 440 miles (700 kilometers) south of Tripoli.
Over the past week, hundreds of fighters have been driving through the region’s 22 villages in a preliminary attempt to spread the NTC’s control.
Most of the fighters are young men from Tripoli who say the region’s poverty shocks them. Some of the villages — with names like “Cat,” ‘’Sons of Yellow” and “Burnt” — consist of no more than simple, cinderblock houses surrounded by date palms and connected by dirt roads. Some homes lack running water, and few have central sewage. Jobs are lacking, with those not employed by the government raising goats and camels in the desert.
The war made matters worse by cutting the area’s supply lines. Most villages haven’t had regular electricity or phone service for months, leaving them unclear about what has happened in the rest of the country. Meanwhile, gas prices have skyrocketed and banks have run out of cash, leaving many unable to cross the large distances that separate their towns.
Despite the poverty, support for Gadhafi remains strong, a phenomenon locals who have joined the revolution blame on ignorance and government propaganda.
“All the messages these people have received for the last 42 years have trained them to think a certain way, and that will be very hard to change,” said Col. Bashir Awidat, head of the region’s new military council.
That has complicated the “liberation” of the area.
In the town of Mahrouqa, Arabic for “Burnt,” crowds of cheering locals watched on a recent afternoon as fighters fired rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at an abandoned security building, blasting chunks of plaster off the facade. Locals then commandeered a cement mixer to topple a large statue of The Green Book, Gadhafi’s largely unintelligible vision of the perfect government.
Soon after, however, locals in another neighborhood fired on the convoy, killing one fighter. Another was shot dead in a nearby village that night.
Elsewhere, the rebels fought among themselves about how to handle a family they heard was armed and flew a green flag on their home.
In the end, they didn’t search the home, though a commander told the angry men standing at the door they’d have to give up their guns and not fly Gadhafi’s flag.
“That flag has been there 20 years, so why should we take it down now?” one replied. “In this house, we still love Moammar.”
Awidat, the military council head, said the fighters planned to chip away at the remaining support for Gadhafi by bringing aid. Once the villages are secure, he said, the fighters will truck in gasoline, food and medicine.
The aid is badly needed — as is longer term development.
Abdel-Qadir Hussein, a high school teacher in the 3,000-person town of Tarut, said plumbing was only installed in part of the town last year and that the local clinic hadn’t had a doctor in years, forcing locals to drive long distances for medical care.
Still he said, only about half the town supported the revolution — something the arrival of services could change.
“Most of the people here are very simple,” he said. “If they see that the gas and electricity come back and that they are treated well by the revolutionaries, they’ll slowly start to support the revolution.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Nothing wrong with ISA: Only its illegal implementation

2011-09-17T17:05:00.000+08:00

Read the comments made by this Professor based on what I had recently read about the ISA. It is not the law, but its implementations by Policemen and Judges. It is very clear in the constitution and the ISA acts that it is meant for events threatening the FEDERATION ONLY!!!

Not even any state government, let alone a person as imporant as the Prime Minister. But when police start interpreting events that threaten UMNO as threatening the Federation of Malaysia, it is indeed a blatant illegal implementation of these acts and constitutions.

Answer for all ISA arrests, law expert tells Putrajaya

By Clara Chooi

September 16, 2011

Aziz said BN should not claim credit for the repeal of the ISA. — File pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 16 — Constitutional law expert Professor Abdul Aziz Bari wants the government to be answerable for all previous arrests under preventive laws like the Internal Security Act (ISA), urging for the formation of a royal commission to investigate power abuse.
He also cast doubt over Putrajaya’s reform promises made last night, questioning if Barisan Nasional (BN) and its lynchpin Umno have abandoned their own political philosophy.
“But whatever the case, perhaps it is necessary to set up a royal commission to investigate the abuse of the powers under the ISA and emergency proclamations.
“In a democracy, the government must be made accountable for its actions and decisions,” he said in a statement here.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, BN and Umno should not claim credit for moving such reforms, he added, pointing out that demands for the revocation of the three Emergency Declarations and the repeal of the ISA have been made for years by the federal opposition.
Aziz said Najib was only reacting to demands from the opposition, indicating that the prime minister “does not seem to be in power”.
He also urged the government to broaden its reforms to include repealing the University and University College Act 1971 (UUCA), Societies Act 1966, and Section 27 of the Police Act 1967.
Yesterday, Najib announced a slew of reforms to the country’s press and security laws, including the repeal of the ISA and several significant amendments to the Printing Presses and Publications Act and Section 27 of the Police Act regarding peaceful assembly.
“The proposal on Section 27 was put up by the royal commission headed by former [Chief Justice] Tun Dzaiddin (Abdullah) in 2005.
“In its report the [2005 Royal Commission on the Enhancement of the Management and Operations of the Police] found that the police have abused the power to deny the right to peaceful assembly that is provided for by the Constitution,” said Aziz.
He also urged for amendments to the Official Secrets Act 1971, which he said has been tightened over the years, and the controversial Sedition Act 1948.
“The problem with this archaic and draconian law (Sedition Act) is that not only ordinary citizens are under its threat.
“In fact even MPs, who are the lawmakers, can be prosecuted under it. Not even parliamentary privileges can help them,” he pointed out.

Libyans fight for Liberty, not weath

2011-09-17T16:54:00.000+08:00

Libyan women primed for their own revolution

ANNE BARNARD

Having played their part in the uprising, Libyan women have big plans but face big obstacles
AISHA GDOUR, a school psychologist, smuggled bullets in her brown leather handbag. Fatima Bredan, a hairdresser, tended wounded rebels.
Hweida Shibadi, a family lawyer, helped Nato find airstrike targets. And Amal Bashir, an art teacher, used a secret code to collect orders for munitions: Small-calibre rounds were called “pins”, larger rounds were “nails”. A “bottle of milk” meant a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
In the anti-Gadafy forces’ unlikely victory in Libya, women did far more than send sons and husbands to the front.
The six-month uprising against Gadafy has propelled women in this traditional society into roles they never imagined. And though they already face obstacles to preserving their influence, many women never want to go back.
“Maybe I can be the new president or the mayor,” Gdour (44) said as she savoured victory with other members of her rebel cell.
But in the emerging new Libya, women are so far almost invisible in the leadership. Libya’s 45-member National Transitional Council includes just one woman. The council’s headquarters does not have a women’s bathroom. And in his exceedingly eccentric way, Gadafy may have had a more expansive view of appropriate female behavior than some conservative Libyan families.
Still, much as Rosie the Riveter irreversibly changed the lives of American women after the second World War, Libyan women say their war effort established facts on the ground that cannot be easily undone. Women from many walks of life are knitting small rebel support cells into larger networks, brainstorming what they can do next to help build a post-Gadafy Libya.
Men are also responding, with some who once objected to fiancees and sisters working late or attending protests now beginning to support such activities.
“People know the part women played in this revolution, even if it didn’t show up in the media,” said Nabila Abu Ras (40) who helped organise Tripoli’s first lawyers’ demonstration in February and then, late in pregnancy, printed revolutionary leaflets that women tossed from speeding cars.
Women helped start Libya’s revolution. On February 15th, female relatives of prisoners killed in a massacre in Abu Salim prison held a protest in Benghazi. Prominent female lawyers joined them and within two days, Gadafy forces attacked the swelling crowds with machine guns. Watching her colleagues’ audacity on satellite television, Shibadi, the family lawyer, was electrified.
“I was jealous,” she said. Shibadi (40) helped organise 100 colleagues, including about 20 women, to protest in Tripoli. Soldiers surrounded them, but the crowds swelled anyway. Soon, she would do more. Few female revolutionaries saw themselves as fighting for women’s rights. But in hindsight, many Libyan women, educated enough to dream large, said they were held back by dictatorship and tradition. When the revolution came, they were primed for action.
Gadafy fancied himself a champion of women. In his Green Book, the musings he insisted that Libyans study, he devoted pages to the sanctity of breastfeeding and female domesticity.
Yet many Libyan women viewed his advocacy as superficial. Women, like most citizens, had virtually no say in government. Those he promoted, like his female bodyguards, were seen as cronies, sex objects or both. Educational opportunities for the well-connected made little difference to conservative and rural families who kept women out of the public sphere. Even in Tripoli, where many women work, drive cars and mix with men, leading less circumscribed lives than some Arab counterparts, female independence was fragile. Bredan, the hairdresser, lost her chance at medical school for making fun of the Green Book.
Bashir, the art teacher, who giggles as she recalls her days as a covert arms dealer, wanted to build a career as an artist. But the sponsor of her first exhibit of drawings, a government insider, demanded sex. She cancelled the show, hid the drawings and focused her public life around raising her children.
“I forgot about everything I dreamed of,” said Bashir. But she found another outlet, one that proved valuable during the revolution. She ran an underground charity. Beginning in 2005, Bashir and Gdour, the psychologist at her school, secretly raised about $5,000 a month for poor families. Four or five families a day came to Gdour, the unmarried daughter of an imam, for money and clothing.
Across town, Dr Rabia Gajun, whom they did not know but would meet during the revolution, was also secretly raising money, to build a clinic and offer free care. When their male relatives left Tripoli to fight, the women’s charities acquired a new mission. Gajun spirited away drugs and a printer for the rebels. A neighbour of Gdour’s who was a fighter told her rebels outside the city needed ammunition. So she purchased bullets from an acquaintance in Gadafy’s military and delivered them in her handbag.
As Tripoli quietly armed itself for a possible uprising, Bashir took orders for weapons which she called “wax paper” and “meat”. Gdour’s mole delivered them in his military vehicle. At the same time, Shibadi, the lawyer who once thought herself too emotional to be a judge and who was forbidden by her family to study English abroad, was helping determine airstrike targets.
She collected weapons and information on troop locations from friends and family in the security forces and relayed the news to a female friend whose cousin, a fighter, passed it to rebel leaders who, she was told, passed it to Nato.
Twice, a female friend living in a high-rise near the airport spotted soldiers carting in heavy weapons. Twice, Shibadi reported it, and Nato bombs soon fell. She could not be sure it was because of her, but the possibility was thrilling. When fighting reached Tripoli, female revolutionaries converged on Matiga Hospital, abandoned by pro-Gadafy doctors and nurses. That is where many first met one another. Bredan, finally wearing scrubs and treating patients, has barely left the hospital since. Down the hall, Fawzia al-Dali (51) was cooking lunch. She had let her nephews build weapons in her house, which the authorities ransacked.
“Why did I risk it?” she asks. “For God, for tasting freedom, for our land, for liberty, for the future.” Libyan women have big plans and face big obstacles.
But last week, Gdour, Gajun and others met to plan for continued action. Gajun wanted to trace missing detainees. Gdour wanted to run for political office. Naima Badri, one of her charity partners, organized a women’s conference at the Tripoli city council. They are all working together on a charity fair.” We will never again let anyone control us,” Shibadi said. – (Copyright The New York Times News Service)

Stop Syria and Iran like Libya

2011-09-08T11:13:00.000+08:00

If it were true that the majority of the population is against the government, and the governments use violent means to stop demonstrations, by all means, the West and the rest of the world is justified in helping the population rebel against their governments.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Stop+Syria+easy+Libya/5365614/story.html

Stop Syria? It’s not as easy as Libya

By Trudy Rubin, The Philadelphia Inquirer September 7, 2011

Now that NATO has helped to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi, some pundits are calling for similar action against Syria.
So far the chorus is muted, composed mainly of op-eds by neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq war. Back then they were certain that regime change in Baghdad would undercut Iran and make the region Israel-friendly (the opposite happened). They now argue that regime change in Damascus — a close friend to Iran — would undercut Tehran and help Israel.
They want NATO to take on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad next.
On the surface, it’s easy to dismiss them. Neither the American public nor the White House is keen on more U.S. military interventions. Polls show only 12 percent of the public thinks the United States should get more involved in the Syrian crisis. And NATO members have ruled out for now any military move against the Syrian regime.
Yet, given today’s deranged political climate, the calls for intervention in Syria may grow louder. Republicans are eager to snipe at President Barack Obama’s supposed foreign-policy weakness and Republican front-runner Rick Perry calls for the United States to “renew our commitment of taking the fight to the enemy.” Which enemy does he have in mind? Syria? Iran?
Moreover, those who believe in humanitarian intervention to prevent the slaughter of civilians may join the call for action on Syria. After all, the justification for NATO’s no-fly zone over Libya was to prevent mass slaughter in Benghazi; Syrian leader Assad continues to slaughter civilians who are peacefully calling for reforms in their country. Despite Assad’s ban on news coverage, shocking videos are leaking out of the carnage.
So, rather than dismiss comparisons between the Libyan and Syrian rebellions, we should focus on their differences lest we get sucked into another military intervention — one that we will regret.
Libya was a special case, dissimilar to other Arab revolutions. Indeed — heed this point closely — every Arab revolt has been unique, and needs to be dealt with on its own terms.
In the Libyan case, several unique factors made NATO intervention possible.
The bizarre Gadhafi was personally despised by almost every Arab leader, Sunni or Shiite, for crimes and assassinations he’d committed or attempted. This was the key reason the Arab League endorsed a no-fly zone over Libya. The Arab League endorsement persuaded the Russians and Chinese not to veto a U.N. Security Council vote for the no-fly zone.
Other key factors: Libya’s location, far from the Arab heartland, with a small Sunni Arab population, and lots of oil to buy off its people; this meant Libyan regime change was not seen as a threat by most Arab leaders. None of these special circumstances applies in the Syrian case.
Syria sits in the center of the Arab heartland. “Every country in the region has vital security interests in Syria,” says Vali Nasr, a Middle East expert at Tufts University.
Assad has a much stronger military machine than did Gadhafi, and is still supported by a sizable segment of the Syrian population that fears chaos. If he falls, a brutal sectarian civil war seems likely.

Syria straddles the Mideast’s Shia-Sunni fault line. The Assad regime is led by Alawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot, while the bulk of the population is Sunni. Assad’s exit would touch off a round of Shiite-Sunni bloodletting that could spread to neighboring countries, including Lebanon and Iraq.
Given the uncertainties about what would follow Assad, Arab leaders are not certain they want him to fall. “No one (in the region) wants the current situation but no one is comfortable with what is coming,” says Nasr. “No one thinks there would be a soft landing” after Assad’s demise,” he adds.
In such circumstances, no Arab endorsement would be forthcoming for Western military intervention, nor is any Security Council resolution likely.
Moreover, as Nasr notes, no one should assume that the fall of the Assad regime will necessarily help Israel — or seriously harm Tehran.
The Syrian opposition is disorganized and weak, with liberals mostly in exile; the likely winners after a regime change would be Sunni Islamists, perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood.
A new regime led by Sunni Islamists might loosen Assad’s tight ties with Shiite Tehran, but that hardly means it would cut them. It might stop openly shipping weapons to Israel’s enemies, such as the Lebanese group Hezbollah, but that doesn’t mean it would be friendly to Jerusalem.
“A change of regime might mean the Syrian-Israeli border becomes hot again,” says Nasr, with new Syrian rulers pressing harder to regain the Golan Heights. Such a regime, he believes, would find much common cause with Hezbollah — and the Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza.
This doesn’t mean the West shouldn’t look for nonmilitary ways to help the Syrian opposition, including tighter sanctions on Assad’s government. It does mean that Washington should have no illusions that Syrian regime change will realign the region in the West’s favor.
“We have to put pressure on Assad but not charge ahead,” says Nasr. “One thing we should have learned from Iraq is that the choices are not between black and white but between shades of gray.”
And each Arab revolution is a different shade of gray.

How to handle the fall of BN: Libya Lessons

2011-09-08T09:58:00.000+08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/world/africa/08tripoli.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

September 7, 2011

In a New Libya, Racing to Shed Ties to Qaddafi

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

TRIPOLI, Libya — Khalid Saad worked for years as a loyal cog in Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s propaganda machine, arranging transportation to ferry foreign journalists to staged rallies, ensuring that they never left their hotels without official escorts and raising his own voice to cheer the Libyan leader.
The day that rebels took Tripoli, Mr. Saad immediately switched sides.
Now he works for the rebels’ provisional government, coordinating transportation for its officials and insisting that his previous support for Colonel Qaddafi was just business. “My uncle and my son were soldiers for the revolution,” he said in an interview. “Everyone will be happy now. Everything is changed now. Everyone is free.”
As the curtain falls on Colonel Qaddafi’s Tripoli, many of its supporting actors are rushing to pick up new roles with the rebels, the very same people they were obliged not long ago to refer to as “the rats.” Many Libyans say the ease with which former Qaddafi supporters have switched sides is a testament to the pervasive cynicism of the Qaddafi era, when dissent meant jail or death, job opportunities depended on political connections, and almost everyone learned to wear two faces to survive within the system.
That cynicism may now prove to be Tripoli’s saving grace. After months of a brutal crackdown and a bitter civil war, in a country with little history of unity where autonomous brigades of fighters still roam the capital, citizens have been unexpectedly willing to set aside their grievances against functionaries of the Qaddafi government. Everyone knows that almost everyone who stayed out of jail during four decades of Colonel Qaddafi’s rule was to some extent complicit.
Indeed, the thin veneer of support helps explain why the loyalist forces who had terrorized the city crumbled so swiftly when it became clear that the end was near, averting the expected blood bath. Though loyalists still hold out in pockets around the country, and there have been episodes of retaliatory violence and looting, Tripoli, the capital, changed hands and returned to peace in a matter of days.
“The way the system worked, everyone had to be part of it — all of us,” said Adl el-Sanusi, a former official of Colonel Qaddafi’s Foreign Ministry who is now working for the provisional government’s Foreign Ministry. “If we say, ‘Get rid of whoever was part of the system,’ we would have to get rid of the whole population,” he said.
Now, he said, many of those former loyalists “are more revolutionary than anyone else!”
Rebel officials have said for months that they would try to avoid the mistakes made in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, when United States officials disbanded the military and barred all former members of the ruling Baath Party — many of Iraq’s most experienced professionals — from working in any public-sector job.
Instead, the Libyan rebels said, they will seek retribution, in a courtroom, against only the most notorious Qaddafi government officials, those who oversaw torture or killings, egregiously enriched themselves or, in the case of the captured television host Hala Misrati, led the propaganda war on state television.
The rebel leaders pledged to welcome back most of the bureaucrats and other midlevel functionaries, and so far, former senior officials of Colonel Qaddafi’s government say the provisional government appears to be keeping its word. To underscore that point, the rebel leadership held a ceremony on Tuesday to hand control of a major natural gas plant to the same manager who was responsible for its security under Colonel Qaddafi.
“There are very few instances of revenge,” said Abdulmajeed el-Dursi, the former chief of the Qaddafi-era foreign media operation, sipping coffee at a cafe full of rebels and talking about opening a media services company.
“It is legitimate, all these things they are doing — freedom of the press, the rule of law,” Mr. Dursi added. “We always thought it was the right thing to do.”
Officials at the rebels’ detention centers around the city say they have sent scores of Colonel Qaddafi’s former soldiers and supporters back to their homes after they have turned in their weapons, and even some of the former soldiers now insist that they are revolutionaries at heart.
Ahmed el-Naeli was a soldier from Tripoli captured and jailed weeks ago by rebels in the Nafusah Mountains, where a reporter for The New York Times gave him a business card. On Tuesday, he called to say that he, too, had changed sides. After his capture, Mr. Naeli said, “I turned around and joined the revolution.”
Officials at local police stations say hundreds of officers are returning to work, usually in their home neighborhoods without incident.
They are “well accepted” because local residents understand they were only part of the system, said Abdou Shafi Hassan, 34, a former officer who began working with the rebels months ago, smuggling weapons and plastic explosives for them until he was caught and sent to jail.
Now he is an acting police chief in his neighborhood, Tajura, where he is recruiting dozens of former officers back to work. “They are the ones who are bringing the security to the city,” he said.
A top associate of the Qaddafi government’s spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, cast aside any pretense of loyalty when he offered to sell a Western journalist a series of secret tape recordings he had made of his former boss trying to bribe journalists for favorable coverage.
The most famous turncoat was Gen. Albarrani Shkal, a senior officer who was in charge of a large army unit that fought the rebels. About a month before Tripoli fell, officials of the new provisional government said, General Shkal began secretly collaborating with the rebels. The rebels instructed him to stay in his job so that when their troops entered Tripoli he could order his own soldiers to disperse. “He saved a lot of lives,” Mr. Sanusi of the Foreign Ministry said.
More than 50 Libyan ambassadors serving abroad abandoned Colonel Qaddafi as soon as the uprising began, and Mr. Sanusi said that many others sought to defect in the following months. The rebel leaders told them they could do more for the cause if they stayed in their jobs, he said.
“So many people had turned, that it really ended up a true popular revolution,” Mr. Sanusi said.
Youssef M. Sherif, one of Libya’s most prominent writers, said he tracked the waning days of Colonel Qaddafi’s government by the wages it paid young people to cheer in front of the state television cameras. At first, he said, they were paid about $360, then $140, then $35 and then the money ran out.
When the money ran out, so did the crowds.
Mr. Sherif said he asked people why they accepted such money from a tyrant. “ ‘Better I spend it than him!’ ” they would say.
Salem el-Ajelli, 39, an unemployed resident of the Abu Salim neighborhood where rebels fought a fierce firefight to eradicate the last bastion of support for Colonel Qaddafi in the city, said that he and his neighbors would sometimes be paid $30 a day to cheer for the colonel.
“Most of us are just regular people who did not really care about Qaddafi or not Qaddafi,” Mr. Ajelli said. “We just worrying about getting by day by day.”

Copies of documents showing Gani Patail's corruption

2011-09-08T00:47:00.002+08:00

Now let’s see what the MACC is going to do (UPDATED with Chinese Translation)

ARCHIVES 2011

Tuesday, 23 August 2011 Super Admin

After that, Ho Hup’s auditors discovered that Gani Patail’s assistance to Vincent Lye went beyond just friendship. Vincent Lye had also bribed Gani Patail. But Vincent Lye was a cheapskate and he used Ho Hup’s funds to pay for various renovation works for Gani Patail’s second wife's house in Seremban.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin

The Unholy Trinity of Gani Patail, Shahidan Shafee and Tajudin Ramli

Last year, Malaysia Today revealed Attorney-General Gani Patail’s pilgrimage to Mekah that he and his family performed together with Tajudin Ramli’s proxy, ex-police officer cum lawyer Shahidan Shafee.

It was a free Haj trip, paid for by Shahidan.

This is what we call corruption in the name of Allah and adds a new dimension to the concept of money laundering. Dirty money, when used to finance your trip to Mekah to perform the Haj, becomes squeaky-clean money.

Is JAKIM going to now come out with a new fatwah regarding whether your Haj trip, paid for with dirty money, is true Haj or bullshit Haj? Or is JAKIM only concerned about whether Muslims wear Santa Claus hats on Christmas Day?

Now, this was not just a wild allegation of 40% truth and 60% lie, as Mukhriz Mahathir would say. Malaysia Today provided Tabung Haji documents that clearly showed they travelled together and shared rooms like one big happy family of Mafia Dons.

This revelation caused an uproar, but only for a short while, because, as Tun Dr Mahathir said: Melayu mudah lupa. This Haj trip of Gani Patail is reminiscent of Chief Justice Eusoffe Chin’s holiday to New Zealand with that infamous lawyer, VK Linggam, who made the phrase ‘correct, correct, correct’ popular.

As expected, and as is customary of how things are done in Malaysia, nothing much came out of this revelation. In fact, Gani Patail was ‘investigated’ and cleared by the MACC Operations Evaluation Panel (PPO) chairman, Tan Sri Dr Hadenan Abdul Jalil, who said that the case has been dropped because the investigation showed “no testimony to any criminal offence.”

Okay, for those who do not understand what this means, in simple English it means NFA (no further action). In Chinese they would say ‘I scratch your back and you scratch mine’. The Umno Members of Parliament call it the ‘close one eye’ syndrome.

Last week, the de facto Minister for Law, Nazri Aziz, directing the GLCs to withdraw their civil suits against Tajudin Ramli. Why do they want to do this? Well, according to Nazri, this is to help save the government a lot of unnecessary expenditure because court cases cost money.

Then again, could this be because of what Malaysia Today has been saying regarding Tajudin Ramli cutting a deal with the government? Nah! It cannot be. That would be dishonest and criminal in nature. Surely the government would not dare do something that illegal.

If you can also remember, Malaysia Today also revealed that Gani Patail used his prosecutorial powers to help his corporate friends involved in boardroom tussles. Malaysia Today provided a picture of Gani Patail with Dato Vincent Lye at the Ho Hup Bhd office.

After that trip, Vincent Lye’s adversary in the boardroom tussle, Dato’ TC Low, was charged in court for a very minor technical offence in order to tilt the balance in Vincent Lye’s favour. Unfortunately for Vincent Lye, the minority shareholders ganged up on him and booted him out during an EGM.

AG Gani Patail with Dato’ Vincent Lye at Ho Hup’s Office

After that, Ho Hup’s auditors discovered that Gani Patail’s assistance to Vincent Lye went beyond just friendship. Vincent Lye had also bribed Gani Patail. But Vincent Lye was a cheapskate and he used Ho Hup’s funds to pay for various renovation works for Gani Patail’s second wife's house in Seremban.

Now see the documents below of how Vincent had used Ho Hup’s company funds to gratify his friends in the corridors of power.

So, will the MACC now charge Gani Patail?

Many have been hauled to the MACC office and were thrown out of the window for less than this. And this not only involves a larger amount but also involves the number one man in the AG’s office.

Now let’s see what the MACC is going to do. I place my bet on the MACC doing nothing and that Gani Patail will continue to serve and will retire a very rich man.

I suppose it is true when they say that Cina baruah Melayu. Is this not a case of the Chinese paying for the cost of the Malay’s bonking partner?

Translated into Chinese at: http://ccliew.blogspot.com/2011/08/blog-post_9628.html

The fall of Tripoli: An excellent article

2011-09-07T21:57:00.002+08:00

http://thestar.com.my/services/printerfriendly.asp?file=/2011/9/7/worldupdates/2011-09-06T220405Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-591761-1.asp&sec=worldupdates

The Star Online > Worldupdates

Tuesday September 6, 2011 MYT 1:15:54 AM SPECIAL REPORT - The secret plan to take Tripoli
By Samia Nakhoul
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime was delivered by a caterer, on a memory stick.

Libyan rebels celebrate at Bab Al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli August 23, 2011. (REUTERS/Louafi Larbi/Files)

Abdel Majid Mlegta ran the companies that supplied meals to Libyan government departments including the interior ministry. The job was "easy," he told Reuters last week. "I built good relations with officers. I wanted to serve my country."
But in the first few weeks of the uprising, he secretly began to work for the rebels. He recruited sympathisers at the nerve centre of the Gaddafi government, pinpointed its weak links and its command-and-control strength in Tripoli, and passed that information onto the rebel leadership on a series of flash memory cards.
The first was handed to him, he says, by Gaddafi military intelligence and security officers. It contained information about seven key operations rooms in the capital, including internal security, the Gaddafi revolutionary committees, the popular guards -- as Gaddafi's voluntary armed militia was known -- and military intelligence.
The data included names of the commanders of those units, how many people worked in each centre and how they worked, as well as crucial details like the number plates of their cars, and how each unit communicated with the central command led by intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi and Gaddafi's second son Saif al-Islam.
That memory card -- which Mlegta later handed to officials at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) -- provided the basis of a sophisticated plan to topple the Libyan dictator and seize Tripoli. The operation, which took months of planning, involved secretly arming rebel units inside the capital. Those units would help NATO destroy strategic targets in the city -- operation rooms, safe houses, military barracks, police stations, armoured cars, radars and telephone centres. At an agreed time, the units would then rise up as rebels attacked from all sides.
The rebels called the plan Operation Dawn Mermaid. This is the inside story -- much of it never before told -- of how that plan unfolded.
The rebels were not alone. British operatives infiltrated Tripoli and planted radio equipment to help target air strikes and avoid killing civilians, according to U.S. and allied sources. The French supplied training and transport for new weapons. Washington helped at a critical late point by adding two extra Predator drones to the skies over Tripoli, improving NATO's ability to strike. Also vital, say western and rebel officials, was the covert support of Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Doha gave weapons, military training and money to the rebels.
By the time the rebels were ready for the final assault, they were so confident of success that they openly named the date and time of the attack: Saturday, Aug. 20, at 8 p.m., just after most people in Tripoli broke their Ramadan fast.
"We didn't make it a secret," said Mohammed Gula, who led a pro-rebel political cell in central Tripoli and spoke to Reuters as rebels first entered Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound. "We said it out on the street. People didn't believe us. They believe us now."
THE DIGITAL GIFT
Planning began in April, two months into the uprising. Rebel leader Mahmoud Jibril and three other senior insurgents met in the Tunisian city of Djerba, according to both Mlegta and another senior official from the National Transitional Council (NTC), as the alternative rebel government calls itself.
The three were Mlegta, who by then had fled Tripoli and joined the rebels as the head of a brigade; Ahmed Mustafa al-Majbary, who was head of logistics and supplies; and Othman Abdel-Jalil, a scientist who became coordinator of the Tripoli plan.
Before he fled, Mlegta had spent just under two months working inside the regime, building up a network of sympathisers. At first, 14 of Gaddafi's officers were prepared to help. By the end there were 72, Mlegta says. "We used to meet at my house and sometimes at the houses of two other officers... We preserved the secrecy of our work and it was in coordination with the NTC executive committee."
Brigadier General Abdulsalam Alhasi, commander of the rebels' main operation centre in Benghazi, said those secretly helping the rebels were "police, security, military, even some people from the cabinet; many, many people. They gave us information and gave instructions to the people working with them, somehow to support the revolution."
One of those was al-Barani Ashkal, commander-in-chief of the guard at Gaddaffi's military compound in the suburbs of Tripoli. Like many, Ashkal wanted to defect, but was asked by the NTC to remain in his post where, Alhasi says, he would become instrumental in helping the rebels enter the city.
The rebel planning committee -- another four men would join later, making seven in all -- knew that the targets on the memory sticks were the key to crippling Gaddafi's forces. The men included Hisham abu Hajar, chief commander of the Tripoli Brigade, Usama Abu Ras, who liaised with some cells inside Tripoli, and Rashed Suwan, who helped financially and coordinated with the tribes of Tripoli to ease the rebels' entry.
According to Mlegta and to Hisham Buhagiar, a rebel colonel and the committee's seventh member, the group initially drew up a list of 120 sites for NATO to target in the days leading up to their attack.
Rebel leaders discussed their idea with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a meeting at the Elysee Palace on April 20.
That meeting was one of five in Paris in April and May, according to Mlegta. Most were attended by the chiefs of staff of NATO countries involved in the bombing campaign, which had begun in March, as well as military officials from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
After presenting the rebels' plan "from A to Z", Mlegta handed NATO officials three memory cards: the one packed with information about regime strongholds in Tripoli; another with updated information on regime sites as well as details of 65 Gaddafi officers sympatheric to the rebels who had been secretly supplied with NATO radiophones; and a third which contained the plot to take Tripoli.
Sarkozy expressed enthusiasm for the plan, according to Mlegta and the senior NTC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The leaders slimmed the 120 targets down to 82 and "assigned 2,000 armed men to go into Tripoli and 6,000 unarmed to go out (onto the streets) in the uprising," according to rebel colonel Buhagiar. He joined the opposition National Front for the Salvation of Libya in 1981 and has lived in the United States and trained as a special forces operative in both Sudan and Iraq.
There were already anti-Gaddafi cells in the capital that the rebels knew they could activate. "The problem was that we needed time," the senior NTC official said. "We feared that some units may go out into the streets in a spontaneous way and they would be quashed. We also needed time to smuggle weapons, fighters and boats."
In the early months of the uprising, pro-rebel fighters had slipped out of Tripoli and made their way to the north-western city of Misrata, where they were trained for the uprising, rebels in Misrata told Reuters in June. The leaders of two rebel units said "hundreds" of Tripoli residents had begun slipping back into the city by mid-July. Commander Alhasi and other rebel officers in Benghazi said the number of infiltrators sent into Tripoli was dozens, not hundreds.
"This was not D-Day," Alhasi told Reuters in his office.
"THE OVERSEAS BRIGADE"
Most of the infiltrators travelled to Tripoli by fishing trawler, according to Alhasi. They were equipped with light weapons -- rifles and sub-machineguns -- hand grenades, demolition charges and radios.
"We could call them and they could call each other," Alhasi said. "Most of them were volunteers, from all parts of Libya, and Libyans from overseas. Everybody wants to do something for the success of the revolution."
Although Tripoli was ostensibly under the control of Gaddafi loyalists, rebels said the security system was porous: bribery or other ruses could be used to get in and out. Small groups of men also began probing the government's security system with nighttime attacks on checkpoints, according to one operative who talked to Reuters in June.
It was possible to smuggle weapons into Tripoli, but it was easier and less risky -- if far more expensive -- to buy them from Gaddafi loyalists looking to make a profit before the regime collapsed. The going rate for a Kalashnikov in Tripoli was $5,000 over the summer; in Misrata the same weapon cost $3,000.
Morale got a boost when rebels broke into government communication channels and recorded 2,000 calls between the regime's top leadership, including a few with Gaddafi's sons, on everything from military orders to sex. The NTC mined the taped calls for information and broadcast some of them on rebel TV, a move that frightened the regime, according to the senior NTC source. "They knew then that we had infiltrated and broken into their ranks."
Recordings of two of the calls were also handed to the International Criminal Court. One featured Gaddafi's prime minister al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi threatening to burn the family of Abdel Rahman Shalgham, a one-time Libyan ambassador to the United Nations and an early defector to the rebels. Al-Mahmoudi described Shalgham as a slave. The other was between al-Mahmoudi and Tayeb al-Safi, minister of economy and trade; the pair joked about how the Gaddafi brigades would rape the women of Zawiyah when they entered the town.
Several allied and U.S. officials, as well as a source close to the Libyan rebels, said that around the beginning of May, foreign military trainers including British, French and Italian operatives, as well as representatives from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, began to organise serious efforts to hone the rebels into a more effective fighting force.
Most of the training happened in the rebel-held Western Mountains. But Eric Denece, a former French intelligence operative and now Director of the French Centre for Research on Intelligence, says an elite rebel force of fighters from the east was trained both inside and outside Libya, at NATO bases and those of other allies. This "overseas brigade" was then dropped back into the country. In all, estimated Denece, some 100-200 foreign operatives were sent to Libya, where they focused on training and military coordination. Mlegta confirms that number.
FRENCH DROPS, BRITISH INFILTRATION
Rebel commander Alhasi insists western special forces were not involved in combat; the main help they gave was with the bombing campaign and training. London, Paris and Washington also say their troops were not involved in combat.
"They complied with our (bombing) requirements, immediately sometimes, sometimes we had a delay," said Alhasi, who has a big satellite photograph of Tripoli on one of his walls. "We had the information on the ground about the targets and relayed it to them."
A European official knowledgeable about such operations said "dozens" of plain-clothes French military advisers were sent to Libya. A French official said between 30 and 40 "military advisers" helped organise the rebels and trained them on basic weapons and more high-tech hardware.
In May, the French began smuggling weapons into western Libya. French military spokesmen later confirmed these arms drops, saying they were justified as "humanitarian support", but also briefing that the aim was to prepare for an advance on Tripoli.
British undercover personnel carried out some of the most important on-the-ground missions by allied forces before the fall of Tripoli, U.S. and allied officials told Reuters.
One of their key tasks, according to allied officials, was planting radio equipment to help allied forces target Gaddafi's military forces and command-and-control centres. This involved dangerous missions to infiltrate the capital, locate specific potential targets and then plant equipment so bomber planes could precisely target munitions, destroying sensitive targets without killing bystanders.
WASHINGTON'S ROLE
In mid-March, a month after violent resistance to Gaddafi's rule first erupted, President Obama had signed a sweeping top secret order, known as a covert operations "finding", which gave broad authorisation to the CIA to support the rebels.
But while the general authorisation encompassed a wide variety of possible measures, the presidential finding required the CIA to come back to the White House for specific permissions to move ahead and help them. Several U.S. officials said that, because of concerns about the rebels' disorganisation, internal politics, and limited paramilitary capabilities, clandestine U.S. support on the ground never went much beyond intelligence collection.
U.S. officials acknowledge that as rebel forces closed in on Tripoli, such intelligence "collection" efforts by the CIA and other American agencies in Libya became very extensive and included efforts to help the rebels and other NATO allies track down Gaddafi and his entourage. But the Obama administration's intention, the officials indicated, was that if any such intelligence fell into American hands it would be passed onto others.
A senior U.S. defence official disclosed to Reuters details of a legal opinion showing the Pentagon would not be able to supply lethal aid to the rebels -- even with the U.S. recognition of the NTC.
"It was a legal judgment that the quasi-recognition that we gave to the NTC as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people didn't check the legal box to authorise us to be providing lethal assistance under the Arms Export Control Act," the senior official said.
HELP FROM THE GULF
In some ways the rebels' most unlikely ally was Qatar.
The Gulf Arab state is keen to downplay its role, perhaps understandably given that it is ruled by an absolute monarch. But on the ground, signs abounded of the emirate's support. The weapons and equipment the French brought in were mostly supplied by Qatar, according to rebel sources. In May, a Reuters reporter saw equipment in boxes clearly stamped "Qatar." It included mortar kits, military fatigues, radios and binoculars. At another location, Reuters saw new anti-tank missiles.
Qatar's decision to supply arms to the rebellion, one source close to the NTC told Reuters, was instigated by influential Libyan Islamist scholar Ali Salabi, who sought refuge in Qatar after fleeing Libya in the late 1990s. He had previously worked with Gaddafi's son Saif, to help rehabilitate Libyans who had fought in Afghanistan. Salabi's brother Ismael is also a leader of a rebel militia in Libya.
Salabi "is the link to the influential figures in Qatar, and convinced the Qataris to get involved," said the source close to the NTC.
HIRED GUNS
By early June, Libya seemed locked in a stalemate.
After three months of civil war, rebels had seized huge swathes of territory, but NATO bombing had failed to dislodge Gaddafi. The African Union said the only way forward was a ceasefire and negotiated peace. London joined Paris in suggesting that while Gaddafi must step down, perhaps he could stay in Libya.
But hidden away from view, the plan to seize Tripoli was moving into action.
The rebels began making swift advances in the Western Mountains, out of Misrata and around the town of Zintan. Newly arrived Apache attack helicopters operating from Britain's HMS Ocean, an amphibious assault ship, were destroying armoured vehicles. NATO aircraft dropped leaflets to dispirit Gaddafi forces and improve rebel morale.
"The game-changer has been the attack helicopters which have given the NTC more protection from Gaddafi's heavy weapons," a French Defence Ministry official said.
The rebels' foreign backers were eager to hasten the war. For one thing, a U. N. mandate for bombing ran only to the end of September; agreement on an extension was not guaranteed. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the main U.S. concern was "breaking the rough stalemate before the end of the NATO mandate".
The Europeans were also burning through costly munitions and Washington was concerned about wear and tear on NATO allies' aircraft. "Some of the countries... basically every deployable F-16 they had in the inventory was deployed," a senior U.S. defence official told Reuters.
But the momentum was shifting in the rebels' favour.
On July 28, the assassination of rebel military commander Abdel Fatah Younes proved a surprise turning-point. The former Interior Minister had defected to the rebels in February. Some believe he had held back their advance from the east, for reasons that remain unclear. Younes' death at the hands of his own men raised questions about the NTC and added impetus to NATO's desire to push things along in case the anti-Gaddafi forces imploded.
The West forced NTC head Mahmoud Jibril to change his cabinet. NATO then took more of the lead in preparations, according to Denece, who said he has contacts within both French and Libyan intelligence.
There was another boon to the rebels. Regional heavyweight Turkey came out in support of the NTC in July, and then held a conference at which 30 countries backed them. "The Turks actually were very helpful throughout this in a very quiet kind of way," said the senior U.S. defence official.
With the morale of Gaddafi troops eroding, the end was clearly near. Mediocre at the best of times, Gaddafi's fighters began fading away. So too did his secret weapon: foreign mercenaries.
After the uprising began, Gaddafi recruited several thousand mercenaries; some formed the core of his best-organised forces. Most of the hired guns came from countries to Libya's south such as Chad, Mali, and Niger, but some were from further afield, including South Africa and the Balkans.
Among them was a former Bosnian Serb fighter who had fought in Sierra Leone as a mercenary and later worked as a contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hired in March, first as an instructor and later as the commander of a 120mm mortar battery, the fighter, who used his nom-de-guerre Crni ("the Black" in Serbian), told Reuters he had been paid regularly in cash in the western currency of his choice.
"I knew Libyans had poor discipline, but what I have seen was dismal in comparison with what we had in former Yugoslavia during our wars," he told Reuters. "They were cowards, at least many of them. Communications were the biggest problem, as they just couldn't figure out how to operate anything more sophisticated than a walkie-talkie, so we resorted to cellphones, when they worked and while they worked."
It was in early August, he said, that "everything started falling apart." The force of which he was a part began retreating from a rebel onslaught. "At some point we came under fire from a very organised group, and I suspect they were infiltrated (by) NATO ground troops," he said. The loyalist units pulled back to a point about 50 km (30 miles) from Tripoli. By mid-August, "I decided it was enough. I took a jeep with plenty of fuel and water and another two Libyans I trusted, and we travelled across the desert to a neighbouring country. It took us four days to get there."
A DRONE DEBATE
Foreign agents, meanwhile, were circulating far and wide. At the Tunisia-Libya border in early August, a Reuters reporter ran into a Libyan with an American accent who identified himself as the head of the rebel command centre in the Western Mountains. He was accompanied by two muscular blond western men. He said he spent a lot of time in the United States and Canada, but would not elaborate.
As the rebels advanced on Zawiyah, the Reuters reporter also saw western-looking men inside the Western Mountain region travelling in simple, old pickup trucks. Not far away, rebels in Nalut said they were being aided by CIA agents, though this was impossible to verify.
Operation Dawn Mermaid was initially meant to begin on Aug. 10, according to Mohammed Gula, the political cell leader in central Tripoli. But "other cities were not yet ready", the leadership decided, and it was put off for a few days.
A debate flared inside the Pentagon about whether to send extra Predator drones to Libya. "It was a controversial issue even as to whether it made sense to pull (drones) from other places to boost this up to try to bring this to a quicker conclusion," the U.S. defence official said.
Those who backed the use of extra drones won, and the last two Predators were taken from a training base in the United States and sent to north Africa, arriving on Aug. 16.
In the meantime, the rebels had captured several cities. By Aug. 17 or 18, recalls Gula, "when we heard that Zawiyah had fallen, and Zlitan looked like it was about to fall, and Garyan had fallen, we decided now is the time."
Those successes had a knock-on effect, U.S. and NATO officials told Reuters. With much of the country now conquered, Predator drones and other surveillance and strike planes could finally be focused on the capital. Data released by the Pentagon showed a substantial increase in the pace of U.S. air strikes in Libya between Aug. 10 and Aug. 22.
"We didn't have to scan the entire country any longer," a NATO official said. "We were able to focus on where the concentrations of regime forces were."
ZERO HOUR
Days before the attack on Tripoli, the White House began leaking stories to TV networks saying Gaddafi was near the end. But U.S. intelligence officials -- who are supposed to give an objective view of the situation on the ground -- were pushing back, telling journalists they were not so sure of immediate victory and the fighting could go on for months.
Then, on Aug. 19, a breakthrough: Abdel Salam Jalloud, one of the most public faces of Gaddafi's regime, defected. Jalloud had been trying to get out for the previous three months, according to the senior NTC official. "He asked for our help but because he wanted his whole family, not only his immediate one, to flee with him it was a logistical problem. His whole family was around 35."
By now, the mountain roads were under rebel control. They took him and his family from Tripoli to Zintan and across the border into Tunisia. From there, he flew to Italy and on to Qatar.
The rebel leadership was ready. But now NATO wanted more time. "Once they got control of Zawiyah, we were sort of expecting that they would make a strategic pause, regroup and then make the push on into Tripoli," the senior U.S. defence official said.
"We told NATO we're going to go anyway," said a senior NTC official.
The western alliance quickly scaled back its number of bombing targets to 32 from 82, while rebel special forces hit some of the control rooms that were not visible, like those in schools and hospitals.
The signal to attack came soon after sunset on Aug. 20, in a speech by NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil. "The noose is tightening," he said. A "veritable bloodbath" was about to occur.
Within 10 minutes of his speech, rebel cells in neighbourhoods across Tripoli started moving. Some units were directly linked to the operation; many others were not but had learned about the plan.
"We didn't choose it, the circumstances and the operations led us to this date," Alhasi told Reuters when asked why the uprising in Tripoli began then. "There was a public plan in Tripoli that they would rise up on that day, by calling from the mosques. It was not a military plan, not an official plan, it was a people's plan. The people inside Tripoli, they did this in coordination with us."
In the first few hours, rebel cells attacked installations and command posts. Others simply secured neighbourhoods, setting up roadblocks and impeding movement.
Ships laden with food and ammunition set off from rebel-held Misrata. Rebel forces began pushing towards the capital from the Western Mountains and from the east. According to French newspapers, NATO cleared a path on the water by destroying pro-Gaddafi speed boats equipped with explosives.
The first rebel soldiers reached the city within a few hours. The rag-tag army didn't look like much: some warriors wore football kit bearing the name of English soccer players. But they encountered little resistance.
One rebel source said Gaddafi had made a fatal error by sending his important brigades and military leaders, including his son Mu'atassem, to secure the oil town of Brega. The Libyan leader apparently feared the loss of the oil area would empower the rebels. But it meant he left Tripoli without strong defences, allowing the rebels easy entry.
The air war was also overwhelming the regime. Under attack, Gaddafi forces brought whatever heavy equipment they still had out of hiding. In the final 24 hours, a western military official said, NATO "could see remnants of Gaddafi forces trying to reconstitute weapons systems, specifically surface-to-air missiles". NATO pounded with them with air strikes.
COLLAPSE
By Sunday Aug. 21, the rebels controlled large parts of Tripoli. In the confusion, the NTC announced it had captured Saif al-Islam. Late the following evening, though, he turned up at the Rixos, the Tripoli hotel where foreign reporters were staying. "I am here to disperse the rumours...," he declared.
U.S. and European officials now say they believe Saif was never in custody. NTC chief Mahmoud Jibril attributes the fiasco to conflicting reports within the rebel forces. But, he says, the bumbling turned into a bonanza: "The news of his arrest gave us political gains. Some countries recognised us, some brigades surrendered ... and more than 30 officers defected."
As the Gaddafi brigades collapsed, the rebels reached a sympathiser in the Libyan military who patched them into the radio communications of Gaddafi's forces. "We could hear the panic through their orders," said the senior NTC official. "That was the first indication that our youths were in control of Tripoli."
As the hunt for Gaddafi got underway, the NTC began implementing a 70-page plan, drawn up in consultation with its foreign military backers, aimed at establishing security in the capital.
Officials in London, Paris and Washington are at pains to say the plan is not based on the experience of Iraq or any other country, but the lessons of their mistakes in Baghdad are obvious.
At a press conference in Qatar, NTC head Jibril said Libya would "rehabilitate and cure our wounds by being united so we can rebuild the nation."
Unity was not hard to find during the uprising. "The most important factor was the will of the people," commander Alhasi told Reuters. "The people hate Gaddafi."
Will Libya remain united once he's gone?
(With reporting by Robert Birsel in Benghazi, Peter Graff in Tripoli, Michael Georgy in the Western Mountains, Phil Stewart and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Regan Doherty in Doha, Bill Maclean and Peter Apps in London, John Irish in Paris, Nick Carey in Chicago, Aleksander Vasovic in Belgrade and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels; editing by Simon Robinson, Mike Williams and Sara Ledwith)

Lockerbie bomber: Failure of western justice

2011-08-19T05:49:00.000+08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/18/lockerbie-bomber-megrahi-libyan-conflict/print

The Lockerbie bomber I know

Two years ago Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was controversially released on the grounds he was about to die. But this shadowy figure has survived to become a pawn in the Libyan conflict. John Ashton, who has long believed in his innocence, describes the man behind the myth

John Ashton
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 August 2011 20.59 BST
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Article history

Megrahi is greeted on his return to Libya in August 2009. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

It's an anniversary that the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, will have long dreaded. Two years ago tomorrow MacAskill granted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, AKA "the Lockerbie bomber", compassionate release from the life sentence he was serving for the murder of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing. MacAskill had been advised that terminal cancer was likely to end the Libyan's life within the following three months: he had, in short, been "sent home to die". As Megrahi's recent appearance at a pro-Gaddafi rally reminded us, he has not stuck to the script. The anniversary presents sections of the media with another opportunity to splutter its outrage at MacAskill's decision, and to resurrect the theory that it was driven by backroom deals rather than medical evidence. More seriously, for many of the relatives of the Lockerbie dead it adds an appalling insult to their already grievous injury. But Megrahi's survival, and the Lockerbie case in general, now has far wider significance. For western governments struggling to justify why Libya should be singled out for enforced regime change, the issue has become a godsend. In recent weeks both Barack Obama and William Hague have tried to boost wilting public support for the war by highlighting Gaddafi's responsibility for the 1988 attack. Libya's government-in-waiting, the National Transitional Council, has weighed in too. Its leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, claimed in February that Gaddafi personally ordered the bombing, and its London PR company, Bell-Pottinger, followed up Hague's comments by circulating a claim by a leading cancer specialist that MacAskill's decision was based on flawed medical advice. There is, though, another view that is shared by many who have scrutinised the Lockerbie case. They hold that the true scandal was not Megrahi's release, but his 2001 conviction. The Justice for Megrahi campaign, founded in 2008, counts among its signatories Dr Jim Swire and Rev John Mosey, each of whom lost a daughter in the bombing, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien. Another signatory, Scottish QC Ian Hamilton, last year blogged: "I don't think there's a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted." I go further than those lawyers: I am as certain as I can be that Megrahi is innocent. For three years until his return to Libya I worked as a researcher alongside his legal team and since then have been writing a book with him. I have read all his case files and have visited him many times, both in prison and in Tripoli. I'm one of a handful of people familiar with both the man and the evidence that convicted him. It requires a book to explain all the flaws in that evidence. In 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) granted Megrahi an appeal, having identified six possible grounds for overturning the conviction. Among these, remarkably, was that the original judgment, delivered by three Scottish judges at a specially constructed court in the Netherlands, was unreasonable. Four of the other grounds concerned the Crown's most important witness, a Maltese shopkeeper called Tony Gauci, in whose shop Megrahi allegedly bought the clothes that ended up in the same suitcase as the bomb. In 1991 he picked out Megrahi from a lineup of photos. The SCCRC discovered that before doing so he had expressed an interest in receiving a reward, and that after Megrahi's conviction the Scottish police secretly approached the US Department of Justice to secure a $2m payment. Gauci's evidence was, in any case, highly unreliable. His descriptions of the clothes purchaser all suggested the man was around 50 years old, 6ft tall and with dark skin, whereas Megrahi was 36, is 5ft 8in and has light skin. There is also a wealth of circumstantial evidence that suggests Lockerbie was the work of Iranian proxies, rather than Libya. (Although the Libyan government formally accepted responsibility for Lockerbie in 2004, it made clear that it was doing so only to rid the country of UN sanctions.) The final reason for my near certaintly about Megrahi is my knowledge of the man himself. Who, then, is he if not the cartoon terrorist of contemporary mythology? Few have any idea: he opted not to give evidence at trial, and has barely spoken to the media. He was born in Tripoli in 1952, into poverty that was typical of the times in Libya. One of eight siblings, his family shared a house with two others, and his mother supplemented his father's customs officer's income by sewing for neighbours. As a young child he was plagued by chest problems, for which he received daily vitamin supplements at his Unesco-administered school. His main passion was football, which continues to absorb him. After finishing school in 1970, he briefly trained as a marine engineer at Rumney Technical College in Cardiff, hoping to become a ship's captain or navigator. When his eyesight proved too poor, he dropped out and returned to Tripoli, where he trained as a flight dispatcher for the state-owned Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA). Having completed his training and gained his dispatcher's licence in the US, he was gradually promoted to head of operations at Tripoli airport. Keen to improve his education, he studied geography at the University of Benghazi. He came top in his year and was invited to join the teaching staff on the promise that he could study for a master's degree in climatology in the US. When the promise proved hollow, he opted to boost his salary by returning to LAA. In 1986 he became a partner in a small company called ABH and was temporarily appointed LAA's head of airline security. The following year he became part-time coordinator of the Libyan Centre for Strategic Studies. His Scottish prosecutors aimed to prove that these roles were cover for his activities as a senior agent for the Libyan intelligence service, the JSO. Megrahi maintains that his only involvement with the JSO came during his 12-month tenure as head of airline security when he was seconded to the organisation to oversee the training of some of its personnel for security positions within the airline. There is ample documentary evidence to support his claim that ABH was a legitimate trading company whose main business was the purchase of spares for LAA aircraft, often in breach of US sanctions. He admits that he sometimes travelled on a false passport, but insists that it was issued to give him cover for his sanctions-busting activities; unlike his true passport, it did not betray his airline background. Megrahi says that it came as a complete surprise when, in November 1991, he and his former LAA colleague Lamin Fhimah were charged with the bombing (Fhimah was found not guilty). Megrahi also maintains that it was their decision to stand trial and that they were not ordered to by their government. He was repeatedly warned that he was unlikely to receive a fair trial, but believed he would be acquitted. During his decade in prison his good manners and cooperative behaviour earned him the respect of the officers. He bonded with them through football, joining in their three-a-side matches at HMP Barlinnie and bantering about Glasgow's Old Firm rivalry. Perversely, he supported Rangers, but his favourite player was Celtic's Henrik Larsson. He was cheered by visits from well-known figures, most notably Nelson Mandela, and by hundreds of letters of support. In 2005 he was transferred to a low-security wing of HMP Gateside in Greenock, where he was placed among long-term prisoners nearing the end of their sentences. He was soon accepted by both inmates and officers, one of whom volunteered to me: "We all know he didn't do it." I would visit him there in one of the tiny rooms set aside for legal visits. He always arrived with a bundle of papers and would then take me through fine points of evidential detail. He was demanding, but friendly and humorous. He was sustained by the support of his family and by regular prayer; like most Libyans of his generation he is a devout Muslim. He abhors violent extremism and was reduced to tears by the 9/11 attacks. We were optimistic that his appeal would succeed, but its progress was glacial. In autumn 2008, with the first hearing still six months away, he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He had always dreamed of clearing his name and returning to his family, but eventually felt compelled to choose between the two. Although the compassionate release decision carried no legal preconditions, he knew that abandoning the appeal would smooth the process. No longer able to make his case in court, he asked me to write his story so he could make it to the public. Writing the book required numerous visits to Tripoli, where he received me warmly in the home he shares with his wife and four sons in a middle-class suburb. His illness limited our sessions to a couple of hours. He would check every word I'd written for accuracy and was insistent that I include the case for both sides and not shy away from awkward facts. He repeatedly told me: "I understand that people will judge me with their hearts, but I ask them to please also judge me with their heads." His reception, on his return to Tripoli, was portrayed as a triumphant official welcome, but, as a WikiLeaks cable revealed, the Libyan authorities limited the crowd to 200, with thousands of supporters and the international media kept away. A few months later the Sunday Times reported that, at the time he was convicted, he had $1.8m in a Swiss bank account. In fact the account had been dormant since 1993, when it had a balance of $23,000. This year the same paper reported a claim by NTC leader Abdel-Jalil that Megrahi had blackmailed Gaddafi to secure his release from prison "by threatening to expose the dictator's role" in the bombing. Had he done so he would have severely jeopardised both his chance of freedom and the safety of his family in Libya. Although he responded to such misreporting with a faint smile and a roll of the eyes, it hurt him deeply that anyone could believe him guilty of murder. One story was rather easier to refute: Sky News's October 2009 report that he had died. By chance I was with him that day. It was almost impossible to talk as every few seconds he took a call from a distressed relative. When I last saw him, in September 2010, he visited me at my hotel. It was the only time I saw him among ordinary Libyans. Again we were repeatedly interrupted, this time by strangers thanking him, not for an act of terrorism, but for sacrificing his liberty for the good of the nation. His decision to stand trial helped free the country from UN sanctions that imposed 12 years of collective punishment on the assumption of his guilt. We now know that that assumption was based on evidence that was, at best, flimsy and, at worst, fabricated. His appearance at the rally in a wheelchair probably won't silence the conspiracy theorists who claim he is living the life of Riley. The fact that he has made it this far is partly down to the superior medical care he receives. But I believe it's as much to do with his will to live and the knowledge that every day survived is a fragment of justice reclaimed.

Hot topics

Easy for BN to issue ICs to phantom voters

2011-08-06T09:02:00.000+08:00

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2011/08/03/yong-attacked-over-phantom-voters/

Yong attacked over ‘phantom voters’

Queville To | August 3, 2011

Former senator Dr Chong Eng Leong has offered his assistance to any institution or group wanting to rid the electoral rolls of phantoms voters.

KOTA KINABALU: Political activist Dr Chong Eng Leong, already under attack by ex-chief minister Harris Salleh for his outspokeness over the illegal immigrant issue, has now trained his guns on another former Sabah chief minister.
This time Chong, a former senator, alleged that Yong Teck Lee, who is now in the opposition ranks with his Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), was a beneficiary of phantom voters in Likas, during the 1999 general election.
“Yong, you were not a victim of phantom voters in Likas, you were not the scapegoat – you got their votes and for this it was not your fault but it was what BN wanted.
“Loss of your YB status then had nothing to do with phantom voters in Likas rolls.
“It was Harris Salleh’s petition against you that cost you your YBship – your election billboards contravened election laws,” Chong pointed out yesterday in response to Yong’s statement.
Chong, who is a former Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) member, is now with PKR.
Acknowledging that the subsequent Likas election petition in the same year had exposed the method by which ICs were being issued using falsified SDs (Statutory Declarations), Chong said as the petitioner he did not stop at the Likas roll after the trial.
He also said that he had not “conveniently and consistently ignored the existence of phantom voters in other places like Kawang” as claimed by Yong in his statement.
“In fact I further probed into the whole Sabah rolls. That’s how I traced the 70,000 names in the Sabah rolls, names corresponding to the Project IC numbers disclosed in the trial and Kawang had 1,292 phantom voters,” Chong added.
No political will
He however agreed with Yong that it is possible to rid the rolls of phantoms – only if the central government has the political will to do it.
“And I am more then willing to help any body or institution like SAPP towards this end, after all it is for Sabah’s sovereignty within Malaysia,” he said.
Meanwhile, in a statement carried by the local newspapers, Harris on Monday accused Chong of “repeatedly instigating matters on racial and religious issues” and said that his Yayasan Islam Sabah will lodge a police report against him.
He criticised Chong for singling out Malays and Muslims as the beneficiaries of the alleged secret project to issue citizenship to foreign immigrants in order to build a vote bank for the ruling Barisan Nasional government.

Someone who wants to get married, also want to commit suicide?

2011-07-22T08:36:00.000+08:00

It is illogical. Especially when it is repeated for the 2nd time. This
time, a devout Muslim, who is ready to go for a pilgrimage(Haj) is
also accused of committing suicide. This is in a place that only has a
small window that is extremely difficult to climb up to, especially
for an old man. And these two are willing WITNESSES. They are not even
accused.

The only logical explanation is that they were both murdered and then
disposed off. Due to the lack of evidence, and the huge amount of
illegal activities committed by MACC.

The lesson is very clear to all citizens. If you are called as a
witness by any government agency, REJECT. Even if you have to pay huge
fines. What is money compared to your life?

Imagine, if these 2 people, with things to look forward to can be
accused of committing suicide, what will happen to ordinary people
like us.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/7/22/nation/9152808&sec=nation

Friday July 22, 2011
Teoh driven to suicide; MACC trio singled out over 'intensive
grilling'
Reports by MAZWIN NIK ANIS, NG CHENG YEE, FLORENCE A. SAMY, ZUHRIN
AZAM AHMAD, ISABELLE LAI, SHAUN HO, A. LETCHUMANAN, RASHVINJEET S.
BEDI, TEH ENG HOCK, WONG PEK MEI, RAHIMY RAHIM, ALLISON LAI and SARBAN
SINGH

Report released: Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk
Seri Nazri Aziz holding the RCI report on the death of political aide
Teoh Beng Hock (inset) at Parliament House in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
— SIA HONG KIAU / The Star

PETALING JAYA: The much-awaited Royal Commission of Inquiry report has
concluded that Teoh Beng Hock was driven to commit suicide and blamed
intensive interrogation by three Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission
(MACC) officers.

The report singled out three MACC officers, saying that personnel were
prepared to go to great lengths to lie and form a "blue wall of
silence" in the spirit of brotherhood.

The 124-page report also made numerous recommendations to improve the
MACC, including amending the law to prevent further abuse.

Teoh's family refused to accept the commission's findings that the
political aide to Seri Kembangan assemblyman Ean Yong Hian Wah
committed suicide.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz
promised that the recommendations would be implemented and expressed
the Government's regret and sadness to Teoh's family.

Views of Ir. Hj. Othman bin Hj. Ahmad

Dangers of outsourcing: Facebook coding theft

Apple is not a firm of endearment

Preventing workers from joining competitors is illegal

Preventing workers from joining competitors is illegal. It is shown by this article. Supported by one of the CEOs.

"a 2007 note from Palm's chief executive to Apple's Steve Jobs, saying that an anti-poaching agreement would be "likely illegal."

And these CEOs deny having an anti-poaching agreement, which imply they all agree that anti poaching agreement is illegal, but their defence that there is no written agreement is not valid. An agreement need not be in writing all the time.

Not even an agreement that will be illegal but also laws preventing workers from moving to other better paying jobs are also illegal.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-apple-lawsuit-idUSTRE80Q27420120127

Steve Jobs told Google to stop poaching workers

It is the large amount of content, either songs or applications that made Apple products so powerful. Similarly for Microsoft products. Unfortunately, Microsoft has forgotten how it managed to be so successful when it abandoned its content publishers.

But Apple made them available in a central store that everyone can access. Even now, I can download any song that I want but I have to search for them. Most people don't have the expertise and time to search for these songs.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/apple-digital-destroy-textbook/

Apple To Announce Tools, Platform To ‘Digitally Destroy’ Textbook Publishing

GarageBand for e-books

Mobile, social learning

Steve Jobs’ pet project

Anwar's view on gay is the true Islamic view

SBPA: 10 % increase, after that ZERO?

Advanced salary payment is compulsory in Islam

Competing for perfection

Targeting US15,000 per capita income

Stealing from the public if you devalue

US Corporations pay NO tax but pay more Lobbying

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/264481/20111209/30-major-u-s-corporations-paid-lobby.htm

30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010

30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010

Uselessness of school tests

When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids

One condition where Eistein's Laws are violated

Election Commission obvious criminal violations

Another advantage of NO SUBSIDY

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US spent Trillion US $ just to overthrow Saddam

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Use USB drives for XBOX360

Xbox 360 Consoles Now Have USB Memory Support

We are never sure who is the right side but we know for sure who the wrong side is

Libya: It's All Over But the Doubting

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iPhone can make or break a TelCo

Report: Sprint Makes Multibillion Dollar Bet on the iPhone

Android phones still don't get it! It is useability rather than power

After going through the latest android phones including 3D HTC and LG offerings, I notice that Android phones have improved by leaps and bounds. Samsung has improved a lot by reducing the thickness and weight of its phones. Not sure about its scratch resistant glass though.

Most other androids pride in dual core speed but as long as we can browse the internet comfortably, there is little need for slightly higher speed. Just because it is double core does not mean that the internet speed will be higher.

iPhone4 has HDR photos which means that you DO NO NEED FLASH. How many Android offers such a feature? How many have managed to get 960 x 640 resolution which allows us to read more pictures and characters on screen? None. The highest I have seen was 960 x 540.

The coming HTC 3D 4G has 1024 x 720, which is 720p resolution, similar to the Astro Beyond. Don't be fooled by the 1080p video taking. It only takes 1080p video, but cannot display it at 1080p.

Don't be fooled by displays of low resolution pictures, or brilliant colours. What you need is just a way to get information, which is sharpness of high resolution pictures and maximum number of text per screen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8799059/iPhone-5-eBay-expects-iPhone-4-sales-rush.html

iPhone 5: eBay expects iPhone 4 sales rush

The launch of the new Apple's iPhone 5 in October will push sales growth in the online market for previous iPhone models, according to eBay

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BN insulted by the truth that Johor is not safe!

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Why dictators love to make people POOR

It is the poor people who love dictators. This is shonw in Libyan and Malaysian poorest regions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/poor-libyans-look-to-revolution-for-roads-and-plumbing-not-just-democracy/2011/09/22/gIQA1F12nK_print.html

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Nothing wrong with ISA: Only its illegal implementation

Read the comments made by this Professor based on what I had recently read about the ISA. It is not the law, but its implementations by Policemen and Judges. It is very clear in the constitution and the ISA acts that it is meant for events threatening the FEDERATION ONLY!!!

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Stop Syria and Iran like Libya

If it were true that the majority of the population is against the government, and the governments use violent means to stop demonstrations, by all means, the West and the rest of the world is justified in helping the population rebel against their governments.

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