Winning is more important than Economic Prosperity: US Debate comments

Afer reading comments in News that can are offered by Google News
Search
and the comments on TV of US voters who watched the debates, my
conclusion is that the US citizens are more concerned about winning
than
about their economic prosperity.

The prominent message given by McCain that the "burst" led to the
winning in Iraq but this is false. It was the support given by Iraqis
that led to the reduction in sectarian violences and US deaths.

Couldn't it be due to the threats by Democrats to give a time table
for
withdrawal, which made the Iraqi government more earnest in solving
their security problems rather than amassing their personal wealth?

I'm surprised that Obama didn't elaborate on this but it could be due
to
the sentiments of US citizens who believe that Iraqis are imbeciles
who
are incapable of looking after themselves, typical of racist attitudes
that I observe prominently in the citizens of USA. (racist here is the
true meaning: superiority derogatory, not racial discrimination)

Obama in the debate mentioned briefly about the need of Iraq to
shoulder
the burden of security for themselves but somehow commentators missed
on
this issue. Obama didn't help by not emphasising forcefully on this
issue. But many European commentators are already aware of this
tendency
of Obama in trying to get allies to shoulder more of the burden of
security for the world.

McCain's main message is the USA is winning in Iraq, and Obama had not
supported the move that led to the win, which is a blatant lie. In the
end the bill was passed but timetable for withdrawal is set at a later
date. This tentative withdrawal date which led the US commanders to
change their tactics in trying to get help from the Iraqis and the
Iraqis were more desperate in solving their own problems.

The US citizens' tendency to support winning at all cost despite
suffering from economic disaster as a result of this win is clearly
shown by the result of this debate. Obama dare not even touch on this
topic despite the obvious fact that losing in Cambodia and Vietnam,
never led to any security loss to USA but led to economic prosperity
for
USA which contributed greatly to ending the era of the cold war.

McCain's disregard for the well being of the citizens of the occupied
nations is also well respected by the US citizens. As pointed out by
Obama, supporting dictatorship regimes in Pakistan had not brought any
reward to USA in terms of increased security. The problems with Iraq
and
Afghanistan is that they are corrupt and inefficient. They were chosen
not because of their patriotism to their nations but by their
unconditional support for USA interests, above the interest of their
citizens. Taliban will never take root if Hamid's government is
respected by Afghans. Similarly for Iraq.

USA, no doubt supported by its citizens, mocked Iran for being a false
democracy, despite the fact that no citizen is denied the right to
vote, unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet dare to proclaim that
Afghanistan and Iraq are true democracies, while Iran is not.

Another failed US policy that is also supported by its citizens, is
the
acceptance that talking to terrorists is deemed as giving credibility
to
the terrorists. It does not occur to even Obama and US journalists,
that
this is mocking Jesus, the founder of Christianity who routinely
talked
to criminals, prostitutes and even the Romans, his enemies.

Even if Obama were to win, it is more due to the concern for the
economy. Most of the citizens of USA do not believe in just, freedom
and
democracy for people other than US citizens and Jews. Obama may be the
voice of reason, talking to people, even terrorists, concentrate on
the
real security of USA instead of just winning, which includes giving
true
justice and freedom as well as mutual respect for other nations, but
he
may have a hard time with the citizens of the USA. Obama should start
with the journalists who control the US media.

--
Sabah is heaven. Beautiful shark-free beaches and mountains next to
civilisation with no natural and man-made disasters except Malaysia.
My homepage:
http://othman.000webhost.info/
http://othmana.tripod.com/

War in Islam

War in Islam:

An excellent site for quaran and hadith search in many languages:
http://www.islamicity.com/QuranSearch/

English translation by Picktall

These phrases are found using the "fight" word search.

A)Only in self-defense.
Al-Baqara (The Cow)
2:190 fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you,
but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not, aggressors.

B)War is compulsory and muslims are forbidden from tolerating
persecution.
Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2:191 And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the
places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than
slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship
until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then
slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.

C)Stop if the persecution is gone. Note the phrase "religion is for
Allah", not necessarily converstion to Islam.
Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2:193 And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for
Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except
against wrongdoers.

D)Islam prefers set piece battles to guerilla warfare.
Saff
61:4 Lo! Allah loveth those who battle for His cause in ranks, as if
they were a solid structure.

E) Muslims must intervene in order to stop wars.
Al-Hujurat (The Dwellings)

49:9 And if two parties of believers fall to fighting, then make peace
between them. And if one party of them doeth wrong to the other, fight
ye that which doeth wrong till it return unto the ordinance of Allah;
then, if it return, make peace between them justly, and act equitably.
Lo! Allah loveth the equitable.

My overall analaysis is this:

The most favoured way of fighting is the one adopted by Hezbollah.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War

Whereas Hamas and Fatah style of fightig in Palestine is allowed but
not favoured despite them being called terrorists by many Western
Natiions. Israel take advantage of the situation by declaring them as
terrorst organisations.

Alqaedah style of fighting is the worst because there is no order in
battle. There is no clear definition of the transgressors. Is it USA,
Pakistan, Australia or Indonesia. There is little chance for the other
party to stop their aggression and repent.

The Taliban fighting in Afghanistan can be considered as a civil war.
Muslim nations are supposed to intervene in order to have justice
prevail. It can be achieved by allowing Taliban to be involved in the
voting process. When USA denied Taliban the right to the voting
process and forcefully removed from government, it is the USA that had
done wrong to the Taliban so Muslim nations are not allowed to
intervene and help USA and allies.

The bali bomber and Marriot bomber in Pakistan recently is not allowed
in Islam because there is no clear persecution involved. The
persecution that is mentioned in the quran is to be driven from ones'
homeland.

Muslims can argue that they are fighting for Palestinians that are
persecuted in Israel but the real enemy is Israel, not the other
nations. Whether it is allowed to fight the non-combatant allies of
the enemy of Islam, it is not stated in the verses that I had
searched. Based on Albawarah 2:190, it is clear that Muslims can only
fight against those that fight against Muslims. Fight, here means,
physical violence. Giving arms and weapons is not fighting. The case
is similar in the 1st world war when Germany did not declare war on
USA despite it sending war supplies to UK.

Disappointed with Wikipedia and Joomla: try tikiwii

http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/JSPWiki+MediaWiki+TikiWiki-CMS-Groupware+WikkaWiki

A good comparison of Wiki software. These are free and user
installable with mySQL database storage.

http://info.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Top+10+Reasons&bl

Look at this description of tikiwiki.
Very impressive.

I'm currently testing mambo, joomla1.0 and joomla1.5 but are
disappointed with their handlings of java applets and javascripts, and
the lack of decent panoramic picture viewers and galleries.

I'm stuck with my normal html code in order to allow users to view my
panoramic pictures.

http://panorama.freewebhosting247.com/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php
You can try TikiWiki v1.9.8.3 at the link above.

The latest version is 1.9.11 which you can download from http://tikiwiki.org/

Wikipedia is more famous and is based on Wikimedia but it is only
optimised as an encyclopaedia. It is also filled with editors who are
so anxious to delete other people's articles based on false reasons.

Imagine deleting an article because England is not an International
team.
Scoring 2 goals in football is not significant enough. The editor
thought that it was US football, instead of International Football.

My contributions towards the culture of the Suluks in Sabah were
deleted because they are not substantiated. How can I substantiate my
everyday living? I can record them on videos with well known personnel
such as the current ADUN for Sekong showing how Daling-daling is
performed in Sandakan.

I also have a few blogs on food in Sabah as well as panoramic pictures
that I want to share with others so that they will know more about
Sabah. I write about Sabah simply because I live in Sabah and there
are not many articles about Sabah.

I also can write about my researches on Intelligence theory that are
published in International conference papers but I welcome people to
write their own theories so that we can record and compare with each
other.

Technical articles are not as useful as travel articles so we
encourage people to contribute their experiences, by noting the time
that they are talking about. Information about travel and politics
change very rapidly. Similarly for reviews about technologies.

Contributors are welcomed and encouraged but I still don't know how to
allow people to contribute to tikwiki. I also would like to allow
contributors to insert adverts in their articles, especially Google
Adsense.

Google Adsense is the technology of the century. I had made Google the
richest Internet company and will soon overtake Microsoft.

The beauty of Adsense is that, it is more like a useful link than an
advertisement. Adsense will offer links that are relevant to the
article that is written. If you talk about panorama, it will provide
links to advertisers related to the "panoramic picture" industry.

If your reader clicks these links, the author can make money. That is
the way we should reward contributors while not offending the readers,
and even helps the readers with useful links to the article.

So register with Adsense: by clicking
<SCRIPT>
<!--
google_ad_client = "pub-2898215078168601";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as_rimg";
google_cpa_choice = "CAAQlfaWhAIaCDgcetl7W8a7KNvD93M";
google_ad_channel = "2182994049";
//-->
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT SRC="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/
show_ads.js"></SCRIPT>

or link to http://www.google.com.my/ads/

I shall encourage my colleagues and those in the know to engage in
this business of providing content while making money.

Now we must find ways to link these databases together. My idea is
just to use the wiki technology to link to other sites. Wikipedia
doesn't seem to encourage linking to others because it is not supposed
to be a linking centre but Wikipedia is only useful for its links.
Original articles are not its strength since their authors are mostly
amateur authors.

So don't worry about your grammar and spelling. We should not mind
their spellings and command of language but please use spelling
checkers in Firefox. We need to gather their facts and opinions. It
does not matter if their opinions are right or wrong. These opinions
must be recorded for eternity. I'm sure these opinions will change
with time but it is a normal process and should be recorded as
history.

You can upload anything you want. Pictures and even videos of whatever
format. Youtube is just too overloaded at the moment. We should create
our own in order to reduce the burden on Youtube and other video
sharing services.

It will also avoid office firewalls.

Sabah is heaven. Beautiful shark-free beaches and mountains next to
civilisation with no natural and man-made disasters except Malaysia.
My homepage:
http://othmana.tripod.com/
http://sabahheaven.blogspot.com/
http://panorama.000webhost.info/
http://panorama.webhosting4free.info/
http://othman.1stfreehosting.com/
http://othman.aokhost.com/
http://panorama.freewebhosting247.com/

Deterioration of UK 1st Class Honours

It is obvious since the 1990s when the numbers of students getting
first class honours from British Universities become more and more.

I didn't know the reasons until this article.

This is especially true for overseas students because it is deemed
that plagiarism is part of their culture.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/lecturers-pressed-to-boost-degree-results-848481.html

Lecturers 'pressed to boost degree results'

By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Degree standards in many British universities are in danger of
collapsing because lecturers are under pressure to "mark positively"
and turn a blind eye to plagiarism, the man who was in charge of
safeguarding standards at Britain's largest university will say today.
Professor Geoffrey Alderman, former chairman of the academic council
at the University of London, warns that "league table culture" has led
to an explosion in the number of firsts awarded.

Latest figures show they have gone up by more than 100 per cent over
the past decade from 16,708 to 36,645 – at a time when the
undergraduate population has risen by just over 40 per cent. In a
lecture at the University of Buckingham, Professor Alderman will also
argue that universities have been particularly lenient with overseas
students because they rely on them so heavily for fee income – so much
so that they turn a blind eye to plagiarism and cheating.

...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/lecturers-pressed-to-boost-degree-results-848481.html

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Re: Supporting ineffective leaders is committing 2 sins

On Nov 24, 6:21 pm, KJ <khairy.jamalud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 24, 3:21 am, Choong <sunr...@streamyx.com> wrote:
>
> > Haji boy, you wrote this? In a sense I do think the same, UMNO is so
> > corrupt with BN so even PAS deserves a chance.
>
> > Choong
>
> bagi can kepada UMNO di bawah kepimpinan barisan pemuda baru.

Sebab itulah artikle ini lebih kepada pertukaran pemimpin, dan tidak
semestinya Parti, tetapi saya sangat sangsi dengan apa yang telah
terjadi kepada Sabah.

Pemimpin UMNO adalah seperti pemimpin diCUCUK HIDUNG.

Bayangkan, sebuah parti yang berbangga dengan keIslamannya,
tetapi Kerajaannya
i) mengamal riba dengan denda cukai pendapatan lebih dari 120%
setahun,
ii) tanpa sebarang notis kekurangan bayaran sebab kononnya notis
taksiran sudah memadai,
iii) mendenda walaupun sudah dibayar cukai,
(my-incometax.blogspot.com untuk bukti nyata)

iv) membiarkan pekerja perempuan negaranya menunjukkan kemaluannya
melalui seluar dalam berbentuk tali sahaja(G-string), untuk
ditunjukkan kepada seluruh orang didunia ini melalui Penerbangan Asia.
Ini disahkan oleh Isteri saya sendiri. Saya baru tahu sewaktu
perhimpunan agung UMNO sahaja.

Kenapa UMNO terpaksa menyuarakannya cuma diperhimpunan agungnya
sahaja?
Kenapa tidak boleh disuarakan dimesyuarat dalaman sahaja?

Kalau demikian, saya dengan tegas menuduh bahawa Islam Hadhari yang di
laungkan bukan Islam yang sebenarnya. Buktikan dengan perlaksanaannya.

Saya juga tahu bahawa UMNO adalah berbeza dari kerajaan tetapi ia
terlibat bersama sebab tidak mampu menyuarakan pendapat mereka kepada
kerajaan yang sepatutnya tunduk terhadap kehendak ahli-ahli UMNO.

UMNO masih ada peluang untuk memperbaiki keadaan, tetapi apa yang
sudah terjadi tetap sudah terjadi. Ia menjadi sejarah pahit tetapi
tetap sejarah. Kita tidak boleh mengubah sejarah lagi. Namun keadaan
masih boleh diperbaiki.

UMNO memerlukan pemimpin yang jujur, berani, pintar, prihatin,
saksama, bertolak-ansur dan rajin. Anwar Ibrahim memenuhi kesemua ini
tetapi sebab terlalu berani, dihapuskan oleh Mahathir. Abdullah
Badawi, yang kedua tetapi kurang berani, sebab itulah dia selamat.

Mungkin Khairi Jamaludin mampu tetapi belum ada rekod yang baik. Saya
hormati sifat berani tetapi saya selalu dengar perkara yang tidak
baik. Seperti penglibatannya dengan Air Asia sehingga Air Asia berani
melanggar tata-susila Islam dan bukan-Islam diserata dunia ini.

Saya sangsi dengan semua tuduhan ini. Namun demikian, pemimpin baru
UMNO yang mempunyai sifat Anwar Ibrahim perlu dipertengahkan. Namun
pemimpin-pemimpin UMNO yang memegang portfolio kerajaan yang sangsi
seperti Rafidah Aziz sepatutnya sudah lama disingkirkan dari Kerajaan
walaupun tanpa bukti yang jelas.

Untuk jawatan tinggi, kita tidak mampu lagi mengikut lunas-lunas
undang-undang sepenuhnya. Akal dan fikiran perlu digunakan. Bukannya
undang-undang yang tidak menggunakan akal, tetapi prosesnya terlalu
lama dan selalu disalah gunakan. Ini terbukti dengan kes saya melawan
LHDN. Bukan undang-undang yang salah, tetapi pegawai kerajaan yang
tidak mematuhi undang-undang kerajaan itu sendiri.

Untuk menjadi pemimpin kerajaan yang efektif, tidak semestinya tahu
menggubal undang-undang sahaja, tetapi mengawal kakitangan kerajaannya
juga. Rakyat dan pembangkang dan juga ahli politik UMNO selalu
tersilap dengan mengaitkan kakitangan kerajaan, ketua kerajaan dengan
parti. Buat apa ahli UMNO menyokong Hakim yang kurang amanah? Hakim
adalah kakitangan kerajaan sahaja.

Mungkin ada sifat malu membuka pekong didada. Namun, untuk membaiki
penyakit, perlu didedahkan juga supaya dapat dilihat oleh orang yang
mungkin mampu menyembuhnya kelak. Kalau pun mahu mendedahkan pekong
kepada ahli keluarga sahaja, kenapa tidak didedahkan kepada ahli-ahli
UMNO dahulu.

Ir. Hj. Othman bin Hj. Ahmad
Sabah is heaven. Beautiful shark-free beaches and mountains,
next to civilizations with no natural or man-made disasters,
except Malaysia. But how long will it last?
Disclaimer: I only speak for myself.
Homepage: http://othmanA.tripod.com
Blog: http://othmanahmad.blogspot.com

Malaysia used to be among the best but no more

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/Columns/2086779/Article/index_html

The defence used by the Government to charges of dirty tricks in
elections is that:

i) the opposition used to win elections.

That was many years ago. Certainly it cannot be argued that Malaysia
has among the highest standard in election fairness which allowed the
oppositiion some chance of winning.

By the last election(2004), when BN seats in Trengganu were won when
the voting attendance achieved the unheard of 98%(? Please verify),
when the highest ever was 80%, it is certainly a very clear evidence
that fraud was taking place.

Even Timor-timor, among the poorest nation on earth has a much better
election procedure than Malaysia in having dyed fingers and
transparent ballot boxes.

ii) Anwar Ibrahim used to lead BN to victory over the opposition using
the same tactics.

What clear evidence is required that fraud and unfairness is being
carried out in Malaysian elections than by statements of those who had
seen it on first hand. In fact, most knowledge we had about election
discrepancies come from former BN members.

Malaysia used to be among the fairest in election under the guidance
of the UN and British government but those were more than 50 years
ago.

Time has passed. Other nations have improved their standards while
Malaysia had deteriorated its standards. Now Malaysia is among the
most corrupt and lawless in the whole world.

We are going in the ways of North Korea and Myanmar. Soon our economy
will tumble the way of these oppressive and lawless nations. These
nations are peaceful because all oppositions are suppressed severely.
Don't you see what happens to their economies? Is peace worth the
price of the destruction of freedom and rule-of-law and therefore our
livelihood and economy?

Many Malaysians think so judged by election results. The most obvious
is in Sabah where the BN majority is the most. But look at the economy
of Sabah. It is now among the poorest in the whole world.

Soon, Malaysia will go into the way of the poorest in the whole world
if election fraud and lawlessness are allowed to continue all because
of the fear of racial riots. In fact this is the most effective tactic
used by BN in many elections where views of the May 13, 1969 riots
were used as a secret weapon during the last days of the previous
election campaigns.

DAP and PAS may be bad but BN is certainly bad. Why don't we give the
oppostion a chance while we still have some chance? If you don't like
to vote, someone else will vote for you. I am sure that any oppostion
party that may take over will have lots of problems but so are BN
parties.

But may and are, are certainly two different things altogether. We
should fear the proven evil than a perceived evil, but never to
surrender completely our rights to anybody. Most of all, the present
government, which has a proven bad record.