Israel : The main problem in the middle east

The recent attack on gaza by Israel is yet another chapter in the UN’s history impotency as a world police. They have failed to stop the unjustified attack on Iraq by the US and and then in lebanon by Israel and now in Gaza. Surprisingly, it is totally unable to do anything to help in any armed conflicts involving african or middle-eastern nations.

The needless loss of civilian life and the untold destruction of civilian property such as schools, mosques and hospitals that the Israel’s  claim either as collateral damage or are being used by militants is laughable because it seems there are more collateral damage and damage to suspected military outposts than there is objective damage. The result is an unacceptably large proportion of civilian casualty.

Already the civilian populaion was under siege by the Israelis since Hamas came to power. The legitimacy of the Hamas’ democratic victory was never recognised by the very proponent of democracy itself. Hamas was isolated and shunned and demonised as a terrorist organisation that had the support of the majority of the Gazan Palestinians. So much for the much vaunted democratic ideals that the west claims to uphold.

There was practically no dialogue with the Hamas government and nothing is known about how the flimsy strip of land at the edge of the mediterranean sea has managed to subsist half a million people is indeed a miraculous mystery. The 6 month ceasefire was not siezed by the west to renegotiate any peace deals between the warring parties. The power-brokers literally sat through the whole window of opportunity.

We have seen so much of coverage given to the Israeli views and their reasons for the military assault on Gaza and yet practically no views were sought from the other side of the conflict. It makes it invitingly easy to assume that the Hamas rockets were inteneded to kill Israelis for no apparent reason other than to purely terrorise the innocent Israeli public reconfirming Hamas’ Terrorist label. But none is mentioned about the Israeli settlement expansion over Palestinian lands, unprovoked assassinations of Hamas leaders, sequestration of rich arable Palestinian lands, restricting movements of the palestinian people even if it is necessary for their livelihood. This on top of 60 years of occupation of Palestinian lands in contravention of UN resolutions. And yet the Israelis wonder why Hamas rockets are still terrorising them.  The current military assault by the Israelis on Gaza is akin to killing a fly with a sledgehammer. The Israeli response, though calculated, is grossly and unproportionally violent in gross disregard of innocent lives.
Their refusal to negotiate with hamas and then blame Hamas for the war is an insult to the intelligence of the world community. We can see what they do and that the Isralis are finding it hard to put up a successful media campaign despite getting much help from it’s allied networks of the west such as CNN and fox news routinely ignoring Palestinian views.

It’s about time the African and Middle eastern nations withdraw their memberships from the UN and form their own group that is committed to solve their own problems. Israel has time and again disregarded international consensus to solve it’s own problems unilaterally via military means. They are the problem in the middle east and they are the ones who need to be stopped

The muslims in general condemn israeli action and are sympathetic towards the palestinians as well as hamas. They tend to believe that hamas firing of the rockets is a reaction against years of oppression by the israeli government. None of the malays I have discussed about this have any empathy for the israelis. I believe the israeli excuse which is the hamas rockets being fired into israel is like a person disturbing a bee hive and then killing the bees for stinging him. The equation is simple, The israeli must stop their seige on palestinian lands first to ensure no rockets come their way. Them blaming hamas for the current debacle is an insult to any discerning person.

This gaza offensive not only sabotages any ongoing peace negotiations but will also radicalise moderates into extremist camps. The israeli objective to totally neutralise palestinian fire power by destruction of palestinian civil and government infrastructure as well as the militant hideouts works in the opposite direction. Any resulting peace via such violent means is only temporary. The seething anger of such humiliation of palestinians will continue to stoke their anger as more moderates even people like mahmoud abbas may cease to work with the ongoing peace process. The wider damage of this is far reaching. This will create more anger and give sympathy, legitimacy, grounds, support and rationalisation for terrorist activities across the islamic world. This irresponsible israeli action sabotages everyone.

The Israelis should not be allowed to conduct violent acts unilaterally with impunity as it has far reaching consequences for ongoing efforts against terrorist activities and co-operation from muslim nations.

How to cram 2 hours of work Into 30 minutes

Dude HAVE A DEADLINE for anything that needs to be done

Scientists call it the time compression phenomenon

gd luck

Laws of physics mentioned in the quran

The physical laws – including the derivation of the speed of light in the quran mentioned way before science discovered it.

Really interesting stuff- follow the ling

http://www.speed-light.info/angels_speed_of_light.htm

The Devil

Black Light

 

I am the legitimate child of fire and sin

I am the unheard whisper behind an innocent grin

 

I am the mystical tempter of the Garden of Eden

I am the nameless seducer of a fruit forbidden

 

I am the skewed logic of every good sense

I am the corruption in every pure essence

 

I am the righter of every conscious wrong

I am the author of every liars melodious song

 

I am the unrest after every ominous dream

I am the unseen hand in a deceptive scheme

 

I am the scented air in a haters breath

I Choreograph the steps to every unkind death

 

I am the aching beauty in every vixen’s face

I am the coldest sweat in every morbid embrace

 

I am the safe lair of every plotter’s thought

I am the truest idol of every Unholy God

 

I am the guardian of every faustian pact

I am the magician who changes fiction to fact

 

I am the subtle soul of every treacherous cheat

I am the blackest blood in every murderous heartbeat

 

I am the cryptic code in every evil seed

I am the beautifier of every deadly deed

 

I dance to the thundering emptiness of wicked minds

I am the pleasing intoxication in every wine

 

I am the shadow encompassing every light

I am the fabulous wronger of every right

 

I am the loving father of all fallen angels

I am the numinous tempter of all holy strangers

 

I am the visible void in every heartless breast

I am the fairest umpire of every evil contest

 

I dragged your father from heaven to earth

And have been your faceless friend ever since your birth

 

 

Iqbaldinho

26 Aug 2008

Sex Change operations : IT’S IN THE GENES STUPID

The inane logic of modern jurisprudence

 

Are there legal mechanisms to deal with anomalies produced by the ever changing realities of life? Recently a 34 year old “man”, Thomas Beatty,  from USA, Oregon, gave birth to a baby via artificial insemination. His female partner was unable to produce any offspring “he” decided to spring into action. As recently as the 1980s, human attributes such as sex and race are immutable. But that has all changed with the law now recognising sex change operations made via approved means as valid.

 

Now the problem is if the woman transforms into a “man”, and decides to give birth, it exposes some flaws in our legal philosophy of recognising such perverted social tendencies that still forms a minority within a small minority in our societies.  At the moment there is no legal mechanism to properly deal with such anomalies.

 

If a legal male gives birth –will the birth certificate then reflect the father as the one who gave birth? It doesn’t sound right from the start – the law on this needs a re-think – all the way to the drawing board because to deal with the unforeseen anomalies, on an ad hoc basis, produced as a result recognising something that is largely unacceptable and that which flies in the face of hard practical realities or even scoffed at in our society (here in Singapore) is not really the way to go.

 

In Singapore the gender change sought by persons undergoing sex change operations done via approved means enjoy full legal recognition. The folly of the authorities everywhere is in their failure in understanding of the simple fact  that gender in human beings is something more visceral than their cosmetic physiological alteration would want us to believe.

 

The nature of gender in humans is more in the programming contained within the genes than anything else. This is what creates that fine balance in us in our hormones combined with the psycho-physiological make-up of our bodies that makes us a man or a woman. The fundamental core of our gender is in our genetic make-up. And the authorities should come to such understanding before going free and easy with the law regarding sex change operations.

 

The alteration or addition in sex-change operations, such as artificial breasts and penises, are even non-functioning to begin with. The surgically rendered “vagina” is just a freaking little hole for crying out loud. How on earth does that make a man into a woman?

 

While the person may psychologically feel like the opposite gender, he or she is essentially still the same sex as he or she was before.

 

The authorities may have to face the embarrassing prospect of having to deal with, as they say in computer terminology, an “unhandled error” caused by their folly in being overly eager to recognise some medical procedure still in it’s infancy as a revolutionary technological triumph, that hardly even addresses an iota of an issue of truly being male or female. This freak result is largely due to the fault of the various rights movement originating in the west . And as with all unhandled errors – it exposes the weakness in the underlying program and it ends up screwing up the whole bloody system that treats the ensuing problems in piecemeal fashion while largely ignoring or being oblivious of the underlying fundamental fault.

In this case the “error” at a fundamental level and the implication could go much deeper than we thought. It exposes a flaw in the western philosophy and socio-political thought. The fundamental philosophy of absolute individual freedom of thought and action has brought about a situation where it produced a truly fucked up situation where everybody is supposed to respect every individual’s personal choice, no matter how screwed up the philosophy is, no matter how it screws up the larger society no matter what problem it causes to the various cultures in existence.

 

The force of a responsible democratic society and it’s laws, they believe, will weed out such behaviour to the dustbins of history. But it did not happen because the problem with western democracy is that it failed to anticipate the lopsided exception of lobby groups in the system that wield power and influence that is disproportionate to their number. And as such they are able to influence policy decisions at a political level without really getting into the political hotseats.

 

Trans-gender surgery as transforming one into an opposite sex is no more real than a fake Rolex being a real Rolex. Mere cosmetic similarity does not makee something the real Mcoy. Sex change operations as we see today don’t cause gender transmutations for the simple fact that the sexual organ(s) that went through the knife are non-functional. The issue of human sexual distinction is more visceral than that.

The fact that the law recognises this as real is laughable because it ignores the underlying scientific realities that glaringly screams otherwise.

we all have a common denominator – God – it’s just that our numerators are different

our basis is the same, but our interpretations are different – that’s all – if only we can find a way to just get along and ignore all the hate mongering that goes on at all levels of western society and their ilk. We are so sold to the idea of hating people that are so eagerly and easily propagated by the media that we forget that these are real people who bleed the same blood when we cut them to pieces in the name of fighting terrorism. We forget that they have emotions, they have feelings, they love and have children, they have hopes and dreams. If only we can understand that the hate that is mongered at a political level that sent military hardware with a pretext as a lame excuse to establish control right over the body and blood of millions of innocent lives who were branded as terrorists, or criminals, if it becomes clear that they are neither – collateral casualty of war. Children who die like dogs on the streets while the oil installations are being protected. I just cannot understand how such hatred can have such wide international support? How asian governments who are too chicken to stand up against a bully and hide under the cover of terrorism and fighting it as a just cause that it is all right to break the sacred laws of humanity, acording to the innocents among the adversary, the most basic of human  dignity and respect. It is so easy to demonise that which is unknown and even easier to believe it.

Democracy : An abject failure for the world

I’m no political scientist, but the way I see it by the way the world is moving, democracy as a philosophical movement, as an ideology, as a political mechanism, as a strong base for economics and commerce and as a governing principle for an increasingly interdependent and shrinking world – is an abject failure. The most glaring failure is at the political level where power-hungry and imperial political elitism still exists. Even for America now this holds true. Power is being abused while those in power vehemently ascribe to themselves claim democratic credentials. The sorry state that the world has been since the end of the world wars with unresolved conflicts perpetuated by self-righteous democracies such as the US, Israel, France and the UK.

Democracy is supposed to be a vanguard against political imperialism and corruption, totalitarian tyranny, dictatorial high-handedness, gross official incompetence and a whole host of other political evils that brings humanity to ruins. It is supposed to return dignity to every human being and respect for every individual’s belief. And even though not everyone gets what they want it is supposed to bring about the best solution to the larger society as a whole via clever elicitation of society’s will and earnest administration of society’s wisdom.

In theory it looks as pretty and romantic with it’s platitudinous principles –“power to the people”, “Rule of Law”, “separation of powers”, the highest political master, thus publicly empowered, sworn to lowly service to his people etc. etc. This is beautiful. But the reality is anything but.

Much of the world is in political turmoil and much of it are started and sustained by democracies. So far, instead of vesting the power with the people and empowering them to effect political change through collective will when things go awry, we have those in power clinging on to their powers and using it to perpetuate their political presence and their own personal ideologies and principles in flagrant disregard of the will and wants of the people and the common good. They are hell bent on strengthening their positions as long as they are allowed by the system that they happily hijacked once they came into power. I don’t have to name names the examples are readily available here and now.

The democratic system is a fucking failure because it failed to factor in the motherfucking assholes who deviously slip through the idiot filters and hold the world hostage to their tyranny. The problem of it is that the system assumes those who are elected to power are so elected by carefully calculated exercise common will. This is supposed to allow the people to elect a person who is the best among them. But alas, the common people can be idiotic bigots in large numbers trying to propagate their ideology through threat and force. This will throw the fucking spanner in the democratic works.

Lets face it people tend to be evil, selfish and egocentric when they can get away with it. The flimsy checks and balances has failed to protect the people from an overbearing government.

It has caused much misery to the world especially now that we are so interconnected and thus one callous action (or inaction) can cause so much damage to whole peoples half way across the world.

We need a new philosophy. The world needs a new system. Maybe we already have it – but we’re just not using it. Democracy is a fucking failure. Albeit it’s beautiful philosophy it does not work. We need a better mechanism other the that of the western styled ones, to re-establish a better social, political, economic and governing order.

How to develop charisma and self esteem

 

This article is taken wholesale from http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Peter-Dobler-427/self-esteem-2002.php.

I found it interesting that paying attention and treating others like they are very important will attract the same towards you. In short if you want self esteem – give others just that.

10 tips to improve your self esteem

Striving to improve our self esteem is on everybody’s mind. It doesn’t matter if you actively pursue this goal or you subconsciously working on improving your self esteem. The problem with this is that you really don’t know exactly what you want to improve. You’re acting intuitively on external signals.

Do you know how to improve your self esteem? Probably not. To make it a little bit easier for you and to achieve your goals quicker I put together 10 tips that you can utilize right away.

1. Build up your self-esteem. You must take an inventory. What do you want to improve or change about the way you interact with others? Try to make only one change at a time. Always check you progress before making another change.

2. Celebrate your journey, not your destination. Learn to always feel good about where you are now, and to exude self-confidence about anywhere you might find yourself tomorrow.

3. Set clear goals for yourself before every interaction. Know what you want. Think about how the people you will be meeting can help you reach those goals. Then decide how to approach each person accordingly. Apply this regularly and you will notice a difference.

4. Be proactive. Take the initiative. Be decisive. Let the other person know exactly how he or she can help you. Proactive people tent to be more successful in their career.

5. Treat each person you meet as if she or he is truly important. (You’ll be amazed how this works.)

6. Give a firm handshake; look the other person straight in the eye. Practice both of these. Your handshake should be just right. Not too firm and not too loose. Train yourself to notice something you like or find attractive in the person.

7. Listen! Listen! Listen! Teach yourself to develop good listening skills. Learn a way to remember the other person’s name. If in doubt simply ask for the name again 2 or 3 sentences into the conversation.

8. Visibly respond to the other person. Smile, nod agreement, and address him or her by name. Apply all you listening skills to visibly respond. The body language is the most important part of a conversation. Practice, practice, practice…

9. Pay more attention to the other person than to yourself. Are you responding to what may be going on in his or her life? Don’t filter out bad news. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Be caring.

10. Stay “in the moment.” Don’t mentally cut off the other person. Don’t reload while he or she is speaking. What this means is that you need to focus on the other person 100% during a conversation. Anything less is considered rude.

Next time you meet somebody new look out for these behaviors. Put a mental checkmark on the each of the 10 tips and see how well this person scored. Chances are that the person scored very high if you tent to like her/him. On the contraire the person probably scored low if you don’t seem to connect.

The more you practice the more likely you will create a positive aura which is commonly known as charisma. To step up to become a charismatic personality it takes more than just these 10 tips.

Creating a positive aura will benefit you in every thing you do. You will create a warmer ambience with your family. You will be more successful in your career. Even while trying to meet a partner of the opposite sex you will notice a difference on how people perceive you.

Unfortunately a small article can’t do justice on the wide spectrum of creating a positive aura and developing a charismatic personality. You will get the complete picture and step by step explanations in Race Kale’s new book “The Power of Charisma”.

 

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The Halal-food-in-school issue

I refer to this recent furore about the establishment of halal canteen in a public school here in Singapore.

The head of the school from the perspective of principled consistency in administration was technically not wrong. But he has ignored the deeply ingrained existing realities and has thus faltered egregriously on a very sensitive issue that violated an implicit but common understanding among the different peoples here.

 He has failed to fully appreciate that:

1)  mainstream schooling here is a secular government establishment.

2) adequate provisions had been made for muslim students halal food requirements

3) the existing system was working fine for all (i.e he tried to fix a thing that was not broken in the first place)

Fundamentally, the government, due to reasons entrenched in our historical cultural demography coupled with colonial era political legacy and post-independence socio-political upheaval, finds it imperative to preserve the secular character of the school system to allow for the peaceful sharing of the fast dwindling common space here.

The idea is to allow for healthy human social interaction and engagement and peaceful co-existence while preserving the socio-cultural distinctiveness of every group. So it is a situation that not only calls for tolerance of each others cultural behaviour and practices but also to actively partake in and gain knowledge and experience of the ways of our fellow citizens who are different from each other.

In Australia New Zealand, Europe and the north-Americas, a myriad of different cultures, even including that of the indigenous population, were uncermoniously (and sometimes violently) subsumed by a single dominant culture under a socio-political policy of integration. In Singapore we adhere to a policy of pluralism in the societal administration of our social and economic policies.

Like every system of choice there are always trade-offs and one major trade-off of a policy of pluralism is the opportunity-cost of social cohesion at the expense of allowing indivdual space for cultural expression and practices of the various social and cultural groups.

So while a policy of integration works to unite people it robs the society of the colour and vibrance of the symbiotic-diversity that pluralist societies, such as that of Singapore’s, enjoy.

Muslims, like the rest of the peoples here already enjoy their own cultural space and to push the limits of tolerance that may unduly pressurise others into grudgingly accept a policy that violates the fundamental rules of common space is not only unfair, it is downright insensitive. The principal should have known better as his only serves to play upon the weak social fabric of this pluralist society that took decades to stabilise. It puts the spotlight on the darker side cultural differences and lowers the threshold of tolerance among its peoples.

For muslims it is a double whammy because firstly they are not the dominant cultural group even though they wield a relatively stronger influence despite their small numbers. Secondly this negative spotlight will have a ripple effect on the rest of the muslims who may be treated with wariness whenever they stake their claim to theor share of their cultural pie.

The principal thus should have realised the gravity of  implementing such risky policies with scant regard for the sensitivities of others and existing realities. Such principled halal policies are only fit for a madrasah or where people are generally in agreement to such a move.

Having said that, the government also needs to do more to address the needs of muslims seeking religious education instead of the mainstream secular ones. The madrasahs need more funding and more infrastructural attention.

Paying token service to this need while statutorily and administratively restricting parents from exercising their choice to send their children to a non-mainstream schools is not a step in the right direction.

If the demand is there, the government must provide the necessary infrastructure and the required funding to accommodate a significant cultural group. Compulsory secular education could also be done in a madrasah. If the government pays scant regard to such important needs then there is always a danger that this need may spill into the common arena and cause unnecessary social upheavals.

Can robots “think”?

This looks is a no brainer and yet we struggle to comprehend this question.

We can simulate human neural functions like logical thinking, reasoning, language etc (i.e. left-brain activities) but can we simulate right brain functions like appreciation of music and art? It’s not humanly possible because these are subjective attributes that has no dicernable pattern to capture, imitate and reproduce. It is thus really a misnomer to say that robots can think. Thinking is a unique human attribute that can only be simulated or copied to a rudimentary degree. The origins of thought processes and how it develops and is processed within the neuro-circuitry are a mystery that eludes any explanation – scientific or otherwise. Even in this day and age we can only theorise how the brain functions. So we should have no illusions about robots possessing cognition, creativity or imagination. Its what we put into it and as such they function as an extention of our brain.