Followers

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Laws - Oppress or Protect You ?


Everyone knows and everyone had been told that laws are necessary for society to be peaceful and stable.

No reasonable person will deny that some sort of rules, regulations and laws are necessary to determine "the rules of the game" for everyone. These rules will make it clear what some or all can do and what others or all cannot do.Undeniably, there are unreasonable people among us, the age old fight between "good and evil" will forever exists so long as human beings exists. Laws protect and empower the "good" and punish, deter or eliminate the evil.

Laws therefore are very powerful tools to control human beings.

But what if the the laws are in the hands of the evil and they want to use the rules to oppress the people so that they can exist and survive. History has shown many rulers, politicians and governments that pass evil laws to oppress the people just to perpetuate the interest of the wealthy and powerful.

The people or the masses, generally are unaware of evil laws that are being passed until it affects them individually and personally by which time it is always too late.

The middle, lower income and poor people are usually too busy trying to sustain themselves in life to notice what the wealthy and powerful are doing.

What if the laws that oppress the people are further passed in the name of God or religion?

How many ordinary people will even understand that even such laws can be oppressive for they may feel ignorantly guilty if they oppose such laws? They may think or may have been indoctrinated to think that any law mentioned in the name of God must never be objected.

Through out history all governments and rulers, whether evil or good, have always passed laws in the name of the people or in the name of religion.

Can normal, ordinary, struggling people monitor and oppose bad laws?

Would they dare? Can they afford the sacrifice involved?

How many honourable and brave citizens are there to support and advocate good laws?

At the end of the day, whatever our individual circumstance, it is us and us alone that condone or object to evil laws by evil men,

The other citizens may either support us or stay far away merely hoping we will succeed. And there are other ignoble citizens who wish us to fail so that they can maintain thier status quo and income from the bad laws by the evil men.

And a Rapera's choice is just too clear.

Peace !

Friday, December 6, 2013

Rest in Peace Nelson Mandela

A great leader has walked on earth and has passed away on 5th December 2013 at age 95. Without doubt he is an excellent personification of a Rapera.



CNN writes:

"(CNN) -- Freedom fighter, prisoner, moral compass and South Africa's symbol of the struggle against racial oppression.
That was Nelson Mandela, who emerged from prison after 27 years to lead his country out of decades of apartheid.
His message of reconciliation, not vengeance, inspired the world after he negotiated a peaceful end to segregation and urged forgiveness for the white government that imprisoned him.
"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison," Mandela said after he was freed in 1990".
Peace !

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

‘Gandhi’s first non-violent movement had Chinese link’

A portrait of Mahatma Gandhi.'The idea of non-violence as an alternative to armed uprising which formed the core of Mahatma Gandhi’s movement had a China connection as hundreds of Chinese took part in his first peaceful protest in Zanzibar in 1906, a noted Indian historian said.

Highlighting this much-forgotten Chinese link to the birth of Gandhi’s non-violent movement, veteran Indian historian Ramachandra Guha told a meeting here that 1,100 Chinese along with 8,000 Indians took part in the agitation against Asiatic ordinance of the then Zanzibar racist government in East Africa in 1906.

This was Gandhi’s first movement after the idea of non-violence as an alternative to armed violence to bring about political change was formulated on September 11, 1906 at Johannesburg in South Africa, which Guha described as the world’s first 9/11.

The Asiatic ordinance barred Asians from owning property, made it mandatory to carry identity cards and imposed restrictions on their trade bringing about system of exclusion.

Subsequently the first non-violent movement was launched by Gandhi in Zanzibar when the racist government in which Chinese took part shoulder-to-shoulder along with Indians, Mr. Guha said at a literary festival.

Significantly, the first truce agreement with Zanzibar government was signed by Gandhi, Thambi Naidoo, on behalf of Tamils and Leon Qin who represented the Chinese.

Piqued by Indian-Chinese solidarity in 1906-1909 the Zanzibar government brought about more stringent ordinance resulting in the deportation of both Indians and Chinese to Madras, now Chennai, he said.

After the deportation Qin talked about how their movement in Zanzibar was given birth to Asian solidarity movement, Mr. Guha said referring to a newspaper clipping of that time'. 

You can continue reading here.

History has many accounts of significant cooperation between the two great civilisations - Indian and Chinese and also documents much Indian influence   on Chinese civilisation. I predict history is going to repeat itself.

Peace.


Monday, December 2, 2013

Chris Goslow Comments on Rapera

Incidentally I found something which was written on Chris Goslow's website in 2009 yesterday. Chris Goslow is a pianist, composer and song writer from Sacramento USA. By a strange coincidence, he also produced a musical called "Rapera"in 2009!

He wrote the following on his website:



Rapera Latest Updates:
(February 8, 2009) MALAYSIAN LAW LECTURER’S UNCANNY “RAPERA” DEFINITION
I was astounded to find a blog by a Malaysian law lecturer, in which he defines the term “rapera” as a “savior citizen…[who makes] a positive impact in the betterment of society.” His ideas bear an uncanny resemblance to the spirit ofRapera and especially to the character of the youth. Read Jahaberdeen Mohamed Yunoos’s blog here!"

This only proves that when its time is right, ideas become universal.
Peace.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Why write nothing on the UMNO Elections?

This is one of the questions my friends have been asking me - why have you not written your thoughts on the UMNO elections? None of my very close friends asked me this as they know me very well.

To begin with, I have been busy trying to get justice for my clients. Also, my NGO activities have been keeping me occupied. More importantly, I developed again the "cannot write virus".

I simply could not write anything on any of the issues my blogger friends are writing about. I am not saying they are wasting their time or they should stop writing - but I just could not.

What can I possibly write about the impending elections? Write about the candidates? Well, quite a number of them are my friends and quite a number of others are known to me. 

I admit, there are a few new and potential faces in the competition.

But I always ask the wrong the question - fundamentally how is the current political system (with the emphasis on patronage, lineage and money) ever going to change anything fundamentally for the Malaysians? 

Well, since this is an UMNO election, the question is: how is it ever going to change the fate of the Malays and the bumiputras fundamentally?

The way I see it is that everyone keeps complaining about the traffic jams and then each politician champions the cause to build bigger and better roads. Every blogger and columnists gets into a frenzied discussion on which politicians' "vision" of bigger and better roads are better.They start looking at the history of road buidling by the politicians. The academics join in the fray and present papers on it. The clerics also join in discussing the "Islamic" roads and the halal and haram aspect of the roads. The whole nation gets frenzied and busy.

But no one looks at the root of the problem - holistic long term planning ! No one cares to see that there are so many factors which are inter-pendent affecting the traffic jams - town planning, transportation planning,  accommodation planning, vehicle production planning and so on. These take too much thinking and planning are are just too long term.

So, everyone takes the short cut - just focus on the short term - to expand the road or not?

Likewise with the UMNO election. Generally speaking, what fundamental, dramatic and far- reaching impact do we expect from the election that is going on?

Have we heard any thing earth shaking from any of the leaders or is it generally toe the line and use the rehashed strategy that they have been used to all along?

If we keep doing things the same way we have been for the past 50 years, do you think it will be any different the next 50 years?

Apologies if I wasted your time reading this.

I told you - nothing that is happening at the moment is inspiring me to write.

Peace !


Monday, September 9, 2013

Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Found By USA ???!!!!

Iraq All Over Again!
By William Blum
04 September, 2013
@ Williamblum.org
Found at last! After searching for 10 years, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have finally been found – in Syria!
Secretary of State John Kerry: “There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. … Sorry, did I just say ‘Saddam’?”
A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. 1
So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles in the eastern Mediterranean?
    >> Only 9 percent of Americans support a US military intervention in Syria. 2
    >> Only 11% of the British supported a UK military intervention; this increased to 25% after the announcement of the alleged chemical attack. 3
    >> British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote August 29 endorsing military action against Syria 285-272
    >> 64% of the French people oppose an intervention by the French Army. 4 “Before acting we need proof,” said a French government spokesperson. 5
    >> Former and current high-ranking US military officers question the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggest that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. “If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to Islamic fundamentalist rebels, they say, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.” 6
    >> President Obama has no United Nations approval for intervention. (In February a massive bombing attack in Damascus left 100 dead and 250 wounded; in all likelihood the work of Islamic terrorists. The United States blocked a Russian resolution condemning the attack from moving through the UN Security Council)
    >> None of NATO’s 28 members has proposed an alliance with the United States in an attack against Syria. NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that he saw “no NATO role in an international reaction to the [Syrian] regime.” 7
    >> The Arab League has not publicly endorsed support of US military action in Syria; nor have key regional players Saudi Arabia and Qatar, concerned about a possible public backlash from open support for US intervention. 8
    >> We don’t even know for sure that there was a real chemical attack. Where does that accusation come from? The United States? The al-Qaeda rebels? Or if there was such an attack, where is the evidence that the Syrian government was the perpetrator? The Assad regime has accused the rebels of the act, releasing a video showing a cave with alleged chemical-weapon equipment as well as claiming to have captured rebels possessing sarin gas. Whoever dispensed the poison gas – why, in this age of ubiquitous cameras, are there no photos of anyone wearing a gas mask? The UN inspection team was originally dispatched to Syria to investigate allegations of earlier chemical weapons use: two allegations made by the rebels and one by the government.
    >> The United States insists that Syria refused to allow the UN investigators access to the site of the attack. However, the UN request was made Saturday, August 24; the Syrian government agreed the next day. 9
    >> In rejecting allegations that Syria deployed poison gas, Russian officials have argued that the rebels had a clear motivation: to spur a Western-led attack on Syrian forces; while Assad had every reason to avoid any action that could spur international intervention at a time when his forces were winning the war and the rebels are increasingly losing world support because of their uncivilized and ultra-cruel behavior.
    >> President George W. Bush misled the world on Iraq’s WMD, but Bush’s bogus case for war at least had details that could be checked, unlike what the Obama administration released August 29 on Syria’s alleged chemical attacks – no direct quotes, no photographic evidence, no named sources, nothing but “trust us,” points out Robert Parry, intrepid Washington journalist.
So, in light of all of the above, the path for Mr. Obama to take – as a rational, humane being – is of course clear. Is it not? N’est-ce pas? Nicht wahr? – Bombs Away!
Pretty discouraging it is. No, I actually find much to be rather encouraging. So many people seem to have really learned something from the Iraqi pile of lies and horror and from decades of other American interventions. Skepticism – good ol’ healthy skepticism – amongst the American, British and French people. It was stirring to watch the British Parliament in a debate of the kind rarely, if ever, seen in the 21st-century US Congress. And American military officers asking some of the right questions. The Arab League not supporting a US attack, surprising for an organization not enamored of the secular Syrian government. And NATO – even NATO! – refusing so far to blindly fall in line with the White House. When did that last happen? I thought it was against international law.
Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the United States did not respond to the use of chemical weapons the country would become an international “laughingstock”. Yes, that’s really what America and its people have to worry about – not that their country is viewed as a lawless, mass-murdering repeat offender. Other American officials have expressed concern that a lack of a US response might incite threats from Iran and North Korea. 10
Now that is indeed something to laugh at. It’s comforting to think that the world might be finally losing the stars in their eyes about US foreign policy partly because of countless ridiculous remarks such as these.
United States bombings, which can be just as indiscriminate and cruel as poison gas. (A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.)
The glorious bombing list of our glorious country, which our glorious schools don’t teach, our glorious media don’t remember, and our glorious leaders glorify.
    Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)
    Guatemala 1954
    Indonesia 1958
    Cuba 1959-1961
    Guatemala 1960
    Congo 1964
    Laos 1964-73
    Vietnam 1961-73
    Cambodia 1969-70
    Guatemala 1967-69
    Grenada 1983
    Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
    Libya 1986
    El Salvador 1980s
    Nicaragua 1980s
    Iran 1987
    Panama 1989
    Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
    Kuwait 1991
    Somalia 1993
    Bosnia 1994, 1995
    Sudan 1998
    Afghanistan 1998
    Yugoslavia 1999
    Yemen 2002
    Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular no-fly-zone basis)
    Iraq 2003-2011 (Second Gulf War)
    Afghanistan 2001 to present
    Pakistan 2007 to present
    Somalia 2007-8, 2011 to present
    Yemen 2009, 2011 to present
    Libya 2011
    Syria 2013?
The above list doesn’t include the repeated use by the United States of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and other charming inventions of the Pentagon mad scientists; also not included: chemical and biological weapons abroad, chemical and biological weapons in the United States (sic), and encouraging the use of chemical and biological weapons by other nations; all these lists can be found in William Blum’s book “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”.
A story just released by Foreign Policy magazine, based on newly-discovered classified documents, reports how, in 1988, the last year of the 8-year Iraq-Iran War, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks by Iraq far more devastating than anything Syria has seen. 11 Indeed, during that war the United States was the primary supplier to Iraq of the chemicals and hardware necessary to provide the Saddam Hussein regime with a chemical-warfare capability. 12
Now, apparently, the United States has discovered how horrible chemical warfare is, even if only of the “alleged” variety.
Humanitarian intervention
Some of those currently advocating bombing Syria turn for justification to their old faithful friend “humanitarian intervention”, one of the earliest examples of which was the 1999 US and NATO bombing campaign to stop ethnic cleansing and drive Serbian forces from Kosovo. However, a collective amnesia appears to have afflicted countless intelligent, well-meaning people, who are convinced that the US/NATO bombing took place after the mass forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic forced deportations of large numbers of people from Kosovo did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a Serbian reaction to it, born of extreme anger and powerlessness. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:
    … with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation.
On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that sort.
But the propaganda version is already set in marble.
    If you see something, say something. Unless it’s US war crimes.
“When you sign a security clearance and swear oaths, you actually have to abide by that. It is not optional.” – Steven Bucci, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, speaking of Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley) 13
Really? No matter what an individual with security clearance is asked to do? No matter what he sees and knows of, he still has to ignore his conscience and follow orders? But Steven, my lad, you must know that following World War II many Germans of course used “following orders” as an excuse. The victorious Allies of course executed many of them.
Their death sentences were laid down by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, which declared that “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”
Nuremberg Principle IV moreover states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Manning, and Edward Snowden as well, did have moral choices, and they chose them.
It should be noted that Barack Obama has refused to prosecute those under the Bush administration involved in torture specifically – he declares – because they were following orders. Has this “educated” man never heard of the Nuremberg Tribunal? Why isn’t he embarrassed to make this argument again and again?
I imagine that in the past three years that Manning has had to live with solitary confinement, torture and humiliation, adding mightily to her already existing personal difficulties, the thought of suicide has crossed her mind on a number of occasions. It certainly would have with me if I had been in her position. In the coming thousands and thousands of days and long nights of incarceration such thoughts may be Manning’s frequent companion. If the thoughts become desire, and the desire becomes unbearable, I hope the brave young woman can find a way to carry it out. Every person has that right, including heroes.
The United States and its European poodles may have gone too far for their own good in their attempts to control all dissenting communication – demanding total information from companies engaged in encrypted messaging, forcing the closure of several such firms, obliging the plane carrying the Bolivian president to land, smashing the computers at a leading newspaper, holding a whistle-blowing journalist’s partner in custody for nine hours at an airport, seizing the phone records of Associated Press journalists, threatening to send a New York Times reporter to jail if he doesn’t disclose the source of a leak, shameless lying at high levels, bugging the European Union and the United Nations, surveillance without known limits … Where will it end? Will it backfire at some point and allow America to return to its normal level of police state? On July 24, a bill that would have curtailed the power of the NSA was only narrowly defeated by 217 to 205 votes in the US House of Representatives.
And how long will Amnesty International continue to tarnish its image by refusing to state the obvious? That Cheleas Manning is a Prisoner of Conscience. If you go to Amnesty’s website and search “prisoner of conscience” you’ll find many names given, including several Cubans prominently featured. Can there be any connection to Manning’s omission with the fact that the executive director of Amnesty International USA, Suzanne Nossel, came to her position from the US Department of State, where she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations?
A phone call to Amnesty’s office in New York was unable to provide me with any explanation for Manning’s omission. I suggest that those of you living in the UK try the AI headquarters in London.
Meanwhile, at the other pre-eminent international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, the director of HRW’s Washington office, has been nominated by Obama to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Is it really expecting too much that a high official of a human rights organization should not go to work for a government that has been the world’s leading violator of human rights for more than half a century? And if that designation is too much for you to swallow just consider torture, the worst example of mankind’s inhumanity to man. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of torture centers in much of the world, kidnaping people to these places (“rendition”), solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!
Surrounding Russia
One of the reactions of the United States to Russia granting asylum to Edward Snowden was reported thus: “There was a blistering response on Capitol Hill and calls for retaliatory measures certain to infuriate the Kremlin. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), long one of the Senate’s leading critics of Moscow, blasted the asylum decision as ‘a slap in the face of all Americans’ and called on the administration to turn up the pressure on Moscow on a variety of fronts, including a renewed push for NATO expansion and new missile-defense programs in Europe.” 14
But we’ve long been told that NATO expansion and its missiles in Europe have nothing to do with Russia. And Russia has been told the same, much to Moscow’s continuous skepticism. “Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO in 2001, “this is a military organization. It’s moving towards our border. Why?” 15 He subsequently described NATO as “the stinking corpse of the cold war.” 16
We’ve been told repeatedly by the US government that the missiles are for protection against an Iranian attack. Is it (choke) possible that the Bush and Obama administrations have been (gasp) lying to us?
America’s love affair with Guns
Adam Kokesh is a veteran of the war in Iraq who lives in the Washington, DC area. He’s one of the countless Americans who’s big on guns, guns that will be needed to protect Americans from their oppressive government, guns that will be needed for “the revolution”.
On July 4 the 31-year-old Kokesh had a video made of himself holding a shotgun and loading shells into it while speaking into the camera as he stood in Freedom Plaza, a federal plot of land in between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. This led to a police raid of his home and his being arrested on the 25th for carrying a firearm outside his home or office. The 23-second video can be seen on YouTube. 17
I sent Kokesh the following email:
    “Adam: All your weapons apparently didn’t help you at all when the police raided your house. But supposedly, people like you advocate an armed populace to protect the public from an oppressive government. I’ve never thought that that made much sense because of the huge imbalance between the military power of the public vs. that of the government. And it seems that I was correct.”
I received no reply, although his still being in jail may explain that.
Kokesh, incidentally, had a program on RT (Russia Today) for a short while last year.
Notes
1. The three preceding jokes are courtesy of my friend Viktor Dedaj of Paris
2. Reuters/Ipsos poll, August 26, 2013
3. Sunday Times (UK), YouGov poll, August 25
4. Le Parisien, August 30, 2012
5. Christian Science Monitor, August 29, 2013
6. Washington Post, August 29, 2013
7. The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2013
8. Washington Post, August 31, 2013
9. UN Web TV, August 27, 2013 (starting at minute 12:00)
10. The Washington Post, August 31, 2013
11. Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid, “CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran”, Foreign Policy, August 26, 2013
12. William Blum, “Anthrax for Export”, The Progressive (Madison, Wisconsin), April 1998
13. Washington Post, August 22, 2013
14. Washington Post, July 31, 2013
15. Associated Press, June 16, 2001
16. Time magazine, December 2007
17. Washington Post, August 13, 2013
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.
William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, atwww.williamblum.org
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

A Saudi conspiracy?

Prem Shankar Jha, September 2, 2013, DHNs:
The US and France are about to unleash an attack upon Syria  that will open the way for 10,000 to 20,000 jihadis who form a ‘floating army of Islam’ to invade Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. 

None of this seems to bother the Obama administration, because its purpose in destroying Syria, if we are to believe him and his Secretary of State, is to uphold a moral principle no matter what its political cost. This is not realpolitik, simply necessary punishment. But shouldn’t punishment follow conviction, and shouldn’t conviction be based on proof beyond reasonable doubt ? Even as the US readies for war two other far more plausible explanations have emerged for the alleged  gas attack. The first is what the Syrian government and many others are  asserting — that the rebels launched it to force Nato into the attack on Assad. The second is that it was an accident — a horrible consequence of a Machiavellian plan that went wrong.  

The 1,300 word US intelligence assessment that the White House on August 30 added little to what he had said on the August 26. Its main contribution was to flesh out Assad’s possible motive for such a heinous act. “The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighbourhoods of opposition elements, including neighbourhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime's frustration ….may have contributed to its decision. ”

On the surface this is not implausible. Dale Gavlak, an Amman-based correspondent of the Associated Press who speaks fluent Arabic, and is one of the very few western journalists to have visited the site of the atrocity, reported that the rebels told him they had built tunnels in which they hid from bombardments, stored their weapons and moved from one building to another, but would sleep in mosques and peoples’ house at night. So trying to penetrate the tunnels with gas would be a sound military, even though politically suicidal, strategy. 

The assessment also describes the attack in greater detail. It “began at 2:30 am local time and within the next four hours there were thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area. Among “multiple streams of intelligence” it specifically noted “the detection of rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media”.

Anomalies revealed

The report does not explain what it means by ‘detection’, or how many launches but the rebels uploaded at least one video which, they claimed, captured the launch of the chemical rocket. Repeated viewings of this video, however,  reveal several anomalies:
uThis video was shot at around 1.00 am. That meant that there was someone on a balcony looking towards the launch site at this unearthly hour with his phone, or a camera in hand. Could this be mere coincidence ?

uThe video starts four seconds before the rocket launch. That suggests the man knew when it would happen and had started shooting at the appointed time.  

uThe video reveals that the man also knew the exact spot from which the rocket would rise, for when it rose, it was only slightly to the left of centre of his screen. By reflex, he corrected the camera angle to get it into the centre of the frame.

uThe time the sound took to follow the flash was between six and seven seconds. That placed the cameraman almost exactly a mile away from the launch site — an optimum safe distance for filming. 

u Contrary to the White House claim,  the rocket launch does not seem to have been a part of a salvo. The video is 34 seconds long and there is absolute silence the rest of the time. 

Foreknowledge, if confirmed, will be conclusive proof that it was the rebels who launched this particular rocket. But there is another possible explanation. In the same article (August 29) Dale Gavlak and a young Jordanian colleague Yahya Ababneh, reported “from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.” 

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion”.

The conspiracy between the Saudi secret service, headed by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the CIA has already been thoroughly exposed by the Wall Street Journal (August 25). Gavlak’s story therefore opens up a third possibility:  that the intense Syrian bombardment of the area (which began on August 19) penetrated a tunnel that was being used by Saudi backed jihadis to store chemical weapons supplied by Prince Bandar’s men. This would explain the panic heard in a high Syrian army official’s voice in the allegedly intercepted phone call that is the most concrete evidence that US sources have (unofficially) revealed.

Saudi supply of chemical weapons is not as far-fetched as it sounds, because onDecember 29 the London Daily Mail had published the hacked emails of a British ‘security contracting’ firm, Britam defence, which revealed that Qatar had offered it an ‘enormous’ sum of money to obtain a chemical warhead from Russian stock, ‘similar to what Syria has’, to supply to the rebels. 

These disclosures show that there are at least two other explanations for the gas attack fatalities that are far more plausible than the one the Americans have chosen to believe. 


Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Does Obama Know He’s Fighting On Al-Qa’ida’s Side?

By Robert Fisk
28 August, 2013
@ The Independent
If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.
Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa’ida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa’ida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa’ida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa’ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa’ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?
And while we’re talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.
Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run.
Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Tengku Razaleigh 2010 - "It's Time To Wake Up"

One of the best speeches I have heard from a political leader in this country !

 It is like a Rapera mindset !



Peace !

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Muslims Praying Eid Mubarak Prayers in a Gurdwara (Sikh Temple)

Someone emailed me this report is from The Times of India


In bad weather, Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus make good friends

Subodh Varma, TNN Aug 22, 2012, 02.40PM IST
(Muslim residents of Joshimath…)
NEW DELHI: In a country where religious intolerance and communal hatred dominate the news nowadays, here is something that goes to show that all is not rotten and ugly.
Muslim residents of Joshimath in Uttarakhandoffered Eid namaaz (prayers) on Monday in a gurdwara (Sikh temple), after being invited in by its head priest, according to the local media. There is no mosque or idgah in Joshimath, a town perched above the Alakhnanda deep in the Garhwal Himalayas. Usually its 800-odd Muslim residents offer namaaz at the town's Gandhi Maidan, a public ground.

Peace

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Quran, The Dogs and The Lady

As usual, year in and year out, the entire of the Ramadan would have had many “religious events”. Most of the mosques would have been full of people doing the terawih – the long prayer. One will hope and expect that at the end of such “month of holy activities”, the Malay Muslim community will emerge more compassionate, more responsible for other makhluks of Allah, more aware of what Islam is and hopefully, more aware of what is IN THE QURAN.

My fear and I repeat – my fear only – that for many of the Malay Muslims, life will be back as usual until the next Ramadan comes along to perform the “religious rituals” all over again. I think some are concerned with the “pahala” (whatever that means to the beholder) of the ritual than the substance of what Islam is all about.

It was very disturbing the manner with which Maznah was handcuffed and put into lockup for 2 days simply because she happened to love and care for dogs. This says a lot about those involved in the episode.

It was already shocking (in one sense not shocking because one will not expect any differently from the ignorant) that a few Malay Muslims were chastising her for keeping dogs.  I also saw the video many times. Try as I might, I could not see anything offensive to Islam in that video.

OH my God – Muslims keeping dogs????? Haram ke? All this in Ramadan. Despite all the terawih, no one seems to care what Allah says in the Quran in surah Al Maidah verse 4. I honestly do not know what punishment Allah will visit on those who exert cruelty on others contrary to Allah’s injunctions and decree!

This is what surah Al Maidah verse 4 says with regards to what is lawful (halal) to eat:

‘They ask you what is lawful to them (as food). Say: lawful  for you are (all) things good and pure: and what you have taught your trained hunting animals (mukallibina) (to catch) in the manner  directed to you by Allah: eat what they catch for you, but pronounce the name of Allah over it: and fear Allah; for Allah is swift in taking account’-(translated by Yusof Ali).

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