Obama di Mesir

Yesterday, Barack Obama went to Egypt and gave a speech. I've listened to part of the speech on BBC news and it seems ok. Dia cuba 'ambil hati' orang2 Islam dgn mengatakan bahawa mmg tak patut Palestinians di treat macam tu... tapi dia kata bond US dan Israel tak dapat dipisahkan...

I dont know what he will do in the future about Palestin and Israel situation. I suspect he will be less brutal compared to the Bush era, but you never know these american presidents... kita tak leh berharap sangat pada depa ni, oleh itu kene berusaha, fikir strategi, camne nak do it our way, inshaAllah...

Here are the comments of Robert Fisk, a journalist from the independence newspaper (original version)

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Robert Fisk: Words that could heal wounds of centuries

President Obama reaches out to the Islamic world in a landmark speech

Friday, 5 June 2009

President Obama's speach reached out to the Islamic world



Preacher, historian, economist, moralist, schoolteacher, critic, warrior, imam, emperor. Sometimes you even forgot Barack Obama was the President of the United States of America.

Will his lecture to a carefully chosen audience at Cairo University "re-imagine the world" and heal the wounds of centuries between Muslims and Christians? Will it resolve the Arab-Israeli tragedy after more than 60 years? If words could do the job, perhaps...

It was a clever speech we heard from Obama yesterday, as gentle and as ruthless as any audience could wish for – and we were all his audience. He praised Islam. He loved Islam. He admired Islam. He loved Christianity. And he admired America. Did we know that there were seven million Muslims in America, that there were mosques in every state of the Union, that Morocco was the first nation to recognise the United States and that our duty is to fight against stereotypes of Muslims just as Muslims must fight against stereotypes of America?

But much of the truth was there, albeit softened to avoid hurting feelings in Israel. To deny the facts of the Jewish Holocaust was "baseless, ignorant and hateful", he said, a remark obviously aimed at Iran. And Israel deserved security and "Palestinians must abandon violence..."

The United States demanded a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He told the Israelis there had to be a total end to their colonisation in the West Bank. "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

The Palestinians had suffered without a homeland. "The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," Obama said and the US would not turn its back on the "legitimate Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own". Israel had to take "concrete steps" to give the Palestinians progress in their daily lives as part of a road to peace. Israel needed to acknowledge Palestinian suffering and the Palestinian right to exist. Wow. Not for a generation has Israel had to take this kind of criticism from a US President. It sounded like the end of the Zionist dream. Did George Bush ever exist?

Alas, he did. Indeed, at times, the Obama address sounded like the Bush General Repair Company, visiting the Muslim world to sweep up mountains of broken chandeliers and shredded flesh. The President of the United States – and this was awesome – admitted his country's failures, its over-reaction to 9/11, its creation of Guantanamo which, Obama reminded us all again, he is closing down. Not bad, Obama...

We got to Iran. One state trying to acquire nuclear weapons would lead to a "dangerous path" for all of us, especially in the Middle East. We must prevent a nuclear arms race. But Iran as a nation must be treated with dignity. More extraordinarily, Obama reminded us that the US had connived to overthrow the democratically elected Mossadeq government of Iran in the Fifties. It was "hard to overcome decades of distrust".

There was more; democracy, women's rights, the economy, a few good quotes from the Koran ("Whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind".) Governments must respect "all their people" and their minorities. He mentioned the Christian Copts of Egypt; even the Christian Maronites of Lebanon got a look in.

And when Obama said that some governments, "once in power, are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others", there was a roar of applause from the supposedly obedient audience. No wonder the Egyptian government wanted to select which bits of Obama's speech would be suitable for the Egyptian people. They were clearly very, very unhappy with the police-state regime of Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, Obama did not once mention Mubarak's name.

Over and again, one kept saying to oneself: Obama hasn't mentioned Iraq – and then he did ("a war of choice... our combat brigades will be leaving"). But he hasn't mentioned Afghanistan – and then he did ("we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan... we will gladly bring every one of our troops home"). When he started talking about the "coalition of 46 countries" in Afghanistan – a very dodgy statistic – he began to sound like his predecessor. And here, of course, we encountered an inevitable problem. As the Palestinian intellectual Marwan Bishara pointed out yesterday, it is easy to be "dazzled" by presidents. This was a dazzling performance. But if one searched the text, there were things missing.

There was no mention – during or after his kindly excoriation of Iran – of Israel's estimated 264 nuclear warheads. He admonished the Palestinians for their violence – for "shooting rockets at sleeping children or blowing up old women in a bus". But there was no mention of Israel's violence in Gaza, just of the "continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza". Nor was there a mention of Israel's bombing of civilians in Lebanon, of its repeated invasions of Lebanon (17,500 dead in the 1982 invasion alone). Obama told Muslims not to live in the past, but cut the Israelis out of this. The Holocaust loomed out of his speech and he reminded us that he was going to the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp today.

For a man who is sending thousands more US troops into Afghanistan – a certain disaster-to-come in the eyes of Arabs and Westerners – there was something brazen about all this. When he talked about the debt that all Westerners owed to Islam – the "light of learning" in Andalusia, algebra, the magnetic compass, religious tolerance, it was like a cat being gently stroked before a visit to the vet. And the vet, of course, lectured the Muslims on the dangers of extremism, on "cycles of suspicion and discord" – even if America and Islam shared "common principles" which turned out to be "justice, progress and the dignity of all human beings".

There was one merciful omission: a speech of nearly 6,000 words did not include the lethal word "terror". "Terror" or "terrorism" have become punctuation marks for every Israeli government and became part of the obscene grammar of the Bush era.

An intelligent guy, then, Obama. Not exactly Gettysburg. Not exactly Churchill, but not bad. One could only remember Churchill's observations: "Words are easy and many, while great deeds are difficult and rare."

Interesting news...

Saya pernah tengok beberapa kali documentary about scientology di BBC.... mmg mengarut habis la scientology ini dan menghasut pula ramai orang...they dont believe in God...cam ala2 atheist zaman baruramai gak artis hollywood yg terkenal jadi pengikut cult ni......KARUT...kesian ke org islam yg duk minat pelakon2 hollywood2 tu, jadi idola la, kesian kesian.... saya sangat gembira wikipedia banned them...because scientology ni boleh jadi sangat aggressive...entah2 mrk duk baca apa yg saya (sbb tu tulis ni bnyk in malay)...al kisah knp wikipedia banned mrk sbb mrk akan gunakan segala macam media utk menghapuskan idea yg mrk tu salah...mrk duk asyi tukar apa je org tulis dlm wikipedia tu tentang mrk....mrk ni mmg gila...

Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology from site

By Ian Rakowski

NEWS.com.au

Wikipedia ... the user-edited encyclopedia's entry for the Church of Scientology's, which is currently locked / Wikipedia

• Wikipedia ban on edits by Scientologists
• Allegedly found a coordinated campaign
• More: Technology news and reviews »

WIKIPEDIA has banned members of the Church of Scientology from contributing to articles in a bid to stamp out biased information.

The site's administrators allegedly decided to impose the ban after finding members of the church were changing articles related to Scientology to promote their interests.

It is the first time Wikipedia has placed a ban on such a large group.

In a long running internal review, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to nil in favour of banning contributions from all IP addresses known to be owned or run by the church.

One member abstained from the vote.

According to evidence found by Wikipedia, multiple users with known scientology IP addresses had been "openly editing (Scientology-related articles) from Church of Scientology equipment and apparently coordinating their activities".

The administrators were concerned the edits were "damaging Wikipedia's reputation for neutrality".

Wikipedia promotes the fact its articles are presented from a neutral point of view, and frowns upon users who edit the site "in order to promote their own interests".

Individual users who caused mischief have been prevented from editing articles in the past, but this is the first time such a large-scale ban has been placed.

The Register reported the ban was the first time administrators had officially placed a block on edits from such a large organisation.

A spokesperson from the Church of Scientology's Sydney office said no Australian members would have been involved in editing the site.

The Church of Scientology's Wikipedia entry is currently locked, preventing any edits.

Freegans

Mesti pembaca tertanya-tanya...apakah itu freegans? Dan kenapa pulak nak tulis psl freegans...

First encounter ngan freegans masa tgk tv...program tu bertajuk wife swap....satu keluarga ni mengamalkan freegan's lifestyle and satu lagi keluarga yg kaya raya, rumah besar etc...

Masa tu terkejut la ngan free gan lifestyle ni...sebelum tu kita introduce dulu apakah maksud freegan ni...

Menurut pakcik wikipedia :

Freeganism is an anti-consumerist lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on "limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources". Freegans "embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed."^[1] The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as dumpster diving. Freegans salvage the food for political reasons, rather than out of need

A brief history of freegans : Freeganism started in the mid 1990s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. Groups such as Food Not Bombs served free vegetarian and vegan food that was salvaged from food market trash by dumpster diving

so freegan ni take the exact extreme opposite of consumerism...erm..kita as muslim mmg tak terima consumerism and capitalism life...tapi mrk take it to the extreme...sampai mrk takkan beli makanan, mereka hanya akan korek2 dalam tong2 sampah, cari makanan2 lebihan org dan ambil apa yg elok2 utk di makan (dumpster diving).... dalam rancangan wife swap tu, ada la mrk tunjuk mrk buat ni, kat uk...geli pun ade..iskk

tapi kalau kita baca apa mrk nak bawa dlm life ni, mmg interesting cam apa islam bawa...kesian mrk tak nampak islam...tapi tu la, mrk nak kebahagiaan itu mengikut neraca akal mrk...tak makan daging at all kerana kesian kat binatang, walhal, Allah menciptakan binatang utk kita, kuat supaya dpt gigih beribadah kepadaNya!

Kenapa tulis psl depa ni? Sbb semalam, masa berjalan pulang drp student union, ada mat salleh ni duk passkan booklet kecil...dia menyapa 'Care to have a book me and my friends write?' Saya pun ambil la buku tu, tengok...Tajuknye ' Extreme Happiness '... masa tu belek kejap je..pastu dia kata, please have the book in the exchange of a few pennies...so saya tanya' How much for it?' Dia jawab, doesn't matter, a few pennies will do'...so sy bagi la beberapa pence....and take the book home..

Bila dah baca muqaddimah buku tu, baru sy tahu, buku tu ditulis oleh Freegan's people ni, and explaining mrk punya 'aqidah' dan segala kebaikan drp situ...tersenyum sendiri saya...bestnya kalau kita boleh buat booklet camtu...and pass to org awam, saying, me and my friends write this book, please have it :)

Islam is moderation, wasathiyyah....dalam apa2 jua keadaan...even dalam beribadat! Kalau kita extreme akan jadi lah seperti mrk2 ni, freegans la, vegans la, capitalist, communism... apa yg Islam gariskan tu lah yg paling cantek dan terbaik, alhamdulillah beruntung kita berada dalam Islam! Alhamdulillah ya Robb......