Last Friday, I was quite upset. I went to the mosque to do my Friday prayers as usual and listen to the mosque preacher as usual. I had one thing in mind before I entered, i.e., the Asian Tsunami and the horrific catastrophe it resulted in and which caused severe misery to millions of Muslims and innocent people from other religions. I thought the first thing any preacher would do is to pray for the victims, ask God for the protection of those of them still suffering without shelter or food. But what I got was ugly in the true sense. "You see, this is the power of God! Who ever know that death would come in such a quick instant. Those who died in Asia, how many of them were drinking, committing crimes, committing adultery, or practicing other evil deeds?" he asked.
I was truly astonished. In a time the whole world is pledging to help, the preacher so openly implicitly or even explicitly criticized those who died saying that they are an example to all of us! What is going on? What are those preachers feeding their communities? The only mention of the Tsunami didn't last for two minutes. The remainder of his speech focused on traditional lecturing that he must have repeated for a thousand times or more. But suddenly, the preacher turns back again to call for the demolishing, the total destruction, the erasing, and the smashing of all Jews and America. How bizarre!
In a time his Muslim brothers and sisters are suffering in South East Asia, this preacher returns to slam the USA, which by coincidence is the largest sole contributor to aid efforts to help them. I just wonder how those South Asian Muslims would feel if they know that hundreds of preachers are uttering such rubbish and feeding those in the mosque with ideas that bring hatred and enmity. Those preachers are in my opinion a reason why we are retarded as a nation. They preach hate and with no justification insult and accuse others calling them infidels, in a time those so-called 'infidels' are the ones currently helping.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/04/2005 9:46:45 AM ||
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Who ever know that death would come in such a quick instant. Those who died in Asia, how many of them were drinking, committing crimes, committing adultery, or practicing other evil deeds?â he asked.
A preacher after my own heart, let's talk about the low tensile strength of that thread holding your ass above hell.....
#6
Article: âYou see, this is the power of God! Who ever know that death would come in such a quick instant. Those who died in Asia, how many of them were drinking, committing crimes, committing adultery, or practicing other evil deeds?â he asked.
This sermon could have come from any Christian pastor. It's the stock hellfire and brimstone sermon - since you never know what will happen tomorrow, you need to come home to Jesus (or Allah, or whatever flavor of deity you happen to believe in). The issue isn't sermons like this - which are part and parcel of any religion with any kind of rigor - it's sermons that call upon the faithful to go forth and kill the infidel.
In time of disasters the hellfire and brimstone Christian pastors call for the faitful to help the vixrims and exert charity. They don't tell about "the victims had it coming" or "money from zakhat" should be kept for the faithful.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
01/04/2005 15:27 Comments ||
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#9
JFM: They don't tell about "the victims had it coming"
I think the sermon does have two pieces - (1) the sinful - i.e. non-observant - may be called a little early to judgment and (2) parishioners should shape up from a religious standpoint so that they are always ready to meet whatever deity they worship with a record they can be proud of. The first part sounds a little harsh to the ears, but Christian clergymen have been dishing it out for millenia.* Heck - read a few books of the Bible and you will see what I mean - the tradition wasn't exactly invented out of whole cloth. The narrative about Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, fairly exulted at their destruction. (I have to admit that the bit about not helping non-Muslims may be unique to Islam - Christian charities in the present age have not made conversion a requirement for receiving aid).
* The Bible isn't just about the beatitudes (a call to be nice to the weak and the poor) - most of it is about individual responsibility.
#11
Let's compare Islamic and Christian descriptions of Hell and punishment, in the words of Mohammed and Jesus, respectively.
Oh, yer kidding me. Really? You mean Jesus never talked about hellfire and brimstone, and being forced to drink boiling turds? That's pretty weird.
Predestination is a little touchy in the Bible and Christianity, but the Qur'an takes it even further than John Calvin did. Don't even try to forecast the weather--it's sacrilage to "second guess" Allah's divine will. I'm not sure how this figures into the tendency for Muslims seeing God's punisment against sinners in disasters of every sort. I'll have to research the correlation.
I know I am not supposed to link to other Blogs (I promise I'll say three 'Hail Fred's ok?) but the Diplomad's assessment of the U.N. efforts in South Asia just has to be read..... Editors - delete if you wish :)
Examples:
. . .I know I had promised to lay off the UN for a bit . . . but I can't. As one reader commented on a previous Diplomad posting on the UN, "it's like watching a train wreck" -- you know it's horrible, but you've just got to look at it. In this part of the tsunami-wrecked Far Abroad, the UN is still nowhere to be seen where it counts, i.e., feeding and helping victims. The relief effort continues to be a US-Australia effort, with Singapore now in and coordinating closely with the US and Australia. Other countries are also signing up to be part of the US-Australia effort. Nobody wants to be "coordinated" by the UN. The local UN reps are getting desperate. They're calling for yet another meeting this afternoon; they've flown in more UN big shots to lecture us all on "coordination" and the need to work together, i.e., let the UN take credit. With Kofi about to arrive for a big conference, the UNocrats are scrambling to show something, anything as a UN accomplishment. Don't be surprised if they claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln is under UN control and that President Lincoln was a strong supporter of the UN. . .
UPDATE: More on "The UNcredibles": WFP (World Food Program) has "arrived" in the capital with an "assessment and coordination team." The following is no joke; no Diplomad attempt to be funny or clever: The team has spent the day and will likely spend a few more setting up their "coordination and opcenter" at a local five-star hotel. And their number one concern, even before phones, fax and copy machines? Arranging for the hotel to provide 24hr catering service. USAID folks already are cracking jokes about "The UN Sheraton." Meanwhile, our military and civilians, working with the super Aussies, continue to keep the C-130 air bridge of supplies flowing and the choppers flying, and keep on saving lives -- and without 24hr catering services from any five-star hotel . . . . The contrast grows more stark every minute.
#1
2004 was not a good year for the Useless Nations. Let's hope 2005 is even worse.
My biggest fear regarding the UN is that King Kofi will step down, and be replaced in a superficial show of "reform" that will only delay what really needs to be done: abolishing this useless, loathesome monstrosity.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
01/04/2005 14:00 Comments ||
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#2
The team has spent the day and will likely spend a few more setting up their "coordination and opcenter" at a local five-star hotel. And their number one concern, even before phones, fax and copy machines? Arranging for the hotel to provide 24hr catering service.
I believe many of us called this about 5 minutes after this thing started. Not that it was all that friggin hard to predict. Kinda like the sun coming up.
#4
TG for the blogosphere. Real-time, inside baseball without a PC MSM filter. If anything brings down the UN, it will be continued real-time exposes of the complete clownishness, incompetence and sheer bullshit of those running the UN's relief program.
Hurrah for Diplomad. Here's hoping they attract 5 million visitors, or more, with this series. Expose these shameless bastards.
In the heyday of musical comedy, they had "catalog songs" — great long laundry lists of examples that all go to prove the same point — that "You're The Top" or "These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You." That's the way it is with the world's opinion formers these days. Whatever happens anywhere on the planet all goes to prove the same central point — the iniquity of America. Even so, you would think an unprecedented tsunami in a region that has never been a U.S. sphere of influence would be hard to pin on the Great Satan. And, to be fair to the global rent-a-quote crowd, for an hour or two they were stunned into silence. But it wasn't long before they were back singing the same old song: Disaffected young Muslim men in Saudi Arabia, devastated coastal villages in Sri Lanka ... "These Foolish Things Remind Me Of U.S.A." You really need Cole Porter:
You're The Pits
With your massive armies
You're The Pits
And you cause tsunamis.
Jan Egeland, that Norwegian bloke who is the U.N. humanitarian honcho, got the ball rolling with a few general remarks about big countries' "stinginess." He particularly thinks U.S. tax rates too low. Got that? Those tightwad Yanks aren't doing enough. But whoa, hang on. It turns out those pushy Yanks are doing way too much, at least according to Clare Short, formerly Britain's international development secretary (until she stormed out of Tony Blair's Cabinet to protest the Iraq war). President Bush roused her ire by announcing Washington would coordinate its disaster relief with Australia, India and Japan. To Miss Short that had a whiff of another "coalition of the willing." "I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the U.N.," she told the BBC. "Only really the U.N. can do that job. It is the only body that has the moral authority."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper ||
01/04/2005 9:53:45 AM ||
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At that point, the tsunami was still an hour away from Thailand, and several hours away from Somalia. But whoever issued that bulletin either never thought to call anyone in the Indian Ocean, or had no one in his Rolodex to call.
He's wrong. The warning was issued. That's been documented already. It went wrong at the receiving end.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli company said on Monday it planned to distribute free to Asian countries hit by last week's tsunami a device it says could save lives by warning holiday-makers directly that a tidal wave is coming.
The system developed by Israeli inventor Meir Gitelis uses land and water sensors, smaller than a shoe box and each costing $170, to measure seismic activity and wave motion.
Like other systems already in operation, the sensors can send alerts in seconds by satellite to governments anywhere in the world
Columnist William Raspberry in the "Washington Post" (hat tip Deacon at Powerline):
"We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the U.S.-spawned anarchy has left the Iraqi people better off?"
The beautiful thing about paragraphs like this one is that you don't need to make too many changes to come up with an infinite variety of new versions. Like this one for example:
"We can argue all day that Adolf Hitler was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the Allied-spawned anarchy of the Second World War has left the German people [or Jews or Europeans in general] better off?"
An extreme example, perhaps? Saddam was not nearly as wicked as Hitler? Yes, but by the same token the liberation and its aftermath in Iraq pale in comparison with the horror of the Second World War and the desolation afterwards. The problem with the left is not that it keeps asking utalitarian questions about the costs and benefits of maintaining status quo versus affecting change in places like Iraq. The problem is that after all is said and done there never seems to be a regime horrid and oppressive enough for the benefits of its removal to outweigh the costs. Europeans can thank their lucky star that the Second World War took place sixty years ago and not yesterday.
Just as Bob Mugabe thanks his he's alive in in supreme power today...
Posted by: tipper ||
01/04/2005 9:46:58 AM ||
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"We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country..."
Sounds remarkably like another one of those "at least the trains ran on time" statements...
#2
THE LEFTIST IDIOCRATS. WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA SO MUCH OR IS IT JUST THE CURRENT C&C. WAS THERE SUCH AN OUTCRY OVER BOSNIA. DOESN'T ANYONE REMEMBER GOOD OLE SLODOBAN AND RATKO MURDERING THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS IN SCREBANICA. WE REMOVED HIM. ARE THE BALKANS BETTER OFF MR. LIBERAL PANTY-WASTE. BY REMOVING HIM WE KEPT THE RADICAL ISLAMOFASCISTS OUT OF MAINSTREAM EUROPEAN POLITICS BY PUUTING AN END TO THE CONFLICT. DID THE MUSLIMS RECOGNIZE THIS? THEY PROBALY DID BEFORE THE BEFORE THE LEFT WING PRESS. DOES THE PRESS REALLY WANT A NUKE TO GO OFF IN DC OR NY? THE PROBLEM WITH THAT IS THE 5 MILLION OR SO LESS SUBSCRIBERS. IT'S TIME PRESS WAKES UP AND REALIZE EVIL IS ALLOWED TO EXIST WHEN GOOD MEN TO NOTHING. DISGUSTING I'D SAY.
#8
I'd like to start a top ten category of those who, having gained respect, traded it all in to settle small, petty scores and will go to their graves looking small and foolish. Jimmy Carter, Dan Rather, William Raspberrry etc. As for Raspberry, this article brings to my mind the saying: give him enough rope, and he'll hang himself.
A week ago, people kept asking me for my opinion of the tsunami, and, to be honest, I didn't have one. It didn't seem the kind of thing to have an "opinion" on, even for an opinion columnist - not like who should win the election or whether we should have toppled Saddam. It was obviously a catastrophe, and it was certain the death toll would keep rising, and other than that there didn't seem a lot to opine about.
I've never subscribed to Macmillan's tediously over-venerated bit of political wisdom about "events, dear boy, events". Most "events" - even acts of God - come, to one degree or another, politically predetermined: almost exactly a year before the tsunamis, there were two earthquakes - one measuring 6.5 in California, one of 6.3 in Iran. The Californian quake killed two people and did little physical damage. The Iranian one killed 40,000 and reduced an entire city to rubble - not just the glories of ancient Persia, but all the schools and hospitals from the 1970s and 1980s. The event in itself wasn't devastating; the conditions on the ground made it so.
That said, a sudden unprecedented surge by the Indian Ocean is as near to a pure "event" as one can get, and it seemed churlish to huff afterwards about why the governments of Somalia or the Maldives hadn't made a tsunami warning system one of their budgetary priorities. But the waters recede and the familiar contours of the political landscape re-emerge - in this case, the need to fit everything to the Great Universal Theory of the age, that whatever happens, the real issue is the rottenness of America. Jan Egeland, the Norwegian bureaucrat who's the big humanitarian honcho at the UN, got the ball rolling with some remarks about the "stinginess" of certain wealthy nations. And Clare Short piled in, and then Polly Toynbee threw in her three-ha'porth, reminding us that " 'Charity begins at home' is the mean-minded dictum of the Right". But even Telegraph readers subscribe to the Great Universal Theory. On our Letters Page, Robert Eddison dismissed the "paltry $15 million from Washington" as "worse than stingy. The offer - since shamefacedly upped to $35 million - equates to what? Three oil tycoons' combined annual salary?"
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper ||
01/04/2005 9:21:15 AM ||
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It would be interesting to simulate the relief effort without the US military humanitarian response. We sit back, as the world would expect, and let the UN take the lead. How would it play out? Probably a bigger disaster than the tsunami and earthquake.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
01/04/2005 11:29 Comments ||
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#2
Didn't Kofi or Egeland demand that Americans on the ground wear U.N. Uniforms during the relief effort?
Outside of having US Servicemen under UN command. How long would it take the UN to produce that many uniforms? Weeks? Months? I think at least 3 - 4 five-star lunches at exotic locations (oh! and a conference too!).
#5
A recent SCRAPPLEFACE arty said it all, its point being about how on-going, Government- and Intra-African genocides and violence in Africa keep occurring thanks to the USA NOT engaging in militarized Africa-specific IMPERIALISM as it did in Iraq-Afghanistan.
CATASTROPHES unleash great human energies. For now, the world's attention is fixed on the stunning destruction wrought in South Asia, on global mourning. But the long-term effects of nature's terrorism may surprise us all. In the short-term, the misery is incalculable. Even after the last corpses have been buried or burned, survivors will continue to lack adequate shelter. Food and water shortages, the threat of epidemics and psychological paralysis will drag out the misery. Entire cities may not rise again. The key outcome of the disaster is going to appear in Indonesia, especially on the ravaged island of Sumatra, where Aceh province suffered the worst effects of the tsunami. Vast stretches of coastline, thickly settled, disappeared. Even now, the full extent of the destruction has not been surveyed.
Aceh lies in the far northwest of Indonesia's mini-empire of 17,000 islands. Islam penetrated there six centuries ago, arriving with traders from the Arabian peninsula. Early ties with Mecca gave the faith of the Prophet deeper roots and stricter tenets in Aceh than elsewhere in Indonesia, where Islam came later and Muslim beliefs are wonderfully muddled with folk religion, Buddhist strains and even hints of Hinduism. As a result, Aceh has suffered under a long Islamic insurgency that means to establish an independent state closer in spirit to Riyadh than to Jakarta. Wandering through Indonesia, I was struck by the complexity and humanity of the many local variants of Islam — and by the lack of interest in the Aceh-style intolerance the Saudis were anxious to spread throughout the country.
At present, the United States is doing the right thing — and the wise thing — by hurrying aid to Aceh. The efforts are critical in purely human terms, and they also help polish our tarnished relations with Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim country. But we need to have realistic expectations. The Acehnese may remember our help fondly, but aid alone will not change the province's centuries-old prejudices. Such change must come from within. We can play a constructive role on the margins, but the dynamic that matters is already at work within the local society. The question that matters is this: How will Indonesians interpret the disaster that has befallen Aceh?
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper ||
01/04/2005 9:18:37 AM ||
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well said. We have to do better on the PR front - both abroad and here at home.
#2
Most of these guys (the Acehnese) have never seen an American up close and personal, and certainly never in a situation where help was being rendered. Many get their information about Amerika Syarikat (literally, the American Union) from the local anti-American press. I think the personal person-to-person contact will do wonders for Acehnese attitudes towards Uncle Sam. The aid effort may even improve Uncle Sam's relations with Malaysia, whose ethnic Malay ruling majority have their ancestral roots in Aceh.
#3
#2 Most of these guys (the Acehnese) have never seen an American up close and personal, and certainly never in a situation where help was being rendered.
This is not necessarily true. An American company built (at the time the world's largest)a LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) plant in Aceh at Lhaksouwame. It employed upward to 10,000 locals in both skilled and non-skilled positions. It trained thousands in all construction skills as well as management and administration. Other American companies have operations there and have intense and continuing local contact as both employer, good citizen and missionary of American values. Sure there is insurrection by the Islamists but it is basically rejected by the great majority of the population - I should know, I lived and worked there for 2 years.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
01/04/2005 11:36 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
. . .I know I had promised to lay off the UN for a bit . . . but I can't. As one reader commented on a previous Diplomad posting on the UN, "it's like watching a train wreck" -- you know it's horrible, but you've just got to look at it. In this part of the tsunami-wrecked Far Abroad, the UN is still nowhere to be seen where it counts, i.e., feeding and helping victims. The relief effort continues to be a US-Australia effort, with Singapore now in and coordinating closely with the US and Australia. Other countries are also signing up to be part of the US-Australia effort. Nobody wants to be "coordinated" by the UN. The local UN reps are getting desperate. They're calling for yet another meeting this afternoon; they've flown in more UN big shots to lecture us all on "coordination" and the need to work together, i.e., let the UN take credit. With Kofi about to arrive for a big conference, the UNocrats are scrambling to show something, anything as a UN accomplishment. Don't be surprised if they claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln is under UN control and that President Lincoln was a strong supporter of the UN. . .
