Day: 25 December 2006

Quetta is a resting spot, recruiting ground and meeting point for the militia, officials say.

By Laura King
Times Staff Writer

December 21, 2006

QUETTA, PAKISTAN — At a time when the Taliban is making its strongest push in years to regain influence and territory across the border in Afghanistan, this mountain-ringed provincial capital has become an increasingly brazen hub of activity by the Islamist militia.

Quetta serves as a place of rest and refuge for Taliban fighters between battles, a funneling point for cash and armaments, a fertile recruiting ground and a sometime meeting point for the group’s fugitive leaders, say aid workers, local officials, diplomats and others.

“Everybody is here,” said Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a Quetta-based member of Pakistan’s National Assembly, describing the routine comings and goings of senior Taliban commanders in Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan….

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From Reuters

Singer James Brown, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Soul,” who billed himself as the hardest working man in show business, died on Monday at age 73, his agent said.

Brown died at 1:45 a.m. at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta after being admitted there over the weekend for treatment of severe pneumonia, his agent, Frank Copsidas, said.

The singer, also known as “Mr Dynamite,” is credited with bringing the word “funk” into mainstream musical vernacular and influencing a new generation of black music that spawned rap and hip-hop.

Brown’s hit “Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” became a civil rights anthem during the turbulent 1960s and he performed the song at Richard Nixon’s inaugural in 1969 — an act that temporarily hurt his popularity among young blacks.

More than anything else, Brown was a showman, typically changing suits a dozen times during a show and dancing himself into a frenzy on stage. He once said he aimed to wear out his audience and “give people more than what they came for — make them tired.”

He had more than 119 charting singles and recorded over 50 albums, was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and received a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 1992.

Brown also built a successful business empire, including a string of radio stations and his own production company, and owned a fleet of expensive cars and his own plane.

He even played the role of a manic preacher in the hit 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers.”

“Soul is all the hard knocks, all the punishment the black man has had … all the unfulfilled dreams that must come true,” he once said.

ARRESTS, PRISON TIME

He was chosen to be a member of President Reagan’s Council Against Drugs, but was arrested several times in the mid-1980s and 90s and charged with drug and weapons possession.

By 1988 Brown, who had begun his music career in jail as a juvenile offender, was back behind bars, sentenced to six years for drug, weapons and vehicular charges after a high-speed car chase through Georgia and South Carolina which ended with police shooting out the tires of his truck. He left prison in 1991.

Brown emerged from a boyhood of extreme poverty and petty crime to become one of the biggest record-sellers in rhythm and blues and later achieved crossover success. His gospel-style voice backed by staccato horns brought a distinctive funky and frenetic sound to black and later white audiences.

“Feeling and flamboyance fused into calculated spontaneity,” one critic wrote of a Brown performance, adding he danced like a dervish and sang with “an astounding range of primitive emotional sounds — grunts, groans, screeches, screams, wails…”

Every record he made during 1960-77 reached the top 100. Big hits included “Please, Please, Please,” “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” “I Got You (I Feel Good)” “Get Up (I feel like being a Sex Machine)” and “It’s a Man’s World.”

His 1985 monster hit “Living in America,” which was featured in the movie “Rocky IV,” brought him a whole new generation of fans and his first Grammy.

He combined his soul-rending music with a theatrical delivery. He also developed a trademark routine in which he would keep coming back on stage after a show and sing a few lines of “Please, Please, Please” with the sweat pouring from his bare-chested body.

His stage crew would throw a cape over his back and he would leave, only to reappear seconds later on his knees, moaning the song into the microphone. The routine would sometimes go on for 30-40 minutes and send his fans delirious.

Needless to say that we get nothing in return from the ‘Palestinians’….

Olmert suggests Palestinian prisoner release
By Ari Rabinovitch Sun Dec 24, 2:54 PM ET
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested on Sunday he could release some Palestinian prisoners this week, even though Gaza militants have yet to free a captured Israeli soldier.

Israel has been under U.S. and European pressure to take steps to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a power struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which ousted Abbas’s Fatah faction in a parliamentary poll last year.

At their first formal meeting on Saturday, Olmert pledged to release $100 million in withheld tax revenues to Abbas, bypassing the Hamas-led government.

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The obsessive Mohammedan hatred and the Arab inferiority complex towards the Jews and israel is rarely analyzed in the western press. Here, we take a closer look:

+++WHY Jews are so powerful, according to Dr Farrukh Saleem, who is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist.

There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in the Americas , five million in Asia, two million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa .

For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims. Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together.

Ever wondered why? Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most Influential scientist of all time and TIME magazine’s ‘Person of the Century’, was a Jew. Sigmund Freud — id, ego, superego — the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew. So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman.

Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched the whole humanity:

Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle. Jonas Salk Developed the first polio vaccine. Alert Sabin developed the improved live polio vaccine.

Gertrude Elion gave us a leukaemia fighting drug. Baruch Blumberg Developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B. Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis (a sexually Transmitted disease). Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases.

Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission.

Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology (disorders of the endocrine system; diabetes, hyperthyroidism). Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy (psychotherapy to treat mental disorders, depression and phobias).

Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill. George Wald won a Nobel for furthering our understanding of the human eye.

Stanley Cohen won a Nobel in embryology (study of embryos and their development). Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine.

Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims (other than Peace Prizes).

Why are Jews so powerful?

Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip. Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor. Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable; Charles Adler, traffic lights; Benno Strauss, stainless steel; Isador Kisee, sound movies; Emile Berliner, telephone microphone and Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder.

Famous entrepreneurs in the business world who belong to Jewish faith Include Ralph Lauren (Polo), Levis Strauss (Levi’s Jeans), Howard Schultz (Starbuck’s), Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Dell (Dell Computers), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Donna Karan (DKNY), Irv Robbins (Baskins & Robbins)and Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts). Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew.

So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman, Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Casper Weinberger (Americansecretary of defence), Maxim Litvinov (USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal (Singapore’s first chief minister), Issac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia), Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Barry Goldwater, Jorge Sampaio (president of Portugal), John Deutsch (CIA director), Herb Gray (Canadian deputyPM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria) and Robert Rubin(American secretary of treasury).

In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyyeld (Executive editor, The New York Times) Larry King CNN and Max Frankel (New York Times).

Can you name the most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world?

The name is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal $4 billion, most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around the world.

Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion.

Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, Goldie Hawn, Cary Grant, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis and Peter Falk are all Jewish?

As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew.

Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling Neil Simon, Andrew Vaina, Michael Man, Milos Forman, Douglas Fairbanks and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.

To be certain, Washington is the capital that matters and in Washington the lobby that matters is the Jewish Lobby, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

Washington knows that if PM Ehud Olmert were to discover that the earth is flat, AIPAC will make the 109th Congress pass a resolution congratulating Olmert on his discovery.

William James Sidis, with an IQ of 250-300, is the brightest human who ever existed. Guess what faith did he belong to?

Question: So, why are Jews so powerful?

Answer: Education.

Why are Muslims so powerless?

There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of the planet: one billion in Asia , 400 million in Africa, 44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas .

Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are one hundred Muslims. Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless?

Here is why:

There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims.

The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407.

In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’, and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.

As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian-majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent.

A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent.

Some 98 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Muslim world did the same. Around 40 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world attended university while no more than two percent of the ‘literates’ in the Muslim world did the same.

Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims.

The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million.

In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is

35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million).

Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP.

Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge.

Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society.

In Pakistan, there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 360.

In the UK, the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.

Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application.

Pakistan ‘s exports of high technology products as a percentage of Total exports stands at one per cent.

The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait, Morocco , and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent while Singapore is at 58 per cent.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?

Because they aren’t producing knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?

Because they aren’t diffusing knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?

Because they aren’t applying knowledge. And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies.

Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion.

America , just by itself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion; China $8 trillion, Japan $3.8 trillion and Germany $2.4 trillion.

Oil rich Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion; Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and Buddhist Thailand $545 billion (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining).

So, why are Muslims so powerless?

Answer: Lack of education. Quality education to be exact.

Uncontaminated education to be precise.