Nuclear Iran

Iran is going nuclear, as announced by Iranian President Ahmadinejad yesterday broadcast live on CNN. Not nuclear weapons, mind you. It’s nuclear energy. And it will remain so for at least 10 years time even if Iran wanna to make it (Iran insist it does not). But why so much hype in international media around the uranium enrichment Iran has started producing?

See the mainstream world media and headlines and world politicians reactions: “Time for Strong steps over Iran”, says Condoleezza Rice. “World criticism mounts over Iran’s nuclear step,” a title from REUTERS. And no less than Israel most “liberal” newspapers doesnt want to be left behind in the blaming game “A nuclear Iran is a threat to the free world.” (Haareetz, 12/04/06)
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Hamid Awaluddin: They are Paid Protesters

Note from the meeting with Minister of Justice Hamid Awaluddin

Before question & answer session, Ambassador Donillo Anwar requested the Minister to brief us regarding the latest information on current events in Indonesia. Interesting to note that the first word he said was regarding the intense protests currently prevailing in Indonesia and media.
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Beware of GAM!

01.00 pm November 23, 2005: Question & Answer with Indonesian expats (3) An ethnic cleansing attempt by GAM in Takengon

Photo: Aligarh Muslim University Campus
The third and last question or, to be precise in this case, the info and request were provided by Jusman Masga, a Ph.D student of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), India. Aligarh is a small town around 200 km from New Delhi.
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Between A Leader and Manager

Picture: Baharuddin Lopa the few good men in Indonesia politics

What differentiate between a person with leadership personality and a mere manager? The answer is plenty and will be in a very long list. I’ll just wanna pick up few of those. The order might not necessarily on priority basis.

(1) While the former thinks more on common cause and interest, the latter is busy to sharpen his skill for his own cause;
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US image slips further worldwide

WASHINGTON: The global image of America has slipped further, even among people in some countries closely allied with the US, a new opinion poll has found. Favourable views of the US dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23% said they had a positive opinion, down from 41% last year.

It was done in 15 nations, including the US, this spring by the Washington-based Pew Research Center.

Other countries where positive views dropped include India (56 %, down from 71%); Russia (43%, down from 52 %); and Indonesia (30%, down from 38&%). In Turkey, only 12% has favourable opinion.

Full story

Israeli Attrocities Against Palestinians

One of the duty of citizen media like blogs is to bring forward a news that is not getting enough attention from or totally ignored by major media for whatever reasons. Israeli-Palestinians conflict is a several decades long conflict and will see no future solution in many decades ahead. I dont know how the bloody and inhuman attrocities in the region will end. Yet, it’s a mistake on our part to forget a nation attrocities against another and simply wipe it off our memory, becuase it might happen to us, someday if lesson not learnt.
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Lebanon PM: Israel War Criminal

“I felt as if I was turning around, and the earth was going up, and I was going into the earth,” said Mohamed Chaloub, a father of five who was thrown into a doorway and managed to escape. All five of his children, including a 2-year-old child, were killed. His wife, sister and aunt were also killed.

Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora denounced the attack as a “war crime”, demanding an immediate ceasefire in a conflict that has now killed more than 500 people and left a trail of destruction across the country.
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Obama, Madrassa and Pesantren

Indonesian madrasah* gets five-minutes fame in the US media for the “wrong” reason: Senator Barack H. Obama, a hot presidential candidate from Democrat allegedly was educated in Indonesia’s madrasah during his childhood years in Indonesia along with his mother.

The news emanated from Insight Magazine, an American right-wing-stripe media owned by the same company as the Washington Times (not to be confused with the blue-stripe Washington Post).The news then debunked by CNN as false. According to its Jakarta bureau, “Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.”

Bush as Dangerous as Bin Laden: British Survey

Many people from the third world countries — where Muslims are in majority or not such as India– think that America under Bush and/or Republican in particular are very dangerous to the world peace as far as US foreign policy goes. But none of those the so-called third world people think that they are not alone. Therefore when the people from nations closely related with US policy like Britain think similarly as it’s obvious from the poll conducted recently and released on Friday, it comes as a real surprise.

As reported by the Guardian, UK, America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published on Friday that reveals just how far the country’s reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

“Luckily” for Bush he falls short of Bin Laden in terms of causing danger to the world peace:

He is outranked by Osama bin Laden in all four countries, but runs the close in the eyes of British voters: 87 per cent think the Al-Qaeda is a great or moderate danger to peace, compared with 75 per cent who think this of Mr. Bush.

Yet, as the world only super-power, he should be “proud” of outranked Kim Jong-il of North Korea and other world leaders dubbed by him as the axis of evils and terrorists:

Mr. Bush is seen in Britain as a more dangerous man than the President of Iran (62 per cent think he is a danger), the North Korean leader (69 per cent) and the leader of Hizbollah, Hassan Nasrallah (65 per cent).

Accurately, America as a whole is also put to blame, for choosing him democratically as their leader:

In Britain, 69 per cent of those questioned say they believe U.S. policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7 per cent thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.

As we can see from the table, it’s not only British who think so, other US allies like Canada and and even Israel–the carte blanche recipient of US nod on anything– worried:

The finding is mirrored in America’s immediate northern and southern neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62 per cent of Canadians and 57 per cent of Mexicans saying the world has become more dangerous because of U.S. policy.

Even in Israel, which has long looked to America to guarantee national security, support for the U.S. has slipped. Only one in four Israeli voters say that Mr. Bush has made the world safer, outweighed by the number who think he has added to the risk of international conflict, 36 per cent to 25 per cent.

I’m a bit surprised with the finding. As a blogger who sometimes blogwalks to other world blogs, I can’t see the same feeling and thinking in some of British bloggers. Well, at least not as expressed by their expats…

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