Display Commandments, but not Koran verses

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3944/is_200311/ai_n9307693/print

Display Commandments, but not Koran verses, Americans tell pollsters

A majority of Americans believe government should be able to display the Ten Commandments but would not extend that right to displays involving passages from the Koran, a new poll indicates.

The survey, taken by CNN and Gallup in conjunction with USA Today, found that 70 percent of Americans back displays of the Ten Commandments at government buildings and public schools. However, only 33 percent approved of displays featuring a verse from the Koran in those same settings. Sixty-four percent opposed them.

A separate question asked respondents how they feel about displays that include many different religious symbols. Only 10 percent said they believe government should be able to display exclusively Christian symbols, while 58 percent said other religious symbols should be included. (Twenty-nine percent said government should display no religious symbols.)

Those polled did not accept the argument that displays of religious symbols at the seat of government send a message of religious exclusion. Only 25 percent of those polled said displaying the Ten Commandments could send the message that Christians and Jews will get special treatment; 73 percent said the display would not send that message.

A majority did agree that government endorsement of religion can harm religious minorities, however. Fifty-four percent agreed with the statement that when government promotes religion it "can harm the rights of people who do not belong to that religion." Forty percent disagreed.

The survey also asked a few questions about faith-based initiatives. Most respondents - 64 percent - said they approve of using tax funds to pay for community services run by Christian groups. But 56 percent said they would not support funding of community groups with an Islamic affiliation.

The poll was based on a survey of 1,003 adults nationwide taken Sept. 19-21. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three points.

Copyright Americans United for Separation of Church and State Nov 2003

Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Display Commandments, but not Koran verses

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3944/is_200311/ai_n9307693/print

Display Commandments, but not Koran verses, Americans tell pollsters
A majority of Americans believe government should be able to display the Ten Commandments but would not extend that right to displays involving passages from the Koran, a new poll indicates.
The survey, taken by CNN and Gallup in conjunction with USA Today, found that 70 percent of Americans back displays of the Ten Commandments at government buildings and public schools. However, only 33 percent approved of displays featuring a verse from the Koran in those same settings. Sixty-four percent opposed them.
A separate question asked respondents how they feel about displays that include many different religious symbols. Only 10 percent said they believe government should be able to display exclusively Christian symbols, while 58 percent said other religious symbols should be included. (Twenty-nine percent said government should display no religious symbols.)
Those polled did not accept the argument that displays of religious symbols at the seat of government send a message of religious exclusion. Only 25 percent of those polled said displaying the Ten Commandments could send the message that Christians and Jews will get special treatment; 73 percent said the display would not send that message.
A majority did agree that government endorsement of religion can harm religious minorities, however. Fifty-four percent agreed with the statement that when government promotes religion it "can harm the rights of people who do not belong to that religion." Forty percent disagreed.
The survey also asked a few questions about faith-based initiatives. Most respondents - 64 percent - said they approve of using tax funds to pay for community services run by Christian groups. But 56 percent said they would not support funding of community groups with an Islamic affiliation.
The poll was based on a survey of 1,003 adults nationwide taken Sept. 19-21. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three points.
Copyright Americans United for Separation of Church and State Nov 2003Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Protesters draw link between Katrina and Iraq war

Protesters draw link between Katrina and Iraq war
19 Sep 2005 23:08:45 GMT
Source: Reuters
(adds police breaking up rally in paragraphs 4, 5)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N1943789.htm

NEW YORK, Sept 19 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's faltering performance after Hurricane Katrina, like his decision to invade Iraq, show his priorities are at odds with actions needed to keep Americans safe, anti-war protesters said on Monday.

"One of the bogus reasons that George Bush gives for this invasion (and) occupation of Iraq is to make America safer -- and Katrina exposed that clearly he has made America more vulnerable through his policies in Iraq," anti-war activist and bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan told a morning news conference.

U.S. troops fighting an unexpectedly stubborn insurgency in Iraq should come home to help face domestic challenges like the unprecedented humanitarian relief and recovery effort on the Gulf Coast, said the activists, who will stage a march on Washington this weekend.

When Sheehan later spoke in Manhattan's Union Square to a group of about 200 anti-war protesters, New York police broke up the rally and arrested a man over a dispute about whether their permit allowed amplified sound.

Morrigan Phillips, spokeswoman for the Bring Them Home Now Tour, which has been stopping in towns across America on its way to the march in Washington, said the arrest was the first since the group began its campaign earlier this summer.

Leaders of the coalition organizing the Sept. 24-26 protest in Washington include Sheehan, who gained international fame by camping out for weeks outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The anti-war group United for Peace and Justice, spearheading the march on Washington, said National Guard troops and materiel deployed in Iraq were needed to respond to the tragedy in and around New Orleans.

Sheehan is the star attraction for the three-day protest, which will include nonviolent acts of civil disobedience at the White House and an interfaith religious service, organizers said.

After her soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq, Sheehan demanded to meet with Bush while he vacationed in Texas so he could explain why U.S. troops were not being withdrawn from Iraq.

Bush, who had met briefly with Sheehan on a previous occasion, has declined to meet with her again.

"We were alarmed to hear the first company to get a contract in the rebuilding of New Orleans was Halliburton, another nonbid contract," said Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, which bills itself as the largest anti-war coalition in the United States.

The largest U.S. contractor in Iraq, Halliburton Co.'s <HAL.N> subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root has been given a $29.8 million contract to rebuild Navy bases along the Katrina-battered Gulf Coast.

Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton, whose subsidiary secured no-bid contracts in Iraq after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein.

Why the millennium goals won’t work?

Q:
Why the millennium goals won’t work?
Ans:

Because those who designed them do not want them to work well. These are the rich executives of UN and WorldBank. If those goals are fulfilled and the poor became rich, then they will loose their luxurious jobs. They will loose around-the-world missions. They will loose 5-start hotel stay.

So, the solution is to make big bubbles on the subject, and hold meetings and conferences in most luxury places and claim love for the poor and shed crocodile tears for the poor.

THE DEVELOPMENT SET

Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet-
I'm off to join the Development Set;
My bags area packed, and I've had all my shots,
I have traveller's cheques and pills for the trots.

The Development Set is bright and noble,
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes,
Out thoughts are always with the masses.

In Sheraton hotels in scattered nations,
We damn multinational corporations;
Injustice seems so easy to protest,
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with an open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution-
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.

The Language of the Development Set,
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell words like 'epigenetic',
'Micro', 'Macro', and 'logarithmetic'.

Development Set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carving, curios and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the rich and poor.

Enough of these verses- on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray to God the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.



Why the millennium goals won't work
By Bunker Roy International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/09/13/opinion/edbunker.php


TILONIA, India In 1978, when Robert McNamara, then president of the World Bank, and McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation, spend a night at the Barefoot College here in Tilonia, McNamara asked a man whose family lived on much less than a dollar a day what he looked forward to in life. He smiled and said very quietly, "Two square meals a day."
 
I remember the stunned silence even today and think back to that meeting when I read the United Nations' report on its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2005. For all the high-powered officials who put it together and for all the 25 UN agencies and international donor groups it depends on, it reflects a naïve and gullible attitude about poverty.
 
The virtual reality in which its authors live, full of action plans, road maps and fact sheets, is frightening. They should listen to someone who has lived and worked for the last 34 years with the rural poor: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (MDG No. 1) does not need indicators and databases. Only intellectual activists who have no idea how to reach the very poor need that.
 
So long as governments in the South are powerless to break the hold of corrupt private contractors and larcenous village-level politicians, the poor will never be free from want or free from fear, whatever the UN report envisions. The possible solution? Get every government in the South to work toward a Right to Information Act like India's. Ensure transparency and accountability, with rural communities putting pressure on government from below to disclose how money has been spent. Ask Transparency International. They will help.
 
If we want to achieve universal primary education (MDG No. 2), Unesco's approach has not worked. With 60 percent of the poorest rural children not going to school in the morning because they have to help with domestic chores, far from a solution, the development report offers only a demonstration of an inability to think out of the box. But there's a common-sense people's solution - have school at night.
 
Few government teachers sleep in the villages. So train literate but unemployed rural youth as part-time "barefoot" teachers by the thousands, all over the world, to run the night schools.
 
Are the development report's authors aware that the tremendous work that community-based groups are doing in primary education is not reflected in the official statistics either of Unesco or of governments? This is because their work is still not valued or recognized and never will be, because they are a threat to village officials who represent government and who do not believe in changing the status quo.
 
There are many innovative ways of empowering women (MDG No. 3) used by community-based groups the world over. In my experience, to the disbelief of urban paper-qualified experts, semiliterate rural women have become solar and water engineers and have begun repairing hand pumps, building rainwater tanks in schools, solar-electrifying villages and feeding data into computers without any technical help from outside.
 
Speaking of rainwater, it falls on the roofs of schools everywhere. It should be collected, by the billions of gallons, for drinking and flushing toilets. Expensive centralized technology solutions with hand pumps or piping systems must be phased out. This simple solution to meet a basic minimum need will advance not only MDG No. 7, which specifically calls for greater access to safe drinking water, but almost every other MDG as well, either directly or indirectly.
 
We do not need the World Health Organization in the villages: It's so simple and inexpensive to upgrade the skills of traditional midwives, improve their confidence and build on their knowledge. Where these small community-managed steps have been taken to involve the traditional medicinal systems, child mortality has fallen sharply, maternal health has improved and waterborne diseases have been tackled more effectively (MDG Nos. 4 through 6).
 
If the primary focus is really ending poverty, the partnerships we need to strengthen are of a sort other than trade (MDG No. 8): partnerships between poor communities so that they learn from one another and share traditional, practical knowledge and skills. Importing expensive, unworkable ideas, equipment and consultants from the North simply destroys the capacity of communities to help themselves.
 
Any goal that is driven from the top by international donors and governments not accountable to the communities and without financial transparency is doomed to fail. That model encourages colossal falsification of figures, the excessive hiring of private consultants and contractors, conflicts of interest and a massive patronage system.
 
When poor communities think at the human level, all their goals are interconnected. But under the present top-down model, with the absence of a global grass-roots movement with the communities as equal partners, the goals have been broken up compartmentally into project mode, to suit donors and governments.
 
That's the ultimate recipe for disaster, and that's why the MDGs will be achieved only on paper.
 
(Bunker Roy is the founder of the Barefoot College and chairman of the Global Rain Water Harvesting Collective. A complete list of the Millennium Development Goals and the related UN report can be found at www.un.org/millenniumgoals.)

CHARITIES ARE FOR SUCKERS

This man did the internal audit correct!!
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ucru/20050914/cm_ucru/charitiesareforsuckers

CHARITIES ARE FOR SUCKERS
By Ted RallTue Sep 13, 8:06 PM ET
Leave Katrina Relief Efforts to Government
NEW YORK--Hurricane Katrina has prompted Americans to donate more than $700 million to charity, reports the Chronicle of Philanthropy. So many suckers, so little foresight.
Government has been shirking its basic responsibilities since the '80s, when Ronald Reagan sold us his belief that the sick, poor and unlucky should no longer count on "big government" to help them, but should rather live and die at the whim of contributors to private charities. The Katrina disaster, whose total damage estimate has risen from $100 to $125 billion, marks the culmination of Reagan's privatization of despair.
The American Red Cross leads the post-Katrina sweepstakes, quickly closing in on the $534 million it took in just after 9/11. But Red Cross spokeswoman Sheila Graham told the AP it needs another half billion "to provide emergency relief over the coming weeks for thousands of evacuees who have scattered among 675 of its shelters in 23 states."
Shelley Borysiewicz of Catholic Charities USA, which has raised $7 million thus far, also continues to solicit donations: "We don't want people to lose sight of the fact that this is going to take years of recovery, and we're going to be there to help the people who fall through the cracks."
What "cracks"? Why should New Orleans' dispossessed have to live in private shelters? We live in the United States, not Mali. There's only one reason flood victims aren't getting help from the government: because the government refuses to help them. The Red Cross and its cohorts are letting lazy, incompetent and corrupt politicians off the hook, and so are their donors.
It's ridiculous, but people evidently need to be reminded that the United States is not only the world's wealthiest nation but the wealthiest society that has existed anywhere, ever. The U.S. government can easily pick up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather--if helping them is a priority. That goes double for Katrina, a disaster caused by the government's conscious decision to eliminate the $50 million pittance needed to improve New Orleans' levees.
For our leaders the optional war against Iraq is such a priority, which the Congressional Budget Office expects to cost $600 billion by 2010. That's four or five Katrinas right there. (That's also where the levee money went.) Because rich people are always a political priority, their taxes have been slashed by $4 trillion over a decade--the equivalent of 32 Katrinas. So worried are our public servants about the tax burden placed on the rich that they're looking out for rich dead people. This is why they've gutted the estate tax that, at a cost of $75 billion annually, will run half a Katrina a year. Trickle-down economists beginning with Milton Friedman shout "starve the beast," but while the social programs are put on a diet, the mean and powerful pig out more than ever.
Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead (nine percent for the Red Cross) and their parochial, often religious, agendas. It's also way too expensive. In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they've managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognizing the reality that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, has already allocated $58 billion--over 70 times the amount raised by charities--to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico. As Bush says, that's only a "down payment."
Cutting a check to the Red Cross isn't just a vote for irresponsible government. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what you'll end up paying for Katrina in increased taxes.
Granted, in terms of popularity of likelihood of success, trying to make a case against giving money to charities compares to lobbying against puppies. The impulse to donate, after all, is rooted in our best human traits. As we watched New Orleanians die of thirst, disease and anarchic violence in the face of Bush Administration disinterest and local government incompetence, millions of us did the only thing we thought we could to do to help: cut a check or click a PayPal button. Tragically, that generosity feeds into the mindset of the sinister ideologues who argue that government shouldn't help people--the very mindset that caused the levee break that turned Katrina into a holocaust and led to official unresponsiveness. And it is already setting the stage for the next avoidable disaster.
It's time to "starve the beast": private charities used by the government to justify the abdication of its duties to its citizens.

Satan Says: Mardi Gras Must Continue

This tells that Satan inspires it’s fellows and push them for sin and before that covers the sin with blanket of virtue…

Those people never think that Mardi Gras has any contribution to the calamity New Orleans are suffering…

Mardi Gras is a festival that promotes paganism, sex, crime…it fetches the city a billion bucks and a Katrina….

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/national/nationalspecial/17mardigras.html?hp

September 17, 2005
Vowing to Maintain an Annual Rite After the Storm
By MICHAEL LUO
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 16 - The giant Agamemnon survived. So did the Kevin Costner head from last year's parade. Wolfman just lost a little papier-mâché. But SpongeBob needs some major work.
In a sprawling patchwork of warehouses across the Mississippi River from downtown, a different kind of recovery from Hurricane Katrina is under way. One worker was busy the other day mending the Styrofoam teeth of an oversize alligator, while another repainted a large catfish - all part of a headlong rush to get back on track for the annual rite that is the psychic center of this city and could signal its rebirth next year: Mardi Gras.
"It's certainly some millions of dollars in damage that we have sustained," said Barry Kern, president of Kern Studios, the family-run company that produces most of the elaborate floats for Carnival, the several-weeks-long celebration that culminates in Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 28 next year. "But it's nothing that's going to stop us. We're ready to roll."
Still, it is unclear whether New Orleans will have the money, the crowds or the heart for a full-blown Mardi Gras, especially the parades that are the season's signature. And as the city struggles to regain its footing, that question promises to take center stage.
"Maybe it has to be primitive, but it still has to happen," said Oliver Thomas, president of the City Council. "It would be an international shame if it didn't."
The celebration's contribution to the city's economy has been estimated at more than $1 billion, according to study conducted in 2000 for the Mayor's Mardi Gras Advisory Committee. Mardi Gras is the lifeblood of a cottage industry of bead manufacturers, costume designers and other artisans, as well as hotels, restaurants and taxis that profit from the tourists and residents who jam the streets.
"It's equal in size to three Super Bowls," Mr. Kern said. "If we don't have it, it would be devastating."
In the storm's wake, the importance of Mardi Gras extends well beyond dollars, many people said.
"Psychologically, I think it would be significant for New Orleans to have some kind of Mardi Gras celebration next year, celebrating that it's back," said Sarah Kracke, senior vice president of Greater New Orleans Inc., an economic development group. "All these things would be extremely valuable to the city and our psyche."
Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the first Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, said Arthur Hardy, who publishes an annual guide to the festivities. In all those years, there have been only a handful of times when revelers did not parade through the streets in the days before Ash Wednesday: during the Civil War, a period of local unrest in 1875, World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
"Basically, it's been wars that have stopped Mardi Gras," Mr. Hardy said, "not anything like a little rainstorm."
Much of how Mardi Gras will look next year is dependent on the more than 50 organizations, called krewes, that put on the raucous parades that stretch over 10 days. Some have histories that stretch back decades, and mythological names like Orpheus, Endymion and Bacchus. Rex, one of the oldest krewes, dating from 1872, suffered some of the worst storm damage, as waters flooded its warehouse, across the Mississippi River from Kern Studios.
A major question is whether the smaller krewes will have enough money, and members back in the city, to stage their parades, said Mr. Hardy, who suggested that corporate sponsors might step in to help.
Regardless, Kern Studios is plunging ahead with preparations at its warehouses here in the Algiers neighborhood.
The work begins an entire year before Mardi Gras, said Blaine Kern Sr., who founded the company and is widely known here as Mr. Mardi Gras. As a result, many floats for next year's festivities had already been completed before the storm. "We're set back, of course, but we were ahead of our schedule," Mr. Kern said.
Some doors blew off the Kern warehouses, but damage to the floats and props inside was minimal. Signature floats like Orpheus's Leviathan, a giant dragon that blinks with an elaborate fiber-optic system, and Endymion's 240-foot-long riverboat were unharmed.
The worst damage was the collapsed roofs of two warehouses. But even there, amid the debris, a fragile flamingo on one float remained standing atop spindly legs, ready to go on.

Is there a need for scientific proof for God?

The problem is that those hardcore evolutionists does not want to confess that their brain has limitations!  

When you see a building, you does not need an evidence that it was built by someone..When you see a foot track in the beach, then you do not need an evidence that someone was there!
When you see this whole universe working perfectly..why you need a lab test to believe someone is behind…

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,16548995%255E911,00.html

World of science looks at a new design on life's creatorJENNY HOPE in London10sep05A NEW theory on the beginnings of life has divided educators - but not along the lines you might think.Intelligent Design Theory - which claims to have evidence life was at least partly the work of a designer - is causing controversy across the world.
Criticised as a way of "sneaking" creationism into science, the theory has attracted the support of United States President George W Bush.
On the other side, scientists including Professor Paul Davies have compared it to "fairies and flat-Earth" theories.
Already, schools overseas - and some in the eastern states - have incorporated it into their curriculums.
Intelligent Design has yet to be taught in a South Australian school - but argument over its merit is running hot.
Independent schools - usually thought to be conservative - say Intelligent Design theory could be used as a tool for developing critical thinking.
The SA Science Teachers Association, meanwhile, has come down with an unapologetically hard-line stance.
"Intelligent Design is simply a belief," executive officer Bob Geary said.
"As beliefs are not measurable, testable nor evidence-based, they can't be considered part of science.
"Therefore, it is not appropriate for inclusion in any science course or science textbook." More than 14 million websites tackle both sides of the Intelligent Design debate.
Supporters claim life is so complex, it must have been the work of a directing intelligence.
They argue scientific evidence, gleaned from DNA, cellular machines and mathematical formula, supports their claims.
Critics, however, claim the theory simply fills gaps in current evolutionary theory with "speculative beliefs". They call the idea "God of the gaps".
Association of Independent Schools SA executive director Gary LeDuff said that the theory was an issue for most of the state's 97 non-government schools.
"Our schools have not had the opportunity to seriously consider whether they would incorporate this approach into their curriculums," he said.
He said schools taught both evolution and creationism in the hope students would come to their own conclusions about life.
"Even if it was introduced, it would be to encourage students to examine it along with the other two theories on life," he said.
"Christian schools would usually be seen as conservative but they want to give students the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills and make their own decisions."
The Science Teachers Association, meanwhile, has drafted an official, four-paragraph position on Intelligent Design.
It concedes the theory may have a place in religious studies, or as a "contrast" to evolution.
"As it is not possible to set up an experiment to test Intelligent Design, it cannot have any status as a scientific theory," the document says.

Ethiopians are not Welcome in Israel

Blacks are problematic in America, Israel, etc…
Only Islam came to gave them their rights….
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1126059636147
Integrate Ethiopians
On the first day of school last week 50 youngsters – dressed up, toting schoolbags and new supplies – were turned away from Or Yehuda's Sa'adya Gaon Elementary School by orders of the mayor, who protested "the imposition" on his anyway underprivileged township of immigrants even worse off than the original population.
After a petition to the Supreme Court, severe rebukes from the state comptroller, concerted attacks from the Knesset Education Committee and a unanimous media thrashing, Mayor Yitzhak Bukovsa relented and allowed the pupils – all children of immigrant Ethiopian families – into the classes they were to attend in the first place.
In Israel's entire history of absorbing disparate immigrants from the far-flung corners of the globe, not a single group encountered anything of the sort. In this the Ethiopian experience is unique.
The sad fact, however, is that there isn't much new in the Or Yehuda story.
Other immigrant groups have not suffered similar rejection, but the Ethiopians certainly have. Bukovsa's bid to exile Ethiopians from city's schools has previously been attempted elsewhere, too. The only difference is that Bukovsa's executive decree has attracted considerable press attention, whereas identical moves by other mayors in the very recent past somehow escaped notoriety.
Only last year, for instance, Kiryat Yam refused to accept any more Ethiopian pupils to its schools. A school-within-a-school was almost set up in Ashdod to essentially segregate Ethiopian enrollees, who, local parents feared, would drag their own children down.
There are plenty of local authorities that bus their Ethiopian pupils to more distant schools in other localities. Often families acquiesce, raise no squawk and nobody's the wiser. Thus children from culturally deprived backgrounds fall further behind when they spent hours on the road to and from class, some starting their day as early as 5 a.m.
Bukovsa's response is that his critics "are hypocrites from well-to-do neighborhoods where Ethiopians don't congregate." Unpalatable and legally irrelevant as his in-your-face retort is, we must in all honesty admit the veracity of another of his observations: that the shunting aside he advocates locally is already being conducted nationally.
Bukovsa notes that his town, founded by Iraqi olim and bolstered later by North African newcomers, is problem-ridden to begin with. Its city government is nearly bankrupt. The influx of a thousand Ethiopian families makes a bad situation worse and bodes ill for the prospects of the Ethiopian youngsters themselves. He figures the Ethiopian communities ought to be dispersed in smaller numbers in wealthy towns.
Perhaps he is right, but the coarse social engineering methods of the past are not sufficient to deal with the problem.
Unlike other immigrants, Ethiopians receive special housing grants, yet even these won't go far in costly locations and the taxpayer certainly cannot finance luxury housing. Ethiopian families thus per force gravitate to locales they can afford and this makes economic sense.
They also seek each other out, as immigrants everywhere do. As a result, Rehovot's Kiryat Moshe, for instance, is heavily Ethiopian and 10 kindergartens there are 95% Ethiopian. It has its own tiny school in which the enrollment is 90% Ethiopian. The pupils at Netanya's Rambam school are also 95% Ethiopian.
Things frequently hinge on how new a family is to Israel. The more veteran meander out of immigrant communities. The newest are generally concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods.
Bukovsa is right about one thing, that the challenge of integrating Ethiopian immigrants into Israeli society should be a national one, and that the burden of doing so should not fall predominantly on communities that are least able to shoulder it.
Full integration may never have been a realistic goal for those who late in life were rescued from the desperate conditions in their native land, whisked to a place they knew only from their prayers. It is not acceptable, however, that the second generation – born in Israel, speaking fluent Hebrew and ostensibly receiving a full Israeli education – is not being giving more of an opportunity to fully integrate into Israeli society.
That eager, innocent children who showed up for their first day of school were turned away just begins to show the depth of the problem. That act was shameful, but the continued refusal to address the wider situation is worse still.

Trojan swaps porn sites for Koran text

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5851679.html

A new Trojan horse is serving as a moral guard of sorts, displaying text from the Koran if users visit what could be a pornographic Web site, Sophos warned on Monday.

The Trojan horse, dubbed "Yusufali-A," scans the title bar of the active Web browser window, which typically contains the name of a Web site. The program jumps into action when it sees any one of nine terms, including sex, teen, xxx, penis and exhibitionism, Sophos said in a description of the Trojan on its Web site.

When it determines that a pornographic Web site is being shown, the Trojan minimizes that window and displays a message from the Koran instead, Sophos said. If the offending site is not closed, a button labeled "For Exit Click Here" will appear. Moving the mouse to that box will lock it in and the user is forced to log out of Windows, according to Sophos.

Because of the way it is programmed, the Yusufali Trojan may also block innocent Web sites such as medical, educational and sites targeted at teenagers, Sophos notes.

Porn and malicious code have been married before, but more often explicit images are used to trick people into downloading a Trojan horse. Earlier this year however, Sophos found the Baba-C worm, which traveled by e-mail posing as a tool to clean porn from PCs.

The Yusufali Trojan horse is not widespread, Sophos said. Regardless, the Abingdon, England-based antivirus company, advises users to keep their antivirus software up to date.

Nations Offer Help to Katrina Victims

Nations Offer Help to Katrina Victims

It is amazing to see the weakness of the most powerful nation. Countries like Bangladesh helping US is a puzzle no one could solve before the hit of Allah…It is time for all rich and poor to return to Allah and seek HIS help..We are all poor in front of the richness and sovereignty of Allah –the Almighty.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5259960,00.html


Tuesday September 6, 2005 9:01 PM

AP Photo MSDP116

By MATT MOORE

Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - Impoverished Bangladesh, where millions live on a monsoon- and flood-prone delta, pledged $1 million and offered rescuers. Thailand, recalling U.S. aid after last year's tsunami, offered to send 60 doctors and nurses as well as rice as a ``gesture from the heart.''

They are among more than 90 countries, rich and poor, proposing assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina, with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates contributing ``very large cash'' donations, the State Department said Tuesday.

The Bush administration eagerly accepted a German offer of high-speed pumps to reduce the floodwaters in New Orleans and a Dutch offer of experts on levee reconstruction.

``There is a process of matching needs with expertise and the donations that have been made,'' said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

He indicated that the U.S. health care system is meeting current needs stemming from the hurricane. That could mean that offers of medical experts from Cuba and other countries will not be accepted, but McCormack said no decisions have been made.

He said decisions on proposals from foreign governments will be based on needs and not political considerations. Cuba has offered 1,100 doctors for hurricane relief despite the hostile political relations between the two countries. Havana has repeatedly rejected U.S. offers of humanitarian relief over the years.

In some cases, relief was already on the way.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia, three Canadian navy ships, a coast guard vessel, several Sea King helicopters and about 1,000 personnel were preparing to leave for Louisiana. The ships packed supplies for two to three months.

``Canada was built by neighbors helping neighbors in times of crisis. That doesn't apply just within our borders,'' Prime Minister Paul Martin said at the naval dockyard.

On Monday, the Mexican navy ship Papaloapan left the Gulf coast port of Tampico and headed for New Orleans with eight all-terrain rescue vehicles, seven amphibious cargo vehicles, a mobile hospital, two helicopters and drinking water.

A Mexican army convoy of 15 vehicles was to follow, carrying food, medical workers, water-treatment facilities and mobile kitchens capable of feeding 7,000 people daily.

``Mexico and the United States are nations which are neighbors and friends which should always have solidarity in moments of difficulty,'' President Vicente Fox said.

European Union spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich said there were some transport problems with aid bound for the United States, noting that a Swedish transport plane filled with food and water-treatment tools had not been able to get landing permission.

Even as foreign governments offered aid, many people overseas expressed shock at the slow emergency response, poverty and racial inequality they say the images from New Orleans have exposed.

Jurek Kuczkiewicz, in an editorial this week in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, noted that the United States had been confronted with a ``human and economic toll immeasurably heavier than the attacks of 2001 on New York.''

``It would not be unreasonable to think that the famous 'war on terror' will suddenly seem trivial with regard to the necessary war on poverty and inequality,'' he said.

Nations Offer Help to Katrina Victims

Nations Offer Help to Katrina Victims

It is amazing to see the weakness of the most powerful nation. Countries like Bangladesh helping US is a puzzle no one could solve before the hit of Allah…It is time for all rich and poor to return to Allah and seek HIS help..We are all poor in front of the richness and sovereignty of Allah –the Almighty.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5259960,00.html


Tuesday September 6, 2005 9:01 PM

AP Photo MSDP116

By MATT MOORE

Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - Impoverished Bangladesh, where millions live on a monsoon- and flood-prone delta, pledged $1 million and offered rescuers. Thailand, recalling U.S. aid after last year's tsunami, offered to send 60 doctors and nurses as well as rice as a ``gesture from the heart.''

They are among more than 90 countries, rich and poor, proposing assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina, with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates contributing ``very large cash'' donations, the State Department said Tuesday.

The Bush administration eagerly accepted a German offer of high-speed pumps to reduce the floodwaters in New Orleans and a Dutch offer of experts on levee reconstruction.

``There is a process of matching needs with expertise and the donations that have been made,'' said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

He indicated that the U.S. health care system is meeting current needs stemming from the hurricane. That could mean that offers of medical experts from Cuba and other countries will not be accepted, but McCormack said no decisions have been made.

He said decisions on proposals from foreign governments will be based on needs and not political considerations. Cuba has offered 1,100 doctors for hurricane relief despite the hostile political relations between the two countries. Havana has repeatedly rejected U.S. offers of humanitarian relief over the years.

In some cases, relief was already on the way.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia, three Canadian navy ships, a coast guard vessel, several Sea King helicopters and about 1,000 personnel were preparing to leave for Louisiana. The ships packed supplies for two to three months.

``Canada was built by neighbors helping neighbors in times of crisis. That doesn't apply just within our borders,'' Prime Minister Paul Martin said at the naval dockyard.

On Monday, the Mexican navy ship Papaloapan left the Gulf coast port of Tampico and headed for New Orleans with eight all-terrain rescue vehicles, seven amphibious cargo vehicles, a mobile hospital, two helicopters and drinking water.

A Mexican army convoy of 15 vehicles was to follow, carrying food, medical workers, water-treatment facilities and mobile kitchens capable of feeding 7,000 people daily.

``Mexico and the United States are nations which are neighbors and friends which should always have solidarity in moments of difficulty,'' President Vicente Fox said.

European Union spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich said there were some transport problems with aid bound for the United States, noting that a Swedish transport plane filled with food and water-treatment tools had not been able to get landing permission.

Even as foreign governments offered aid, many people overseas expressed shock at the slow emergency response, poverty and racial inequality they say the images from New Orleans have exposed.

Jurek Kuczkiewicz, in an editorial this week in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, noted that the United States had been confronted with a ``human and economic toll immeasurably heavier than the attacks of 2001 on New York.''

``It would not be unreasonable to think that the famous 'war on terror' will suddenly seem trivial with regard to the necessary war on poverty and inequality,'' he said.

US hands control of Najaf base to Iraqis

Najaf is no Falluja…will US do the same to the Falluja city..Never…Why? Because: Najaf is a shia city..and Shia causes no tension to US..they are close friends of US. This shows the ugly face of Shia..and shows at the same time the bright face of Sunnis




http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=60231

US hands control of Najaf base to Iraqis
18:50 AEST Tue Sep 6 2005
AAP
AP - The US Army has handed over its base in Najaf to Iraqis, giving them full control of the city as a first step in transferring security across the country so multinational forces can begin to go home someday.
The US commander of Forward Operating Base Hotel, Lieutenant Colonel James Oliver, handed the ceremonial keys to the installation to the new Iraqi commander, Colonel Saadi Salih al-Maliky.
About 1,500 Iraqi soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 8th Division marched by.
Before the ceremony, the Iraqi soldiers, all Shi'ites, chanted "long live Sistani," referring to top cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and "Saddam is a coward."
US forces have relocated to another base further outside the city so they would be available to assist in a major security crisis.
The US-led coalition plans to hand over control of other cities to the Iraqis, gradually reducing its security profile.
If all goes according to plan, this would enable the United States and its international partners to begin drawing down their troops next year and focusing on the insurgency-ridden Sunni Arab areas to the north.
"This is indeed a very important day for the province of Najaf," said Brigadier General Augustus Collins, commander of the 155th Brigade Combat Team.
"It gives me great pleasure to say the Iraqi army in Najaf can control the area," he said.
Oliver said the transfer was a "visible sign that the people of Najaf have rejected violence and have trust in their elected government."
"This is only the beginning for Najaf," he said. "The Iraqi army is operating successfully throughout the region. They are fully independent and capable of responding to all security needs. We are now here in a strictly advisory mode."
Governor Asaad Sultan Attai thanked the American people "and its army" for ousting Saddam Hussein and for "their assistance since then."
Najaf is the holiest city in Iraq for Shi'ite Muslims and was the scene of heavy fighting last year between the US Army and the militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The fighting ended following a truce mediated by the city's Shi'ite clerical hierarchy, which wields considerable power behind the scenes in the current Shi'ite-dominated national government.
(image placeholder)©AAP 2005

Lessons of Katrina not Understood Yet

If the wise people go beyond the physical reasons of ‘natural’ phenomenon, they would get so many other meta-physical causes of such catastrophe..

Quran is full of such causes. Sins are real catastrophes, and even more catastrophe when the sinners does not know that they are been hit because of their sins.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/06/MNsamesex06.TMP


Sacramento -- The state Assembly, in a stunning victory for the gay rights movement, approved a landmark bill allowing same-sex marriage Tuesday night and sent it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The measure, which passed with no votes to spare, marks the first time that a legislative body in the United States has approved a bill that legalizes gay marriage. Schwarzenegger has not taken an official position on the legislation but has hinted that he would veto it.
Just three months after the Assembly defeated an identical bill, 41 Democrats voted to approve the measure. Three Democrats who had abstained on the previous measure changed course and voted for the bill.
"It's always a dilemma whether to follow or lead. This is one of those times history is looking to us to lead," said Assemblyman Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, one of the swing votes, during more than an hour of debate. The final vote was 41-35, with all Republicans and a handful of Democrats opposed.
The bill, AB849, does not require any religious organization to recognize or perform marriages for same-sex couples. The bill makes the law defining marriage gender-neutral. California state law did not place gender into the marriage code until 1977.
Opponents have promised to go to court if the bill becomes law, saying it violates the spirit of Proposition 22, a 2000 ballot initiative that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. They also say they will go to the polls next year with proposed constitutional amendments that would ban same-sex marriage.
"What about Prop. 22? What about the 62 percent of Californians who supported it? What about their will?" asked Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy, R-Monrovia (Los Angeles County). "If this legislation doesn't subvert the will of the people, I don't know what does."
Schwarzenegger's office has repeated that he believes the issue should be decided either by a vote of the people or a court decision. He has said he supports the state's current domestic partnership laws.
"The governor believes the people spoke with Prop. 22, and that is now in the courts," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson. "The governor believes that is where it belongs and will uphold any decisions the courts make."
Massachusetts became the only state that allows same-sex marriage after a court ruling. Vermont permits civil unions.
Supporters and opponents of the bill focused on a handful of moderate Democrats who had abstained on the measure previously. Their offices reported getting a huge influx of calls and letters on the issue from both sides.
San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno, the Democrat who wrote the bill, said reaching the benchmark of 41 votes was difficult. When the final vote was called, there was a moment of stunned silence before supporters broke out in cheers. Leno grabbed Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, in a bear hug and lifted him off the floor with glee.
"He was resolute in his leadership," Leno said of the speaker. "He always said civil rights is civil rights."
Leno said momentum has been building in favor of same-sex marriage, and several events in the past few months helped to turn the tide in the Assembly. Those include endorsements from the United Farm Workers Union and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa along with the nation of Spain approving marriage for same-sex couples.
Umberg said that of all the constituents who contacted him on the bill, he had ultimately looked to his three children.
"I wanted them to look back and see where I was when we could make a difference, if I stood with those who took a leadership role in terms of tolerance, equity and fairness," he said. "And I'll be proud to say I did."
Assemblywoman Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Chino (Santa Barbara County), was another swing vote. She said she was convinced listening to the words of the Declaration of Independence that demanded "justice for all." Assemblyman Simon Salinas, D-Salinas, was the third member who had previously abstained to vote "aye" and push the bill to victory.
Opponents said Democrats who voted for the bill are not leaders.
"I say you are betraying the people of California," said Assemblyman Jay La Suer, R-La Mesa (San Diego County). "You are not leading. You have gone astray."
The Capitol rotunda was a scene of cheers, hugs and tears of joy as ecstatic supporters of the bill streamed out of the Assembly gallery after the 41st vote was recorded.
"I kept telling myself it wouldn't pass because I didn't want to get my hopes up,'' said Suzanne Neilsen of Sacramento, her arm wrapped tightly around her partner, Jan Roberts.
Neilsen and Roberts were married in San Francisco on Valentine's Day 2004 and were crushed when the state Supreme Court declared their wedding invalid.
"We're regular people like everyone else,'' said Roberts, fighting off tears. "Now, our rights are there. Even filling out our taxes every year will be easier.''
Hanus Jelinek of San Francisco said that far from threatening marriage, the bill would allow him to live the same life as anyone else.
"I can settle down with my beloved, and the government will just leave us alone,'' he said.
Focus now turns to Schwarzenegger.
"Schwarzenegger can't afford to sign the 'gay marriage license' bill," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, which helped lead the statewide battle against AB849. "He'll actually become a hero to the majority of Californians when he vetoes it. The Terminator should announce without delay that this bill is dead meat."
But Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, said the governor would be deciding his legacy when he decides whether to sign or veto the bill.
"He will determine whether he will be the first governor to do a little heavy lifting and support equality for all or whether he will become the first governor to terminate our rights," he said. "We know in his heart he wants to do the right thing."
Page A - 1 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/06/MNsamesex06.TMP

Can Condom Sove AIDS?

It is not a matter of Condoms, it is awareness and belief in the Day of Judgment that solves AIDS problem…


The missing condoms
The New York Times MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2005

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/04/opinion/edcondom.php

Uganda became Africa's leader in fighting AIDS by waging an all-fronts war. In 1991, 15 percent of Uganda's adults were infected with the virus. Ten years later the figure was 5 percent. Ugandan officials achieved this drop by bringing the disease out into the open and encouraging people to protect themselves. President Yoweri Museveni called the fight "a patriotic duty." The government and a network of citizens' groups promoted abstinence, faithfulness and consistent condom use.
 
Now this balanced approach is tilting, and Ugandans will die as a result. The country still prescribes condoms for high-risk groups. But in the last few years, pushed by Washington, it has begun to emphasize abstinence only, for the general population. Washington is moving away from condom advocacy in all its overseas AIDS programs, but Uganda is the only place that this policy has been so fully embraced by the government. Last year at an international AIDS conference, Museveni gave a blistering speech attacking condoms. Meanwhile, his wife, Janet, has been condemning condom use as immoral and has called for a national census of virgins.
 
Billboards that promoted condom use have come down. More than half of Washington's funds for preventing sexual transmission of AIDS now go to groups promoting abstinence only. Among Washington's grantees are groups that argue incorrectly that the AIDS virus can pass right through a condom. While free condoms used to be widely available at clinics in Uganda, in the last year they have virtually disappeared, and condoms in stores have tripled in price.
 
The most important development of the past year is the disappearance of free condoms. A year ago, Ugandans began to complain that the Engabu brand made in Germany and China and distributed free by Uganda's health system smelled bad. Uganda sent a batch to Sweden for testing and they were found to have holes. Further widespread testing found that the condoms were actually fine, but by that time the government had so attacked the brand that people will not use them. Thirty million Engabu condoms are sitting in warehouses.
 
As result only eight million free condoms have been available to Ugandans in the past year, while 80 million were needed. The government has no plan to address the shortage. Instead, it has put a new fee on condoms sold in stores, raising a shortage-inflated price further. And it instituted a requirement that condoms undergo new testing after they are received in Uganda. Extra testing is fine, but Uganda has halted all condom distribution for months while it sets up the testing regime. An emergency supply received in April is still sitting in warehouses.
 
 
Promoting abstinence and faithfulness has been crucial to fighting AIDS in Uganda. But so have free condoms. One of the highest-risk groups is young married women infected by straying husbands. For them, abstinence is not an option, and they are already faithful. They need to be able to protect themselves. Abstinence-only teaching does not work in the United States, and there is no reason to think it will work in Uganda.
 
The policy shift in Uganda threatens to undermine the country's success in bringing AIDS into the open. Ugandans felt relatively free to talk about the risks of catching the AIDS virus and to be open about living with AIDS. If condom users are branded as immoral, it will drive the epidemic back underground. No one knows better than the Ugandans that lives are saved when AIDS is treated as a public health challenge, not a moral crusade.

He who Created Knows the Difference

  
Read from Quran: [4:34]  
  
  Men are in charge of women, because Allah  hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of  their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient,  guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom  ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge  them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is  ever High, Exalted, Great.  
  
  
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/09/05/opinion/edfarrell.php
  
  Meanwhile: Exploiting the gender gapWarren Farrell The New York Times
  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2005
    
  
CARLSBAD,  California Nothing disturbs America's working  women more than the statistics showing that they are paid only 76 cents  to men's dollar for the same work.  
  
When I was on the board of the National Organization for  Women in New York City, I blamed discrimination for that gap. Then I asked  myself, "If an employer has to pay a man one dollar for the same work  a woman would do for 76 cents, why would anyone hire a man?"  
  
Perhaps, I thought, male bosses undervalue women. But  I discovered that in 2000, women who own their own businesses earned only  49 percent of male business owners. Why? When the Rochester Institute of  Technology surveyed business owners with MBAs from one top business school,  they found that money was the primary motivator for only 29 percent of  the women, versus 76 percent of the men. Women put a premium on autonomy,  flexibility (25- to 35-hour weeks and proximity to home), fulfillment and  safety.  
  
After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in  the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more  money, but to women having better lives.  
  
High pay, as it turns out, is about tradeoffs. Men's tradeoffs  include working more hours (women work more around the home); taking more  dangerous, dirtier and outdoor jobs (garbage collecting, construction,  trucking); relocating and traveling; and training for technical jobs with  less people contact (like engineering).  
  
Is the pay gap, then, about the different choices of men  and women? Not quite. It's about parents' choices. Women who have never  been married and are childless earn 117 percent of their childless male  counterparts. (This comparison controls for education, hours worked and  age.) Their decisions are more like married men's, and never-married men's  decisions are more like women's in general (careers in arts, no weekend  work, etc.)  
  
Does this imply that mothers sacrifice careers? Not really.  Surveys of men and women in their 20s find that both sexes (70 percent  of men, and 63 percent of women) would sacrifice pay for more family time.  The next generation's discussion will be about who gets to be the primary  parent.  
  
Don't women, though, earn less than men in the same job?  Yes and no. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps together  all medical doctors. Men are more likely to be surgeons (versus general  practitioners) and work in private practice for hours that are longer and  less predictable, and for more years. In brief, the same job is not the  same.  
  
Are these women's choices? When I taught at a medical  school, I saw that even my first-year female students eyed specialties  with fewer and more predictable hours.  
  
But don't female executives also make less than male executives?  Yes. Discrimination? Let's look. The men are more frequently executives  of national and international companies with more personnel and revenues,  and responsible for bottom-line sales, marketing and finances, not human  resources or public relations. They have more experience, relocate and  travel overseas more, and so on.  
  
Comparing men and women with the "same jobs,"  then, is to compare apples and oranges. However, when all 25 choices are  the same, the great news for women is that then the women make more than  the men. Is there discrimination against women? Yes, like the old boys'  network.  
  
And sometimes discrimination against women becomes discrimination  against men: In hazardous fields, women suffer fewer hazards. For example,  more than 500 marines have died in the war in Iraq. All but two were men.  In other fields, men are virtually excluded - try getting hired as a male  dental hygienist, nursery school teacher, cocktail waiter.  
  
There are 80 jobs in which women earn more than men -  positions like financial analyst, radiation therapist, library worker,  biological technician, motion picture projectionist. Female sales engineers  make 143 percent of their male counterparts; female statisticians earn  135 percent.  
  
I want my daughters to know that people who work 44 hours  a week make, on average, more than twice the pay of someone working 34  hours a week. And that pharmacists now earn almost as much as doctors.  But only by abandoning our focus on discrimination against women can we  discover these opportunities for women.  
  
Warren Farrell is the author of ''Why Men Earn More:  The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap — and What Women Can Do About It.''    

The Missing Link in Katrina's Appearance

One of many missing links in Katrina's timing is been exposed...
Read from Surah Hud: [11:80-83]

(The Messengers) said: "O Lut! We are Messengers from thy Lord! By no means shall they reach thee! now travel with thy family while yet a part of the night remains, and let not any of you look back: but thy wife (will remain behind): To her will happen what happens to the people. Morning is their time appointed: Is not the morning nigh?"

When Our Decree issued, We turned (the cities) upside down, and rained down on them brimstones hard as baked clay, spread, layer on layer,-
Marked as from thy Lord: Nor are they ever far from those who do wrong!  
 
http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html

HURRICANE KATRINA DESTROYS NEW ORLEANS
DAYS BEFORE "SOUTHERN DECADENCE" 8/31/05

PHILADELPHIA - Just days before "Southern Decadence",
an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of
thousands of people to the French Quarters section
of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the city.

"Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the
French Quarters section of the city with drunken
homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public
streets and bars. Last year, a local pastor sent
video footage of sex acts being performed in front
of police to the mayor, city council, and the media.
City officials simply ignored the footage and
continued to welcome and praise the weeklong
celebration as being an "exciting event". However,
Hurricane Katrina has put an end to the annual
celebration of sin.

On the official "Southern Decadence" website
(www.SouthernDecadence.com), it states that the
annual event brought in "125,000 revelers" to New
Orleans last year, increasing by thousands each
year, and up from "over 50,000 revelers" in 1997.
This year’s 34th annual "Southern Decadence" was
set for Wednesday, August 31, 2005 through Monday,
September 5, 2005, but due to massive flooding
and the damage left by the hurricane, Louisiana
Governor Kathleen Blanco has ordered everyone to
evacuate the city.

The past three mayors of New Orleans, including
Sidney Barthelomew, Marc H. Morial, and C. Ray Nagin,
issued official proclamations welcoming visitors to
"Southern Decadence". Additionally, New Orleans City
Council made other proclamations recognizing the
annual homosexual celebration.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening,
this act of God destroyed a wicked city," stated
Repent America director Michael Marcavage. "From
'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New
Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open
to the public celebration of sin. From the
devastation may a city full of righteousness
emerge," he continued.

New Orleans is also known for its Mardi Gras parties
where thousands of drunken men revel in the streets
to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken women to
expose their breasts. This annual event sparked the
creation of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series. In
addition, Louisiana had a total of ten abortion
clinics with half of them making their home in New
Orleans. At these five abortion clinics in the city,
countless numbers of children were murdered at the
hands of abortionists.

"We must help and pray for those ravaged by this
disaster, but let us not forget that the citizens
of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness
in their city for so long," Marcavage said. "May
this act of God cause us all to think about what
we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us
trembling before the throne of Almighty God,"
Marcavage concluded.

"[God] sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
(Matthew 5:45)

Guardsmen 'played cards' amid New Orleans chaos

No Problem since the victims are Blacks, they have done worse in Guantanamo and Abu Garib Prison in Iraq...

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=348160

Sunday, September 4, 2005 at 07:32 JST
NEW ORLEANS — A top New Orleans police officer said Saturday that National Guard troops sat around playing cards while people died in the stricken city after Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley launched a bitter attack on the federal response to the disaster though he praised the way the evacuation was eventually handled.

His remarks fueled controversy over the government's handling of events during five days when New Orleans succumbed to lawlessness after Katrina swamped the city's flood defenses.

The National Guard commander, Lt Gen Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force.

But Riley said that for the first three days after Monday's storm, which is believed to have killed several thousand people, the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone in trying to rescue people.

"We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance," he said.

Riley went on: "We have been fired on with automatic weapons. We still have some thugs around. My biggest disappointment is with the federal government and the National Guard.

"The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep.

"For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I understand why we are not winning the war in Iraq if this is what we have."

Riley said there is "a semblance of organization now."

"The military is here and they have done an excellent job with the evacuation" of the tens of thousands of people stranded in the city.

The National Guard commander said the city police force was left with only a third of its pre-storm strength.

"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters in Washington.

"Once that assessment was made, then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theatre."

Blum said that since Thursday some 7,000 National Guard and military police had moved into the city. President George W Bush on Saturday ordered an additional 7,000 active duty and reserve ground troops.

Blum said any suggestion that the National Guard had not performed well or was late was a "low blow."

The initial priority of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard forces was disaster relief, not law enforcement, because they expected the police to handle that, he said.

The police commander was unable to give a death toll for New Orleans.

"We have bodies all over the city. A federal mortuary team was supposed to come in within 24 hours. We haven't seen them. It is inhumane. This is just not America."

Riley said he did not even know how many police remained from a normal force of 1,700.

"Many officers lost their homes or their families and there are many we have not heard from. Some officers could not handle the pressure and left. I don't know if we have 800 or thousands today." (Wire reports)

Hilltop Youth, Jewish Al-Qaeda

If Muslims does a fraction of the efforts done by this group to fulfill Quranic Covenant they will be branded as hardcore terrorists!


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3337812
Sept. 4, 2005, 1:01AM

Religious rebels stir unease across Israel
'Hilltop youth' fight withdrawals and fear no law
By LAURA KING and KEN ELLINGWOOD
Los Angeles Times


Video, audio, multimedia courtesy The AP. (Requires Real Player and Flash plug-in)
SANUR, WEST BANK - They spend their days in primitive hilltop encampments deep in the big-sky territory of the far northern West Bank, sleeping rough among their sheep and goats, as fervent in their chanted prayers as in their belief that all of the biblical Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people forever.

The "hilltop youth" who battled police and soldiers with homemade weapons during the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a sliver of the West Bank decisively failed in their attempt to prevent the relinquishing of 25 Jewish settlements.

But after witnessing the zeal of these messianic-minded teenage boys and young men, many Israelis were left with the uneasy impression that they could prove a force to be reckoned with if the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seeks to cede any more territory to the Palestinians.

"They are very small in number — we are talking about hundreds, not thousands," said Uri Dromi of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonprofit research organization. "But from the way they act, it is clear they have really broken loose from everything. They don't fear the law, and there's not much law to fear in the no-man's land where they live."

When these youth came down from their hilltops to join in the fray in Gaza and the small West Bank settlements that Israel had designated for evacuation, they stood out from the family-oriented settler crowd with their sidelocks and scraggly beards, their knitted yarmulkes and dusty sandals, their hip-hop-style T-shirts and baggy shorts.

Deep-rooted beliefs
Religious bohemians of a sort, their beliefs reflect a melange of New Age and Hassidic influences, laced with a passionate mistrust of Israel's institutions — the army, the courts, the Knesset, the prime minister.

"They're 'anti' just about everything," said Gideon Doron, a Tel Aviv University political scientist. "Anti-everything, that is, except for 'balagan' " — the Hebrew expression for chaos.

When it suits them, the youths heed the admonitions of selected rabbis. But just as often, religious authorities are considered part of the larger establishment they are in open rebellion against.

In the West Bank settlement of Sanur, the last to be emptied, the hilltop youth appeared to be taking marching orders from an extremist rabbi, Shaul Halfon. He urged them onward, telling them the Israeli troops they faced were not "real Jews" because they had failed to keep faith with the biblical covenant between God and the Israelites.

But other rabbis, even those who had led the opposition to the Gaza withdrawal, found themselves shoved aside, in some cases literally, by young protesters who went on to make a frenzied last stand Aug. 18 on the rooftop of the synagogue in the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom.

They hurled rocks, debris and caustic liquid at Israeli troops. Dozens were arrested, and some may face serious charges.

Blacks are not welcome....

Even though it is not in written documents, but it is a well known descrimination against any non-white in the land of freedom, and happiness: USA....


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/nation/3337225

Sept. 2, 2005, 10:08PM

Many ask if race a factor in New Orleans' crisis
By MARTHA MENDOZA

Hurricane Katrina had no deliberate target, but in the aftermath it's clear that the victims — who are now facing a horrifying lack of rescue and care — are mostly black and mostly poor.

So many photographs from the devastation of New Orleans show the same faces: Desperate. Grief-stricken. Black.

"Love has no color," Cassandra Robinson said as she huddled with her family in a parking entrance along New Orleans' Convention Center Boulevard. "But I've seen where this is all black and everybody else who is Caucasian, they're up high in the hotels."

In fact, those in hotels complained bitterly they were neglected, too. But Robinson's comment echoes those of others who question the part race may have played in New Orleans' crippling crisis.

Would the response have been more urgent if the victims had been mainly white? Is economic class a factor even more than race?

In Orleans Parish, where the boundaries are the same as the city limits, 66.6 percent of the residents are black. The black population nationwide is 12.1 percent.

New Orleans neighborhoods, once lined with old live oaks, charming cottages and imposing mansions, had been proof of the ease with which black and white could live side by side. With the exception, perhaps, of the toniest areas of St. Charles Avenue, and the poorest blocks of housing projects, black and white homeowners chatted to each other from their front porches and greeted each other as they walked their dogs down the streets.

D.J. Kelly, stood on a wet New Orleans sidewalk today with an American flag that he plucked from a gutter and washed with "some of my precious water." Kelly, who is black, said the disaster has nothing to do with the color of anyone's skin.

"Don't make it seem like no racial thing," he said. "That's not the way I feel. We all is in this together."

Uptown New Orleans, around Tulane University, was mostly white and affluent; the areas north of the French Quarter and east of downtown tended to be poorer and more heavily populated by minorities.

New Orleanians were divided not so much by race as by economic class, a daily fact of life in a city where birthlines mean much. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a blue-eyed blonde, is the daughter of a former mayor. Marc Morial, the color of cafe au lait, followed his own father into the mayor's office.

The political power structure is, to the eye, firmly controlled by people with African blood in their veins; most of the economic power of the city is held in very white hands.

When 80 percent of the city's population, according to the mayor, evacuated before Hurricane Katrina, that left behind those with no cars, no resources, no way out. Twenty-one percent of Orleans Parish households earn less than $10,000 a year. Nearly 27,000 families are below the poverty level. Most of those families are black.

Larry E. Davis, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center on Race and Social Problems, said images of the disaster are an embarrassment to this nation.

"It suggests that the residuals of a racist legacy are still very much intact," he said. "It's as though you are looking at a picture of an African country."

The images of the black poor struggling in New Orleans' chaos should be "a powerful wake-up call," said Dr. Jeff Johnson, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine.

"The message is that these people are in some sense abandoned, and that's why they're so angry," he said, "but that abandonment occurred not just around this storm. They've been abandoned by our society in the last decade. That's something as a society we have to acknowledge and grapple with."

Racial disparity in access to health care has been documented. Last December, the American Journal of Public Health reported that 886,000 African American deaths could have been prevented between 1991-2000 if they had the same care as whites.

There has been an outpouring of donations from throughout the United States in response to the images seen in news coverage — but might it have been greater if those images did not show black faces?

"I do think the nation would be responding differently if they were white elderly and white babies actually dying on the street and being covered with newspapers and shrouds and being left there," said David Billings of The People's Institute, a 25-year-old New Orleans-based organization focused on ending racism.

Jesse Jackson, en route to Louisiana for what he said was a humanitarian effort, said racial injustice and indifference to black suffering was at the root of the disaster response.

"In this same city of New Orleans where slave ships landed," Jackson said, "where the legacy of 246 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow discrimination, that legacy is unbroken today."

Black members of Congress today denounced the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

"It looks dysfunctional to me right now," said Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif.

"We cannot allow it to be said by history that the difference between those who lived and those who died in the great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md. "It would be unconscionable to stand by and do nothing."

Ben Burkett, a black farmer whose fields of kale, spinach and broccoli and acres of soft pine trees were wiped out by the hurricane, said the initial disaster made no distinctions, but he expects relief to be inherently biased.

"The eye of the storm made everybody equal, black or white, rich or poor, big house or small house," he said. "But believe me, when the relief comes — and we haven't seen anything yet — the small farmer is going to be at the end, and the small black farmer is going to be at the end of that.

"Basically I expect it because that's the way it's always been."

———
Contributing to this report were AP writers Rebecca Carroll in Washington D.C., Charlotte Porter in Baton Rouge, and Allen G. Breed in New Orleans.

The Storm After the Storm

Following article from NYtimes clearly shows the white discrimination of Americans against the Blacks when the real test comes, that is the test at the time of tragedy....

September 1, 2005

The Storm After the Storm

By DAVID BROOKS

Hurricanes come in two waves. First comes the rainstorm, and then comes what the historian John Barry calls the "human storm" - the recriminations, the political conflict and the battle over compensation. Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. When you look back over the meteorological turbulence in this nation's history, it's striking how often political turbulence followed.

In 1889 in Pennsylvania, a great flood washed away much of Johnstown. The water's crushing destruction sounded to one person like a "lot of horses grinding oats." Witnesses watched hundreds of people trapped on a burning bridge, forced to choose between burning to death or throwing themselves into the churning waters to drown.

The flood was so abnormal that the country seemed to have trouble grasping what had happened. The national media were filled with wild exaggerations and fabrications: stories of rivers dammed with corpses, of children who died while playing ring-around-the-rosy and who were found with their hands still clasped and with smiles still on their faces.

Prejudices were let loose. Hungarians then were akin to today's illegal Mexican immigrants - hard-working people who took jobs no one else wanted. Newspapers carried accounts of gangs of Hungarian men cutting off dead women's fingers to steal their rings. "Drunken Hungarians, Dancing, Singing, Cursing and Fighting Amid the Ruins" a New York Herald headline blared.

Then, as David McCullough notes in "The Johnstown Flood," public fury turned on the Pittsburgh millionaires whose club's fishing pond had emptied on the town. The Chicago Herald depicted the millionaires as Roman aristocrats, seeking pleasure while the poor died like beasts in the Coliseum.

Even before the flood, public resentment was building against the newly rich industrialists. Protests were growing against the trusts, against industrialization and against the new concentrations of wealth. The Johnstown flood crystallized popular anger, for the fishing club was indeed partly to blame. Public reaction to the disaster helped set the stage for the progressive movement and the trust-busting that was to come.

In 1900, another great storm hit the U.S., killing over 6,000 people in Galveston, Tex. The storm exposed racial animosities, for this time stories (equally false) swept through the press accusing blacks of cutting off the fingers of corpses to steal wedding rings. The devastation ended Galveston's chance to beat out Houston as Texas' leading port.

Then in 1927, the great Mississippi flood rumbled down upon New Orleans. As Barry writes in his account, "Rising Tide," the disaster ripped the veil off the genteel, feudal relations between whites and blacks, and revealed the festering iniquities. Blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the waters rose. A steamer, the Capitol, played "Bye Bye Blackbird" as it sailed away. The racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move north.

Civic leaders intentionally flooded poor and middle-class areas to ease the water's pressure on the city, and then reneged on promises to compensate those whose homes were destroyed. That helped fuel the populist anger that led to Huey Long's success. Across the country people demanded that the federal government get involved in disaster relief, helping to set the stage for the New Deal. The local civic elite turned insular and reactionary, and New Orleans never really recovered its preflood vibrancy.

We'd like to think that the stories of hurricanes and floods are always stories of people rallying together to give aid and comfort. And, indeed, each of America's great floods has prompted a popular response both generous and inspiring. But floods are also civic examinations. Amid all the stories that recur with every disaster - tales of sudden death and miraculous survival, the displacement and the disease - there is also the testing.

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com