I am proud that Malaysia has donated to the Hurricane Katrina relief fund. The amount may not seem much but the fact that Malaysians saw the devastation wrought by the hurricane and felt compelled enough to help and donate is most noteworthy. :-)Malaysia gives RM3.7m to hurricane victims in US
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has given US$1mil (RM3.76mil) to the United States to provide relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina that recently lashed through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Foreign Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar presented the money to American Red Cross president and CEO Marsha Evans at its headquarters in Washington yesterday.
Syed Hamid, in the United States to deliver a keynote address at the Malaysia-US Bilateral Colloquium, said the two countries had long enjoyed warm and close relations in various fields, such as trade, defence, education, tourism and counter-terrorism.
Therefore, it was only natural for Malaysia to help the United States in its difficult period.
Syed Hamid added that Malaysia was committed, on humanitarian grounds, to help countries afflicted by natural disasters.
In accepting Malaysia's donation, Evans expressed her appreciation, saying that it indicated the country's commitment to humanitarian assistance.
Rita's Destruction Falls Short of Fears
"As bad as it could have been, we came out of this in pretty good shape," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after taking a helicopter tour Sunday.
Even with nearly 1 million in the region without electricity, some coastal towns flooded to the rooftops and the prospect of nearly 3 million evacuated residents pouring back onto the highways for home, the news was overwhelmingly positive.
Petrochemical plants that supply a quarter of the nation's gasoline suffered only a glancing blow, with just one major plant facing weeks of repairs. The reflooding in New Orleans from levee breaks was isolated mostly to areas already destroyed and deserted, and could be pumped out in as little as a week. And contrary to dire forecasts, Rita and its heavy rains moved quickly north as a tropical depression instead of parking over the South for days and dumping a predicted 25 inches of torrential rains.
Most significantly, deaths were minimal — with only two reported so far — largely because residents with fresh memories of Katrina heeded evacuation orders and the storm followed a path that spared Houston and more populous stretches of the coast.
Hurricane Rita taken at 11.15 pm EST, Friday
This festival falls on the 8th month, 15th day of the Chinese Lunar Calendar, making it on the 18th September for 2005 around the time of the Autumn Equinox. In the Western calendar, this festival normally falls between the 2nd week of September and the 2nd week of October.My Malaysian friends, who visited me recently, brought me some mooncakes which they had bought in San Francisco. They told me those were actually replacements for mooncakes which two sisters in Malaysia had sent me through them. :-( Apparently the mooncakes they brought from Malaysia were confiscated by a custom official at the port of entry. Why? Because the mooncakes contained egg yolk! Grrr!
The Mooncake Festival or Lantern Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival , call it what you will - is a celebration of unity. This festival is believed to have originated from the ancient ceremony of Sacrificing to the Moon Goddess for the year's end harvest. This is when families return to celebrate and give thanks for the year's bounty. Offerings of their harvest such as apples, pears, peaches, grapes, pomegranates , melons, oranges and pomelos were common. Other offerings cooked, baked etc included moon cakes, cooked taro, and water caltrope, a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns. And of course, 'tang yuen' made from glutinous rice. 'Yuen' means 'round' which symbolize "completeness" as in "yuen man" of the cycle. Thus, it means unity and harmony within the family.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional festivity for both the Han and minority nationalities. The custom of worshipping the moon can be traced back as far as the Xia and Shang Dynasties (2000B.C.-1066B.C.). In the Zhou Dynasty(1066B.C.-221B.C.), villagers held ceremonies in preparation for the arrival of winter and to celebrate the beauty of the new moon. In the later dynasties, mooncakes were baked and sent to relatives as gifts of family reunion.Traditionally, thirteen moon cakes were stacked into a pyramid to symbolise the thirteen moons of a "complete year," that is, twelve moons plus one intercalary moon.
The Mooncake Story
During the Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1280-1368) China was ruled by the Mongolians. Rebel leaders unhappy with the overlords, plotted to overthrow the government. As the Mid-Autumn Festival drew near, the rebels ordered cakes baked and distributed to the villages. Messages of the outline of the attack were baked into the cakes.
On the night of the Festival, the rebels with the help of local villagers, successfully overthrew the government and later established the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.). Hence from then on, the Mooncake Festival is celebrated on a large scale.
Fashion show only for women
BY IAN MCINTYRE
KOTA BARU: You can have your fashion show but no husbands please – that’s the order from the PAS government of Kelantan to the womenfolk.
“There is no need for husbands to be present at the show. The wives can just tell them what they want to buy,” said state executive councillor Takiyuddin Hassan yesterday.
The fashion show is part of the programme to celebrate the declaration of the state capital as an Islamic City on Oct 1.
Entertainment that day will be alternative – not to be mistaken for “alternative music” though.
Alternative here means “in accordance with religious guidelines,” said Takiyuddin, such as separating the men and women in the audience.
“PAS understands that there is a need for entertainment as a form of temporary escapism but it must be orderly and not lead to unhealthy activities or influences,” he added.
Akademi Fantasia 3 winner Mawi has been invited to perform that day but fellow performer, veteran rocker Ramli Sarip, may have to tone down his act.
It has been 4 years since the September 11 attacks. Mark Steyn does a good job of telling us how much we have forgotten what the attacks were all about. Read the rest of his column here.
Terror war all but forgotten on home front
Sept. 11, 2005 -- Four years ago, I thought the "war on terror" was a viable concept. To those on the right who scoffed that you can't declare war on a technique, I pointed out that Britain's Royal Navy fought wars against slavery and piracy and were largely successful. Of course, since then we've had the shabby habit of presidents declaring a "war on drugs" and a "war on poverty" and, with hindsight, that corruption of language has allowed Americans to slip the war on terror into the same category -- not a war in the sense that a war on Fiji or Belgium is a war, but just one of those vaguely ineffectual aspirational things that don't really impinge on you that much except for the odd pointless gesture -- like the shoe-removing ritual before you board a flight at Poughkeepsie. The "war on terror" label has outlived whatever usefulness it had.
And, as the years go by, it becomes clearer that the war aspects -- the attacks in New York, Washington, Bali, Madrid, Istanbul, London -- are really spasmodic flashes of a much more elusive enemy. Although Islamism is the first truly global terrorist insurgency, it shares more similarities with conventional terror movements -- the IRA or the Basque separatists -- than many of us thought four years ago. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: the IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. That's what the Islamists have bet.
The Star Online: NationIf I were the envoys, I would walk out too. In a democracy, one does have the right to talk, but one does not have the right to be listened to.
Saturday September 10, 2005
BY M. KRISHNAMOORTHY
KUALA LUMPUR: Three European diplomats walked out of the conference hall during Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s speech when he criticised US and British policies on Iraq.
His comments that the American and British-led invasion of Iraq was based on lies that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction did not go down well with British High Commissioner Bruce Cleghorn, Hungarian ambassador Tamas Toth and Dutch deputy ambassador Luc Schillings, who got up and left.
The former prime minister was speaking at a conference on human rights organised by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) which was attended by about 350 participants.
“The British and American bomber pilots came, unopposed, safe and cosy in their state-of-the-art aircraft, pressing buttons to drop bombs, to kill and maim real people who were their targets, just targets.
“And these murderers, for that is what they are, would go back to celebrate mission accomplished,” Dr Mahathir said.
At a press conference later, when asked what he thought of the diplomats walking out, he said: “Well! I am sorry. As much as they have the right to criticise me, they should give me the right to criticise them.
“But if you don’t want to hear my criticisms of them, then you are denying my right to speak up.”
Dr Mahathir added that there was no tally of Iraqi deaths but every single death of an American was reported to the world.
“These are soldiers who must expect to be killed. But the Iraqis who died because of US action or the civil war in Iraq that the US precipitated were innocent civilians who under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein would have been alive.
“You and I read reports of the death of Iraqis with equanimity as if it is right and just. You and I do not react with anger and horror over this injustice, this abuse of the rights of the Iraqis to live, to be free from terror including state-initiated terror,” he said.
When Cleghorn was asked to comment on his walkout, he issued a statement: “I was invited by Suhakam to attend the opening of their Human Rights Day conference.
“I accepted out of respect for Suhakam and for Tun Dr Mahathir.
“Unfortunately I found myself listening to abuse and misrepresentation about my country. I therefore left.”
Suhakam commissioner Prof Datuk Hamdan Adnan said the walkout was “very, very distasteful.”
“If they claim to subscribe to the democratic process, why can’t they listen?” he asked.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush has the rare opportunity to name two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court after the death Saturday of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
"It will serve the best interest of the nation to fill those vacancies promptly," Bush said in a brief message in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
The president said he would move quickly to nominate a "highly qualified" chief justice but offered no clues Sunday as to his choice.
I'm trying to picture a different aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans: one in which all residents were evacuated in advance, no lives were lost, order was perfectly maintained, emergency supplies were delivered and distributed in ample quantities with flawless precision, and everyone was pleased with how well the government performed.
And you know what? I can't do it.
These things are called disasters for a reason: They have terrible consequences, most unavoidable and some unforeseeable. When nature unleashes its fury, it leaves a mess no amount of human ingenuity can instantly dispel. The images of chaos and death in New Orleans come as a shock, but what would we expect of the worst natural disaster in American history? Yet some people behave as though only incompetence or evil motives could account for anything that went wrong.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
The Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog.
Doug and me at the place where he proposed to me 6 years ago.
Tina, the kids and me.
Crab stalls on Fisherman's Wharf.
Hard Rock Cafe on Pier 39.
The famous Alcatraz Island.
Sea lions on Pier 39
