In 1938, the American mathematician Edward Kasner (1878-1955) asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta to invent a name for a very large number, ten to the power of one hundred; and the boy called it a googol.
Kasner, Adrian Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University, announced the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination. He thought this was a number to overflow people's minds, being bigger than anything that can ever be put into words. Another mathematician then shot back with Googolplex, and defined it to be 'ten to the power of googol', proving poor old Edward wrong in an instant.
1 googol = 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
A googol is equal to ten duotrigintillion.
To give you an idea of its gargantuan enormity, a googol is greater than the number of particles in the known universe, which has been variously estimated from 'ten to the power of 72' up to 'ten to the power of 87'.
Since a 'googol plus 1' is the number of digits in a googolplex, it would therefore not be possible to write down or store the digits of a googolplex in decimal notation, even if all the matter in the known universe were converted into paper and ink or disk drives.
Googolplex is the second largest number with a name. The distinction of being the world's largest number with a name goes to googolplexian: a "1" followed by a googolplex of zeros.
Well, that was the case until I invented the azlanplex which is a "1" followed by a googolplexian of zeros. And then I invented the azlanplexian which is a "1" followed by an azlanplex of zeros.
The Internet search engine Google was named as a pun on the number googol. The original founders were going for 'Googol', but ended up with 'Google' due to a spelling mistake. Larry Page: "Lucas Pereira: 'You idiots, you spelled 'Googol' wrong!' But this was good, because google.com was available but googol.com was not. Now most people spell 'Googol' 'Google', so it worked out OK in the end."
Except for one tiny problem: Kasner's great-niece, Peri Fleisher, is suing Google.com, insisting that the US-based company has gained financially at the expense of the family. She said: "If we do have a legal right, we're certainly going to exercise that. And now is the time."
However, experts in intellectual property said that bringing a successful legal action would be problematic. "It would be an uphill struggle to try to assert any legitimate claim," said David Gourlay, a senior associate at the Dundas and Wilson Technology Group.
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Friday, December 30, 2005
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
XL Condoms
A hot babe enters a pharmacy and shyly asks the sales assistant:
"Where do you display your Extra Large condoms?"
After being shown the section, she thanks the sales assistant and heads to the display.
After several hours, the young lady still hasn't made a purchase and so the sales assistant comes over and asks:
"Miss, have you decided which one to purchase?" to which she answers:
"Actually, I have no intention of making a purchase at all. I just want to meet the guys who buy them!"
Kondom XL
Seorang wanita muda yang cantik dengan malu-malu bertanya serta berbisik pada penjual sebuah pasaraya:
"Cik, bahagian yang jual kondom XL di mana?"
Setelah ditunjukkan dan mengucapkan terima kasih dia pun menuju ke bahagian tersebut.
Setelah beberapa jam, wanita tersebut tidak juga memilih salah satu kondom tersebut, maka penjual tadi bertanya ;
"Akak mahu pilih yang mana?"
Wanita itupun segera menjawab,
"Ooo... sebenarnya saya tidak mahu beli. Saya cuma ingin berkenalan dengan orang yang akan membeli kondom ini."
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
"Where do you display your Extra Large condoms?"
After being shown the section, she thanks the sales assistant and heads to the display.
After several hours, the young lady still hasn't made a purchase and so the sales assistant comes over and asks:
"Miss, have you decided which one to purchase?" to which she answers:
"Actually, I have no intention of making a purchase at all. I just want to meet the guys who buy them!"
Kondom XL
Seorang wanita muda yang cantik dengan malu-malu bertanya serta berbisik pada penjual sebuah pasaraya:
"Cik, bahagian yang jual kondom XL di mana?"
Setelah ditunjukkan dan mengucapkan terima kasih dia pun menuju ke bahagian tersebut.
Setelah beberapa jam, wanita tersebut tidak juga memilih salah satu kondom tersebut, maka penjual tadi bertanya ;
"Akak mahu pilih yang mana?"
Wanita itupun segera menjawab,
"Ooo... sebenarnya saya tidak mahu beli. Saya cuma ingin berkenalan dengan orang yang akan membeli kondom ini."
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Risk Management for the Home
Here's a good reason to seriously consider Home Contents Insurance this time of year:
Holiday Season Safety Information
Avoid Fire Hazards This Holiday Season
The Arlington Fire Department Has Safety Instructions
Christmas trees, lights and candles help make the holiday bright. Local fire officials say they can also cause fire hazards in the home.
Each year in the United States, there are more than 12,000 candle-related fires that result in 150 deaths, 1,200 injuries and an estimated $173 million in property loss, according the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Christmas trees are a primary cause in most residential fires.
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Holiday Season Safety Information
Avoid Fire Hazards This Holiday Season
The Arlington Fire Department Has Safety Instructions
Christmas trees, lights and candles help make the holiday bright. Local fire officials say they can also cause fire hazards in the home.
Each year in the United States, there are more than 12,000 candle-related fires that result in 150 deaths, 1,200 injuries and an estimated $173 million in property loss, according the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Christmas trees are a primary cause in most residential fires.
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
The Psychic Computer
Hi! Check this site out... it's very fascinating!
The Psychic Computer
It certainly freaked me out.
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
The Psychic Computer
It certainly freaked me out.
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Single-storey Terrace House for Rent
Single-storey terrace house for rent in Kota Warisan (two minutes' drive to Salak Tinggi ERL station), available immediately.
Rent going for RM350 excluding bills.
The house has three rooms but the landlord can only let you have two as she needs one to keep all her barang-barang. She has extensively renovated the house and it comes fully furnished.
Preferrably open-minded, working professionals please. Especially strategic for aircrew as Kota Warisan is just next door to KLIA. Also suitable for government servants working in Putrajaya as there is now a toll-free four-lane highway that takes only 10-15 minutes to get there via Dengkil.
If interested or know of someone who is, send me a msg here or email to Azlan at azlan088@gmail.com
many thanks guys
warm regards
Azlan
019-282 9526
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Rent going for RM350 excluding bills.
The house has three rooms but the landlord can only let you have two as she needs one to keep all her barang-barang. She has extensively renovated the house and it comes fully furnished.
Preferrably open-minded, working professionals please. Especially strategic for aircrew as Kota Warisan is just next door to KLIA. Also suitable for government servants working in Putrajaya as there is now a toll-free four-lane highway that takes only 10-15 minutes to get there via Dengkil.
If interested or know of someone who is, send me a msg here or email to Azlan at azlan088@gmail.com
many thanks guys
warm regards
Azlan
019-282 9526
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Apartment for Rent
Third-storey apartment for rent in Kota Warisan (two minutes' drive to Salak Tinggi ERL station), available March 1, 2006.
Rent going for RM400 excluding bills and monthly RM55 maintenance fee.
The apartment has three rooms with front-door and kitchen grilles, curtain railings, and has ample parking space.
Preferrably open-minded, working professionals please. Especially strategic for aircrew as Kota Warisan is just next door to KLIA. Also suitable for government servants working in Putrajaya as there is now a toll-free four-lane highway that takes only 10-15 minutes to get there via Dengkil.
If interested or know of someone who is, send me a msg here or email to Azlan at azlan088@gmail.com
many thanks guys
warm regards
Azlan
019-282 9526
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Rent going for RM400 excluding bills and monthly RM55 maintenance fee.
The apartment has three rooms with front-door and kitchen grilles, curtain railings, and has ample parking space.
Preferrably open-minded, working professionals please. Especially strategic for aircrew as Kota Warisan is just next door to KLIA. Also suitable for government servants working in Putrajaya as there is now a toll-free four-lane highway that takes only 10-15 minutes to get there via Dengkil.
If interested or know of someone who is, send me a msg here or email to Azlan at azlan088@gmail.com
many thanks guys
warm regards
Azlan
019-282 9526
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Monday, December 26, 2005
Furnished Room to Let
Two fully furnished bedrooms in third-storey Villa Impian apartment in Kota Warisan (2 minutes' drive to Salak Tinggi ERL station), available for immediate occupancy.
2) Smaller bedroom has lovely lace curtains, bed, fan, stainless steel clothes hook behind door - come see for yourself lah. Rent going for RM200 ~ single occupancy. RM250 ~ double occupancy (non-negotiable) including maintenance fee, water and electricity. STILL AVAILABLE FOR RENT!
Share the bathroom with the room next to yours. Other common facilities include 29-inch TV, Bose radio/CD player, DVD player, parking space, stove, fridge, kettle, rice-cooker, blender.
Click here for Location Map.
Breath-taking views of green rolling hills and spectacular sunsets, three minutes' drive from Salak Tinggi KLIA Transit ERL station, two minutes' drive from primary school (SK Kota Warisan), Pasar Malam Kota Warisan every Saturday from 5 pm to 11 pm. 24 hrs security guard.
Preferably open-minded, working professionals please. Suitable for airline crew as next to KLIA. If interested or know of someone who is, call Azlan 019-282 9526 for appointment to view.
Azlan Adnan
019-282 9526
Copyright 2003-2008 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
A View from the Eye of the Storm
by Haim Harari, Chair, Davidson Institute of Science Education.
Past President, Weizmann Institute of Science
Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004:
"As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the world from which I come.
I have never been and I will never be a Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a country.
I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab, predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also significant non-Moslem minorities.
Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.
Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.
The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.
The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.
The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.
Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel.
Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.
The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.
The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years.
The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion.
They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe.
These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone.
Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers.
The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago.
Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.
According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates.
The total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis.
Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline.
And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.
It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves.
A word about the millions of decent, honest, good people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew up in Moslem families: They are double victims of an outside world, which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional.
The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement, but they also do not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present upheaval in the region.
A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III":
1. The first element is the suicide murder.
Suicide murders are not a new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this _expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than many earthquakes More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month more people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition occupation of Iraq.
So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines. It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One such murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and in Turkey.
But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport security in the world. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!
What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown himself.
No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naïve children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.
Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair.
The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam's Iraq than in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power.
The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way.
Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the "Family".
If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism.
The United States understands this now, after September 11.Russiais beginning to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders arrive in Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved.
2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies.
Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot.
You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to similar liars.
After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened, and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media report them as if they could be true.
It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.
Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not believe your own eyes.
But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration inBerlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by political leaders as a "peace monstration". You may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the money flows.
There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
3. The third aspect is money.
Huge amounts of money, which could have solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder.
In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. The inner circles are primarily financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. These states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the wholesale murder vendors.
They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure.
Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming every-body outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the region. The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, while still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred.
Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands of dollars per month from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority, while a typical local ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at the retail level.
4. The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking of all laws.
The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and free press, among other liberties. There are naïve old-fashioned habits such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set.
Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.
The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to arrest him.
The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under international law, and define all those who attack them as "war criminals," with some Western media repeating the allegations.
The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international law have changed, and the same will happen after the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.
The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run - only educate the next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must be destroyed by force.
The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the civilized world against all three circles of evil
Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it is best to do both.
But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize that you are in a war, and this may takeEuropea few more years.
In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a safe haven for these people.
I do not want to comment here on whether the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria an Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.
In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It is clearly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hezbollah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.
In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaeda and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hezbollah, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them collaborate beautifully.
It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism.
It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.
Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.
Is the solution a democratic Arab world?
If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution.
If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria, and to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have worked in China.
I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn."
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Past President, Weizmann Institute of Science
Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004:
"As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the world from which I come.
I have never been and I will never be a Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a country.
I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab, predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also significant non-Moslem minorities.
Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.
Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.
The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.
The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.
The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.
Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel.
Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.
The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.
The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years.
The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion.
They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe.
These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone.
Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers.
The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago.
Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.
According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates.
The total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis.
Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline.
And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.
It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves.
A word about the millions of decent, honest, good people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew up in Moslem families: They are double victims of an outside world, which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional.
The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement, but they also do not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present upheaval in the region.
A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III":
1. The first element is the suicide murder.
Suicide murders are not a new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this _expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than many earthquakes More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month more people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition occupation of Iraq.
So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines. It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One such murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and in Turkey.
But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport security in the world. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!
What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown himself.
No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naïve children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.
Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair.
The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam's Iraq than in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power.
The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way.
Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the "Family".
If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism.
The United States understands this now, after September 11.Russiais beginning to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders arrive in Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved.
2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies.
Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot.
You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to similar liars.
After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened, and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media report them as if they could be true.
It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.
Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not believe your own eyes.
But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration inBerlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by political leaders as a "peace monstration". You may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the money flows.
There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
3. The third aspect is money.
Huge amounts of money, which could have solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder.
In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. The inner circles are primarily financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. These states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the wholesale murder vendors.
They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure.
Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming every-body outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the region. The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, while still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred.
Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands of dollars per month from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority, while a typical local ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at the retail level.
4. The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking of all laws.
The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and free press, among other liberties. There are naïve old-fashioned habits such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set.
Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.
The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to arrest him.
The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under international law, and define all those who attack them as "war criminals," with some Western media repeating the allegations.
The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international law have changed, and the same will happen after the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.
The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run - only educate the next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must be destroyed by force.
The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the civilized world against all three circles of evil
Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it is best to do both.
But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize that you are in a war, and this may takeEuropea few more years.
In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a safe haven for these people.
I do not want to comment here on whether the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria an Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.
In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It is clearly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hezbollah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.
In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaeda and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hezbollah, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them collaborate beautifully.
It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism.
It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.
Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.
Is the solution a democratic Arab world?
If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution.
If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria, and to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have worked in China.
I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn."
Copyright 2003-2006 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Friday, December 16, 2005
Vincent
The Starry Night
June 1889 (Oil on Canvas, 72 x 92 cm (29 x 36 1/4 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Starry Night was completed near the mental asylum of Saint-Remy, 13 months before Van Gogh's death at the age of 37. Vincent's mental instability is legend. He attempted to take Paul Gauguin's life and later committed himself to several asylums in hopes of an unrealized cure.
Van Gogh painted furiously and The Starry Night vibrates with rockets of burning yellow while planets gyrate like cartwheels. The hills quake and heave, yet the cosmic gold fireworks that swirl against the blue sky are somehow restful.
This painting is probably the most popular of Vincent's works.Artist: Don McLean
Song: Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)
Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.
Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.
For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.
Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The End
One night a guy and a girl were driving home from the movies. The boy sensed there was something wrong because of the painful silence they shared between them that night. The girl then asked the boy to pull over because she wanted to talk. She told him that her feelings had changed and that it was time to move on.
A silent tear slid down his cheek as he slowly reached into his pocket and passed her a folded note.
At that moment, a drunk driver was speeding down that very same street. He swerved right into the driver's seat, killing the boy. Miraculously, the girl survived. Remembering the note, she pulled it out and read it.
"Without your love, I would die."
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
A silent tear slid down his cheek as he slowly reached into his pocket and passed her a folded note.
At that moment, a drunk driver was speeding down that very same street. He swerved right into the driver's seat, killing the boy. Miraculously, the girl survived. Remembering the note, she pulled it out and read it.
"Without your love, I would die."
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Is this your mobile phone number?
1) key-in the first 3 digits of your handphone number (not the 01x number) into a calculator, OR
1a) IF YOU HAVE AN 8-DIGIT HANDPHONE NUMBER, key-in the first 4 digits of your handphone number into a calculator (Singaporeans, listen up!)
2) multiply by 80
3) add 1
4) multiply by 250
5) plus last four digits of your phone number
6) plus last four digits of your phone number again
7) minus 250
8) divide by 2 at last
Is it your mobile phone number?
AMAZING ISN'T IT?
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
1a) IF YOU HAVE AN 8-DIGIT HANDPHONE NUMBER, key-in the first 4 digits of your handphone number into a calculator (Singaporeans, listen up!)
2) multiply by 80
3) add 1
4) multiply by 250
5) plus last four digits of your phone number
6) plus last four digits of your phone number again
7) minus 250
8) divide by 2 at last
Is it your mobile phone number?
AMAZING ISN'T IT?
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
A depressed man
There's a man sitting at a bar just looking at his drink. He stays like that for half an hour. Then, a big trouble-making truck driver steps next to him, takes the drink from the guy, and just drinks it all down.
The poor man starts crying. The truck driver says, "Come on man, I was just joking. Here, I'll buy you another drink. I just can't stand seeing a man crying."
"No, it's not that. This day is the worst of my life. First, I overslept this morning, and I'm late to my office. My boss, in a fit of rage, fires me. When I leave the building to my car, I find out it was stolen. The police say they can do nothing. I get a taxi to return home and when I leave my office, I remember I had left my wallet and credit cards there. The cab driver just drives away. I go home and when I get there, I find my wife in bed with the gardener. I leave home and come to this bar. And when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, and steeling myself to finally do it, you show up and drink my poison."
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
The poor man starts crying. The truck driver says, "Come on man, I was just joking. Here, I'll buy you another drink. I just can't stand seeing a man crying."
"No, it's not that. This day is the worst of my life. First, I overslept this morning, and I'm late to my office. My boss, in a fit of rage, fires me. When I leave the building to my car, I find out it was stolen. The police say they can do nothing. I get a taxi to return home and when I leave my office, I remember I had left my wallet and credit cards there. The cab driver just drives away. I go home and when I get there, I find my wife in bed with the gardener. I leave home and come to this bar. And when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, and steeling myself to finally do it, you show up and drink my poison."
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Friday, December 09, 2005
Beware of these Women!
ANY emails you send or receive from the person you see in the photo, DO NOT go to, or come from that person. They come from another person, A SCAMMER who uses photos such as these to "entice" men into sending money. The scam itself is the: TRANSLATION/CONNECTION scam in which the girl falls in love with you, very quickly, with 3 or 4 MOSTLY PRE-WRITTEN emails, each with a sexy/pretty photo, that actually come from the scammer, pretending to be the person you see, THEN after you're "hooked," YOU WILL RECEIVE AN EMAIL SAYING THAT HER ACCOUNT IS OVER and to continue to contact her, you will have to PAY HER AGENCY. THIS SCAM is popular amongst RUSSIAN and UKRANIAN scammers that use escorts pics to perpetrate the scam. THERE ARE MANY MORE JUST LIKE IT ON THIS SITE AND OTHER SITES. WARNING: DO NOT SEND MONEY, OR YOU WILL BE TAKEN. If you do send money, you will never hear from the "girl" anyway because the scammer will have already gotten what he/she came for, YOUR MONEY. Or, the scammer WILL keep responding, keep charging you the small fee for letters, then initiate the VISA/TRAVEL scam, which will COST YOU HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS to have the girl come to you, or you to her. IN EITHER CASE, YOU WILL NEVER REALLY SEE THE GIRL IN REAL LIFE.
REFER TO THIS SITE FOR SUBSTANTIATION:
http://www.anti-scam.org/scenario.html
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Latest Credit Card Scam/Ploy
WARNING... CREDIT CARD SCAM. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.
This information is worth reading.
By understanding how the VISA & MasterCard Telephone Credit Card Scam works, you'll be better prepared to protect yourself.
One of our employees was called on Wednesday from "VISA", and I was called on Thursday from "MasterCard".
The scam works like this:
Person calling says, "This is (name), and I'm calling from the Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge number is 12460. Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I'm calling to verify.
This would be on your VISA card which was issued by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Device for $497.99 from a Marketing company based in Arizona?"
When you say "No", the caller continues with, "Then we will be issuing a credit to your account. This is a company we have been watching and the charges range from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to (gives you your address), is that correct?"
"You say yes". The caller continues - "I will be starting a Fraud investigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask for Security. You will need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then gives you a 6 digit number. "Do you need me to read it again?"
Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works. The caller then says, "I need to verify you are in possession of your card". He/She will ask you to "turn your card over and look for some numbers". There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card number, the next 3 are the security Numbers' that verify you are the possessor of the card.
These are the numbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card.
(NOTE: The callers will not ask for your card number; they already have it. What they need however, are the Security Numbers on the back of the card. Don't fall for it.)
The caller will ask you to read the 3 numbers to him. After you tell the caller the 3 numbers, he'll say, "That is correct, I just needed to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions?"
After you say No, the caller then thanks you and states, "Don't hesitate to call back if you do", and hangs up. You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the Card number.
But after we were called on Wednesday, we called back within 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did!
The REAL VISA Security Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card. Long story made short - we made a real fraud report and closed the VISA account.
VISA is reissuing us a new number.
What the scammers want is the 3-digit PIN number on the back of the card. Don't give it to them. Instead, tell them you'll call VISA or Master card directly for verification of their conversation. The real VISA told us that they will never ask for anything on the card as they already know the information since they issued the card!
If you give the scammers your 3 Digit PIN Number, you think you're receiving a credit. However, by the time you get your statement you'll see charges for purchases you didn't make, and by then it's almost to late and/or more difficult to actually file a fraud report.
What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call from a "Jason Richardson of Master Card" with a word-for-word repeat of the VISA scam. This time I didn't let him finish. I hung up! We filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they are taking several of these reports daily! They also urged us to tell everybody we know that this scam is happening. Please pass this on to all your family and friends. By informing each other, we protect each other."
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
This information is worth reading.
By understanding how the VISA & MasterCard Telephone Credit Card Scam works, you'll be better prepared to protect yourself.
One of our employees was called on Wednesday from "VISA", and I was called on Thursday from "MasterCard".
The scam works like this:
Person calling says, "This is (name), and I'm calling from the Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge number is 12460. Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I'm calling to verify.
This would be on your VISA card which was issued by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Device for $497.99 from a Marketing company based in Arizona?"
When you say "No", the caller continues with, "Then we will be issuing a credit to your account. This is a company we have been watching and the charges range from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to (gives you your address), is that correct?"
"You say yes". The caller continues - "I will be starting a Fraud investigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask for Security. You will need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then gives you a 6 digit number. "Do you need me to read it again?"
Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works. The caller then says, "I need to verify you are in possession of your card". He/She will ask you to "turn your card over and look for some numbers". There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card number, the next 3 are the security Numbers' that verify you are the possessor of the card.
These are the numbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card.
(NOTE: The callers will not ask for your card number; they already have it. What they need however, are the Security Numbers on the back of the card. Don't fall for it.)
The caller will ask you to read the 3 numbers to him. After you tell the caller the 3 numbers, he'll say, "That is correct, I just needed to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions?"
After you say No, the caller then thanks you and states, "Don't hesitate to call back if you do", and hangs up. You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the Card number.
But after we were called on Wednesday, we called back within 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did!
The REAL VISA Security Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card. Long story made short - we made a real fraud report and closed the VISA account.
VISA is reissuing us a new number.
What the scammers want is the 3-digit PIN number on the back of the card. Don't give it to them. Instead, tell them you'll call VISA or Master card directly for verification of their conversation. The real VISA told us that they will never ask for anything on the card as they already know the information since they issued the card!
If you give the scammers your 3 Digit PIN Number, you think you're receiving a credit. However, by the time you get your statement you'll see charges for purchases you didn't make, and by then it's almost to late and/or more difficult to actually file a fraud report.
What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call from a "Jason Richardson of Master Card" with a word-for-word repeat of the VISA scam. This time I didn't let him finish. I hung up! We filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they are taking several of these reports daily! They also urged us to tell everybody we know that this scam is happening. Please pass this on to all your family and friends. By informing each other, we protect each other."
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
An Irish Wish for You!
May there always be work for your hands to do;
May your purse always hold a coin or two;
May the sun always shine on your windowpane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;
May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
May your purse always hold a coin or two;
May the sun always shine on your windowpane;
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;
May the hand of a friend always be near you;
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Chicken Surprise!
A couple go for a meal at a Chinese restaurant and order the Chicken Surprise. The waiter brings the meal, served in a lidded cast iron pot. Just as the wife is about to serve herself, the lid of the pot rises slightly and she briefly sees two beady little eyes looking around before the lid slams back down.
"Good grief, did you see that?" she asks her husband. He didn't, so she asks him to look in the pot. He reaches for it and again the lid rises, and he sees two beady little eyes looking around before it slams down.
Rather perturbed, he calls the waiter over, explains what is happening, and demands an explanation. "Please sir," says the waiter, "What you order?" The husband replies, "Chicken Surprise."
"Ah... so solly," says the waiter, "I bring you Peeking Duck!"
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
"Good grief, did you see that?" she asks her husband. He didn't, so she asks him to look in the pot. He reaches for it and again the lid rises, and he sees two beady little eyes looking around before it slams down.
Rather perturbed, he calls the waiter over, explains what is happening, and demands an explanation. "Please sir," says the waiter, "What you order?" The husband replies, "Chicken Surprise."
"Ah... so solly," says the waiter, "I bring you Peeking Duck!"
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Ah Beng Jokes
Act 1)
Ah Beng calls the telephone operator.
Ah Beng: "Could you please tell me the time difference between Singapore and New York?"
Operator: "Just a minute..."
Ah Beng: "Thank you."
Ah Beng got his answer and cut off the line.
Act 2)
At a bar in New York, the man sat next to Ah Beng told the bartender, "JOHNNIE WALKER, SINGLE" and his companion said, "JACK DANIELS, SINGLE."
The bartender turned to Ah Beng and asked, "AND YOU, SIR?"
Ah Beng replied: "Tan Ah Beng, MARRIED."
Act 3)
After completing a jigsaw puzzle he'd been working on for quite sometime, Ah Beng proudly shows off the finished puzzle to a friend. "It took me only 5 MONTHS to do it," Ah Beng said. "FIVE MONTHS? Why did you take so long?" the friend asked. Ah Beng replied, "No, it is not long at all, look at the box, it says it is for 4 to 7 years."
Act 4)
Ah Beng had just bought a new computer and was using it when he encountered some problems. After a few attempts, he decided to use the 'Help' command. Soon after, he became very irritated and called the computer shop for support. Ah Beng : "I pressed the 'F1' key for help... but it's been over half an hour & still nobody has come to help me..."
Act 5)
Ah Beng with two red ears went to his doctor. The doctor asked him what had happened to his ears and he answered, " I was ironing a shirt and the phone ring lor- but instead of picking up the phone, I accidentally picked up the iron and stuck it to my ear. So Kena lor!" "Oh Dear!" the doctor exclaimed in disbelief. "But, what happened to the other ear?" Ah Beng: "That stupid fellow called back again loh!"
Act 6)
Why did Ah Beng go to a movie with his 18 friends? Because according to the advertisement, below 18 is not allowed to go in.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Ah Beng calls the telephone operator.
Ah Beng: "Could you please tell me the time difference between Singapore and New York?"
Operator: "Just a minute..."
Ah Beng: "Thank you."
Ah Beng got his answer and cut off the line.
Act 2)
At a bar in New York, the man sat next to Ah Beng told the bartender, "JOHNNIE WALKER, SINGLE" and his companion said, "JACK DANIELS, SINGLE."
The bartender turned to Ah Beng and asked, "AND YOU, SIR?"
Ah Beng replied: "Tan Ah Beng, MARRIED."
Act 3)
After completing a jigsaw puzzle he'd been working on for quite sometime, Ah Beng proudly shows off the finished puzzle to a friend. "It took me only 5 MONTHS to do it," Ah Beng said. "FIVE MONTHS? Why did you take so long?" the friend asked. Ah Beng replied, "No, it is not long at all, look at the box, it says it is for 4 to 7 years."
Act 4)
Ah Beng had just bought a new computer and was using it when he encountered some problems. After a few attempts, he decided to use the 'Help' command. Soon after, he became very irritated and called the computer shop for support. Ah Beng : "I pressed the 'F1' key for help... but it's been over half an hour & still nobody has come to help me..."
Act 5)
Ah Beng with two red ears went to his doctor. The doctor asked him what had happened to his ears and he answered, " I was ironing a shirt and the phone ring lor- but instead of picking up the phone, I accidentally picked up the iron and stuck it to my ear. So Kena lor!" "Oh Dear!" the doctor exclaimed in disbelief. "But, what happened to the other ear?" Ah Beng: "That stupid fellow called back again loh!"
Act 6)
Why did Ah Beng go to a movie with his 18 friends? Because according to the advertisement, below 18 is not allowed to go in.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Largest in the animal kingdom
Just for the record, in case you were wondering, unless someone can show me a photograph of a whale's penis.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Monday, December 05, 2005
The perfect man
The perfect man loves you for you and not just one tiny part.
The perfect man would sacrifice everything for you.
The perfect man isn't afraid to tell you the truth.
The perfect man is kind, sweet, funny, and loving.
The perfect man can make you crumble with one glance.
The perfect man can make you feel unlike you've ever felt before.
The perfect man knows he's perfect, but won't ever admit it.
The perfect man has a smile that lights up a room.
The perfect man will admit when he's wrong.
The perfect man won't admit when he's right.
The perfect man would never say anything that makes you feel like less of a person.
The perfect man has his beliefs, but would never force them on you.
The perfect man will sit with you when you don't feel like dancing.
The perfect man will know when to take your hand.
The perfect man will know when he loves you but won't tell you until he's sure he means it.
The perfect man will make you want to be a better person.
The perfect man does not exist.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
The perfect man would sacrifice everything for you.
The perfect man isn't afraid to tell you the truth.
The perfect man is kind, sweet, funny, and loving.
The perfect man can make you crumble with one glance.
The perfect man can make you feel unlike you've ever felt before.
The perfect man knows he's perfect, but won't ever admit it.
The perfect man has a smile that lights up a room.
The perfect man will admit when he's wrong.
The perfect man won't admit when he's right.
The perfect man would never say anything that makes you feel like less of a person.
The perfect man has his beliefs, but would never force them on you.
The perfect man will sit with you when you don't feel like dancing.
The perfect man will know when to take your hand.
The perfect man will know when he loves you but won't tell you until he's sure he means it.
The perfect man will make you want to be a better person.
The perfect man does not exist.
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Sunday, December 04, 2005
I love you
= "gihigugma tikaw" (Bisaya)
= "obicham te" (Bulgarian)
= "ngor oi lay" (Cantonese)
= "miluji te" (Czech)
= "Ik hou van jou" (Dutch)
= "ana bahebak kawry" (Egyptian)
= "I love you" (English)
= "mita kuuluu" (Finnish/Suomi)
= "je t'aime" (French)
= "Ich liebe dich" (German)
= "szeretlek" (Hungarian)
= "ti amor" (Italian)
= "es tevi milu" (Latvian)
= "kia ora" (Maoritanga)
= "ku cinta mu" (Malay)
= "wak ai knee" (Mandarin)
= "tumse pyar ha" (Pakistani)
= "kocham Cie" (Polish)
= "Eu te amo" (Portuguese)
= "lublju ciebia" (Russian)
= "te quiero" (Spanish)
= "mama oyata ardare" (Sri Lankan)
= "mahal kita" (Tagalog)
= "nann unni kathalickiren" (Tamil)
= "phom rak khun" (Thai)
= "maih tum saih payar karta ho" (Urdu)
with many thanks to all my international girlfriends who contributed to this little project (you know who you are!)
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
= "obicham te" (Bulgarian)
= "ngor oi lay" (Cantonese)
= "miluji te" (Czech)
= "Ik hou van jou" (Dutch)
= "ana bahebak kawry" (Egyptian)
= "I love you" (English)
= "mita kuuluu" (Finnish/Suomi)
= "je t'aime" (French)
= "Ich liebe dich" (German)
= "szeretlek" (Hungarian)
= "ti amor" (Italian)
= "es tevi milu" (Latvian)
= "kia ora" (Maoritanga)
= "ku cinta mu" (Malay)
= "wak ai knee" (Mandarin)
= "tumse pyar ha" (Pakistani)
= "kocham Cie" (Polish)
= "Eu te amo" (Portuguese)
= "lublju ciebia" (Russian)
= "te quiero" (Spanish)
= "mama oyata ardare" (Sri Lankan)
= "mahal kita" (Tagalog)
= "nann unni kathalickiren" (Tamil)
= "phom rak khun" (Thai)
= "maih tum saih payar karta ho" (Urdu)
with many thanks to all my international girlfriends who contributed to this little project (you know who you are!)
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Saturday, December 03, 2005
The Dress (and other rhymes)
The Dress
There once was a dress, none were fairer!
Appearance improved with its wearer.
On a girl it looked hot,
on a male it did not,
but certainly no sight was rarer!
Dangerously in Love
You took my heart and ran away
Forever in my heart you'll stay
No matter what you intend to do
I'm going to keep on loving you...
Love Always
She was my North, my South, East and West
She was my working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk and my song
I thought that love would last forever
I was wrong...
Riena Kangkang
Gula Prai, gula Melaka
dari Teluk Kandih ke Kajang
Betina sundal, penuh celaka
untuk wang sanggup bertelanjang
Dari Bukit Jelutong ke Tanjung Karang
dengan Khalifah, Azri dan sesiapa lagi
Sanggup berzina untuk wang
macam mana kau boleh jadi begini?
Penipu besar, berperangai curang
untuk wang mudah kangkang
Setelah puas lepas miang
kepada Jeff, bekas suamimu, kau pulang
Gutter Trash
Gutter trash with a pretty face
with the looks of an angel, but what a waste,
your slutty behaviour's such a disgrace
such a liar, in my heart you have no place.
Goodbye, My Love...
If you leave me, I won't cry,
I won't waste a single day,
But if you leave, don't look back;
I'll be running the other way.
if i'm not in love with you
by Tonette, December 12, 2005
If I'm not in love with you,
Then why do I hurt?
I ached with the pain of having to feel
And knowing what I have is just a dream
Though it seems that I'm stoned with this
Even my friend thinks it's just a bliss.
What right do I have to claim?
A man I know who won't feel the same.
He seems to be what I know of life...
The reason that I aimed to survive.
With you I've learned to love again...
To pick up the pieces...
Torn and broken.
If to love you was to hurt this much...
I'll allow my heart to bleed as such.
And with this tear that's falling now
Every drop of it is a relief...
I guess... somehow.
If I'm not in love with you...
Then why do I have to cry?
Explain it to my heart...
That's been crying all night.
I pretended to be blind...
When I saw you with her.
I now for that moment it isn't fair.
I'm just a lass who fell in love...
With someone who again I could never have.
I know now...
that to love is to hurt.
to feel its pain...
'til it tears you apart.
to let you realize...
to only love and never expect...
to bleed with the feeling...
to be numb 'til it hurts not...
to cry 'til you run dry...
to give up...
to let go...
and to never ask why.
Starting Over
I'm stepping out into the great unknown
I'm feeling wings though I've never flown
I've got a mind of my own
I'm flesh and blood to the bone
Moving On
People laugh while others cry,
some give up while others try.
Always try to do your best,
don't care about anything else.
Waiting for Love
I sit and wait
Does an angel contemplate my fate?
And do they know
the places where we go
when we're grey and old?
'Cos running through my head
I feel that love is dead
The Truth about Girls
Girls don't like boys,
girls like cars and money...
The girls with hot bodies
like boys with Ferraris
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
There once was a dress, none were fairer!
Appearance improved with its wearer.
On a girl it looked hot,
on a male it did not,
but certainly no sight was rarer!
Dangerously in Love
You took my heart and ran away
Forever in my heart you'll stay
No matter what you intend to do
I'm going to keep on loving you...
Love Always
She was my North, my South, East and West
She was my working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk and my song
I thought that love would last forever
I was wrong...
Riena Kangkang
Gula Prai, gula Melaka
dari Teluk Kandih ke Kajang
Betina sundal, penuh celaka
untuk wang sanggup bertelanjang
Dari Bukit Jelutong ke Tanjung Karang
dengan Khalifah, Azri dan sesiapa lagi
Sanggup berzina untuk wang
macam mana kau boleh jadi begini?
Penipu besar, berperangai curang
untuk wang mudah kangkang
Setelah puas lepas miang
kepada Jeff, bekas suamimu, kau pulang
Gutter Trash
Gutter trash with a pretty face
with the looks of an angel, but what a waste,
your slutty behaviour's such a disgrace
such a liar, in my heart you have no place.
Goodbye, My Love...
If you leave me, I won't cry,
I won't waste a single day,
But if you leave, don't look back;
I'll be running the other way.
if i'm not in love with you
by Tonette, December 12, 2005
If I'm not in love with you,
Then why do I hurt?
I ached with the pain of having to feel
And knowing what I have is just a dream
Though it seems that I'm stoned with this
Even my friend thinks it's just a bliss.
What right do I have to claim?
A man I know who won't feel the same.
He seems to be what I know of life...
The reason that I aimed to survive.
With you I've learned to love again...
To pick up the pieces...
Torn and broken.
If to love you was to hurt this much...
I'll allow my heart to bleed as such.
And with this tear that's falling now
Every drop of it is a relief...
I guess... somehow.
If I'm not in love with you...
Then why do I have to cry?
Explain it to my heart...
That's been crying all night.
I pretended to be blind...
When I saw you with her.
I now for that moment it isn't fair.
I'm just a lass who fell in love...
With someone who again I could never have.
I know now...
that to love is to hurt.
to feel its pain...
'til it tears you apart.
to let you realize...
to only love and never expect...
to bleed with the feeling...
to be numb 'til it hurts not...
to cry 'til you run dry...
to give up...
to let go...
and to never ask why.
Starting Over
I'm stepping out into the great unknown
I'm feeling wings though I've never flown
I've got a mind of my own
I'm flesh and blood to the bone
Moving On
People laugh while others cry,
some give up while others try.
Always try to do your best,
don't care about anything else.
Waiting for Love
I sit and wait
Does an angel contemplate my fate?
And do they know
the places where we go
when we're grey and old?
'Cos running through my head
I feel that love is dead
The Truth about Girls
Girls don't like boys,
girls like cars and money...
The girls with hot bodies
like boys with Ferraris
Copyright 2003-2005 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Difference Between Rich and Poor People...
One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.
On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"
"It was great, Dad."
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah," said the son.
"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.
The son answered:
"I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night..
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them."
The boy's father was speechless.
Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."
Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have. Appreciate every single thing you have, especially your friends!
"Life is too short and friends are too few."
N.B. Many thanks go to Iraida G. T. Dungo for kindly sharing this piece with us.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.
On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"
"It was great, Dad."
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah," said the son.
"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.
The son answered:
"I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night..
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them."
The boy's father was speechless.
Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."
Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have. Appreciate every single thing you have, especially your friends!
"Life is too short and friends are too few."
N.B. Many thanks go to Iraida G. T. Dungo for kindly sharing this piece with us.
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