No Clinton in Indonesia

Muslim student protesters hold a rally against the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outside the Presidential palace in Jakarta, on February 18, 2009. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived 18 February; in Indonesia on an alleged mission to start mending US ties with the Islamic world; which US foreign policy towards the Islamic world, has proven vastly different.

Islamic Worshippers Praying in Indonesia

Islamic worshippers pray at a Mashid (Mosque) in Jakarta, Indonesia; on 31 October 2008.

Bushonomics: US stocks swing sharply in early trading

Specialist Justin Bohan holds his head as he works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, on 9 October 2008.

8 October 2008
By JOE BEL BRUNO

NEW YORK -Stock prices swung sharply in early trading Friday as investors again dumped stocks but also scooped up shares that have been devastated by more than a week of intense and panicked selling. The Dow Jones industrials, down nearly 700 points in the opening minutes of trading, recovered to a loss of just over 125 and then headed lower again.

Frozen credit markets and a loss of confidence in the world's financial system have caused the Dow to drop 21 percent in just 10 trading days. The blue chip index tumbled 678 points Thursday, and is heading to its worst weekly point drop, and one of its biggest weekly percentage drops, since being created 112 years ago.

Friday's gyrations were likely caused the computer-driven "buy" orders that kicked in when prices had fallen far enough to make some stocks look like attractive bets. But that buying reflected no lifting of the market's deep despair, and selling continued.

"Momentum is running against the market and you don't want to get hit by a train," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank. "This is now about market psychology. There's extreme fear and panic out there."

At the start of Friday's session, losses for the year totaled a staggering $8.3 trillion, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S.-based companies representing almost all stocks traded in the U.S.

A stream of selling forced exchanges in Austria, Russia and Indonesia to suspend trading, and those that remained opened were hammered. The rout in Australian markets caused traders there to call it "Black Friday."

European stocks sank, with Britain's FTSE-100 down 8.09 percent, German's DAX down 9.4 percent, and France's CAC-40 down 9.7 percent. In Asia, the collapse of Japan's Yamato Life Insurance caused already nervous investors to pull even more money out of the market — the Nikkei 225 fell 9.6 percent.

The Dow fell 242 points to the 8,336 level. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was off 2.87 percent, while the Nasdaq composite index was down 1.16 percent.

Video: Will the stock market crash?

Commentary:
As to the question of the stock market crashing, the answer is yes and at anytime, as to the focus of where it stands in the current situation; for it has all the earmarks of an historical repeat of "Black Tuesday 1929. "

What is making some people to have extreme anxiety is not just the stock market coming extremely close to crashing or the current personal economic problems, it is felt it is the fact some economist have commented this coming economic depression will make the 1930’s Great Depression; seem like a sunny day walk in the park.

Developing Nations Open Summit in Malaysia

6 July 2008

Kuala Lumpur-The 11th meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Eight Islamic Developing Countries (D-8) started its work on Sunday.

The meeting was inaugurated by Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim who stressed the need for further cooperation among the D-8 member states.

The D-8 compromises Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

It was set up in 1997 as an economic alliance with the objective of improving the position of Muslim developing countries in the global world economy through the diversification of their economies by creating new opportunities via increased trade relations.

The ministerial meeting would be followed up by the sixth Summit of the D-8 heads of states due to be held on July 7-8.

The theme of the Summit is "Meeting Challenges Through Innovative Cooperation."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is expected to leave Tehran for Kuala Lumpur Sunday evening to attend the D-8 Summit.

This is the first time that Malaysia is hosting the D-8 Summit.

The last summit was hosted by Indonesia, the current chairman of D-8, in Bali, Indonesia on 13th of May 2006.

Meeting of the D-8 states' senior officials known as the 25th Session of the Commission of D-8, was held between July 4-5 in Kuala Lumpur.

The opening session of the 6th Summit of D-8 would be held on July 8 with a speech by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah bin Ahmad Badawi.

More in the inaugural ceremony, the D-8 presidency would be handed over to Malaysia by the group's current chairman President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Malaysia would be the D-8's president for two years.

The 2008 Summit is expected to adopt the decision on the setting up of the D-8 Permanent Secretariat and D-8 Roadmap for Economic Cooperation in the Second Decade of Cooperation.

Let's call God Allah

14 August 2007

by Mohammed Abdelrahman & Nicolien den Boer

The Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens, wants people to start calling God Allah. He says the Netherlands should look to Indonesia, where the Christian churches already pray to Allah. It is also common in the Arab world: Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably.

Speaking on the Dutch TV programme Network on Monday evening, Bishop Muskens (pictured) says it could take another 100 years but eventually the name Allah will be used by Dutch churches. And that will promote rapprochement between the two religions.

Retiring
Muskens doesn't expect his idea to be greeted with much enthusiasm. The 71-year-old bishop, who will soon be retiring due to ill health, says God doesn't mind what he is called. God is above such "discussion and bickering". Human beings invented this discussion themselves, he believes, in order to argue about it.

More than 30 years ago Bishop Muskens worked in Indonesia and, there, God was called Allah, even in Catholic churches. The Dutch should learn to get on spontaneously with different cultures, religions and behaviour patterns:

"Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years. In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can't we start doing that together?"

In the Arab world God is called Allah. The long history of Christianity in the Arab world led to the development of a rich Christian-Islamic theological vocabulary, which makes God a normal equivalent to Allah. Both Muslims and Christians use the word in the Middle East.

ar-Rabb
Apart from Allah, the term ar-Rabb (the Lord) is also widely used, although this appears far more often in the Arabic version of the Bible than in the Qur'an. In the Islamic context, references to ar-Rabb are normally found in the possessive form, such as Rabbi (My Lord). Interestingly, the word Allah was already in use by Christians in the pre-Islamic period.

Bishop Muskens proposal will undoubtedly receive a warm welcome from the Islamic community in the Netherlands. Particularly as it follows last week's remarks by Geert Wilders about banning the Qur'an and, shortly before that, former Muslim Ehsan Jami's comparison of Muhammad with Osama bin Laden.

Attention
Perhaps this is the reason Bishop Muskens' remarks have received so much attention in the Dutch press. The bishop actually said exactly the same several years ago. He also suggested abolishing Whit Monday as a national holiday in favour of an Islamic religious day.

In the past, Bishop Muskens has offended many Muslims. In 2005 he said Islam was a religion without a future because it had too many violent aspects. The bishop is also responsible for a number of controversial remarks. He caused uproar in the Netherlands when he said the poor had a right to steal bread if they were hungry. And he put the Vatican's back up with an appeal for the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS.

Thousands homeless as Asia weather misery spreads

People wade across a flooded road after heavy rains in Bihar July 25, 2007. Asia's monsoon misery has spread to Nepal, leaving thousands of people homeless, while more rain is expected to bring further chaos to China's drowned southwest, where many have already lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones. REUTERS/Krishna Murari Kishan

27 July 2007

By Guo Shipeng

BEIJING (Reuters) - Asia's monsoon misery has spread to Nepal, leaving thousands of people homeless, while more rain is expected to bring further chaos to China's drowned southwest, where many have already lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones.

Rescuers dropped relief supplies to hundreds of people in Indonesia's Sulawesi island on Friday after days of torrential rain triggered landslides and floods.

About 85 people have died and nearly 8,000 people displaced from their homes in central Sulawesi. A relief official said authorities had not been able to pull out many bodies because of a lack of heavy machinery and equipment.

In China, the toll is far higher, with more than 500 people killed across this country in floods this summer.

Meteorologists forecast more downpours for the Guangxi region and the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan where floods and related disasters have already taken a heavy toll.

"The possibility of landslides and mud and rock flows is high and preventive measures should be taken," the centre said on its Web site (www.nmc.gov.cn).

This year's monsoon has also caused widespread flooding in South Asia and Indochina, straining disaster relief agencies.

In mountainous Nepal, floods have destroyed crops and disrupted transport and electricity supplies across the country, officials and media reports said on Friday.

Around 2,500 houses have been washed away in the Himalayan nation's southern plains, forcing residents to flee to higher grounds after week-long heavy rains, local media said.

Officials said floods and landslides have killed about 40 people in Nepal since June when the annual monsoon rains began.

FLOODWATERS SPREAD

In Bangladesh, monsoon floods continued to spread, inundating vast areas in 30 of the country's 64 administrative districts, officials said on Friday.

"Thousands of people have been marooned or displaced. We have opened flood shelters at several places and are bracing for the worst," said Ibrahim Khalil, an official in Sirajgan district, one of the worst-hit areas north of the capital Dhaka.

Across the border in India, incessant rains over the past week have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the east and northeast, destroyed crops and damaged bridges, officials said on Friday.

In Bihar, 21 people have died and hundreds of thousands of villagers have seen their houses washed away. Road and rail networks have been disrupted by heavy monsoon rains over the past three days.

Rivers in the northeast - including the Brahmaputra that also flows through Bangladesh - have burst their banks. Floodwaters have submerged paddy fields and destroyed houses.

"The situation is grim," said Bharat Chandra Narah, flood control minister for Assam.

Weeks of rain in China's mountainous southwest, home to the upper reaches of the Yangtze river, have made floods peak in Wuhan, capital of the central province of Hubei, state media said.

Authorities in Hubei had mobilised tens of thousands of people to check embankments as the Han River, a main tributary that converges with Yangtze, was also swollen.

But as parts of China battle floods and landslides, others are suffering from a heatwave and drought.

Temperatures have reached above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 days in seven southern and southeastern provinces, home to about 200 million people, the National Meteorological Centre said on Friday.

The heat is set to compound the drought in the rice-growing provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Fujian, where about 1 million residents faced shortages of drinking water.

(Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Mita Valina Liem and Telly Nathalia in Jakarta, Azad Majumder in Dhaka and Biswajyoti Das in Guwahati)