Think Positive............!

A beautiful email someone forwarded me recently...

Some time ago a man punished his 5-year-old daughter for wasting a
roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became
even more upset when the child pasted the gold paper so as to
decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the
little girl brought the gift box to her father the next morning and
said, This is for you, Daddy. The father was embarrassed by his
earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the
box was empty. He spoke to her in a harsh manner,Don't you know,
young lady, when you give someone a present there's supposed to be
something inside the package? The little girl looked up at him with
tears in her eyes and said, Oh, Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses
into it until it was full. The father was crushed. He fell on his
knees and put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her to
forgive him for his unnecessary anger. An accident took the life of
the child only a short time later and it is told that the father kept
that gold box by his bed for all the years of his life. And whenever
he was discouraged or faced difficult problems he would open the box
and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who
had put it there.In a very real sense, each of us as human beings
have been given a golden box filled with unconditional love and
kisses from our children,family,friends and God. There is no more
precious possession anyone could hold.


Friends are like angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have
trouble remembering how to fly. Think positive and act. This is nice
- finding something positive out of every negative, which we don't
always manage to do.

I am thankful.........


For the children who complain about doing dishes, because that means
they are at home and not on the streets.

For the taxes that I pay, because it means that I am employed.

For the mess to clean after a party, because it means, that I have
been surrounded by friends.

For the clothes that fit a little too snug, because it means,
I have enough to eat.

For my shadow that watches me work, because it means I am out in the
sunshine.

For a floor that needs mopping, and windows that need cleaning,
because it means I have a home.

For all the complaining I hear about the government, because it means
that we have freedom of speech.

For the parking spot I find at the far end of the parking lot,
because it means I am capable of walking and that have been blessed
with transportation.

For the noise I have to bear from my neighbors, because it means that
I can hear.

For the pile of laundry and ironing, because it means I have clothes
to wear.

For weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day, because it
means I have been capable of working hard.

For the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours, because it
means that I am alive.

AND FINALLY.............

For too much e-mail, because it means I have friends who are thinking
of me.

THINK POSITIVE!!
Count your blessings for you have many more than you know.

 

Liberal Islam Facing Execution From Power Hungry Islam

Cartoon issue xposes Middle East Rift -

(Long but interesting writeup)

.

on how the moderate/liberal muslims are being used for political benefits by the extremists (or power hungry persons)

In a direct challenge to the international uproar over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, the Jordanian journalist Jihad Momani wrote:

.

"What brings more prejudice against Islam,

these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras,

or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony?"

In Yemen, an editorial by Muhammad al-Assadi condemned the cartoons but also lamented the way many Muslims reacted. "Muslims had an opportunity to educate the world about the merits of the Prophet Muhammad and the peacefulness of the religion he had come with," Assadi wrote. He added, "Muslims know how to lose, better than how to use, opportunities."

To illustrate their points, both editors published selections of the drawings â€" and for that they were arrested and threatened with prison.

Momani and Assadi are among 11 journalists in five countries facing prosecution for printing some of the cartoons. Their cases illustrate another side of this conflict, the intra-Muslim side, in what has typically been defined as a struggle between Islam and the West.

The flare-up over the cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, has magnified a fault line running through the Middle East, between those who want to engage their communities in a direct, introspective dialogue and those who focus on outside enemies.

But it has also underscored a political struggle involving emerging Islamic movements, like Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Arab governments unsure of how to contain them.

"This has become a game between two sides, the extremists and the government," said Tawakkul Karman, head of Women Journalists Without Constraints in Sana, Yemen. "They've made it so that if you stand up in this tidal wave, you have to face 1.5 billion Muslims."

The heated emotions, the violence surrounding protests and the arrests have sent a chill through people, mostly writers, who want to express ideas contrary to the prevailing sentiment. It has threatened those who contend that Islamic groups have manipulated the public to show their strength, and that governments have used the cartoons to establish their religious credentials.

"I keep hearing, 'Why are liberals silent?' " said Said al-Ashmawy, an Egyptian judge and author of books on political Islam. "How can we write? Who is going to protect me? Who is going to publish for me in the first place? With the Islamization of the society, the list of taboos has been increasing daily. You should not write about religion. You should not write about politics or women. Then what is left?"

While the cartoons have infuriated Muslims, the regional dynamics underlying the conflict have been evolving for decades, during which leaders have tried to stall the rise of Islamic political appeal by trying to establish themselves as guardians of the faith.

In the end, political analysts around the region say that governments have resorted to the very practices that helped the rise of Islamic political forces in the first place. They have placated the more extreme voices while arresting and silencing more moderate ones.

Jihad Khazen, a columnist for the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat, said: "The Islamists wanted to prove their strength. The government replied in kind, saying that we are all Muslims and we care about our religion, and I think the truth was trampled on in the process."

In Jordan, King Abdullah II, who has been trying to control the most extreme religious forces in the region, came out with such a powerful condemnation of Shihan, the newspaper Momani edited, that even some of his allies were taken aback.

The newspaper printed three cartoons without obscuring them, including one depicting the prophet in a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Many of the king's supporters said he felt the need to respond as firmly as he did partly because of the rise of Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in Gaza, and to strip the Islamists in Jordan of an issue to rally around.

"What Shihan did was a corruption on earth, which cannot be accepted or excused under any circumstances," the Royal Court said in a statement.

But now there seems to be a growing concern and in some circles a degree of regret for unleashing a wave of anger that has claimed lives. In Jordan, authorities moved quickly to release the journalists from detention. In Libya, where spontaneous protests are unheard of, allowing protests over the cartoons seemed a safe bet for the authorities â€" until protesters began criticizing the government. At least 11 people were killed in clashes with the police.

Some of the world's most renowned Islamic religious leaders and scholars recently issued a declaration that, though sharply critical of the drawings, sought to rein in the violence and cautioned Muslims against becoming international pariahs. In so doing, they have begun to echo the sentiments of the journalists facing criminal charges.

"We appeal to all Muslims to exercise self-restraint in accordance with the teachings of Islam," the statement said. It added that "violent reactions" can lead to "our isolation from the global dialogue."

To many journalists, proof that Momani and Assadi face charges because of the region's broader political dynamics â€" and not because of the nature of the cartoons â€" can be found in Egypt.

After all, Ahmed Abdel Maksoud and Youssra Zahran are free. They are journalists with the Egyptian weekly Al Fajr, one of the first Arab newspapers to publish the cartoons. They wrote a story about the caricatures and reprinted them in October â€" months before the conflict erupted â€" to condemn the drawings.

"The feelings of the Muslims are being exploited for some purpose," said Adel Hammoude, editor in chief of Al Fajr. "Religion is the easiest thing to use in provoking the people. Egyptians will never go out on the street in protest about what happened in the case of the sinking ferry or against corruption or this or that."

That thinking is widespread in Yemen, where three journalists languished in a squalid cell, escorted to court by machine-gun toting police. It is echoed in Jordan as well, where two journalists await trial.

Momani appears in court on Wednesday, while two of the Yemeni journalists were released Tuesday pending their trial. The third begins his trial on Wednesday. Government officials in both countries say the journalists were arrested for having printed blasphemous cartoons. In Jordan, a spokesman said the king felt especially obligated, because his family is a direct descendant of the prophet.

"If freedom of the press affects national unity in a tribal system with high levels of illiteracy, one has to consider how far it can go," said Yemen's foreign minister, Dr. Abu Bakr al-Qirbi. "All societies have red lines." But in Yemen, with presidential elections scheduled for September, many see a more political motive.

"They've now found a good reason to put us here â€" they say the public demanded it," said Assadi in an interview in his jail cell. "The Yemeni government has many reasons to arrest Yemeni journalists. They want to keep people busy as long as they can, so that they can cover over issues like corruption."

Assadi, who once worked as a part-time correspondent for The New York Times, is the editor of The Yemen Observer, an English-language paper owned by an adviser to Yemen's president. Assadi has been sharing a prison cell with Abdulkarim Sabra, the managing editor of the weekly Al Hurriya, and Yehiya al-Abed, a reporter for that paper.

The three stand accused of insulting their faith by publishing the images, a crime approaching heresy. In each case the intention was to condemn the drawings, and The Observer obscured the image with a black X. A fourth man, Kamal al-Aalafi, editor-in-chief of the weekly Al Rai al Aam, became a fugitive after escaping arrest for similar charges.

"When I saw all the demonstrations, I thought that Muslims should be able to see what the fuss was all about," said Sabra during an interview in jail. "I condemned them; I said these drawings don't represent our prophet, burn them."

The Yemen Observer had called for Muslims to accept the apology of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first printed the caricatures, and urged Muslims to avoid violence. Assadi said that call was especially unpopular with the government and the Islamists. The Observer recalled its print run and republished a new issue just two days after the initial publication, but to no avail.

"Anyone who insults the prophet must face the sword," said one imam in a recent Friday sermon in Yemen. Another announced, "The government must execute them."

In Jordan, Momani is free from jail, but a prisoner in his home. He has no work, no immediate prospects, a criminal case against him and a lifetime of friends who privately support his message but say they dare not support him publicly.

Momani was not the first to print the cartoons in Jordan. Hisham Khalidi, whose newspaper, Al Mehwar, printed the cartoons a week earlier with a story condemning them, is awaiting trial.

But Momani's timing was particularly bad, just one week after the Hamas victory in Gaza, political analysts said. Jordanian officials expelled Hamas leaders years ago and saw their recent victory as a potential threat to national stability.

From the beginning, Momani felt the cartoon issue was being manipulated by Islamic groups eager to flex their muscles, and he asked his readers to consider why the protests began so many months after publication. He says he did not expect such a backlash, but that in hindsight, he understands why the authorities acted as they did.

"They wanted to show the Islamic movement that they are the defenders of the prophet" Momani said in an interview. "They used me."

Momani expressed exasperation when asked why he printed the cartoons. He insisted that it was the work of journalists to inform, and that he did so after speaking to many people who were outraged without ever seeing the cartoons.

"I am telling my people, 'Be rational, think before you go into the streets,' " he said. "Who harms Islam more? This European guy who paints Muhammad or the real Muslim guy who cuts a hostage's head off and says, 'Allah-u akbar?' Who insults our religion, this guy or the European guy?"

Mittal - Arcelor

At home, it's not just profits that matter
Tarun Khanna International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2006

Guy Dollé, the embattled chief of the European steelmaker Arcelor, may have been wrong to resist Lakshmi Mittal's takeover attempt. But his opposition to the bid contained a kernel of truth: National ownership really does matter.

It is easy these days to see corporations as the new countries - as vast, ubiquitous entities that make political borders irrelevant. Exxon Mobil's revenues now exceed the total economic output of Saudi Arabia or of Indonesia. Foreign investors care less about where a stock comes from than the return it offers.

Dollé dissented from this widening consensus - but for the wrong reason. He argued the case of national ownership in the outdated language of protectionism. A "company of Indians," as he called Mittal Steel, would not run European steel mills the way Europeans would.

Moreover, only those with local understanding, he suggested, would be able to extract the most economic value from Arcelor's mills. Comments like Dollé's fuel a common perception among the global business elite that all arguments for national ownership are merely protectionist throwbacks.

On the contrary, my work on developing-world corporations, with Krishna Palepu at Harvard, demonstrates that companies rooted in a particular country are more likely than footloose multinationals to make a nation's problems their own.

Indeed, national ownership matters for a reason that Dollé ignored: Companies identified strongly with a particular country more often find it in their interest to invest in public goods for the country - from roads to universities to national branding campaigns.

And because they do so precisely out of economic self-interest, this alternative case for national ownership is about creating more efficiency - not less.

Examples abound. Infosys, the Indian software giant, is a major driver of India's economic success. But it is also hostage to what the larger economy achieves. Thus it has invested considerably to promote Brand India, for example, by sponsoring the "India Everywhere" campaign at the World Economic Forum in Davos, touting Indian democracy and Bollywood. It is hard to imagine IBM, active though it is in India, underwriting that kind of campaign.

For Infosys, the India story is part of its founders' ethic. Westerners' opinions of India will rub off on how they see Infosys - value that would be lost on IBM. Similarly, whether Bangalore has a world-class airport matters to Infosys, but not as much to IBM.

In Thomas Friedman's "flat world," it does not matter whether IBM goes east to employ a thousand software engineers for its clients or Infosys goes west to find clients to employ the same number of people in India. But it cannot be argued that India should be indifferent to the two.

Developing-world companies also have to invest in infrastructure whose paucity constrains them, even if that investment benefits others substantially.

More than a decade ago, Compañía de Teléfonos de Chile (CTC), the Chilean phone company, was the first Latin Amercian company to raise capital on a U.S. stock exchange. This brought it, and Chile, into direct contact with sophisticated financial intermediaries on Wall Street, and catalyzed the development of Chilean capital markets, today among Latin America's best.

A global phone company doing business in Chile would not have had to care as much about Chilean markets.

Schools and universities are a key part of institutional infrastructure. Today, Koc and Sabanci are responsible for impressive universities in Turkey. The availability of educated talent in Turkey matters more to these companies than it might to a European corporation operating in Turkey.

Over the long run, the most important proving ground for emerging-market firms may be the vast, rural hinterlands of the developing world.

Much of the world consists of poor village dwellers, as in India, where they constitute two-thirds of a billion-plus population. Corporations are on the frontlines of catering to the less-fortunate. But it is usually indigenous entrepreneurs, rather than multinationals, who realize that the rural poor constitute an emerging market inside an emerging market.

Commercial interventions in rural areas often spur further development which, in turn, is more likely to benefit local entrepreneurs than multinationals.

ITC has introduced an electronic platform to facilitate rural commerce in India. This platform creates an environment of transparency in the village, spurring markets for agricultural produce, in turn raising the productivity of entire villages.

Indigenous companies are better positioned to capitalize on the broad opportunities that result. ICICI, India's leading private-sector bank, has identified rural financial services as its next big opportunity. As ICICI executive Nachiket Mor told one newspaper, "We can't simply go there and say, 'I'm a financier; I don't know anything else.' If you don't know anything else, the customer is going to give you the residual of whatever happened to his life. If he's not able to sell his sugar cane, if he's not able to sell his grain, if he's not able to get good value for his milk, he suffers and - you know what? - you suffer."

So, in order to collect on its loans, ICICI has resolved to solve the farmer's problems rather than merely mitigate their impact through erudite risk management. With the amount of local knowledge needed, and the patience before seeing returns, it's no wonder multinational banks will think twice about venturing this far afield. And it would be right for them to exercise caution.

Similarly, in China, Ningbo Bird was faster off the block in selling cellphones to rural dwellers than was Motorola, and Wahaha beats Coke and Pepsi in the villages.

The cost structure of multinationals and their need to get the quickest and highest returns available at present makes it much less attractive to them than to indigenous entities to venture outside the major metropolitan areas.

Corporate nationality has important practical implications. The Mittal-Arcelor affair is only the most prominent case of a multinational rooted in emerging markets bidding for a Western firm.

When protectionists claim that corporate nationality matters, their duplicitous motives should not mar their overall point, which is correct: that where companies come from really does count.

And instead of rejecting them on those grounds, the West should embrace the Infosyses of the world as the world's last best hope for solving developing countries' chronic afflictions.

Tarun Khanna is Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School.

Building A Tourist Spaceport

Building a Tourist Spaceport
 
LOS ANGELES -- A day after Space Adventures announced it was in a venture to develop rocket ships for suborbital flights, the company said it plans to build a $265 million spaceport in the United Arab Emirates.
The commercial spaceport would be based in Ras Al-Khaimah near the southern end of the Persian Gulf, and the UAE government has made an initial investment of $30 million, the Arlington, Va.-based company said in a statement.
The spaceport announcement comes on the heels of Space Adventures' new partnership with an investment firm founded by major sponsors of the Ansari X Prize to develop rocket ships for suborbital flights.
The agreement between Space Adventures and the Texas-based venture-capital firm Prodea would help finance suborbital vehicles being designed and built by the Russian aerospace firm Myasishchev Design Bureau.
Space Adventures is best known for sending the first three space tourists to the orbiting international space station for a reported $20 million a person.
Space Adventures' jump into the infant suborbital flight industry comes at a time when several companies already are designing spaceships to take paying passengers on short trips up into space and then back to Earth without circling the globe.
Last December, British tycoon Richard Branson announced development of a $225 million spaceport in southern New Mexico, which will be the headquarters of Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism company.
Virgin Galactic is contracting with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites to develop a suborbital spaceship based on SpaceShipOne technology.
Flying out of Mojave, California, SpaceShipOne made history on June 21, 2004, as the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space, then made two more flights later that year to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Why Donald Trump gets all the girls

Why the Donald gets all the girls
The new Mrs. Trump may very well have been attracted by all the money. So what?

Why do beautiful women keep marrying Donald Trump?

Most people -- at least most people who aren’t billionaires or supermodels -- will answer that question with an insult directed at the latest Mrs. Trump. It’s an insult that probably can’t be printed on this Web site, but it rhymes with “Because she’s a bore.”

We know why rich men marry beautiful women: for the sex, naturally enough, maybe even the love, as well as the companionship and perhaps the social status that marriage confers on a companion. (Grown men, particularly wealthy ones, can have mistresses, but there's something childish about a billionaire with a girlfriend.)
     
No one cuts women who marry rich men the same slack. We refuse to believe they honestly find these men attractive -- after all, the men they’re marrying are usually decades older, and long past their looks-good-naked-in-the-daylight expiration date. Models and actresses who marry obscenely wealthy men, everyone agrees, must be interested in the money alone, and the power and the status it brings. They get through the sex by gritting their teeth or thinking of other, more pleasant things. (Like, say, their new credit limits.)

Maybe I’m filled with the milk of human kindness, or perhaps I have a soft spot for supermodels -- I’m a gay man, so I have at least one soft spot for supermodels -- but I actually believe that it’s possible for a beautiful, young woman to fall in love with an obscenely wealthy older man.

Come for the money, stay for the love
Women are sex objects, the old saying goes, and men are success objects. Women, fairly or unfairly, are judged on their looks, and men, fairly or unfairly, are judged on their money, their power and their status. If Mr. Donald Trump were a dishwasher, it's a safe bet that supermodels would not clamor for the opportunity to be the next Mrs. Trump. But The Donald is rich (although how rich is in dispute), and he’s famous, and he is powerful. That makes him more appealing than a dishwasher of similar age and build and comb-over.

Is this latest Mrs. Trump in it for the money? Will the next Mrs. Trump be in it for the money? Yes and yes -- and you know what? That's OK. And you know what else? That fact doesn't preclude the possibility that Mrs. Trump is also in love with Mr. Trump.


But can a woman fall in love -- truly, deeply in love -- if she was initially attracted to a man for his money? To show how ridiculous that question is, let me alter it just a bit: Can someone fall in love -- really in love -- if he was initially attracted to a woman for her legs? No one doubts the answer to the second question is yes. A physical attraction can bring two people together and, if the pair is compatible, lead to a lasting love.

It’s our problem, not Mrs. Trump’s
Insisting that it's simply not possible for a woman to really love a man whose wealth caught her eye is very deeply sexist. Our culture celebrates romantic love and equates physical desirability with sexual prowess and romantic self-worth. This is a male-centric view, an elevation of the surface beauty over other qualities. But it's male-ish to say that only the size of a man's pecs or the shape of woman's rear end can inspire a genuine attraction, whereas obscene wealth always and everywhere inspires only money-grubbing gold-digging.

Yes, yes: Wealth can inspire money-grubbing gold-digging, but that's not always the case. Determining whether someone who was initially attracted to you for whatever reason -- because you’ve spent the last three years in the gym doing crunches, or because you’re Ronald Perelman -- sincerely loves you requires emotional insight, the advice of good friends, and a good pre-nup lawyer.

So let's say a beautiful young woman of modest means falls in love with a rich and powerful older man. Will the love last? Maybe, maybe not. There have been many Mrs. Trumps, and Ronald Perelman is soon to be single again. People fall out of love for all sorts of reasons (Slideshow: Billionaire divorces); whether it was wealth or looks that brought two people together, there's no guarantee that it will last. Wealth, however, does have one thing over looks: beauty fades, interest accrues. This works in billionaires' favor, but not, alas, in the supermodels.

But it is possible that this Mrs. Trump really loves Mr. Trump -- and heck, it’s even possible that she may be the last Mrs. Trump.

Dan Savage is the author of "Savage Love," an internationally syndicated sex-advice column read by millions every week. Savage is the author of "Savage Love, "a collection of his advice columns, and "The Kid," an award-winning memoir about adoption.