Month: October 2004

In an interview with Malaysia’s The Star newspaper published Tuesday, Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad said neither Bush nor Kerry want to address the root problem of terrorism because that would “annoy the Jewish group (voters).”

“If you mention Palestine as the root cause (of terrorism), you will lose the election. So neither Kerry nor Bush will mention Palestine,” he said.

“But surprisingly, the electorate appears to be willing to accept a person who told a blatant lie and to elect a liar as their president,” he said, referring to Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“The American people are, by and large, very ignorant and know nothing about the rest of the world. … Yet they are the people who will decide who will be the most powerful man in the world,” he said, adding that he thinks Bush will win the November 2 election.

“They (accepted) Blair, and I am sure they will accept Bush. They have already accepted Howard who told a blatant lie,” he said without elaborating.

But Mahathir apparently sees Kerry as the lesser of two evils.

In an open letter dated October 15 to America’s Muslim community, Mahathir urged them to vote for Kerry, saying Bush has been “the cause of the tragedies” across the Muslim world.

“Vote Bush out of office,” Mahathir said.

[Via: CNN]

Just last week I visited a well-known high school in Jerusalem. A good many of the students I spoke to told me appalling things. They said: When we are soldiers, we will kill old people, women and children without giving it a thought. They said: We will expel them, we will put them on planes and fly them to Iraq. We will fly hundreds of thousands of them. Millions. And most of the students in the audience applauded those opinions. They supported them even when I pointed out that that is how people talked 60 years ago in Europe.

— Avrum Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset: On The Eve Of Destruction

[Via: Lawrence of Cyberia]

As long as the next generations are brought up to think that way and not taught to use reason to try and understand the problem and seriously take steps to solve it, this problem will exist forever.

We have to teach the next generations that the use of power doesn’t solve problems, it only makes them bigger.

We all need a change of hearts, a change of minds, a new beginning to reach a precious and lasting peace.

US President George W. Bush said he had signed into law a bill requiring the State Department to monitor global anti-Semitism and rate countries annually on their treatment of Jews.

“This nation will keep watch; we will make sure that the ancient impulse of anti-Semitism never finds a home in the modern world,” Bush said.

Of course, no one cares about Muslims and the ever growing Anti-Islamism in the world!

In fact, it’s the opposite, countries that treat Muslims well could end up being blacklisted for it.