TEARS IN HEAVEN

THIS BLOG WILL REMAIN SILENT FOR A WEEK IN REMEMBRANCE OF A DEAR FRIEND WHO PASSED AWAY THIS MORNING.

ONLY LAST NIGHT HE WAS IN OUR MIDST.IT SEEMS SO UNFAIR, A YOUNG MAN, THE EPITOME OF GOOD HEALTH, A GOOD FATHER AND HUSBAND, GOOD FRIENDS TO MANY AND SO MUCH AHEAD OF HIM, TAKEN AWAY UNEXPECTEDLY.

IT IS THE SADDEST MOMENT FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. LET GOD GIVES COMFORT TO THE FAMILY IN THIS DIFFICULT AND TRYING TIME.OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS FOR HIM AND THE FAMILY.



WE WILL MISS YOU DEARLY ANDREW AND MAY GOD BLESS YOUR SOUL.

Why Does Australia Want To Send Refugees To Malaysia?

By Marina Kamenev/SYDNEY

Between 2003 and 2004, Marion Le, a Canberra-based lawyer, made regular trips to the remote island of Nauru in the South Pacific. But she wasn't going for a beach holiday. At the time, Nauru was part of the so-called Pacific Solution, Australia's policy of processing and detaining asylum seekers arriving by boat in offshore detention facilities.

From 2001 to 2007, thousands of asylum seekers were in offshore detention centers while Australian immigration officials decided their fate. Le, who helped many migrants file successful asylum claims to Australia, was among the Pacific Solution's many critics in Australia and abroad, saying the system was both a human rights violation and a breach of international law. After former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came into office in 2007 and closed the centers on Nauru, Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and the Australian territory of Christmas Island, Le recalls feeling "relief" that the government was finally listening to the plight of those that had been confined. (Watch a video about asylum seekers in South Africa.)

So it's something of a surprise that today, Le wants to have the facility in Nauru reopened. "It's the better of the two evils," she says. The second "evil" that Le is referring to has been nicknamed the Malaysian Solution. It's the latest plan by the Australian government to deter its longtime problem of "irregular maritime arrivals," and to stop the business of the people smugglers who get them here. The proposal, tabled by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in early May, mandates that asylum seekers arriving to Australia by boat will no longer be taken to Christmas Island, where they have access to getting an Australian visa. Instead, the first 800 asylum seekers will be sent to Malaysia — "to the back of the queue," as Gillard puts it. In turn, Australia will give a permanent home to 4,000 mainly Burmese refugees over a period of four years who are now residing in or near the Malaysian capital. "Now [the governments] are just people trading," says Le. "What they are suggesting is deplorable."

Since May 7, when the Malaysia Solution was announced, there have been more than 274 people who have arrived to Australia by boat. For the moment, they are in limbo on a detention center in Christmas Island. A formal deal between Canberra and Kuala Lumpur is close to being, signed according to Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, though it has not been announced where the affected migrants will be processed. Bowen told ABC Radio on June 9 that they will be processed in a third country. (See how refugees are living around the world today.)

So far, Malaysia is the closest the Australian government has come to establishing a regional deal. But it's not the first. Gillard had hopes for building a detention center in East Timor, but President Jose Ramos-Horta told journalists on April 29 that this is not an option. There have also been talks with Papua New Guinea about reopening the facilities at Manus Island, and Thailand has reportedly expressed interest in participating in a similar scheme to Malaysia. Critics are concerned about the seemingly arbitrary nature of the location for offshore solutions. "I feel like Gillard is just throwing darts around the Pacific Ocean and hoping one sticks somewhere," says Le.

Malaysia, unlike Australia, is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, and therefore does not have special national laws that recognize refugees, fleeing their homes for fear of persecution, have different rights than illegal immigrants. "We have a country like Australia that has signed the Convention sending people to a country that hasn't signed the Convention, and where we know refugee protection is deeply problematic," says Graham Thom, a spokesperson for Amnesty International, which expressed concern over the agreement in a press release on May 8. The statement quoted a 2010 report by Amnesty which found that 6,000 refugees in Malaysia are caned annually for immigration-related offences, such as working, which is not legal for refugees in that nation. Bowen has since said that the 800 refugees coming from Australia will be issued with identity tags that should safeguard them against caning.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2077279,00.html#ixzz1PPpx4vDw

How Love Corrupts: The Story of a Weiner, an Anwar, and a Frenchman

By Christopher Badeaux

The story on the wind, as I write this, is that Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is contemplating resignation as more details emerge of his online conversations with what tentatively appears to be a veritable corps of women aged 17 to 40. I hold no particular love for Congressman Weiner — his policy positions are impressively even more abhorrent than his personality, a feat that is comparable to identifying which of the Twelve Labors was harder — but if this is true, it either shows a sincere understanding of the enormous damage he has done to his constituents, his caucus, and the House to which he was elected; or a keen awareness that he will be persona non grata even in his own caucus for the rest of this term.

Either way, assuming there’s any truth to this story, this is a stunning level of self-awareness from a politician, especially one who has been babied by a favorable press corps for basically the entirety of his elected career.

The danger to a politician inclined to indulge his darker proclivities is not power. Power in modern nations, outside of a relative handful of non-democratic states, is fleeting and unstable. It’s not wealth. It’s love, the sort of love one gets for fulfilling others’ dreams for them, saying what they cannot or will not, and basically acting as their avatar in some public policy realm. All can be forgiven for an idol. Popular athletes internalized this lesson decades ago, but popular politicians have had it down since the Roman Republic.

Anthony Weiner has benefited from a media that loved to hear him speak — whether because he reminded them of Chuck Schumer, or because he said what they wanted to but wouldn’t, or because he would talk to them at any hour anywhere — and that media brought him places no ordinary Congressman from New York City would ordinarily reach. His Twitter followers — who later became his camp followers — came from across the country. He came to them as a standard-bearer for a kind of liberalism not really likely to succeed outside the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, the answer to their frustrated dreams in a sea of people who thought their political leanings mildly nutty. They loved him for it, they worshiped him for it, and it was that love, that worship, that brought him to relentlessly cheat on his wife (any woman who tells you that online sex with another woman is not cheating is lying to you); because if everyone loves you, how can you do wrong?

I’ve made no secret of the fact of my distaste for Anwar Ibrahim, and not just because he’s the Muslim Brotherhood’s kept man, and not just because his choice of coalition partners includes a band of hardcore socialists and Islamists who regretted not being able to shoot Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan. But I will freely confess that he is a terribly interesting person — and one clearly suffering from the same encompassing wave of uncritical love that enabled Congressman Weiner to telegraph his eponymous body part to any woman he felt would want to see it.

In Anwar’s case, that love — from Western media and politicians who should know better, from Malaysian websites that uncritically regurgitate his talking points, from his bands of loyal followers — has at the very least deluded him into a sort of messianism, where the democratically elected government of Malaysia is Olympus to his Prometheus. At the worst, if the allegations against him are true, it has led him to believe that forced sodomy and infidelity are excusable for him. Read more.

How To Buy A Birkin Bag

Hantu Laut

Interesting read about Birkin Bags by Raja Petra here.

Many Malaysian ladies with very rich husbands no matter how the wealth is gathered, honestly or dishonestly, coveted this most expensive and sought after bags by celebrities and the rich and famous.

Actresses, pop singers and wives of self-made millionaires and billionaires own one, two or dozens of them who cares it's their own money but should wives of Malaysian politicians carry this elusive bag of shameful extravagance knowing most Malaysians politicians have had humble beginnings.

The bag is not that elusive or hard to come by after all.It's a marketing gimmick to keep the price high for suckers of the world.

I did a bit of research to add to what RPK wrote.Read the story below:

Huffington Post

You've all heard of the oh-so-elusive Hermes Birkin bag. Carried by A-List celebs everywhere and knocked off by Canal Street vendors on every corner, a Birkin is the ultimate elitist symbol.

The elusive Birkin bag made by Hermes is so sought after as a status symbol by women worldwide that the French fashion house has a two year waiting list for potential owners...

The elusiveness of the Birkin has ensured it has remained one of the world's most coveted bags since Hermes named it after British actress Jane Birkin in 1984, with prices starting at about $9,000 and rising to about $34,000 for a crocodile skin bag.

However, HuffPost blogger Michael Tonello uncovers the mystery behind the Birkin and in the fashion equivalent of a tell-all book called Bringing Home The Birkin shows the masses of the world how they, too, can by-pass the marketing-ploy waiting list.

How did he do it?

"I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client," Tonello told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I'd ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period -- and you tell me there is a waiting list?" Read more.