Rabihah

My clock shows me 2209.. still early to night because I'd cover my time sleep after celebration of Maal Hijrah at my college. The celebration was successful enough, even though the Sultan was not coming just his representative Tengku Panglima and what not, I can't remember la..his long name. Just simple ceremony, officiated by him, and several entertainment by Rabbani, Muadz and forgot his name, and launching of 15 years Lembaga Zakat Selangor.

The most interesting was, this is my first time I sing Selangor's song..Sound okey la..like others state song..mendayu-dayu.. After the ceremony, my friends and I visit stalls at the parking lot... there are several stalls sell t-shirt, handy craft made from asnaf and so many thing.. I bought some..

Just nothing, but tonite am really miss my friend that I met at masjidil haram when I visited Mecca several month ago. Very much miss her. Her name Rabihah. She's Shariah student, study in Oman. I met her twice, at first when we were together performing tahajud prayer at 1am.. she seated beside me.. and second time, we met when performing eid ul fitr prayer..she was telling me that she will back to Oman after tawaf wida'... she hold my hand tightly..and she said "hope we will meet again"(translation arabic becoz I speak with her in Arabic)... duss.... still in my memory... Rabihah..I hope you get what her want... may Allah bless her always....

2247
japanese table and iron board

1430 H

Esok bermulanya episod tahun baru yang sebenar bagi Umat Islam seluruh dunia yang sememangnya memerlukan kita merenungi tentang konsep TAHUN BARU HIJRAH dan pengertian PENGHIJRAHAN yang sebenarnya bagi Umat Islam.

Cuba kita renungi kembali sejarah penghijrahan Rasulullah s.a.w ke Madinah yang telah mencetus satu perubahan besar dalam sejarah Umat Islam. Walaupun sebelum itu telah berlaku beberapa penghijrahan kecil seperti penghijrahan beberapa orang sahabat ke Habsyah dan Madinah namun ia hanya sekadar penghijrahan biasa sahaja. Walaupun dari sudut pandangan kasar kita, penghijrahan rasul ini dilihat seolah-olah seperti ‘undur ke belakang’ atau semata-mata melarikan diri dari kezaliman, cemuhan dan seksaan Musyrikin Mekah namun sebenarnya penghijrahan tersebut merupakan satu arahan dan perintah dari Allah s.w.t bagi meneruskan kewajipan sebagai seorang Rasulullah s.w.t untuk menegakkan Panji Islam dan melaksanakan suruhan Allah s.w.t di dalam mewujudkan satu komunit Islam yang hidup bermasyarakat dan bernegara.

Kita renungi semula SEJARAH PENGHIJRAHAN RASUL - HIJRATUL RASUL ini agar generasi sekarang tidak lupa kepada pengertian Hijrah yang sebenar serta sejarah yang berlaku di sebaliknya. Hijrah ini bermula apabila pemuka-pemuka Quraisy yang merasa tercabar dengan penyebaran Islam di Kota Mekah telah melakukan pelbagai bentuk seksaan dan kezaliman terhadap Muslimin pada waktu itu. Anak isteri dipisahkan, harta benda dirampas, nyawa diragut, dipukul dan diseksa dengan seksaan yang begitu dahsyat dan mengerikan, namun tindakan yang tidak berperikemanusiaan itu tidak berjaya juga menghalang kebangkitan Islam yang semakin luas penyebarannya dari sehari ke sehari.

Maka para pemuka Quraisy yang mewakili kabilah masing-masing telah mengadakan MESYUARAT TERGEMPAR atau persidangan pada 26 Safar tahun ke 14 kenabiaan di Darul Nadwah bagi membincangkan isu Islam, Umat Islam dan Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. Di dalam persidangan tersebut iblis turut menghadirinya dengan menyamar sebagai Syeikh An-Najd (Seorang tua dari Najd) yang turut memberi cadangan dan usul yang jahat. Persidangan tersebut akhirnya berakhir dengan menerima cadangan dari Abu Al-Aswad agar Rasulullah s.a.w dibuang negeri dan kemudian menerima pula cadangan dari Abu Al-Buktari yang mencadangkan agar Rasulullah s.a.w dipenjarakan.

Allah s.w.t telah mewahyukan kepada Nabi Muhammad s.a.w melalui perantaraan Jibril tentang pakatan jahat kaum Musyrikin tersebut dan memerintahkan agar Rasulullah s.a.w berhijrah ke Yathrib (Madinah). Rasulullah s.w.t telah memberitahu sahabat karibnya, Abu Bakar As-Siddiq r.a tentang makluman dan perintah dari Allah s.w.t tersebut dan membuat persiapan dan perancangan untuk berhijrah dari tanah kelahirannya itu.

Ringkasnya, Rasulullah s.a.w telah memerintahkan Saidina Ali bin Abi Talib r.a agar berbaring menggantikannya di tempat pembaringan dan menyampaikan beberapa pesanan dan amanah kepada Ali. Helah yang dilakukan oleh baginda ini telah berjaya memperdayakan pengintip-pengintip Quraisy yang telah mengintai tempat pembaringan Rasulullah s.a.w dan melihat sekujur tubuh sedang tidur yang disangkakan Rasulullah s.a.w itu. Rasulullah s.a.w telah berjaya melarikan diri dari kepungan Quraisy tersebut tanpa disedari oleh mereka walaupun seorang pun.

Rasulullah s.a.w bersama Abu Bakar r.a telah bertolak ke arah selatan menuju ke ‘Gua Thur‘ dan bermalam di dalamnya selama 3 malam. Dalam tempoh tersebut, Asma dan Aisyah telah membawa bekalan makanan manakala Abdullah bin Abu Bakar pula menjadi perisik bagi mendengar sebarang berita atau perancangan dari pembesar Musyrikin, dan Amir bin Fuhaira’ pula mengembala kambing di sepanjang laluan yang telah dilalui oleh Rasulullah s.a.w dan Abu Bakar r.a bagi menghapuskan kesan-kesan perjalanan mereka berdua itu. Sewaktu Rasulullah s.a.w dan Abu Bakar berada di Gua Thur ini telah berlaku beberapa mukjizat seperti sarang labah-labah dan sebagainya.

Pihak Quraisy yang kecewa akibat tidak berjaya menangkap mereka berdua telah mengumumkan ‘SPECIAL OFFER‘ berupa ganjaran 100 ekor unta kepada sesiapa yang berjaya memberkas 2 orang pelarian yang amat-amat dikehendaki itu. Tawaran ini telah berjaya menarik minat Suraqah bin Malik yang telah berjaya mengesan jejak mereka berdua dan mengejarnya dari belakang. Namun impiannya untuk mendapatkan 100 ekor unta tersebut berkecai akibat beliau dan kudanya tersungkur rebah ke tanah.

Nabi Muhammad s.a.w dan Abu Bakar As-Siddiq r.a telah meneruskan perjalanan mereka berdua melalui beberapa perkampungan di antaranya ‘Tihama‘ dan melintasi padang pasir yang luas dalam keadaan panas terik yang membakar padang pasir sahara. Perjalanan yang penuh dengan kesusahan dan keperitan dengan melintasi padang pasir, batu-batu kapur, lembah-lembah curam, binatang berbisa, kedinginan malam hari dan 1001 macam bentuk kepayahan itu berjaya diharungi dengan hanya berbekalkan keimanan, ketabahan, kesabaran, kepatuhan yang tinggi kepada Allah s.w.t.

Akhirnya Rasulullah s.a.w bersama Abu Bakar r.a telah tiba di Quba’ pada hari Isnin 8 Rabiul Awwal tahun ke 14 Kenabiaan, sebahagian ulamak mengatakan hari tersebut bertepatan dengan 12 Rabiul Awwal. Baginda telah menetap di situ selama 4 hari dan mendirikan Masjid Quba’.

Maka pada hari Jumaat, 16 Rabiul Awwal bergemalah laungan “Thola’al Badrul Alaina” yang merupakan laungan nasyid Selamat Datang oleh penduduk “Yathrib” yang diiringi laungan takbir memecah kesunyian bandar tersebut. Rasulullah s.a.w menunaikan solat Jumaat di ‘Yathrib’ dan menukarkan nama bandar ‘Yathrib’ itu kepada ‘Madinaturrasul‘ atau ‘Al-Madinah‘. Maka dengan itu tertegaklah sebuah negara Islam Madinah dengan rasminya dan disitulah juga merupakan titik permulaan bagi penyebaran Islam ke serata dunia.

Unta Rasulullah s.a.w terus bergerak menuju sehingga ke tempat jemuran kepunyaan 2 orang anak yatim iaitu Shal dan Suhail bin Amr, Rasulullah s.a.w kemudian membeli tempat itu untuk membangunkan masjid dan tempat kediamannya. Rasulullah s.a.w telah menumpang di rumah Abu Ayyub bin Khalid bin Zaid sementara menunggu tempat tinggalnya siap dibina.

Detik bersejarah tersebut telah disaksikan oleh seluruh penduduk Madinah termasuk golongan Yahudi yang telah melihat kedatangan seorang Rasul yang membawa amanah dari Allah s.w.t yang kemudiannya berjaya menyatukan puak Aus dan Khazraj serta mempersaudarakan Muhajirin dan Ansar yang merupakan satu ikatan persaudaraan yang unggul dan gemilang dalam sejarah Umat Islam.

Oleh itu sahabat-sahabat sekalian, jadikan Hijrah ini sebagai satu titik permulaan bagi MENGUKUHKAN KEIMANAN, MENINGKATKAN KETAKWAAN dan MENEGUHKAN SYARIAT ISLAMIAH agar kita menjadi individu Muslim yang aktif, positif, produktif dan inovatif agar bersesuaian dengan firman Allah s.w.t yang bermaksud :

“Kamu merupakan sebaik-baik Ummah yang telah dikeluarkan untuk seluruh umat manusia…..“

Renungilah detik-detik bersejarah yang tersimpan di dalam Awal Muharram atau Maal Hijrah ini dan perlu diketengahkan dan diperbincangkan sekurang-kurangnya sekali setahun. Ketahuilah sahabat-sahabat sekalian bahawa di dalam peristiwa ini tersimpannya pelbagai ‘elemen-elemen’ yang boleh dijadikan pedoman dan iktibar bagi menyuburkan ‘Ruh Islamiah’ yang mungkin semakin hari semakin di’gelap’kan oleh pelbagai bentuk anasir maksiat dan mungkar yang semakin canggih dan mempersonakan.

*pic was taken on Ramadhan 1429H,(15 Sept 2008 - 2 Oct 2008)

Ya Rabb..jadikanlah aku yang terbaik dalam 1430H ini, permudahkanlah segala urusan yang telah dirancang serta akan dirancang seiring dengan NurMu.. Tentukanlah yang terbaik buatku. Permudahkanlah hijrah ku ini..


0048
japanese table and molly...

You really deserve to be Rich

Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not
possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No man
can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he
has plenty of money; for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have
many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy
them with.

A man develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is
so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of
things; therefore, the basis of all advancement for man must be the science of
getting rich.

The object of all life is development; and everything that lives have an
inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.
Man's right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the
things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual, and physical
enfoldment; or, in other words, his right to be rich.

The man who owns all he wants for the living of all the life he is capable of
living is rich; and no man who has not plenty of money can have all he wants.
Life has advanced so far, and become so complex, that even the most ordinary
man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner
that even approaches completeness. Every person naturally wants to become all
that they are capable of becoming; this desire to realize innate possibilities is
inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be.
Success in life is becoming what you want to be; you can become what you
want to be only by making use of things, and you can have the free use of
things only as you become rich enough to buy them. To understand the science
of getting rich is therefore the most essential of all knowledge.

There is nothing wrong in wanting to get rich. The desire for riches is really the
desire for a richer, fuller, and more abundant life; and that desire is praise
worthy. The man who does not desire to live more abundantly is abnormal, and
so the man who does not desire to have money enough to buy all he wants is
abnormal.

There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the
mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all
are alike desirable, and no one of the three--body, mind, or soul--can live fully
if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or
noble to live only for the soul and deny mind or body; and it is wrong to live for
the intellect and deny body or soul.

We are all acquainted with the loathsome consequences of living for the body
and denying both mind and soul; and we see that real life means the complete
expression of all that man can give forth through body, mind, and soul.
Whatever he can say, no man can be really happy or satisfied unless his body is
living fully in every function, and unless the same is true of his mind and his
soul. Wherever there is unexpressed possibility, or function not performed,
there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function
seeking performance.

Man cannot live fully in body without good food, comfortable clothing, and
warm shelter; and without freedom from excessive toil. Rest and recreation are
also necessary to his physical life.

He cannot live fully in mind without books and time to study them, without
opportunity for travel and observation, or without intellectual companionship.
To live fully in mind he must have intellectual recreations, and must surround
himself with all the objects of art and beauty he is capable of using and
appreciating. To live fully in soul, man must have love; and love is denied
expression by poverty.

A man's highest happiness is found in the bestowal of benefits on those he
loves; love finds its most natural and spontaneous expression in giving. The
man who has nothing to give cannot fill his place as a husband or father, as a
citizen, or as a man.

It is in the use of material things that a man finds full life for his body, develops
his mind, and unfolds his soul. It is therefore of supreme importance to him that
he should be rich.

It is perfectly right that you should desire to be rich; if you are a normal man or
woman you cannot help doing so. It is perfectly right that you should give your
best attention to the Science of Getting Rich, for it is the noblest and most
necessary of all studies. If you neglect this study, you are derelict in your duty
to yourself, to God and humanity; for you can render to God and humanity no
greater service than to make the most of yourself.

Love does not demand..

Salam, hai readers.. my jumaat today is very much released to me. I got a bit energy that I had lost several days ago. By meeting with my children, and explaining then sumthing that very much beneficial to them.. and am really happy. Hopefully my energy through out today, now and then will increase approximately. What am focussing for jumaat barakah is the article, I dunno whether it is written or just like cluster made by anybody on this short article. But it is wonderful to read and to think of it...and thank you to SIM group which this article has been enclosed here..

Cinta tidak pernah meminta, ia sentiasa memberi, cinta membawa penderitaan, tetapi tidak pernah berdendam, tak pernah membalas dendam. Di mana ada cinta di situ ada kehidupan; manakala kebencian membawa kepada kemusnahan.

~ Tuhan memberi kita dua kaki untuk berjalan, dua tangan untuk memegang, dua telinga untuk mendengar dan dua mata untuk melihat. Tetapi mengapa Tuhan hanya menganugerahkan sekeping hati pada kita? Karena Tuhan telah memberikan sekeping lagi hati pada seseorang untuk kita mencarinya. Itulah namanya Cinta.

Ada 2 titis air mata mengalir di sebuah sungai. Satu titis air mata tu menyapa air mata yg satu lagi,” Saya air mata seorang gadis yang mencintai seorang lelaki tetapi telah kehilangannya. Siapa kamu pula?”. Jawab titis air mata kedua tu,” Saya air mata seorang lelaki yang menyesal membiarkan seorang gadis yang mencintai saya berlalu begitu sahaja.”

Cinta sejati adalah ketika dia mencintai orang lain, dan kamu masih mampu tersenyum, sambil berkata: aku turut bahagia untukmu.Jika kita mencintai seseorang, kita akan sentiasa mendoakannya walaupun dia tidak berada disisi kita.

Jangan sesekali mengucapkan selamat tinggal jika kamu masih mau mencoba. Jangan sesekali menyerah jika kamu masih merasa sanggup. Jangan sesekali mengatakan kamu tidak mencintainya lagi jika kamu masih tidak dapat melupakannya.

Perasaan cinta itu dimulai dari mata, sedangkan rasa suka dimulai dari telinga. Jadi jika kamu mahu berhenti menyukai seseorang, cukup dengan menutup telinga. Tapi apabila kamu Coba menutup matamu dari orang yang kamu cintai, cinta itu berubah menjadi titisan air mata dan terus tinggal dihatimu dalam jarak waktu yang cukup lama.

Cinta datang kepada orang yang masih mempunyai harapan walaupun mereka telah dikecewakan. Kepada mereka yang masih percaya, walaupun mereka telah dikhianati. Kepada mereka yang masih ingin mencintai, walaupun mereka telah disakiti sebelumnya dan kepada mereka yang mempunyai keberanian dan keyakinan untuk membangunkan kembali kepercayaan. Jangan simpan kata-kata cinta pada orang yang tersayang sehingga dia meninggal dunia , lantaran akhirnya kamu terpaksa catatkan kata-kata cinta itu pada pusaranya . Sebaliknya ucapkan kata-kata cinta yang tersimpan dibenakmu itu sekarang selagi ada hayatnya.

Mungkin Tuhan menginginkan kita bertemu dan bercinta dengan orang yang salah sebelum bertemu dengan orang yang tepat, kita harus mengerti bagaimana berterima kasih atas kurniaan itu.Cinta bukan mengajar kita lemah, tetapi membangkitkan kekuatan. Cinta bukan mengajar kita menghinakan diri, tetapi menghembuskan kegagahan. Cinta bukan melemahkan semangat, tetapi membangkitkan semangat -HamkaCinta dapat mengubah pahit menjadi manis, debu beralih emas, keruh menjadi bening, sakit menjadi sembuh, penjara menjadi telaga, derita menjadi nikmat, dan kemarahan menjadi rahmat.

Sungguh menyakitkan mencintai seseorang yang tidak mencintaimu, tetapi lebih menyakitkan adalah mencintai seseorang dan kamu tidak pernah memiliki keberanian untuk menyatakan cintamu kepadanya.Hal yang menyedihkan dalam hidup adalah ketika kamu bertemu seseorang yang sangat berarti bagimu. Hanya untuk menemukan bahawa pada akhirnya menjadi tidak bererti dan kamu harus membiarkannya pergi.Kamu tahu bahwa kamu sangat merindukan seseorang, ketika kamu memikirkannya hatimu hancur berkeping.

Dan hanya dengan mendengar kata “Hai” darinya, dapat menyatukan kembali kepingan hati tersebut. Tuhan ciptakan 100 bahagian kasih sayang. 99 disimpan disisinya dan hanya 1 bahagian diturunkan ke dunia. Dengan kasih sayang yang satu bahagian itulah, makhluk saling berkasih sayang sehingga kuda mengangkat kakinya kerana takut anaknya terpijak. Kadangkala kamu tidak menghargai orang yang mencintai kamu sepenuh hati, sehinggalah kamu kehilangannya.

Pada saat itu, tiada guna sesalan karena perginya tanpa berpatah lagi.Jangan mencintai seseorang seperti bunga, kerana bunga mati kala musim berganti. Cintailah mereka seperti sungai, kerana sungai mengalir selamanya.Cinta mampu melunakkan besi, menghancurkan batu, membangkitkan yang mati dan meniupkan kehidupan padanya serta membuat budak menjadi pemimpin. Inilah dasyatnya cinta !Permulaan cinta adalah membiarkan orang yang kamu cintai menjadi dirinya sendiri, dan tidak merubahnya menjadi gambaran yang kamu inginkan. Jika tidak, kamu hanya mencintai pantulan diri sendiri yang kamu temukan di dalam dirinya.Cinta itu adalah perasaan yang mesti ada pada tiap-tiap diri manusia, ia laksana setitis embun yang turun dari langit,bersih dan suci.

Cuma tanahnyalah yang berlain-lainan menerimanya. Jika ia jatuh ke tanah yang tandus,tumbuhlah oleh kerana embun itu kedurjanaan, kedustaan, penipu, langkah serong dan lain-lain perkara yang tercela. Tetapi jika ia jatuh kepada tanah yang subur,di sana akan tumbuh kesuciaan hati, keikhlasan, setia budi pekerti yang tinggi dan lain-lain perangai yang terpuji.~ Hamka

Kata-kata cinta yang lahir hanya sekadar di bibir dan bukannya di hati mampu melumatkan seluruh jiwa raga, manakala kata-kata cinta yang lahir dari hati yang ikhlas mampu untuk mengubati segala luka di hati orang yang mendengarnya.

Kamu tidak pernah tahu bila kamu akan jatuh cinta. namun apabila sampai saatnya itu, raihlah dengan kedua tanganmu,dan jangan biarkan dia pergi dengan sejuta rasa tanda tanya dihatinyaCinta bukanlah kata murah dan lumrah dituturkan dari mulut ke mulut tetapi cinta adalah anugerah Tuhan yang indah dan suci jika manusia dapat menilai kesuciannya. Bukan laut namanya jika airnya tidak berombak. Bukan cinta namanya jika perasaan tidak pernah terluka. Bukan kekasih namanya jika hatinya tidak pernah merindu dan cemburu.Bercinta memang mudah. Untuk dicintai juga memang mudah. Tapi untuk dicintai oleh orang yang kita cintai itulah yang sukar diperoleh.Satu- satunya cara agar kita memperolehi kasih sayang, ialah jangan menuntut agar kita dicintai, tetapi mulailah memberi kasih sayang kepada orang lain tanpa mengharapkan balasan....

1325
table work and soy beans...

welfare day

Today is holiday. Yahu.. But for me, I have several thing need to be done. As usual, in the early morning I take a mug of anlene and bring it in front of my laptop and start searching something which can gain my knowledge. Looking at my mug in front of me... milk.. anlene.. expert in bone nutrition wit nano calcium..With the fact – we may feel strong with our bone outside, but are we really strong inside? Actually bones are made up of two layers; a hard outer layer and weaker inner core. And bone decay usually gone unnoticed because it happens deep inside.

By right, women should try a new revolutionary anlene which contain Nano-calcium, a new form of microscopic that is 100x smaller than normal calcium. Anlene helps nutrients get right into the inner corner of our bones.

We need bone nutrients because to build our bone to be strong and youthful. Basically in the bone nutrients contain calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, protein and zinc. This milk contains a high vitamin D to ensure effective absorption of important bone nutrition. Therefore, our inner core of our bone will be strong.

Yea..all of us should take at least a glass of milk, whatever la low fat or for strong bone or full cream as source of nutrition to our body.

With regard to my welfare day, I need to jot down several important things that should I finish by today. If not I can't shopping at Cheras Selatan today. kiki...

0843
japanese table with a mug of anlene

same..

When the SAME question has been raised. Definitely the SAME answer I have to give.

Sometimes, I always think, is there any other questions? What should I answer but quiet.

When these such questions should be raised on me?

Why me have to answer all these question?

I dunno....

No... dunno.... It's good if anybody can answer all these questions.

Only Him knows the best for me.


1818
unknown place
unknown venue
unknown lot

funny but scary

Last tuesday nite, I'd a class with my pretty ladies at the third floor of my faculty. The class started at 8pm. At first session, the lecture session run smoothly. I gave the best for them to grasp as much as they can on that chapter. After the azan isya', I started asking them the terms which related to the chapter had been discussed in earlier hour of lecturing. This is the time I saw the beauty of Malay students with their politeness and ‘tawadhuk’ when the questions have been raised. Everyone of them keep looking each other. Am waiting for the answers, at the same time I was thinking am I asking a such difficult questions??? Just wait and until I pointed everyone of them. Hehe.. they started ‘cuak’… just a simple question… give me an example of complementary goods and substitutes goods. Still there are no answers.

But then, I ordered “Okey, at the back! Please answer my question.” (actually am just make a joke of nobody at the back to show that in stead of my students may be others will answer my questions)… And all of them turn their head at the back. But nobody…. Hehehe… am just smile to them… this is because they refused to answer my questions. Hihi.. As usual, I continued my lecture after 15 minutes just like a flash the door at the back opened and closed by itself. Jeng jeng…. Every one of my students turns back eventually. It’s okey class nothing happened. Let’s continue with our discussion. Am just continued but I heart felt something and my eyes keep looking at the same door… hehe..am scary too…. But still in the situation that can be controlled.

Till at the certain time, I felt enough to wait there. And I stopped the class little bit early. However, thanks to them because accompany me to punch card as well as walked down together.

early morning..

It just arround 6.55am. Yea, I have class this morning. And still at my sweet home. Erm... why am saying 'sweet home' because I love my home. Today I will be alone because my lovely sister already went to my cousin's house. I sent her last nite. Around 2330 I arrived at BSP. She already got the offer executive training at PNB, which her course will be conducted two month at Jalan Binjai Ampang, near by Hotel Nikko (memory of KLIFF 2007). Even though, we are separated but we are still close each other to 'lepak-lepak' during weekend. Insya Allah.

Preparing my fifth lecture for this morning class...the sound of birds make me happy this morning. Erm..as my parents told me last two days..BSP is a far far far place from hassle and bustle..alah like santan village... peace and 'lemak manis'. Alhamdulillah..thank ya Allah..Thanks for everything... Thanks for breathing me this morning...

Nothing to pen more. I have something to do.. my stomach is 'berkeroncong' and ask me to do something....gas man! gas man! gas man!

Okey okey..

"Nothing impossible to make your life happiness, Yes! Everyday make me excited! Huhu...Ford Focus 1.8 still in my memory"

Peace..

This picture was taken by me last two month...cantik lllaaa Kuala Perlis, Perlis. My hometown

cost or benefit

Something come across in my mind just now.

They come at once.

I have to choose either one. To take this one or leave another.

It's little bit confusing to me lately. It's not easy to choose.

I may put into two column, cost and benefit. And find which one the best alternative. Which one more..whether cost outcome or benefit outcome.

Sometimes I feel that I don't want to think. But I have to. Yea have to.

And now it becomes more complicated and hard to choose.


1108
the day I found...

forgiveness..

Raining afternoon. I had class today. Alhamdulillah everything settled within the time. Now, my clock shows me 18.44. Am just waiting for to night program. I have program with my students started today until sunday. Means my weekend fully utilize here. Nothing to plan or 'jalan-jalan'.

Simple lecture took about three hours. My attraction on the "trade off"...if we want to get something, we must to forgo something else. This point actually grasp from what have been discussed today with my student. Yea... in real world we always face the same thing. We can not afford to get something at the same time. For instance, you have two goods with limited resources that only can accommodate to get only one good. Therefore, only one you will get and another you have to forgo. Another example, hehe.. if you a girl and come over to you are two nice guys.. of course you can not get married both. Choose either one... but for guy, they have four place to plug in. :)

The thing that I would like to raise here is not the marriage or the trade off. But the forgiveness. The intellects entails responsibility. The more intellect a person has the more he / she is responsible. When the intellect is missing, the responsibility is also not here. However, part of our human being is also that we make mistake. Sometime we make mistakes without deliberation and intention. Islam speaks about two aspect of forgiveness. Allah's forgiveness and Human forgiveness.

Forgiveness each other, even forgiving one's enemies is one of the most important Islamic teaching. Allah says;

The rewards of the evil is the evil thereof, but whosoever forgives and makes amends, his reward is upon Allah. (al-shura 42:40)

We must keep in mind that as much as we need Allah's forgiveness for our own sins and mistakes, we must also practice forgiveness towards those who do wrong to us. Alhamdulillah.. I have done something that related to this issue...

1907
unknown corner

The View of the Emperor Hotel

Now I am at the top roof of Emperor Hotel Mallaca. Just arrived at the level of 21th floor. The sightseeing of Melacca City at the night is such wonderful night. I could imagine that if I with my "future hubby" together spend time for candle light dinner... emmm such a romantic night..kahkah... just dreaming.. when it is happen? Dunno.. I can't predict my future...but only can plan my future...

Actually, this vacation is unplanned. Just coincidentally. My youngest sister just finished her semester, and my parent was planning to pick up her as well as her stuff. Since that, they took an opportunity to 'jalan-jalan' around PD.. and Malacca.

And I just spent four night at Istana Hotel with regards to the KLIFF, came back to BSP and work for Friday lecture. And immediately rushed to the PLUS JB / Seremban for joining the vacation of my family. It seems like 'hush-rush' or 'kalam-kabut' but am really spend my time wisely, in stead of seeking knowledge all the while since monday, and weekend I have best time with lovely mum, dad and sisters.

Back to matters of what have been doing by me and cutest sisters. Before that, I realized that, this is my first time I came to the Historical City of Malaysia alone. When I arrived here, without having any signage where should go, what should do, I just 'belasah' all the road. By looking signage wrote 'Pusat Bandaraya' I felt secured that I am in the right track. Drive and just drive. Until my car's clock showed me 4.05pm. I was thinking the 'Asr prayer was just around the corner. I let other thing go and find the mosque first. But couldn't find any mosque near by me. Then, am just drive, until I saw a signage of mosque. I felt so happy. The mosque named Masjid Tengkera. Performing 'asr prayer jamaah. Then, I met several pakcik outside of mosque. And asked them where should go to the Emperor Hotel. Alhamdulillah.. my path much more easier.. He showed me the hotel.

Then, I get to the room. Met my parent and siblings. Wawah.. the view was so fantastic! But then my sisters begged me to visiti 'eye on malaysia'. Eye on Malaysia is located near by beach. By using student ID card, only four of us it priced about RM29.00. The view on the cabin was very nice. The sunset showed us very very much wonderful...

After that, we tried to find the 'ikan bakar and seafood' restaurant. Go where and there we found Tanjung Keling nearby Pantai Puteri. Very near by beach... the sound of beach is so great. Four of us ate squid fried, crab grill, otak-otak, soto haha... we ate and ate.. until full tank.

Around 9.45pm we arrived at the Emperor... the chair I seat now....my mum and dad still outside. They have dinner with other dad's friends.

2245
L21
Emperor Hotel
Melacca

US-Led Capitalist System Headed for Collapse?

Syed Rashid Husain, Arab News


Oil prices continue to rise and rise, with no end in sight. Virtually all other commodities seem to be following to be the same suit. Some now say a new economic system is emerging from the ashes of the old and now crumbling financial structure. Failing to meet even the basic needs of the common man, the current economic system is facing its worst crisis and appears in doldrums. It has miserably failed the underprivileged of this world.

Markets appear divorced from the fundamentals. F. William Engdahl strongly says in a recent write up that the oil markets (and other markets too) today are controlled by an elaborate financial market system as well as by the four major Anglo-American oil companies. As much as 60 percent of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price.

And the end-result is growing deprivation to a large number of people across geographical boundaries!

In the 90’s, with the war in Afghanistan taking its toll, the Soviet empire virtually melted before our eyes under its own weight. The number of deprived, form Moscow to Siberia and Grozny started to grow and grow rapidly. And as the number of have-nots in then USSR rose, the system could not cope with the pressures, and failed to provide even the basic needs to the common man in the streets. And within years the mighty and the powerful USSR was assigned into the annals of history.

Analysts today point to the Afghan war as one of the major causes for the disintegration of the USSR. Many then rejoiced over the demise of the USSR, claiming the capitalist system has won the war — finally. Many in the West, including the Regan Administration claimed supremacy of the capitalist system over the Marxist ideals. The victory of the West was described in terms of ideologies.

Current developments also point to a new emerging reality. The capitalist economy now seem to be failing its underprivileged, the have-nots of the world. With the number of people below the poverty line growing rapidly all over the globe, the common man on the streets today appear more and more desperate today.

In sharp contrast to this grim reality, it is only a few, the haves of the world, controlling the capital, benefiting from the current scenario. The vast majority is now being deprived of two square meals a day too. The old Malthusian theory, which has been lying dormant in the shelves for quite sometime, seem to be back and people have started to look at it closely once again. And this is happening in this 21st century, when the world claims to have taken tremendous strides in the fields of science and technology. What a growth indeed!

The people to benefit out of this imbroglio are the money vendors, the rich of the world. Real estate and property boom has been the engine of growth all around. Conservative economists do not accept investments in real estate as really contributing toward the growth of the economy. Terming it as stagnant investment, these conservative economists continue to claim, growth in the real estate sector does not contribute significantly to the over all GDP of an economy. And secondly it is only the fortunate few who could benefit out of this boom — and at the cost of poor many.

Unable to come up to the expectations of the vast majority of the common man, many seem asking the question today, is the capitalist economy also passing through its last phases? The situation is grim for a vast majority. Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the year to the end of January, markedly accelerating an upturn that began, gently at first, in 2002.

Since then, prices have risen 65 percent. In 2007 alone, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent. The World Bank estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential political and social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices.

And this has resulted in disastrous social consequences for the billions below the poverty line in the impoverished, underdeveloped world. The scenario is so bleak for the common man on street that the world is witnessing food riots virtually all across the globe. People of the world are hungry in this era of growth and emancipation!

Where are we being led? We are living in a different world with a new era seeming to dawn upon us. In the 21st century, when the world was supposed to be at the click of a mouse, the number of hungry population, those who can’t afford proper food three times a day has increased. It seems, the age of scarcity, of shortages, of rising prices, of food riots, of ration cards, is finally upon us, all around the globe.

What is happening, that with the weakening of the ruling currency of the world, the US dollar, the moneyed class of the world — sans frontiers in this age of freedom and liberty- is moving their capital into commodities — from oil to gold and grains.

This paper transaction, at times termed as speculation, is taking place even without the physical transfer of the goods and is making a mockery of the conservative economic models. And this is contributing to the current imbroglio. Unfortunately only the moneyed class has the capacity to participate and benefit from this entire game — at the cost of the poor.

Religious scholars tell that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) did not permit transactions in which physical transaction of the goods under question did not take place. And in the current situation, rarely is the physical transaction taking place.

This paper circulation is contributing to this rise of virtually all commodities — oil included. If it continues the same way, it may not be too wrong to point out that like the Marxist ideals, the current era of capitalism may also not last long. It may already be in its final throes, some hence deduce.

If a system cannot meet the basic idea of having some sort of equity within the society, where the have-nots could not have at least three meals a day, then it is bound to fizzle out, proponents of the theory underline.

The war in Afghanistan turned out to be the Achilles heel of the Russian empire and who knows the two concurrent wars, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, is leading the US-led capitalist economic system toward the same fate? Only time has the answer to this trillion dollar question.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=110042&d=19&m=5&y=2008

Islamic Finance - Road Ahead

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful.

Today is my second day staying at Istana Hotel. Since yesterday I have been invited by organizer CERT for the Kuala Lumpur Islamic Finance Forum 2008. I am very thankful to Allah and to those give me an opportunity to participate in this prestigious event. Even though this is my third time joining this such event. As for me, Islamic Finance is not a static subject that can be ignored. It's like growing and keep growing.

The KLIFF 2008 is officiated by YAB Dato' Sri Najib Tun Abd Razak, deputy prime minister of Malaysia. Approximately 300 participants attend to this event. As an observer, I am proud to be one of them and of course felt eagerly to join the forum. The topics discussed are more focus on the current issue like hedging in forward and futures market (for the yesterday discussion, sukuk, Malaysia as a centre of halal hub, roles of shariah scholars in the Islamic Finance.

Definitely tomorrow I will continue my writing on this event, what will be discuss tomorrow as well as the conclusion of two days forum. And I really hope by participating this such event will improve my little knowledge as well as to gain more and more ilmu that very substantial and important. After this two days forum I will attend another convention namely International Convention Takaful and Retakaful.

With that.. till then and be continued....

1145
833, Istana Hotel

Four Crises of the Contemporary World Capitalist System

William K. Tabb

This essay examines aspects of the global political economy that I hope will inform progressive governments and movements for social change. It evaluates the constraints and opportunities presented in the current conjuncture of world capitalist development by analyzing four areas of crisis in the contemporary world capitalist system. These are not the only contradictory elements in the contemporary conjuncture, but they are, in my view, the most salient.

The first problem is the financial turbulence that has gripped the economy of the United States and has had widespread effects. It is a crisis that further discredits mainstream Anglo-American economics. I do not know that it is the crisis of capitalism. For this to be the case it would not only have to become much deeper, but its impacts would have to be felt more dramatically as a systemic failure. Most importantly, a party formation capable of explaining how such crises are inherent in the nature of the functioning of capitalism and of inspiring a socialist alternative would have to mobilize a movement of the sort that ended apartheid in South Africa. Without the last, even a deep and painful crisis will be, at best, only the occasion for reforming and not abolishing capitalism.

A second crisis is that of U.S.-led imperialism, which has been discredited both in terms of its regime-change-wars-of-choice and the increasingly effective resistance to the international financial and trade regime we know as the Washington Consensus. Because of the incalculable harm neoliberalism has done, and continues to do, it is now ideologically on the defensive. A third point of crisis is the rise of new centers of power in what had been the peripheries of the capitalist system and the tensions this has unleashed, providing room to maneuver for countries wishing to break with the United States. A fourth area of crisis has to do with resource usage, the uneven distribution of the necessities of life, and a growth paradigm that is no longer sustainable. Here grassroots social movements in South Africa and elsewhere are leading actors in resisting privatizations and the imposition of a hyper-individualism that brings disaster for the most oppressed and exploited.

Crisis One: Financialization and Financial Crisis1

How much damage the current financial meltdown will cause remains to be seen, but the harm is already extensive. At the level of systemic crisis an important issue relates not just to the economic costs and the way rescue operations are premised on tax payer bailout, but whether financial capitalism can sustain itself. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times senior economic columnist, writes about capitalism “mutating” from “mid-20th century managerial capitalism into global financial capitalism.”2 John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, argues “that although the system has changed as a result of financialization... financialization has resulted in a new hybrid phase of the monopoly stage of capitalism that might be termed ‘monopoly-finance capital.’”3 Finance has been able to restructure productive capitalism, the economy that actually produces real goods and services people consume. In a new way it appropriates more and more of the surplus created in the processes of production, not only in the core, but in what has been the periphery of the world system.

Taken as a whole the corporate profits of the financial sector of the U.S. economy in 2004 were $300 billion, compared to $534 billion for all nonfinancial domestic industries, or about 40 percent of all domestic corporate profits. They had been less than 2 percent of total domestic corporate profits forty years earlier, a remarkable indication of the growth of financialization in the U.S. political economy. This was both an economic and a political development, as the financial sector gained leverage over the rest of the economy, in effect gaining the power to dictate priorities to debtors, vulnerable corporations, and governments. As its power grew, it could demand greater deregulation, allowing it to grow still further and endangering the stability of the larger economic system.

It seemed that finance had developed a new magical M–M' circuit, in which money could be made solely out of money, without the intervention of actual production. The new secret of accumulation was presumed to be leverage and risk management, which allowed the purchase of assets that promised higher returns even if they carried a higher risk, and the borrowing of many times the amount the investor had in equity capital—perhaps ten, twenty, thirty, or in some cases a hundred times as much. When so highly leveraged, even a small rise in value could return great profit on the initial investment. Given global markets, the money might be borrowed at low interest rates in Japanese yen and invested in high return U.S. financial assets, junk bonds, and derivatives of all sorts.

So long as asset values rose, whether in bundles of mortgages in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), or more exotic products, investors made a great deal of money. This encouraged others to copy these strategies, to bid up asset prices. The increasing value of these assets allowed even greater borrowing to purchase still more, further bidding up prices, in an upward spiral producing bubbles that eventually popped. Financialization as an accumulation strategy has brought not only severe crisis with the failure of financial markets but has put the United States in a position resembling that of a poor nation in debt to foreign creditors—its currency declining, its trade policies favoring elites, and its government demanding that some taxpayers pay more to recapitalize the financial system while providing more tax cuts to the affluent and corporations.

Toxic collateralized debt obligations are featured in most discussions, but a central aspect of financialization is the growth in debt itself: government debt (much of it the result of military spending and tax cuts and other “incentives” for corporations and the rich), consumer debt of all kinds, and corporate debt. The explosion in debt creation has powered an economy that has strong stagnationist tendencies. The irrationality of a class divided society is that profits accruing to corporations will not be reinvested to produce things people and the society as a whole need and want, because the purchasing power of the working class is kept limited and the corporate rich will not pay the taxes needed by the state sector to provide desired public goods.

There is an overinvestment in capacity to produce that cannot be utilized within an irrational social structure in which the only effective demand is that backed by adequate purchasing power. Overproduction in the midst of unmet social needs characterizes the system, as does pressure on workers everywhere to take lower compensation as a result of the class power of capital and its ability to pit workers against each other. The surplus produced and appropriated by capital cannot find outlets in production and spills over into financial speculation where it is absorbed in speculative bubbles that eventually collapse, spreading chaos and pain through the economy.

Beyond these general tendencies is the connection between financialization and rising inequalities and the declining economic fortunes of most working-class people as prices for basics—home heating oil, gasoline, health care, and food—have soared. In the United States, where the victory of shareholder capitalism has been extreme (as opposed to stakeholder capitalism in which workers, communities, and the public are also considered interested parties whose views and needs must to a greater extent be taken into consideration), workers have been squeezed the hardest.

During the Bush presidency, the United States lost one in five manufacturing jobs and that too is part of financialization and globalization. Wages have been pushed down, pension benefits curtailed, health care burdens shifted onto workers and their families, employees made to work part-time or fired and hired back as “temporary” workers, and so on—all in order to meet profit targets and to finance the huge debts companies are burdened with as a result of widespread borrowing to finance takeovers. More people are working part-time or as temporary workers and are pessimistic about the prospects of their children. They see their government captured by the corporations and the wealthy.

Widespread popular pessimism is justified because three trends interact to make the prospects of the majority of U.S. workers bleak. The first is continued globalization of the production of goods and services to lower-wage venues. Less skilled work can be done more cheaply elsewhere. Further, no amount of education can preserve many jobs that can be done by well educated workers in India, China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Second, technology increases output per worker, meaning that each worker can produce more, and when demand for output does not expand faster than their productivity, fewer workers are needed. We see this in basic industries such as auto and steel that once employed far more production workers. Third, the jobs that are expanding are mostly low paid, nonunionized McJobs. Furthermore, the unrelenting attack on unions starting with Ronald Reagan’s destruction of the air traffic controller’s union set the precedent for using replacement workers to break strikes, not to mention the ability of owners—thanks to National Labor Relations Board connivance—to fire workers.

Anglo-American expertise in finance was presumed to be the lever that would ensure the continued prosperity of these economies. Having pioneered the growth of financialization in their own economies, promoting growth through the creation of vast amounts of debt, and forcing its financial regime and rules on the developing world through the mediation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, capital has been expanding financial operations into the so-called emerging markets. Now we see a meltdown on Wall Street and the irony of foreign sovereign wealth funds and other investors having to rescue the pillars of the U.S. financial empire. How should we understand these contradictory developments? This is a political question. It needs to be answered like any other economic matter in which a small elite benefit at the expense of the many. Its solution should not be how to allow them to continue to do so but how to force social regulation so they cannot do so.

It is here that the loyal opposition, in the United States the Democratic Party, in Europe the social democrats, and third-way triangulators everywhere, by essentially accepting the power of capital, lose the respect of working people, who now must self-organize by creating anticapitalist parties if they are to defend their interests and change the social relations that promise only a future of further exploitation. In Die Linke, the German party formation far to the left of the Social Democrats, we see a successful example of such a party, which is becoming a force in that country’s politics. As noted later in this essay, in Latin America, the continent with the longest experience with the devastation of neoliberalism, the masses have supported a variety of left parties that promise to one degree or another to break with capitalist social relations.

Crisis Two: U.S. Imperialism—Losing Hegemony

There have been two recent failures of U.S. imperialism: the discrediting of the neoliberal Washington Consensus and the revulsion against the shock and awe violence of Washington’s arrogant militarism. The growing condemnations qualify, I think, as a crisis for the continued easy exercise of hegemony and for the ruling-class presumption that it has the capacity unilaterally to run the world. After the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, the hubris of the Bush neocons has been discredited and their program of wars and conquest has been questioned and perhaps now rejected by most Americans.

One faction of this ruling class has seen international trade and finance regimes favoring U.S. capital as key. The other wing has been quick to threaten and take military action to reassert and impose U.S. hegemony. The U.S. ruling class always employs both strategies, but the balance between the two shifts with the state of the world and domestic politics.4 The two dominant ideological factions of this class can be characterized by looking at the most powerful cabinet figures and policies of two recent presidents. The key figure in Bill Clinton’s administration was Robert Rubin, the secretary of the treasury. Under Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense was the most powerful.

Of course, the dominant figure in the administration is Vice President Cheney, a man of incomparable devious devotion to an imperial presidency and the rewarding of a small elite, willing to use whatever means necessary to intimidate and destroy opposition at home and abroad. With Clinton, although the projection of U.S. power and use of violence were important, the spreading of the Washington Consensus was the key foreign policy. Under Bush it was shock and awe. Today both strategies are proving unsuccessful to a remarkable extent. The failure of the Washington Consensus to bring development is widely recognized, and despite its imposition on dozens of countries in the 1980s and 1990s, it is now being effectively resisted around the world. Again, this is not to say that both policies have not done and continue to do great damage.

Let me comment briefly first on U.S. militarism and then more fully on the demise of the Washington Consensus. Americans were led into a war in Iraq on the basis of lies and are now unconvinced that the attack on Iraq was a good thing. There is a dawning understanding that the United States not only lost Iraq but that the situation in Afghanistan is further revealing an inability to occupy and enforce regime change and imperialist stability. The increased awareness that such adventurism is bankrupting the country while domestic priorities like health care and jobs with adequate pay need to be the priority is challenging imperial America from within to an extent not previously seen.

Many Americans may still support the assertion of national power in easy victories over weaker “enemies,” but they have had their fill of long, drawn out, costly misadventures. For many, the charade of “Mission Accomplished” has produced reactions ranging from unease to hatred of those who think them stupid and so easy to manipulate. U.S. imperial ambitions in Iraq have led to much elite soul searching, and they have promoted popular opposition not only abroad but increasingly at home where the claim to be spreading democracy and fostering development are wearing thin. Globally these pretenses are thoroughly discredited. The decline of U.S. credibility and hegemonic power is a major part of what is new in the world system.

Last year on the tenth anniversary of the East Asian financial crisis, two points were widely made. The first was the acknowledgment that capital market liberalization had brought instability and not growth. Even studies by International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists came to this conclusion. A paper coauthored by the chief economist of the IMF concluded that it is difficult to make a convincing connection between financial integration and economic growth once other factors are taken into account. The sudden stop of capital inflow can be devastating. Second, neoliberal policies were hardly mistakes. It is clear that neoliberal ideologues and Wall Street interests pushed policies that harmed debtor countries while the financiers profited from financial liberalization. It is not only radical leftists who now hold this view.5

What took place in countries forced into accepting Washington Consensus neoliberal policies was a process of accumulation by dispossession—a construct introduced by David Harvey.This is a process in which working people are divested of their assets and their rights. He has in mind the privatization of water, health care, and education, goods that had been or should be entitlements. The sale of these things in private markets dispossessed those who could not afford what should have been theirs by right. The term is a propos of what has happened in the aftermath of financial crises. Global state economic governance institutions have imposed structural adjustment programs and conditionalities that, in privatizing public goods, dispossess people through debt repayment, the loss of government benefits, and the liberalization of the local economy to the benefit of foreign investors and domestic elites.

When the United States got in trouble in 2007, Washington rescued financial institutions, rather than imposing the harsh medicine it advocated and forced on others. Instead, it lowered interest rates and bailed out those responsible for the crisis. Moreover, after decades of denouncing the unsophisticated banking structures and practices and crony capitalism of the third world, the United States financial system was revealed as incompetent. The presumed sophistication of bank risk-assessment models were shown as so much hogwash. The dishonesty revealed in the subprime market was far more extensive than anything found in any developing nation. Rather than letting the value of financial assets find their equilibrium level in transparent markets, the U.S. Treasury tried to organize a cartel to prevent this process and to shore up the housing market and save the collateralized debt instruments from collapsing, much at odds with what the Treasury Department had recommended to others. As Martin Wolf wrote, “Not for a long time will people listen to U.S. officials lecture on the virtues of free financial markets with a straight face.”6 Of course, countries like South Africa are left with heavy debt burdens and the neoliberal policies embraced by the Mbeki government, while the United States itself follows far different policies.

One impact of this unmasking of the interests that benefited from the Washington Consensus policies was a rush by Western leaders to invite the now more significant developing countries to take a greater role, to be given greater voting rights, and to exercise more power in the Bretton Woods institutions. By 2007, when the developing economies were accounting for a far larger share of the world economy and many were growing significantly faster than the richer economies that had long dominated these regimes, we began to hear statements such as the one from Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, that the IMF could “slip into obscurity” without radical reform.7 That the developed countries with 15 percent of the global population hold 60 percent of the voting power at the IMF and World Bank is perhaps finally no longer in their own interests.

On the diplomatic front, there have been proposals to broaden the G-8. Philip Stephens, the chief political commentator of the Financial Times, proposes expansion to a G-13 by adding the IBSA countries (India, Brazil, and South Africa), along with Mexico and China. The idea of such expansion according to World Bank President Robert Zoellick is that they are being invited to become “responsible stakeholders.”8 It may be that the reorganization of the world economy is producing a more inclusive transnational capitalist class with a global interpenetration of ownership most prominently through sovereign wealth funds but more commonly through a diversification of ownership on a global scale and the increased interaction among elites.9

At the same time, discontent with growing inequalities and the arrogance of capital, local and foreign, has created local movements for fundamental change and awareness through venues such as the World Social Forum that another world is possible. There are conflicting pressures on the governments of the South, from capitalists at home, the masses below, and governments and international agencies representing foreign capital above. While there is at the moment the expectation that these governments will generally throw their lot in with the traditional imperial powers, there has been increasing popular pressure against this.

There is of course the likelihood that financialization centered in the North will continue to grow in the countries of the South, with banks and other financial institutions (many foreign-owned) appropriating a larger slice of the surplus. Such a repetition of the historic pattern of the penetration of imperialist finance in these countries will undoubtedly produce new and more severe crises and once again the people will have to bear the cost. The alternative would have to be a fundamental shift to social control over capital. We will have to use what we have learned in opposing neoliberalism to say no to the growth of high-risk finance and its depredations.

On the positive side, some third world governments have shifted in a progressive direction, sometimes in an effort to strike a better bargain for local capital, sometimes because of genuine commitment to a social agenda, and often as the result of a compromised tension between the interests at stake. In Latin America, after periods of military rule and neoliberal policy dominance, Mercosur under Brazilian leadership has put a crimp in the U.S. attempt to form a Free Trade Area of the Americas. As a single market, it is the world’s sixth largest economy. With 260 million people and a combined Gross Domestic Product of over four trillion dollars, it represents a formidable development.

The more radical Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America (ALBA) promotes not only regional solidarity but social transformation based on socialist goals and ideals. In 2007 the Mercosur and ALBA countries created a Banco del Sur (Bank of the South) to offer an alternative development finance instrument premised on solidarity and totally rejecting Washington’s thinking and controls.10 Some of the member countries have withdrawn from the IMF and the World Bank. The Banco del Sur operates on a one country, one vote principle and, building on the Venezuelan Bank for Economic and Social Development priorities, favors cooperatives and community ownership, offering below-market interest rates to public and social enterprises. With a proposed capitalization of seven billion dollars, it represents a serious challenge to the U.S.-controlled Bretton Woods Institutions as well as the Washington-dominated neoliberal Inter-American Bank.

The changes in the region have been dramatic as leftist governments have come to power. In 2005 South America accounted for 80 percent of IMF outstanding loans. Today the region’s borrowing accounts for less than 1 percent of the IMF global loan portfolio. Along with the Banco del Sur there is talk of a regional monetary system so that bilateral trade can take place in domestic currencies with a goal of eventually creating a common currency for the region.

Social movements are pushing the Banco del Sur to take a more grassroots approach, to reject mega infrastructure (as pushed by Brazil) that supports monocultures including agrofuels, and instead finance local infrastructure to support food and energy sovereignty, produce generic medicines, and extend membership to other countries of the South. Such formations—always a mix of transformational and reformist elements—illustrate important historical momentum. The failures of the Washington Consensus and the increased strength of alternative centers of power, both of the left and the national-developmentalist right, are reshaping the global political economy. Also significant is the great weakening of the U.S. dollar—its former strength having been both a result and a source of U.S. power.

We are now witnessing the loss of what Charles DeGaulle once called the “exorbitant privilege” of the United States, derived from its role as issuer of the international currency. George Soros, speaking to the World Economic Forum in January of 2008, suggested, “It’s basically the end of a sixty-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency.”11 The advantage the United States has enjoyed by being able to borrow in its own currency has been undercut by abuse, outsized current account deficits, and the buildup of dollars in foreign hands. This has progressed to the point where the money creation and lower U.S. interest rates implemented by the Federal Reserve to stave off financial collapse have driven down the currency’s value and encouraged further flight from the dollar.

Given the dollar’s serious decline, there would be fear of free fall if not for the fact that it is not easily replaceable in the short term. While at present about a quarter of the world’s monetary reserves are in euros and two-thirds are held in U.S. dollars, there are predictions from respected sources that the euro could be a more important reserve currency than the dollar within a decade. These predictions are based on rising inflation in the United States, its large current account deficits, the costs of imperial overreach, and simulation models by leading economists.12 Of course, the economic situation continues to deteriorate everywhere; at this writing Europe is facing severe economic problems, and there is a slow down in the “emerging economies” suggesting a larger crisis than has heretofore been acknowledged. A renewed strength of the dollar could be a reflection of greater trouble elsewhere rather than economic recovery in the United States.

Finance capital has expanded in parasitic form. Not only have the masses in the South suffered but the working people of the rich countries are now being told they must bail out “their” banks and other financial institutions. The class component of this redistributive model is becoming more apparent. As the international political economy becomes more multipolar U.S. hegemony will increasingly be challenged in other areas in addition to the currency issue.

Crisis Three: The New Centers of Power

Let me turn then more broadly to the world historic phenomenon of the rise of non-Western economic and political players. In 2006, for the first time, emerging markets accounted for over 50 percent of global output. If they continue to grow at the rate they have, forecasts project a very different world by mid-century. Their rise will, I expect, prove as significant as the emergence in the late nineteenth century of Germany, Russia, and Japan. A 2006 study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers projected that in the year 2050 the Chinese economy would be almost as large as that of the United States in dollar terms, and that India would be the third largest. A year later Goldman Sachs researchers predicted China would pass the United States in 2027 and India’s economy would become larger than that of the United States before 2050. Investment bankers predict Brazil’s economy in 2050 will be as large as Japan’s, and the Indonesian and Mexican economies will be larger than those of the United Kingdom and Germany.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ researchers expect the “E-7” (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey) will be about 25 percent larger than the current G-7 and will be driving the growth of the global economy. Whatever one may think of the details of such projections, there is little doubt that momentous changes in relative nation-state economic standing are in the offing. The role these new economic powers play in the international political economy will matter significantly. Whether they will be prone to new crises brought on by increased financialization of the sort now plaguing the United States will also be important. Greater financialization and fragility creates new dependencies and therefore new possibilities for global crisis.

The importance of China is hard to overstate. It has already made advances in a number of parts of the world. For example, at its recent summit with forty-eight African leaders, Hu Jintao pledged to double assistance to the continent, cancel debt owed by thirty-three countries, and provide five billion dollars in concessional loans and credits. The Chinese president has also been traveling in Latin America, which is increasingly orienting its trade to Asia. Other developments in Asia, such as the move by the region’s finance ministers toward creating a common currency, also have major implications for the dollar.

In Asia itself there are major historical changes underway. A recent Foreign Policy essay begins: “Northern Asia is in transition. After 60 years of U.S. domination, the balance of power in the region is shifting. The United States is in relative decline, China is on the ascent, and Japan and Korea are in flux. The implications for Washington are profound.”13 What has been called a “Beijing Consensus” based on respect for sovereignty and mutual economic benefit is widely appealing as an alternative to Washington’s version of spreading democracy and the “free” market by cruise missiles and economic threats. Nonetheless, China is an exploitative power repressive to its working class. It is a transitional capitalist economy in which the children of high party officials have appropriated the social wealth as a result of the defeat of socialism.

The point is not that these emerging state powers are progressive but rather that a multipolar world offers other countries some space they did not have when U.S. hegemony was unquestioned. There is emerging what Conn Hallinan calls a “consortium of convenience,”14 the drift toward a partnership among China, India, and Russia, which, if it matures, could shift global power from Washington. Russia is selling advanced military systems to both India and China and cooperating on energy. Daniel Drezner, writing in Foreign Affairs, the publication of the establishment Council on Foreign Relations, describes “a coalition of the skeptical,” which includes states ranging from Argentina to Pakistan and Nigeria, and a revitalization of the nonaligned movement in an anti-Americanism that is taking on renewed salience.15 It is possible then that we are entering a period where there will be more room for progressive states to maneuver.

The need for access to energy on the part of India and China is a factor in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) formed in 2001, which includes China, Russia, and the “stans” (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan). India has joined SCO and Iran, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Afghanistan have been given observer status. (The United States was pointedly denied observer status.) The SCO has declared that the United States should leave the Middle East and is emerging as a counter to NATO.16 While a country like India plays all sides in global maneuvering, it has invested tens of billions in gas and oil interests in Iran. Such actions, driven by the need for energy supplies, impact the prospects for U.S. violence toward Iran and the future of U.S. military bases in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. China, which in a few years will be the biggest consumer of energy in the world, has been exceedingly active all over the planet in search of energy supplies and indeed other commodities.

There is as well the emergence of a new “Seven Sisters,” a term Enrico Mattei coined to describe the seven Anglo-American companies that controlled oil in the Middle East after the Second World War. Today it is not ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and the others but Russia’s Gazprom, CNPC of China, Venezuela’s PDVSA, Brazil’s Petrobras, Saudi Aramco, and Petronas of Malaysia that are the seven giant producers. Resource nationalism is likely to grow in importance as these state-owned companies squeeze the Anglo-American companies to force additional concessions. The politics of the new Seven Sisters is, of course, diverse; the Saudis, a staunch U.S. ally, are the most powerful. That Venezuelan oil is controlled by the Chávez regime, which is trying to lead the nation toward a twenty-first century socialism, is an important development, as are new nationalizations in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Putin’s takeover of Gazprom symbolizes a reawakened Russian bear.

Crisis Four: Resources and Sustainability

The final and perhaps greatest crisis is that of the availability and distribution of such critical resources as oil, food, and water. The sustainability of human life is simply not consistent with inherently wasteful capitalist growth.

The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook tells us that 50 percent more energy will be needed in 2030 than in 2005 (after adjusting for efficiency improvements) and that almost three-fourths of this increased demand will come from developing countries, with China and India alone responsible for 45 percent of the increase in demand. After 2015, China is expected to be the planet’s biggest carbon dioxide emitter, ahead of the United States, followed by India as the third largest emitter. (Other studies show China is already the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases.)

There are two political issues of some significance here. The first is that the United States and other rich countries have used the lion’s share of the world’s resources for a long time. Social justice requires not simply that the developing countries help ration future use of nonrenewable resources but that those who have long overconsumed bear a greater than proportionate share of the cost of such a transition. Second, there must be new patterns of human development premised on ecological concerns as well as social justice and these must take a more prominent place in the work of international councils, which now seem to accept that the only important thing is terrorism. A sixth of the world’s population enjoys an energy-intensive lifestyle. As the numbers aspiring to this type of consumption grows, the planet’s problems will increase. The American Dream will become much more expensive and finally unsustainable. It cannot be widely shared along present production and consumption patterns. Not only are billions of people not benefitting from global capitalism, but those who do are adding pressure to the resource base of the planet.

Today a quarter of all deaths in the world have some link to environmental factors and most of the victims are poor people who are already vulnerable due to malnutrition and lack of access to medical care. Malnutrition is likely to become a more serious issue as food prices continue to rise. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor people are rural and most of them depend on agriculture. Since it is hard for them to make a living, there is massive migration to the cities of the developing world. A billion people now live in the slums of these growing cities where they scavenge a living or eke out a marginal existence as street vendors. Agronomists tell us that almost every country in the world has the soil, water, and climate resources to grow enough food for its people to have an adequate diet.17 However, this would require serious land reform and technical and financial support. In very few places are such policies practiced, and food insecurity is said to affect close to half of humanity.

On the more hopeful side, we are seeing countries reject the World Bank’s insistence that they not subsidize agriculture. Malawi, which for years hovered at the brink of famine, with five million of its thirteen million people needing emergency food aid after a disastrous 2005 maize harvest, decided to subsidize its poor farmers and was soon exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of maize thanks to the help it gave the farmers, whose yields grew dramatically. The United States, while willing to provide food aid from its agricultural surplus (grown with huge federal subsidies to U.S. farmers), refuses to assist farmers in poor countries. Even as it insists that they follow the free market, the United States undermines the ability of third-world farmers to compete by dumping free or low-cost agricultural exports in their countries.

There is a growing use of maize to produce ethanol and soy beans for diesel fuel, as well as an increased desire of large numbers of the newly affluent to consume meat. Increasingly, grains feed animals and not people. China’s average caloric intake from meat consumption, for example, has doubled since 1990, and given that it takes ten pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork and double that for beef, such a growing demand has consequences for those who find the staples of life becoming too expensive for their own survival. The food-price index computed by The Economist magazine went up by 30 percent in 2007 and will go up by far more in 2008. Indeed, the United Nation’s World Food Program issued an extraordinary emergency appeal on March 23, 2008, to governments to increase their collective donations by at least a half-billion dollars to fund the higher cost of their feeding seventy-three million people in close to eighty countries. They noted a 20 percent jump in food costs in just three weeks along with the impact of the increase in oil prices on shipping costs. Grain prices are rising at an annual rate of 80–90 percent. Rice prices surged 30 percent in one day in late March 2008, having doubled in the less than three months since the start of the year, provoking protests among the poor in some Asian countries where rice is a dietary staple.

At the same time, what has been called the American diet of refined white flour, corn sweeteners, and corn-fed animal fats is replacing traditional diets for too many of the world’s people. Refined sugars create obesity and promote diseases such as diabetes by replacing the complex nutrients of traditional foods. The uncontrolled profit motive is destroying health and increasing medical costs dramatically as it poisons its customers with adulterated and unhealthy foods. Each of these broad areas of crisis is brought about by the normal activities of capitalists in a system that accepts the right to profit at virtually any cost. The mass media and the political system strive at all times to keep the public from understanding the heavy burden on global humanity that these systemic priorities impose.

Conclusion

In my remarks I have stressed four areas of crisis of the contemporary world system: the financial crisis, the loss of relative power by the United States, the rise of other centers of accumulation, and resource depletion and ecological crisis. The U.S. strategy remains to project military power to control oil and other resources. The other wing of the eagle is relying on appropriation of surplus through financial vehicles, but this hardly exhausts its tactics. It also demands the enforcement of protected monopoly rents by international patent and licensing regimes to protect intangible property rights, from Microsoft Windows to Big Pharma claiming ownership of the human genome. The extension of property rights and the enclosing of the scientific commons need to be (and are being) opposed by developing countries, which pay exorbitant licensing fees and are not allowed to use what in the past would be common knowledge inheritance.

Just as high-risk finance needs to be limited and socially controlled, science should be liberated so that technological progress is not artificially constrained and monopoly rents cannot be demanded. For the developing world, the strategies of both wings of the imperial eagle have been exposed.

The Washington Consensus has been discredited, and although the damage it causes continues, it has not achieved Washington’s goals. There has been a uniting of much of the world into a coalition of the unwilling. If serious left-wing governments took power in many countries of the South, there could be dramatic reconstruction of the global political economy. However, those who now run these countries are hardly revolutionaries. We can expect elements of collaboration, cooperation, and contestation depending on what pressures these elites are subject to. A progressive South Africa could help shape an alternative to the Anglo-American capitalist world system and influence new centers of power that claim to represent the interests of the Global South and someday may have governments that actually do so.

Notes
1. This section draws on William K. Tabb, “The Centrality of Finance,” Journal of World-Systems Research, XIII (2007), 1.
2. Martin Wolf, “Unfettered finance is Fast Reshaping the Global Economy,” Financial Times (June 18, 2007).
3. John Bellamy Foster, “The Financialization of Capitalism,” Monthly Review (April 2007): 1.
4. William K. Tabb “The Two Wings of the Eagle,” in John Bellamy Foster and Robert W, McChesney, eds., Pox Americana: Exploring the American Empire (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004).
5. Kenneth Rogoff, Eswar Prasad, Shang-Jin Wei, and M. Ayhan Kose (2003) “The Effects of Financial Globalization on Developing Countries: Some Empirical Evidence,” http://www.imf.org/research.
6. Martin Wolf , “Why the Sub-Prime Crisis is a Turning Point for the World Economy,” paper presented at the Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre, Nottingham University, March 5, 2008, http://globalisationandeconomicpolicy.org. The Powerpoint presentation, which is available on the Web, has a number of useful graphs and tables.
7. Krishna Guha and Chris Giles, “IMF wants more say for rising economies; Asian countries would have greater influence,” Financial Times, April 5, 2008.
8. Philip Stephens, “A Table for Thirteen,” Foreign Policy (January/February, 2008): 65.
9. Willaim K. Tabb, “Globalization Today; At the Borders of Class and State Theory,” Science & Society (January 2009).
10. Mark Engler “Latin America Banks on Independence,” In These Times (February 2008): 43.
11. Craig Karmin and Joanna Slater, “Dollar’s Dive Deepens as Oil Soars,” Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2008.
12. Jeffrey Frankel, “The Euro Could Surpass the Dollar Within the Next Decade,” (March 18, 2008), http://www.voxeu.org. 2008.
13. Jason T. Shaplen and James Laney, “Washington’s Eastern Sunset; The Decline of U.S. Power in Northeast Asia,” Foreign Policy (November-December 2008): 82.
14. Conn Hallinan, “Challenging a Unipolar World,” Foreign Policy in Focus, January 21 2008, http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4904.
15. Daniel W. Drezner, “The New New World Order,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2007).
16. William K. Tabb, “Fumbling Through the Great Game in Eurasia: the British and U.S. spreading ‘Freedom’ through Invasion, Occupation, and Regime Change,” Z Magazine (November 19, 2006).
17. Fred Magdoff “The World Food Crisis,” Monthly Review (May 2008).

rasa sakit

"Ya Allah... Azabnya...", aku mengaduh perlahan. Sampai bila harusku berdepan dengan keperitan dan kesakitan ini.

"Allah.. Allah...sakitnya..", menahan kesakitan. Mesin yang menghempap badan ini terus menerus mengsakiti tubuh badan ini. Terasa peluh mula memercik disegenap dahiku. Manik-manik peluh ini mula membasahi tubuh badanku.

Begitu payahnya aku menghadapinya. Tidak semudah yang disangka. Aku tahu setiap kesusahan pasti berakhir dengan kesenangan. Tapi.. sangat mengilukan..sangat memeritkan.

Dengan keazaman, mimpi akan menjadi nyata. Kepala aku mula merawang jauh ke angkasa lepas, aku berasa berada di ISS macam Dr. Sheikh Muszapha. Walau kepala menerawang, rasa sakit masih terasa.

Aku terfikir, setiap apa yang kita impikan tiada jalan mudah untuk mengecapinya. Lantas ianya adalah satu motivasi terbaik untukku untuk mara dan mara kedepan.

Puncak jaya itu harus didaki dengan tabah. Tiada kesungguhan, maka tiada lah kejayaan. Aku bermonolog sendirian sambil menahan kepedihan.

Tiba-tiba aku terdengar suara... Aku mencari-cari suara itu.

"Eh, bangun la.." Ops..

Aku bermimpikah? atau aku sedang menghadapi realiti.

Insya ALlah ia pasti menjadi realiti.

Success comes from great immigination..

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Great Ideas

They're all around you..

You're getting great ideas all of the time. Great ideas that no one else ever thought of. Great ideas that only you know how to make happen. Great ideas that can make you rich. Great ideas that can set you free from you current job - if you want that. Great ideas that can drastically change your life and the lives of the people you care most about.

There's one thing though. When they come to you, you gotta write them down or in some other concrete way acknowledge them. I say write them down because that's what works for me. I carry 4x6 cards in my purse to write down my ideas. I've also seen people carry little notebooks around to do this.

Here are 5 of the many ways you can capture your ideas:

1. Speak your ideas into the memo feature of your phone or palm pilot or whatever your communication gadget of choice. I use this a lot.

2. Call your answering service and leave your ideas on it.

3. Email your ideas to yourself from your work computer, lap top, palm pilot or cell phone

4. Write your ideas on one of those suction note pads that sticks on your car's windshield. Then tear off the page and put it into an "idea" file until you can work on it.

5. Write your ideas on your hand - crude but effective

6. If you're sleeping when an idea come to you, wake up an write it down. Some of your best ideas could come to you in dreams or while you're in that weird place between sleeping and awakening. My newest song "Peace Will Be", came to me in my sleep. It is one of the few times I've received a complete song at one time. What if I'd turned over and ignored it.

Do you get my drift here? You want to grab hold of your idea the moment it arrives. You can work on it later. But you gotta take it when it comes to you. You will not remember it later. And, someone else might get wind of it and follow thru. Then you'll be mad at yourself. And here's something great. The more you acknowledge your ideas, the more ideas you'll get.

The little whispers are always trying to give you the world's next great idea? Are you listening?

Copyright ©2006 Jan Spencer

please open

Being alone.

Only has nothing in front of me.

Look around..but nobody.

Turn left and right. still I didn't find it.

Until now still looking for.

The news of justice...peace...and indipendent.

Please..please..open your eyes..

Open the door rahmah...

Give the best key to open it...

Yea... time to open and see..

No more sleepy...

Just do what have you feel you want to do...

Time calls for do... and do for it...



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Obama sweeps to victory as first black president

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent David Espo, Ap Special Correspondent – 3 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. "Change has come," he told to a huge throng of jubilant supporters.

The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his historic triumph by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states — Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa and more.

On a night for Democrats to savor, they not only elected Obama the nation's 44th president but padded their majorities in the House and Senate, and come January will control both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.

Obama's election capped a meteoric rise — from mere state senator to president-elect in four years.

In his first speech as victor, to thousands at Grant Park in his home town of Chicago, Obama catalogued the challenges ahead. "The greatest of a lifetime," he said, "two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century."

He added, "There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face."

McCain called his former rival to concede defeat — and the end of his own 10-year quest for the White House. "The American people have spoken, and spoken clearly," McCain told disappointed supporters in Arizona.

President Bush added his congratulations from the White House, where his tenure runs out on Jan. 20. "May God bless whoever wins tonight," he had told dinner guests earlier.

Obama, in his speech, invoked the words of Lincoln and echoed John F. Kennedy.

"So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder," he said.

He and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession, and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.

The popular vote was close — 51.3 percent to 47.5 percent with 73 percent of all U.S. precincts counted — but not the count in the Electoral College, where it mattered most.

There, Obama's audacious decision to contest McCain in states that hadn't gone Democratic in years paid rich dividends.

Obama has said his first order of presidential business will be to tackle the economy. He has also pledged to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.

A survey of voters leaving polling places on Tuesday showed the economy was by far the top Election Day issue. Six in 10 voters said so, and none of the other top issues — energy, Iraq, terrorism and health care — was picked by more than one in 10.

In Washington, the Democratic leaders of Congress celebrated.

"It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change," said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Said Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California: "Tonight the American people have called for a new direction. They have called for change in America."

Shortly after midnight in the East, The Associated Press count showed Obama with 338 electoral votes, well over the 270 needed for victory. McCain had 141 after winning states that comprised the normal Republican base.

Interviews with voters suggested that almost six in 10 women were backing Obama nationwide, while men leaned his way by a narrow margin. Just over half of whites supported McCain, giving him a slim advantage in a group that Bush carried overwhelmingly in 2004.

The results of the AP survey were based on a preliminary partial sample of nearly 10,000 voters in Election Day polls and in telephone interviews over the past week for early voters.

Democrats also acclaimed Senate successes by former Gov. Mark Warner in Virginia, Rep. Tom Udall in New Mexico and Rep. Mark Udall in Colorado. All won seats left open by Republican retirements.

In New Hampshire, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen defeated Republican Sen. John Sununu in a rematch of their 2002 race, and Sen. Elizabeth Dole fell to Democrat Kay Hagan in North Carolina.

The Democrats also looked for gains in the House. They defeated Republican incumbents Rep. Tom Feeney and Ric Keller in Florida, 22-year veteran Chris Shays in Connecticut and Rep. Robin Hayes in North Carolina.

At least two Democrats lost their seats. Rep. Tim Mahoney fell after admitting to two extramarital affairs while serving his first term in Florida. In Louisiana, Democratic Rep. Don Cazayoux lost the seat he had won in a special election six months ago.

The resurgent Democrats also elected a governor in one of the nation's traditional bellwether states when Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon won his race.

A dozen states elected governors, and ballots across the country were dotted with issues ranging from taxes to gay rights.

An estimated 187 million voters were registered, and in an indication of interest in the battle for the White House, 40 million or so had already voted as Election Day dawned.

Obama sought election as one of the youngest presidents, and one of the least experienced in national political affairs.

That wasn't what set the Illinois senator apart, though — neither from his rivals nor from the other men who had served as president since the nation's founding more than two centuries ago. A black man, he confronted a previously unbreakable barrier as he campaigned on twin themes of change and hope in uncertain times.

McCain, a prisoner of war during Vietnam, a generation older than his rival at 72, was making his second try for the White House, following his defeat in the battle for the GOP nomination in 2000.

A conservative, he stressed his maverick's streak. And although a Republican, he did what he could to separate himself from an unpopular president.

For the most part, the two presidential candidates and their running mates, Biden and Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, spent weeks campaigning in states that went for Bush four years ago.

McCain and Obama each won contested nominations — the Democrat outdistancing former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton — and promptly set out to claim the mantle of change.

Obama won California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

McCain had Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

He also won at least 3 of Nebraska's five electoral votes, with the other two in doubt.

Normative and Positive

Today is my first class of public finance. So, the first class of course I brought with me course outline and material for introduction. My students showed their attention for the first class.

As starting point, I am just touched the simple concept of public finance and asked them whether they still remember or not based on previous subjects. Erm.. my assumption was true, they could not remember some terms of the basic in economics. It's okey. My approach is only to see how far they still can remember what had they learned before.

My focus is normative and positive analysis. Both of these analysis present the analytical tools used by public finance economists. Positive analysis deals with statements of cause and effect. Where as, the normative analysis is more study on the subjective effects. Let's say, by doing campaign "say no" to cigarette, ministry of health in Malaysia found that the number of smoker are reducing by this year.

By time gone, I do advised them to be ready for next week. Other than that we will continue next week....tunggu noo...

"Friends will keep you sane, Love could fill your heart, a Lover can warm your bed, but Lonely is the soul without a mate... the only thing make your lonely having a mate by tahajjud.. tell and cry to Him, the only Soul mate for everything..nothing than nothing"


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