Hadi a man of ‘no substance’, says Sarawak church leader

By NANCY NAIS AND NG AI FERN

Published: 22 January 2016 5:26 PM

Bishop of the Anglican Church's Kuching Diocese, Datuk Bolly Lapok (right), seen here with Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Azmin Ali in March last year, criticises PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang for making disparaging remarks against Christians in Sarawak. – The Malaysian Insider pic, January 22, 2016.The Bishop of the Anglican Church's Kuching Diocese in Sarawak has joined in the furore over PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang's remarks against Christian missionaries in Sarawak and Sabah.

Datuk Bolly Lapok, who is also the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Southeast Asia, said the Islamist party president was a "loose cannon" and a person of "no substance", and who had no right to talk about Christians and Sarawak's indigenous people, the Dayaks, in such a disparaging manner.

“With due respect to him as a one of the political leaders, Hadi (should) put all of his condemning words in a basket and throw it into our Sarawak river. He (is) plainly mischievous," Bolly said of Hadi's recent remarks that Christian missionaries spread their teachings in Africa and in Sabah and Sarawak after being rejected in the West.

Hadi's remarks were published in the PAS organ, Harakah.

“I do not know what sort of books he is reading, what sources he is quoting or how he reached that observation. He is a person of no substance and has no right to talk about Christians or the Dayaks in Sarawak,” Bolly said in an interview with The Malaysian Insider.

Hadi had said, “Kristian sudah tidak laku di negara di mana tahap pendidikan tinggi seperti Jerman, Perancis, Britain dan negara Eropah lain. Mereka juga membawa ajaran itu ke kawasan pedalaman negara kita seperti Sabah dan Sarawak. (Christianity is no longer attractive in countries where there is a high level of education, such as Germany, France, Britain and other European countries. They brought their teaching to the interiors of our country like Sabah and Sarawak.)

Hadi had also said that Christian missionaries used unethical means to spread their faith, such as giving money and other incentives.

Bolly today slammed these remarks, and said that Sarawak's history showed that Christians in the state, the majority of whom are Dayak people, would disagree that they had been exploited.

“Humans are imperfect, but to dismiss the whole missionary movement as rejected in Europe is completely arrogant and mischievous,” Bolly said.

Christianity is recorded as having come to Sarawak in the 1930s through missionaries.

Bolly, who is also chairman of the Council of Churches of Malaysia (CCM), said he heard of Hadi's remarks on Wednesday when he arrived home from the Meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion in Canterbury, England.

At the meeting, Anglican clerics had just discussed the issue of moderation and the threat to civilisation posed by the Islamic State (Isis) militant group.

He said even governments of Muslim countries were calling for help to fight the Isis threat.

“We are called to fight together on things which are wrong. To my dismay, upon arriving home on Wednesday, this was what I hear,” Bolly said.

Meanwhile, Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) Sarawak chairman Mohamad Fidzuan Zaidi described Hadi’s statement on Christian missionaries as very insensitive.

The former Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) Sarawak election director said such baseless criticism would not do well in a multi-racial and multi-religious state.

“Amanah Sarawak rejects any effort to belittle other religions,” he said. – January 22, 2016.

Hadi is talking nonsense. Age affecting hi mind? Islam is being forced onto indigenous prople and others yet he blames Christians for doing this.

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Villagers denied subsidies, water tanks for not voting BN

FMT Reporters

 | January 22, 2016

DAP slams bias actions, calls it blatant abuse of power that is tantamount to a criminal act in many democratic countries.

PETALING JAYA: A group of villagers from Kampung Mentu Tapu, Sarawak has claimed that their village head deprived them of pepper fertiliser subsidies, water tanks and tar-sealed roads due to their political affiliation.

The village falls under the Barisan Nasional-held constituency of Kedup.

In a statement, Abdul Aziz Isa, the Special Assistant to Sarawak DAP Chairman Chong Chieng Jen, labelled these actions as a blatant abuse of power and said it was time to eradicate sadistic and ruthless politics, as well as its culprits.

He also said that in many democratic countries, these abuses were viewed as criminal.

“Why must funds meant for all rakyat be deprived to those who don’t vote for BN?”

He said this when accompanying the group to lodge a report at the One Stop Centre IPD Kuching, and described the abuse of power as an act of “favouritism and injustice”.

BN leaders and supporters, Abdul Aziz said, should know that the allocations came from the taxpayers and therefore, must be returned fairly to the rakyat regardless of their political affiliations.

He then urged the Chief Minister and relevant authorities to investigate this matter.

 These actions are a blatant abuse of power. Who do these prople think they are - god.

May God deal with them as their folly deserves!

5 Popular Knife Myths and Why They’re Not True

August 7, 2014 By Thomas Xavier | Updated: February 28, 2015 23 Comments

There’s a whole lot of nonsense that gets repeated on the internet, and there’s no exception to this rule, even for the knife community. Many of the “facts” about knives that people wholeheartedly believe are not facts at all, but are really just myths, commonly believed and rarely ever questioned.

While these myths are typically blatantly false, there are good explanations for why many of them exist: whether it’s because historically, they may have been true at one point, or whether it’s because knife companies encourage specific myths to continue by using product branding and advertising.

The knife community would be far better off nipping these myths in the bud, but they’ve been repeated so frequently that more and more people on the forums begin to believe that they’re true.

Here’s 5 popular knife myths that have come up on the forums that really, really don’t want to die.

Spyderco Endura FFG EDC Knife – Amazon

Myth #1: Forged Knives Are Stronger

This myth has been debunked many times over, and yet it keeps coming up. Surprisingly, it’s still quite a frequent flyer, even amongst those in the knife community who really should know better by now. To clear things up yet again, here’s the abridged version of why forged knives are actually not stronger than production knives:

Debunk that Myth! Why It’s Not True:

The core issue with this myth is that, historically, it was actually ground in truth (hah!). In the past, steel in its most raw form had many impurities, and so the process of forging quite literally beat many of them out. This helped produce a more congruent material for a bladesmith to make a knife’s blade out of.

But it’s 2014. These days we have robots on Mars, so I’d hope (and yes it is the case) that we can make pure steels that do not benefit from forging in the slightest.

Another reason this myth has persisted over such a long period of time is due to the industrial process. Because this process has become so damn efficient, stamping out a thousand blades a second has at times come to mean that knives get produced with no regard for performance or grinds. Many cheap knives were created on the production line, and therefore, people started connecting cheapness with production. Knives that were forged, by contrast, were often of higher quality than these crudely stamped cheap knives.

That being said, not every production knife is a cheap knife, and even though the price of a forged knife is much higher than a production knife (think of all that hard labour, and those long hours of manual work going into that knife), oftentimes production knives come out on top, if they are designed well and have great steel that is.

Modern powdered steels like CPM 3V, which is widely renown as a very tough steel, by design cannot be forged. If you limit yourself to only buying knives that are forged, you will be missing out on many of these technological advances, such as  CPM S90V or CTS-204P, currently used frequently in the cutlery world for example.

Forged knives will also always have a degree of variance between them. In terms of pure performance, a machine ground blade, made from powdered steel and professionally heat treated, will be consistently superior to the average knife from a custom knife maker who forges his own blades.

Obviously, one can always argue that, in terms of aesthetics, or the “soul” of the blade, forging yields better results. But in terms of strength alone, production knives, if they’re well made, will typically be stronger than forged blades.

Note: I’m in no way saying that forged knives are subpar – many are excellent, but that’s based on the skill of the craftsman – not the act of forging.

CCK Knives Pigsticker

Myth #2: The More Expensive the Knife, the Better the Quality

You may have noticed that there can be enormous price differences between one knife and the next. Though that price difference is sometimes an indication of higher quality, overall, it’s really not typically the case. Higher price does not often mean better knife quality.

Debunk that Myth! Why It’s Not True:

Knives, like nearly anything else, are worth however much people are willing to pay for them. Prices do not necessarily reflect the quality or performance of the final product. My ZDP-189 Spyderco Delica is so acute that in terms of pure cutting performance it destroys pretty much any of my other knives, regardless of budget. I would wager it would crush the vast majority of custom knives on this front as well.

But it’s not a custom – so it’s not perceived by others to be worth as much as a custom. Hence why it’ll go for cheaper.

In terms of performance, a Helle Viking would be roughly comparable to any odd Mora knife (take the dirt cheap Mora Classic for instance). There’s a huge difference in how they look, but in terms of quality, especially when it comes to using the knife as a survival tool, honestly the Mora Classic is pretty on par, even though there’s over an $80 price difference.

When it comes to fit and finish, whilst it’s generally the case that more expensive knives are better constructed, this again isn’t a hard and fast rule. Also, cost doesn’t seem to be a necessary factor for good fit and finish. One only has to check out the, frankly quite epic, Kershaw Emerson CQC-6K to essentially have their view that “quality comes at a cost” shattered into a million pieces. Unreal levels of quality for an astonishingly low price.

Kershaw Emerson CQC-6K Folding EDC Knife – Amazon

Myth #3: Hardness Has to do with Steel Type

This knife myth is obviously more common amongst those of us who are really into knives. Typically, those who buy knives purely as tools and don’t have vast collections of them (ahem! yes that’s me), rarely look at steel type. That being said, amongst those of us (and I do include myself in that us) who obsess over the materials a knife is made out of, this myth is pretty popular.

Debunk that Myth! Why It’s Not True:

The short of the story is that all steels types have an optimal hardness, but the heat treat is what determines the final resulting hardness of a blade: not the steel type itself.

The long version plays out like this:

The reason this myth exists and continues to be believed by many is ultimately because of branding and the claims made by knife companies.

Knife hardness is usually measured on the Rockwell scale, with the typical knife steel falling anywhere between 54 and 60 Rockwell. Certain steels, like S30V are heat treated to be around 58 Rockwell hardness, while others, like ZDP-189, are heat treated to be around 64 Rockwell hardness.

Companies can opt to heat treat these steels to be harder, but ultimately most do not, due to the risk that increasing hardness also increases chances that the knife blade may snap if happens to be used in an aggressive way (such as if it is used to pry with instead of being used to for its intended purpose: to cut with).

Although a custom knife maker may heat treat one blade at a time and time the process so perfectly so that the end result will be close to optimal, production knives will be heat treated in batches, as this is much more cost efficient. Because a knife company is not going to test every single blade, then heat treat the batch all over again if the knives are not exactly 58 Rockwell, knife companies instead have looser tolerances, specifying a hardness range of 57-59 for S30V (for example).

What that means for consumers is that depending on the company doing the heat treat and the specific batch in question, you might actually have optimal S30V blade, or you might have one that falls short by a few Rockwell points. Hardness doesn’t have as much to do with the steel type as it does that particular heat treat your specific knife went through.

Spyderco Military EDC Folding Knife – Amazon

Myth #4: An ‘X’ Grind Is Always Best

Now when people say this and mean it’s always best for them, that’s one thing. But when people start claiming that “X” grind is always best for anyone, in all situations, something is quite wrong about their statement.

Debunk that Myth! Why It’s Not True:

We are all highly opinionated meat sacks, and as a consequence, we tend to think our way of doing things is the best way of doing things. When it comes to grinds, this issue can very quickly turn into a giant flamefest. Hell, everyone’s got their own preferences, even I prefer specific grinds over others. But I also have to admit that, objectively speaking, all grinds can (and do) excel at specific tasks over other grinds.

Let’s have an example, shall we? I dislike hollow grinds. I’ve always preferred having more meat on my blades, so that just in case I ever want to, I always have the choice of turning my knives into super slicers or tough workhorses.

That being said, a knife with a hollow grind will take a razor edge far easier than any other grind (as a general rule). The primary grind is usually much thinner, and as such, when it comes to putting on the final edge, that edge is much leaner than the edge on a stereotypical scandi grind or convex grind. The thinner edge makes initial cuts easier, due to lack of wedging. Once the edge ends, a hollow grind will tend to form a T-type of wedge, which for me, is frustrating when cutting things like potatoes and thick cardboard.

We all have our biases, but at the end of the day: pick the right knife for the right job! A nice lean full flat ground chef’s knife for slicing vegetables, a thick full convex for chopping wood, or a deep hollow grind for your cut throat razor. They all have their place!

Condor Tool and Knife Bushlore – Amazon

Myth #5: Stainless Steel is All the Same/Are No Good

ARG. This myth is one of my worst gripes. Not at all true, and yet so frequently repeated it drives me mad.

Debunk that Myth! Why It’s Not True:

Stainless steel is not “inferior carbon steel,” contrary to what’s sometimes said around the internet. The vast majority of high edge retention steels are actually stainless: CPM S90V, CPM S110V, and Vanadis 23, for example. On that same note, stainless does not mean brittle or weak. INFI (it’s more or less a stainless steel) is very tough, as is 440B with the right heat treat, and 12C27, which is used by Mora in all their stainless blades, is also very tough.

Judging the performance of a steel based purely on its stain resistant properties is incredibly ignorant. Look at alloy content, the heat treat, and hardness to determine what steel suits your needs. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, judge a knife purely on whether it’s stainless steel or not.

Opinel No. 8 Carbon Pocket Knife – Amazon

Heard any claims about knives that you just aren’t sure about? Know any more myths that irk you whenever you hear them repeated? Feel free to ask or rant in the comments.

Malaysian Birthright

Federal Constitution states who is Malay, and who isn’t
        
by Joseph Francis


QUICK TAKE: An Umno blog’s prejudiced take in recent days implying that former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad – his family hails from Kerala, southwest India – was not a “real Malay” begs the question of who a “real Malay” is.

Three misconceptions arise here.

Firstly, there’s a misconception that since there’s a Malay language, there must be a Malay race. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Malay was created from a Cambodian dialect as a lingua franca, for the archipelago, by Hindus and Buddhists from India. Malai in Tamil means hill, denoting the hill country from where the Cambodian dialect originated.

Secondly, there’s a misconception that only people from the archipelago and Arabs could be Malays. If Arabs could be Malays, why not other people?

Thirdly, there’s a misconception that Malays are Bumiputera (sons of the soil) in the peninsula. If the Malays are not Orang Asal in the peninsula, how could they be Bumiputera?

Only the Orang Asli in the peninsula are Bumiputera – the Federal Constitution uses the term Aborigine – just as only the Orang Asal in Sabah and Sarawak are Bumiputera.

The fact is that the term Malay was codified, for administrative reasons, by the British in Malaya as an umbrella term to cover the Muslims in the peninsula and Singapore who used Malay to communicate with each other.

These Muslims knew themselves as Bugis, Javanese, Minang, Aceh and “Others” and for many years resisted the Malay term as applied to them.

Not so long ago, even as late as in the years before the May 13 1969 searing race riots, a “Malay” would punch anyone in the face if referred to as “Melayu”.

Mahathir listed himself down as Indian Muslim when he applied to the University of Malaya in Singapore to do medicine. The proverbial cat was out of the bag when the late Lee Kuan Yew reportedly gave the late Sultan of Johor a copy of Mahathir’s application form to enter the university in Singapore.

In any case, this is not so important except to illustrate the fact that Malay was not a term universally accepted by among those people who the British insisted on calling Malays for administrative reasons.

The term Malay has been defined under Article 160 of the Federal Constitution:

“Malay” means a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, conforms to Malay custom and – (a) was before Merdeka Day born in the Federation or in Singapore or born of parents one of whom was born in the Federation or in Singapore, or is on that day domiciled in the Federation or in Singapore; or (b) is the issue of such a person.

Obviously, this means that not every Tom, Dick and Harry, although Muslim and speaking Malay, can be regarded as Malay.

Birth and place of birth and descent determines who is Malay and who isn’t. Unless it can be proven that Mahathir, 90, was in fact not born in Malaya or Singapore before Merdeka and/or does not meet the other criteria stated in the Federal Constitution, it can’t be said that he’s not a “real Malay”.

So who are  the Pendatangs??? All except for Orang Asli. So treat them with utmost RESPECT!

Christians slaughtered

Christians slaughtered The numbers are staggering. In Iraq and Syria, between 1 and 1.8 million Christians have been slaughtered or displaced. 600,000 Christians have fled for their lives in Syria in just the last four years alone. Iraq's decimated Christian community has dropped from over 1.4 million to merely 270,000 Christians. Christians are being exterminated. It's genocide. Yet the Obama Administration refuses to act. Even worse, it is denying Christians critical international legal protections by intentionally excluding Christians from its genocide designation. If President Obama doesn't call it genocide, he's not legally required to protect Christians. It's horrendous. If he won't defend Christians, we must. We've filed a critical amicus brief in a major international human rights court to defend Christians from jihadist genocide. Now we're demanding Congress recognize the genocide and protect Christians. Christians are being slaughtered each and every day. Will you allow this genocide to continue? Sign Our Petition: Recognize the Genocide; Protect Christians. Jordan Sekulow

 

ISIS - the Islamic State - is trying to exterminate Christians.

ISIS - the Islamic State - is trying to exterminate Christians.

It beheads Christian missionaries, including their young children. It burns Christians alive in cages. It buries explosives and detonates them with Christians kneeling on top of them.

It's genocide. It's evil.

President Obama is preparing to declare ISIS terror against only one religious minority as genocide. But he is intentionally planning to leave Christians off the list.

Why?

Because the Administration doesn't want to be responsible for following international laws to intervene and stop this historic evil.

It's cowardice. And it's wrong.

We're dedicated to defending Christians from genocide. We've just filed a critical brief to defend persecuted Christians at the European Court of Human Rights. Now we're working on Capitol Hill to pass critical legislation recognizing the genocide of Christians and demanding crucial legal protections.

We won't stop until the U.S. leads the world in ending this evil.

Sign Our Petition: Recognize the Genocide; Protect Christians.

Jay Sekulow
ACLJ Chief Counsel

 

Facebook aiding and abetting terrorists to attack Israel

Facebook Caves on Israel Hate Page

Exclusive: Social network rescinds earlier decision to allow page that incites violence

By Paul Miller • 01/07/16 9:46am

The ‘Stop Israelis’ Facebook page. (Photo: Facebook)

In an email sent Wednesday afternoon obtained exclusively by this reporter, Facebook rescinded its initial decision that a page that incited hatred and violence against Israelis met “community standards.”

“As you may have noticed, we have now taken down both those pages as we made a mistake earlier,” a Facebook spokesperson explained in the email.

The two referenced pages are “Stop Palestinians” and “Stop Israelis.” Both pages were set up by Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center as a test to determine how much hateful and violent incitement is tolerated on the social media website. The civil rights group was also monitoring how quickly the pages would be taken down.

According to Shurat HaDin, The Big Facebook Experiment began on December 28th, 2015, with its simultaneous launch of two identical Facebook pages: Stop Palestinians and Stop Israelis. Shurat HaDin then began posting nearly identical content on both pages. The content on the “Stop Palestinians” page incited hatred and violence against Palestinians, and the content on the “Stop Israelis” page incited hatred and violence toward Israelis. Over the course of two days, the severity of the incitement was gradually increased on both pages.

After two days, the civil rights group reported the pages to Facebook on the grounds of violating community standards.

‘We have displayed what thousands of Jewish activists and the Israeli security services have known since September—Facebook’s bias and refusal to act in real time is spurring on the terrorism.’

“Facebook was very quick to respond to our reports. On the same day that we filed the report, Facebook removed the ‘Stop Palestinians’ page that incited against Palestinians. Facebook sent us a response stating that the page was removed for ‘containing credible threat of violence’ which ‘violated our community standards.’ On the other hand, the ‘Stop Israelis’ page that incited against Israelis, was not removed. We received a response from Facebook stating that the page was ‘not in violation of Facebook’s rules.’ The ‘Stop Israelis’ page is still live on Facebook,” explained Shurat HaDin in a press release.

News first broke on Monday about what the Israeli and Jewish press deemed “Facebook’s double standard in removing inflammatory material on its site.” Calling their earlier decision a “mistake,” Facebook insists it “does not tolerate hate speech, including against people on the basis of their nationality. We review all reports and take down such content. Both these pages have now been removed from Facebook,” noted the email.

Shurat HaDin is not buying their statement.

“Unfortunately we do not believe it was a simple ‘mistake’ as Israelis and Jews worldwide have been relentlessly protesting that Facebook is completely unresponsive to this type of Palestinian incitement to violence,” said Shurat HaDin founder and Israeli attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. “Two months ago we filed a lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of over 20,000 Israeli citizens, seeking an injunction against Facebook for “intentionally disregarding the widespread incitement and calls for murder of Jews being posted on its web pages by Palestinians. This simple experiment and its results speak for themselves.”

Ms. Darshan-Leitner continued, “Every Israeli that walks the street, rides the buses and sits in a public cafe is feeling the consequences of the Palestinian incitement to violence on social media.  We have displayed what thousands of Jewish activists and the Israeli security services have known since September—that the online incitement is driving the stabbing and vehicle attacks, and Facebook’s bias and refusal to act in real time is spurring on the terrorism.”

Noting that social media platforms like Facebook have sophisticated tools to block out subjects like pornography, Ms. Darshan-Leitner asserted that social media organizations must use their tools to stop incitement by Islamic extremists to kill Jews.

“A publicly traded company like Facebook that utilizes the Internet to make its billions in profits,” said Ms. Darshan-Leitner, “cannot simply turn a blind eye to the role it plays in aiding and abetting terrorists to carrying out their attacks.”

Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on twitter @pauliespoint.

Facebook founder being a Jew and yet allowing such attacks on fellow Jews is a new evil in itself. The Christian and Jewish community now should cancel  and terminate their Facebook accounts with immediate effect and not be an accessory to Facebook 'criminal and biased hatred' of Jews and Israel.