Taqwa Bekalan Dunia Akhirat

Taqwa adalah bekalan untuk dunia dan hari Akhirat. Firman Allah SWT:Maksudnya: “Hendaklah kamu menambah bekalan. Maka sesungguhnya, sebaik-baik bekalan itu adalah sifat taqwa.” (Al Baqarah: 197) Ramai muallim menghuraikan sifat taqwa itu adalah bekalan di hari Akhirat. Itu tidak boleh dinafikan. Itulah yang penting. Itulah yang asas.

Tetapi bagi orang mukmin, taqwa juga perlu sebagai bekalan untuk dunia. Sebab jalan dan landasan kejayaan di dunia bagi orang mukmin adalah taqwa. Dengan taqwa dia dibantu Tuhan. Untuk berjaya dalam berekonomi perlukan taqwa. Hendak dapat kemenangan dalam perjuangan mesti dengan taqwa. Hendak mendapat bantuan dan pertolongan Tuhan, mestilah berdasarkan taqwa. Hendak terlepas dari azab, penderitaan dan bala bencana di dunia mesti dengan sifat taqwa. Di sinilah kita lihat, bukan sahaja taqwa itu penting di Akhirat tetapi untuk orang mukmin, mereka juga mendapat bantuan, rahmat, berkat, kejayaan, kemenangan dan kebahagiaan dari Tuhan di dunia lagi dengan adanya sifat taqwa.

Tuhan janjikan kepada orang yang bertaqwa:

1. Rezekinya terjamin

2. Lepas dari bencana

3. Diberi kejayaan

4. Diberi kemenangan

5. Dihapuskan dosanya

6. Diturunkan berkat dari langit dan bumi

7. Diberi bantuan dan pembelaan

8. Dilepaskan dari masalah hidup

9. Diberi ilmu

10. Dipermudahkan urusan

11. Diwariskan bumi ini

Firman Allah SWT: Maksudnya: “Allah jadi pembela (pembantu) bagi orang-orang yang bertaqwa.” (Al Jasiyah: 19)

Maksudnya: “Jika penduduk satu kampung beriman dan bertaqwa, Kami akan bukakan berkat dari langit dan bumi.” (Al A’raf: 96)

Maksudnya: “Barang siapa bertaqwa kepada Allah, nescaya dipermudahkan urusannya.” (At Thalaq: 4)

Maksudnya: “Bertaqwalah kepada Allah, necaya Allah akan mengajar kamu.” (Al Baqarah: 282)

Maksudnya: “Barang siapa bertaqwa kepada Allah, Allah akan lepaskan dia dari masalah hidup dan memberi rezeki dari sumber yang tidak diduga.” (At Thalaq: 2-3)

Maksudnya: “Sesungguhnya bumi ini diwarisi hambahamba- Ku yang soleh (bertaqwa).” (Al Anbiya: 105)

Kalau tidak ada taqwa, mungkin Allah bantu juga seperti Allah bantu orang-orang kafir. Ertinya dapat bantuan dan pertolongan atas dasar istidraj iaitu atas dasar kutukan dan kemurkaan Tuhan. Tuhan beri dengan tidak redha. Istidraj sebenarnya adalah satu tipuan dari Tuhan. Akhirnya nanti akan terjun ke dalam Neraka. Dengan kejayaan itu mereka akan berbuat maksiat dan kemungkaran di atas muka bumi. Ia akan rosak dan merosakkan.

Di sini jelas bagi kita bahawa sifat taqwa itu bukan sahaja perlu di Akhirat tetapi perlu juga di dunia lagi. Orang kafir Allah menangkan atas dasar quwwah (kekuatan lahir). Orang mukmin diberi kemenangan atas dasar taqwa.

What Price Iraq War?

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

By DAVID LEONHARDT

The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation itself — the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.

That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending.

The two best-known analyses of the war’s costs agree on this figure, but they diverge from there. Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in this country.

Mr. Wallsten, who worked with Katrina Kosec, another economist, argues for a figure closer to $1 trillion in today’s dollars. My own estimate falls on the conservative side, largely because it focuses on the actual money that Americans would have been able to spend in the absence of a war. I didn’t even attempt to put a monetary value on the more than 3,000 American deaths in the war.

Besides the direct military spending, I’m including the gas tax that the war has effectively imposed on American families (to the benefit of oil-producing countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia). At the start of 2003, a barrel of oil was selling for $30. Since then, the average price has been about $50. Attributing even $5 of this difference to the conflict adds another $150 billion to the war’s price tag, Ms. Bilmes and Mr. Stiglitz say.

The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war’s veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 billion. If the disability rate matches Vietnam’s, the number climbs higher. Either way, Ms. Bilmes says, “It’s like a miniature Medicare.”

In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year. Before the war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern California.

Whatever number you use for the war’s total cost, it will tower over costs that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is costing about $200 billion a year.

Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about $50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations — held up in Congress partly because of their cost — might cost somewhat less. Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute, annual budget is about $6 billion.

“This war has skewed our thinking about resources,” said Mr. Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group. “In the context of the war, $20 billion is nothing.”

As it happens, $20 billion is not a bad ballpark estimate for the added cost of Mr. Bush’s planned surge in troops. By itself, of course, that price tag doesn’t mean the surge is a bad idea. If it offers the best chance to stabilize Iraq, then it may well be the right option.

But the standard shouldn’t simply be whether a surge is better than the most popular alternative — a far-less-expensive political strategy that includes getting tough with the Iraqi government. The standard should be whether the surge would be better than the political strategy plus whatever else might be accomplished with the $20 billion.

This time, it would be nice to have that discussion before the troops reach Iraq.

leonhardt@nytimes.com

Nurse Assaulted for Passing out 9/11 DVDs at Library

Below is letter to the editor which, after being published, brought negative attention to her passing out 9/11 Truth DVDs at her local library. This person was assaulted by a police officer and arrested; the officer admittedly got her contact info from the library where she had been demonstrating.

Guest Letter To The Editor:

A Peace Treaty was signed between the US Government and Vietnam in 1973, but peace did not come and alas Saigon fell to the Vietcong in 1975, over three decades ago.

It was an incredible time on many fronts holding memories, joyous, painful and otherwise momentous. A young wife with a new home, I was busy raising my pre-schooler son, delivering mail for the USPS by day and attending college at night. Like most Americans I stayed glued to the television as aircraft landed in 1975 and thin men, all ambulatory, de-boarded in their Class-A’s, home from the war and imprisonment by the enemy. Thirty-one years since elapsed. As a lyricist once said, “…but that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone…” America lost 58,000 military to death in those years of profiteering.

Nationally syndicated columnist Andy Rooney some time ago gave an excellent commentary on the deaths incurred by our always war-mongering nation—HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. I wish I could quote it here in its’ entirety but that it Mr. Rooney’s work, not mine.

To quote:
Every American knows this one:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present.
Above is excerpted from President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961.

Another often this decade erroneously attributed to Julius Caesar and/or William Shakespeare is:

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.

Take heed of those who fabricate war, invent WMDs and catalysts like the Twin Towers (3,000 dead) to take from you your rights in the name of fear-induced “terror.”

As of today, December 11, 2006 CNN reports 2932 American military dead in Iraq. This does not include private contractors, journalists et al. To see their photos of these young people used as cannon fodder in the name of the Global Elite and their PSYOPS, visit CNN and other sources you elect to research.

Just as the assassination of JFK was a coup d’etat, a prelude to war, so as well was the carefully planned execution of the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers le coup d’etat. Likewise The 911 Commission Report is probably the worst “conspiracy theory” since the “magic bullet” of the CFR-fabricated Warren Commission. (We all need to read 911 Commission: Omissions and Distortions by Professor David Ray Griffin PhD available at SCL).

Most people are not aware that until September 10th, Marvin Bush was the Chief of Security of The Twins or that seven of the so-called “suicide bombers” are alive and well. Is that not like Mark Twain saying “the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated?”

Yet this was the catalyst to send America’s alpha male and female into battle and to take from the Iraqi people their water, sewer, electricity, their cities, their homes and families.

Whether the Spanish-American, The Revolutionary, The War of 1812, The Civil, WWI&II, The Korean Conflict, Vietnam, Deserts’ Storm and Shield or the bogus and deadly Iraqi Freedom, war serves two purposes and two only; it pads the coffers of the Globalists, The Elitists Illuminati families such as the Rockefellers’, Rothchilds’, Russells’, Ruthefords, Duponts’ et al and it exceeds all expectations in “attrition of the masses.” If the alpha young adult is being shot at and maimed, killed, he is not at home getting an education courting wedding and re-producing. Simple economics of population control.

Last Friday I passed three older persons picketing in front of Colville’s two military recruitment centers. They were identified by their placards as of the “Veterans For Peace” and carried signs asking the public to honor veterans and stop war. Am I understanding this? They are not asking us to honor the boys and girls commandeered currently as “expendable commodities” for the Halliburton Bush-Cheney profiteers and their illegal American invasion and occupation of Iraq? Are they educating the military boys inside these centers? Are they educating would-be soldiers and sailors? They are asking us to honor them while 18-25 year olds are being lost daily?
Some people prefer to be sheeple-people and chattel-cattle. Perhaps that is why Christ so often referred to humans as “sheep.” Very dumb animals who can see only in front of their own faces and will follow the one in front to fall over a precipice.

The major media will not educate you. They have received over 1.8 billion in illegal funds from the Bush family to see to it you are told lies. Your churches are not preparing you for the reality of events to come. They subscribe to the sheeple-people mentality to remain in good graces with their 501C3 tax-exempt status.

To the mindless and spineless who ever so altruistically state they support the Nazi terrorist invasion of Iraq, I salute you…in a way. Just let me know and I’ll call the feds to let them know you need arms, gear and passage on a C-130. Tell the “gubmint” you are replacing a soldier or sailor who is to be ETS’d for home.

Thank you
Shirley M. Anderson RN

Contact Shirley by phone at (509) 684-7999 or by email at mountainmorn@yahoo.com