US President has turned up a hornet’s nest with his suggestion that a mosque be built on ground zero where the twin towers of the World Trade Center existed in New York. Now speculations are rife that he is recommending this probably because he is a Muslim, as his name suggests.
According to a recent poll by Pew Research Centre, close to one in every five Americans think wrongly that Obama is a Muslim, which is a far higher number than people who thought the same when he took up residence in the White House.
The survey was conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and was based on interviews conducted before the controversy over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site.
Little idea about their president
Only 34% of people polled correctly answered that Obama is a Christian. 43% said they had no clue about his religion, showing how little the Americans knew about the person who holds the privilege of being the ‘most powerful man on the planet’.
Most of the people (close to 60% of the respondents who felt he was a Muslim) said their perceptions were largely influenced by media information or mis-information in this case. And this feeling gained momentum once he supported suggestions by Muslim groups to construct an Islamic cultural centre and mosque near the 9/11 terror attack site.
The issue has also brought to the fore, the underlying and growing religious intolerance of US citizens, who consider all brown-skinned people as Pakistanis, unaware about the diversity of the different cultures in the Asian sub-continent.
Xenophobia has become rife in a country which was better known as the land for the free and fearless at one point of time. But post-9/11, people are on the edge and distrust most Asians, which is unfair.
Where ignorance is bliss, is it truly folly to be wise?
The Pew survey results show how important a role the media plays when it tries to influence people with their perception of reality. With the current viewpoint about Obama’s religion, his political career could see a period of turmoil, since most Americans have a not so favorable view about Muslims.
When Obama supported the creation of a mosque on ground zero, doubts started creeping into the citizens’ mind about his religious beliefs, which could have a direct impact on his popularity. He has already faced a lot of opposition on the health reform bill which he pushed through the Senate and the Pew poll shows that now 41% of respondents disapprove of his job performance as compared to 26% who voiced their disapproval in the agency’s March 2009 poll.
Following this poll Joshua DuBois, White House faith adviser shared his unhappiness and blamed certain factions in the media and his opponents for creating this wrong impression. “While the president has been diligent and personally committed to his own Christian faith, there are certainly folks who are intent on spreading falsehoods about the president and his values and beliefs,” he reportedly said.
Now the White House’s public relations machinery will have to work on an overdrive to highlight that Obama was actually born to a Kenyan father and an American mother. He grew up in Hawaii when his father left for Africa, when Obama was just two. He was raised by his maternal grandparents and incidentally his grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a Muslim.
The bone of contention
The Islamic educational culture centre which also houses a mosque whose construction Obama supported is actually two blocks away from Ground Zero. This 13-story building is led by the Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, a cleric with a mosque in New York, who also belongs to an advocacy group that promotes improved relations between Islam and the West.
The group aims to educate local masses about the actual teachings of the Islam and showcase that the religion is not fundamentalist in nature nor does it preach hatred. The message that the group wanted to spread is that ordinary Muslim Americans and most Muslims around the world do not subscribe to the terror attacks carried out by a minority faction in their community, under the guise of religion.
Ironically, their centre itself has now come in the eye of the storm, with strong opposition from major Republican leaders. Amongst them is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who claimed that “Nazis do not have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a sight next to Pearl Harbor. There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”
Obama on the other hand tried to fervently convince his opponents, during an iftar dinner (a dinner which signals the end of a day-long fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan) telling that the believed that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as every other person in this country. And if they wish to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances, then such a move should not be opposed.
Bouquets and brickbats thrown in together
Obama has found some supporters for his move like New York City Mayor Michael R Bloomberg, who also supported the planned mosque. He described that Obama’s views were “a clarion defense of the freedom of religion”. But Republicans like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin asked Obama, whether they should permit the building of the mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people?
The mosque is just a symbol now which shows what the general public opinion is about religious tolerance, especially a religion which has unfortunately been linked to most terror attacks to the world over. Co-relating its construction with the perceived religious beliefs or even the religion that the President of United States subscribes is not only foolish, but also counter-productive to his detractors in the long run.
Obama’s overtures to the construction of the Islamic center is a positive step in telling the world that the US is not prejudiced against any religion and supports their right to practice it peacefully in the country. One can only hope that his political peers see how this message will help assuage millions who have been trained to believe that the US is a demon to hated and feared and then inducted in terror camps in certain countries. (V. Bhatia, NewsCollective/8/20/2010)
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
DSWD-9 SET TO UPDATE REGION’S LIST OF POOR HOUSEHOLDS
The Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office IX is set to conduct another household assessment to update the National Household Targeting System’s (NHTS) data. The said assessment or On-Demand Application (ODA) aims to provide an opportunity for households who were not included or assessed during the initial enumeration conducted last April 2009-March 2010 but whose place of residence was identified within the target area.
According to Mr. Hasan Alfad, DSWD IX Planning Officer and Focal person for NHTS the ODA will be primarily pursued in 16 priority municipalities of the region sometime this month to September.
Each municipality will have a scheduled 10-day assessment period where the local government units through their social welfare offices will assist the hired supervisors in the conduct of the activity.
The house-to-house interviews in the 16 areas will be handled by the area supervisors who were hired by DSWD.
Just recently, the supervisors attended an orientation on the conduct of the ODA with the respective municipal social welfare officers of the 16 areas.
The DSWD, in its drive to target the real poor households of the country as basis for government programs and services came up with the NHTS in 2009. It is a data bank and an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are. The system guarantees the generation and establishment of a socio-economic database of poor households which were gathered by enumerators from the barangays during the nationwide conduct of survey last year.
As a process, the data culled from the communities are encoded and elevated to the national project management office who administers the feeding of the data to a proxy-means test (PMT) system which generates the list of poor and non-poor households. This master list will then be downloaded to the DSWD regional office concerned which will further verify the accuracy of the data through a validation process. The validation process includes the posting of the master list in a conspicuous area in the community for further verification.
The 16 areas for the ODA are Buug, Diplahan, Imelda, Kabasalan, Naga, Siay and Ipil for Zamboanga Sibugay while Aurora, Guipos, Josefina, Labangan, Molave and Ramon Magsaysay for Zamboanga del Sur plus the cities of Zamboanga, Pagadian and Isabela.
Results based on the 2003 released statistics of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) showed that 30 families out of 100 are living in slums, or makeshift houses of indigenous materials, do not have access to clean water, are unable to send their children to school, and are generally denied of other essential services including hospitals. And out of the 30 families, 24 do not have enough food to eat. (DSWD-9, PIA9-BST)
According to Mr. Hasan Alfad, DSWD IX Planning Officer and Focal person for NHTS the ODA will be primarily pursued in 16 priority municipalities of the region sometime this month to September.
Each municipality will have a scheduled 10-day assessment period where the local government units through their social welfare offices will assist the hired supervisors in the conduct of the activity.
The house-to-house interviews in the 16 areas will be handled by the area supervisors who were hired by DSWD.
Just recently, the supervisors attended an orientation on the conduct of the ODA with the respective municipal social welfare officers of the 16 areas.
The DSWD, in its drive to target the real poor households of the country as basis for government programs and services came up with the NHTS in 2009. It is a data bank and an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are. The system guarantees the generation and establishment of a socio-economic database of poor households which were gathered by enumerators from the barangays during the nationwide conduct of survey last year.
As a process, the data culled from the communities are encoded and elevated to the national project management office who administers the feeding of the data to a proxy-means test (PMT) system which generates the list of poor and non-poor households. This master list will then be downloaded to the DSWD regional office concerned which will further verify the accuracy of the data through a validation process. The validation process includes the posting of the master list in a conspicuous area in the community for further verification.
The 16 areas for the ODA are Buug, Diplahan, Imelda, Kabasalan, Naga, Siay and Ipil for Zamboanga Sibugay while Aurora, Guipos, Josefina, Labangan, Molave and Ramon Magsaysay for Zamboanga del Sur plus the cities of Zamboanga, Pagadian and Isabela.
Results based on the 2003 released statistics of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) showed that 30 families out of 100 are living in slums, or makeshift houses of indigenous materials, do not have access to clean water, are unable to send their children to school, and are generally denied of other essential services including hospitals. And out of the 30 families, 24 do not have enough food to eat. (DSWD-9, PIA9-BST)
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Will Muslim rebels brace war if peace talks fail?
Muslim guerrillas in Mindanao have continuously undergone combat training at secret camps in southern Philippines and amassed more weapons to heighten their military strength in case eyed peace talks with the government wane, according to military reports.
President Benigno Aquino III and the 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front have expressed readiness to resume Malaysian-brokered peace negotiations as early as September after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The talks collapsed in 2008, sparking massive fighting, and resumed in the final months of the tenure of Aquino's predecessor without reaching any major accord.
Aquino, who succeeded Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on June 30, has said efforts to turn around his impoverished Southeast Asian nation will be futile if it continues to be wracked by violent insurgencies. He has begun forming negotiation teams to resume talks with the Moro rebels and communist guerrillas.
While fresh talks loomed, the military has monitored at least nine separate combat trainings by hundreds of Muslim fighters and recruits in their strongholds in southern Mindanao region in the first half of the year, according to a military report that assessed national security threats. A copy of the report was seen by The Associated Press.
Muslim guerrillas have been holding combat training and "acquisition of logistics to ensure readiness if the peace talks will not prosper," according to the report, adding the rebels plan to intensify kidnappings and extortion to gain funds.
About 230 rebels underwent training on combat tactics for three days in March in a hinterland camp called Palestine near Butig town in Lanao del Sur province. Several guerrillas joined a month long training on intelligence-gathering in the same camp that month while 247 regular fighters were trained in "rigid jungle warfare" for 15 days in the southernmost province of Tawi Tawi, the report said.
About a hundred recruits were given basic military training for three months in Lanao del Sur starting in March. Other training involving an undetermined number of rebels focused on first aid and leadership, it said.
Muslim rebel negotiator Mohagher Iqbal acknowledged his group has continued to train fighters and seek weapons, which, he said, were obtained in the past from local and foreign sources, mostly gun-running syndicates.
"That's normal in a revolutionary group," Iqbal told AP. "It's not a sign of bad faith because there have always been two options while the problem remains unresolved: the peace process or war."
Iqbal, however, said that his group has primarily focused on the "peaceful track" and will reconstitute its peace panel once the government negotiating team has been set up. He denied that the rebels plan to resort to kidnappings for funds, saying they have relied mostly on civilian financial contributions.
Muslim rebel chief Al Haj Murad said he wanted the rebellion to end in his lifetime but added future talks were froth with obstacles and the guerrillas were bracing for a long battle.
"We are preparing the young generations to carry on the great task of liberating our people," Murad said in a statement posted on a rebel web site.
More than 120,000 people have died in the decades-long conflict in Mindanao, homeland of minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines.
A shaky truce between government troops and the rebels has held for a year since their last major fighting in Mindanao's marshy heartland that killed hundreds and displaced as many as 750,000 people. (AP-08/12/10-NMT)
President Benigno Aquino III and the 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front have expressed readiness to resume Malaysian-brokered peace negotiations as early as September after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The talks collapsed in 2008, sparking massive fighting, and resumed in the final months of the tenure of Aquino's predecessor without reaching any major accord.
Aquino, who succeeded Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on June 30, has said efforts to turn around his impoverished Southeast Asian nation will be futile if it continues to be wracked by violent insurgencies. He has begun forming negotiation teams to resume talks with the Moro rebels and communist guerrillas.
While fresh talks loomed, the military has monitored at least nine separate combat trainings by hundreds of Muslim fighters and recruits in their strongholds in southern Mindanao region in the first half of the year, according to a military report that assessed national security threats. A copy of the report was seen by The Associated Press.
Muslim guerrillas have been holding combat training and "acquisition of logistics to ensure readiness if the peace talks will not prosper," according to the report, adding the rebels plan to intensify kidnappings and extortion to gain funds.
About 230 rebels underwent training on combat tactics for three days in March in a hinterland camp called Palestine near Butig town in Lanao del Sur province. Several guerrillas joined a month long training on intelligence-gathering in the same camp that month while 247 regular fighters were trained in "rigid jungle warfare" for 15 days in the southernmost province of Tawi Tawi, the report said.
About a hundred recruits were given basic military training for three months in Lanao del Sur starting in March. Other training involving an undetermined number of rebels focused on first aid and leadership, it said.
Muslim rebel negotiator Mohagher Iqbal acknowledged his group has continued to train fighters and seek weapons, which, he said, were obtained in the past from local and foreign sources, mostly gun-running syndicates.
"That's normal in a revolutionary group," Iqbal told AP. "It's not a sign of bad faith because there have always been two options while the problem remains unresolved: the peace process or war."
Iqbal, however, said that his group has primarily focused on the "peaceful track" and will reconstitute its peace panel once the government negotiating team has been set up. He denied that the rebels plan to resort to kidnappings for funds, saying they have relied mostly on civilian financial contributions.
Muslim rebel chief Al Haj Murad said he wanted the rebellion to end in his lifetime but added future talks were froth with obstacles and the guerrillas were bracing for a long battle.
"We are preparing the young generations to carry on the great task of liberating our people," Murad said in a statement posted on a rebel web site.
More than 120,000 people have died in the decades-long conflict in Mindanao, homeland of minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines.
A shaky truce between government troops and the rebels has held for a year since their last major fighting in Mindanao's marshy heartland that killed hundreds and displaced as many as 750,000 people. (AP-08/12/10-NMT)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Seabees, Marines Give Youth Tools to Build Future
By Terrence Siren JSOTF-P
CAMP BUD DATU, SULU – Philippine Marines and U.S. Sailors endured the mud, heat, and rain to work side-by-side constructing a new facility on Camp Bud Datu for the past few weeks -- a barracks for some very important trainees.
But these trainees aren’t soldiers; and the training isn’t in military tactics. The new ‘barracks’ is an addition to the Tausug Youth Training Camp, a project organized and carried out by the Marines of Philippine Marine Battalion Landing Team (MBLT) 6. The trainees, for whom this facility is being built with the help of U.S. Sailors from Seabee Squad Two, are young Filipinos and Filipinas from local municipalities. The training will provide youth with tools that – in the hopes of Lt. Col. Robert Velasco – will help them build a better future.
“We have a youth development training program,” said Velasco, Commander, MBLT 6. “The [barracks project for the existing] Tausug Youth Camp is a facility to increase the capacity to teach the youth how to be civic-minded persons; how to be good citizens.”
Velasco points out that one only needs to look at simple statistics to ascertain the reason why he, his Marines, and U.S. forces are willing to spend effort on programs to open the window of opportunities for the youth.
According to a survey done by Social Weather Stations, Philippine youth –people between the ages of 15 to 30 years old – make up more than one-third of the nation’s population and therefore play an important role in the future of the Philippines.
Philippine Marine Corps Commandant Maj. Gen Juancho Sabban has said that extremist groups, such as Abu Sayyaf, are quick to exploit poverty, lack of education, and minimal government services throughout the Sulu Archipelago.
“Education and opportunities for development are the keys to lasting solutions to end the terrorism problem,” said Sabban, a former field commander on the islands of Basilan and Sulu.
Sulu ranks among the bottom five provinces in the country in terms of civic needs such as education, according to a Philippine Human Development Report cited in the Asia Times last month. In the same article, Lt. Gen. Ben Dolorfino, Commander, Western Mindanao Command (WMC), compared groups like Abu Sayyaf to a diseased tree, stating that “military force can only go as far as cutting the branches and removing the leaves, but unless you eliminate the roots, new branches and leaves will grow with time.”
Velasco and fellow Marine commander Lt. Col. Elias Juson, Jr., attest that eliminating the roots of extremist ideologies starts with education.
“Through education, people will think differently, and instead of fighting, they will work to make their community better,” said Juson, commander of MBLT 4. And while many of the civil military operations (CMO) that the Marines are conducting on Sulu include building new schools and renovating old ones, the Tausug Youth Training Camp strives to give young people a different kind of education.
On the surface, it appears that the Marines of MBLT 6 are providing the same sort of skills that one would expect from any ordinary camp: outdoor skills such as hiking, rappelling, building rope bridges, and the like. A closer look shows that these activities are structured to impart vital tools for building a promising future. These tools include environmental stewardship, responsible citizenship, conflict resolution, tolerance, and cooperation.
Through a partnership with the Confederation of Youth Organizations in Angono, which is headquartered in Rizal province in Metro Manila, MBLT 6 has hosted school and student government organizations, the Sanguniang Kabataan (elected youth who are part of the local provincial government), and both the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of the Philippines at the Tausug Youth Training Camp.
“The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, for example, are existing organizations – worldwide – whose aim is to build up the youth,” said Velasco, a former Eagle Scout. “[Like them,] we want to make civic-minded boys and girls… to enhance their skills and their ability to lead other youth.” Camp Bud Datu played host to the Boy Scouts Provincial Jamboree this past February, where more than 600 scouts were in attendance. The Boys Scouts of the Philippines are the third largest scouting organization for boys in the world, according to their official website, phiscout.org and Velasco hopes to host up to 1,000 scouts for next year’s jamboree.
The builders of MBLT 6 and Seabee Squad Two were also mindful that the Tausug Youth Camp projects help bolster the local economy. The materials for the barracks were bought from local venders in the Indanan province. “Everything that we do is in pursuit of the sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development [of our community],” said Velasco.
The community-mindedness of Velasco and his Marines is not only serving to educate and invigorate a new generation of Filipinos, however; the concept of the Marines as seen by local leaders has begun to change as well.
“We look at the Philippine Marines as a friend,” said Diding Hajiraini, a barangay captain from Maligap. “Everything they do today shows the people of the barangays that the Marines are there to help them.”
“We see the Marines as more than soldiers,” said Hadji Jamil Harud, president of the Tugas housing community. “We are happy with the help of the Marines and the support they have provided us. We all know the Marines and they know us. We are all friends.” Tugas is one of several areas on Sulu where additional joint building projects are planned between Camp Bud Datu Marines and Seabee Squad Two. Seabee Squad Two, a part of U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, is assigned to Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P).
“One of the main roles of Seabees is to go in and build roads and schools and bridges to better the community,” said Builder 1st Class (SCW) Justin Metz, Team Leader, Seabee Squad Two. “Our whole mission here is to work hand-in-hand with the Armed Forces of the Philippines…to be able to make positive change in people’s lives together.”
Over the next eight months, Metz’s nine-man squad will work together as “peace-builders” with Philippine Seabees, Marines, and AFP Soldiers to rebuild and renovate three schools in Tugas, Maharaja, and Timbangan, all of which are schools that need renovation or, in some cases, have been burned down by lawless groups. The improvement of these schools is estimated to effect approximately 800 students.
“Anything you do for kids, as a group, be it sports or youth camp or anything like that… Those kids usually turn out to be alright,” Metz said. “It’s the kids that don’t have that opportunity, that don’t have any type of education, that unfortunately go down the wrong path.”
“Education is the most important element,” said 2nd Lt. Ian Villeza, Civil Military Operations (CMO) Officer, MBLT 5. “The children who go to school and receive an education will know the difference between the good guys and the bad ones and realize that going into the jungle to fight the government will destroy their future. It will let them know that being a good, local person has a bright future here.”
Velasco believes that the Philippine Marines and JSOTF-P Seabees working together to provide the youth the education and tools for a bright future is one of their most important projects that they will build together.
“We hope that by the end of the year, through the youth program that we are doing here, we would like to gather 20 youth leaders and bring them to Manila to have some interaction at the universities there,” said Velasco. When asked why this is important, Velasco simply responded, “So that they will dream.”
“The only way to win [peace] is to empower the people themselves.” (WESTMINCOM-JSOTF-P/ PIA9-BST)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Moro Note - International Recognition
Independence is a collective right of a people; to be independent is to stand in the community of nations as equal, and to be recognized by the international community is the ultimate sign of being free from the yoke of colonial power.
To declare independence unilaterally is a risky strategy. The more tested strategy is to seek covert recognition even prior to declaration. Recognition cannot be assumed; it should be actively sought and sought properly. Recognition comes in a strand, outright for historical and perceived benefit by countries or political compromise. Seeking recognition comes in the form of support from individual, organization or business within a country. None of these supports matter unless they transform into their government's foreign policy.
Therefore, those in charge of leading the cause of independence should have put in place a viable strategy on how to generate support from overseas governments. Being remiss in this respect could spell disaster for the whole effort and liberation movement.
Malaysia's support to an independent Moroland is conditional on the Sabah issue. Indonesia's support can embolden liberation movement (i.e. Papua) within her borders. Pakistan will thread cautiously as it looks on Kashmir and Baluchistan. Most Middle East countries will not find it beneficial unless they see some imperatives from their American and European partners. How about the US and Spain? Thailand will not support it as it will give credence to the Pattani movement in the Deep South. Sudan suffers the same south problem. Even Timor Leste is beholden to the Philippines for its support. It is also difficult to follow Taiwan's diplomatic feat. What we do not want to happen is to see a unilateral declaration turned into an international pariah.
Save from giving us an 'observer' seat, the OIC hasn't sway far from international convention in helping resolve the Moro problem.
We should learn from the recent experience of Timor Leste, Bosnia and Kosovo. While Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia, the first pronouncement was on the protection of its minorities and later with tacit support from the USA and her allies. Do we have the same tacit support?
Even the ANC of South Africa can teach the Moro liberation movement a thing or two about international support and recognition. In fact, in the case of South Africa, it is the international pressure and isolation that really pressured the Apartheid government to finally crush its own policies.
Unilateral declaration? Think again whether it's eventual recognition or pariah. (By Noor Saada)
To declare independence unilaterally is a risky strategy. The more tested strategy is to seek covert recognition even prior to declaration. Recognition cannot be assumed; it should be actively sought and sought properly. Recognition comes in a strand, outright for historical and perceived benefit by countries or political compromise. Seeking recognition comes in the form of support from individual, organization or business within a country. None of these supports matter unless they transform into their government's foreign policy.
Therefore, those in charge of leading the cause of independence should have put in place a viable strategy on how to generate support from overseas governments. Being remiss in this respect could spell disaster for the whole effort and liberation movement.
Malaysia's support to an independent Moroland is conditional on the Sabah issue. Indonesia's support can embolden liberation movement (i.e. Papua) within her borders. Pakistan will thread cautiously as it looks on Kashmir and Baluchistan. Most Middle East countries will not find it beneficial unless they see some imperatives from their American and European partners. How about the US and Spain? Thailand will not support it as it will give credence to the Pattani movement in the Deep South. Sudan suffers the same south problem. Even Timor Leste is beholden to the Philippines for its support. It is also difficult to follow Taiwan's diplomatic feat. What we do not want to happen is to see a unilateral declaration turned into an international pariah.
Save from giving us an 'observer' seat, the OIC hasn't sway far from international convention in helping resolve the Moro problem.
We should learn from the recent experience of Timor Leste, Bosnia and Kosovo. While Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia, the first pronouncement was on the protection of its minorities and later with tacit support from the USA and her allies. Do we have the same tacit support?
Even the ANC of South Africa can teach the Moro liberation movement a thing or two about international support and recognition. In fact, in the case of South Africa, it is the international pressure and isolation that really pressured the Apartheid government to finally crush its own policies.
Unilateral declaration? Think again whether it's eventual recognition or pariah. (By Noor Saada)
Monday, August 2, 2010
This blog has been on many news and opinion. For a break, I wish to share this lesson, also shared by my friend Dave M.
The Strangest Secret (An excerpt)
by Earl Nightingale
George Bernard Shaw said, "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, they make them."
Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? And every person who discovered this believed (for a while) that he was the first one to work it out. We become what we think about.
Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety and worry - his life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing... he becomes nothing.
How does it work? Why do we become what we think about? Well, I'll tell you how it works, as far as we know. To do this, I want to tell you about a situation that parallels the human mind.
Suppose a farmer has some land, and it's good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice; he may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care. It's up to the farmer to make the decision.
We're comparing the human mind with the land because the mind, like the land, doesn't care what you plant in it. It will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant.
Now, let's say that the farmer has two seeds in his hand- one is a seed of corn, the other is nightshade, a deadly poison. He digs two little holes in the earth and he plants both seeds-one corn, the other nightshade.
He covers up the holes, waters and takes care of the land...and what will happen? Invariably, the land will return what was planted.
As it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
Remember the land doesn't care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants - one corn, one poison.
The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant...success...or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal...or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety and so on. But what we plant must return to us.
You see, the human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant.
The Strangest Secret (An excerpt)
by Earl Nightingale
George Bernard Shaw said, "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, they make them."
Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? And every person who discovered this believed (for a while) that he was the first one to work it out. We become what we think about.
Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety and worry - his life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing... he becomes nothing.
How does it work? Why do we become what we think about? Well, I'll tell you how it works, as far as we know. To do this, I want to tell you about a situation that parallels the human mind.
Suppose a farmer has some land, and it's good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice; he may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care. It's up to the farmer to make the decision.
We're comparing the human mind with the land because the mind, like the land, doesn't care what you plant in it. It will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant.
Now, let's say that the farmer has two seeds in his hand- one is a seed of corn, the other is nightshade, a deadly poison. He digs two little holes in the earth and he plants both seeds-one corn, the other nightshade.
He covers up the holes, waters and takes care of the land...and what will happen? Invariably, the land will return what was planted.
As it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
Remember the land doesn't care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants - one corn, one poison.
The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant...success...or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal...or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety and so on. But what we plant must return to us.
You see, the human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant.
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