SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE: Philippine invasion of the Arabian Peninsula…

I am posting this on my blog because if I share the URL/webpage, I will also be sharing my email. A few days ago, I shared another letter that likewise praised Filipinos in the kingdom, but one thing that most people forgot to mention was the length of time Filipinos have been in the Middle East. I came to Saudi Arabia in 1980, but I had already known people in KSA long before then. Filipinos were virtually the builders of the Cities and roads of the Arabian Peninsula: the GCC countries. They are the backbone of the GCC’s (KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, UAE, and Bahrain) health services, not to mention Libya and Iraq before the war. It is true that if there is one place where Filipinos can’t get lost outside of the Philippines, it is anywhere in the countries of the Persian Gulf. It is one place where Filipinos can’t be strangers. Except for KSA, Filipinas have become the saleswomen of the Gulf nations. Walking into a mall is like stepping into SM. Check into a hotel, and you will find Filipinos at the reception. Climb onto a bus and find Filipino drivers. If your car breaks down, a Filipino will come to tow it to a shop where Filipino mechanics are waiting. Feeling hungry, try walking into KFC or McDo, and if you get sick…Filipino nurses will be there to take care of you or prick your buttocks :-) And more often than not, you end up married legally or illegally…buwahaha!

With needles, pitchforks, and bulldozers…, the Philippines has truly invaded the Arabian Peninsula and consequently saved the Philippine economy.

NLK

E-mail from a friend:

From: Ahmad Peradilla <ahmadperadilla@yahoo.com>
Subject: SHARINGe
To: “ahmad peradilla” <ahmadperadilla@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2013, 8:38 AM

This is the kind of email that we all want to receive and thanks for almaghlooth@alwatan.com.sa from the Middle East for writing this article. After Obama’s praise to a Filipina Nurse, this is what Arabs think about FILIPINOS.IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT FILIPINOS by Abdullah Al-Maghlooth|AL-WATAN Muhammad Al-Maghrabi became handicapped and shut down his flower and gifts shop business in Jeddah after his Filipino workers insisted on leaving and returning home. He says: “When they left, I felt as if I had lost my arms. I was so sad that I lost my appetite.” Al-Maghrabi then flew to Manila to look for two other Filipino workers to replace the ones who had left. Previously, he had tried workers of different nationalities but they did not impress him. “There is no comparison between Filipinos and others,” he says. “Whenever I see Filipinos working in the Kingdom, I wonder what life would be without them.” Saudi Arabia has the largest number of Filipino workers – 1.019,577 – outside the Philippines and their numbers are still increasing. Filipinos not only play an important and effective role in the Kingdom, they also perform different jobs in countries across the world, including working as sailors. The are known for their professionalism and quality of their work. Nobody here can think of a life without Filipinos, who make up around 20 percent of the world’s seafarers. There are 1.2 million Filipino sailors. So if Filipinos decide one day to stop working or go on strike for any reason, who would transport oil, food and heavy equipment across the world? We can only imagine the disaster that would happen. What makes Filipinos unique is their ability to speak very good English and the technical training they receive in the early stages of their education. There are several specialized training institutes in the Philippines, including those specializing in engineering and road maintenance. This training background makes them highly competent in these vital areas. When speaking about the Philippines, we should not forget Filipino nurses. They are some 23 percent of the world’s total number of nurses. The Philippines is home to over 190 accredited nursing colleges and institutions from which some 9,000 nurses graduate each year. Many of them work abroad in countries such as the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Singapore. Cathy Ann, a 35-year old Filipino nurse who has been working in the Kingdom for the last five years and before that in Singapore, said she does not feel homesick abroad because “I am surrounded by my compatriots everywhere.” Ann thinks that early training allow Filipinos to excel in nursing and other vocations. She started learning this profession at the age four as her aunt, a nurse, used to take her to hospital and ask her to watch the work. “She used to kiss me whenever I learned a new thing. At the age of 11, I could do a lot. I began doing things like measuring my grandfather’s blood pressure and giving my mother her insulin injections.” She said. This type of early education system is lacking in the Kingdom. Many of our children reach the university stage without learning anything except boredom. The Philippines, which you can barely see on the map, is a very effective country thanks to its people. It has the ability to influence the entire world economy. We should pay respect to Filipino workers, not only by employing them but also by learning from their valuable experiences. We should learn and educate our children on how to operate and maintain ships and oil tankers, as well as planning and nursing and how to achieve perfection in our work. This is a must so that we do not become like Muhammad Al-Maghrabi who lost his interest and appetite when Filipino workers left his flower shop. We have to remember that we are very much dependent on the Filipinos around us. We could die a slow death if they chose to leave us. (almaghlooth@alwatan.com.sa) Top of Form Bottom of Form

RIGHTEOUS LIE: the bread and butter of doctors and private hospitals/Clinics.

RIGHTEOUS LIE: the bread and butter of doctors and private hospitals/Clinics.

“Dr. K thinks that he is still working at the Ministry of Health,” my colleagues used to say, and they would laugh. I was called to the office of the manager/owner of Al Ahli Medical Polyclinic many times to instill in me that working in a government hospital (where I spent more than 20 years, from 1980 to 2000) is different from working in a private clinic. It took me 3 years (this is my 8^th year) battling not only my employer but also my conscience, until I was slowly absorbed by the system, albeit to a certain extent that is reasonably acceptable to my moral sense of righteousness.

I spent more than half of my entire life in this town, so how, for instance, will I write unnecessarily expensive diagnostic examinations for someone I have known for quite a while? My other dilemma is overseas foreign workers from South Asia who will spend half of their monthly wage on an unnecessary abdominal ultrasound. Although I detest what the other foreign doctors are doing, I accepted it as a necessary evil until I realized that it was no evil: it is a righteous lie. Doctors need to exaggerate the diagnosis to convince patients to submit to more expensive examinations. Although doctors do not want you to be well, they don’t like you to be seriously ill. They want to cure you to make you happy and grateful. They hope that something abnormal will come out of your laboratory examinations, so they will know for sure what is wrong with you, and if necessary, ask for more expensive tests. This is not the truth; it is the reality of private enterprise.

When mandatory medical insurance was instituted in Saudi Arabia, not only for foreign workers but also for all Saudi citizens employed in private and semi-private companies/corporations, I saw it as a godsend for my moralizing ego (LOL). Even then, I was slow to adapt to the new realities. Only when I realized that owners of Insurance companies fly around in private jets and party on private yachts did I change my attitude. If you come to me with a complaint of recurrent abdominal pain, I will send you for an abdominal ultrasound and other tests, and if our clinic has a CT scan, which we do not have (fortunately lol), I will send you for one. In this way, everybody is happy, including the patients. (I just got a call from our pharmacist.) He is sending me two patients, meaning two poor, sick Indians with Insurance cards that belong to someone else. Sigh…! My moral dilemma.

I don’t judge people who run private clinics/hospitals. While they have a responsibility to the public, they have a more pressing responsibility to the institution they run, including stockholders demanding profitable dividends, employees, and, yes, the monthly payroll. To raise money, they need to cheat patients and insurance companies in so many different ways (male patients pay for pregnancy tests in the USA [lol]).

I don’t believe it is fair to condemn Pacific International Hospital (http://truthaboutpacificinternationalhospitalpng.wordpress.com/) based on the experiences of one or a few individuals that occurred some time ago. If you are a highly moral person, you must never work in a private hospital/clinic, because you will be severely disappointed. You must seek employment in a government-run hospital, where you try every persuasion you can muster to drive away patients wanting admission, which is the opposite of private enterprise, where you employ the art of persuasion, including white lies, to keep patients admitted. In a government hospital, everybody is well…go home. In a private hospital, everybody is dying…stay.

Back in the days of “MEDICARE” insurance in the Philippines, the company was bankrupted by small clinics and hospitals that made the insurance company their bread and butter, collecting hospital bills for people who never got sick.

https://www.amazon.com/Nosca-Khalid/e/B01NA7APYQ

NLK

…am I the last to know?

I was so excited; I felt like a child getting a new toy. I can’t wait to share it. Am I the last to know :-(

There is a channel on my satellite TV that occasionally broadcasts nice 3D movies. The latest one was the “AVATAR.”

“Why watch a movie that can hurt your eyes?” I thought, but then I paused and said, “Wait a minute! Is it possible? I’m so ignorant, I didn’t know?” (I used to refer to this town as being on another planet for being so far and away from civilization). I made a few clicks on Google and in minutes, I got the idea on how to make your own 3D pair of paper glasses at home.

I was so excited that I went out to the store across the street (it was late at night) and bought a red and blue marking pen for 2 riyals each. I colored an old pair of glasses I’m no longer using, but it worked very well.  I felt very disappointed.

After the Friday prayer, the following day, I stopped by a bookstore and for one riyal, I was able to buy a pair of red and blue 1x1 foot transparent colored plastics, and yes…it was perfect for my need. I had to search YouTube for 3D movies (Avatar/Transformers) and wow; I can’t believe it.

My desktop is wired to a 32” LED TV I bought recently so it was real wonderful :-) I opened my laptop and checked if it can work there as well and yes…it did; you can watch 3D movies on your laptop.

NLK

ACTUAL VIEW OF EARTH 100 MILLION MILES AWAY...

You may not, although your children or your grandchildren may one day travel to colonies outside of planet Earth; technology has given us actual footage of what Earth looks like if you look out the window of your spaceship from 100 million miles away. (1/2 minute video:   captured by the STEREO-B spacecraft on March 9-12 [NASA's STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory]

NASA - Multimedia - Video Gallery:

(1/2 minute video)

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=160999371

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CNN: Are Religious Americans Really This Stupid?

Most Americans even failed to answer correctly if the Pope is Catholic or if the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist or what the Qur’an is to Muslims :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifUXxsOPMA

(6 minutes CNN video clip) 

RESURRECTING not only the dead but the EXTINCT…

Scientists don’t even use the word “resurrect” in order not to offend the sensibilities of organized religion. They use words like ‘revive’ or ‘clone,’ but resurrection is the most appropriate word. It will be cruel to resurrect extinct animals if you cannot resurrect the environment where they lived and thrived. They died out because their world had literally ended, and God did not see it fit (out of His mercy) to let them continue to live. If you resurrect extinct animals and keep them in cages or artificial sanctuaries, that will be the height of folly. It will be stupidly cruel. Scientists should not continue doing things that are seemingly impossible simply because they can. Imagine if humans had been more humane and decided (although they could) not to build the atomic/hydrogen bombs, more than 10,000 of which not only threaten the very existence of life on our planet, but also subjugate others to endless fears.  Humans are part of nature and are therefore subject to the laws of nature, but nah; humans are gods…fools. 

Maybe Extinction Isn’t Forever. Is That a Good Thing? : Collide-a-Scape:

Maybe Extinction Isn’t Forever. Is That a Good Thing?

By Keith Kloor | March 14, 2013 1:26 pm

Have you heard about the big event National Geographic is hosting with TEDx this week, the one about restoring species? No, not endangered species–but ones that are already extinct, like the woolly mammoth.

I have mixed feelings about the idea. In the abstract, I think it’s pretty cool. The prospect of regaining lost pieces of our evolutionary heritage is exciting, as I wrote in a 2006 Audubon magazine review of a book that argued for “reversing prehistoric extinctions when we have the chance.”

Ecologists and conservationists seem divided, though. A group of them expressed their enthusiasm in a 2005 commentary in Nature; others, such as the prominent conservation biologist Stuart Pimm, argue forcefully against the “de-extinction” proposal. In a piece this week at the National Geographicsite, he discusses a host of  likely problems that cannot be ignored.

In a world of finite resources and attention, I’m inclined to side with Pimm, who writes:

Fantasies of reclaiming extinct species are always seductive. It is a fantasy that real scientists—those wearing white lab coats—are using fancy machines with knobs and digital readouts to save the planet from humanity’s excesses. In this fantasy, there is none of the messy interaction with people, politics, and economics that characterizes my world. There is nothing involving the real-world realities of habitat destruction, of the inherent conflict between growing human populations and wildlife survival. Why worry about endangered species? We can simply keep their DNA and put them back in the wild later.

PLEASE READ FULL ARTICLE:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/?p=10782#.UVm0vhz-HCY

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Mind-numbing questions to ponder on 9/11

PressTV - 9/11: Illegitimacy of US government:

9/11: Illegitimacy of US government

SNIP

The missing contents and mass of the Twin Towers are not the only mysterious “absence” connected with 9/11. Other notable “missing evidence” includes: 

* The absence of the US government’s 80-plus videos of the attack on the Pentagon, some of which were confiscated by FBI agents just moments after the attack. Only a few frames have been released, and those frames show an explosion at the Pentagon but no big airliner. 

* The absence of the 100,000 kilos of Boeing 757 airliner that supposedly entered the Pentagon. No record exists of those 100,000 kilos of airliner debris, or the plane’s luggage and passenger remains, ever being removed from any of the three widely-separated damaged areas of the Pentagon. 

* The absence of the 100,000 kilos of Boeing 757 airliner that supposedly buried itself in the soft earth beneath a shallow fifteen-foot-diameter crater in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There is no evidence of 100,000 kilos of airliner debris, along with passenger remains and luggage, being recovered from beneath the ground at the alleged crash site. 

* The absence of the official airline passenger lists, security video footage, ticket stubs, testimony from airline employees, or any other actual evidence that the 19 young Arabs blamed for 9/11 were even on the planes. 

* The absence of the audio recordings of FAA personnel debriefing each other about what they experienced on 9/11. These recordings were confiscated by an FAA supervisor and shredded into tiny pieces, which were discarded into many widely-separated trash receptacles so they could never be collected and reconstructed. 

* The absence of the indestructible “black boxes” of the planes that hit the Twin Towers. The US government claims these flight data recorders were never recovered, but first responders say they were present when they were found and taken away by FBI agents. 

* The absence of the government’s most important cited evidence: The audio and video recordings of the lengthy torture sessions and scripted false confessions of mentally-retarded “9/11 mastermind” Abu Zubaydah and his fellow “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The CIA admits that it illegally destroyed these recordings, anonymous second-hand reports of which are cited in the 9/11 Commission Report as its only evidence for the 19-hijackers scenario. 

* The absence of any plausible innocent explanation for the BBC’s premature report of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, Larry Silverstein’s confession that he demolished WTC-7, and (of course) the obvious controlled demolition of that building. 

In every one of these cases - as in the case of the 1,116 missing victims - the absence of evidence is a smoking gun. 

The US government now faces a complete absence of legitimacy. 

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/31/295874/911-illegitimacy-of-us-government/

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is www.truthjihad.com. More articles by Dr. Kevin Barrett

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