3 von 3 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
This book Is a must have Reminds me of I Ching, 30. Juli 1998
Von Ein Kunde
Diese Rezension stammt von: As a Man Thinketh (Taschenbuch)
I cant believe Amazon has this book I have an ORIGINAL copy with picture and signature of James Allen. Authorized Edition New York Thomas Y. Crowell Company Publishers. Hard cover 47 pages Its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that "They themselves are makers of themselves" I have had this book all my life and always wanted to share it with others. I found it in my over one hundred year old house. I read it and re-read it. It reminds me of I Ching or the Bible it leads one to think and helps to explain the behavior of others. You can plant the seed but dont expect to see what you want right away or ever. Live to inspire others and learn from others. Only at the end of your life can others look back and see what you have done. "You will be what you will be" By the thoughts you choose to encourage. Enjoy this Book and try to undrestand how easy and sometimes how difficult it is to make people se! e things your way. Frank S. sang it I did it my way - Because thats the only way he could do it. If he did it MY way he would have played the drums and never sung a note or made a movie. So be thankful people do it their way but always be ready to help them do it better.
Kommentar | Kommentar als Link | War diese Rezension für Sie hilfreich? (Rezension unzumutbar?)


2 von 2 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
dynamite, 15. Dezember 2003
Von Larry Hehn "author & speaker, www.larryhehn.com" (Toronto, ON Canada) - alle meine Rezensionen ansehen

Diese Rezension stammt von: As a Man Thinketh (Taschenbuch)
James Allen proves that it is possible to pack dozens of valuable nuggets in a small package. The language is often lofty and dated, which in other works detracts from the material. In this case it reads like the writings of a wise old scholar, enhancing the content and its weight.
If you enjoy highlighting key points, keep the cap off your highlighter while reading this. More than just an essay on positive thinking, Allen walks the reader through applications for personal growth, putting thought into action, using personal gifts to achieve right purposes, persevering to develop character, sacrificing and putting forth your full effort.

Powerful nuggets in a tiny package. Dynamite.

Larry Hehn, Author of Get the Prize: Nine Keys for a Life of Victory

Kommentar | Kommentar als Link | War diese Rezension für Sie hilfreich? (Rezension unzumutbar?)


1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
Changing your thoughts, changing your life, 27. Juni 2000
Von Judith E. Pavluvcik (on the beach in California) - alle meine Rezensionen ansehen

Diese Rezension stammt von: As a Man Thinketh (Little Books) (Gebundene Ausgabe)
This excellent compilation of essays by James Allen truly holds the key to success, amongst other things! I feel so inspired after reading this book, so ready to put into practice what this powerful, little book is teaching. This "classic" has been around since the turn of the century and it seems to be even more relevant in today's stressful and competitive society. I underlined so many wonderful and inspiring passages that I intend to refer to on a daily basis. As Allen states, "a man is literally what he thinks", or as the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out! Or put another way, "All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts."
I have learned that I cannot blame others for my life, or my state of affairs - they are my creation, the end product of my thoughts and actions. Allen states that man makes or unmakes himself by the thoughts he keeps and cultivates. Man is truly is his own worst enemy!

I really resonated to his quote on fear, "Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplish anything, and never can. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in." How profound and how true. How we let fear run our lives - again proving how powerful our thoughts can be. Allen further expounds by saying, "He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure."

The garden of our mind is only cultivated by us. What kind of crop we want to consistently yield is solely determined on our positive, enriching, and encouraging thoughts or on our doubting, destructive and negative ones. We alone hold the key to our future, and our success, and our attainments in life. We can either have a feast or a famine - it is only up to us.

This highly inspirational book cannot help but to motivate you in some degree. I feel like I have been given the keys to a door that was once rusty and would not open, but now will yield freely in my hand. Another great quote is, "The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, this you will become." This is one book that you will want to keep constantly by your side, especially for those times when you get discouraged, or when the road seems rough. Just reading one page will have you having a change of heart, with its motivation putting you back on that right path.

This book is a MUST read if you are desiring to change your negatives into positives! The power of the mind is incredible - in all areas of our life!

SAfrican anti-immigrant violence reaches Cape Town

May 23 07:53 AM US/Eastern

A wave of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa spread to Cape Town on Friday, even as troops and police appeared to have quelled the unrest in the hotspot of Johannesburg.
Police reported attacks against immigrants and foreign-owned shops in a slum area of picturesque Cape Town.

The southern coastal city is a major draw for tourists and had thus far been spared the mob violence seen in Johannesburg.

At least 42 have been killed, more than 500 arrested and 16,000 displaced in the province of Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, since unrest broke out 12 days ago.

Police spokesman for the Cape Town area Billy Jones said a public meeting to address the danger of xenophobia in the Dunoon slum area 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the city degenerated into violence on Thursday evening.

"Groups within the crowd started to loot shops owned by Zimbabweans and other foreigners," he told AFP, saying 500 had since fled the area and were staying in community centres.

"Some people were assaulted, but mostly shops were looted."

Police also reported pockets of overnight unrest in Durban in the KwaZulu Natal region, where an unidentified foreigner was shot, and in North West province where two Pakistanis were stabbed.

Pakistanis were also targeted in Free State on Thursday. Twenty two people were arrested after a group of people were seen throwing stones at their shops.

"The police are on high alert and we will not tolerate any violence," said North West police spokesman Peter du Plessis. "What we are doing is identifying the areas where the foreigners are staying and then patrolling those areas."

In Johannesburg, the raging violence of the last week and a half appeared to have been brought under control by police bolstered by specialist units trained in public order and the army.

"It's quiet," said police spokesman for the Johannesburg area Govindsamy Mariemuthoo.

For the first time, soldiers deployed on Johannesburg's streets on Thursday to help stem the tide of violence that has seen mobs of armed youths attack foreigners in poor areas around the city.

About 200 soldiers assisted police with morning arrest and search operations in central Johannesburg on Thursday and remain on standby to offer back-up and logistical support.

Spokesman for the defence forces General Kwena Mangope told AFP Friday there had been no further army deployments.

President Thabo Mbeki bowed to pressure to call in the army on Wednesday after a request for support from the police force.

Foreigners in South Africa, many of whom have fled economic meltdown in neighbouring Zimbabwe, are being blamed for sky-high crime rates and depriving locals of jobs.

The violence, which has done untold damage to South African's reputation as the "Rainbow Nation," is also taking its toll on the country's economy.

Unions and several mining companies reported Thursday that gold mines around Johannesburg, the country's economic heartland, had been hit by the unrest, with employees failing to show up for work.

South Africa's tourism industry has also warned of the impact on visitor numbers and a farming group raised alarm Thursday about the impact of xenophobia in the agricultural sector.

Politicians are increasingly blaming criminals for the anti-immigrant violence, as well as the insanitary and lawless conditions found in slum areas.

But a number of rights groups have said the government has failed to address the problem of xenophobia, with isolated incidents of attacks against foreigners reported since the end of the 1990s.

"These unpardonable acts bring to the fore the need to intensify the implementation of government's efforts to eradicate poverty and reinforce our housing and service delivery programmes," Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils told the National Assembly Friday, SAPA news agency reported.

"We must better educate our people in tolerance, resolutely dispelling any erroneous perceptions about foreign nationals, which are fuelled in circumstances of relative socio-economic disadvantage," he added.

Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

Editorial Reviews
Daniel Pipes, Founder and Director, Middle East Forum
Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out (Hardcover)by Susan Crimp (Editor), Joel Richardson (Editor)

"The right of Muslims freely to leave Islam is emerging as an international human rights issue of the first order. Why We left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out both documents and humanizes the tragedy of those born-Muslims who wish to pursue their conscience. The stories are vivid and the political implications profound."

Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch and NY Times bestselling author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" and "The Truth About Muhammad."
"Powerfully written and deeply compelling, these accounts of people of conscience who left Islam are rendered all the more poignant by the realization that each one of them, no matter their status or situation, lives under the death sentence mandated by the Prophet Muhammad for apostates from Islam. Why We Left Islam should be required reading for human rights activists and all those who value the dignity of the human person, so that they will see why this horrific denial of the freedom of conscience within Islam must be resisted by all people of goodwill...

From the Publisher
The penalty for renouncing Islam is death, which makes the stories in Why We Left Islam -- and the lives behind them -- all the more remarkable.

Contained in these brutally honest personal accounts written by former Muslims is an urgent truth that the mainstream media and cowed politicians won't admit -- that far from being "a religion of peace," Islam is instead barbaric and repressive, a nightmare for those living under it and those seeking to confront it.

Here are some of the voices from Why We Left Islam...

"I still remember my sister's black eyes; she stared at the sky while she was dug into the ground. She was wrapped in white sheets and her hands were tied to her body. She was buried up to her waist. The rabid mob circled her with stones in their hands and started throwing them at her while the roars of 'Allah-u-Akbar' added to their frenzy..." -- Yagmur

"As a Muslim man, the fact that my mother had only given birth to three girls made him really angry. He beat my mother very badly and the doctors were forced to remove her womb...When she awoke, my father was kind enough to tell her that he was divorcing her now that she could no longer have children, and being a man he needed a son." -- Shara

"The Koran is full of verses that teach the killing of unbelievers and how Allah would torture them after they die. There are no lessons on morality, justice, honesty or love..." -- Ali

These shocking, real-life stories from those who have escaped the Muslim yoke make Why We Left Islam a powerful communique -- and a warning -- to the West.

About the Author
Susan Crimp is a respected journalist and author specializing in Middle East affairs.

Joel Richardson is an expert in Jewish and Islamic theology.

India
Shovelling for their supper
Apr 24th 2008 | JALOR
From The Economist print edition

The world's biggest public-works project just got bigger. In some places it is working better than many feared; but by no means everywhere

James Astill

OUTSIDE Ajit Pura village, in India's arid state of Rajasthan, 42 women and a man scrape earth into panniers, hoist the panniers to their heads, and walk the contents up to a low embankment rising on the edge of the work-site. It is designed to slow the passage of monsoon flood-water, encouraging more of the precious liquid to infiltrate Ajit Pura's dusty soil. This should help irrigate just a few peasant plots for a year or two, before the embankment is washed away. And yet, modest as that sounds, to some development wonks this site is revolutionary.

Its creation was a policy cornerstone of the coalition government led by the Congress party: a guarantee of 100 days' employment on public works each year to any rural household that requests it. As an eye-catching promise—in a country where some 260m exist below the poverty line—it helped Congress win power in 2004. And with an eye to India's next general election, due by May 2009, the party's leaders are now making brave claims for its success. Last year, operating in 330 districts, the “National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme” (NREGS) provided 30m families with an average of 43 days' work. This month, to much fanfare, NREGS went India-wide (see map).

India has a history of rotten public-works schemes. At best, these have produced nothing of much value: Rajasthan, a drought-prone region, is littered with their residue: ditches and dykes as mysterious in function as crop circles. Worse, public-works budgets have made easy plunder for corrupt officials. By Congress's own rule of thumb—attributed to Rajiv Gandhi, the party's murdered leader, in the 1980s and since parroted by activist and politician alike—85% of welfare spending fails to reach its intended recipients.

To devotees of the scheme, including several fiery campaigners who helped design it, NREGS is different: above all, because its provisions are enshrined in the law. Wherever it applies, Indians may demand employment as their right. If it is not provided within 15 days, they are entitled to receive unemployment benefit. What is more, many safeguards have been written into the scheme, in an effort to make it more transparent and less misused than its predecessors. To exorcise ghost workers, NREGS muster rolls are read aloud at work-sites each morning. Many of these lists are available online. To chase away dodgy contractors—a main beneficiary of some works projects—at least 60% of the funds devoted to NREGS must be spent on wages for manual labourers.

Another beauty of the scheme, for its supporters, is that these poor folk are self-selecting: only a genuinely needy man would be likely to labour under an Indian sun for 60 rupees ($1.50) a day, the national minimum wage stipulated under NREGS. In tandem with one or two other recent efforts to hold the underperforming Indian state to account—for example, a right to information law, passed in 2005—NREGS represents for some starry-eyed acolytes the basis for a social-security system in a country that has more poor people than any other.

In Rajasthan, at least, it is working well. With its history of public works, and with fairly well-established local governments to run the scheme, the state last year came closer to honouring its prescriptions than any other. In the fiscal year that ended this March, Rajasthan provided an average of 85 days' work to some 2m households, a threefold increase in public-works employment offered by the state.

Better still, in Rajasthan NREGS employees came mostly from India's poorest groups: including 19% from dalit (formerly “untouchable”) castes, and 46% from tribal groups. Nearly 70% were women. Earning 73 rupees for a day's labour—the minimum wage set by the state—they did better than their sisters working in agriculture. In 2005 the average agricultural wage for women in Rajasthan was 48 rupees a day.

In Ajit Pura, in Rajasthan's southern district of Jalor, these benefits are manifest. According to the muster roll displayed at its work-site, 19 of the 43 workers belong to marginalised groups. They include the only man, Rajesh Harijan, from the Hindu sweeper caste, who shares street-sweeping duties in the village with his brother, rotating annually. The brothers are paid for this with sporadic gifts of bread.

Victory for digging
Another shoveller, Hiri Bawari, presents an even starker vindication of the scheme. As a temporary crutch for agricultural labourers, NREGS was designed to tide them over the lean season between sowing and reaping, and thus stanch temporary migrations to India's cities. Thereby, it is hoped, NREGS should ensure that the education of rural children is not disrupted—and in the case of Ms Bawari's children, that is so. A resident of Ajit Pura, she used to migrate to Punjab and Haryana, making and hawking plaster statues of Hindu gods. Together, Ms Bawari, her husband and their ten-year-old son used to earn 50 rupees a day for this work. Now she earns 73 rupees. Her husband earns 100 rupees as a farm labourer (happily, local wage-rates have risen, allegedly because of competition from NREGS). And the couple's three sons are in school.

It is a hopeful tale, but not typical. In a state that has embraced NREGS, Jalor is an especially well-run district. Its top official, or district magistrate, has made several improvements to the scheme—defying local mores, for example, by insisting that at least one-third of work-site foremen are women. Elsewhere, alas, NREGS frequently offers little obvious improvement on the rotten works schemes of the past.

Enthusiasm for NREGS among state governments has been patchy, with some of India's poorest and most populous states, such as Bihar and Jharkhand, slow to adopt it. Others have politicised NREGS, viewing it through the prism of their relations with the central government: Uttar Pradesh's 180m people, for example, saw no benefit from the scheme until mid-2007, when they elected a state government less hostile to the one in Delhi.

Even where the scheme is working well, it has hiccups. Jalor, for example, is supposed to have 27 locally hired engineers, to provide technical advice to the local governments. But, in a poor district, only five engineers can be found—of whom four have in fact been dragooned from other government service.

Elsewhere, a surfeit of pointless earth embankments is the least of the trouble. A report on NREGS by an autonomous government auditor, released in January, pinpointed many examples of error and abuse. Another, by researchers at Allahabad University, estimated that 33% of NREGS wages in Jharkhand were being trousered by corrupt officials (the government disputes this). Hardly any unemployment benefit has been paid to millions of people who are currently being denied all or part of their 100-day entitlement. India's rural development minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, admits some of these “shortcomings”, which arise, he says, “because so many dishonest people are there”. But he is confident that, because of the transparency and checks in the scheme, the failings will be put right in a year or two.

That the states' bad behaviour makes NREGS so far neither national nor guaranteed does at least ease one big concern: its cost. This was originally projected at $11 billion a year. According to Mr Singh, however, though NREGS may overshoot its provisional budget of $4 billion this year, it is unlikely to cost more than $6 billion annually. Its opportunity cost may be another matter. According to a recent World Bank simulation, more Indian peasants would be withdrawn from poverty if the government just handed them cash—without first making them shovel dirt.

Spread of Nuclear Capability Is Feared
Global Interest in Energy May Presage A New Arms Race

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 12, 2008; A01

VIENNA -- At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts.

Much of the new interest is driven by economic considerations, particularly the soaring cost of fossil fuels. But for some Middle Eastern states with ready access to huge stocks of oil or natural gas, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the investment in nuclear power appears to be linked partly to concerns about a future regional arms race stoked in part by Iran's alleged interest in such an arsenal, the officials said.

"We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians," a senior U.S. government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology said in an interview. He declined to speak on the record because of diplomatic sensitivities. "The big question is: At what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?"

Although the United Arab Emirates has a proven oil reserve of 100 billion barrels, the world's sixth-largest, in January it signed a deal with a French company to build two nuclear reactors. Wealthy neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain are also planning nuclear plants, as are Libya, Algeria and Morocco in North Africa and the kingdom of Jordan.

Even Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, last year announced plans to purchase a nuclear reactor, which it says is needed to produce electricity; it is one of 11 Middle Eastern states now engaged in starting or expanding nuclear power programs.

Meanwhile, two of Iran's biggest rivals in the region, Turkey and Egypt, are moving forward with ambitious nuclear projects. Both countries abandoned any pursuit of nuclear power decades ago but are now on course to develop seven nuclear power plants -- four in Egypt and three in Turkey -- over the next decade.

Egypt's ambassador to the United States, Nabil Fahmy, told a recent gathering of Middle Eastern and nonproliferation experts that his country's decision was unrelated to Iran's nuclear activities. But he acknowledged that commercial nuclear power "does give you technology and knowledge," and he warned that a nuclear arms race may be inevitable unless the region's leaders agree to ban such weapons.

"We continue to take the high road, but there isn't much oxygen there, and it is very lonely," Fahmy told the gathering in Washington at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He added a prediction: "Without a comprehensive nuclear accord, you will have a proliferation problem in the Middle East, and it will be even worse in 10 years than it is today."

Many countries involved in nuclear expansion have stressed their peaceful intentions. Some, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, publicly vowed never to pursue uranium enrichment or fuel reprocessing -- technologies that can be used to create fissile materials for nuclear weapons. But some arms-control experts say the sudden interest cannot be fully explained by rising oil prices.

"This is not primarily about nuclear energy. It's a hedge against Iran," said Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear policy and author of "Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons." "They're starting their engines. It takes decades to build a nuclear infrastructure, and they're beginning to do it now. They're saying, 'If there's going to be an arms race, we're going to be in it.' "
'90 Percent' Is Deterrence

Although U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran halted its research into making nuclear weapons five years ago, the Islamic republic still seeks to make enriched uranium with centrifuges at its vast underground facility at Natanz. It is now operating about 3,000 centrifuges and plans to increase the number to 50,000.

While Iran insists that the uranium will be used only to make electricity, the United States and its European allies have sought to dissuade Tehran from pursuing the technology by pushing ever-tougher sanctions through the U.N. Security Council. Iran's neighbors, convinced that a nuclear-armed Tehran is now likely, are keeping their own options open, nuclear experts say.

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and a winner with the IAEA of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has likened the pursuit of "latent" nuclear capability to buying an insurance policy.

"You don't really even need to have a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei said at a recent international conference of security officials in Munich. "It's enough to buy yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it. Let's not kid ourselves: Ninety percent of it is insurance, a deterrence."

The Middle East's renewed interest in nuclear power is part of a global trend that began around 2004, as prices for fossil fuels began to rise. Before that, commercial nuclear development had remained relatively flat since 1986, when a massive fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine widely spread radioactive contamination in history's worst commercial nuclear power accident.

But now, with oil supplies tightening and prices soaring, nuclear power is being viewed in a different light, said Alan McDonald, an IAEA official who coordinates the agency's programs on nuclear energy. McDonald said he thinks there is a logical economic argument for developing a domestic nuclear industry, even if a nation's oil reserves are measured by the tanker-load.

"Why would these Gulf states want to go nuclear? Because they know their oil will only become more valuable as global demand increases," McDonald said. "It may be more cost-effective to sell oil to Americans driving SUVs than to burn it domestically."

The IAEA officially encourages commercial nuclear development under policies backed by successive U.S. administrations since the 1950s. It also provides technical and legal assistance to any country that wants a nuclear power plant.

But IAEA officials say they have never previously seen such widespread interest in starting a domestic nuclear power industry. While officials declined to detail their correspondence with specific countries, the list of the newly interested includes several African countries, such as Nigeria and Namibia, and at least half a dozen former Soviet republics that are embracing new Western designs to replace less-reliable Soviet nuclear plants.
Programs Can Be Hidden

Nuclear weapons experts say commercial nuclear power plants, by themselves, pose relatively little proliferation risk, although they are frequently mentioned as possible targets for terrorist attacks. But nuclear power can give a country the technological expertise and infrastructure that could become the foundation for a clandestine weapons program.

Such covert programs can be successfully hidden for years, as was demonstrated in recent months by U.S. and Israeli allegations that Syria was building a secret plutonium production reactor near the desert town of Al Kibar. Plutonium is an efficient fuel for nuclear explosions, as well as for power generation.

Both India and Pakistan built nuclear devices using an industrial infrastructure built ostensibly for nuclear power. Taiwan and South Korea conducted weapons research under cover of civil power programs but halted the work after being confronted by the United States.

A particular concern is rising interest in nuclear enrichment and reprocessing, the commercial enterprise that creates nuclear fuel and then, after its use, separates plutonium from the spent fuel. The business has long been dominated by the United States, Russia and a consortium of European nations.

But since 2004, uranium-producing countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, as well as close U.S. allies such as Canada and Australia, have sought to develop their own enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. All of these nations are seeking to cash in on the future growth in nuclear power generation.

Canada's push for expanded enrichment capacity has already prompted private but intense clashes with the Bush administration, officials said.

"They're all rethinking enrichment, even countries that did it in the past and gave it up," said a senior IAEA official who monitors fuel-cycle development, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that he not be identified by name. "They already mine uranium and sell it, and now they realize they could make a lot more money if they enrich it."

While no one forecasts a nuclear-armed Canada or Australia, the change could lead to more nuclear materials being transported around the world, among countries in nearly every region with heightened nuclear expertise.

"People stand up and pay attention when you talk about enrichment and the fuel cycle," said the senior U.S. government official who tracks nuclear proliferation. "That's the long pole in the tent" in the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. He added that, while the extensive system of IAEA inspections and monitoring for such programs is meant to prevent misuse, "that only holds up to the point where the country decides to kick the IAEA out."

View all comments that have been posted about this article.