Turn your clock back 70 years. Imagine that Wall Street banks and brokerages sold Nuremberg-compliant bonds and stock funds in 1938. American Nazi sympathizers bought financial instruments certified by Berlin-based advisers as free of ``Jewish profits'' from, say, Salomon Brothers and Bloomingdale's. In turn, a percentage of such funds' gains underwrote pro-Nazi charities, like the German-American Bund, and similar organizations in the Fatherland, like the Hitler Youth. Seventy years hence, an analogous outrage grows on Wall Street, only this time for real.
Sharia-compliant finance (SCF) is expanding among banks and securities houses eager to absorb the hundreds of billions of petrodollars cascading into the Middle East, thanks to $100-per-barrel oil. To lure this cash, financial companies increasingly offer vehicles that neither pay interest nor benefit from gambling, entertainment, alcohol, pork or anything considered ``haram'' or ``un-kosher'' in Islam. Bahrain's International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM) counts $97 billion in Islamic bonds in circulation with another $66 billion forecast through 2008 - and SCF is not limited to the bond market.
SCF goes far beyond marketing to Muslims and Middle Easterners. IIFM lists ``wider sharia acceptance'' among its goals. Selling sharia-compliant investments legitimizes a barbaric theocratic orthodoxy that should be defeated, not promoted. Turn your clock back 1,300 years. According to the Koran, sharia means that, with disobedient women, men should ``admonish them, and send them to their beds and beat them'' (Koran 4:34). For those having sex outside marriage: ``The fornicatress and the fornicator, flog each of them with a hundred stripes'' (24:2). ``Cut off the hands of thieves, whether they are male or female, as punishment for what they have done'' (5:38). Instead of celebrating gay sex with parades and rainbow flags, ``kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done'' (''Reliance of the Traveler'' - Abu Dawud 4447). How do you handle an adulteress? ``Khalid Walid came forward with a stone which he threw at her head, and when the blood spurted on his face, he cursed her'' (''Reliance'' - Muslim 4206). Western financiers have no business complying with this.
Nevertheless, SCF advisers help these funds remain sharia-compliant. Unfortunately, these authorities often are Muslim extremists who appear mainstream by consulting for such powerhouses as Deutsche Bank and Standard & Poor's. And:
[ufaro][mc]In 2002, Caribou Coffee had to explain the ties between its Atlanta-based sharia-compliant owner, Arcapita Inc., and Arcapita's sharia adviser, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. He had defended ``our brothers and children in Al-Aqsa and the blessed land of Palestine generously sacrificing their blood, giving their souls willingly in the way of Allah.'' Qaradawi eventually resigned from Arcapita.
Sheik Muhammad Taqi Usmani advises the Dow Jones Islamic Index. He has written: ``The purpose of Jihad...aims at breaking the grandeur of unbelievers and establish(ing) that of Muslims.'' The North American Islamic Trust owns 69.8 percent of the Dow Jones Islamic Fund. The Justice Department identified NAIT last June as an un-indicted co-conspirator in supporting Hamas' murderous anti-Israeli terrorism. NAIT also owns the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany, N.Y. In April 2007, its founder, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, and imam, Yassin Muhiddin Aref, received 15-year prison sentences for assisting an FBI sting operation to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat in Manhattan with a shoulder-fired missile.
Sharia-compliant funds usually donate 2.5 percent of profits as ``zakat.'' While such money assists peaceful Muslim causes, some of it has gone ka-boom. The Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, all major Muslim charities, were shuttered in December 2001 for allegedly supporting Islamic terrorism.
According to ``The Tax Lawyer,'' Yasin al-Qadi - an investor in one Hamas-connected, sharia-compliant company called BMI (not the perfectly legitimate Broadcast Music Inc.) - transmitted $820,000 to Chicago's Quranic Literacy Institute in 1991. QLI employee Mohammad Salah confessed in 1995 that he trained recruits to handle assorted toxins and ``basic chemical materials for the preparation of bombs and explosives.''
``This is bad for America, bad for capitalism and good for jihad,'' says Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, which is sounding the anti-SCF claxons. CSP's legal analysis by David Yerushalmi richly details SCF's dangers. The last thing America needs is jihad with tailored suits and Excel spreadsheets. It's time to stop the clock on this deadly idea.
How in the word could Mr. "Just Words" have responded to Hillary's claim that she was "Rocky" by saying that "We got to remember that Rocky was a movie?
A man who would say that movies don't matter is a man who would bowl a 37, then quit after seven frames. A quitter! And a non-movie-matterer! He just doesn't get us. Well, he's going to regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of his life. Or at least until the North Carolina primary.
I CAN QUIT ANYTIME: But until I do - was it "Just a movie" when Obama hit up Hollywood for $1.2 million?
Posted by: Mike ||
04/06/2008 07:08 ||
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#1
Yep, and Uncle Tom's Cabin was just a book. Though legend has it when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 he said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!"
By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE
The Obama for President headquarters in Levittown, Pa., is set on a busy thoroughfare just to the east of where all the houses begin 17,311 of them built by the developer William Levitt between 1952 and 1957. Right next door is the Dairy Delite, which began selling soft-serve ice cream 50 years ago and is still going strong. About four miles north, along the Delaware River, is what Levittowners have always just called the mill the mighty Fairless Works, a U.S. Steel plant that grew up alongside the town and at its peak employed some 10,000 workers.
Any longtime resident could lead you to the other sites where the men of Levittown found muscular, good-paying work Vulcanized Rubber and Plastics; Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M); Thiokol, a defense contractor; the big General Motors plant across the river in Trenton. They worked their shifts and came home to their young families and their little patches of green. Many had moved here from the cramped neighborhoods of Philadelphias blue-collar river wards or from coal country in upstate Pennsylvania.
You could call the Levittown experience the American dream, but that does not get to what was best about it: its concrete, earthbound specificity. The union wage. The house you could purchase in the mid-1950s for $8,990, with a down payment of $100. The elementary schools that Levitt & Sons put right in the neighborhoods, so that no young child would have to ride a bus. The Olympic-size public pools and the Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains and its parking for 6,000 cars.
Last month, as the epic struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reached Pennsylvania, I came to watch it through the prism of Levittown its past and present. The dream is vanishing in the same specific ways it came to life. The young men of the community no longer follow their fathers into the mill, because the work force at U.S. Steel has dwindled to fewer than 100. A Spanish-owned company now occupies part of the site, where it makes wind turbines. The old 3M plant has become something called the Bristol Commerce Center, and most of the other manufacturers are long gone. The towns main intersection, Five Points, is dotted with check-cashing agencies and pawnshops. The original Shop-a-Rama was leveled...
Condescending remainder at the link...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/06/2008 00:00 ||
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"When I turned 18, my mother instructed me on everything she believed I needed to know about voting. Just pull the big lever, she said, by which she meant the Democratic lever that automatically cast votes for the partys entire ticket."
This was the entire point of the article. Everything else was cover for pushing this concept.
Remember, conservatives are all evil.
/sarcasm off
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/06/2008 7:39 Comments ||
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#2
"Just pull the big lever, Mom said
"Pull my finger" the Democrats said
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/06/2008 7:59 Comments ||
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#3
...and, if I am elected, I will require that all buggy whips, horseshoes, corsets and shoe button hooks used in America are made in America...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/06/2008 8:12 Comments ||
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#4
What Mucek said.
Income security, uber alles.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/06/2008 9:28 Comments ||
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#5
But . . but . . . but . . . I thought suburbs like Leavittown were soul-destroying monuments to corporate AmeriKKKa's bland, bourgeoise, Fifties-vintage conformity.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/06/2008 11:54 Comments ||
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#6
Just pull the big lever
Which has been the mantra for most of the Northeast states for over a century.
#7
Which has been the mantra for most of the Northeast states for over a century.
And just look at all they have to show for doing it...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/06/2008 12:31 Comments ||
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#8
Another steaming pile of crap from the NYT.
My credentials: I have lived in the immediate vicinity of Levittown, PA for the last 27 years.
This article takes the slant of a grumpy old unemployed steel plant worker. Everything is negative and in need of change. But it is largely so slanted that doesn't even approximate the truth. Here are some examples:
"The mill" and numerous other unionized smokestack industries cited have been essentially gone for decades. They're old news. Most of the people who worked there in the 50's and 60's are way past retirement age now. Most younger people have moved on from "muscular, good-paying work" to more-cerebral good-paying work. Levittown is neither a ghost town or a poverty zone.
The "Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains" is also old news. It was eclipsed three decades ago by the very-modern and much larger Oxford Valley Mall which is better located to draw customers from both Levittown and many surrounding areas. I was just there. It's thriving.
"The dream is vanishing" -- because the majority of Levittown homes have been remodeled from Bill Levitt's little boxes into full-sized less-affordable homes. If "the dream" is a nasty hot job at the steel mill and a little box home then they're right -- those days are gone. And good riddance. The next generation is aspiring to better jobs and homes in adjacent upscale communities like Yardley and Lower Makefield that were mostly farm land when "the mill" had its day.
"The towns main intersection, Five Points, is dotted with check-cashing agencies and pawnshops."
The "town" is a sprawling set of communities including over ten square miles. It does not have a "main intersection" any more that the U.S. has a main intersection. Cherry-picking the Five Points intersection is like judging the U.S. by only observing a crack house in Chicago.
This article is so slanted I surprised I didn't have to turn my monitor on end to read it.
#9
Levittown was American mass production brought to the housing industry, what Ford was to making the automobile affordable for the unwashed masses. Together they, with the help of the post WWII GI Bill homeownership, brought suburbanization and the ability of the common man to establishment his family and himself beyond a four room apartment ghetto in the post-agricultural urban society. The self appointed betters critics come off like landed aristocracy who've seen their bound peasants depart for the new world and free land out from under their subservience to dictate their daily lives.
According to British media, the US is set to attack Iranian military facilities. DEBKAfiles military sources add that the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf.
War tensions in the Middle East have shot up - not only over the signals flashing between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, but also on the US-Iranian front in Iraq in the wake of rising in violence around the Basra conflagration.
Tuesday, April 8, US Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus and ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will stress in their report to Congress that Iran is waging war on America in Iraq, say sources in Washington, London and Baghdad. This emerged strongly last week, when US intelligence learned that Iran had intervened directly in the Iraqi governments crackdown on renegade militias in Basra and southern Iraq, by directing and provisioning those militias through the Revolutionary Guards al Qods Brigades.
Official sources in London predict that Irans intervention against the American effort to stabilize Iraq may well prompt a US attack on the military installations in Iran which are orchestrating the interference.
Better to be crafty and deniable about it. Mysterious explosions, untimely deaths of senior Iranian officials, 'accidents' galore. There's more than one way to handle this ...
Gen. Petraeus is on record as accusing Iran of being the source of the daily rocket bombardment of Baghdads Green Zone, seat of government and US diplomatic and military headquarters.
DEBKAfiles military sources report that Moscow has dropped its two nickels into the rising war alarm. In the last two weeks, Russian military and intelligence officials have been leaking claims of intensified American military movements around Iranian shores. Iran is certain to come up in Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putins farewell talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Sunday, along with other controversial business, such as Moscows objections to NATOs eastern expansion and US missile shield in East Europe.
Saturday, US defense secretary Robert Gates turned up in Oman, the site of big American air bases, for talks with Sultan Qaboos. He then flew straight back to Washington. While Gates insisted to correspondents aboard his plane that the US is committed to a diplomatic solution for Irans covert nuclear program, the surprise visit struck sparks in the already fraught regional atmosphere, particularly as it followed on the heels of US Vice President Dick Cheneys talks in Oman two weeks ago.
DEBKAfiles Middle East sources sum up how Tehran and Damascus read these events and the picture they have built up of Washingtons intentions as combined with Israels military steps:
1. US is preparing to attack the Iranian military installations linked to subversion in Iraq. The operation will widen out into strikes on the Islamic Republics suspect nuclear sites.
2. Israel will use the chance for a concurrent attack on Syria.
3. Israel will attack Hizballahs strongholds in Lebanon.
4. A broad, coordinated US-Israeli offensive will be mounted against Iran, Syria and Hizballah.
Iran and Syria view Israels four-day home defense exercise against missile attack, conventional or non-conventional, beginning Sunday, as setting the stage for these attacks.
Both believe Washington and Jerusalem are in close military step. Neither is reassured by soothing statements from prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Barak that Israel does not seek violent confrontation - especially when the US administration is withholding all comment. Hence the high state of preparedness ordered by the jittery governments in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut.
#3
This would be what, the fourth time that DEBKA has said we have a carrier force on our way to attack Iran. Are people still buying those wolf tickets?
"Syria has raised the state of alert of its armed forces because it knows Hizbullah's revenge attack against Israel for the killing of Imad Mughniyeh is near, according to Channel 2.
Soon after Mughniyeh's death, Israel warned Syria that it would hold it responsible for any revenge attack launched by Hizbullah for the killing of Mughniyeh, its operations officer."
#6
Unconfirmed: "Israel has massed troops on both the Lebanese border and the Syrian Border (according to Israeli friends that live near there)Syria has massed troops on their border as well."
#7
Okay, so why are troops always "massed" and why do buses always "plunge"? And has anyone ever seen a "stumbling block" in real life and if so, is it really something designed on purpose to trip people?
#8
OSAMA BIN LADEN IS NO LONGER POINTING THE JIHAD/ISLAMIST SWORD AT BOTH AMER + RUSSIA-
CHINA/ASIA - HE's POINTING IT SOLEY AT THE LATTER. Its in RUSSIA's, CHINA's, and ASIA's interests at this time for the US-IRAN to engage in conflict right now - as per WAFF.com/OTHER, A Russ mil analyst has proclaimed that the USA may destroy Russ in preemptive war bwtn 2011/2012-2015, which IMO covertly indir denotes RUSS, etc. REALIZATION THAT OSAMA'S = RADICAL ISLAMISM'S REGIONAL-GLOBAL JIHAD IS WEAKENING AND MAY NO LONGER BE STRONG ENUFF OR VIOLENT ENUFF TO DIVERT THE US' FULL MILPOL ATTENTION vv RUSS OR CHINA's, etc. GEOPOL ACTIONS-INTERS.
OSAMA's NEW MSGS > Russ is held as mil incapable or impotent, unable to mount any kind of major = full-scale MilOp agz NUCLEARIZING IRAN WIDOUT EFFEC JEOPARDIZING ITS OWN INTERNAL-NATIONAL SECURITY - AT BEST, RUSS AT THIS TIME CAN ONLY MOUNT A LIMITED, "IN-AND-OUT", "ATTACK-AND'LEAVE" TEMPORARY MIL STRIKE. RUSS CAN ALSO LOCALLY OR SELECTIVELY DEFEND AGZ ISLAMIST INCURSIONS BUT CANNOT FULLY DEFEND OR PROTECT, ATTACK OR PROJECT ON REQUIRED = COLD WAR-ERA SCALE. IOW, Russ internal security has TOO MANY POROUS HOLES + needs Amer to attack and invade Iran in Russ' name, both to stop NUCLEAR IRAN + LOOMING NUCLEAR ISLAMIST TERROR. OSAMA > is forcing Russ to spend more and more of its newfound national-internat wealth to proficiently protect itself from the Islamist search for unsecure Nukes-WMDS.
Iff Osama = Radical Islam don't have any already [past Net], to salvage their Jihad they'll need to procure or capture, etc. unsecure Nuke-WMD Techs Perts + Devices AMAP ASAP.
PUTIN'S DESIRED "MULTIPOLAR WORLD" IS FACING IRRELEVANCY, WID RUSSIA PER SE [+ MACKINDER'S WORLD ISLAND} BECOM EITHER PART OF US-DOMIN OWG-NWO, OR IN ALTERN SUBORNED UNDER A FUTURE REGIONAL = EURASIAN ISLAMIST NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER.
1. Oman wants to clear the IRG out of the Omani enclave that juts into the Gulf of Hormuz. Apparently its riddled with IRQ.
They need a US guarantee that Iran will not respond.
2. The UAE will attempt to take back with American support the Tumb islands Iran invaded 10 or so years ago.
Both actions are entirely consistent with 'international law', and Iran will be forced to escalate or shown to be impotent in the Gulf. And both locations are very strategic for Gulf oil supplies.
BTW, I wouldn't rule out both more or less simultaneously.
#12
See WAFF.com Poster Thread > ARAB WORLD: POTENTIAL SUPERPOWER. Poster replies include thoughts of SLAVIC WORLD SUPERPOWER???
ALso, ARAB LEAGUE + TURKEY +..... versus INDIA thread.
AGAIN, SHOWS IMO THAT OSAMA = RADICAL ISLAM HAS CHANGED THE STRATEGIC DIRECTION OF JIHAD SQUARELY OR SOLELY AT RUSSIA-CHINA, CENASIA, ETC IN ASIA - Islamist losses are such that they may need to depend on NUCLEAR-WMD INTIMIDATION + FIREPOWER-TERRORISM TO CONTIN WID ISLAMISM-CENTRIC/CONTROLLED JIHAD, ESPEC AFTER 2010 AND BEYOND. They need NUCLEAR IRAN, + OTHER, NOW AS CONTINGENCY ASAP AMAP IN CASE OF DE FACTO US-IRAN WAR [Iran loses].
#13
Lest we fergit, any de facto defeat of the Islamist Jihad may be interpreted by Muslims as a defeat and invalidation of Quranic/Sutric Premises Values and Teachings, etc. COMMON to both Mainstream = "Moderate" Islam, as well as Radical/Militant Islamism.
AQ, etc. NEED NUKE-WMD TECHS, AND THE BEST PLACE FOR THEM TO GET IT IS FROM RUSSIA, FORMER SSRS + ASIA STILL CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE BETWEEN COLD WAR "STATUS QUO" STATISM VERSUS DEMOCRATIC REFORMS.
ISRAEL = IRAQ-AFGHANI > any war agz Tel AViv is IMO a "HOLDING ACTION" meant notsomuch to destroy Israel BUT TO ATTRACT NEW RECRUITS TO REPLACE ON-GOING LOSSES. GOOD ISLAMIST RECRUIT PR + DELAYS ISRAEL FROM DESTROYING IRAN'S BUDDING MIL ARSENAL WHICH AQ + ISLAMISM NEED FOR JIHAD + KEEPS US-COALITION [read - MILFORS] PREOCCUPIED BUT OUTSIDE OF IRAN PROPER.
OSAMA > IMO clearly sees RUSSIA + ASIA as either suborned to under US-domin OWG-NWO, or under NUCLEARIZED RADICAL ISLAMISM = ISLAMIST BLOC.
OSAMA's PROB > CONTAINING US-SPECIFIC MILFORS TO IRAQ-AFGHANI LONG ENUFF FOR IRAN + ISLAMISM TO DEV ANDOR PROCURE POTENT NUKE-WMD ARSENALS [time factors]. Remember, OSAMA is IRAN-CENTRIC/FOCII as to his personal ISLAMIST END-TIMES BELIEF + APOCALYPSE - Islam = Islamism is victorious/ destroyed, proven or discredited, etc. in same. THE LONGER IRAN IS NOT INVADED, THE GREATER THE CHANCE FOR THE NUCLEARIZED ISLAMIST SWORD, ERGO THE GREATER THE CHANCE OF ISLAM = ISLAMISM'S + GLOBAL JIHAD'S FINAL VICTORY. PEACE > means only to Rest + Rebuild before Attacking, Warring again. WOT > WAR TO THE DEATH > OSAMA BIN LADEN > ABSOLUTE VICTORY, OR ABSOLUTE DEATH, TO THE WEST OR TO ISLAM.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
According to British media, the US is set to attack Iranian military facilities. DEBKAfiles military sources add that the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf.
