FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 674(Democrats in roman; Republicans in italic; Independents underlined)
      H R 3997      RECORDED VOTE      29-Sep-2008      2:07 PM
      QUESTION:  On Concurring in Senate Amendment With An Amendment
      BILL TITLE: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes

—- AYES    205 — 

—- NOES    228 — 

—- NOT VOTING    1 — 

French underground news:

Hearthquake HAARP made,

a Big One in California since two month

A  website close to French intelligence services said that an earthquake will take place in California, a Big One:  9 on the Richter scale, in order to hide the bankruptcy of the financial system and of course of  US citizens.

Video in French:

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=xzZcCyN3iRs

READ MORE:

Evidence that the US Navy is responsible for the recent earthquakes in Indiana.

Scalar Quake Weapons Being Aimed At Oak Ridge?

Earthquakes:Natural or Man-Made?

Curious cloud formations linked to quakes

Earth tremor felt across England (Update: suggestions that it wasn’t an earthquake)

We Are Under Martial Law!

As Declared By The Speaker Last Night! Rep Burgess

_____________________________________________

Wall Street Protest call your congress

say NO 2 a bailout 1-800-828-0498

Sep 29, 2008

The Last Day

Sam Mathid
Sep 29, 2008

Last week, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke announced that taxpayers money would be expropriated to bail out the bad loans of bankers. Despite the appalling scale of greed, fraud and incompetence, that is the deal that is being rammed through Congress as I write. I assume that outcome based on Congress’ long record of having the collective spine of a jellyfish.

The banks, by their actions, have ensured that many people who could not afford houses were sucked into the market. When the last person was in, housing prices started their inevitable tumble. Prices are falling hard, and will continue to fall hard into the foreseeable future. Those who are already underwater will soon be underwater a lot further. Those who are marginal will soon be joining their ranks.

A friend approached me today. The dollar value on his house was $600,000 12 months ago. He had a $320,000 mortgage. Today his house is worth $300,000 and falling.

He has a perfect credit rating, and has never missed a full payment on his house. His family is one of the many that the current structure is penalizing in order to support those who bought houses that they could never afford. He asked me what he should do. My advice was to walk. There is no moral responsibility for him to continue to pay people who have shafted him in such a manner.

Why would anyone pay their mortgage when legislation is being drafted to make non-payment acceptable? If responsible people who didn’t over commit are penalized for the actions of those people who did, then the rules of the game are corrupt. If the rules of the game are corrupt then don’t play the game. If you do, then you end up as no better than a banker or a Wall Street used CDO salesman.

Today in my in-box I found an email suggesting that instead of giving $700 billion to the cronies of Hank Paulson, that we should break it up and distribute the money to every adult in America. The email claimed that would be an amount in the region of $400,000 for every man and woman in America. That won’t happen of course and for one very good reason.

The current system has collapsed because of the inflation of the currency. The beauty of inflation for the rich is that they are first at the spigot when the money is released. They get it at full value and use it to send asset prices up and off to the moon. It appears that the economy is booming. It’s not of course, but it looks that way to the true believers in the bizarre world of Keynesian economics.

How much inflation has there been? From the signing of the Constitution right up until landing a man on the moon the whole American experience, every house, car, television, freeway, airplane, war… everything, cost one trillion dollars. Then consider that the debt ceiling has been raised 2 1/2 trillion dollars just this last 12 months. Do you see the value in that? Of course not; that is because you didn’t get it. The rich bankers and their Wall Street friends that you are now being told you have to bail out got the lot.

By the time that the money filters down to the poor suckers in the street, the prices of goods have finally started to rise in line with the rate of inflation of the currency. The pittance that trickles down to Joe and Suzy is never enough to cover the higher prices caused by the full amount of inflation. Inflation ALWAYS causes higher prices, but only after a delay. The delay is always long enough that Joe and Suzy fail to make the connection between cause and effect. The already rich elites get the money, Joe and Suzy get lumbered with the bill via higher prices.

If Congress distributed the inflated currency to the tune of $400,000 to every man and woman, then ON THE SAME DAY that the money arrived, a coke would be $20- and it would cost $300- to fill the car with gas. Joe and Suzy would instantly make the connection between inflation and higher prices. In one day that would signal the end of the greatest and most insidious scam that governments the world over play on ‘their’ citizens.

The inflation in America has been greater than anywhere else over a more sustained period. That is why the pain of higher prices will be greater here than anywhere, with the possible exception of Zimbabwe. Joe and Suzy Lunchbox must never be allowed to understand the inflation scam. That is why cheques for $400,000 are not going to arrive in anyone’s mailbox.

The rising grocery and gas prices that Joe and Suzy are now paying are simply the repayments due on the vast amounts already given to those first in line at the spigots years ago. The repayments will go on for a long time. Beyond the life span of anyone alive today. How high will prices have to rise to accommodate the infusion of $700 billion in new dollar bills (not counting the fact that it will end up as $7 trillion after our banks work their fractional banking magic)? Impossible to know for sure, but my guess is really scary.

The bankers and Wall Street investors have lost Joe and Suzy’s money, now they want passage of legislation to ensure that Joe and Suzy have to pay them back. There can be little doubt that Congress will pass it. There will be electoral rage at the decision with unforeseeable consequences in November.

My wife went to the gas station in Clearwater, Florida yesterday. There was no gas, so not being desperate she went home. Today she went out again and found a gas station with a long queue. She queued. Whilst waiting she chatted to another woman in the queue. This other woman informed my wife that there was no gas between Ashville in N. Carolina and Charleston in S. Carolina. She claimed that in Georgia people were fighting over gas it was so short. Maybe that is not the whole story, maybe it is. Who knows what is true in America anymore?

Things are falling apart very quickly in America. The downright lies, and omissions and twisting of the truth, are being continued right up to the end. There will be a great deal of bitterness if Joe and Suzy ever realize the nature of the con trick that has been pulled on them. Never forget that Joe is armed in this country, and oft times Suzy also.

Our children have been in school here, and tonight we went to the Homecoming dinner. A drum band pounding out the rhythm whilst beautifully gowned ladies with fantastic jewellery and sundry glitter walked around the room. Men in beautiful and expensive suits accompanied them. We feasted and drank and made conversation. On a giant screen, film of the High School football team (quarter-back has the best stats in the whole US) was played. People were light-hearted and merry and it was a great night in the American tradition.

I could not help but have the thought intrude upon me that it was like an ‘end of America’ party. Maybe it’s the end of something that had become rotten, and the re-birth of something far more decent. There are very hard times coming. When TSHTF [the s*** hits the fan] remember that it is Congress who is your enemy, not your neighbour.

None of the bankers and Wall Street crooks could have done what they did without the support and backing of Congress legislation that not only allowed such actions, but by the nature of government intervention in markets, made it impossible to survive in those industries without becoming corrupted by the legislation.

Whilst it does not excuse the lack of moral fibre of those who participated in this greatest of ever frauds, it is good to remember that we all have things in our youthful past that we are not proud of. Without a Congress who completely ignored the Constitution there could never have been the legislation that created this fraud. Without Congress, America would never have reached this impoverished state. Without Congress, Americans would already be living much better lives, with far fewer enemies in the world.

I shall be writing from overseas after tomorrow. I’ll look from a distance at the implosion of America. My family and I have loved living in America these last nine months and are very sad to leave. I came to chronicle at first hand the decline of this once great country. The people are wonderful… warm, friendly, honest and hard working.

I have come to understand much about Americans in the last nine months, and found nothing that I did not like (apart from the food and coffee), but I am still a million miles away from understanding why you elect the no-hopers that you do to your Congress. We all want to be able to come back again one day. No matter how much my family and I will miss America, it will not be as much as the world will miss America.

***

The brilliant Professor Antal E. Fekete, economist and mathematician, is conducting a seminar in Canberra, Australia from the 11th to the 14th November this year. It is the ONLY seminar anywhere in the world where all aspects of the gold and silver basis are discussed, together with a trading system guided by the basis. Meet and hear one of the giants of our age. Bookings for the seminar can be made through:

feketeaustralia@yahoo.com

I was privileged to attend Professor Fekete’s seminar in Hungary in August of 2006, and will again be in attendance in Canberra. Sadly it will be Professor Fekete’s last presentation of Gold Standard University Live. Also in attendance will be the loquacious Mr D.R. Schoon.

Another one day event has been announced. This will take place on Saturday 15th November and is entitled ‘The Unfolding of the Crisis’. Professor Fekete graciously bowed to considerable pressure and has agreed to stay on for the extra day and speak on the subject. It will include questions from the floor. I will definitely be there.

Sep 27, 2008
Sam Mathid
email: sammathid@yahoo.com

© Sam Mathid 2006-2008

American pressure on the Gulf-States to save Wall StreeT

Gulf diplomatic sources in New York, told Al-Akhbar that they are concerned about the U.S. pressures on the Gulf-countries to absorb the currency liquidity available in their banks.

The United States sent harsh messages to its Gulf allies demanding serious contribution in Bush’s financial rescue plan to prevent the complete collapse of financial markets.

Especially after Qatar Investment Authority rejected the investment of part of its assets in the U.S. market, Preferring to invest in Asian markets.

http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/09/29/american-pressure-on-the-gulf-states-to-save-wall-street/

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US financial fire fans across global borders

PARIS: Wall Street’s meltdown isn’t just America’s problem.

While many around the world are watching the financial crisis unfold as if it were a gruesome spectator sport, the consequences for businesses and ordinary people from Tokyo to Buenos Aires could dig deep and last long. And that’s regardless of what happens to the U.S. government’s bailout plan.

Asia’s export-driven manufacturers face the prospect of their biggest market — the United States — suddenly drying up. Retailers could see a slow Christmas in Europe and America. And spooked lenders around the world may turn off the tap of capital to companies and consumers, sending economies into a tailspin.

“It’s like I’m holding my breath, waiting for the collapse,” said Dmitry Zhiltsov, a recruiter in St. Petersburg, Russia, worried about his company’s prospects, his family finances and his mortgage.

In a report Friday, the World Economic Forum was blunt about the risks. It warned that the world faces a “heightened risk of widespread contagion” and of “massive consumer credit defaults.”

Today in Business with Reuters
Bailout plan in hand, House braces for tough voteEuropean governments rescue more lendersBailouts drive down stocks globally
Yet the overall message was: Don’t panic. The forum urged regulators to help out but not over-protect, “to balance the immediate imperative to prevent further damage with the longer-term need to ensure future market competitiveness and innovation.”

That may be an elusive equilibrium, especially in today’s climate. Consultancy Global Insight expects things “to get worse before they get better” and doesn’t expect a global recovery until 2010.

In early trading Monday, Asian stock markets were mixed after U.S. Congressional leaders and the White House agreed Sunday to a US$700 billion rescue of the ailing financial industry.

Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 0.5 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 2 percent amid lingering anxiety over the effectiveness of the plan, which still needs official approval from both houses of Congress.

A swoop through a few major cities shows how legions of lives are linked, in different ways, to the U.S. financial sector and its costliest crisis ever.

In Tokyo, the mood is strangely serene, as the world’s No. 2 economy considers how to cope — and how to capitalize on the weaknesses of No. 1.

Japanese financial institutions suffered little from the subprime crisis that ignited today’s fires on Wall Street, and are now flush with cash. Their conservative lending strategies, and lessons learned after Japan’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, are paying off.

“Quite a few businesses, especially banks, are seeing this as a major opportunity,” said Martin Schulz, an economist at Fujitsu Research Institute.

Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest brokerage, is buying the Asian, European and Middle Eastern operations of collapsed U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. Top Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. is buying up to 20 percent of Morgan Stanley.

Long-term, though, the financial crisis is bad news for Japan’s export-driven economy. Government data released Thursday showed a rare trade deficit in August — including a 21.8 percent drop in exports to the U.S.

Manufacturers in China are antsy about export losses, too.

“Clothes are constantly on sale in the U.S. We can’t make money,” said the manager of Tianjin Excellent Import & Export Co., in Tianjin, southeast of Beijing.

The textile company, with 100 employees and $40 million in exports last year, has slashed shipments to the United States and shut its office in Paris, said the manager, who only gave his family name, Yang. The company is refocusing on Japanese and Bangladeshi markets.

Overall, the Chinese and Indian economies are holding steady as the U.S. falters, partly thanks to domestic demand.

China’s treasury ran a 1 trillion yuan ($130 billion) surplus in the first half of the year, and its financial institutions are among the world’s strongest. A run on banks is unlikely because Chinese families have few other places to put their money.

Not so in Hong Kong.

The territory suffered a big bank run last week — with thousands of customers swarming Bank of East Asia offices there and in Singapore — and 11 people were arrested after rumors involving troubled American Insurance Group Inc. fueled market jitters.

A few times zones westward, Moscow’s financial markets have swooned in recent weeks, partly under the avalanche of bad news in New York.

Zhiltsov, the Russian recruiter, fears demand for investment bankers and financial analysts will dry up, gouging his company’s profits. “All we need is for the housing bubble to end too,” he said drily, referring to real estate prices that have mushroomed in Russian cities.

In sober “Old Europe,” bankers, retailers and consumers are realizing that no one is immune to the fever on financial markets.

When Lehman Brothers imploded, European banks counted their chickens and sighed with relief: Their exposure to Lehman’s risks looked limited. But now Dutch-Belgian bank Fortis is teetering — and blaming uncertainty over the U.S. bailout package for its volatile share price. On Sunday, Congressional leaders and the Bush administration reached a tentative deal on the $700 billion bailout designed to prop up the financial system and avert a deep recession.

In Britain, even the Queen’s tailor is careening. Trading in shares of Hardy Amies PLC, the Savile Row tailor famous for making dresses for Queen Elizabeth II, was suspended Friday after it disclosed it might go into administration for lack of cash.

“The news of what’s been happening in the financial markets over the past two weeks has been very worrying for consumers and has impacted their confidence,” said Clive Black, retail analyst at Shore Capital Stockbrokers in London.

“There will be more companies finding it difficult and the banks aren’t in a position to help them as much after the credit crunch, so there will undoubtedly be more casualties down the line,” he added.

Fears of credit cards and corporate loans drying up have given fodder to anti-capitalism activists like Jerome Sinpaseuth, who was handing out fliers on a posh Paris square. “For a long time people considered us jokers, extremists from the left. But now more and more people think we were right” to criticize unfettered corporate profits, he said.

Sinpaseuth has a kindred spirit across the Atlantic in Brazil, if an unlikely one: Patricia Fraga, a 37-year-old bank manager who works on Sao Paolo’s Avenida Paulista, the financial heart of Latin America’s largest economy.

“The crisis in Wall Street makes it more than clear that financial institutions must be under some form of permanent government supervision,” she said. “It also shows that countries must reduce their dependence on the American market.”

The global fallout from Wall Street’s mistakes isn’t just hurting stock portfolios. It’s also denting dreams.

India’s best and brightest, who once sought jobs in medicine and engineering, have turned to business schools in increasing numbers. News of Lehman’s bankruptcy filled PaGalGuY.com, a message board for India’s aspiring financiers, with mournful comments.

“Is it a time for us b-school aspirants to reassess our career goals?” wrote a blogger identified as Sukrit Munjal, 22, from Bangalore. Another blogger who called himself Unhappy Demon, said simply: “Don’t post these kind of sick scary news man.”

___

Associated Press writers Joe McDonald in Tianjin, China; Emily Flynn Vencat and Bob Barr in London; Alan Clendenning and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Dikky Sinn in Hong Kong; Tomoko Hosaka in Tokyo; Erika Kinetz in Mumbai; and researcher Bonnie Cao in Beijing contributed to this report.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/29/business/Meltdown-Contagion.php?page=2

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THE USA AND WESTERN FINANCIAL CRISIS CANNOT BE SOLVED 

There is an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE problem!

WHAT IS THE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE PROBLEM?

The real estate scam in the USA alone is over 10 trillions and world wide is about 40 trillions. The fact that the crooks at the Federal Reserve and other Central Banks around the world (mainly Europe and Japan) keep printing money and doing computer entries over night, creating billions of dollars to bail out bankrupt banks, insurance and financial institutions, not only is another scam against tax payer but at the end of the day IT WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM!

This is not a question of faith or pessimism; it is simply “an order of magnitude” issue. What I mean is that with 1.5 trillions so far world wide they cannot solve a 40 trillion dollar real estate scam. For instance one USA bank alone has around $20 billions in assets but OVER $600 BILLIONS in loans and bad debts i.e. a leverage of 30 times their capital or 3.3 CENTS FOR A DOLLAR! Another Belgian bank (Fortis) has leveraged its assets 33 times that is THREE TIMES BIGGER THAN THE BELGIAN ECONOMY (GDP) where is hosted.

How can Central Bankers cover up for these bank leverages when loans start defaulting? For instance a bank with capital assets of $ 20 billions and leveraged loans of $600 billions IS TECHNICALLY BANKRUPT IF JUST 4% OF THE LOANS GOES INTO DEFAULT i.e. about $24 billions in the red versus $20 billions in capital! This is why they are desperate raising capital and getting rescue packages to stay financially viable.

So what our “new comrades’ Gordon, Bush, Bernanke and Paulson with their bank nationalizations programs are doing? GIVE THEM MORE LOANS FROM TAXPAYERS MONEY to keep them just above the float line. Let’s say in the above case they give this bank a rescue package of $20 billions. Then what? If the loans default reaches 10% we are back to square one and even worse! The bank is still insolvent with capital of $ 20 billions plus $20 billions of rescue package versus the $60 billions in default loans or 10%. So the problem does not get solved by these $20 billion bail out; it just postpone the crisis and at much larger amount!

On the other hand, the government debt is now higher, the Central Banks reserve keep going down until depletion by printing money out of thin air, and the taxpayer will be hit with higher taxes and higher inflation caused by currency devaluations. This self-feeding monster will make the SPECTER OF A DEEPER DEPRESSION A REALITY SOONER THAN LATER.

Warren Buffet said recently that if the bail out is not approved USA will go into its biggest crisis ever! This is half true: first, the depression is coming no matter what after 50 years of Western expansions at the expense of the Third World; second, the bail out IS JUST A TEMPORARY solution to a real estate crisis and economic slow down THAT HAD JUST STARTED!

So what these new ‘bankers comrades” will do next and then what? Probably they will suck again the taxpayer as they so far are not massively on the street while being robed! But the game WILL COME TO AN END BECAUSE THE SOLUTIONS AVAILABLE TO GOVERNMENTS AND CENTRAL BANKERS HAVE AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE PROBLEM that it is impossible to overcome! Total GDP on this planet is only $47 Trillions and just the real estate scam is about $40 trillions! A house in London in the 1980s was around $40K pounds and until recently was over $340K – Has the UK economy expanded to this magical level or is this just pure speculation that has nothing to do with their GDP?

USA alone listed last week 780 banks and institutions in deep red that the market cannot short anymore i.e. you cannot sell unless you own the shares. Now you multiply this 790 USA banks and financiers by just $10 billions in the red and you get $7.9 TRILLIONS. This gives you again “the order of magnitude” problem and confirms what I said before: the USA real estate scam is about $10 TRILLIONS.

It is quite interesting to see that Russia closed the market for couples of day, injected $20 billions, their President made some clear statements and the market rallied like never before; similarly in China. THIS IS TRUST AND RIGHT ORDER OF MAGNITUDE!

On the other side of the coin you see the ECB and the Feds with over one trillion pumped so far and still the market is in limbo. Bush talks and the market go further down. This probes again that USA and Western Europe solution has a credibility problem and “AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE” PROBLEM.

You cannot fight forest fires with buckets of water and tell the world that you are wining the fight! It is just a blatant lie because there is an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE PROBLEM.

______________

Gulf banks face merger pressure as credit crisis weighs on liquidity
ABU DHABI: Speculation intensified yesterday that Abu Dhabi’s leading banks would face the first forced merger in the Gulf region due to the credit crisis as liquidity in the region tightened.

Sarkozy renews pledge of support to French banks, calls for meeting
MARSEILLE, France: President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday repeated a pledge to protect French bank deposits from any losses in the financial market crisis, and called a meeting of bank and insurance bosses to discuss the situation. “We must not give way in the face of destabilisation. We have to support the banks,” he told a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Central banks redouble efforts to save banking
WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT: The world’s central banks redoubled their efforts yesterday to revive the paralysed global financial system through massive injections of cash.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) warns banks to not hide exposure
The prudential regulator has warned the big banks to scrutinise their overall loan exposure to financial companies and their satellite funds as turmoil continues on global markets. APRA is concerned the banks may be treating loans to companies such as Macquarie Group, Babcock & Brown and Challenger Financial and their listed funds as separate exposures, as this could allow the banks to avoid reporting them to the regulator, The Australian Financial Review reports.

European banks bailed out as Wall Street financial crisis spreads
LONDON – European governments announced a flurry of bank bailouts from Germany to Iceland on Monday, but the rescue deals only heightened fears that the contagion from the U.S. credit crisis has much further to spread before the financial system recovers.

Fears for economy take toll of Irish banks
Financial Time: Ireland’s banks suffered their biggest one-day fall in share prices for two decades on Monday as fears swept the Dublin market about their ability to withstand the downturn in the Irish economy amid the global financial turmoil.

European banks sucked into financial US crisis
FRANKFURT — European banks were sucked yesterday into turmoil spawned by the US financial crisis, with bailouts, sales and attacks on the shares of financial institutions multiplying across the continent. Banks in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands suffered brutal attacks on the stock markets, with investors hammering shares in small and large financial institutions alike.

SEE RON PAUL IN THE HOUSE TODAY. He is the only one after the Federal Reserve! And BTW the Federal Reserve was created by the Democrats under traitor Woodrow Wilson dECEMBER 1913. Today the democrats are trying to save the SAME private bankers that converted free people into PEONAGE!
http://www.ronpaul.com/

…’’Indeed, we do face a major crisis but it is much bigger than the freezing up of Wall Street and dealing with worthless assets on the books of major banks. The true crisis is the pending collapse of the fiat dollar system that emerged after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971.

For 37 years the world built a financial system based on the dollar as the reserve currency of the world in an attempt to make the dollar serve as the new standard of value. However since 1971, the dollar has had no intrinsic value, as it is not tied to gold. The dollar is simply a fiat currency, which has fluctuated in value on a daily, if not hourly, basis. This worked to some degree until the market realized that too much debt and malinvestment existed and a correction was required.”…

By: CANUKISTAN_VIEW on: 29.09.2008

Mossad and Indian Intelligence Target Pakistan

By Tariq Saeedi

Globe-Intel

“It is essential that we…strike and crush Pakistanis, enemies of Jews and Zionism, by all disguised and secret plans.” — David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister.

Janes information group, the world’s foremost source on intelligence information, reported in July 2001 that “The Indian spy agency RAW and the Israeli spy agency Mossad have created four new agencies to infiltrate Pakistan to target important religious and military personalities, journalists, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats. In addition, bombs would be exploded in trains, railway stations, bridges, bus stations, cinemas, hotels and mosques of rival Islamic sects to incite sectarianism.”

Pakistani intelligence agencies also said that RAW had constituted a plan to lure Pakistani men between 20 and 30 years of age to visit India so that they could be entrapped “in cases of fake currency and subversion and then be coerced to spy for India.”

This was the high point of cementing an unholy alliance which began much earlier and which continues to tighten its noose around the neck of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

It appears that RAW and Mossad — either singly or jointly, either covertly or overtly — have been making efforts to penetrate sensitive circles of top echelon in Pakistan.

It cannot be said with certainty but there are some reasons to assume that Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, wittingly or unwittingly, played in the hands of RAW-Mossad masterminds. She appointed Rehman Malik as chief of the Federal Investigation Agency which then launched a secret war against the Islamists; amounting to a direct attack on the ISI.

War against religious extremists could have been a laudable goal but it seemed to target only those elements which could have brought a semblance of moderation to the religious swatch cutting across Pakistan society.

Thus, leaving the field wide open for extremists.

It seems that the Pakistani military was equally dismayed by reports of FIA contacts with the Israeli secret service, the MOSSAD, to investigate Islamist terrorists.

One of the first acts of President Leghari after dismissing Benazir Bhutto on November 5, 1996 was to imprison the Ghulam Asghar, head of FIA, suspended on non-specified corruption charges. Rehman Malik, Addl. Director General FIA, was also arrested.

Whether these actions were triggered as a consequence of plotting by RAW-Mossad planners or whether it was an entirely internal matter, it is difficult to say.

Bhutto s visit to India last year at a time when Pakistan was going through one of the worst crises in its history, and her statements there which aimed to undermine the whole foundation of Pakistan, generate more than a flicker of doubt in analytic minds.

The basic question arises: Who is Benazir Bhutto?

Leaving BB to her own fate, let’s return to RAW-Mossad connection.

What is clear right now is that Indian RAW and Israeli Mossad are collaborating extensively to curb the freedom movement of Kashmir and destabilize Pakistan.

The Indian newspaper The Pioneer wrote on March 3, 2001: Fencing of the Indo-Pak border is not enough. To check Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism, top security experts of Israel have suggested that hi-tech gadgets ranging from an electronic barrier system of radars to thermal imaging devices should be immediately installed on India’s sensitive international border in Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab sectors.

The team of experts, including officials of the Mossad, the Israeli Army and the Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), also found shocking loopholes in the security arrangements relating to the much-talked about Samjhauta Express. They advised that instead of Lahore, the train should terminate on the Attari border. Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs said the Israeli experts surveyed the 198 km international border in Jammu and Punjab and reviewed the route of the Samjhauta Express with top officials of the Border Security Force.

Subsequently, former DG of the Border Security Force, E.N. Ram Mohan was appointed as the consultant on border management. Mr. Ram Mohan has recommended that besides radars, aerostate balloons and FLIR equipment be used.

India is keen to purchase surveillance aircraft (UAVs) from Israel to gain intelligence teeth. The UAVs could also help the state police in keeping an eye in naxalite-affected areas of Andhra Pradesh.

For several years, Mossad and Israel’s internal intelligence agency, Shinbhet, have utilised unmanned air vehicles to patrol the hypersensitive Gaza border.

Qutbuddin Aziz, former minister in Pakistan embassy in London, wrote an excellent article, titled ‘Dangerous Nexus between Israel & India.’ It was published by a prominent Pakistani newspaper on April 1, 2001.

Aziz writes: “Top secret details of Indian Home Minister LK Advani’s visit to Israel in June 2000, show that the deals he has struck with the Israelis would make India and Israel partners in threatening the Muslim world with diabolic conspiracies to fragment and cripple it as a political force in the world. The details of his meetings with Israel’s rulers, particularly the heads of the Israeli Home Ministry and its intelligence agencies, Mossad and Sabak, reveal that the arrangements he has made for joint Indo-Israel espionage operations in key areas of the Muslim world would make the Indian embassies in these Muslim countries the eyes and ears of the worldwide cloak-and-dagger Israeli spy network.

“Under the euphemism of ‘counter-terrorism,’ India is allowing Israel to establish a huge spy establishment in India which will, inter alia, unearth and monitor ‘Islamic fundamentalist’ individuals and groups for elimination by extra judicial process or by cold-blooded murder and kidnapping.

“The most important meeting Indian Home Minister Advani had during his three-day Israeli tour on June 13-16 was with the top brass of Israel’s intelligence agencies in Tel Aviv. Heading the Israeli team was the powerful chief of Israeli police, Yehuda Wilk, with the heads of the Israeli intelligence agencies, Mossad and Sabak, and military officials dealing with Israel’s punitive and espionage operations against Arabs in Israel, Palestine and neighbouring states such as Lebanon and Syria. Senior officials from the Israeli Foreign Office and the defence and home ministries attended this meeting. Israeli experts in bomb detection were also present.

“Mr. Advani’s large team included India’s highest-level spymasters such as the Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Mr. Shayamal Dutta, the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, Mr. R. K. Raghvan, the head of the Indian Border Security Force, Mr. E. M. Ram Mohan, Indian Home Ministry’s powerful Secretary K. Pande who oversees the work of the infamous Indian spy agency, RAW, and liaises with the Indian Foreign Office in respect of undercover RAW agents working in Indian embassies abroad, and a senior officer of India’s military intelligence agency (equivalent of Pakistan’s ISI).

“In this top-level meeting in Tel Aviv on June 14, Advani reportedly thanked the Israeli government for its immense help to India in security matters and spoke of the dangers India and Israel face from their common enemies, i.e., Muslim neighbours.

“Advani, it is reported, highly praised the help provided by Mossad and army commando personnel to the Indian army in the war on ‘Muslim militants’ in Kashmir and against ‘Muslim terrorists’ such as the ‘Memon brothers’ of Mumbai in Dubai. Advani said he had, throughout his political career, advocated India’s recognition and friendship with Israel and that his party had played a key role in forcing Congress government to have full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992.

“He lauded the Indo-Israeli cooperation in the military, economic and other fields. Advani recalled that India had voted in favour of a US-sponsored motion in the UN for rescinding a UN resolution that equated Zionism with racism. Mr. Advani explained at length India’s security problems in which the danger from Pakistan and Indian Muslims getting Arab money loomed large. Advani gave a long list of the special services in spying and the anti-insurgency devices and spy equipment India urgently needs from Israel to combat ‘Muslim terrorism.’

“In the June 14 Tel Aviv meeting, the Israeli Police Chief, Yehuda Wilk, profusely praised India for its friendship with Israel and pledged help to the Indian government in combating ‘Muslim terrorism’ that poses new threats to Israel and India. The heads of India’s intelligence agencies then briefed the Israeli side in the meeting on the ground situation in India in respect of ‘Muslim terrorists,’ especially in Jammu and Kashmir, and the new dangers coming up for India and Israel because of the Pakistani bomb and the fear that Pakistan may give its nuclear weapons to the anti-Israel Arabs.

“The Indian side showed a keen interest in learning from Israeli security experts how they had run the slice of Lebanon which Israel ruled for 18 years and gave up recently. Some information about the Israeli torture and investigation methods was gathered by the Indian side from the Israelis with regard to dealing with Arab dissidents within Israel and in the Palestinian Authority region.

“The Indians gave the Israelis a long shopping list of spying, torture and surveillance equipment such as electronic fencing of sensitive sites, laser systems, short-range rockets, eagle-eyed long distance snipers, observation blimps, giant shields, night vision device, unmanned aircraft of the MALAT wing of the Israeli Aircraft Industries Limited, special protective dress and gear for security personnel, cross border snopping devices and gadgets, training and deployment of spies and the special gear for them, use of computers and Internet for espionage and disinformation, code-breaking, tailing of enemy agents and their elimination, nuclear espionage, purloining state secrets of hostile countries and pooling them for the good of India and Israel and their mutual friends.

“The Israelis were interested in having access to the secret reports of Indian undercover RAW diplomats from certain Muslim countries of special interest to Israel (especially Pakistan, Libya and Iran). India is apparently willing to grant access to Israeli agents to the Indian Home Ministry’s Central Intelligence Processing Unit (CIPU) in New Delhi. This was recently set up under Advani’s direction with Israeli and US help. A handpicked RAW officer, trusted by Advani, heads this unit. Israel wants full access to its information data. The Indian government has already allowed access to it by American intelligence agencies now working with the Indian government on so-called anti-terrorist assignments.

Federation of American Scientists website comments on RAW in these words: “RAW has engaged in disinformation campaigns, espionage and sabotage against Pakistan and other neighboring countries. RAW has enjoyed the backing of successive Indian governments in these efforts. Working directly under the Prime Minister, the structure, rank, pay and perks of the Research & Analysis Wing are kept secret from Parliament.”

Tarek Fatah, a Turkish scholar settled in Canada, wrote: “Britain’s authoritative and respected defense publication, Jane’s Terrorism & Security Monitor, reports that Israel and India have formed a military relationship and that Israeli intelligence is active in Occupied Kashmir.

“It says: Israeli intelligence agencies have been intensifying their relations with India’s security apparatus and are now understood to be heavily involved in helping New Delhi combat Islamic militants in the disputed province of Kashmir…

Ed Blanche writes in Janes’ Security on 14 August 2001: “Israeli intelligence agencies have been intensifying their relations with India’s security apparatus and are now understood to be heavily involved in helping New Delhi combat Islamic militants in the disputed province of Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state which lies at the core of the conflict with neighbouring Pakistan.

“Israel has several teams now in Kashmir training Indian counter-insurgency forces to fight the dozen separatist guerrilla groups operating in the Indian-controlled sector of the disputed state.

“The exact extent of the involvement in Kashmir by Israel s intelligence agencies is far from clear, but it fits into Israel’s increasing focus on events in Central Asia, and as far afield as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, to counteract Islamic fundamentalism, which it perceives as a major threat.

“Shimon Peres, currently Israel’s foreign minister, said during a visit to New Delhi in January 2001 (shortly before he took his current post in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition government) that Israel was prepared to co-operate with India to fight terrorism. Weeks earlier, an Israeli counterterrorism team, including military intelligence specialists and senior police commanders, paid a visit to Indian-administered Kashmir and other regions of the country that are grappling with anti-government militants to assess India’s security needs.

If there is still any doubt as to the real intentions of Israel, then please see this statement issued by David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister. His words, as printed in the Jewish Chronicle, 9 August 1967, leave nothing to imagination:

“The world Zionist movement should not be neglectful of the dangers of Pakistan to it. And Pakistan now should be its first target, for this ideological State is a threat to our existence. And Pakistan, the whole of it, hates the Jews and loves the Arabs.

“This lover of the Arabs is more dangerous to us than the Arabs themselves. For that matter, it is most essential for the world Zionism that it should now take immediate steps against Pakistan.

“Whereas the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula are Hindus whose hearts have been full of hatred towards Muslims, therefore, India is the most important base for us to work therefrom against Pakistan.

“It is essential that we exploit this base and strike and crush Pakistanis, enemies of Jews and Zionism, by all disguised and secret plans.

We are grateful to Tariq Saeedi for permission to reprint excerpts from his special report that appeared first in The Balochistan Post,

www.balochistanpost.com

Trouble in Banktopia

By Mike Whitney 

The financial system is blowing up. Don’t listen to the experts; just look at the numbers. Last week, according to Reuters,

“U.S. banks borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve nearly $188 billion a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

The Fed opened the various “auction facilities” to create the appearance that insolvent banks were thriving businesses, but they are not. They’re dead; their liabilities exceed their assets. Now the Fed is desperate because the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the banks vaults have bankrupt the entire system and the Fed’s balance sheet is ballooning by the day. The market for MBS will not bounce back in the foreseeable future and the banks are unable to roll-over their short term debt. Game over. The Federal Reserve itself is in danger. So, it’s on to Plan B; which is to dump all the toxic sludge on the taxpayer before he realizes that the whole system is cratering and his life is about to change forever. It’s called the Paulson Plan, a $700 billion boondoggle which has already been disparaged by every economist of merit in the country.

From Reuters:

“Borrowings by primary dealers via the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, and through another facility created on Sunday for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch, and their London-based subsidiaries, totaled $105.66 billion as of Wednesday, the Fed said.”

See what I mean; they’re all broke. The Fed’s rotating loans are just a way to perpetuate the myth that the banks aren’t flat-lining already. Bernanke has tied strings to the various body parts and jerks them every so often to make it look like they’re alive. But the Wall Street model is broken and the bailout is pointless.

Last week, there was a digital run on the banks that most people never even heard about; a “real time” crash. An article in the New York Post by Michael Gray gave a blow by blow description of how events unfolded. Here’s a clip from Gray’s “Almost Armageddon”:

“The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday…Had the Treasury and Fed not quickly stepped into the fray that morning with a quick $105 billion injection of liquidity, the Dow could have collapsed to the 8,300-level – a 22 percent decline! – while the clang of the opening bell was still echoing around the cavernous exchange floor. According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning.

The panicked selling was directly linked to the seizing up of the credit markets – including a $52 billion constriction in commercial paper – and the rumors of additional money market funds “breaking the buck,” or dropping below $1 net asset value.”

The Fed’s dramatic $105 billion liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large tracts of the US economy to a halt.” (New York Post)

Commercial paper is the lubricant that keeps the financial markets functioning. When confidence vanishes (because the stewards of the system in Washington are buffoons), investors withdraw their money, normal business operations become impossible, and the markets collapse. End of story. So, rather than restore the public’s confidence by strong leadership and behavior designed to reassure investors; President Bush decided to give a major prime-time speech stating that if Paulson’s emergency bailout package was not passed immediately, the nation’s economy would vaporize into the ether. Go figure?

Last week, the commercial paper market, (much of which is backed by mortgage-backed securities) shrunk by a whopping $61. billion to $1.702 trillion, the lowest level since early 2006. So, Paulson’s bailout will effectively underwrite CP as well as the whole alphabet soup of mortgage-backed derivatives for which there is currently no market. The US taxpayer is not only getting into the plummeting real estate market, he is also backstopping the entire financial system including defaulting car loan securities, waning student loan securities, flailing home equity loan securities and faltering credit card securities. The whole mountainous pile of horsecrap-debt is about to be stacked on the back of the maxed-out taxpayer and the ever-shriveling greenback. Paulson assures us that its a “good deal”. Booyah, Hank!

PAULSON’S $700 BILLION BOONDOGGLE

How did Treasury Secretary Paulson figure out that recapitalizing the banking system would cost $700 billion? Or did he just estimate the amount of money that could be loaded on the back of the Treasury’s flatbed truck when it sputters off to shower his buddies at G-Sax with freshly minted greenbacks? The point is, that Paulson’s calculations were not assisted by any economists at all, and they cannot be trusted. It is a purely arbitrary, “back of the envelope” type figuring. According to Bloomberg: Swiss investor Marc Faber, known for a long track record of good calls, believes the damage may come to $5 trillion:

“Marc Faber, managing director of Marc Faber Ltd. in Hong Kong, said the U.S. government’s rescue package for the financial system may require as much as $5 trillion, seven times the amount Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has requested….

“The $700 billion is really nothing, Faber said in a television interview. “The treasury is just giving out this figure when the end figure may be $5 trillion.(Bloomberg News)

Most people who follow these matters would trust Faber’s assessment way over Paulson’s. In his latest blog entry, economist Nouriel Roubini said that “no professional economist was consulted by Congress or invited to present his/her views at the Congressional hearings on the Treasury rescue plan.” Roubini added:

“The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.”

Roubini is right on all counts. So far, more than a 190 prominent economists have urged Congress not to pass the $700 bailout bill. There is growing consensus that the so-called “rescue package” does not address the central economic issues and has the potential to make a bad situation even worse.

BANKER’S COUP?

Financial industry rep. Paulson is the ringleader in a banker’s coup the results of which will decide America’s economic and political future for years to come. The coup leaders have drained tens of billions of dollars of liquidity from the already-strained banking system to trigger a freeze in interbank lending and hasten a stock market crash. This, they believe, will force Congress to pass Paulson’s $770 billion bailout package without further congressional resistance. It’s blackmail.

As yet, no one knows whether the coup-backers will succeed and further consolidate their political power via a massive economic shock to the system, but their plan continues to move jauntily forward while the economy follows its inexorable slide to disaster.

The bailout has galvanized grassroots movements which have flooded congressional FAXs and phone lines. Callers are overwhelmingly opposed to any bailout for banks that are buckling under their own toxic mortgage-backed assets. One analyst said that the calls to Congress are 50 percent “No” and 50 percent “Hell, No”. There is virtually no popular support for the bill.

From Bloomberg News: “Erik Brynjolfsson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School, said his main objection “is the breathtaking amount of unchecked discretion it gives to the Secretary of the Treasury. It is unprecedented in a modern democracy.”

“I suspect that part of what we’re seeing in the freezing up of lending markets is strategic behavior on the part of big financial players who stand to benefit from the bailout,” said David K. Levine, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies liquidity constraints and game theory.” (Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis)

Brynjolfsson’s suspicions are well-founded. “Market Ticker’s” Karl Denninger confirms that the Fed has been draining the banking system of liquidity in order to blackmail Congress into passing the new legislation. Here’s Denninger:

“The Effective Fed Funds rate has been trading 50 basis points or more below the 2% target for five straight days now, and for the last two days, it has traded 75 basis points under. The IRX is demanding an immediate rate cut. The Slosh has been intentionally drained by over $125 billion in the last week and lowering the water in the swamp exposed one dead body – Washington Mutual – which was immediately raided on a no-notice basis by JP Morgan. Not even WaMu’s CEO knew about the raid until it was done….The Fed claims to be an “independent central bank.” They are nothing of the kind; they are now acting as an arsonist. The Fed and Treasury have claimed this is a “liquidity crisis”; it is not. It is an insolvency crisis that The Fed, Treasury and the other regulatory organs of our government have intentionally allowed to occur.”

Bingo. This is a banker’s coup cooked up and facilitated by the deep-money guys who operate stealthily behind the political sideshow. The only time they emerge from their stinkholes is when they’re flushed out by a crisis that threatens their continued dominance. Grassroots resistance, spearheaded by Internet bloggers (like Mish, Roubini and Denninger) are demonstrating that they can mobilize tens of thousands of “peasants with pitchforks” and be a factor in political decision making. It also helps to have elected officials, like Senator Richard Shelby, who stand firm on principle and don’t faint at the first whiff of grapeshot (like his weak-kneed Democratic counterparts) Shelby has shouldered the full-weight of executive pressure which has descended on him like a Appalachian rockslide. As a result, there’s still a slight chance that the bill will have to be shelved and the industry reps will have to go back to Square 1.

Market Ticker has provided charts from the Federal Reserve that prove that Bernanke has withdrawn $125 billion from the banking system in the last 4 days alone to create a crisis situation that will incite credit market mayhem and increase the liklihood of passing the bill. This is coercion of the worst kind. http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2008/09/24.html

The country’s economic predicament is steadily deteriorating. Orders for manufactured durable goods were off 4.5 percent last month while inventories continued to rise. Unemployment is soaring and the housing crash continues to accelerate. Credit Suisse now expects 10.3 million foreclosures (total) in the next few years. Numbers like that are not accidental, but part of a larger scheme to use monetary policy as a way to shift wealth from one class to another while degrading the nation’s overall economic well-being. More alarming, the country’s primary creditors are now staging a rebellion that is likely to cut off the flow of capital to US markets sending the dollar plummeting and triggering a deflationary credit collapse. This is from Reuters:

“Chinese regulators have asked domestic banks to stop lending to U.S. financial institutions in the interbank money markets to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday. The China Banking Regulatory Commission’s ban on interbank lending of all currencies applied to U.S. banks, but not to lenders from other countries, the report added.”

Bloomberg News reports that Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher has broken with tradition and lambasted the proposed bailout saying that it “would plunge the U.S. government deeper into a fiscal abyss.”

From Bloomberg: “The plan by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to buy troubled assets from financial institutions would put ‘one more straw on the back of the frightfully encumbered camel that is the federal government ledger,’ Fisher said today in the text of a speech in New York. ‘We are deeply submerged in a vast fiscal chasm.’…The seizures and convulsions we have experienced in the debt and equity markets have been the consequences of a sustained orgy of excess and reckless behavior, not a too-tight monetary policy,” Fisher said to the New York University Money Marketeers Club.” (Bloomberg)

Surely, the cure for hyperbolic “credit excesses and reckless behavior” cannot be “more of the same.” In fact, Paulson’s bailout does not even address the core issues which have been obscured by demagoguery and threats. The worthless assets must be written-down, insolvent banks must be allowed to go bust, and the crooks and criminals who engineered this financial blitz on the nation’s coffers must be held to account.

The carnage from Greenspan’s low interest rate, “easy money” binge is now visible everywhere. Inflated home and stock values are crashing as the gas continues to escape from the massive equity bubble. The FDIC will have to be recapitalized–perhaps, $500 billion–to account for the anticipated loss of deposits from failing banks caught in the cross-hairs of asset-deflation and steadily contracting credit. Recession is coming, but economic collapse can still be avoided if Paulson’s misguided plan is abandoned and corrective action is taken to put the country on solid financial footing. Market Ticker lays out framework for a workable solution to the crisis, but they must be acted on swiftly to rebuild confidence that major systemic changes are underway:

1–Force all off-balance sheet “assets” back onto the balance sheet, and force the valuation models and identification of individual assets out of Level 3 and into 10Qs and 10Ks. Do it now. (Editor: In other words, no more Enron-type accounting mumbo-jumbo and no more allowing the banks assign their own “values” to dodgy assets)

2–Force all OTC derivatives onto a regulated exchange similar to that used by listed options in the equity markets. This permanently defuses the derivatives time bomb. Give market participants 90 days; any that are not listed in 90 days are declared void; let the participants sue each other if they can’t prove capital adequacy.(Ed: If trading derivatives contracts can damage the “regulated” system, than that trading must take place under strict government regulations)

3–Force leverage by all institutions to no more than 12:1. The SEC intentionally dropped broker/dealer leverage limits in 2004; prior to that date 12:1 was the limit. Every firm that has failed had double or more the leverage of that former 12:1 limit. Enact this with a six month time limit and require 1/6th of the excess taken down monthly. (Ed: The collapse in the “structured finance” model is mainly due to too much leverage. For example, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had $80 of debt for every $1 dollar od capital reserves when they were taken into government conservatorship)

If there’s going to be a bailout, let’s get it right. Paulson’s $700 billion bill does nothing to fix the deep structural problems in the financial markets; it merely pushes the day of reckoning a little further into the future while shifting the burden of payment for toxic assets onto the taxpayer. It’s a real turkey. The entire system needs transformational change so that the activities of Wall Street mesh with the broader objectives of the society it’s supposed to serve. Paulson’s business-model is busted; it does no one any good to try to glue it back together.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20883.htm

Muslim View on American Markets Meltdown

The Wall Street has noticed that Shariah-compliant investments – which avoid speculative risk and debt-ridden greed- -have fared much better in these troubled markets. In the past few years, Shariah-compliant investments in Western markets have grown to more than half a trillion dollars, says Ali Khan.

Call it the consequences of irresponsible American invasions, call it the irrational exuberance of short sellers, call it the catastrophe of subprime lending, call it the mismanagement of leveraged products, blame it as you may, American markets are facing unprecedented meltdown and doomsayers see little promise in the federal bailout package. Ironically, the Wall Street has noticed that Shariah-compliant investments–which avoid speculative risk and debt-ridden greed–have fared much better in these troubled markets. In the past few years, Shariah-compliant investments in Western markets have grown to more than half a trillion dollars.

Islamic financing is attracting huge academic curiosity. Many experts participating in the 8th Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance held this past April wondered if Islamic financing could have prevented the meltdown that American markets are facing primarily due to mortgage debt and mortgage-backed securities—now known as “toxic investments.” This legal commentary highlights the two fundamental principles of Islamic financing that I presented at the Forum.

High Risk Investments

The Quran prohibits al-Maysir or speculative risk, warning the faithful to avoid games of chance in which the probability of loss in is much higher than the probability of gain (2:219). Shariah-compliant investments, therefore, avoid speculative risk, including interest rate options, naked equity options, futures, derivative and numerous leveraged products purportedly designed to hedge investments. Many of these financial products attract speculators in hopes of making quick money. When trusted fund managers, under institutional pressures to show profit, resort to speculative risk, hedge investments turn into suicidal strategies for financial destruction.

In pursuit of greed and thrill, straightforward investments in companies engaged in socially useful activity has become unattractive, even boring, because of their presumably lower rate of return—frequently a self-fulfilling prophecy. Billions of dollars are dumped into companies that promise huge profits but produce nothing. While Islam would allow risking investments in socially beneficial research projects, it prohibits investments in companies peddling alcohol, tobacco, pornography, debt, and weapons—products that undermine our health and safety.

Some investment strategies rampant in the markets are not only morally corrupt but socially harmful. Short sellers, for example, make money when companies collapse and close. Turning the conventional logic of investment on its head, short sellers wish companies to crash rather than prosper for they make most money when companies go bankrupt, workers and employees lose jobs, and pension funds evaporate through declining company stock. Such cynical investments, touted as useful forces that balance the market, are contrary to Islamic law.

Interest-Bearing Debt

In addition to prohibiting high risk investments, the Quran also prohibits no risk investments. The prohibition against riba, interest on loans, is strictly forbidden. Islam does not prohibit passive investments. Nor does it prohibit giving interest-free loans. Debt is not contrary to Islamic law. Charging interest is. Although some experts argue that usury, and not interest, is prohibited under Islamic law. Most Muslim scholars agree, however, that interest on loans is contrary to the Shariah.

Refuting arguments that money has time value or that interest is analogous to profit, the Quran offers a categorical principle that “trade is permitted but interest is not.” (2:275). The prohibition against interest was revealed not only to save the poor from unscrupulous lenders but also to deter investors who demand a set return on their investments and decline to take the risk of engaging in useful trade.

Contrary to Islamic principles, lending in general and subprime lending in particular was predestined to harm American financial markets for two distinct reasons. First, debt braced with high interest was being extended to persons who simply could not afford to pay back loans. This was usury. Second, the real estate mortgage was no longer a prudent investment decision, since numerous investors were trading in real estate with inflated prices. Investment bankers and other geniuses on Wall Street were securitizing mortgage debts, turning them into interest-bearing securities. These fancy securities began to fail when their underlying assets were foreclosed or deflated. The debt turned deadly and its holders bankrupt.

Shared Destruction

Between the prohibited limits of maysir (speculative risk) and riba (no risk), however, Islamic Law permits creativity in financial markets where investors mobilize surplus monies for the production and distribution of halal (Kosher) goods and services. These permissible markets are neither risk-free nor prone to irresponsible risk. Though innovative and authentic, the markets are infused with the values of fairness, transparency, and reasonable profits. They are free of predatory practices that corrupt transactions with greed and inflict hardship on the poor, the elderly, and the novice.

The federal bailout package that the Bush Administration is selling as a quick cure of all problems will only aggravate the underlying cancer of interest-bearing debt. It is unlikely that the infusion of more money will reform institutions and companies built on layers of interest-bearing debt. When the best and the brightest are engrossed in finding ways to make money with money, and no more, the system may look creative and intelligent but it is geared toward shared destruction.

Ali Khan is Professor of Law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/opinion/?id=28072

Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland.

US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated

 to ” help with civil unrest”

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, September 26, 2008

The Army Times reports that the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is returning from Iraq to defend the Homeland, as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” The BCT unit has been attached to US Army North, the Army’s component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). (See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008).

“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. …

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga.,

…

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it. (ibid)

The BCT is an army combat unit designed to confront an enemy within a war theater.

With US forces overstretched in Iraq, why would the Pentagon decide to undertake this redeployment within the USA, barely one month before the presidential elections?

The new mission of the 1st Brigade on US soil is to participate in “defense” efforts as well as provide “support to civilian authorities”.

What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a natgional emergency, constitute a “war theater” thereby justifying the deployment of combat units..

The new skills to be imparted consists in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.

What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The prevailing FISA emergency procedures envisage the enactment of martial law in the case of a terrorist attack. The 1st BCT and other combat units would be called upon to perform specific military functions:

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

Civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc.

The timing of this planned militarization is crucial: how will it affect the presidential elections scheduled for Tuesday November 4.

The brigade in its domestic homeland activities will be designated as the Consequence Management Response Force ( CCMRF) (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

What ” Consequences” are being envisaged?

In a conference held under NorthCom last February, the mission of CCMRFF was defined as follows;

“How to protect communities from terrorist and biological attacks topped the agenda last week for more than 100 service members and civilians gathered at Joint Task Force Civil Support headquarters at Fort Monroe, Va.

The U.S. Northern Command Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosive Commanders’ Conference, held Feb. 21-23, brought JTF-CS subordinate task force and unit commanders here to discuss common concerns regarding operational requirements of the CBRNE Consequence Management mission and to begin preparations for Exercise Ardent Sentry 2007.

“We’re giving operationally focused briefs to our CCMRF ( CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force) units to help them prepare and successfully deploy for a CBRNE mission in the continental United States, its territories and possessions,” said JTF-CS Current Operations Specialist Hawley Waterman, who helped organized the conference. “This is also an opportunity to get acquainted and establish better relationships with (subordinate commanders).”(NorthCom, March 2007)

What is envisaged is the possibility of a (false flag) terrorist attack on America, which could be used as a justification for retaliatory or preemptive military action overseas (e.g. Iran) as well actions on the domestic front. The ultimate objective of this deployment of 1st BCT is to apply combat experience in the Homeland:

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home … and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.

The operation officially has an emergency mandate to “help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris”, but it also implies the running of military style operations. :in fact it would appear that the emergency tasks helping civilians is a cover-up. This is a combat unit, which is trained and equipped to kill people:

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.

Other branches included The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.

Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.

A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.

In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.

There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.

“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.

A national emergency could be triggered. “Horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive attack” or a so-called CBRNE type scenario. One assumes that this is some form of domestic attack, allegedly by terrorists.

But at the same time, the Bush administration may be seeking a justification to establish martial law and intervene militarily within the USA.

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.” (Army Times, op cit , emphasis added)

“This type of planning and coordination and training is a priority both in our headquarters and at NORTHCOM, as we understand our responsibilities to be ready should the requirement arise, God forbid,” (Army News Service Sept 15m 2008)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10341