Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system
On September 17, 2008, the U.S. News and World Report magazine reported on how the “Federal Reserve extended an $85 billion loan to American International Group to be paid back as AIG sells off some business in the biggest government takeover so far in the ongoing credit crisis.” What the American public hasn’t seen yet is what AIG is going to sell off in terms of its business. According to the September 16, 2008 press release by the Federal Reserve on this bailout, the “U.S. government will receive a 79.9 percent equity interest in AIG and has the right to veto the payment of dividends to common and preferred shareholders.”
But while the U.S. taxpayers are loaning money to AIG and the U.S. holds a nearly 80% equity interest in AIG, no one in the government seems concerned that AIG is continuing to expand its Sharia finance business. Less than a week after the government bailout of AIG, Reuters reported on how AIG’s unit American International Assurance Co (AIA) was awarded an “international takaful (Islamic insurance) license” by the Malaysian government. AIG’s American International has been selling Sharia-based “Islamic insurance” for at least two years, through its AIG Takaful division, since its October 1, 2006 announcement, with a stated goal to sell such Sharia financial instruments in the United States. AIG SunAmerica, AIG Financial Services Corp, and other divisions of AIG also are dealers in Sharia mutual trusts.
…
The day before the AIG bailout was being announced, the Center for Security Policy’s (CSP) Frank Gaffney published his concerns about this growing financial institutional problem of “Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF)” in an article entitled “Into the Fire.” In his article, Mr. Gaffney references David Yerushalmi’s study “Sharia’s Black Box: Civil Liability and Criminal: Exposure Surrounding Shari’ah-Compliant Finance,” which details the lack of financial transparency inherent in Sharia finance, and how such lack of transparency could lead to financial institutions being used to support terrorism and reverse money laundering. Moreover, as Mr. Gaffney, the current financial crisis will allow Islamist nations to buy “up engines of our capital markets for pennies on the dollar,” and "[w]orse yet, they are, in the process, putting themselves in a position to promote Shariah-Compliant Finance and the seditious theo-political agenda it serves.”
Sharia finance is not just “business.” Sharia finance exists to promote an expansionist, supremacist ideology; it is not merely “business,” but is “business with an agenda.” As I addressed in my November 14, 2007 article “Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, and Islamist Financing,” organizations promoting Sharia finance have employed individuals such as former Dow Jones’ advisor Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who have called for Jihad. As Alex Alexiev has stated, “far from being an innocent venture in free market capitalism, Islamic finance was conceived and is practiced as one of the key instruments of the militant Islamist movement in its struggle against the West." As reported by Alex Alexiev, Alyssa A. Lappen, Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi, and others, Shariah finance zakat can be used to promote Jihad warfare. As addressed by Allyson Rowen Taylor and others, Sharia finance is anything but simply “business,” as has been addressedinmultiplearticles on this subject.
Venezuelan authorities are investigating the fatal shooting of a student leader who helped organize protests against constitutional amendments proposed by President Hugo Chavez.
Julio Soto, a student leader at the University of Zulia, was killed Wednesday by unidentified gunmen in the western city of Maracaibo.
Local Police Chief Jose Gonzalez said he believes Soto was specifically targeted because the assailants sprayed his vehicle with gunfire and then fled without taking anything.
But Justice Minister Tarek El Aissami said federal authorities have not yet determined if the killing was a politically motivated hit.
Soto was a member of the Copei opposition party. Voters rejected Chavez’s proposed reforms in December.
Education Minister Hector Navarro told Venezuela’s state news agency on Thursday that Chávez wants police to catch those who killed Julio Soto “as soon as possible.”
In the second item, former Defense Minister Gen. Raúl Baduel, who was instrumental in defeating Chávez constitutional reforms last December, was detained by the authorities on Friday and is now barred from leaving the country:
Rafael Tosta, a lawyer for Mr. Baduel, who was released Friday night, said his client was also required to appear before a military tribunal every 15 days and was prohibited from publicly commenting on the accusations, which revolve around $14.5 million in missing funds.
Mr. Baduel, who helped reinstall Mr. Chávez after a brief coup in 2002, has gone from being a hero of the president’s socialist-inspired revolution to one of its outcasts. Mr. Baduel emerged as one of Mr. Chávez most vocal opponents since resigning as defense minister last year.
Military Attorney, Gen. Ernesto Cedeno, said the former minister has been charged with alleged robbery of National Armed Forces funds and properties during his term of over four years at the helm of the military institution.
In a press conference, Cedeno said the decision was taken in the wake of an investigation stemming from an accusation rather than from political reprisal, as stated by Baduel, who assumed opposition stances after his retirement.
“According to the investigation, there are over $31 billion bolivars missing (about $14.50 million), and out of a sense of justice and honor, he oughts to clear up the situation during his term as Defense minister,” stressed Cedeno.
Baduel was recently shot at while driving his car but managed to get away.
Does this signal a new crackdown on the Venezuelan opposition? Stratfor sees it at attempts to destabilize the opposition:
A few months ago, the loosely organized and previously unpopular opposition parties began making major gains in public opinion as Venezuela’s economy began souring and Chavez’s socialist policies came under fire. With this in mind, Chavez has gone so far as to have the courts ban 272 opposition politicians from running for office, charging them with corruption.
Chavez has also moved to strengthen the central government ahead of the elections, including implementing a series of reforms rejected in the 2006 constitution vote. Most recently, Chavez — with the help of the National Assembly — enacted the Organic Law for the Organization and Management of the Territory, which gives the central government control over local and state-level governments. In doing so, Chavez effectively negates any gains the opposition leaders might achieve if they are able to score seats in the upcoming election.
There is confusion over a provision in the current financial rescue package which benefits the rum-producing territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. This is not a tax break for rum makers as has been reported in the press and claimed on Capitol Hill.
It is fundamentally a revenue sharing arrangement between the U.S. government and the governments of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, which Congress has voted to extend repeatedly over the last 20 years. Under this provision, the federal government rebates to the governments of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands most of the Federal Excise Tax collected on rum imported to the United States.
Well, why not? /s The U.S. is sending loud signals it doesn’t care about Russian nuclear proliferation in the Caribbean, so the French are taking the cue that this is a ‘for sale’ sign. Or maybe something more negative is going on. France also says it wants Hugo Chavez, that glorious mediator to FARC (who was found to have used FARC contacts not to mediate but funnel cash and arms to the terrorists) now will mediate between the West and Iran. Wonder what he will funnel now? This is insane. Do the French never learn?
Earlier today:
My guest this morning is Barbara Comstock of Save the Election.com. We will talk about how Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or “card check” legislation would strip American workers of their right to vote by secret ballot in union-organizing elections.
Chat’s open at 9:45AM and the call in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!
Fears are mounting that many Wall Street banks and financial firms will refuse to participate in the US government’s $700bn bail-out package, leaving global markets and world economies in a perilous state for months to come.
‘There is a growing feeling that banks … might instead decide to tough it out,’ said Thomas Caldwell, chairman and CEO of Caldwell Financial, a $1bn-plus fund manager.
Jerry Webster and Carol Templeton are both in the advertising business, but for different agencies. Annoyed by Jerry’s methods of using alcohol and women to ensure contracts for his agency, Carol tries to get him thrown out of his profession. To avoid this Jerry bribes the girl who’d testify against him, by starring her in a TV commercial for a product named VIP that he’s just made up. By accident these commercials are broadcasted and to keep his job, Jerry has to come up with VIP for which he enlists the help of Doctor Linus Tyler. Carol goes to see the Doctor to try and get the VIP account, but because she and Jerry have never met, she mistakes Jerry for the Doctor. Jerry then takes advantage of this situation to win her. Written by Leon Wolters {wolters@strw.LeidenUniv.nl}
The plot is rife with gay innuendo: Even when the early 1960s audience didn’t know for sure (there had been lots of rumors which the studio managed to suppress for a long time) that Rock Hudson was gay in real life, the script writers had a field day. Rock Hudson and Tony Randall at one point look like they’re about to break into singing “I”m a lumberjack” when they went moose hunting out in the woods.
Monty Python had nothing to do with the movie, of course, but I can’t resist inserting it here,
Tony Randall actually wore the full lumberjack outfit.
Tony Randall played the confirmed bachelor to Rock Hudson’s stud in the Doris Day movies. Someone actually put together a YouTube of scenes from Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. They did have chemistry:
Carol, played by Doris Day, is a spinster dedicated to her carreer in advertising and wears ridiculous hats throughout the movie, the most ridiculous of which is this one:
I guess in 1961 hats were to Doris Day what shoes later became to the Sex and the City crowd.
Rock Hudson plays Jerry, a corrupt and corrupting liar whose entire carreer is predicated on his telling people what he thinks they want to hear. His client from Virginia was the great grandson of a Confederate general, so Jerry also pretends to be the grandson of a Confederate general and takes him to the Bunny Club (the Playboy Club, of course) for a show where the final nightclub number plays Dixieland and the star bunny rips her bodice to show a Confederate flag to the client. An orgy at the client’s penthouse followed. The movie shows only the morning-after debris, including a hungover bunny in a bass case.
Later on Jerry pretends to be Dr. Linus (obviously named after Linus Paulding who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954), a brilliant chemist but a shy and repressed guy (who she woke up early one morning at Jerry’s apartment!). Jerry as Linus makes up a remarkable family: his father who he idolizes is a philosopher, this brother a heroic surgeon who died in Africa, and on and on. Jerry/Linus pretends that all he needs is the right girl to bring out the real man in him. To get himself invited overnight to Carol’s apartment he says lines like, “You deserve a man, not a mass of neurotic doubts!”
Carol, after pondering whether to give in while a Doris Day song plays in the background, realizes he’s The Big Phony, drives him out to the beach and dumps him there.
In real life, Jerry would had gone on with his corrupt and dissipated existence and Carol would have gone on being a spinster.
But the movie goes on: the real Linus the chemist actually produces the vips, a candy that started as a bogus advertising campaign for an imaginary product. More innuendo follows:
It’s a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, so you know they will get together. Indeed, the morning after consuming the vips they wake up in bed, much to Jerry’s horrific expression. She’s wearing his pajama top, he’s wearing the bottoms. They’re in a motel in Maryland where, when she wakes up and screams, the housekeepers say, “Some girls are just not ready for marriage.”
Not Viagra, just vips. That’s all it took.
It’s a very funny movie, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
