Islamic Banking versus the rest....a great article that truly defines much of what is not understood about the difference between "trade" and "usery":

http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/articles/Art037_12032005.html

"'Yahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that receipts (sukukun) were given to people in the time of Marwan ibn al-Hakam for the produce of the market of al-Jar. People bought and sold the receipts among themselves before they took delivery of the goods. Zayd ibn Thabit, one of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, went to Marwan ibn Hakam and said, “Marwan! Do you make usury halal?” He said, “I seek refuge with Allah! What is that?” He said, “These receipts which people buy and sell before they take delivery of the goods.” Marwan therefore sent guards to follow them and take them from people's hands and return them to their owners.'"

Is that not the definition of "Junk Bonds". Heh. And some think that the banking game is a new one. Look again.

Disney Trailer: Ice President



Senator Biden's stunning list of heads of state he has met with was just brought to my attention today, and this is only a partial list (courtesy of Office of Senator Joe Biden):

Iraq: Allawi, al-Jaafari, al-Maliki, Talabani, Massoud Barzani, Nechirvan Barzani;

Israel: Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni;

Palestinian Territories: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Salam Fayyad, Ahmed Qurei;

Jordan: King Hussein, King Abdullah;

Egypt: Hosni Mubarak, Anwar Sadat;

Libya: Muammar Qaddafi;

Lebanon: Prime Minister Rafiq Haririm, Najib Mikati;

Bahrain: Crown Prince Shaikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa;

Syria: President Bashar al-Assad;

Turkey: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ahmet Sezer, Abdullah Gul, Bulent Ecevit, Demirel;

Greece: Kostis Stephanopoulos, Kostas Karamanlis, Kostantinos Mitsotakis, Andreas Papandreou;

Cyprus: George Vassiliou, Glafcos Clerides;

Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai;

Pakistan: Asaf Ali Zardari, Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani, Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif;

India: Manmohan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee;

Sri Lanka: Ranil Wickremasinghe;

Russia: Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Andrei Gromyko, Alexey Kosygin, Leonid Brezhnev;

France: Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, Fracois Mitterrand;

U.K.: Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair, John Major, Margaret Thatcher;

Ireland: Bertie Ahern, John Bruton, Albert Reynolds, Charles Haughey;

Germany: Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schroeder, Helmut Kohl, Helmut Schmidt;

Italy: Silvio Berlusconi, Romani Prodi, Cossiga Serbia Boris Tadic, Vojislav Kostunica, Zoran Djindjic, Slobodan Milosevic;

Yugoslavia: Josip Broz Tito;

Croatia: Franjo Tudjman Slovenia Janez Drnovsek, Ibrahim Rugova, Milan Kucan;

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Haris Silajdzic, Sulejman Tihiae, Alija Izetbegovic;

Kosovo (as an independent nation): Fatmir Sejdiu, Hashim Thaci;

Poland: Lech Walesa, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz;

Czech Republic: Vaclav Havel;

Hungary: Gyula Horn, Arpad Goncz, Viktor Orban;

Finland: Paavo Lipponen;

Romania: Ion Iliescu;

Georgia: Mikheil Saakashvili, Eduard Shevardnadze;

Kazakhstan: Nursultan Nazarbayev;

Ukraine: Viktor Yushchenko;

Canada: Paul Martin, Brian Mulroney;

NATO: George Robertson, Javier Solana, Manfred Woerner, Peter Carrington;

China: Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji;

Hong Kong: Tung Chee Hwa;

Taiwan: Chen Shui-Bian;

Korea: Kim Dae Jung;

Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, Lee Hsien Loong;

Indonesia: Megawati Sukarnoputri, Bambang Yudhoyono;

Australia: John Howard, Paul Keating;

Philippines: Gloria Arroyo, Fidel Ramos;

Vietnam: Phan Van Kai;

East Timor: Ramos Horta;

Tibet: The Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso;

Colombia: Alvaro Uribe, Andres Pastrana, Cesar Gaviria;

Mexico: Vincente Fox, Ernesto Zedillo;

Bolivia: Jaime Paz Zamora;

South Africa: Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela;

Liberia: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf;

Lesotho: Leabua Jonathan;

United Nations: Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Boutros Boutros Ghali;

Vatican City: Pope John Paul II;

Slovakia: Rudolf Schuster; and

Turkmenistan: Saparmurat Niyazov.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook09262008.html

Israel and the House of David.....yea...right. Gimme a break.

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=982

“Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth.
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”
–W.H. Auden, “September, 1939”


"Merrill Lynch helped finance the cotton trade before the Civil War! Say it was an essential “linch-pin” in the rise of the South on the backs of black slaves. Say that “free-market,” deregulated capitalism is now getting its due; if I am in steerage on the Titanic and I hear that the swells who have been dancing above our heads are about to take a dip in the sea, Schadenfreude doesn’t calm my queasy stomach." Gary Corseri



Schadenfreude in the City

Where did this problem start,
this stuff about wondering where
a siren goes in the dark
or during the rain, the curtains
pulled aside and you want to see
mainstreet, hope to see a fire
or the headlight of someone's car
dangling like an eye out
of its socket, all hay-wires.
Here, it is night and a plane
ascends, banks then disappears.
A siren peals through the silent
predawn cold and continues on.
Then another. It is always
the second one that gets you going. - Margaret Ruth Porter, Beirut 2005

http://english.hizbollah.tv/essaydetails.php?eid=4943&cid=214

Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed decisive victory against "Israel" if it launches any attack against Lebanon. Addressing the Imam Mahdi (pbuh) scouts in Beirut's southern suburb, Sayyed Nasrallah said that the Islamic Resistance leadership sees that "this sum of threats and noise against Lebanon is attributed to internal reasons inside "Israel"." "We do not underestimate or undervalue these threats, but we deal with them with confidence and resolution."

His eminence also pledged that any new war "Israel" will impose on Lebanon "will be swift and victory shall be fast, crystal clear and unequivocally decisive. The army of our enemy will witness an unprecedented method of fighting by courageous, tough and devoted resistance fighters in the battlefield; something they had never seen since the establishment of their usurping entity."

The resilience of Lebanese banks (the "other" Switzerland) is due to prudent lending policies.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=3&article_id=96068

http://www.islamawareness.net/

That was a great campout Radiann. Thank you very much.

Next time, Ben Lilly for a week. At least.