Lurking Collapse or Globalisation Bonanza

The 16-minute recording, which a woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of immigration law enforcers, and desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. No one knows how widespread blackmail is, but the case echoes other instances of sexual coercion that have surfaced in recent years, including agents criminally charged in Atlanta, Miami and Santa Ana, Calif. Following 9/11 tragedy, thousands of Muslims were imprisoned and then deported on flimsy grounds.

It raises broader questions about the system’s vulnerability to corruption at a time when millions of non-citizens live in a kind of legal no-man’s land, increasingly fearful of seeking the law’s protection.

Improvements in Iraq are counted in amounts to casualty rates that have decreased to the levels of 2005. There is no exit plan for years and a war bill is accumulating at almost $5,000 per second.

Many security gains in Iraq have been attributed to the decision by Sunni guerrilla fighters to become American-backed militia guards. They are paid about $300 a month by the US military. More than 90,000 militiamen, most of them Sunnis, are now on the American payroll. However, in some cases American troops have trouble distinguishing those working for them from fighters who are not.

The collapse of Bear Stearns has made it obvious that things have gone too far. The investment community has morphed into something beyond banks and something beyond regulation. It has become a shadow banking system. It is the private trading of complex instruments that worries regulators and Wall Street.

Oil, gold and other major commodities fell sharply on March 20, capping their steepest weekly drop in a half-century. Investors fled what many had believed to be the last safe haven in turbulent markets. In the last two days, oil slid 6.9 per cent, and most other commodities fell by 7 per cent or more, including a precipitous 15 per cent drop for wheat.

This week’s declines brought an abrupt end to months of big price increases that had attracted speculative cash.

However, oil-rich Arab nations have not learned from earlier disasters. In 1970s, Saudis alone lost hundreds of billions when they invested heavily in gold on the advice of their American economic advisors and its price soared to $700+ an ounce. But soon it fell to $230 an ounce. They lost both first in stock market and then in gold. In recent weeks again Arab investors have lost heavily when DJ fell to the present low. Many moved whatever was left of their stock market portfolio to gold which is trading at all time high of $1000+ per ounce.

Who cares about a precipitous fall? The oil money is a free God-sent bonanza for them.

The question now is whether the US Federal Reserve will devise regulation for a financial system that, on its own, does not control ruinous excesses. When are we going to understand that the best regulations can’t control the innate human greed? The only way to control human greed is cement the ‘regulations’ with “human accountability to God” – a “No, No” for the secularists.

The extraordinarily high prices of some drugs used to treat ultra-rare diseases raise troubling questions. When prices mount into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, they impose a burden on patients and sometimes on employers and insurance programmes that must pay most of the bill.

A case in point is Genzyme, a biotechnology company. It has long charged more than $300,000 a year for typical patients on Cerezyme, a drug used to treat Gaucher disease, a rare, sometimes fatal, inherited disorder that can cause enlarged livers and spleens, anemia and bone deterioration.

Senator John McCain’s trip abroad this week took him from the Middle East to UK and Élysée Palace – was more than just a fact-finding trip, or even a US Presidential candidate’s attempt to appear statesmanlike. Analysts question whether his new tone, and the adoption of a few policies would be enough by themselves to improve America’s image, given the searing unpopularity of the Iraq war – which Mr. McCain strongly supports – in much of the world.

If a man says “God Damn America,” does that mean he has not been saying “God bless America”?

“Damn America” could mean “Damn America for slavery, racism and war.” The implication is that “if America does such and such” then God Damn America. It does not mean that we hate America as such. This is God’s land. How can we damn it? The hot, ranting, style is quite common in churches which follow “liberation theology.” Most of it is nothing more than bombast and hot air.

It is doubtful if Obama will ever stand and fight anywhere. What is the Crux of Obama’s problem?

In many recent pronouncements he has endorsed all the distortions of the American power structure. Muslims of America, by and large, are in about the same mode today about Obama as they were at the time when they gave a bloc vote to Bush in 2000. Believe it or not, some Muslims actually believe that Obama is a Muslim. As evidence, produce his middle name and his origin.

When will the Muslims achieve political maturity? They should know that Obama did not suddenly arise as a presidential candidate. In fact Obama will be more anti-Islam than Bush because he has to prove that he is not a free Black/incipient Muslim. Remember worst ravages against the Iraqis were carried out by a US general of Arab origin: General Abizaid.

President Bush chose Sada Cumber for OIC meet. Sada has little to do with Islam and the Muslims of America. He is extremely wealthy and embedded in the American capitalistic system. Here is how Austin American Statesman, a local paper described him: “Cumber, a native of Pakistan, is the first U.S. envoy to the organisation. He has founded six companies in 25 years. He was previously CEO of Psionic Technologies Inc., an Internet security software company that Cisco Systems Inc. acquired in 2002. He’s active in the Ismaili Muslim community in Austin.”