Are the Rothschilds in on the uprisings?

[Errosion Of Accord]

I was away for a week so this may have already been posted.

http://www.puppet99.com/?p=126

Rothschilds Stage Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt To Kill Islamic Banks In Emerging North African Markets
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PwP Exclusive ©Feb 9 2011 (link to this page or at least give the source)

Background: Tunisia has undergone increasing economic liberalization over the last decade: In the 2010-2011 World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, it was ranked as the most competitive country in Africa, as well as the 32nd most economically competitive country globally. North Africa’s large Muslim populations are a vast business opportunity for Islamic banking and other businesses.


Contrary to popular belief, the world’s finances are controlled by privately-owned “central banks” masquerading as federal government banks in nearly every country in the world [The U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, ruled that The Federal Reserve (U.S.' central bank) was privately owned in 680 F.2d 1239, LEWIS v. UNITED STATES of America, No. 80-5905].

Though it is a carefully guarded secret, the Rothschilds and their associates own most the shares in the central banks (Federal Reserve Directors: A Study of Corporate and Banking Influence, Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing, House of Representatives, 1976, Charts 1-5) (Mullins, Eustice Secrets of the Federal Reserve 1983). With extremely little government input, the economies of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, and Algeria are strictly controlled by the Rothschild’s central banks and their International Monetary Fund.

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THE MOTIVE: FOLLOW THE MONEY

Islamic banks have been eating into Rothschild profits in the Middle East because: they don’t charge interest (Shariah Law), they are growing very rapidly among the world’s exploding Muslim populations, and (in these catastrophic economic times) they are more stable than western banks.

While it is a very good thing that people are freed from the tyranny of dictators, they also need to be freed from the tyranny of economic control and serfdom. The relevant moral question is: Do the means justify the end?.

Ben Ali's son-in-law El Materi at the opening of his Zitouna Bank, North Africa's first Islamic bank, last May

Deposed Tunisian President Ben Ali’s son-in-law, Sakher El Materi, opened Tunisia’s first Islamic bank, Zitouna Bank, on May 26, 2010. Zitouna Bank is the first Islamic bank in the Maghreb region [North Africa]. The bank was a first step toward Ben Ali’s new program of extensive reforms, “Tunisia, a Pole for Banking Services and a Regional Financial Centre”, which would have undermined the power and the profits of the Central Bank of Tunisia (privately-owned by the Rothschilds and their associates).



Tunis Financial Harbour opened last October 19. Its the first offshore finance centre in North Africa.

“Islamic investment bank Gulf Finance House (GFH) and the Tunisian government have created the first offshore finance centre in North Africa. The centre will be part of Tunis Financial Harbour, a $3 billion waterfront development in Tunis . . . GFH, which is based in Bahrain, hopes the centre will allow Tunisia to take advantage of its strategic position on the Mediterranean sea, and operate as a bridge between the EU and the rapidly growing economies of North Africa [and subSaharan Africa].”



“However, despite the current poor climate, the potential for Islamic banking in Egypt is huge, and one should expect more moves from Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank into Egypt, possibly in the form of a buyout,” Executive Magazine (Feb 8 2011) reports, “A recent Middle East Business Intelligence report said it best, when it opined, ‘If Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank can make a success of offering Islamic products, the whole market will open up. We have already seen some of the local banks start to advertise their Islamic products in view of the competition for customers they see about to begin.’

“Clearly Islamic banks in the Gulf are already anticipating the day when their home markets are saturated. And it appears that Egypt will be on the next front-line in the development of regional Islamic banking and finance.”

“African countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Sudan are keen on future sukuk exercises (issuing Islamic bonds). Gambia debuted with a US$166m sukuk deal, privately sold in the US in 2006.” [International Finance Review (Reuters), 2008]

The New York Times article “Islamic banking rises on oil wealth, drawing non-Muslims” ( November 22, 2007) reported: “Rising oil wealth is lifting Islamic banking – which adheres to the laws of the Koran and its prohibition against charging interest – into the financial mainstream. . . . In addition to Islamic loans, there are Islamic bonds, Islamic credit cards . . . Loans and bonds that conform to the Koran are already available in the United States. . . .

“’This is an industry on its way from a niche industry to becoming a truly global industry,’ said Khawaja Mohammad Salman Younis, the managing director for operations in Malaysia for Kuwait Finance House, the world’s second-largest Islamic bank. ‘In the next three to five years you’ll see Islamic banks coming out in Australia, China, Japan and other parts of the world.’

“In Islamic banking, financiers are required to share borrowers’ risks, meaning that depositors are treated more like shareholders, earning a portion of profits. Financing deals resemble lease-to-own arrangements, layaway plans, joint purchase and sale agreements, or partnerships.

“The stampede into Islamic finance is mostly an effort to tap an estimated $1.5 trillion of funds sloshing around the Middle East, largely from higher oil prices. . . .Those investments have helped ignite an economic revival throughout the Muslim world at a time of increasing religious conservatism among Islam’s 1.6 billion faithful. A result is expanding demand for financial services that adhere to Islamic law . . .

“And while the biggest Islamic banks are in the wealthy Gulf states, the most attractive potential markets are in Turkey and North Africa (emphasis added) and among European Muslims. . . .

“. . . even non-Muslims are taking advantage of a growing range of Islamic products offering competitive returns. For instance, David Ong-Yeoh, a public relations executive tired of fretting over the rising interest rate on his adjustable rate mortgage, refinanced to a 30-year fixed loan from an Islamic financial institution. Now, he pays regular installments that include a predetermined profit margin for the bank.

“’The terms are better than on conventional loans,’ said Ong-Yeoh, 41.

“Islamic finance also avoids other prohibited practices. Shariah-compliant bankers cannot receive or provide funds for anything involving alcohol, gambling, pornography, tobacco, weapons or pork. Proponents of Islamic banking say these are limits any socially conscious investor can support, Muslim or not. They also envision wider appeal for Islamic banking’s ban on interest, which stems from the Koran’s prohibition against usury.

“This is a view that has a long religious and historical tradition. Interest is repeatedly condemned in the Bible. Aristotle denounced it, the Romans limited it, and the early Christian church prohibited it. . . .

“The belief that all interest charges are unjust now underpins Islamic finance. . . .Hoarding is frowned upon in the Koran, so savings earn no return unless put to productive use.

“’Money should be used for creating better value in the country or the economy,’ Maraj said. ‘Money cannot generate money.’

“Nor can Islamic banks simply trade money. ‘In the Islamic finance model, the banks are supposed to mobilize funds through a fund management concept,’ said Rafe Haneef, head of Islamic banking in Asia for Citigroup.

“Indeed, Islamic banking is supposed to function more like private equity firms than conventional banking. ‘Private equity is an Islamic concept,’ Haneef said.

“Industry proponents say this risk-sharing requirement helps reduce the kind of abuses that led to the subprime mortgage mess in the United States. Scholars consider it un-Islamic to overload a customer with debt or invest in a company with excessive debt.”

The Washington Post, “Islamic Banking: Steady In Shaky Times” (Oct 31 2008), reported: “As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking. Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown.

“This week, Kuwait’s commerce minister, Ahmad Baqer, was quoted as saying that the global crisis will prompt more countries to use Islamic principles in running their economies. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmet, visiting Jiddah, said experts at his agency have been learning the features of Islamic banking.

“Though the trillion-dollar Islamic banking industry faces challenges with the slump in real estate and stock prices, advocates say the system has built-in protection from the kind of runaway collapse that has afflicted so many institutions. For one thing, the use of financial instruments such as derivatives, blamed for the downfall of banking, insurance and investment giants, is banned. So is excessive risk-taking.

“’The beauty of Islamic banking and the reason it can be used as a replacement for the current market is that you only promise what you own [contrast to western banks fractional reserve system]. Islamic banks are not protected if the economy goes down — they suffer — but you don’t lose your shirt,’ said Majed al-Refaie, who heads Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank.

“The theological underpinning of Islamic banking is scripture that declares that collection of interest is a form of usury, which is banned in Islam. In the modern world, that translates into an attitude toward money that is different from that found in the West: Money cannot just sit and generate more money. To grow, it must be invested in productive enterprises.

“’In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air,’ said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. ‘Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold.’

“Islamic bankers describe depositors as akin to partners — their money is invested, and they share in the profits or, theoretically, the losses that result. (In interviews, bankers couldn’t recall a case in which depositors actually lost money; this shows that banks put such funds only in very low-risk investments, they said.)”

It is easy to see why the Rothschilds and their network of conventional western banks would be threatened by competition from the more appealing, more conservative Islamic banks.

Late in 2008, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announced France’s intention to make Paris “the capital of Islamic finance” and said several Islamic banks would open branches in the French capital in 2009. French sources estimate this area of the financial market is worth from 500 to 600 billion dollars and could grow by an average 11 percent a year.

John Sandwick, managing director of Swiss asset management firm Encore Management, characterized the opening of several Swiss Islamic banks as, “the race to control the rich prize: which today is worth hundreds of billions, but in the future will be trillions of dollars of Islamic wealth.”

“According to Standard and Poor’s, Islamic banking assets reached about $400 billion throughout the world in 2009. In November 2010, The Banker published its latest authoritative list of the Top 500 Islamic Finance Institutions with Iran topping the list. Seven out of ten top Islamic banks in the world are Iranian according to the list.” (iStockAnalyst, Feb 8, 2011)


Commenting on the opening of Zitouna (Islamic) Bank, International Business Times (May 28 2010) reported, “North Africa has begun to embrace Islamic finance after years watching from the sidelines, partly to channel more Arab Gulf petrodollars into the region. . . .Tunisia has one of the most open economies in the region and attracts substantial investment from the European Union, something that is expected to accelerate after 2014, when the government has said it will make the currency (the Tunisian dinar) fully convertible.”

Global Islamic Finance News (May 31, 2010) reported, “Zitouna Bank also seeks to impart a regional dimension on its activities, particularly in the Maghreb region [North Africa], all the more so that it is the first specialised bank not belonging to a foreign banking group,” and went on to add, “The Bank will also seek to forge strong relations with the Maghreb and Mediterranean banks to ensure needed flow of financial operations for its customers. The bank officials stressed that the financial institution has established relations with 12 Islamic banks in collaboration with the Institute of Islamic banks in Bahrain.

Continued...

[Errosion Of Accord]

Zitouna bank’s formation had been announced earlier in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Tunisia on 10 September 2009. Tunisia and Morocco authorized Islamic finance in 2007, partly to channel more investment into their fast-growing tourism and real estate industries.

Due to his being the son-in-law of President Ben Ali, El Materi’s Zitouna Bank was expanding in Tunisia to the level of monopoly. El Materi had built a powerful business empire: he ran businesses in News and Media, Banking and Financial Services, Automotive, Shipping and Cruises, Real Estate and Agriculture, Pharmaceuticals and last November 22 he bought a 50% stake in Orascom Telecom for 0.2 billion.

The newly-opened Tunis Financial Harbour was on the brink of becoming the regional financial centre of North Africa and, with its strategic position on the Mediterranean sea, becoming a bridge between the EU and the rapidly growing economies of North Africa and subSaharan Africa.

On January 20 2011, ZItouna Bank, Tunisia’s first Islamic bank was seized by the Central Bank of Tunisia (Rothschilds). The bank owned by Sakher El Materi, the thirty-year-old son-in-law of deposed Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been placed under “the control” of the central bank. Materi is presently in Dubai. The move came a day after 33 of Ben Ali’s clan were arrested for crimes against the nation. State television showed what it said was seized gold and jewellery. Switzerland has also frozen Ben Ali’s family assets.


A still from the film "It's A Wonderful Life"

The following scenario is right out of the 1946, Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life with Old Man Potter (Rothschild) creating a run on Harry Bailey’s traditional Savings and Loans (Islamic bank):

Islamic (halal) banking products have not made significant inroads in North Africa yet, except in Egypt. “. . . There are several Islamic banks operating in Egypt: Faisal Islamic Bank, Al Baraka Egypt (Al Ahram Bank) and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank NBD . . . There may be others as well,” says Blake Goud, an expert on Islamic Finance (The Review – Middle East, Jan 31 2011), “. . . and the risks of a run on the bank should concern those interested in Islamic banking around the world because it could provide a test of how resilient Islamic banks really are to crisis.

“What I mean is that the Egyptian situation, which could be a fantastic opportunity for the Egyptian people, could expose a weakness within the Islamic banking industry if it is problematic. The main risk to any bank is that there is a run and the bank cannot meet depositor withdrawals with the cash available on hand. This forces the bank to raise cash from other means. In most cases, it can either get an inter-bank loan from another bank overnight that allows it to handle withdrawals. If other banks are hesitant to lend to a given bank because of fears of asset quality, then the bank will usually have access to an overnight borrowing facility with the central bank, which operates as the lender of last resort.

“The key for Islamic banks is that they are not able to take advantage of the inter-bank lending market, nor are they able to borrow from (or lend to) the central bank (emphasis added) because those loans are interest-bearing. The only alternative is to find other banks (mostly Islamic banks) willing to extend Shari’ah-compliant, bilateral loans often using commodity murabaha. In a country like Egypt where the Islamic banking industry is a small portion of the total banking system, it does not create a systemic risk if Islamic banks fail, but it does matter a lot to the depositors of other Islamic banks in the country and globally. If there is the potential that a run on an Islamic bank will not be stopped by someone; whether that is a foreign bank, a multi-lateral bank like the Islamic Development Bank or the central bank of Egypt (through emergency measures), then it could hurt confidence in Islamic banks.

“If neither of these options are available, the bank will have to try to raise funds by selling its assets, most of which (loans) are illiquid in the short run. It will have to take a loss on the sale to realize the cash it needs to meet withdrawals. If this continues and the bank sells enough assets at a discount to the value they are held on the balance sheet, the bank’s equity will be negative (the value of assets minus liabilities) and it will become insolvent (having earlier only been illiquid). This is the fundamental danger in banking from a financial stability perspective. If enough banks face runs and have to sell assets, the run could become self-sustaining and contagious. Even a healthy bank facing a run can become insolvent.

“The loss of confidence is more than just a reputational hit and a hit on the egos of Islamic bankers. It would make it more difficult for Islamic banks to attract and retain depositors and it could raise the cost at which it can attract depositors. This would make the bank, all other things equal, less profitable (it makes profit of the spread between the return on invested funds and the cost of funds borrowed from depositors). Lower profitability will lower the attractiveness of Islamic banks to equity investors limiting their ability to increase capital through equity offerings (or at least increasing the dilution to current shareholders). It will lower the amount available to supplement capital as well as pay dividends to its shareholders.

“Therefore, it is important that the Islamic banks in Egypt make it through the ‘run’ that is predicted if it materializes, not just for those banks’ shareholders, but also for the Islamic banking industry.”

In contrast, Bloomberg reports, “Egypt’s banks may risk a surge in customer withdrawals when they open for business, placing them among companies worst hit by the nationwide uprising against President Hosni Mubarak. … Central Bank Governor Farouk El-Okdah said in a telephone interview Jan. 29 that his bank has $36 billion in reserves, enough to accommodate investors should they wish to withdraw funds. His deputy, Hisham Ramez, said interbank lending “will function properly” when banks are reopened. He said the security situation will determine when that is possible.

“Asked about the risk of a bank run, Mohamed Barakat, chairman of state-run Banque Misr and head of the country’s banking association, said in a telephone interview that Egyptian lenders are ‘very liquid,’” with average loan-to-deposit ratios of 53 percent. […] “The Egyptian interbank offered rate, the rate banks charge to lend to each other, is at a 16-month high of 8.5 percent.”

THE MEANS: SPONSOR PRO-DEMOCRACY ACTIVISTS

These Rothschild revolutions are done under the pretense of bringing democracy and deposing despots, but the real aim is to initially create chaos and a leadership vacuum, then quickly offer a solution: install a puppet that will do the economic bidding of the Rothschilds. The citizens gain freedom of speech and association, but become economic serfs.

These revolutions are most likely coordinated at the highest levels by the Rothschild’s International Crisis Group. Mohamed ElBaradei is already being touted as a new leader for Egypt. ElBaradei is a trustee of the International Crisis Group. Another board member of this group is Zbigniew Brzezinski. George Soros sits on the executive committee. The later two are ubiquitous front men for the Rothschilds.

The revolutions are from the same playbook as the fairly nonviolent “color revolutions”. These revolutions have been successful in Serbia (especially the Bulldozer Revolution (2000), in Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004), in Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution and (though more violent than the previous ones) in Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution (2005), and Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. Iran’s Green Revolution (2009) was unsuccessful.

Liberal billionaire George Soros funded training of activists in North Africa.

The Guardian reported (Nov 26, 2004) that the following were “directly involved” in organizing the colour revolutions: George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute, and Freedom House. The Washington Post and the New York Times also reported substantial Western involvement in some of these events.

Activists from Otpor in Serbia have said that publications and training they received from the US based Albert Einstein Institution staff have been instrumental in the formation of their strategies. The Albert Einstein Institution is funded by the Soros Foundation and NED. (Wikipedia)

In the article, “Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros” (November 26, 2003), the Globe & Mail reported, “[Soros' Open Society Institute] sent a 31-year-old Tbilisi activist named Giga Bokeria to Serbia to meet with members of the Otpor (Resistance) movement and learn how they used street demonstrations to topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Then, in the summer, Mr. Soros’s foundation paid for a return trip to Georgia by Otpor activists, who ran three-day courses teaching more than 1,000 students how to stage a peaceful revolution.”

Egyptian activists wearing Otpor shirts. Otpor was started by Soros in Serbia and has trained activists in other colour revolutions

Several protest organizers on the streets in Egypt last week were wearing Otpor t-shirts. These t-shirts are given out by Otpor at training sessions. This is only to say that there may be a link here, between Soros and Tunisian protesters.

In 2007-08, Freedom House [funded by Soros and the Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative (MEPI)] ran the following program: “New Generation of Advocates, a MEPI-funded program that supports young civil society activists working for peaceful political change in the Middle East and North Africa, spearheaded the “Lawyers against Corruption” campaign in Tunisia.”(Freedom House website). The group of “journalists, lawyers, and other activists who advocate for democratic reform” had a meeting with then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a trip to Washington on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2008. In May 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the group of activist/dissidents. Freedom House reported on their website that the group also visited “U.S. government officials, members of Congress, media outlets and think tanks . . . After returning to Egypt, the fellows received small grants to implement innovative initiatives such as advocating for political reform through Facebook and SMS messaging.” (emphasis added)

And also from the Freedom House website: “From February 27 to March 13 [2010], Freedom House hosted 11 bloggers from the Middle East and North Africa for a two-week Advanced New Media Study Tour in Washington, D.C.”

In 2010, Soros’ Open Society Institute funded a grant called ‘Can It Tweet its way to Democracy? The promise of Participatory Media in Africa’ described on the OSI website as “. . . . Ethiopia and Egypt have been the current focus of the research programme; the OSI funding will allow the project to be expanded to include: Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Eritrea and Rwanda. . . . it is hoped that it will contribute to the understanding of the new media in Africa and its links to democratization. It is also intended that the study will be used as a source material for future research.”

Facebook and Twitter were the primary means of organizing the revolution in Egypt: “Activists from Egypt’s Kifaya (Enough) movement – a coalition of government opponents – and the 6th of April Youth Movement organized the protests on the Facebook and Twitter . . . .” (Voice of America)

In the Foreign Policy Journal, Dr. D.K. Bolton (Jan 19 2011) writes, “NED [National Endowment for Democracy] and Soros work in tandem, targeting the same regimes and using the same methods. . . . At least ten of the twenty-two directors of NED are also members of the plutocratic think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations . . . .” (The Council of Foreign Relations is the American sister of the Rothschild’s Royal Institute of International Affairs in Britain: both are instruments of plutocratic control hiding in plain sight.

The following is a partial list of grants from the NED website for 2009 (the latest year available):

In Tunisia the focus was on training youth activists:

“Al-Jahedh Forum for Free Thought $131,000 To strengthen the capacity and build a democratic culture among Tunisian youth activists.

“Mohamed Ali Center for Research, Studies and Training $33,500 To train a core group of Tunisian youth activists on leadership and organizational skills to encourage their involvement in public life. [MACRST] will conduct a four-day intensive training of trainers program for a core group of 10 young Tunisian civic activists on leadership and organizational skills; train 50 male and female activists aged 20 to 40 on leadership and empowered decision-making; and work with the trained activists through 50 on-site visits to their respective organizations.

“Association for the Promotion of Education $27,000 To strengthen the capacity of Tunisian high school teachers to promote democratic and civic values in their classrooms. APES will conduct a training-of-trainers workshop for 10 university professors and school inspectors, and hold three two-day capacity building seminars for 120 high school teachers . . . .”

The above organizations and others have been recipients of ongoing NED grants in Tunisia, as the following list from previous years indicates:

2008: Al-Jahedh Forum for Free Thought received $57,000 to train Tunisian activists; Mohamed Ali Centre for Research got $37,800; Tunisian Arab Civitas Institute, $43,000 for training teachers in “civic values” and the Center for International Private Enterprise, $163,205 “to inculcate free enterprise doctrines among Tunisian businessmen, which reflects what NED is really aiming for in its promotion of “democracy and civil values”: globalization” (Bolton, 2011)

2007: AJFFT received $45,000 to develop Tunisian Activists; The Arab Institute for Human Rights got $43,900; The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) $175, 818; The Mohamed Ali Center for Research, Studies, and Training $38,500; Moroccan Organization for Human Rights $60,000 “To strengthen a group of young Tunisian attorneys as they mobilize citizens on reform issues.”

In Egypt, the number of NED grants doubled in 2009 to 33 democracy projects totaling $1.4 million and the focus changed from promoting private enterprise to training young human-rights lawyers, and identifying and training youth activists. It will be interesting to see when (if?) NED publishes its 2010 grants. From the NED website—a sample of the grants for 2009:

Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth (EULY) $33,300 To expand the use of new media among youth activists for the promotion of democratic ideas and values. EULY will train 60 youth activists to use filmmaking for the dissemination of democratic ideas and values. The Union will lead a total of four two-month long training workshops in Cairo to build the political knowledge and technical filmmaking skills of participating youth involved in NGOs.

Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies (AITAS) $48,900 To strengthen youth understanding of the Egyptian parliament and enhance regional activists’ use of new technologies as accountability tools. AITAS will conduct a series of workshops for 300 university students to raise their awareness of parliament’s functions and engage them in monitoring parliamentary committees. AITAS will also host 8 month-long internships for youth activists from the Middle East and North Africa to share its experiences using web-based technologies in monitoring efforts.

Bridge Center for Dialogue and Development (BTRD) $25,000 To promote youth expression and engagement in community issues through new media. BTRD will train youth between the ages of 16 and 26 in the use of new and traditional media tools to report on issues facing their communities. BRTD will also create a website for human rights videos and new media campaigns in Egypt.

Egyptian Democracy Institute (EDI) $48,900 To promote accountability and transparency in parliament through public participation, and to build legislative capacity. EDI will produce quarterly monitoring reports and hold seminars to discuss the overall performance of Parliament and offer recommendations on legislation proposed in the People’s Assembly. EDI will monitor, collect, and document evidence of corruption in Cairo and Alexandria

Lawyers Union for Democratic and Legal Studies (LUDLS) $20,000 To support freedom of association by strengthening young activists’ ability to express and organize themselves peacefully within the bounds of the law. LUDLS will train 250 youth activists on peaceful assembly and dispute resolution

Our Hands for Comprehensive Development $19,200 To engage Minya youth in civic activism and encourage youth-led initiatives and volunteerism. Our Hands will hold two public meetings for local youth to discuss challenges and to identify youth leaders who would benefit from additional training courses. Participants will produce a short film on youth political participation, and develop and implement action plans for resolving problems facing youth in the governorate. Our Hands will also provide Minya youth an opportunity to learn from the experience of and network with Cairo-based activists and NGOs.

“Youth Forum $19,000 To expand and maintain a network of youth activists on Egyptian university campuses and to encourage the participation of university students in student union elections and civic activities on campus. . . .”

NED and Soros have been injecting millions of dollars into the training of North African, pro-democracy teachers, lawyers, journalists and youth activists. In 2009 they more than doubled their training efforts. Why, at this time, has the 30-year support of these dictators been undermined? The prize is the rapidly-rising economies of North Africa. It coincides with the efforts of Ben Ali to make Tunisia the financial center of North Africa and to promote Islamic banking. The Rothschilds want North African Muslims to borrow from Rothschild banks and pay interest at rates the Rothschild central bank decides: they do not want them to be able to borrow from Islamic banks and not pay any interest. The Rothschilds want Muslims to trade their present political oppression at the hands of brutal dictators for future economic serfdom under the control of banker Lord Rothschild.

[Errosion Of Accord]

More on the Albert Einstein Institute mentioned in the above article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/wo...harp.html?_r=1

Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: February 16, 2011



BOSTON — Halfway around the world from Tahrir Square in Cairo, an aging American intellectual shuffles about his cluttered brick row house in a working-class neighborhood here. His name is Gene Sharp. Stoop-shouldered and white-haired at 83, he grows orchids, has yet to master the Internet and hardly seems like a dangerous man.

Gene Sharp, 83, is known for writing about nonviolence.
But for the world’s despots, his ideas can be fatal.

Few Americans have heard of Mr. Sharp. But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt.

When Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement was struggling to recover from a failed effort in 2005, its leaders tossed around “crazy ideas” about bringing down the government, said Ahmed Maher, a leading strategist. They stumbled on Mr. Sharp while examining the Serbian movement Otpor, which he had influenced.

When the nonpartisan International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which trains democracy activists, slipped into Cairo several years ago to conduct a workshop, among the papers it distributed was Mr. Sharp’s “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action,” a list of tactics that range from hunger strikes to “protest disrobing” to “disclosing identities of secret agents.”

Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian blogger and activist who attended the workshop and later organized similar sessions on her own, said trainees were active in both the Tunisia and Egypt revolts. She said that some activists translated excerpts of Mr. Sharp’s work into Arabic, and that his message of “attacking weaknesses of dictators” stuck with them.

Peter Ackerman, a onetime student of Mr. Sharp who founded the nonviolence center and ran the Cairo workshop, cites his former mentor as proof that “ideas have power.”

Mr. Sharp, hard-nosed yet exceedingly shy, is careful not to take credit. He is more thinker than revolutionary, though as a young man he participated in lunch-counter sit-ins and spent nine months in a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., as a conscientious objector during the Korean War. He has had no contact with the Egyptian protesters, he said, although he recently learned that the Muslim Brotherhood had “From Dictatorship to Democracy” posted on its Web site.

While seeing the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak as a sign of “encouragement,” Mr. Sharp said, “The people of Egypt did that — not me.”

He has been watching events in Cairo unfold on CNN from his modest house in East Boston, which he bought in 1968 for $150 plus back taxes.

It doubles as the headquarters of the Albert Einstein Institution, an organization Mr. Sharp founded in 1983 while running seminars at Harvard and teaching political science at what is now the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. It consists of him; his assistant, Jamila Raqib, whose family fled Soviet oppression in Afghanistan when she was 5; a part-time office manager and a Golden Retriever mix named Sally. Their office wall sports a bumper sticker that reads “Gotov Je!” — Serbian for “He is finished!”

In this era of Twitter revolutionaries, the Internet holds little allure for Mr. Sharp. He is not on Facebook and does not venture onto the Einstein Web site. (“I should,” he said apologetically.) If he must send e-mail, he consults a handwritten note Ms. Raqib has taped to the doorjamb near his state-of-the-art Macintosh computer in a study overflowing with books and papers. “To open a blank e-mail,” it reads, “click once on icon that says ‘new’ at top of window.”

Some people suspect Mr. Sharp of being a closet peacenik and a lefty — in the 1950s, he wrote for a publication called “Peace News” and he once worked as personal secretary to A. J. Muste, a noted labor union activist and pacifist — but he insists that he outgrew his own early pacifism and describes himself as “trans-partisan.”

Based on studies of revolutionaries like Gandhi, nonviolent uprisings, civil rights struggles, economic boycotts and the like, he has concluded that advancing freedom takes careful strategy and meticulous planning, advice that Ms. Ziada said resonated among youth leaders in Egypt. Peaceful protest is best, he says — not for any moral reason, but because violence provokes autocrats to crack down. “If you fight with violence,” Mr. Sharp said, “you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.”

Autocrats abhor Mr. Sharp. In 2007, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela denounced him, and officials in Myanmar, according to diplomatic cables obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, accused him of being part of a conspiracy to set off demonstrations intended “to bring down the government.” (A year earlier, a cable from the United States Embassy in Damascus noted that Syrian dissidents had trained in nonviolence by reading Mr. Sharp’s writings.)

In 2008, Iran featured Mr. Sharp, along with Senator John McCain of Arizona and the Democratic financier George Soros, in an animated propaganda video that accused Mr. Sharp of being the C.I.A. agent “in charge of America’s infiltration into other countries,” an assertion his fellow scholars find ludicrous.

“He is generally considered the father of the whole field of the study of strategic nonviolent action,” said Stephen Zunes, an expert in that field at the University of San Francisco. “Some of these exaggerated stories of him going around the world and starting revolutions and leading mobs, what a joke. He’s much more into doing the research and the theoretical work than he is in disseminating it.”

That is not to say Mr. Sharp has not seen any action. In 1989, he flew to China to witness the uprising in Tiananmen Square. In the early 1990s, he sneaked into a rebel camp in Myanmar at the invitation of Robert L. Helvey, a retired Army colonel who advised the opposition there. They met when Colonel Helvey was on a fellowship at Harvard; the military man thought the professor had ideas that could avoid war. “Here we were in this jungle, reading Gene Sharp’s work by candlelight,” Colonel Helvey recalled. “This guy has tremendous insight into society and the dynamics of social power.”

Not everyone is so impressed. As’ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese political scientist and founder of the Angry Arab News Service blog, was outraged by a passing mention of Mr. Sharp in The New York Times on Monday. He complained that Western journalists were looking for a “Lawrence of Arabia” to explain Egyptians’ success, in a colonialist attempt to deny credit to Egyptians.
Still, just as Mr. Sharp’s profile seems to be expanding, his institute is contracting.

Mr. Ackerman, who became wealthy as an investment banker after studying under Mr. Sharp, contributed millions of dollars and kept it afloat for years. But about a decade ago, Mr. Ackerman wanted to disseminate Mr. Sharp’s ideas more aggressively, as well as his own. He put his money into his own center, which also produces movies and even a video game to train dissidents. An annuity he purchased still helps pay Mr. Sharp’s salary.

In the twilight of his career, Mr. Sharp, who never married, is slowing down. His voice trembles and his blue eyes grow watery when he is tired; he gave up driving after a recent accident. He does his own grocery shopping; his assistant, Ms. Raqib, tries to follow him when it is icy. He does not like it.

He says his work is far from done. He has just submitted a manuscript for a new book, “Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Terminology of Civil Resistance in Conflicts,” to be published this fall by Oxford University Press. He would like readers to know he did not pick the title. “It’s a little immodest,” he said. He has another manuscript in the works about Einstein, whose own concerns about totalitarianism prompted Mr. Sharp to adopt the scientist’s name for his institution. (Einstein wrote the foreword to Mr. Sharp’s first book, about Gandhi.)

In the meantime, he is keeping a close eye on the Middle East. He was struck by the Egyptian protesters’ discipline in remaining peaceful, and especially by their lack of fear. “That is straight out of Gandhi,” Mr. Sharp said. “If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble.”

[Horn]

I was away for a week so this may have already been posted.

It was touched on in the LW thread.

http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/lw-prelude-to-big-annoucement/msg191720/#msg191720

but yes does deserve its own.

long read, bookmark.

[Horn]

“’This is an industry on its way from a niche industry to becoming a truly global industry,’ said Khawaja Mohammad Salman Younis, the managing director for operations in Malaysia for Kuwait Finance House, the world’s second-largest Islamic bank. ‘In the next three to five years you’ll see Islamic banks coming out in Australia, China, Japan and other parts of the world.’

Not if Wikileaks has anything to say about it.

[Errosion Of Accord]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/libyas-bankers-exposed-goldman-jp-morgan-and-citi

Libya's Bankers Exposed: Goldman, JP Morgan And Citi
Tyler Durden's picture
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/01/2011 20:55 -0500


Ten days ago, when we first looked at the Libyan investment authority (its sovereign wealth fund), we asked "Which US Banks Are Managing Billions For The $32 Billion Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund?" Based on Wikileaks data, it was disclosed that various US banks manage billions for the country which has just seen $30 billion of its assets largely frozen (although this is merely half of its total deposits). Obviously, we had "some" banks in mind, most of the variety whose directors believe they are above the law and can share inside information with criminal intent with utter disdain for the law. Now, courtesy of Marcus Baram of the Huffington Post we find that the usual suspects are, naturally, all here: among the key banks that serve as advisors and asset managers are Goldman Sachs (and not just anyone, but Jim "Revolutions are Bullish" O'Neill's GSAM, Citi and JP Morgan. The only question now is how long before we get some sort of public statement out of the likes of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon: on the 22nd we said: "perhaps it is time for the US banks who manage billions in capital for the LIA, to step up." Now that they have been exposed by a third party, the CEOs should really take the hint before this escalates into a full blown PR disaster.

HuffPo writes:

The secretive Libyan Investment Authority has reportedly invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Goldman Sachs Asset Management funds, including a loan fund designed to invest in new hedge funds set up by the Kuwait Investment Authority. Goldman Sachs already has a relationship with Libya -- in 2008, Goldman was the first U.S. bank to get a contract with the country following the removal of sanctions, when it was hired by Libya's central bank to provide information on its behalf to credit rating agencies. A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs did not return calls seeking comment.

The Libyan government, including LIA, has also banked with Citigroup, according to several sources familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Citigroup declined to comment on the bank's interactions with the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is in charge of carrying out Obama's order regarding Libyan assets.

JPMorgan Chase reportedly handles much of the LIA's cash and some of the Libyan central bank's reserves. The summer after then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Gaddafi in 2008, LIA gave "mandates to some of the international banks, including JPMorgan to manage their funds in the interbank money markets, according to Vanity Fair.

Banks are not the only entities: Washington DC darling private equity firm, and alleged CIA front organization, Carlyle is also among the collaborators:

Two years ago, the Carlyle Group's co-founder and managing director, David Rubenstein, and Blackstone chief executive Steven Schwarzman traveled to the Libyan capital of Tripoli to help celebrate the wedding of Mustafa Zarti, the deputy director of the LIA, in a massive tent set up on the outskirts of the city, reported the Financial Times. And when Gaddafi's son and longtime likely successor, Saif al-Islam, visited New York in November 2008, Schwarzman hosted a lunch for him at the Blackstone CEO's Park Avenue apartment. The younger Gaddafi was also honored on that trip by Carlyle's retired chairman, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci, who hosted a dinner for him in a private room at the City Club.

Yet while nobody really cares about Carlyle which for decades now has managed to remain behind the scenes, even though in many regards it is the Goldman Sachs of the Private Equity world, many do care about Goldman, especially following today's latest disclosure of supposed gross and criminal abdication of fiduciary duty by a person at the very top. The last thing Goldman needs is to be disarming a PR minefield in which various bloggers and the less than mainstream media (certainly excluding those that have Goldman Sachs Asset Management ad banners on their pages) try to pin the tail on the Blankfein donkey of PR blunder following PR blunder.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/libyas-bankers-exposed-goldman-jp-morgan-and-citi

[Horn]

The last thing Goldman needs is to be disarming a PR minefield in which various bloggers and the less than mainstream media (certainly excluding those that have Goldman Sachs Asset Management ad banners on their pages) try to pin the tail on the Blankfein donkey of PR blunder following PR blunder.

In the end most everyone will become expendable excepting those in the thread title. I find it most interesting how Kadaffy was accepted back into the puppet show after his first deposit...

Rest assured that the Royals are already well vested in controlling shares of zlamic banking, otherwise none of this would be happening.

[Errosion Of Accord]

http://blacklistednews.com/Why-the-Banksters-Hate-Islam-/12900/0/5/5/Y/M.html


Thursday, March 3, 2011
Why the Banksters Hate Islam
And everything Old World.
by Tony Cartalucci

Of course, all aspects of the Old World are slated for elimination, as ancient values, be they of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or even regional secular traditions, all pose a direct threat to the Anglo-American unipolar world government. Their world government is one of interdependence between the nation-states, who in turn are enslaved by servile dependence on "global institutions," most notably those involving a world-wide monetary system. Any tradition or value system that promotes independence, sovereignty, knowledge, and self-reliance represents a brick wall standing in the way of the corroding effects of the globalist agenda.

Eastern traditions and Islam in particular, however, have proven themselves most resilient. Islamic communities from the Middle East to Southeast Asia still exist, their local markets still thrive even in the presence of nearby Western consumerist troughs like Tesco of England. As technology progresses, these communities augment their commerce to compete fiercer yet with the Ponzi-scheme economy of the West. Throughout Asia along side these traditional, tightly knit Islamic communities, coexist Asian black-markets or the "underground economy." Together these form the closest model of real "free market" economics you can find. These are markets that not only progress at break-neck speed, but the amount of competition and the informed consumer base demanded by this otherwise unregulated economic activity, do the best job of "distributing" wealth and commodities at the lowest price possible.

While common sense drives the Asian black-markets, the Islamic communities are driven by something much deeper, derived from the Qu'ran. A particular lecturer on the Islamic world verses the international monetary system encapsulates these precepts best in a YouTube video series titled "Islam & the International Monetary System." If you are able to move past superficial details, ideological differences, and labels, and focus on the underlining message of Imran Hosein, Muslim or not, you will walk away enlightened. You will not only be enlightened as to why the globalists fear and despise the Old World, and Islam in particular, but you will understand the possible solution to subverting the globalists' depraved system with one that is as applicable for the American patriot as much as it is the for the Indonesian Muslim.

Imran Hosein's ultimate solution to the problem of international monetary predation is the construction of Islamic villages that are self-reliant and maintain their monetary sovereignty through using sound money locally based on Islamic law. These could just as easily be "Liberty Villages" in the United States where farmers and tradesmen come together and conduct commerce with sound money with intrinsic value.

It has been said many times before, independence is freedom, freedom is independence. It appears that the message of Ron Paul and genuine Libertarians is more than just an American message, it is a universal message, shared not just by secular or Christian Westerners, but also described in the texts of Islam of which there are over a billion adherents worldwide.

It would be highly beneficial for those who seek true freedom and the undermining of the global world order, to exhibit mutual respect for their secular, Christian, Judeo, and Islamic brothers and sisters, and meet each other in the middle on these fundamental issues of sovereignty, because if there is anything the globalists fear and detest more than Old World tradition and faith, it is the prospect of all Old World traditions and faiths meeting together and joining battle against the globcratic elite.

Below is the first of 11 videos.

Skip past the first couple minutes to get past the Arabic tongue stuff. Before you decide to berate me for posting this, because I know some of you will panic, know a couple of things.


Lateran III decreed that persons who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial.[7] Pope Clement V made the belief in the right to usury a heresy in 1311, and abolished all secular legislation which allowed it.[8] Pope Sixtus V condemned the practice of charging interest as "detestable to God and man, damned by the sacred canons and contrary to Christian charity."[8]


...financial oppression of Jews tended to occur in areas where they were most disliked, and if Jews reacted by concentrating on moneylending to non-Jews, the unpopularity — and so, of course, the pressure — would increase. Thus the Jews became an element in a vicious circle. The Christians, on the basis of the Biblical rulings, condemned interest-taking absolutely, and from 1179 those who practiced it were excommunicated. Catholic autocrats frequently imposed the harshest financial burdens on the Jews. The Jews reacted by engaging in the one business where Christian laws actually discriminated in their favor, and became identified with the hated trade of moneylending.[19]


Peasants were forced to pay their taxes to Jews who were economically coerced into becoming the "front men" for the lords. The Jews would then be identified as the people taking their earnings. Meanwhile the peasants would remain loyal to the lords.

In England, the departing Crusaders were joined by crowds of debtors in the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189–1190. In 1275, Edward I of England passed the Statute of Jewry which made usury illegal and linked it to blasphemy, in order to seize the assets of the violators. Scores of English Jews were arrested, 300 were hanged and their property went to the Crown. In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England, and allowed to take only what they could carry; the rest of their property became the Crown's. The usury was cited as the official reason for the Edict of Expulsion. However, not all Jews were expelled: it was easy to convert to Christianity and thereby avoid expulsion. Many other crowned heads of Europe expelled the Jews, although again conversion to Christianity meant that you were no longer considered a Jew (see the articles on marranos or crypto-Judaism).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6iFFs0l3fs&playnext=1&list=PL0819CE057E54DBCB

The wiki on usury in and of it's self is pretty interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

[Horn]

I'm wondering is if Wikileaks isn't stirring up many old pots around the world? And the U.S. is not hearing about it.

If Costa Rica is any indication of what's going on around the rest of the planet I would say, yes.

La Nacion the local newspaper here in Costa Rica has been probing wikileaks on a regular basis for the past weeks, and stirring the ruling parties pot.

What are the true origins of the uprising, is my question.?

Some news outlets must have been rallying the revolt...

[PatColo]

Makes you wonder whether this isn't the root of why the Zionist/Rothschild Global Usury Empire (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/the-zionist-elephant-in-the-room/msg2940/#msg2940) propagandizes the West so relentlessly about the threat of Scary Moozlemists who wanna take over the world booga booga!

***

Muslim investors profit by adhering to faith (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/MN2D15J4HD.DTL&tsp=1)

Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer
San Francisco Chronicle February 8, 2009

(02-08) 20:43 PST -- As credit markets have imploded, triggering a global economic crisis, Islamically correct investors have seen a change of fortune: The conservative principles this small group of devout Muslims clung to during the economic heyday has insulated them from the worst of the past year's suffering.

Their renunciation of the interest-based economy kept them away from investments in financial services companies, whose stocks have collapsed, and out of traditional mortgages.

"There was a time two or three years ago that Islamic finance was considered simply too conservative," said Professor Ibrahim Warde, author of "Islamic Finance in the Global Economy" and an adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. "Right now, many people are recognizing that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing."

Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, which represent benchmarks for Islamically correct investment categories, have been outperforming their non-Islamically compliant counterparts by 3 to 4 percent in key indexes. The two Amana Income and Growth funds, the largest Islamic mutual funds in the country with $1.2 billion in combined assets, have been outperforming the S&P 500 in the past year by 13 and 7 percent, respectively. (Both Amana funds also outperform the S&P index on 5- and 10-year comparisons.)

Bay Area residents who bought homes through an Islamically compliant lender in San Jose, the Ameen Housing Cooperative, don't have to worry whether their lender will work with them if they lose their jobs. Islamic lenders are required to work in good faith with distressed borrowers to figure out ways to make payments manageable - and co-op leaders say they will.

Islamic investing

Warde and other Islamic finance experts and investors caution that the crisis doesn't mean that Islamic finance is a better model than Western capitalism. They say Islamic finance, a system of ethical finance supported on an institutional level, provides unique insight into an economic meltdown created in part by financial practices forbidden by strict observance of Islam.

"I don't think there's anything miraculous about Islamic finance, or that it's a panacea," said Warde, who will be speaking at a UC Berkeley School of Law symposium on the issue this month. "But we can understand why Islamic banks did well in the current financial environment."

Renouncing interest is the high-profile element of Islamic finance that relates to the current economic crisis. For Islamically correct investors, that means there are limits to how much debt a company can have or how much profit it can derive from interest-based investments. That criterion eliminated the possibility of holding stocks in financial services companies, like Citigroup or Washington Mutual, whose stocks lost 86 percent or all of their value last year, respectively.

Avoiding crisis' practices

Islamic finance also prohibits selling assets you don't own, selling someone's debt and engaging in high-risk investments. Thus, there was no participation in practices that have been blamed for Wall Street's meltdown: complex derivatives trading, short-selling and the $30 trillion market in credit default swaps.

While Islamically correct investing is a booming industry, it hardly guarantees good returns. The Iman Fund, run by Allied Asset Advisors and one of the largest Islamic mutual funds in the country, has performed worse than the S&P 500 and others in its category, according to Morningstar, a mutual fund rating service.

But performance alone isn't the point of compliance with Islamic law, known as sharia. For the committed, investing finance with faith is about living with values.

"We don't claim to our investors that we're going to be consistently outperforming the market because we have sharia criteria," said Monem Salam, director of Islamic investing and deputy portfolio manager for Saturna Capital, which manages the Amana funds. "We're going to give our investors the best return they can (get) based on the criteria. If that means outperformance on certain indices, then great."

The Islamic principles playing out across the larger stock market are also playing out in smaller, if no less significant ways for ordinary investors.

Housing cooperatives

In San Jose, the Ameen Housing Cooperative has helped roughly 30 members buy homes without mortgages. Yet the recession has had "no impact whatsoever" on the co-op, according to board member Humayun Sohel. The reasons have much to do with an Islamic requirement that the lender and the borrower share the risks and rewards of a loan.

Ameen members pool their money to give out loans. Borrowers put at least 30 percent down, and monthly payments are based on local rental values. Monthly payments pay down debt and pay dividends to Ameen members. In its 13-year history, Sohel said, Ameen has given a quarterly dividend of at least 3.8 percent and as much as 7.8 percent to co-op members.

When the deed of transfer is finally given to the borrower, Ameen members get a slice of the home's increased value - or take a loss if the price has gone down. With the median home price dropping as much as 40 percent in Santa Clara County and many worrying about their jobs, Ameen remains confident.

Borrower loses equity

As long as the borrower is earnest, Sohel said, Ameen will work to reduce payments, though that may mean a borrower doesn't gain equity or possibly loses some. If someone cannot pay at all for an extended time, Ameen will rent the home instead of selling it and locking in the loss, which is what banks do during foreclosures.

"What we are counting on is riding out this difficult time," Sohel said.

Islamic compliance also precludes investing in things Muslims are expected to avoid, like pornography, tobacco, alcohol and gambling. Those prohibitions drew Juveria Aleem to the Amana funds. But the Oakland Web designer feels like the relatively lower losses on her investments have only reaffirmed her faith.

"Not only was I keeping myself spiritually clean by not engaging in that in my life, but financially, it was helping me," Aleem said. "You cannot ever truly go wrong by practicing the principles of your faith."

Islamic finances

-- The second annual Islamic Finance Symposium, "Islamic Finance: Resilience in a Time of Financial Crisis," is a daylong conference on Feb. 28 at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. To register, go to: links.sfgate.com/ZGBS.

-- For more information on the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, go to: links.sfgate.com/ZGBT.

-- For more information on the Ameen Housing Cooperative, go to: www.ameenhousing.com




http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:V6coMTdx9xK-9M:http://www.soxfirst.com/imgname--bernanke_the_banker---50226711--bernanke_0_3.jpg&t=1