Exclusive: Do We Justify the Most Brutal Murders by Calling Them 'Honor Killings'?

by Margaret Calhoun Hemenway

Islamic groups in the U.S. are actively trying to discourage use of descriptive terms like "Jihadi" to describe an Islamic terrorist and warn Americans against "Islamophobia" should they use the "wrong" words to talk about Islam or Muslim terrorists. Yet Americans have already succumbed to using an Islamist phrase, "honor killing" to describe the brutal, pre-meditated murders of Muslim women (often wives or daughters) by Muslim relatives (often fathers or brothers). Sharia

.... Women are still forced to enter arranged marriages in many Islamic countries and child brides are commonplace. Feminists are oddly silent about systematic violations of the most basic human rights of women throughout the Islamic world. No murder of a spouse or daughter would ever be associated with the word "honor" in any Western democratic society. In borrowing this phrase, we are falling into the trap of letting Islamic extremists justify and rationalize the most brutal of murders.

U.S. Muslims debate how much to help FBI

A petition organized by a Newark nonprofit urging Muslims to limit social outreach with the FBI has provoked a national debate within the Muslim community about how to deal with law enforcement. ....

US Recovery Is Far Off, Banks Are 'Basically Insolvent': Soros

By: Reuters

The U.S. economy is in for a "lasting slowdown" and could face a Japan-style period of relatively low growth coupled with high inflation, billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday.

Soros, speaking to Reuters Financial Television, also warned that rescuing U.S. banks could turn them into "zombies" that draw the lifeblood of the economy, prolonging the economic slowdown.

AP

"I don't expect the U.S. economy to recover in the third or fourth quarter so I think we are in for a pretty lasting slowdown," Soros said, adding that in 2010 there might be "something" in terms of U.S. growth.

Soros' view contrasts with the majority of economists, who expect the U.S. economy to stop contracting in the third quarter and resume growing in the fourth quarter, according to the latest monthly poll of forecasts conducted by Reuters.

The recovery will look like "an inverted square root sign," Soros said. "You hit bottom and you automatically rebound some, but then you don't come out of it in a V-shape recovery or anything like that. You settle down—step down."

The healing of the banking system and housing markets is crucial to recovery. "The banking system, as a whole, is basically insolvent," Soros said.

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What's more, the Treasury's Public-Private Investment Fund is going to work but it won't be enough to recapitalize the banks in a way that they are able to or willing to provide credit.

"What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy," he said. "Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive. This is the zombie bank situation."

The stress tests being conducted by Treasury could be a precursor to a more successful recapitalization of the banks, he added.

Dollar is Vulnerable

Soros, whose latest book, "The Crash of 2008 and What it Means," has made prescient calls during the current credit crisis.

Exactly one year ago, he told Reuters that global losses are likely to top $1 trillion from the credit crisis. To date, U.S. and European banks have recorded more than $700 billion in losses and write-downs, as of Feb. 5. 2009, according to Reuters data.

Soros also said the U.S. dollar is under selling pressure and may eventually be replaced as a world reserve currency, possibly by the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic currency basket comprised of dollars, euros, yen and sterling.

"I think the dollar is now under question and I think the system will need to be reformed, so that the United States will be subject to the same discipline as is imposed on other countries," said Soros, whose famous bet against the British pound earned his Quantum Fund $1 billion in 1992. "Being the main issuer of international currency, we have been exempt and we have abused that because we have effectively consumed 6.5 percent more than we have produced. That is now coming to an end."

China recently proposed greater use of Special Drawing Rights, possibly as an eventual global reserve currency. "In the long run, having an international accounting unit rather than the dollar may, in fact, be to our advantage so we can't splurge—you know, it felt very good for 25 years but now we are paying a very heavy price," Soros said.

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China will be the first country to emerge from recession, probably this year, and will spearhead global growth in 2010, Soros said. He said world policymakers are "actually beginning to catch up" with the crisis and efforts to fix structural problems in the financial system.

The system was "fundamentally flawed, and there is no returning to where we came from," he said.

Euro Zone Not in Danger

In Europe, he said the crisis provides an incentive for countries that use the euro to remain inside the monetary union, though countries on the periphery still face serious problems.

The euro has been "a tremendous advantage" to countries that use it, adding there's "no question of a weaker country dropping out," Soros said.

While additional resources for the International Monetary Fund will help it stabilize struggling Eastern Europe, he said the Baltic states still face "serious problems" and Ukraine is not far from default.

Widespread use of credit default swaps has worsened the risks for Europe, he said, though he added that Germany, the euro zone's biggest economy, is becoming more open to offering help. "Germany, which has been the most reserved about being the deep pocket of the rest of Europe, has recognized that it too has a responsibility toward the new member states."

Germany has been one of the most reluctant major economies to meet U.S. calls for more fiscal stimulus spending to boost the global economy and fight the financial crisis.

Group gains against Electoral College

by Valerie Richardson

DENVER | A movement to bypass the Electoral College and elect the president based on the popular vote is gaining steam, racking up almost one-fifth of the support needed to trigger the plan.

National Popular Vote, a California-based group formed in 2006, has won commitments from four states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Those four states — Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Hawaii — have 50 electoral votes among them.

The goal is for states with a total of 270 electoral votes to enter into a compact in which they agree to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.

Since presidential candidates need 270 electoral votes for victory, such a compact would ensure that the candidate earning the most votes nationwide would win the election, and the Electoral College would be made irrelevant. Campaigning would become radically different. The most obvious change is that there would be no advantage to getting 51 percent in a given state, thus no "battleground states."

The new system wouldn't kick in until the target is reached, said John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote and the designer of the plan.

"We have 20 percent of the electoral votes we need," said Mr. Koza. "The whole idea of the bill is that no state can do this alone. It only goes into effect when we have 270 electoral votes."

At this rate, however, the system could be implemented in time for the 2016 presidential race. Nearly every state has introduced National Popular Vote legislation this year, and seven have passed bills in one chamber.

The next state to join the compact could be Colorado. In 2007 and 2008, the state Senate there passed the legislation, but not the House. In March, however, the House passed a popular-vote bill and sent it to the Senate, which has changed little since last year.

Proponents argue that the National Popular Vote has numerous advantages over the current system. All but two states now award their electoral votes based on a winner-take-all approach, which creates the chance that the winner of the Electoral College vote could be the loser of the popular vote.

It has happened three times in U.S. history, most recently in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won the election by gaining more electoral votes than his opponent, Democrat Al Gore. In 2004, it almost happened again. If 60,000 votes in Ohio had shifted from Mr. Bush to Democrat John Kerry, Mr. Kerry would have won the electoral vote despite trailing by 3.5 million votes.

"The winner-take-all system isn't only undemocratic, it's also dysfunctional," said Colorado state Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat who sponsored the Colorado legislation.

Those recent squeaker elections may explain the push for a system tied more closely to the popular vote. Advocates of the National Popular Vote also insist that the legislation is bipartisan and wouldn't favor either political party in the presidential contest. The group's advisory board includes a handful of former Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Jake Garn of Utah and Rep. Tom Campbell of California.

However, the movement has garnered far more supporters among Democrats than Republicans. In Hawaii, for example, the legislation passed in 2008 only after both Democrat-controlled chambers overrode the veto of Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican.

Republicans say Democrats are using the proposal to avenge their loss in the 2000 presidential race.

"For Democrats, it's a reaction to wanting to poke George W. Bush in the eye," said Colorado state Sen. Shawn Mitchell, a Republican who opposes the popular-vote legislation. "After the 2000 vote, Democrats seemed to react with 'popular vote good, Electoral College bad,' and Republicans, being more traditionalists, have responded with 'Electoral College good, popular vote bad.' "

Republicans also argue that the plan would favor large states and major metropolitan areas, where candidates are able to reach more voters with their advertising dollars. Since most big cities tilt leftward, the system would be more likely to pull candidates to the liberal end of the spectrum, they say.

Under the current system, say Democrats, candidates often end up concentrating their resources on the handful of close "battleground" states, which means that most voters receive little of the candidates' attention.

In the 2008 election, said Mr. Koza, two-thirds of the campaign dollars were spent in six states, and 90 percent was spent in 15 states.

"When you're in a non-battleground state, which is two-thirds of the states, you tend to get ignored," Mr. Koza said. "People are figuring out that in most states, they don't count. If anything, this presidential election reminded them that they don't count."

He predicted that a popular-vote system would force candidates to run national campaigns in which their focus is spread evenly through all 50 states. Opponents say that it's more likely the campaigns would end up concentrating on places where the voters are, such as Los Angeles and New York City, and Republicans would take their chances with swing states in that case.

"Those swing states can actually be quite diverse," Mr. Mitchell said. "It's a slam-dunk that the 10 battleground states are more representative of the broad national interest than the 10 biggest metropolitan areas."

Despite that argument, such current battleground states as Michigan and Colorado have had the measure go at least as far as approval by one chamber during a legislative session.

"That shows this isn't kryptonite in battleground states, either," Mr. Koza said. "This thing seems to have support all over the country."

National Popular Vote was started by Mr. Koza, a self-professed elections geek who published an Electoral College board game in 1966. He went on to serve as founder and chairman of Scientific Games, where he co-invented the rub-off lottery ticket.

He and Barry Fadeem, NPV's president and an attorney based in Lafayette, Calif., got their feet wet in legislative politics by lobbying on behalf of state-run lotteries. Mr. Koza now teaches courses in medicine and engineering at Stanford University as a consulting professor.

How banks were bullied into making bad loans

'Community activists' used pressure tactics to secure high-risk mortgages
WASHINGTON – Using tools provided by the federal community Reinvestment Act, community organizers led by a self-described "banking terrorist" applied bullying tactics to secure high-risk mortgages and to shake down lending institutions for billions of dollars – actions that likely contributed to the "mortgage meltdown" that triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. ....

America for sale … to China?

(Compiler's note: Our nation's people had better "wake up" before it is too late.)

by JEROME CORSI

Leading economist requests dollar protection larger than U.S. homes

A high profile Chinese economist has begun circulating a new plan under which the U.S. government would guarantee foreign investments, so foreign nations with large dollar holdings in U.S. Treasury debt could convert that debt into equity to buy and own U.S. assets or invest in the nation's infrastructure without risk of loss, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

In the process, much of U.S. industry and infrastructure would be sold to the Chinese.

In the Financial Times of London, Yu Qiao, a professor of economics in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsighua University in Beijing, proposed a plan for the U.S. government to guarantee foreign investments in the United States.

Corsi noted that while WND has reported that the Internet rumors Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had given China an eminent domain claim on U.S. homes and property were untrue, the plan advanced by Yu Qiao must be interpreted as a proposal the Chinese government wants the U.S. to give serious consideration.

"Secretary Clinton may not have pledged American homes to China, but the Obama administration may be willing to grant a financial guarantee as an incentive for China to convert U.S. debt into Chinese direct equity investment to establish Chinese ownership in U.S. successful corporations and potentially profitable infrastructure projects," Corsi wrote. "The Obama administration is now willing to put the U.S. up for sale to China to induce China to keep financing U.S. government deficit spending."

As WND has reported, the U.S. Treasury is preparing to borrow $2.5 trillion this year and another $4 trillion in 2010, an amount that would increase by 65 percent in two years the $10 trillion in national debt accumulated since George Washington was president.

WND has also reported the U.S. government faces more than $65 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits scheduled to be paid out largely to baby boomer retirees in coming decades.

Foreign nations now hold $1.6 trillion of U.S. government debt, with Asia, including China and Japan, holding half of the outstanding public-owned U.S. Treasury bonds.

China now directly or indirectly holds more than $1.2 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds.

If the U.S. dollar were to collapse under the weight of Obama's trillion dollar budget deficits, holders of U.S. debt could face substantial losses that the Financial Times estimated "would devastate Asians' hard-earned wealth and terminate economic globalization."

"The basic idea is to turn Asian savings, China's in particular, into real business interests rather than let them be used to support

U.S. over-consumption," Yu Qiao wrote, reflecting themes commonly suggested by Chinese government officials.

Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, said the plan to convert Chinese debt to equity investments in the United States could easily add another $1 trillion to outstanding Obama administration guarantees issued in the current economic crisis.

Corsi received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For more information on China's push to acquire U.S. assets and for financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation." ....