Chavez to Strip Bank Fund's Assets

By Natalie Obiko Pearson
March 29, 2007
President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela's bank deposit protection fund to transfer its assets "to the poor," the latest move threatening to undermine one of the country's autonomous financial institutions.

Venezuela's Fogade insurance fund holds properties and other assets, which guarantee deposits in the banking system, much like the U.S. government's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

"I want all the assets held by Fogade to be passed to the Republic," Chavez said Thursday on his "Hello, President" TV talk show.

"Fogade has many warehouses, it has many properties. All that I am going to give to the people, to the poor," he said. "Fogade must disappear."

Chavez added Fogade has a "long list" of acquired properties that are not being put to use. "This cannot be. Pass me (the list) and I'm going to pass it on to the people," he said.

Chavez said the government would compensate the fund "little by little" for any assets that it loses.

He also said banking deposits would remain insured but did not say how.

Fogade, although affiliated with the Finance Ministry, is an autonomous institution. It played an important role in re-capitalizing Venezuelan banks after a 1994 collapse of the banking system that cost the government some $11 billion in bailouts and damaged the economy for years.

Chavez also diverted billions of dollars (euros) from the central bank's foreign reserves _ which are critical to backing a nation's currency _ toward a state development fund that finances his popular social initiatives.

Since winning re-election in December and vowing to deepen his socialist revolution, Chavez has pledged to do away with central bank autonomy altogether.

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Oil Surges Above $66 Amid Iran Tensions

Crude Oil Rises to New 6-Month Highs As Tension With Iran Intensifies

By Madlen Read
March 29, 3:54 pm ET

Crude oil prices surged above $66 a barrel Thursday, driven to a new six-month high by concerns that strained relations between Iran and the West could put oil exports in jeopardy as U.S. gasoline supplies wane and demand swells.

Pump prices kept rising as well: the average U.S. retail price of unleaded regular gasoline was $2.62 a gallon Thursday, 12 cents higher than a year ago, according to AAA.

Iran detained 15 British navy personnel last week, and on Thursday the country suspended the release of a female British sailor, and a top official said the captives may be put on trial. The incident comes several months into a standoff between Iran, the fourth-largest oil producer, and the United Nations over the country's nuclear program.

Worries related to Iran -- which is also located on a key waterway in the oil trade -- have led traders to put an extra premium on oil prices, which are already high due to seven straight weeks of declines in U.S. gasoline inventories.

Traders aren't saying they believe war with Iran is likely, but in an environment of high demand and falling domestic supplies, they maintain the effects of a large-scale conflict on the energy markets could be huge.

Iran is positioned along the Strait of Hormuz, through which tankers ship about 17 million barrels of crude oil per day, according to the Energy Information Administration. That accounts for two-fifths of the world's crude oil traded by tanker, and about one-fifth of total oil production. The exports exiting the narrow waterway are bound for the United States, Western Europe and Japan.

"We're in a short-term business. If oil were to stop flowing there for a period of time, fear will run rampant and oil will be in the 70s immediately," said James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Fla.

Light, sweet crude futures for May soared $1.95 to settle at $66.03 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after rising as high as $66.50. It was the highest settlement price since Sept. 8, 2006, when crude finished at $66.25, but still far off the record trading high of $78.40 reached in mid-July.

Cordier estimated that concerns related to Iran are adding about $3 to $4 to the price of crude right now, and that supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz would add another $4 or $5.

Gasoline futures climbed 7.83 cents to settle at $2.1355 a gallon.

U.S. inventories of gasoline remain in the upper half of the typical range for this time of year, but U.S. gasoline demand averaged 9.2 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up 1.6 percent from the same period last year, the EIA said Wednesday. Wachovia economist Jason Schenker pointed out that these demand levels weren't seen last year until May.

"Supply is down, demand is up. These are fundamentals that mean higher prices," Schenker said. "As long as the unemployment rate remains low and disposable income is up, gasoline demand is likely to be strong."

Gasoline prices at the pump -- which had surged about 20 percent since the beginning of the year even before Iran detained the British sailors -- continue to rise. Schenker noted that the average U.S. pump price is the highest it's ever been for March, and said it could reach a range of $2.75 to $3.35 a gallon by the summer. The highest recorded national average was $3.057 in September 2005, according to AAA, after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

Californians are seeing the highest prices in the country, with gas stations charging an average $3.216 a gallon for regular unleaded, AAA data showed.

Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J., said it's normal for West Coast prices to be higher than the rest of the country, but that the disparity is wider than usual, largely because California has seen more refinery downtime than other states and there is little new production capacity in the offing.

Many market watchers believe that U.S. refinery production -- which last week inched up to 87 percent -- could be higher, but that refiners are waiting for prices to rise further so they can make bigger profits.

The United States recently had the warmest winter on record, Cordier noted, and last year's hurricane season didn't bring any damaging storms.

"There's absolutely no excuse for tight gasoline supplies. I hate to step on any toes, but that's manipulation," he said. But "they're private companies; there's not much you can do or say."

In other Nymex trading, heating oil rose 4.98 cents to settle at $1.8772 per gallon, and natural gas slipped 6.3 cents to settle at $7.609 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The EIA reported Thursday that U.S. natural gas in storage fell by 22 billion cubic feet last week to 1.511 trillion cubic feet.

Brent crude on London's ICE futures exchange rose $2.10 to $67.88 a barrel.

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America is Funding 'Hamas University'

By Joel Mowbray FrontPageMagazine.com
March 27, 2007

How could the U.S. government be funding Hamas’s university in Gaza? It’s the question that has been asked often since my front-page story in the Washington Times earlier this month, from Capitol Hill to the State Department’s daily press briefing.

No good answer was provided—but in fairness, no good answer exists for supporting a college controlled by Hamas. The alternatives, though, aren’t much better. The sad reality of Palestinian society is that almost any university the U.S. might choose to support at a minimum has student chapters of terrorist organizations on campus.

Whereas Americans have College Republicans and College Democrats, Palestinians have College Hamas and College Islamic Jihad.

Even Al Quds University—embraced as the bastion of moderation by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—engaged in a weeklong celebration this January of the terrorist credited with developing the first suicide belts more than a decade ago.

Given how much leverage the U.S. has—just through money alone—officials could have demanded that at least some of the support or glorification of terrorism be put to an end. There’s no indication, though, that any such pressure was applied.

Rather, it appears that USAID, most likely with guidance from State, decided to fund Palestinian universities with troubling terrorism ties—including the Hamas-controlled Islamic University—and simply hope that no one would catch on. That might have been the case—if not for the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which keeps a watchful eye on everything from school textbooks to television shows and newspaper articles.

PMW has documented, mostly through local and school newspaper articles, that student chapters of terrorist organizations are the most potent political forces on the vast majority of Palestinian campuses. And it was PMW Director Itamar Marcus who tipped off this journalist that USAID’s support of Islamic University needed to be investigated. Marcus provided a 2006 article from Hamas’s newspaper al-Risala proclaiming that 16 Islamic University teachers had just been elected as Hamas members of the Palestinian legislature.

It took several weeks to compile overwhelming evidence of Hamas control of Islamic University, but it was all attainable trough open sources—and it is precisely the kind of information that should have been uncovered in the “careful vetting process” State insists occurred before the school received assistance.

Thus it was all the more vexing that the official line, established by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack the day the article ran, is that Hamas University is “independent.” No proof was offered to support this contention, nor was any argument advanced challenging the evidence in the article pointing to Hamas’s firm control of Islamic University:

• Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded the school in 1978.
• Sheikh Yassin, former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and current Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh have all used the school as a base.
• Haniyeh sits on the school’s board of trustees.
• The school’s 16 parliamentarians account for more than one-fifth of all Hamas legislators.
• Hamas used the campus to host a two-day conference in 2005 on the “martyrdom” of Sheikh Yassin.
• Students gave 78% of their student council votes in 2005 to the Hamas-affiliated party.

Congress didn’t buy State’s spin. House Foreign Affairs chairman Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) unleashed a blistering attack to open his committee’s USAID hearing, held three days after the article ran. Making sure his words would not be misinterpreted, Lantos told USAID Director Ambassador Randall Tobias, “Providing U.S. assistance to a terrorist-controlled university in Gaza was out of the question and, in fact, violates U.S. law.” He added, “This outrageous support for terrorism must and will end.”

This isn’t the first time Congress has told State and USAID that funding in the West Bank and Gaza needed serious reform. Following publication of a Palestinian Media Watch report in June 2004 about USAID funding entities engaged in the support, advocacy, or glorification of terrorism, Congress moved to restrict aid to institutions or individuals “involved in or advocating terrorist activity.”

Within months of the law being changed, USAID issued its next batch of assistance to the Hamas-controlled Islamic University—exactly as it had before Congress acted. It’s not clear, in fact, that USAID did anything of substance to be in compliance with the clear intent of Congress.

When asked by this journalist about its funding decisions in the West Bank and Gaza, USAID pointed to $2.3 million in assistance provided to Al Quds University. Undermining USAID’s argument that funding the school is wise policy, however, was the weeklong celebration this January of Yahya Ayyash, the Hamas leader known as “the shahid [martyr] engineer.” He is credited with creating the first suicide belts in the mid-1990s and training the next generation of suicide bomb makers.

The school’s celebration of a leading terrorist actually seems to be in line with the beliefs of its leader. The president of Al-Quds University President, Sari Nusseibeh, is widely considered a leading Palestinian moderate—USAID praised him as “one such prominent and respected figure”—yet he, too, celebrates the glories of terrorists.

In an appearance on Al-Jazeera in 2002 with Hamas political bureau chief Khalid Mashaal and the mother of a suicide bomber, Nusseibeh had this to say of the woman who proudly raised a terrorist: “When I hear the words of Umm Nidal, I recall the [Koranic] verse stating that ‘Paradise lies under the feet of mothers.’ All respect is due to this mother; it is due to every Palestinian mother and every female Palestinian who is a Jihad fighter on this land.” (Transcript provided by PMW.)

As Palestinian colleges go, Al-Quds University might well be quite moderate—but that’s the problem. If terrorists are hailed as heroes at the moderate schools, imagine what happens at the more radical ones.

If Congress successfully closes all loopholes this time around, maybe we won’t have to.

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Freedom, Liberty and Jihadism

By Noel Gibeson
March 23, 2007

Oftentimes in life we are confronted with difficult choices; choices between good and evil, or between evil and greater evil. However, the choice between evil and greater evil may be the time when we may be most challenged, most tried.

In confronting the evil of Jihadism, we are confronted by evil at its worst. To believe otherwise would be naïve. But there are those who would say just that; that we are more evil than the Jihadists. Those are the 'appeasers' and they are scary and dangerous people. In western democracies they can be found on the Left.

These photographs were taken at the 'Religion of Peace' (or Islamic) demonstration on February 6, 2006 outside the Danish Embassy in London, England. The word 'islam' derives from the Arabic root, sin-lam-mim, which carries the basic meaning of safety and peace. This demonstration was the result of a Danish newspaper publishing a cartoon of Mohammed that Muslims found offensive. During this period Muslims murdered a number of people in different parts of the world because of the cartoon, including a Catholic priest.



In the United States and elsewhere in the Western world, we value our freedom, including the right of free speech. We realize that sometimes, perhaps even oftentimes, someone's right to free speech may trample on values that another person holds dear. For example, in the U.S. sometimes protesters will burn an American flag as part of their protest. Other people find this offensive; I know I certainly do as a former career U.S. Marine Corps officer.

However, I would fight to protect their right of free expression.

I would never support any legislation or restriction on those protestors' right to freely express themselves. Though I may not like them burning an American flag, I will fight for their right to do just that. Their right to free expression should not be impeded. People from other cultures may find this curious. That is because they do not understand freedom and the lengths that many will go to ensure that freedom is protected.



While some cultures are more tolerant than others; other cultures enforce strict conformity. The Jihadist mindset is that the world is corrupt and that it is up to them to fix it; to restore it to its past glory and ensure the domination of Islam over all other religions and cultures. There is no room for negotiation.



Mohammed (570–632 A.D.) was not the founder of a new religion, but rather was one of a line of prophets. However, he is highly revered in Islam because he restored that religion to its original glory by destroying non-purists and other apostates. The Jihadists have this same belief; that Islam has become corrupt and that they, the Jihadists, have been chosen to restore Islam to its past glory. Thus, the historic caliphates that ended with the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 must be replaced by a newer, better one. The new caliphate will first dominate the Middle East, then the entire world. Non-believers will either be converted to Islam or beheaded, there is no middle ground. Osama bin Laden wants this caliphate headquartered in Baghdad. Other Jihadis have other locations in mind.



We, in the West have been relatively tolerant of those from other religions and cultures. For the most part, they have been welcomed as long as they do not infringe on the rights and freedoms of others in a western democracy. Overall, this has worked fairly well, if not perfectly.



However, what western democracies are finding more and more these days is that the welcome and freedoms extended to Muslim immigrants are met, instead, with hostility and derision. Although they may come from a culture with no freedom, they come to western democracy and want to change that new culture to reflect their values instead of adapting and changing to embrace their new country and its culture.

They also use our rights against us by claiming that they are being discriminated against to advance their own agenda of promoting Islam.

At this point it is time for my normal disclaimer: this does not apply to all Muslims, many of whom are fine individuals. I am only speaking about the Jihadists or Islamists that comprise perhaps five percent or less of all Muslims. Mainstream Muslims comprise at least the other 95%.

However, what has been sorely lacking in the dialog to date by mainstream Muslims living in the West has been their lack of condemnation for the violent acts of Jihadists. That only makes them suspect. If they are to be accepted as regular members of society (non-Jihadists) then they must speak up and condemn the violent acts of the extremists.



Our tolerance of the religious freedom of others must not be construed as tolerance at any cost, to include relinquishing our own freedom. It must not be all one-way either; there has to be some give–and-take with new immigrants, not surrender to them. They must adapt to us, not the other way around. Surrender is to be avoided at all costs. They are welcome to join us in freedom and liberty.

Otherwise they can go back home to where they came from.

Oh, one more thing. Did anyone see these photographs in the U.S. mainstream media (MSM)? I thought not. Why not? It makes you wonder doesn't it?

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