In his Forward to this series, the Secretary General of the Islamic Council, Mr. Salem Azzam,  says that “Islam gave Mankind an ideal code of Human rights fourteen centuries ago These rights aim at conferring honor and dignity on mankind and eliminating exploitation, oppression and injustice. Human rights in Islam are firmly rooted in the belief that God and God alone, is the law giver and the source of all human rights. Due to their Divine origin, no ruler, government, assembly or authority can curtail or violate in any way the human rights conferred by God, nor can they be surrendered”.

“Human rights in Islam are an integral part of the overall Islamic order and it is obligatory on all Muslim governments and organs of society to implement them in letter and in spirit within the framework of that order. It is unfortunate that Human rights are being trampled upon with impunity in many countries in the world, including some Muslim countries. Such violations are a matter of serious concern and are arousing the conscience of more and more people throughout the world. I sincerely hope that this Declaration of Human Rights will give a powerful impetus to the Muslim peoples to stand firm and defend resolutely and courageously the rights conferred to them by God”.

“ The Declaration of Human Rights is the second fundamental document proclaimed by the Islamic council to mark the beginning of the 15th Century of the Islamic era, the first being The Universal Islamic Declaration announced at the International Conference on The Prophet Mohamed (peace and blessings be upon him) and his message, held in London from 12 to 15th April 1980..The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights is based on the Quran and the Sunnah and has been compiled by Muslim scholars, jurists, and representatives of Islamic movements and thought.

May God reward them all for their efforts and guide us along the right path.”

Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights

In the Name of Allah the Most Compassionate, Most Gracious and Merciful

Al Quran, Chapter 3 v.138.(Al Imran), states:-

“This is a declaration for Mankind and a guidance and instruction to those who fear God.”

“People should be thankful, you made them so proud,” Hamid Mir, the host of a popular national talk show, said during an interview in his studio Tuesday with four of the six politicians, who railed against the security precautions at Ronald Reagan National Airport.

Meetings with the Obama administration’s top policy makers on Pakistan, including the president’s special representative, Richard Holbrooke, and visits to the Pentagon and the National Security Council, did not allay the anger the politicians said they felt at being asked to submit to a secondary screening Sunday before boarding a flight to New Orleans. They declined to be screened and did not board the flight.

Pakistan is one of 14 mostly Muslim countries whose citizens must go through increased checks before they fly into the United States, a procedure mandated by the Obama administration in the wake of the failed attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up an airliner flying to Detroit on Dec. 25. The inclusion of Pakistan on the list was broadly criticized as an insult to a country that the United States calls an ally.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure calling for President Barack Obama to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan, in an election-year test of his decision to escalate the war.

But dozens of Obama’s Democrats in the House did support the pullout resolution, indicating division over war policy ahead of November congressional elections in which Republicans are expected to make gains.

Sixty-five lawmakers, most of them Democrats, voted for the pullout resolution written by liberal Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, while 356 voted against.

It was the first challenge by the Democratic majority in Congress to U.S. involvement in the conflict since Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and an offensive began last month to retake the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province.

Supporters of the resolution said it was time for U.S. lawmakers to consider if they wanted to continue the nearly nine-year-old war in which about 1,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent.

“Unless this Congress acts to claim its constitutional responsibility, we will stay in Afghanistan for a very, very long time at great cost to our troops and to our national priorities,” Kucinich said.

Detractors argued the United States could not withdraw from Afghanistan before the government there was able to provide security because the Taliban could then provide safe haven for al Qaeda once again.

“I’m keenly aware that even if we remain in Afghanistan — and here I want to emphasize this — there’s no guarantee that we will prevail in our fight against al Qaeda. But if we don’t try, we are guaranteed to fail,” said Representative Howard Berman, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States. But Kucinich said the 2001 vote was not intended to endorse unending war at an ever-rising price.

Aware that many liberal Democrats are unhappy about the continuing war, Obama has said the plan is to start pulling U.S. forces from Afghanistan from July 2011.

It is indeed a plausible gesture by the USAID-funded IOM(International Organization for Migration) to reintegrate the former LTTE cadres and members of the TMVP.

I agree with  all those who are associated with this great mission, like: Mohamed Abdiker,  IOM Sri Lanka Chief of Mission, Rebecca Cohn USAID Sri Lanka Director, Brigadier Sudantha Ranasinghe Commissioner General for Rehabilitation that the combats should be reintegrated but what about those who were made homeless and refugees two decades ago by these combats?
Are we correct in forgetting the Muslim IDPs, who were made refugees overnight by the terrorists LTTE and now all international NGOs are taking the initiative in settling the combats and not the oppressed.

Where is so called Human Rights? Where is  the feeling for human beings?
I earnestly plead the USAID and its affiliated bodies to visit the forgotten refugee camps spread all over the island of Sri lanka specially in Puttalam and Colombo Crow Island, where you can get the first hand information and experience the inhuman way of living.

AGA Barrie P.Eng
Canada

Vice Chancellor Major General Milinda Peiris at a press briefing at the Media Centre for National Security said the University Grants Commission approved KDU is the only university of its kind in Sri Lanka and in the South Asian region. The KDU is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities-United Kingdom. The graduates can apply for a postgraduate for any of the commonwealth universities.

Vice Chancellor said male and female between 18 to 22 years could apply. They can become graduates and cadet officers and join the Armed Forces as second lieutenants after completion of the course.

Referring to the progress of the university, Major General Peiris said it established a medical faculty in association with the Ruhuna University medical faculty and a Law Faculty will also be set-up next year. He said the KDU consists of many streams including Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery. The Engineering Faculty consists of civil, mechanical, electrical and electronic, marine and aeronautic engineering. There are Management and Technical Sciences, Logistic Management and Social Studies, courses.

Vice Chancellor Peiris said each officer will be paid a Rs 23,000 monthly salary and provided free lodging, uniforms, batmen facilities, recreational facilities, and medical facilities. They will be made permanent after completion of the course. With all these facilities undergraduates can continue their studies without being a burden to their families.

He said the closing date of application is April 9 and applications are available on www.kdu.ac.lk. Vice Chancellor said the applicant should possess a minimum of a credit pass for English language at the GCE (O/L) Examination and they will have to sit for a written test held by the KDU that includes general knowledge, IQ and current affairs.

source - http://www.dailynews.lk/2010/03/10/sec02.asp

WASHINGTON - The bimonthly US international affairs journal Foreign Policy has just published a survey of the world’s top 20 public intellectuals and the first 10 are all Muslims.

Fethullah Gülen, who heads a network of schools and media that is probably the world’s largest moderate Muslim movement, came first.

Other Muslim religious personalities made the top 10 — weekly preacher on al-Jazeera satellite television Youssef al-Qaradawi (3rd), popular Egyptian television preacher Amr Khaled (6th), Iranian reformist theologian Abdolkarim Soroush (7th), and Swiss-born scholar Tariq Ramadan (8th).

Second was Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for the microcredit project run by his Grameen Bank.

Several top-tenners besides Yunus made the list for their secular work.

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature, came in fourth. Next was Aitzaz Ahsan, the Lahore lawyer whose lawyers’ protest movement is possibly the strongest voice of secular civil society in Pakistan. Ninth and tenth places went to Ugandan-born cultural anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

On the top 20 list were activist Noam Chomsky, former Vice President Al Gore, historian Bernard Lewis, Italian novelist Umberto Eco, welfare economist Amartya Sen, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, and chess grandmaster and a Russian democracy activist Gary Kasparov.

Half a million people visited the foreignpolicy.com site to pick their favorite candidate.

However, after the results, the journal’s editors said they are not convinced that all the intellectuals belong on top.

In their introduction in the July/August issue, the editors wrote: “Rankings are an inherently dangerous business,” as some candidates ran publicity campaigns on their web sites, in interviews or in reports in media friendly to them.

“No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list,” the introduction said.

“In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in,” the introduction added.

“His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots,” the journal noted.

Foreign Policy had chosen the 100 candidates, noting that they “were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas.”

Foreign Policy also conceded that “part of being a public intellectual is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks.”

Welcome to Priscilla Martinez’s home — and her children’s school, where Martinez is teacher, principal and guidance counselor, and where the credo “Allah created everything” is taught alongside math, grammar and science.

Martinez and her six children, ages 2 to 12, are part of a growing number of Muslims who home-school. In the Washington area, Martinez says, she has seen the number of home-schoolers explode in the past five years.

Although three-quarters of the nation’s estimated 2 million home-schoolers identify themselves as Christian, the number of Muslims is expanding “relatively quickly,” compared with other groups, said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute.

They do so, he said, for the same reasons as non-Muslims: “Stronger academics, more family time, they want to guide social interaction, provide a safe place to learn and . . . teach them [their] values, beliefs and worldview.”

Parents say it is an attractive alternative to public schools, with whose traditions and values they are not always comfortable, and Islamic schools, which might be too far away, cost too much or lack academic rigor.

If Muslims have come to embrace home schooling later than others, it might be in part because so many Muslims in the United States are immigrants who might not be aware of the option. In fact, for many immigrants, the idea of home schooling runs counter to their reasons for coming to America, which frequently include better educational opportunities. And public school has long been seen as a key portal to assimilation.

When Sanober Yacoob arrived from Pakistan 13 years ago and began to home-school her three children, she was the only immigrant she knew of who was doing so. Others from Muslim countries “thought I was weird,” she said. “One of them said to me, ‘I hope you’re not going to destroy yourself, and they will grow up ignorant.’ ”

Now, more are following in her footsteps, and many use the highly regarded Calvert curriculum for home-schoolers.

Maqsood and Zakia Khan of Sterling, who emigrated from Pakistan two decades ago, say home schooling has allowed them to enhance and internationalize their children’s curriculum. Now, in addition to the standard subjects, their children, ages 15, 14 and 9, study the Koran for a half an hour a day, one-on-one, with a woman who teaches them online from Pakistan.

“If they were going to school, we could never do that,” Maqsood Khan said. “You spend any number of hours at school, you’re tired, your brain is full and you don’t want to spend hours with Islamic studies. But now it’s part of their curriculum; we made it part of their time.”

The food incident

The Khans decided to home-school four years ago after a kindergarten teacher, unaware of the religious issues, told their son that he could not refuse school food in favor of the Islamic-sanctioned food he had brought from home. The food incident was small, but it highlighted the issues many Muslims say their children face every day as minorities who don’t celebrate Christmas, Halloween or birthday parties, who don’t eat pork and who fast during Ramadan.

The family did not consider Islamic schools, Zakia Khan said, because “they learn more at home than they learn at school.”

By contrast, Abdul Rashid Abdullah of Herndon said he would have considered an Islamic school for his 11-year-old son, who was struggling in public school, if it weren’t for the cost.

“My children are extremely aware that they are Muslim, and they are extremely aware that other people aren’t,” said Abdullah, whose wife, a Malaysian immigrant, started to home-school their son last fall. Two of the couple’s younger children, ages 10 and 6, remain in public school; their fourth child is 3. “There is a mainstream culture, and my kids aren’t a part of that mainstream culture . . . and to hear, ‘We don’t do this, we don’t do that,’ how are they feeling when they’re sitting in that chair? Home schooling really takes the pressure off.”

Martinez, a convert to Islam who is of Mexican descent and grew up in Texas, said that despite stereotypes of home-schoolers seeking to shut out the world, the point is not to restrict children from mainstream culture so much as to make sure they don’t get lost in the shuffle.

“We don’t isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and sit here at home just not being attuned to our community and our identity as Americans,” she said. “But we’re also not sending them to school where generally speaking they would have to leave most of their identity at the door.”

There are also religious reasons. “We definitely do learn from a different worldview,” she said. “Everything has God as its center. We don’t just study the bee, but we study what the Koran says about the bee and the many blessings and the honey. . . . We get religious studies out of it, we get biology out of it and chemistry.”

The idea of teaching kids at home has found more acceptance in the Muslim community since Yacoob started doing it. Now, she said, former naysayers congratulate her on her children, who are pursuing college degrees. Her son Saad, now 21 and an English major at George Mason University, managed to memorize the Koran while being home-schooled. “The same person [who once criticized her] stopped me, and he told me, ‘We are so proud of Saad!’ ”

As with home-schoolers of any affiliation, questions arise about socialization. Abdul-Malik Ahmad, a 34-year-old Web developer, was home-schooled in Beltsville in the 1980s and ’90s. While he said overall it was a positive experience (he now home-schools his daughter), it had drawbacks.

“There were very few Muslims, and we were very scattered, and the community wasn’t as developed as it is now,” he said. “So we didn’t have a chance to socialize as much as we could have now. It took a while for me to adjust once I got to college.”

To ease that transition, some home-schoolers say they plan to send their children to public high school once their characters are more fully formed. “It’s not that you don’t want them to know the world,” said Norlidah Zainal Abidin, Abdullah’s wife, “but you want to instill certain values in them first.”

Maqsood Khan said his children connect with the outside world through Islamic scouting troops and visits to the mall. “They’re typical teens; they listen to the music full blast, but they listen to Islamic music.”

His daughter Meena, 15, who attended Sterling Middle School until she completed sixth grade four years ago, was at home recently in a Redskins sweatshirt and black headscarf. She said there were things she missed about public school, including the Harry Potter club.

“I liked going. I got good grades,” she said. “But we didn’t get enough Islamic studies.”

Many home-schoolers seek out social interaction in outside classes or group field trips. On a recent afternoon at the Cascades Library in Sterling, mothers in headscarves dropped off their children at a resource room where Jean McTigue was teaching art to Muslim home-schooled children. As the boys and girls looked at reproductions of Dalis and Goyas, McTigue, whose own children were in the class, said there had not been similar opportunities for her oldest, 15. “When Yusef was 6 years old he would have loved to do something like this, but there was really nothing.”

Downstairs, among the waiting mothers, Ayesha Khan said that five years ago her friends and family back in Pakistan had criticized her decision to home-school her children, now 10 and 8. But when they see the children, they are impressed.

“Over there, it’s like, ‘Wow, your kids are going to American schools,’ ” she said. “I say, ‘Yeah, we are giving our kids an American education.’

Almost three decades of bloodshed and destruction have brought us full circle to the gross realization that the destinies of all communities share common goals and are inextricably interwoven. The earnest desire of every community, Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and others, is to live together in harmony. Thus a permanent peace, though still a distant dream, remains the cherished goal of all and, inevitably, the need of the hour is for a political solution for permanent peace.

In this context the book “Nobody’s People – The Forgotten Plight of Sri Lanka’s Muslims” by well known journalist and author Lather Farook is a timely publication as it highlights the plethora of problems, sufferings and grievances of Sri Lankan Muslims and their pathetic predicament owing to discriminatory policies, Tamil militancy  and the failure of the community itself to resolve its burning issues.

As rightly pointed out by the former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva “Muslims have been a peaceful ethnic group interacting with other religious and ethnic groups, cordially interlinking those cultures with their own culture. They never organized themselves for armed insurrection or destruction”.

Contrary to the common belief that Muslims are a wealthy community, the reality is that around 70 percent of the community lives below the poverty line. More than 130,000 northern Muslims, forcibly and mercilessly driven out from their homes and lands on pain of death by the LTTE, languish in refugee camps in appalling conditions for almost 19 years. Around one percent of the community perished in the tsunami and,adding insult to injury, Muslim survivors were discriminated even in the disbursement of aid that flowed from donor countries.

Muslims were discarded by the now defunct 2002 February Ceasefire Agreement between the government and the LTTE and taken for a ride in the P-TOMS agreement that died a natural death. It is a tragedy that the entire population of Mutur and Thoppur who were 95 percent literate and self-employed were reduced to paupers and made refugees when the LTTE and the Government fought their battle there.

In the East, they face numerous obstacles in trading, farming, paddy cultivation, fishing and livestock breeding activities jeopardizing their very means of livelihood while, in the rest of the country, poverty, unemployment, educational and several other problems have raised their ugly heads in this gloomy scenario.

Despite frustration and privation, Muslims always sought peaceful solutions to their grievances for co-existence with the other communities, notwithstanding diabolical efforts   to sideline them. Nor were the Muslims party to the ethnic crisis. They vehemently opposed calls for the division of the country and firmly stood for territorial integrity and unity only to face death, devastation, loss of properties, deprivation of livelihood and displacement with no appreciation from the authorities.

In spite of their miserable plight, it is a travesty of justice that peacemakers, columnists, commentators and others, both here and overseas, call for solutions to the grievances of the Tamils and conveniently ignore the plight of Muslims as if they are non-existent.  In the midst of this calamitous situation, there is a growing feeling among the community that Muslim parliamentarians have abandoned them for power and benefits and do not represent their desires and aspirations any more.

Under the circumstances, the book also suggests Muslims should shed disastrous communal politics and join hands with reasonable and moderate mainstream political forces to face challenges under the present unfolding political scenario in the aftermath of   the LTTE’s crushing defeat.

Thus, this book seeks redress for the numerous grievances of this downtrodden community, particularly in any initiative to solve the ethnic conflict in the larger interests of the country. It is only by considering each group as stakeholders in any future settlement that we could ensure lasting peace to the country so that all its citizens could live with dignity.

That depends on whether there is sufficient proof to show whether the two men KNEW that the nation’s lenders were engaged in large-scale predatory lending and chose to do nothing. As we’ll see, both Greenspan and Bernanke were warned repeatedly about the mortgage/derivatives scam by credible professionals and industry regulators, but failed to act.

Here’s a definition of “aided and abetted” from the ‘Lectric Law Library:

“The guilt of a person in a criminal case may be proved without evidence that he personally did every act involved in the commission of the crime charged. …if the acts or conduct of an agent, employee or other associate of the person are willfully directed or authorized by the person, or if the person aids and abets another person by willfully joining together with that person in the commission of a crime, then the law holds the person responsible for the conduct of that other person just as though the person had engaged in such conduct himself.” Excerpt from The ‘Lectric Law Library http://www.lectlaw.com/def/a033.htm

Bernanke denies culpability in the meltdown–but at the same time– eagerly points out that the Federal Reserve is the chief regulator responsible for overseeing the “large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability of the financial system.” So, which is it? Does he accept responsibility or not? Here is a statement Bernanke made earlier in the week during an appearance before the Senate Banking Committee which may help to clarify the point.

“I think that stripping the Federal Reserve of supervisory authorities in the light of the recent crisis would be a grave mistake… we’ve learned from the crisis large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability of the financial system need strong consolidated supervision…. You need an institution that has a breadth of skills. It’s hard for me to understand why in the face of a crisis that was so complex and covered so many markets and institutions, you would want to take out of the regulatory system the one institution that has the full breadth and range of those skills to address those issues.”

Bernanke admits that the Fed is the ‘primary regulator’ that is responsible for “strong consolidated supervision” over “large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability.” If we accept his definition, than we must also accept that the Fed should be held accountable when it abuses its authority and puts the system at risk. The record will show that, at the very least, the Fed is guilty of criminal negligence in its role of facilitating the sale of fraudulent loans to homeowners and investors. The Fed consistently refused to use its authority to reign in the banks even when their activities pushed the system towards catastrophe.

I have put together a short list of the regulators and agencies that warned Bernanke and Greenspan prior to the Lehman meltdown. (There’s bound to be many I have missed) But, first, here is a brief summary of what caused the crisis by economist and author James K. Galbraith in a recent interview on New deal 2.0:

“The principal cause of the crisis was the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision in the financial sector which had for much of the post-war period kept the most dangerous elements of that sector in check. In the absence of an appropriate system of effective supervision and regulation, what happens is that the actors in the system, who are intent upon taking the greatest degree of risk — including actors who are intent upon using fraudulent methods to increase their returns — come to dominate parts of the system. As they do that, the general methods of assessing performance in the market, specifically stock-market valuations, become counter-productive. That is to say, they invariably reward the worst actors, while they force more traditional actors, who are still respecting the old norms of conduct, into a competitively disadvantaged position. Thus the bad actors, the fraudulent actors, and the speculative extremists quickly take over.

That is what happened specifically in the origination of mortgages in the United States in the middle part of the last decade. You had a transition from a traditional method of issuing mortgages to people who could be reasonably expected to service them, to a method of originating mortgages that were sold off immediately, that were rated in a way that permitted them to be bundled and sold to fiduciaries, and where the issuer had no interest in whether the borrowers could pay or not. In fact, in some ways the lenders actively preferred people who did not intend to pay, because they could then inflate the value of the loan and earn a larger fee upfront for doing it. And in this way, not only was there a large segment of the market that was explicitly corrupt, but the equity value of homes all across the country was compromised. When these practices collapsed, so too did the home values not only of people who had bad mortgages, but also those for many people who had good mortgages, good incomes and perfectly good credit.

The result of that was a general slump in activity. The wealth and financial security of much of the American middle class disappeared. So far about a quarter of the measured wealth of the American middle class has disappeared - about $15 trillion of $60 trillion. That’s bound to have a fantastically traumatic effect on people’s consumption behavior and on their ability to get new good credit. Even if they wish to continue to extend the past pattern of borrowing in order to finance activity, they can’t do it. So, this is a very big problem. It starts with a failure to supervise and regulate the financial system, and flows on to the reaction of the broader population, which is to protect their remaining assets, to become extremely adverse to taking ordinary business and consumer risks.”http://www.newdeal20.org/?p=7981

So, Galbraith believes that the main problem was “the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision” over the last quarter century. This view is now widely shared by industry experts and economists. ( That means that deregulation was a more significant factor in the crisis than the Fed’s low interest rates.) The problem with this theory is that it tends to obscure the fact that the Fed STILL had the authority to step in and prevent people from getting ripped-off. Thus, “deregulation” was not the problem as much as the “failure to regulate”. (which Galbraith also notes) This is an important distinction. The financial crisis was not caused by a system malfunction; it was caused by men perpetrating a crime.

Bernanke and Greenspan had a birds-eye view of everything that was going on in the market, that is, mortgage origination, off-balance sheet operations and securitization. They knew that homes were being sold to applicants who had no way of servicing the debt. They knew that hybrid mortgages were developed with the clear intention of increasing the quantity of mortgages without regard for the creditworthiness of the borrower. They knew that the lenders didn’t care whether the loans blew up or not since they made their profits on upfront fees. They knew everything, and refused to act.

As it happens, many other people knew what was going on, too, but either kept quiet or were ignored by the media. Even now, when we have a much better understanding of what really took place, the media still frames the crisis-narrative in terms of a natural disaster–like an earthquake–that no one could have anticipated or prevented. This is nonsense. The housing bubble was 100% man-made. The Fed could have taken action at any time to stop the bubble from getting bigger but, instead, became the biggest cheerleader for dodgy loans and garbage mortgage-backed securities.

The media has succeeded in concealing the facts and deflecting the blame from the real perpetrators. As former bank regulator Bill Black said in a recent interview with Paul Solman on PBS News Hour, what is most shocking about this particular crisis is the appalling lack of accountability.

ZERO INDICTMENTS, ZERO CONVICTIONS

William Black: “In the savings and loan crisis… we had over 1,000 convictions of senior insiders…. At this stage among the subprime lending specialists, we have zero convictions. We have zero indictments.”…”In September 2004, the FBI began publicly warning that there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud, and it predicted that it would produce an economic crisis, if it were not dealt with. The FBI has also said that 80 percent of the mortgage fraud losses occur when lender personnel are involved. So, Fitch looks at a small sample of these loans, finally, in November 2007….And what did they find? They said…that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined. And they said that normal underwriting would have detected all of those frauds.

So, this is coming from the lenders overwhelmingly. They created incentive systems for the loan brokers and the loan officers that were based overwhelmingly on volume, and nothing on quality. We know that they gutted their underwriting standards. We know that you got in trouble if you were moral and tried to be a good officer and protect the organization from loss.” (PBS News Hour)

Repeat: The FBI KNEW there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud as early as 2004. Ergo: The Fed knew. Greenspan knew. Bernanke knew. And both chose not to perform their regulatory duties to stop the swindle from continuing.

And the FBI wasn’t the only one who knew either. In testimony just last month before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (Jan 14, 2010) FDIC chairman Sheila Bair confirmed that she not only warned the Fed of what was going on, but cited particular regulations under which the Fed could stop the “unfair, abusive and deceptive practices” by the banks. Here is a excerpt from her damning testimony:

“PROBLEMS IN THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE MARKET WERE IDENTIFIED WELL BEFORE MANY OF THE ABUSIVE MORTGAGE LOANS WERE MADE. A joint report issued in 2000 by HUD and the Department of the Treasury entitled Curbing Predatory Home Mortgage Lending noted that a very limited number of borrowers benefit from HOEPA’s protections because of the high thresholds that a loan must exceed in order for the protections to apply. THE REPORT ALSO FOUND THAT CERTAIN TYPES OF SUBPRIME LOANS APPEAR TO BE HARMFUL OR ABUSIVE IN PRACTICALLY ALL CASES. To address these issues, THE REPORT MADE A NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDING THAT THE FEDERAL RESERVE USE ITS HOEPA AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN UNFAIR DECEPTIVE AND ABUSIVE PRACTICES BY LENDERS AND THIRD PARTIES. During hearings held in 2000, consumer groups urged the Federal Reserve to use its HOEPA rulemaking authority to address concerns about predatory lending. Both the House and Senate held hearings on predatory abuses in the subprime market in May 2000 and July 2001, respectively….”

Naturally, Bair’s testimony was ignored by the media.

So, the FBI knew, the FDIC knew, Fitch ratings knew, the Fed and Treasury knew. Was their anyone else who warned Greenspan and Bernanke about what was going on?

Yes, ex-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s good friend Ed Gramlich cautioned him on the surge in predatory lending that was apparent as early as 2000. Here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

“Edward Gramlich, who was Fed governor from 1997 to 2005, said he proposed to Mr. Greenspan in or around 2000, when predatory lending was a growing concern, that the Fed use its discretionary authority to send examiners into the offices of consumer-finance lenders that were units of Fed-regulated bank holding companies.

“I would have liked the Fed to be a leader” in cracking down on predatory lending, Mr. Gramlich, now a scholar at the Urban Institute, said in an interview this past week. Knowing it would be controversial with Mr. Greenspan, whose deregulatory philosophy is well known, Mr. Gramlich broached it to him personally rather than take it to the full board.

“He was opposed to it, so I didn’t really pursue it,” says Mr. Gramlich. (Wall Street Journal)

So, Greenspan was even warned by a close friend and fellow Fed governor and STILL refused to act? And Congress still hasn’t launched an investigation?

And, then there is this from Elizabeth MacDonald at Fox News in an article titled “Housing Red flags Ignored”:

“One of the nation’s biggest mortgage industry players repeatedly warned the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other bank regulators during the housing bubble that the U.S. faced an imminent housing crash….But bank regulators not only ignored the group’s warnings, top Fed officials also went on the airwaves to say the economy was “building on a sturdy foundation” and a housing crash was “unlikely.”

The letters, obtained by Fox Business, were sent in 2005 and 2006 before the housing bubble burst.

As it pleaded with bank regulators to stop subprime lending abuses, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America [MICA] pointed out the red flags in analysis from the bank regulators’ own staffers as well as the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, three years before these two Wall Street giants collapsed under the weight of bad mortgage bets.

Mortgage insurers are “deeply concerned about increased mortgage market fragility, which, combined with growing bank portfolios in high-risk products, pose serious potential problems that could occur with dramatic suddenness,” warned Suzanne Hutchinson, top executive at the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, in 2005. Failure to adjust bank underwriting, reserves and capital to account for this growing risk “means that downturns from credit and/or interest rate events–let alone shocks–will be far more severe than” if precautions are taken, Hutchinson noted, adding that what is “disturbing to us is the fact that recent trends could lead to sudden increases in foreclosures.” ( Elizabeth MacDonald, “Housing Red flags Ignored”, FOX Business News)

Even the mortgage insurance companies knew what was going on. Everyone knew. The biggest mortgage-looting operation in history, and no one even bothered to cover their tracks. What incredible arrogance.

Finally, there’s this tidbit from an op-ed published in the Washington Post in 2008 by former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who accused the Bush Administration of being a ‘partner in crime’ in the subprime mortgage fiasco. Spitzer avers that the OCC launched “an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.” Here’s a clip from Spitzer’s article:

“In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.”(Washington Post)

Is there any doubt that the Fed knew exactly what the Bush administration was up to? Is there any doubt that the OCC’s actions resulted in tens of thousands–if not millions–of homeowners losing their homes to foreclosure?

There’s no doubt at all. People were getting fleeced in broad daylight. As the primary regulator responsible for overseeing the financial system an preventing “unfair, abusive and deceptive practices”, the Fed could have intervened at any time and stopped the predatory lending and exploitation. Instead, they sat on their hands and let the larceny continue uninterrupted, which proves that Greenspan and Bernanke are either criminally negligent in failing to execute their regulatory duties or complicit in aiding and abetting the banks and other financial institutions in the sale of fraudulent loans to investors and homeowners. Which is it? There needs to be an investigation to find out.

“Work is well advanced on the matter of hosting sukuk (Islamic bond) emissions,” Paris Europlace managing director Arnaud de Bresson said in an interview.

Paris Europlace is a body that promotes the French capital’s business interests.

“We are confident that the new fiscal and regulatory framework (for sukuks) will be finalised during the year, perhaps even during the first half of the year,” he added.

Sukuk bonds are a flagship product of the Islamic finance industry, and Paris has been looking to keep up with London in attracting business in a sector estimated to be worth at least US$1 trillion (US$1 = RM3.37).

However, the sector suffered last year in the wake of debt problems in Dubai, when Dubai World’s Nakheel property unit asked for three listed Islamic bonds worth US$5.25 billion to be suspended pending restructuring.

At least one French sukuk bond was also delayed last year due to legal hurdles.

Gilles Saint Marc, a member of Paris Europlace’s Islamic Finance committee, told a Reuters Summit last month that France was still examining tax and legal changes to avoid double taxation of Islamic products.

The credit crisis also hit the Islamic bond market, but Europlace’s de Bresson is confident that sukuk bonds will be issued in Paris once more favourable market conditions return.

“As soon as the market recovers, we will be in a position to host sukuk emissions,” he said.

Sukuk bonds are structured as profit-sharing or rental agreements, with returns derived from underlying assets since Islamic laws prohibit paying or earning interest.

Britain has made the most progress on developing an Islamic finance market in Europe, with a London-based private healthcare organisation set to issue the first-ever Islamic bond in the UK this month.

In 2004, the Islamic Bank of Britain - the country’s first syariah-compliant high street bank - opened in the UK and one Paris banking official said French authorities were looking to see if something similar could be established in France. - Reuters