Either global bankers are seducing Islamic dictators, or vice versa. Islamic/Shari'a banking is coming to the United States and other western nations, thanks to global banks such as Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. With Great Britain now pledging to become the Islamic banking center of the world, the stampede by all global banks to enter the world of Islamic banking is well underway. The implications for the west, and especially for the United States, are staggering. Because all Islamic banking products must be created and offered according to strict Shari'a law, GLOBAL BANKS ARE DOING FOR ISLAM WHAT IT COULD NEVER DO ON ITS OWN: GIVE LEGITIMACY TO SHARI'A AND INFILTRATE IT INTO THE FABRIC OF WESTERN SOCIETY.

Simply put, "ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE" creates, sells and services products that are in strict accordance with Shari'a. In the Islamic culture, it is referred to as "Shari'a finance" and covers the practices of banking, investment, bonds, loans, brokerage, etc. To insure Shari'a compliance, banks must hire Shari'a scholars to review and approve each product and practice as "halal" - It should be noted that most of these scholars are from the school of radical Wahhabi/Salafi Shari'a in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, HOLDING VIEWS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO THE BASIC VALUES OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

Shari'a finance has many differences from orthodox banking: Notably, it cannot charge interest (usury) and it calls for alms giving (zakat). It also calls for avoidance of excessive risk and may not be associated in any way with gambling, drinking alcohol, eating pork, etc. Zakat demands a tithe of 2.5 percent of revenue be donated to Islamic charity. If western banks follow this rule, their contributions will be staggering. IT IS CERTAIN THAT A PORTION OF THIS MONEY WILL END UP IN THE HANDS OF RADICAL MUSLIMS WHO ARE SWORN TO DESTROY THE U.S. AND REPLACE ITS GOVERNMENT WITH SHARI'A LAW.

SHARI'A DEMANDS TOTAL AND UNQUESTIONED SUBMISSION. Its subjects are told that Shari'a is given by Allah and that whatever befalls them (good or bad) is Allah's will. To question a judgment under Shari'a (right or wrong) is to question Shari'a itself and will only bring harsher punishment. If a person receives harsh punishment for something they didn't do, the rationale is that Allah could and would have prevented it if that had been his will. THIS FATALISTIC AND DETERMINISTIC APPROACH ALLOWS SHARI'A RULERS TO GET AWAY WITH VIRTUALLY ANY THING THAT ENTERS THEIR HEAD.

FURTHERMORE, IT IS THE VEHICLE USED TO CALL FOR THE COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF THE WEST AND IN PARTICULAR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which then will be replaced by Shari'a dictatorships. Shari'a banking is quickly encircling the globe and forcing a de facto acceptance of Shari'a law. International bankers have long ago proven themselves to be completely amoral when it comes to money. They bankrolled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 just as blithely as they bankrolled Hitler in the 1930's. Fortunately for us, neither succeeded in conquering the world.

With Islam, odds of its succeeding are radically different. To start with, there are already 1.6 BILLION MUSLIMS IN THE WORLD, and it is the fastest growing religion in history. Secondly, the spread of Islam is richly FINANCED BY THE OIL that is extracted from mid-eastern countries. Thirdly, ISLAM HAS ALREADY INFILTRATED MOST OF THE WEST, especially in Europe.

AND NOW, ISLAM HAS BEHIND IT THE COMBINED SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE ENTIRE GLOBAL BANKING COMMUNITY. The unholy alliance between Islam and global banking may be the final leg on the age-old quest for global domination. Don't be surprised at the silence of the global elite the next time you hear Islamist mobs chant "Death to America" - their goals are now intertwined.

NOTHING HAS BEEN REPAIRED. The pressure points are big banks suffering from insolvency, prime mortgage bonds destined for massive losses, consumers without kitties to rob to keep spending, a worsening housing market from chronic inventory bloat, and deepening problems in the lending industry frozen from insolvency and distrust. Pitch in a global resentment of US fraud and heavy handed tactics, especially from the last couple of decades. What a prospect! ALMOST ALL OF WALL STREET'S FIRMS ARE BANKRUPT, but still in control of the financial media. Citigroup is dead in the water, inevitably to enter restructuring without admission of bankruptcy and surely with no formal filing of such. Even Goldman Sachs might be bankrupt, if they ever produced an honest balance sheet. THE UNITED STATES IS ON A SAD BUT UNSTOPPABLE MARCH TO THIRD WORLD STATUS, complete with totalitarian rule. Nothing can block the path.

The mirrored central damage will be to the US Economy, from both an exhausted household consumer and a lending climate reluctant to supply urgently needed credit. The dependence upon consumption will be unmasked as fatally flawed finally. The entire banking system will go bust in the United States this year, in a highly visible manner, as the entire world watches in total horror. The nation in custodial duty for the world reserve currency, the US Dollar, will suffer a failed banking & bond system, which undoubtedly will result in a grotesque US Economic recession. It is just a bit late in its arrival. The parade of disasters will be mindboggling, offering little respite. SADLY, 2008 IS THE YEAR THE SYSTEM JUST PLAIN BREAKS.

PEOPLE WILL REACT WITH INCREASING ANGER. They will bristle with anger and frustration, even spark isolated riots, from rising food prices, rising gasoline prices with spotty supply, lost jobs from rising costs and outsourcing, lost homes from predatory lending followed by foreclosures. People will suffer, realize that finances are not safe in banks, as bank runs spread amidst the fear in isolated cases, and some stock accounts are frozen unavailable amidst financial service conglomerate bankruptcies. The year 2008 will bring with it a level of confusion never seen before in the nation's history. Economists will be found befuddled, scratching their heads, dazed, and without solutions. Politicians will be confused as to what to advocate, unsure what is potentially effective.

The confusion in 2008 will culminate in the ratcheting upward of the official rescue attempts, measures, freezes, adoptions, initiatives, and eventual grand platform, as my forecast has steadily called for. Each plan will be recognized as insufficient and limited, thus motivated by the next desperate measure. Neither the Administration nor Congress is willing to press forward to initiate ANY broad rescue just yet, since the first pig in line would be the Wall Street thieves, thugs, and conmen whose fingerprints are all over the mortgage bond debacle laced with criminal fraud. So the entire banking system will continue to slide into quicksand. Once politicians enter the picture, the problem worsens, no exception.

Meanwhile, GOLD WILL RISE for many reasons, few being the traditionally recognized ones:

GOLD WILL RISE from gradual recognition that the banking system is destroyed.
GOLD WILL RISE from the perceived need to generate price inflation, whether such efforts are successful or not, an expectation concept.
GOLD WILL RISE from the Competing Currency Wars, as nations urgently print more money to stave off recession and grotesque asset deflation.
GOLD WILL RISE primarily because the global money supply is rising at an astronomical rate, think Weimar, go global.
GOLD WILL RISE because the smart ones will realize that the United States might seek war as a diversion amidst the crisis.
GOLD WILL RISE in response to failures in most policy initiatives, perceived symptoms to systemic breakdown.
GOLD WILL RISE as the global revolt against the US Dollar continues, with the current focal point being the Persian Gulf nations who must defend themselves from the ravages of inflation.
GOLD WILL RISE as the globe finally reckons that the US Fed, traditionally the most powerful among the central bankers, is impotent, toothless, and irrelevant.

The chaos in the financial sector will be matched by growing chaos in the beehive of the US Economy, the business complexes, the neighborhood communities.

WATCH FOR LAWLESS BEHAVIOR TO RISE, as chaos envelops the system.
WATCH FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE to crop up, as high crimes among Wall Street bankers and US Govt leaders go unaddressed. In the year 2008, the bylines will be 1) breakdown, 2) chaos, 3) futility of tools, 4) absence of options, 5) confusion. The system breaks in 2008. Denials will be laughable.

THE COUNTRY MIGHT NOT BE RECOGNIZABLE BY THE TIME THE 2009 PAGE IS TURNED.

Of the 850 million birds reared in Britain every year, only five per cent have had anything approaching a comfortable life. The vast majority are intensively reared, in prison-camp environments.

The way chickens are reared provides an insight into the intensive techniques used to satisfy our demand for cut-price meat and vegetables. IN THIS WORLD, A BIRD THAT WILL FEED A FAMILY OF FIVE CAN BE RAISED IN A MERE 39 DAYS, WHEN BEFORE THE SECOND WORLD WAR IT WOULD HAVE NEEDED AROUND 20 WEEKS TO REACH THE SAME WEIGHT. Modern methods see 40,000 birds packed into one artificially lit barn, reeking to such an extent that if the ventilation system failed they would be gassed by their own droppings.

Each bird inhabits a space smaller than a piece of A4 paper, and most will have been de-clawed and de-beaked to prevent them damaging their neighbours. To encourage them to feed continuously, they are given only one hour of darkness in each day. They will never experience natural light or see a blade of grass. These birds are meant to fatten quickly, so exercise is undesirable. Low light levels keep them drowsy, but as they grow they become so densely packed in as to find movement impossible.

This is a grisly story of animal welfare dereliction, but will it make any difference? Although we have more food available to us than ever before, we seem to value and care about it less: we are spending a lower proportion of our income on what we eat than at any time in history, and THROWING AWAY AN ASTONISHING 30-40 PER CENT OF ALL THAT WE BUY.

This debate over chickens, then, is effectively a test of our changing attitudes to food. That cut-price roast chicken might now seem to be an irresistibly attractive offer - but once you have seen the repellent reality of what the birds go through, changing your choice might seem like less of an inconvenience than an obvious, inalienable imperative.

Families face a massive surge in power bills today with accusations that foreign energy giants are treating the UK like "Treasure Island". German owned N-Power is rushing through immediate rises of up to 27.1per cent. The average family buying both gas and electricity from the company will find the annual bill soaring above £1,000. Charities for the elderly fear the sudden increase will put many lives at risk.

The decision by Npower, part of German utility powerhouse RWE, is expected to be followed by other suppliers, many with foreign parent companies. EON is also owned by the Germans and EDF by a French business, while Scottish Power is part of the Spanish conglomerate Iberdrola.

Adam Scorer, campaigns chief at the consumer body Energywatch, hit out at the profiteering of the foreign energy giants. "The big European energy companies treat Great Britain like 'Treasure Island,' " he said. "They raid the UK's North Sea for gas supplies when it is cheap but then levy punitive prices when demand is higher. This move suggests something is very badly wrong, not only in the GB energy market but in Europe as well. There is no actual shortage of gas across Europe, we have new pipelines to bring that gas to the UK, greater storage capacity and terminals to bring in supertankers full of liquefied natural gas."

Flights were grounded in Northern California as gusts reached 80 mph during the second wave of an arctic storm that sent trees crashing onto houses, cars and roads. Forecasters expected the storm to dump as much as 10 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada by Sunday. The heavy snow was slowing search efforts for a family believed to be missing in the mountains, authorities said.

Highways from Sacramento to San Francisco were closed because of debris or toppled big rigs blocking lanes, and local roads were flooded.

At Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park in Key Biscayne, iguanas fell out of trees Thursday. The cold-blooded reptiles go into a sort of hibernation when temperatures get too low, even if they are perched in branches. Most woke up when the weather warmed later in the day. The animals are not native to Florida and are considered a nuisance, park officials told The Miami Herald.

Three American Airlines Boeing 767-200s that fly daily round-trip routes between New York and California will receive the anti-missile laser jammers this spring, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which is spending $29 million on the tests.

Jets will fly with the jammer device mounted on the belly of the plane, between the wheels. The device works with sensors, also mounted on the plane, that detect a heat-seeking missile and shoot a laser at it to send the missile veering harmlessly off course.

Anti-missile systems have been tested on cargo planes. But "this is the first time these systems have been tested on actual passenger airlines in commercial service," says Burt Keirstead, director of commercial aircraft protection at BAE Systems, which developed the anti-missile device. "It's the ultimate consumer use of the equipment."

Some have been housed in makeshift camps while others have sought refuge in police stations or churches, fleeing violence that has claimed 350 lives. In badly-affected western Kenya nearly all the refugees are hungry, and several children have died of exposure. A top UN official in Nairobi says about 500,000 Kenyans need urgent help. The UN World Food Programme said it was scrambling to bring food to 100,000 displaced people in the Rift Valley area.

"The level of hatred is very high. Violence of tribal origin is the worst - it knows no limits and is extremely difficult to quell," said Alexandre Liebeskind, deputy head of ICRC operations for the Horn of Africa. A statement by a group of independent UN rights experts on Friday said: "We are profoundly alarmed by the reports of incitement to racial hatred and the growing frictions between the different ethnic groups in Kenya."

The BBC's Karen Allen in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret says the CATHOLIC CHURCH is now spearheading a co-ordinated relief effort to get blankets, tents and food to around 30,000 local people who have been made homeless.

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday. "IT'S NOT A MATTER OF IF, BUT WHEN," HE WARNED INVESTORS. "IT'S GOING TO HIT THIS YEAR HARD."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry. "The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year. Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year.WHEAT PRICES ALONE HAVE RISEN 92% IN THE PAST YEAR, and yesterday closed at US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn - the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday - its best finish since June 1996. This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing. With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.

But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production. BIOFUELS ARE EXPECTED TO EAT UP ABOUT A THIRD OF AMERICA'S GRAIN HARVEST IN 2007.

THE AMOUNT OF U.S. GRAIN CURRENTLY STORED FOR FOLLOWING SEASONS WAS THE LOWEST ON RECORD, RELATIVE TO CONSUMPTION, HE SAID. "You should be there for it fully-hedged by having access to those stocks that benefit from rising food prices."

He said there are about two dozen stocks in the world that are going to redefine the world's food supplies, and "those stocks will have a precious value as we move forward." Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, WHICH PRODUCES OVER 200 CORN BUSHES AN ACRE COMPARED WITH AN AVERAGE 30 BUSHES AN ACRE IN THE REST OF THE WORLD.

One is a feudal aristocrat widely reviled as corrupt and blamed for his wife's undoing when she was the country's Prime Minister in the 1990s. The other, their son, is a bookish Oxford undergraduate who talks of democracy but whose political clout derives entirely from his middle name. Yet there they were, three days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, their beloved wife and mother, proclaiming themselves inheritors of her political fief, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), and assuring Pakistan that they were the answer to all its problems. "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge," the younger man intoned.

Pakistan is a long way from democracy, but revenge is on the minds of Bhutto's supporters. Their rage is directed not at her presumed assassins - al-Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists from the lawless tribal areas along the northern border with Afghanistan - but at President Pervez Musharraf, a man the Bush Administration deems a vital ally.

Washington struggled to come to terms with Bhutto's death - the White House hoped she would share power with Musharraf and had made her the centerpiece of its latest plan for Pakistan. While the White House continued to back Musharraf's grip on power as the best near-term key to Pakistan's survival, others are more blunt in their assessment. Anthony Zinni, former chief of the Pentagon's Central Command, whose remit includes Pakistan, warns that extremist groups are "trying to ignite Pakistan into the kind of chaos they need to survive, and create a fundamentalist, even radical, Islamic government."

It doesn't take much insight to see the dangers of that outcome. Failure to keep the sole Muslim nuclear power stable, whole and democratic might be catastrophic not just for the war on terrorism and the stability of South Asia but also for the future of Islam and the relations between Islamic states and the West. Yet Bhutto's assassination has exposed how little influence the U.S. - or any other outside power - has on the nation that was bloodily carved out of India when the British left 60 years ago, and which has been bedeviled by violence and venal politics ever since.

Last month, employers added the fewest new jobs to their payrolls in more than four years, said the jobs report released Friday by the Labor Department. The report also showed that employment conditions are deteriorating, strained by a housing slump and credit crunch that are sapping economic strength.

The unemployment rate jumped from 4.7 percent in November to 5 percent in December, the highest since November 2005 after the Gulf Coast hurricanes dealt the country a mighty blow. Payrolls - both private employers and government - grew by just 18,000 last month, the worst showing since August 2003, when the economy suffered job losses as it struggled to recover from the 2001 recession. The December employment picture was much weaker than economists were expecting. They were forecasting the unemployment rate to bump up to 4.8 percent and for employers to add around 70,000 jobs to their payrolls.

Employers have grown cautious as they try to cope with fallout from housing and credit problems and rising uncertainty about how the economy will fare in the months ahead. Galloping energy prices and bad weather in some parts of the country also probably figured into the weak job figures. Manufacturers, construction companies, financial services all cut jobs in December - casualties of the housing slump. Retailers also sliced jobs. The government added 31,000 jobs in December, while private employers actually cut payrolls by 13,000, underscoring the weakness.

"Perhaps we should call it our new climate," said the Bureau of Meteorology's head of climate analysis, David Jones. He was speaking after the release of statistics showing that last year was the hottest on record in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT. NSW and the Murray-Darling Basin experienced their seventh consecutive year of below-average rain. Dr Jones said the statewide rain statistics would have looked even worse had it not been for heavy falls along the coast.

Sydney had its wettest year since 1998, receiving 1499 millimetres, well above the long-term average of 1215. While much of it was coastal, rain that did fall across the state fell at the wrong time for farmers, soaked into drought-parched soils or evaporated during scorching days.

Australia and New Zealand Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia said Hong Kong-registered SAFE Investment Company had bought stakes of less than one per cent in each of the banks. An entity with the same name has taken a stake of about one-third of a per cent in National Australia Bank, people inside NAB reckon.

The investments were made in the past two months and built up during several weeks so as not to move the banks' share prices or trigger any mandatory disclosure requirements, according to an internal report by one of the Australian banks. A banker familiar with SAFE Investment's activities said the firm had also been looking at similar under-the-radar investments in London.

The new measures - which echo those in place in the US - would allow the FSA to seize and protect depositors' cash when a bank gets into serious difficulty, heading off the risk of a run on the bank. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, believes a special insolvency regime for banks is vital because it would mean that a badly run bank could be allowed to fail without fear of a systemic crisis caused by a loss of public confidence.

The central bank has committed at least £25bn of taxpayer-backed loans to Northern Rock since savers began queuing around the block to withdraw their money last September. Under the new banking insolvency regime, Mr Darling will propose a series of "triggers" - including a request from a bank for an emergency Bank of England loan - which could see the FSA step in if the institution was in danger.

Treasury officials said the deposits would be immediately secured and could then be repaid quickly or parcelled off to another bank, including to the original bank if it had been successfully restructured. The FSA would then oversee the future of the failed bank.

In a study of nearly 3,000 healthy British adults, lead by Dr. Andrew Steptoe of University College London, found that those who reported upbeat moods had lower levels of cortisol -- a "stress" hormone that, when chronically elevated, may contribute to high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and dampened immune function, among other problems.

In the study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, women who reported more positive emotions had lower blood levels of two proteins that indicate widespread inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation is believed to contribute to a range of ills over time, including heart disease and cancer.

Researchers have long noted that happier people tend to be in better health than those who are persistently stressed, hostile or pessimistic. But the reasons are still being studied.

Most of WFP's shipments to east and central Africa come through the Kenyan port of Mombasa, but the spiralling violence that has followed the country's disputed election has left trucks stranded and contractors refusing to move without escort.

"There are delays in reaching the rest of the region," said WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon. "Some have left Mombasa but have been held up at checkpoints or roadblocks run by vigilantes, some drivers did not come back after Christmas and some contractors refuse to leave Mombasa without escort from the security forces."

Turmoil in Kenya after President Mwai Kibaki announced victory at the polls has already killed more than 300 people, with violence bringing much of the country to a standstill.