Ray Is Latest Celeb Accused of Ara-fashion

BY LUCHINA FISHER

May 29, 2008—

Is Rachael Ray, the talk-show host, cookbook author and magazine editor, a terrorist sympathizer?

Dunkin' Donuts, worried that its customers might think so, abruptly yanked an ad in which Ray wears a scarf that resembles a keffiyeh -- a traditional headdress worn by Arab men -- after conservative commentators became enraged by the ad and even threatened to boycott the company.

Ray, who signed on as the company's pitchwoman last March, will continue to appear in other ads and commercials.

The controversial ad, which appeared earlier this month on the doughnut chain's Web site to promote its iced coffee, came under fire nearly two weeks ago when pro-Jewish blogger Pam Geller posted it under the headline "Rachel [sic] Ray: Dunkin Donuts Jihad Tool."

"Have you seen Rachel [sic] Ray wearing the icon of Yasser Arafatbastard and the bloody Islamic jihad," Geller wrote. "This is part of the cultural jihad."

Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin took up the cause last week, when she wrote on her Web site michellemalkin.com: "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not so ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons."

After pulling the ad May 24, Dunkin' Donuts issued a statement from Margie Myers, senior vice president of communications for Dunkin' Brands: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by the stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, as of this past weekend, we are no longer using the online ad because the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee."

Ray's publicist Charlie Dougiello wrote in a e-mail, "This is a nonstory."

He confirmed that Ray was wearing a black and white scarf with a paisley floral design that was chosen by the stylist for the shoot and echoed Dunkin's statement. "Absolutely no symbolism was intended," he said. "However, given the possibility of misperception, Dunkin is no longer using the commercial."

Debbie Schlussel, a Detroit attorney who writes a daily column for her conservative Web site debbieschlussel.com., said, "I think they [Dunkin' Donuts] ought to be applauded for that."

But Laila Al-Qatami, spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League, a Washington-based civil rights and cultural organization, believes that this is all much ado about nothing. "I think Dunkin' Donuts jumped the gun," she said, adding that the scarf's mere resemblance to a keffiyeh makes the company's action seem "unreasonable."

Al-Qatami says the real keffiyeh has been worn for decades by Arab men to protect their heads from the heat. More recently, the black keffiyeh has become associated with the Palestinian people because of Arafat's frequent use of it.

Favored in the 1980s by supporters of the Palestinian cause, these days the keffiyeh is just as likely to make a fashion statement as a political one. Trendy clothing store Urban Outfitters initially sold keffiyeh-like scarves until Jewish customers protested, according to commentator Malkin, but reintroduced them with different colors in several global markets. Fashion house Balenciaga glamorized them on the runway.

When celebrities and public figures don them, however, they are likely to draw heat. Before Ray's recent keffiyeh kerfuffle, there was the racket over Ricky Martin. Three years ago, the pop singer wore a red keffiyeh to show support for Palestinian human rights, Al-Qatami said.

When he learned that it had been inscribed with the phrase "Jerusalem is ours" in Arabic, he apologized, saying, "I had no idea that the keffiyeh scarf presented to me contained language referring to Jerusalem, and I apologize to anyone who might think I was endorsing its message."

Other celebrities, such as Collin Farrell, Mary Kate Olsen and Kanye West, have been singled out by Malkin for wearing "hate couture."

Al-Qatami believes people like Malkin and Schlussel are overreacting. "It's just an article of clothing," she said. "It only carries that kind of symbolism for people like Debbie Schlussel, who are promoting fear of Arabs."

Schlussel, the Detroit attorney and blogger, disagrees. She compares the keffiyeh to the Ku Klux Klan's white hoods. "People need to realize it's not just clothing," she said. "It's come to symbolize the garb of terrorism."

Schlussel said it's no accident that in some pictures and videos of Islamic terrorists who have kidnapped and killed Americans, their faces are covered with a keffiyeh.

In February, she took John McCain's daughter Meghan to task when several pictures surfaced of her wearing keffiyehs. In one, her mother, Cindy, sits beside Meghan, who has the headscarf wrapped around her neck. "It didn't occur to her that her daughter shouldn't be wearing that," Schlussel said. "The possible future first lady doesn't see that?

"People need to be educated," she added. "I think they can't have an excuse these days when wearing that."

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U.S. Bank Failures Loom

Alistair Barr
Daily Times
May 29, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO: By April, Gary Holloway was almost three years into retirement. He’d built a new home by a lake in Texas, bought a boat and was working on his golf game. While taking on some part-time work, Holloway also travelled for months across the US with his wife, from Seattle to Washington DC, catching up with old friends and family.

That life of leisure abruptly changed about six weeks ago when Holloway got a phone call from his former employer, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, or FDIC, which regulates US banks and insures deposits.

Earlier this year, the FDIC began trying to lure roughly 25 retirees like Holloway back to prepare for an increase in bank failures. It’s also hiring about 75 new staff. Holloway quickly went back to work. ANB Financial NA, a bank in Bentonville, Ark with $2.1 billion in assets and $1.8 billion in customer deposits, was failing and an expert like Holloway was needed to value the assets and find a stronger institution to take them on.

On May 9, life for ANB ended when the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, another bank regulator, announced that the lender was closing. Only three banks have failed so far in 2008. But that number is set to surge as the credit crunch slows economic growth and hammers some lenders that grew too fast during the recent real-estate boom, experts say.

Things may get worse before they get better: At least 150 banks will fail in the US during the next two to three years, according to a projection by Gerard Cassidy and his colleagues at RBC Capital Markets.

If the current economic slowdown deteriorates into a recession on the scale of those from the 1980s and early 1990’s, the number of failures will be much higher this time around — probably as high as 300 of them, by RBC’s reckoning. That’s a massive surge compared to the recent boom years of the credit and real estate markets. From the second half of 2004 through end of 2006 there were 10 consecutive quarters without a bank failure in the US — a record length of time, Cassidy notes.

Texas Ratio: Cassidy and his colleagues have developed an early-warning system for spotting future trouble at banks called the Texas Ratio. The ratio is calculated by dividing a bank’s non-performing loans, including those 90 days delinquent, by the company’s tangible equity capital plus money set aside for future loan losses. The number basically measures credit problems as a percentage of the capital a lender has available to deal with them.

Cassidy came up with the idea after covering Texas banks in the 1980s. Until the recession hit that decade, many banks in the state were considered some of the best in the country. But as problem assets climbed, that view was cruelly challenged, Cassidy recalls. Along with his colleagues, Cassidy applied the same ratio to commercial banks at the end of this year’s first quarter and found some disturbing trends.

UCBH Holdings Inc, a San Francisco-based bank, saw its Texas Ratio jump to 31% at the end of the first quarter from 4.7% in 2006, according to RBC. The Texas Ratio of Colonial BancGroup, based in Montgomery, Ala., jumped from 1.5% in 2006 to 25% at the end of March.Sterling Financial Corp., headquartered in Spokane, Wash., had a Texas ratio of 1.9% in 2006. It was nearly 24% at the end of the first quarter, RBC data show.

These banks are nowhere near RBC’s 100% critical threshold, and several lenders have raised new capital since the first quarter. For instance, National City Corp. topped RBC’s list with a Texas Ratio of 40% at the end of March, though the bank did raise $7 billion in new capital in April.

CD signs of stress: Other lenders are already in more dire straits. IndyMac Bancorp a large savings and loan institution and a leading mortgage lender, is one of Cassidy’s biggest concerns, with a whopping Texas Ratio around 140%.

IndyMac is currently offering the highest rates on one-year CDs, according to Bankrate.com. Others in the top 10 include Corus Bankshares, Imperial Capital Bancorp and GMAC bank.

When Countrywide Financial was struggling last year, its federal savings bank unit began offering some of the highest CD rates in the US to build deposits. Bank of America has since agreed to acquire Countrywide and it didn’t make it onto Bankrate.com’s list of top 10 CD rates this week.

Construction loan destruction: Construction and development, or C&D, loans made up 83% of the Chicago-based bank’s total loans at the end of 2007, according to RiskMetrics Group. This type of loans helps to pay for things like the building of real-estate development projects and the construction of office buildings.

Small and medium-sized banks found it difficult to compete with large lenders in the national markets for mortgages and other consumer loans. So many focused on C&D loans because this type of financing relies more on local, personal connections, said Zach Gast, financial sector analyst at RiskMetrics. As the real estate market boomed, C&D loans did too. A decade ago, bank holding companies had $60 billion of these loans. That number is now $480 billion, according to Gast, who also notes that C&D loans are almost never securitized, so they’re held on banks’ balance sheets.

Such rapid loan growth usually creates trouble later. Indeed, delinquencies represented 7.1% of total C&D loans at the end of the first quarter, up from 0.9% at the end of 2005, Gast said. Colonial BancGroup had 37% of its loans in C&D loans at the end of last year, while Sterling Financial had 33% and UCBH had 20%. East West Bancorp a rival to UCBH, is also exposed, with 25% of total loans in C&D assets at the end of 2007, RiskMetrics data show.

Regulators: Where were regulators when these banks built up such large exposures? That’s a question RBC’s Cassidy has been asking himself, noting that “they dropped the ball in a big way.” Officials at the FDIC declined to comment.

Efforts by the Securities and Exchange Commission to make sure banks report accurate earnings may have made the situation worse, Cassidy says. Bank regulators try to encourage institutions to build reserves in good times, so they’re ready for downturns. But the SEC has been worried that banks might use reserves to smooth reported earnings, so it advised some lenders that they couldn’t set aside reserves if they weren’t experiencing commensurate credit losses, Cassidy explained.

Crisis redux? The FDIC had highlighted 76 banks that it considered troubled at the end of 2007. That’s up from 50 at the end of 2006, which was the lowest level for at least 25 years. Once identified by regulators, troubled banks are often required to limit or halt loan growth and shrink their balance sheets by selling some assets, Cassidy said. Resolution and receivership specialists at the FDIC, like Gary Holloway, value troubled banks’ assets as quickly as possible and try to find a stronger bank to absorb the weaker entity through an acquisition.

The current crisis hasn’t reached the scale of the savings and loan crisis. In 1990, more than 1,500 banks were on the FDIC’s troubled watch list, out of a total of roughly 15,000. More than 1,000 banks failed in 1988 and 1989, FDIC data show. But it’s possible for such comparisons to understate the scope of the coming wave of insolvencies.

Cops & Customs Agents Caught Drug Smuggling

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Following last September’s crash of a Gulfstream jet used by the CIA for torture flights that contained 4 tonnes of cocaine, more customs officials and cops have been caught in drug smuggling and drug dealing rackets.

Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

"The investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people — “from distributors to overseas sources of supply” — and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France," according to a CNN report.

Meanwhile in Texas, Cameron County Constable Saul Ochoa was arrested by the FBI yesterday morning for possession and distribution of marijuana.

Ochoa’s brother is Justice of the Peace Benny Ochoa III of Port Isabel and his cousin is Port Isabel Police Chief Joel Ochoa.

"The grand jury charged Ochoa with possessing five to 10 pounds of marijuana on four different days in May with the intent to distribute. Each of the four counts carries a maximum five years in prison and $250,000 fine," according to a Brownsville Herald report.

While reports of customs agents and cops dealing drugs are almost routine, the real head of the hydra has always been CIA involvement in smuggling drugs that end up on America’s streets, a symbiotic process that also helps finance wars and terrorist groups to do the bidding of the U.S. government around the world.

The corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to the gargantuan sprawling CIA drug smuggling racket, the silence is deafening.

In September 2007, a Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel.

After accident investigators arrived on the scene they discovered a cargo of nearly 4 tonnes of cocaine.

Journalists discovered that the same Gulstream jet had been used in at least three CIA "rendition" trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.

Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary American Drug War features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.

Former DEA agent Cele Castillo, who has appeared on The Alex Jones Show many times, personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the You Tube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in central America.