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Q&A: The dollar crisis, rising oil & commodity prices

The following is a translation from an Arabic Q&A. بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم Question: The dollar crisis continues to persist and it its slide down is markedly visible. This has been followed by a surge in crude oil, gold and other minerals & metals prices thereby resulting in steep rise in foodstuff prices. This multi-faceted crisis is unprecedented both in terms of its intensity as well as persistence… Is this crisis really a result of economic problems, or is it the US policies that are spurring & aggravating it? I request you to please clarify this, may Allah reward you for it. Answer: Indeed this crisis has a genuine economic aspect as well, but the interference of political hands has compounded & aggravated the problem to such proportions that we see. To fully clarify the picture, we shall explain how the crisis developed, how the political hands interfered with it and how the rise in the prices of crude oil, gold and metals affected the crisi

Film Review: "Khuda Kae Liyai"

Taken from: http://callforrevival.blogspot.com/2007/09/film-review-khuda-kae-liyai.html It’s on the screens, papers and magazines, and chit chats, of a common man. It’s not about, the crises in middle east, or the carnage in Iraq, the thing everyone has been talking about is, the movie "Khuda Kae liya". As a layman, with sufficient schooling background in English. The appropriate translation of this phrase would have either been "For God's Sake" or "For the Sake of God", the former may imply a strong definitive remark with an exclamation mark, and the latter may be taken on a slightly softer tone, for giving a significant recommendation. Perhaps the makers of the film knew well, and the official English name stand as, ‘In the name of God’. Translate in to Arabic - you don’t need to be an Imam of a mufti for that - "Bismillah". But this time, it’s not about a recitation from the Quran, or the ‘dua’ before having meal. It’s about the movie, bei

Big oil speculators ensure that a barrel of oil crosses the $135 mark

On 22/5/2008 a barrel of oil briefly broke the $135 mark and prompted many analysts to forecast $200 for a barrel of crude by the end of the year. The high price of oil is despite the fact that more and more oil reserves are either being discovered or being improved to boost productivity. For instance during 2007, 250 million barrels of oil were found in Uganda, 8 billion barrels discovered in Brazil and technology improvement has meant that extraction of oil from Canada’s tar sands — deposits that could rival the Middle East—is commercially lucrative. Furthermore, many respectable institutions are predicting that the recession in the US and the high price of oil will dampen overall world demand for crude in 2008. These tell tale signs indicate that speculation is the main factor behind the price of crude. Big oil speculators are intentionally inflating the price of oil to strengthen the sagging value of the dollar. The fact that oil is traded in dollars is assisting the US to keep i