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Posts Tagged ‘USA’

As we now all know or should do by now, President Obama is an Afro-American, the son of a Muslim father and a one-time resident of Indochina which is predominantly Muslim.

The upside to this of course is that it makes it much more difficult for the Islamic world to typecast him as a son of the “Great Satan” especially because his middle name is Hussein.

Rightly or wrongly however, President Barack Obama is getting a lot of praise heaped on him right now by much of the Muslim world because he chose the Saudi-owned Arabic TV news channel Al-Arabiya on which to make his first formal television interview.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well when you give interviews to foreigners that are basically hostile to your country it’s probably not a great idea to firstly criticize your own country and secondly praise the one that despises you, but that is what Obama basically did.

He said,

“All too often the United States starts by dictating and in the past on some of these issues we didn’t always know all the factors that were involved. So let’s listen. Well, here’s what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace”.

The U.S. was previously dictatorial and the Saudi king had been courageous.

Obama went on to say,

“But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task. So what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there’s a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs. But I think that what you’ll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I’m speaking to them, as well”.

So even though America did the following praiseworthy things Obama gave the impression to haters of the U.S. that America had only been bad!

” American saved Kuwait.
” Spoke out against Russia on behalf of the Chechens.
” Tried to save the Somalis.
” Bombed, Christian European Serbia to save the Kosovan and Bosnian Muslims.
” Helped the Afghans fight the Soviets.
” Is still fighting the Taliban.
” Overthrew Saddam Hussein and is still fighting in Iraq.
” Invested billions fighting disease in Africa much of which is Muslim.
” Aided tsunami victims.

And the list goes on and on and Bush can list many things to his credit.

” The U.S. was not hit by terrorists for seven years.
” Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation was stopped.
” Libya gave up its nuclear program.
” Syria mostly left Lebanon.
” Al Qaeda’s leadership is scattered and less effective.

Throughout the almost two years of political campaigning it was tacitly understood that mentioning Obama’s ancestry and middle name were off-limits.

Obama however does not feel himself limited by this tacit understanding,

“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries. The largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith, and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers, that regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

The bottom line is that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all tried hard to promote peace in the Middle East but amongst the major obstacles to peace are religious intolerance, illiberality, violent aggression and complicity in the promotion of terror by Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The above mentioned countries know only too well the role that they’ve played for their own political reasons and Obama knows it too but he has already set out to placate them with the downside being that he will mostly likely make a bad situation far worse.

A Commerce Department report released yesterday states that house prices in the U.S. fell by the most in over eighteen years with November prices declining by 8.7 percent from a year earlier.

Moreover, housing starts fell 16 % last month to an annual rate of 550,000 which is the lowest since the government started compiling statistics in 1959.

A major cause is reckoned to be the record number of foreclosures and the highest jobless claims in over twenty six years.

The U.S. lost more than 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since 1945, and U.S. stocks had their worst performance since the ‘Great Depression’ and the number of U.S. houses in foreclosure last year rose to an all time high of 2.3 million.

The West Coast which includes California showed the sharpest declines in the house price index and the value of homes there fell by 22 %.

Furthermore, there’s no sign that the housing market has hit rock bottom and many observer believe that data will continue to show a worsening trend until at least 2010.

Shares in construction companies fell 76% over the last three years and builders are slashing their margins to compete with the prices of foreclosed properties which always sell at steeply discount prices and this fact offers perhaps one of only upsides to all the gloom and despair.

There are now some incredible deals available to those that can qualify and banks need to loan money to stay in business so provided you believe that you’ll keep your job this might be a great time to consider purchasing a property.