Kuwait in Fight Against Money Laundering and Drugs
This from yesterday’s Arab Times Kuwait:
‘Kuwait In Fight With Drugs, Money-Wash’UN Briefed On Efforts
NEW YORK, Oct 10, (KUNA): A Kuwaiti diplomat has briefed a United Nations commission about the State of Kuwait efforts to combat money laundering and other illegal financial activities as well as menace of narcotics. Ibrahim Faisal Al-Da’ee, the third secretary serving with the permanent Kuwaiti mission at the UN, in an address to the UN Social, Cultural and Humanitarian Affairs Committee (SOCHUM), underscored necessity of taking effective action against crime and boosting coordination at the international and regional levels in this respect. As to combating “corrupt financial activities and funding from illegitimate resources,” the third diplomat noted that the State of Kuwait issued lawinto- decree number 23 in 2012, setting up the public authority for combating corruption and issuing special rules for financial assets’ disclosure, as well as the Ministerial Resolution No. 37 (2013), containing executive regulations for combating money laundering and terrorism funding.
Established
On basis of the above mentioned, diplomat Al-Da’ee continued, the national commission for combating money laundering and terrorism was established. Moreover, the Central Bank of Kuwait issued a number of decisions aimed at clamping down on money laundering, in tandem with Kuwait’s endorsement of the UN convention for combating corruption. Regarding the drugs, Kuwait urges for taking necessary precautions to resolve this international problem by means such as encouraging planting of legitimate crops and improving living conditions in rural regions. Also in this respect, he pointed out, Kuwait had signed international conventions concerning such issues. According to Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior, number of drug-related crimes, during 2010-2013, dropped 6.4 percent, drug dealing cases 7.2 percent and narcotics-linked deaths 30 percent. He concluded his address to the international commission, stressing on respect for human and basic rights, through action against crimes, urging for collective global efforts against narcotics.
So . . . now we have legislation and a decree. Does Kuwait have the resources and/or the will to go after those who are funneling the funds to ISIS? Legislations and decrees are great, but even greater is following through; it gives a government credibility.
Cash or Credit or Debit: Generational
AdventureMan and I are not even typical of our generation. Living overseas, living in so many countries, we just got used to paying in cash. In our early years, even countries like France had more places that didn’t take credit cards than places that did. When it comes to buying gas in France, you’d better have a bucketful of cash 😉
But even those in our generation tend to pull out their credit cards for meals out, so this week AdventureMan asked wait staff percentages of who paid cash and who paid with cards. The most common answer was around 85% paid with a card.
I can understand. The restaurants/stores don’t have to keep as much money on hand for change, so it is easier on them, and those who pay with a card can track their expenses. Part of me laughs and says I think we don’t want to track our eating-out expenses, and another part thinks that because we pay cash, we probably don’t indulge in extras so often, which, for us, is a good thing. If we have dessert, we normally split it.
I do remember how wonderful it was to be able to pay all the tolls on the toll roads in France with a credit card, how wonderfully easy it was to use my credit card and the ATM’s in Kuwait and Qatar and Saudi Arabia – for some reason, it was like they were years ahead of the USA in banking technology, and banking by phone. But even there, in the smaller shops, you needed cash.
So I read with interest this column from The Motley Fool, on AOL News:
Pssst, Millennials! When You Pay, Choose Credit, Not Debit
Hey, millennial! Yes, you there, standing in line at the Starbucks (SBUX) counter, tapping away on your smartphone, with the button-like doodads growing into your earlobes — put away that debit card.
No, don’t worry. No one’s going to nag you about buying a cup of overpriced coffee. We all have our vices. And you’re still basking in the fresh glow of youth. At least your vices won’t hurt you as much as they’d hurt us old codgers.
But the way you’re buying your coffee — you’re doing it wrong. And you’re not alone.
Paper or Plastic?
According to a recent survey by CreditCards.com, only about 1 in 3 American consumers currently uses a plastic card — credit or debit — when buying something that costs $5 or less. Most folks still pay with cash for such small purchases, with folks ages 65 and up having the greatest fondness for paying with greenbacks (82 percent).
But when it comes to the Millennials, 51 percent use plastic to pay for such purchases.
On one hand, that’s not terribly surprising. The younger you are, the more comfortable you are paying with plastic, which didn’t gain widespread acceptance in America until the 1960s. Conversely, the older you are, the more likely you’ve been told, at some point in your life, that shopping with cash is a good way to limit your spending and encourage saving.
There’s only so much cash that will fit in your wallet, and if you limit yourself to paying in cash — you eventually run out. Old folks like me, whose memories aren’t what they used to be (and maybe never were), like this “automatic” check on spending. And as a result, CreditCards.com reports that the older a consumer is, the more likely he or she is to pay for small purchases in cash than to pull out a plastic card.
Not All Plastic Is Created Equal
Among plastic cards, nationally, consumers are about twice as likely (22 percent) to use a debit card to pay for a small purchase as to put the purchase on credit (11 percent). When the data is broken down by age group, it turns out that millennials are even more fond of debit cards than the average shopper. Consumers ages 18 to 29 use debit cards more often than any other age group when making small purchases.
But here’s the thing: Debit and credit cards may be nearly equal in their convenience of use when shopping for small items (eliminating the need to carry weighty pockets, jingling with unwanted coins). But they’re not at all equal in the financial benefits they convey to a consumer.
To cite the most obvious example, credit cards often offer you “rewards” for using them. With card companies charging retailers fat interchange fees for every transaction they process, they can afford to pay you generously when you “choose plastic.” Airline miles; “points” redeemable for cash back, account credits, merchandise, and gift cards; and just plain cash-back offers, as high as 5 percent, all make the choice between credit and debit a bit of a no-brainer. (Granted, some debit cards offer rewards of their own — but they’re rare, hard to find and usually much less generous.)
But rewards are only the most obvious monetary benefit of choosing credit over debit. Consider: When you pay for a purchase — large or small — with a debit card, that money is almost immediately deducted from your account.
What Warren Buffett Thinks
In contrast, a charge placed on a credit card is a debt that doesn’t come due — and needn’t be paid — until your credit card bill is sent to you. Depending on the date of purchase and the due date on your credit card bill, you may not have to pay that bill for as long as a month — which means you may be able to hang on to your money, and collect interest on it at your bank, for that time. (Super-investor Warren Buffett calls this concept of using someone else’s money, and collecting interest on it for your own benefit, “free float,” and deadpans that his business partner “Charlie and I find this enjoyable.”)
Granted, with the ultra-low interest rates that banks are paying on checking accounts these days, free float isn’t as profitable as it used to be — probably only pennies per credit card billing cycle. But still, free money is free money. Are you going to turn it down because you’re not being offered enough free money?
Of course, you do need to remember to pay your credit card bill on time, so as not to get hit by late fees. But as long as you can manage that, a credit card isn’t really a card you use for taking out long-term credit at all. It’s a pay-once-a-month debit card — that pays you free money every month.
The High Cost of Not Buying on Credit
Another advantage: CreditCards.com quotes Martin Lynch, director of education of the Cambridge Credit Counseling Corp. of Massachusetts, noting that “debit cards … can’t be reported to the credit bureaus and, thus, they don’t build [up] credit [ratings].” Building up a strong credit rating is crucial to a young person looking to buy his or her first car or to secure a mortgage on a starter home.
Getting charges and on-time payments, onto your credit report — to establish a track record as a reliable borrower — is therefore a good thing. It’s something you want to do as often as possible, and using a credit card to pay for small purchases is a great way to build up your credit report quickly.
Melinda Opperman, senior vice president of community outreach at Springboard Nonprofit Consumer Credit Management Inc., another expert interviewed by CreditCards.com, echoes the sentiment: “We like the idea of using credit cards frequently for small, manageable expenses. This gives users the benefit of an active credit history, but leaves them with monthly bills that are small enough to pay off in full, so they don’t have to pay any interest.”
Suffice it to say, any idea that’s supported by professional credit counselors, and by the world’s third richest man, is one that millennials would be well advised to take to heart.
Motley Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any stocks mentioned, and hasn’t used a debit card in years. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Starbucks. To read about our favorite high-yielding dividend stocks for any investor, check out our free report.
Khons Asian Bistro on Palafox in Pensacola
One of America’s best streets just got better with the addition of another great eating adventure as Khons Asian Bistro on Palafox opened a month or so ago with Asian fusion cooking. While most of the diners there were ordering sushi, we opted for the miso soup and hot plates. The waiter particularly likes the fried rice dish, which we considered, but ended up ordering the Cambodian chicken, me in lettuce wraps and AdventureMan with rice.
When our main dishes arrived, he grumped – just a little – because he paid three dollars more, and the only difference was that his lettuce was chopped, and he got rice.
“I paid three more dollars for rice” he mourned.
Not for long. The food was delicious, all the tastes fresh and tasty. Just enough spice. In fact, while I really like spicy, I got a hunk of jalepeno in my soup that nearly took my breath away. Our very helpful waitress said next time she would personally make sure that all the seeds were removed. I don’t mind spicy; this just caught me by surprise.
What I love, in addition to the fresh, healthy, tasty food, is the interior. Khon’s uses a deeply greyed blue, very undersea feeling, and silver. Even the chairs (which are comfortable) have silver seats, and that piqued my sense of fun. I love the scaly backdrop behind the sushi bar; the suggestion of a fish tail. We really enjoyed the entire experience, and we are glad they are there and doing so well. They have a brisk lunch crowd, so get there early.
Headless Horseman at Pensacola Ballet
Today is a day to make the heart joyful. Yesterday, we had thunder and lightning, so much that my water aerobics class was cancelled and I made that drive for nothing. Even when the sun came out, hours later, there was so much water soaked into the ground, the evaporation made it feel hotter than it really was.
The best part of the whole day was knowing we were headed to the opening of the Ballet Pensacola Season last night.
Who knew when we came to Pensacola that there would be so many fun things to do? And that we would have the time to try them all? Pensacola has an Opera, a Symphony, many many parades, some kind of fest, normally featuring seafood and/or art, and sometimes also the sugar white sands, wine and/or rock bands almost every month, AND the Ballet Pensacola.
Nothing about the Ballet Pensacola is ordinary. Ballet Pensacola has a husband wife team, artistic director Richard Steinart and his wife Christine Duhon, the ballet mistress, who also does the costumes. Her costumes are often spectacular. Lance Brannon does the sets which are are often minimalist and always wonderfully creative. You know public arts are almost totally public and community supported, you know they must have a tricky budget to work with but the sets and costumes are wondrous to behold.
We were debating whether The Headless Horseman would be a good ballet for our four year old grandson. AdventureMan thought it might be scary. There is a witch, a wonderfully convincing witch. There is a guy with no head. There is a skeleton horse. I countered that he sees worse on his cartoons with Spiderman and BatMan and whoever those heroes are that “Assemble!” The Headless Horseman is a lot of fun; it even looks like the dancers are having a lot of fun with it, and of course, there is this incredible skeleton. We leave our evenings at Pensacola Ballet delighted.
One of the things we love about the ballets this team creates is that it isn’t easy to get most men to love ballet, but many of the ballets they do have appeal to men – The Matrix, Dracula – they are not dainty ballets, but strong, dramatic ballets. In addition, they are, as I said, a lot of fun. When we offer up tickets we can’t use to our son and his wife, they jump at the chance. I want to make Nutcracker an annual event, but I recognize that if I want grandchildren who will love the dance, I will be likely to take them to some of this stronger stuff. We already have an extra ticket for Ali Baba, coming up in the Spring, so our grandson can come with us.
It was still warm when we left the theatre, but this morning it is like we are living in a different place.
The air conditioner is OFF! The windows are open! Fresh clean air is flowing through the house, the sun is shining without wilting anything, and, thanks to yesterday’s rain, the entire world looks fresh and clean and welcoming! The fun times begin in Pensacola, the cooler weather has arrived!
The Fishing Hole; Elegance on Brent
We were actually just turning around to head back to another restaurant for lunch when we saw the Fishing Hole and decided, as we often do, arbitrarily and spontaneously, to give it a try. We used to drive our son crazy that way (not intentionally) by saying “Hey, we are heading for X” and then part way there, changing our minds. He would yell “No Bait and Switch!” (even as a teenager, he was lawyerly) and we would reluctantly go where we had planned. Now, without supervision, we can do as we wish.
(Our son has actually confided that now, as a grown-up, he and his family occasionally do the same thing.)
The Fishing Hole is on Brent. For those of you not from around Pensacola, Brent is a thoroughfare. It’s not an uptown kind of street.
From the outside, The Fishing Hole looks like a fast food place. It has items painted on the inside window, and it looks small.
When we walked in, we were blown away immediately. We walked into a beautiful bistro-style space and were greeted by wait staff dressed in black, with classic long white aprons, very European. They ushered us into the dining room, which has deep red walls above white wainscoting, with spare design elements on the walls – again, very French in feel, and elegant. The tables are all a deep colored wood, comfortable wooden chairs, and spacious.
The first thing I saw on the menu was a shrimp and crab chowder, of which I ordered a cup. This is a very large “cup” and is served with a little pitcher of sherry, which you can add to your own taste. It was purely fabulous. I would go back again just for that signature chowder.
I also ordered the fish tacos, which were very fresh tasting, very delicious and healthy:
AdventureMan had the Oyster Sandwich, which was equally delicious. He also ordered hushpuppies and oh my word, those hushpuppies were perfect.
Because my fish tacos were so healthy, we decided to split an order of peach pie. When it arrived, we almost fell over. It was beautiful, and it was also huge. The taste was spectacular; it had a crust made of graham cracker and toasted walnuts, and it added a unique and wonderful texture and flavor to an already delicious peach pie. As you can see, the presentation is beautiful.
From that startling entrance into unexpected elegance, to our departure, this was a delightful experience. The wait staff is eager to please, willing to explain the menu and answer questions. The service was impeccable. The food was fabulous. We can’t wait to go back.
They have a FaceBook page; check to see which nights they are open for dinner, and make a reservation. The word is getting around, and this place is packed for dinner.
15 Brent Ln
Pensacola, Florida
(850) 912-6664
10:00am – 8:00pm
Cactus Cantina in Pensacola
The service was excellent at the new Cactus Cantina, located just across from the airport in the old Verona’s restaurant location. The parking lot was packed and the restaurant was hoppin’! The menu has most of the standard Mexican dishes, and the feel is sort of chain restaurant.
The food on the other hand, was a wonderful surprise. I ordered Carne Asada, and when it came, it was ginormous, huge, but it was a lot of very good, lean steak and a LOT of grilled onions and peppers, and there was so much that I took half home and still felt stuffed.
The guacamole was expensive, but there must have been three cups of it, and it was very very good, served in a molcajete, and full of nice chunks of avocado. We also took about two thirds of the guacamole home, there was so much.
This is the interior of the Cactus Cantina:
This is the guacamole:
My carne asada:
AdventureMan’s tamale combination:
Sides with carne asada:
On the whole, not bad at all. There are a lot of Mexican restaurants in the area, and this is another one, a very good one, but nothing that raises it high above the crowd.
Our Own Little OctoberFest
It sounded like so much fun when I was 15 and living in Germany, going to a beer fest, drinking beer, sitting in the big fest tents and laughing and drinking and eating wursts and listening to the ooompah band. By the time I was 18 and graduating, I’d been to a fest or two, and was pretty much over it. I’d probably seen a fest or two and a beer or two too many. AdventureMan and I were trying to remember the last beer fest we had been do and we think it was the year we were married (LOL, a LONG time ago) with his military unit.
But . . . it must the the changing light. When I saw Wursts in the commissary, I bought a pack (we NEVER eat wursts, but . . . it’s October. Could not resist . . . )
I mixed up a very strong curry sauce, using the last of some Kashmiri curry I had brought back with me from Kuwait on my last trip, and we each savored our lone curry wursts with a brotchen. Our own little OctoberFest 😉
The Fresh Breath of Fall and Bicycling in the Water
Our grandson is back in swimming lessons, and I have to admit, it is one of my favorite things to do with him. I get to pick him up at school and get him ready, then shower him down and take him home. During all that we have the most amazing conversations, and we laugh a lot, too. Yesterday he did something new, something he called “bicycling in the water” that we used to call “treading.” He had never done it before, and he was good at it. There are days when you are greatly blessed, if you only have the eyes to see it.
AdventureMan and I are having too much fun! We are in the midst of planning two smaller trips, and one larger trip. We call back and forth from office to office – “Have you looked at this place? It gets great reviews!” or “You could book that motel where I stayed when I went there with the birding group!”
The first trip we will take will be in conjunction with a conference AdventureMan will attend, and then we will head on into the southwestern wilds of Louisiana, tracking the Cajun Nature Trail, ending up in Houma after several days. We love knockin’ around with our binos and cameras on the backroads, love the moodiness of James Burke Country, True Detectives, the pure idiosyncratic nature of southern Louisiana.
The next trip will be in the other direction, back to a birding area through which the birds travel south when winter sets in.
The third – back to France! Wooo HOOOOOO!
Fall is kicking in in Pensacola, AdventureMan is out mulching and trimming up the garden, taking out a summerload of weeds, and I am grinning at a lowering utility bill. Even a few degrees difference make a giant reduction in the need for the A/C. I am smiling more; the humidity is lifting and I can feel cool temperatures around the corner. My favorite time of the year!
ISIS War Against Women
I was told – by Saudi women, Qatari women and Palestinian women of faith, that Allah wants women to be educated. The first wife of Muhammed was a businesswoman and a prominent leader in her time. Perhaps the ISIS extremists need to spend a little more time reading the Qu’ran and hadith.
From today’s AOL News/ Huffpost
BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants with the Islamic State group tortured and then publicly killed a human rights lawyer in the Iraqi city of Mosul after their self-proclaimed religious court ruled that she had abandoned Islam, the U.N. mission in Iraq said Thursday.
Gunmen with the group’s newly declared police force seized Samira Salih al-Nuaimi last week in a northeastern district of the Mosul while she was home with her husband and three children, two people with direct knowledge of the incident told The Associated Press on Thursday. Al-Nuaimi was taken to a secret location. After about five days, the family was called by the morgue to retrieve her corpse, which bore signs of torture, the two people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears for their safety.
According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, her arrest was allegedly connected to Facebook messages she posted that were critical of the militants’ destruction of religious sites in Mosul. A statement by the U.N. on Thursday added that al-Nuaimi was tried in a so-called “Sharia court” for apostasy, after which she was tortured for five days before the militants sentenced her to “public execution.” Her Facebook page appears to have been removed since her death.
“By torturing and executing a female human rights’ lawyer and activist, defending in particular the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul, ISIL continues to attest to its infamous nature, combining hatred, nihilism and savagery, as well as its total disregard of human decency,” Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, said in a statement, referring to the group by an acronym. The statement did not say how she was killed.
Among Muslim hard-liners, apostasy is thought to be not just conversion from Islam to another faith, but also committing actions that they believe are so against the faith that one is considered to have abandoned Islam.
Mosul is the largest city held by the Islamic State group in the self-declared “caliphate” it has carved out, bridging northern and eastern Syria with northern Iraq. Since overrunning the once-diverse city in June, the group has forced religious minorities to convert to Islam, pay special taxes or die, causing tens of thousands to flee. The militants have enforced a strict dress code on women, going so far as to veil the faces of female mannequins in store fronts.
In August, the group destroyed a number of historic landmarks in the town, including several mosques and shrines, claiming they promote idolatry and depart from principles of Islam.
Al-Nuaimi’s death is the latest in a string of attacks by the militant group to silence female activists and politicians. In July in the nearby town of Sderat, militants broke into the house of a female candidate in the last provincial council elections, killed her and abducted her husband, the U.N. said. On the same day, another female politician was abducted from her home in eastern Mosul; she remains missing.
Hanaa Edwer, a prominent Iraqi human rights activist, said at least five female political activists have been killed in recent weeks by the Islamic State group in Mosul, including al-Nuaimi, who Edwer said was also running for a seat on the provincial council.
“But it is not just women being targeted,” Edwer said. “They will kill anyone with a voice. It is terrifying.”
The Gulf Center for Human Rights said Wednesday that al-Nuaimi had worked on detainee rights and poverty. The Bahrain-based rights organization said her death “is solely motivated by her peaceful and legitimate human rights work, in particular defending the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul.”
The Islamic State extremists’ blitz eventually prompted the United State to launch airstrikes last month, to aid Kurdish forces and protect religious minorities in Iraq.
This week, the U.S. and five allied Arab states expanded the aerial campaign into Syria, where the militant group is battling President Bashar Assad’s forces as well as Western-backed rebels. Despite making gains in some of the country’s more isolated areas, where airstrikes have paved the way for successful ground operations by Kurdish and Iraqi forces, the cities of Mosul and Fallujah remain major strongholds of the group, which has buried itself among large civilian populations.
The militant group recently killed 40 Iraq soldiers and captured 68 near Fallujah and then paraded their captives through the city in a show of brawn.
Nearly a dozen countries have also provided weapons and training to Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who were strained after months of battling the jihadi group.
In other developments Thursday, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen visited northern Iraq for talks with Kurdish leaders about the fight against Islamic State extremists and Berlin’s efforts to help with arms deliveries.
Thursday also marked the start of German arms deliveries to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, with the ultimate goal of supplying 10,000 Kurdish fighters with some 70 million euros ($90 million) worth of equipment.
“We are involved with relief shipments and the airlift, but we know that this is not sufficient,” said von der Leyen. “Much more is needed to get these (millions of people) through the winter.”
___
Associated Press writer David Rising in Berlin and Bram Janssen in Irbil and an Associated Press reporter in Mosul contributed to this report.
1984, A Question of Irony, and a Brief Discussion of Privacy
From yesterday’s USA Today, a very brief article in the USA Round Up:
Alaska: Fairbanks
The number of security cameras in Alaska schools is going up. The Fairbanks Daily News-Mirror reported video cameras are being installed in Fairbanks middle and elementary schools and it’s part of a statewide trend aimed at making schools safer.
As I raised our son, I was – well, most of the time – an attentive parent. I would listen, and when necessary, I would correct. It’s a mother’s job to help her children navigate the pitfalls of life, and to have a tool-box full of resources with which to cope.
Perhaps I did my job too well. Our son became a lawyer, and he is very particular about the things I say, especially when I use a term incorrectly, such as irony.
Here is what Wikipedia says irony is:
event characterized by an incongruity, or contrast, between what the expectations of a situation are and what is really the case, with a third element, that defines that what is really the case is ironic because of the situation that led to it.
I am about to use the term “irony” correctly. 🙂
When I read the above article, I remembered the horror of Orwell’s 1984, the book, and then the movie. The movie was terrifying, the presence of cameras everywhere, hidden, not hidden, just knowing they were everywhere and everything you did could be monitored.
The irony comes in that here we are, with cameras everywhere, and we are glad for it. The irony is that our society has slipped so far from its ideal that we cannot trust our neighbor to behave him or herself, and we protect ourself by placing cameras so as to encourage people to behave.
I am not so sure that our moral codes have ever worked well; I think it seems to be the nature of humanity to claim a moral code, but not to adhere strictly to it. I think of people who talk about the safety of the ’50’s, but I don’t believe that safety was truly that safe. I think children disappeared. I think wives were beaten, women raped. I think robberies and assaults happened, and I think the law was more lax than it is today.
But it is an irony, IMHO, that we welcome cameras today as a low-cost policing of ourselves, our neighbors, and those we fear will hurt us or take our property. We trust ourselves and one another so little that we are increasingly installing cameras. We’ve been considering installing them through our home security company; we have motion detectors, cameras are just the next upgrade. Have we exchanged a high value on privacy for a heightened perceived need for protection of life and property?
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Early Voting in Florida
