On Wednesday the New South Wales Supreme Court jury condemned a pakistan-born architect, named Faheem Khalid Lodhi, to a 20-years-long detention for charges linked to terrorist activities.

The jury found him guilty of having tried to buy chemicals that could be used to make explosives and they proved that he was negotiating the purchase of maps of the national power grid, using a false name.

During the trial, the prosecutor displayed evidences that convinced the jury about Lodhi’s commitment, or at least his deep interest, in terrorism: indeed not only he tried to buy chemical components that could be combined together to produce a bomb, but also did he possess fifteen pages of handwritten notes in Urdu, Pakistan's official language, containing instructions on making petrol bombs, poison, cyanide gas, sulfuric acid, hand grenades and other explosive devices. Moreover, hundreds of files relating to Islamic extremism and U.S. military training manuals were found on his computer...

Last June American newspapers revealed that the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT, has provided the CIA with data on financial transactions for over four years as part of the war against terrorism in the US. Probably the Bush administration decided to go to SWIFT after certain banks turned down their requests for information.

This news stirred up a tempest in the United States and in the European Union. But is there a real cause for concern here?

According to various sources, SWIFT has granted the US Department of the Treasury and the CIA access to data concerning millions of financial transactions involving € 6 billion daily at the request of the US authorities. If we think that up to 12.7 million messages about money transfers, between more than 7,800 banks and financial brokers in over 200 countries, pass through SWIFT every day, it is self-explanatory that watching SWIFT means tracking a huge amount of data.

After we posted the article of the digital incidents happened in retaliation of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon we saw a raise in the amount of visitors of our website (which is rather normal when you get Slashdotted). I was reading among the harsh comments posted by readers after the news and I noticed there is quite a lot of misinformation, if not confusion in some of our readers' mind. This is why I decided to write this article, which in pure zone-h's style will be only based on facts.

The recent Israel decision to attack Lebanon and invade its territory it's a deja-vu. The same happened in 1982, when Israel decided to invade Lebanon because at that time Lebanon was harboring most of the PLO  infrastructures. Israeli tanks invaded Lebanon on June 6th 1982 under a military operation named "Peace for Galilea", authorized by the Prime Minister Menachem Begin and supervised by at that time  Minister of Defence Ariel Sharon. The facts:

- June 6th: start of the military operations

- June 7th: Israel takes control of the cities Tiro and  Nabatiyeh

- June 8th: Israel takes control of Sidone

- June 9th: Israel takes control of Damour

- June 10th Israel sets the military border 2,5 miles from Beirut

- June 11th to June 13th: Israel bombs the western area of Beirut

- June 13th: Sharon declared to the Israeli parliament that "the job was finished"

... but it was not.

Just like Sakhir F1 International Circuit, Bahrain’s financial circuit is unique in the Middle East.

The Kingdom of Bahrain seems to have found the perfect equilibrium between a fair and consistent application of the fundamental principles of sharia and the need to comply with international financial standards and best practices. The local monetary agency, namely Bahrain Monetary Agency, actually, through an open dialogue between industry players and sharia scholars has been able to establish a robust and competitive financial system open to financial reforms and product development.

The emergence of modern Islamic economics as well as the expansion of Islamic finance is characterised by the involvement of sharia scholars. No doubts that they play a key role in the evolution of the Islamic financial and banking sector and are the main drivers behind the acceptance of new financial products, giving them the needed legitimacy within the Muslim people.

Since 9/11, the efforts to implement security measures against terrorism  vertiginously increased,  and Intelligence agencies from all over the world developed sophisticated defence systems designed for preventing the attacks and detecting  the  attackers.