From: HipParis.com

Although we all want to channel a little Coco Chanel/Edith Piaf/Laetitia Casta while wandering through St. Germain, the price points attached to the fashion dream can be more than a little dissuasive. Here to rescue the dream felled by recessionitis: Thanx God I’m a VIP, a gem of a vintage store located just east of Pl. de la République in the up-and-coming 10th arrondissement.

Unlike overpriced vintage stores the world over, TGI’mVIP houses an incredibly well selected and affordably priced collection of vintage designer pieces. Racks of color-coordinated items range from knee-length, satin, Yves St. Laurent “jupons” (under 150€) to Alaia high-waisted trousers, with Lacoste jumpers splashed in between here and there; just what was needed to revisit that elusive everyday classics category.

And if the ground floor isn’t in your price range, the basement houses a less-expensive-but-no-less-thought-out alternative thrift collection. Between slightly questionable 60s peasant blouses and gorgeous, Indian, brocade full-length coats (25€), you’re sure to find something to go with your Café Crème at the Flore.

Happy Shopping!

Thanx God I’m a VIP

12 rue de Lancry

Paris, 75010

tel: 01 42 03 02 09

www.thanxgod.com

metro: Republique ou Jacques Bonsergent

Further reading here and here.

Text and Photography by: Geneviève Sandifer

Look for updates from the city of lights here…

From Jezebel:

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, has pressed charges against Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir for a variety of things and is awaiting the decision of 3 judges on what basis, if any, they will issue a warrant for his arrest. One of the many charges Moreno-Ocampo has asked be brought against Bashir is for the use of rape as a weapon on genocide. If the court agrees, it will be the first time that anyone has been charged with using mass rape to commit genocide.

David Scheffer, who served under Clinton as the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues, writes in the LA Times that, in this case, there is more than enough evidence to show that Bashir is using rape to not just oppress the women in Darfur but to exterminate their ethic groups.

Moreno-Ocampo bases his charge that Bashir is committing genocide through the orchestrated and targeted use of rape as a weapon of war based on two rarely-used ways of eliminating an ethnic group or people:

“causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Although the mass-rapes in Darfur are not as fast-acting a method of genocide as killing everyone in the area, they do accomplish several things that might legitimately end the existence of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. For one, the brutality of the assaults leaves many women infertile, which means that less children can be born. Furthermore, the women contend that they are raped in order to impregnate them with babies of mixed ethnicity who are not accepted as members of their ethnic group, which means that many of the children aren’t considered part of the groups that Bashir is trying to destroy. Furthermore, because of the stigma of rape and having a baby fathered by a Janjaweed rapist, Moreno-Ocampo contends that “infanticide and abandonment are common” in Darfur among rape victims, reducing the children born to the ethnic groups targeted for destruction even more.

Scheffer writes of his experience:

In the 1990s, when I was the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues, I met scores of women who had been raped during the atrocities in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Uganda and the eastern Congo. In most cases, the experience was devastating to their character, their ethnic bonds and often to their physical health. Even if they were still physically able to bear children, these women typically were ostracized from their communities and could not marry their ethnic men. Confronted with these stories, I recognized that mass rape can destroy a substantial part of a group and thus constitute genocide.

He also urges the U.S. to continue blocking efforts by China, Russia and the African Union to block the ICC from issuing an arrest warrant for Bashir, which they claim is for the sake of UN peace keepers in the region. Protecting the peace keepers worked really well in Rwanda, right guys?

Rape As Genocide In Darfur [LA Times]

You know who you are.

Although I would add this place to the list after the jump

A list of ten bars for those with discriminating palates.

Photography meets sculpture

From VSL:

“In a twist that wouldn’t be out of place in a Charlie Kaufman film, scientists from Georgia and China have announced that they’re now able to erase specific memories from the mind.

How’d they do it? By overactivating an enzyme in the brains of laboratory mice at the precise moment that memories of especially painful stimuli were recalled, the researchers were able to delete those memories — just as if they were expunging files from a hard drive. Will human heartbreaks be so easy to erase? There are no current plans to create an actual instant-amnesia pill, but scientists do hope to find treatments for illnesses like PTSD, which revolve around the triggering of memories that patients would sooner forget.”

Banksy has graced our city with his thoughts on the current financial upheavals 

“Blood on the hands, a suitcase stuffed with money, and a message “Let Them Eat Crack”.  Banksy’s latest rat was completed this morning and the words couldn’t have been any clearer for a city that has been so concerned with ‘me’ first. Nice job Mr. Banksy.” 

- The World’s Best Ever

from Portfolio

“Airlines can charge corporate fliers 10 or even 12 times more than vacationers because business travelers need to get where they are going fast, with no advance notice and no price questioned.” 

“Joe,” the C.E.O. said knowingly, “there’s always an investment banker who needs to get home in time for a date.”

“You’re saying the entire airline pricing system rests on the mating practices of horny bankers?” 

“But what’s a couple of hundred dollars or even a couple of thousand more or less to someone who’s working a billion-dollar deal on one coast and has a dinner date that evening on the other coast? Breakfast meeting in London to lock up a deal and then a flight home to New York in time for the opera—what’s that worth to someone generating billions and earning millions?”

“If your highest-paying fliers disappear, your reason for flying the plane disappears.”

“In other words, for every Lehman banker or Merrill Lynch broker who was laid off last week and now won’t fly on business between New York and London, an airline will need to find 10 vacationers to take his place. And while 10 fliers paying $500 each in coach equals the revenue of one grounded banker, the profit margin isn’t the same. Discretionary fliers are more difficult to reach, more expensive to convert into customers and must be advertised to and sold to again the next time they fly. Not to mention all the extra space, extra luggage, extra fuel, and extra attention that 10 leisure fliers require.”

It’s no wonder social systems regimented by Quranic law are generally perceived as being so all-encompassing. For a believer to live out his or her life according to Islam, all aspects of public and private life should be regulated by Islamic law, or the Sharia. Despite the reputation for controlling freedom of thought and of intellectual extremism that political Islam enjoys today, ultimately the model of the ideal Islamic state is based most fundamentally on social solidarity. One of the 5 main tenets of Islam (along with the Haj and prayer 5 times/day) is alms giving. Go into the poorest region of any Muslim country, and you will find families in distress giving to other families in distress. I think this is one of the main reasons the US and the “West” — representing capitalism and the apparent disregard for fixed reciprocal social customs as a basis for social welfare — are so easily demonized in countries where Islam is the reigning social force.

A really interesting tenet in Islam, that my fellow Vassar students and I had a very hard time grasping during our time in Morocco, was that Muslims are banned from taking interest on loans. We were dumbfounded – I mean, people take out loans everywhere, so how do banks make profits? Well, I’m no economist, but the current financial crisis has brought this fact to the forefront for Muslim countries where economic decisions are being called into question given current vulnerability resultant from possibly not-so-kosher (ha!) economic policies.

These guys explain it much better than me.

Sukuks are “Kuran-compliant bonds” — theoretically.

“While a conventional bond is a promise to repay a loan, Sukuk present partial ownership in a debt (Sukuk Murabaha), asset (Sukuk Al Ijara), project (Sukuk Al Istisna) or business (Sukuk Al Musharaka), or investment (Sukuk Al Istithmar). A key technique to achieve the capital protection without amounting to a loan is a binding promise to repurchase certain assets, e.g. in the case of Sukuk Al Ijara by the issuer. In the meantime a rent is being paid, which is often benchmarked to an interest rate benchmark like LIBOR (which is disliked by Sharia Scholars).” from wiki

Or:

“Sheik Muhammad Taqi Usmani said he believed that as much as 85 percent of Islamic bonds already in the market had a critical religious flaw baked into them: They guaranteed a buyer that principal would be paid back, even in the case of default.
Conventional bonds routinely carry such provisions but they are problematic for Muslims who are, among other things, barred from accepting interest, or engaging in any business where profit and risk are not equally shared.

To work around some of the simplest issues, Islamic bonds are supposed to derive their payment stream from the revenue thrown off by a real asset or some similar structure, while any repurchase is seen as just a return on a lease, and should be done at market rates.

But in an attempt to securitize a wider array of assets, or to make more appealing structures, many Islamic bonds have veered too close to a Western interpretation of what a bond should be.

Or, as Usmani wrote, Islamic financial institutions, in an attempt to compete in “the conventional, interest-based marketplace,” have churned out products that give lip-service to Islam while using “ploys that sound minds reject and bring laughter to enemies.”

Such statements by Usmani, who is the powerful chairman of the board of Islamic scholars at the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, sent a chill through the sukuk market.”

from Portfolio

The rest of the article is available here. Standby for substantial restructuring of Islamic investment markets!! exciting times woop woop.