Sharia has become an increasingly significant force in American capitalism thanks to the embrace by Wall Street and the U.S. government of so-called Sharia-Compliant Finance. Indeed this country's taxpayers now own the largest purveyor of sharia-compliant insurance products in the world: AIG.

To finance this trade deficit the U.S. has to borrow from the rest of the world or sell American assets like stocks businesses and real estate to the rest of the world.

We all know that Americans love their statistics - in sport obviously. And in finance too.

Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

Americans have discovered fear.

Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

Americans are terrified because so many of them have been laid off in recent years and months and they fear that they may be next. Even if they have not been laid off or have not known anyone laid off they definitely know someone who has lost his home.

My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context brilliant African father he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness a deracination.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature and it is an obligation I believe for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength and to be liberated from fear and from silence.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.

When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril.

Italian girls are famous for being snobby and expecting men to make the first move. In America if I don't make eye contact the guys won't come over and talk. American girls just go for it. You men are spoiled.

If it's not some daring dangerous affair it's just not interesting or so it seems. So here you have two people - a famous American iconic couple - who actually like each other sexually in marriage. Imagine.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

These days with 'American Idol' and all the other reality shows young people become famous overnight and that can be very difficult to handle the way photographers follow you around and study your every move.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics called Cheetah blades Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

Maya Angelou the famous African American poet historian and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV I didn't want to be famous I didn't want to be anyone in particular I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags or go out with cute guys from shows or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.

It's never been my purpose to become an American icon or more famous or richer.