I didn't think it would be hard to find "9 Disturbingly Good Jihadi Raps" online, but it was. There were, of course, the stylings of al-Shabab's rapper laureate, Omar Hammami, and the music video for "Dirty Kuffar," which was designed to go viral on social media sites like YouTube and Dailymotion.

But the most professional-sounding jihadi raps weren't on YouTube or SoundCloud -- they were tracks off M-Team's album "Clash of Civilizations." And to listen to them, I bought the songs on iTunes. They're also available for download from Amazon.com and Google Play, and they can be listened to on Spotify.

M-Team (that's short for Mujahideen Team) offered some bold thoughts about violent jihad in their debut album:

SPOKEN: Today is the day of retribution!
Today is the day of jihad!
Today is the day of victory or martyrdom,
so all you who believe, raise your hand and ready your weapons...

SUNG: Bust your weapons, take off oppression,
take their lives and right-hand possessions,
snatch a politician out the election,
give him injections, lethal infections...
The revolution, kaffir execution,
the true solution, the day of retribution!

"It's certainly very provocative," Rolling Stone associate editor Simon Vozick-Levinson told me when I asked him what he thought of it. "Rap and hip hop in particular are effective ways of getting a message out to a broader audience. If you have a strong conviction, putting it to a catchy beat is a good way to get your message across. To a Western audience, it's going to be pretty shocking."

It's also hardly the first time music has encouraged violence. And it's not just rap; before songs like "Cop Killer" and "Fuck tha' Police" in the early 1990s, there were controversies over groups like Black Sabbath and Twisted Sister. But is there a point where musicians go too far for mainstream music outlets?

Graham James, a spokesman for Spotify, said they were looking into M-Team's work and pointed out that Spotify, in its company policy, "reserve[s] the right to remove content that, in Spotify's opinion, is likely to incite hatred or discrimination of any kind, be that race, religion, sexuality or otherwise, or content that is deemed offensive, abusive, defamatory, illegal, pornographic or obscene in anyway." But he also expressed concern about using the policy for anything other than exceptional circumstances. "It's a very slippery slope. If you start taking down things you find objectionable, where do you ultimately draw that line?" he told FP. (Representatives from iTunes did not respond to requests for comment.)

Vozick-Levinson agrees: "Artists test boundaries, like Ice-T's song 'Cop Killer.' But that song didn't lead to an epidemic of violence; that song is a work of art. Time has shown that censorship isn't the answer. The better choice is to discuss these things and why they're objectionable rather than try to censor them."

And its worth noting that, like Ice-T, who went from rapping about shooting cops to playing a detective on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, M-Team took a decidedly more moderate tone in their sophomore album, "My Enemy's Enemy." As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and jihadi rap critic, described it on Twitter, "M-Team's later deviations diminish their jihadi cred. Kind of like how Katy Perry's later music diminishes the credibility of her early work as a gospel singer."

We here at Foreign Policy had been preparing for the day Cyprus's banks reopened by collecting pictures of bank runs from around the world -- on the chance that this morning we'd wake up to long lines of frantic depositors.

But with headlines like "Euro Rises Amid Cyprus Calm"  and "All Is Calm as Cyprus Banks Re-Open After 12 Days," that idea has sort of fizzled out. (Come back to this space next time there really is a bank run, though, for some great pictures!)

So instead, we present you with this: a Cyprus so calm that a man feels comfortable standing in front of a bank with a parrot on his head. 

Enjoy.

President Obama will consult with 20 CEOs of major U.S. companies today to get their advice on how to stimulate U.S. economic growth and create more American jobs. 

The premise of these kinds of meetings is that the heads of American headquartered companies like GE, Google, PepsiCo, and Motorola have a special concern for the fate of the U.S. economy and useful advice on how to fix it. But do they? Are these really American companies in any way other than that they happen to be incorporated in Delaware of some other U.S. state, and do these CEOs have or even can they have the best interests of the American economy at heart?

Remember that most of these companies sell and produce far more outside the United States than inside. They often have many more employees outside the United States than inside and a large proportion of their shareholders are also not American. They must deal in most cases with more than 100 presidents and prime ministers of countries in which they have major interests. In the case of the European Union they must deal with officials in Brussels who are responsible for an economy that is about a third larger than the United States. In Beijing and New Delhi they must deal with governments that are currently driving the development of economies that are almost surely going to become larger than the U.S. economy in the next twenty to forty years.

Also remember that these companies have greater financial power and greater production capacity than all but a handful of countries. They are quasi-sovereign entities and their CEOs are in many respects more akin to powerful heads of state than to your average everyday businessman. It is not a criticism of them to point out that their interests may or may not be congruent with America's interests. Motorola and Cisco, for example, do a large portion of their production in China. They benefit from China's undervalued yuan that allows them to have artificially low production costs. Obama badly needs China to stop manipulating its currency to be undervalued if he wants to realize his goal of doubling U.S. exports. But a halt to China's currency manipulation is not necessarily in the interests of the companies that do a lot of their production there. So what will the CEOs say to Obama about currency manipulation?

A particularly troubling aspect of the global business situation is the affect of the asymmetry of global political organization. In democratic Washington, for instance, the CEOs of these companies are major political players. They have their PACs, legions of lawyers and lobbyists, and ready access to the highest levels of government. Moreover, they can take the U.S. government to court anytime and win. In authoritarian Beijing, on the other hand, not only are the CEOs not political players, they need to pay careful attention to which way the winds are blowing. So in a funny way, they may have to be more responsive to the wishes of the authoritarian governments than to those of the democracies. And certainly it is easier for them to lay off workers and close facilities in the U.S. than it is in most other countries in which they operate including the EU and Japan.

This is not to say that Obama should not be meeting with them. Some CEOs like GE's Jeffrey Immelt seem to have had some second thoughts about off-shoring their production and have even brought some production back to the U.S. from abroad. So it will no doubt be informative for Obama to listen to what they all have to say. But he must do so with a clear understanding of the fact that his problems are not necessarily their problems and indeed may be the source of some of their success.

It would really help if the U.S. government had a clear articulation of the U.S. national economic interest. But it does not, and this is all the more reason for Obama to be non-committal about what he hears.

Indeed, rather than listening too much, the President ought to use this occasion to act like Chinese, Singaporean, Israeli, and French leaders and tell the CEOs that they really need to invest in America. He could remind them that when they need help in protecting their intellectual property and in protesting discriminatory policies abroad, it is not to the Chinese or E.U. or South Korean or other authorities to whom they turn for help. Rather it is to Washington. He could also remind them that more of their innovation comes out of U.S. laboratories and universities than anywhere else and that to keep it going more investment and U.S. based production is also necessary. He should make it clear that he'll be watching their investment announcements and that while he will strive to make America more attractive for their investments, he also expects the companies to do their best to make it or provide the service in America.

After all, what America makes (including services provision) makes America.  

Clyde Prestowitz is president of the Economic Strategy Institute and author of The Betrayal of American Prosperity.

Indian-U.S. relations are going to be pretty important for the foreseeable future. I'd imagine, then, that implicitly threatening the victims of the Bhopal Union Carbide (now owned by Dow Chemical) disaster of 1984 to be quiet or else isn't a very smart thing.

Apparently deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman didn't get that memo.

India's Planning Commission deputy chairman sent Froman an e-mail requesting U.S. assistance in securing a loan from the World Bank. Froman replied that he'd look into it, and then proceded to lose all common sense:

While I've got you, we are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully... I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship.

In case, like Froman, you're not familiar with the details of Bhopal, 25 years ago, a large amount of methyl isocyanate leaked from the plant and spread over the city, killing at least 3,000 immediately and contributing to the deaths of approximately 25,000 more. Local journalists had repeatedly warned that the plant suffered from lax safety regulations to no avail. Birth defects, cancers, growth deficiency, and other health issues are abnormally high in the affected area.

Finally last June employees of the plant received punishment. Local Indian managers were convicted, but received what were perceived as little more than slaps on the wrist. Campaigners have demanded Union Carbide -- including then chairman Warren Anderson -- itself be reprimanded, but no action has been forthcoming. Amnesty International called the convictions "too little, too late." 

Making Froman's e-mail even more asinine, his threat wasn't even credible. Regardless of further actions taken against Dow Chemical, the U.S. is going to invest a lot of money into India for both geopolitical and economic reasons -- making Froman's message one that really should have stayed in his drafts folder.

GoDaddy, the web domain registration company better known for its risque Super Bowl commercials than its political principles, announced today that it will stop registering domains in China in protest against cyber attacks and censorship:

"We believe that many of the current abuses of the Internet originating in China are due to a lack of enforcement against criminal activities by the Chinese government," Christine Jones, Go Daddy Group Inc general counsel, told a congressional commission hearing on Wednesday.

She said GoDaddy had repelled dozens of extremely serious attacks that appear to have originated in China in the first three months of 2010. GoDaddy would, however, continue to manage .cn domain names of existing customers.

"Our experience as been that China is focused on using the Internet to monitor and control the legitimate activities of its citizens, rather than penalizing those who commit Internet-related crimes," Jones said.

I'd be interested to know how much business GoDaddy is actually doing in China. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but since GoDaddy's whole business model depends on grabbing media attention, they may figure that the good publicity is worth taking a hit in the Chinese market. Not sure if it will be as effective an attention-grabber as those Danica Patrick ads but worth a shot I suppose. 

The Heritage Foundation has pulled together a fascinating study of Chinese investment -- showing (with really nice charts and maps!) just where all of those yuan are heading overseas.

A few things to note, plus one question....

• Sub-Saharan Africa is the biggest single region for investment for the Chinese. (Plus, $36.4 billion is a lot of investment in a region whose total GDP is $744 billion.)
• China spends the most money in Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The resource-rich country is one of the very few on Earth whose economy has actually shrunk in the past 20 years (due to a brutal civil war). 
• For every dollar of U.S. investment, China spends 51 cents in Iran.  
• China invests nearly twice as much in west Asia as in east Asia -- a testament to its need for resources, more so than products.
• China spends more in Australia than any other single country.
• Why is China spending so much in Greece? Shipping?

I hadn't seen this earlier: John Pomfret relays word that Google's declaration that it would no longer comply with Chinese Internet censorship rules was a verboten subject in Davos this year.

"At China's request, that topic was left off the table at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank and co-chairman of the event, told Bloomberg News," he writes.

So now China is capable of silencing debate in what's supposed to be an open forum?

Here's more from Bloomberg, which quotes Ackermann saying "China didn't want to discuss Google":

At Davos, participants such as financier George Soros, economist Joseph Stiglitz and French President Nicolas Sarkozy debated technology topics such as social networking and 3-D features used in the motion picture "Avatar." The discussion didn't include the conflict between China and Google, even in panels such as "The Rise of Asia" or "Redesigning the Global Dimensions of China's Growth."

Way to tackle the tough issues, guys.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt did briefly raise the subject on his own, however, according to the Wall Street Journal:

"We like what China is doing in terms of growth...we just don't like censorship," Mr. Schmidt said, speaking at the World Economic Forum's annual summit here. "We hope that will change and we can apply some pressure to make things better for the Chinese people." [...]

Mr. Schmidt maintained Friday that Google wants to continue operating in China. But he said the company didn't want to do so if it had to operate under China's censorship laws. To operate its Web site, Googe.cn in China, Google had to agree to censor its results.

"We would very much like to stay in China. We would very much like the censorship we oppose to improve in China," Mr. Schmidt replied.

Li Keqiang, China's vice premier, didn't address the issue in his speech, but apparently insisted in private that foreign companies must follow Chinese laws.

According to Izhmash Arms' parent company, the Rosoboronexport State Corporation -- which has a monopoly on supplying Russian arms to the international market -- there are about eight countries in which dozens of business are making their own versions of the Kalashnikov. And they are doing this without passing on any licensing fees to the Russians.

And now it appears that the financial difficulties facing the weapons manufacturer have reached crisis point: its very existence is threatened. A businessman in Izhevsk has filed a motion to declare Izhmash Arms bankrupt because of outstanding debts of around 8 million rubles (around €180,000 or $265,000). The case has caused a sensation in Russia because for a long time the Russian armaments industry has been one of the only industries considered competitive on an international basis. And Izhmash, which was founded in 1807 by Russia's royals, is one of the largest firearms manufacturers in Russia.

However, arms exports have fallen dramatically over the past year, falling from around $10.8 billion (€7.4 billion) worth of weaponry in 2007 to a mere $3.5 billion (€2.4 billion) in 2008.

According to the Der Spiegel article, Izmash's problems are partly of its own making. Licenses to manufacture the AK were granted generously to like-minded regimes throughout the third world during the Cold War. After the Soviet Union fell, the companies that were already making the weapons saw no reason to stop. 

RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images

They may be leftists, but the current and former president of Argentina have no aversion to making money on the side.

Rory Carroll in the Guardian reports that Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, elected in 2007, and her husband Nestor, the previous president, have done pretty well for themselves:

New figures show that since Nestor and Cristina Kirchner came to power in 2003, they have presided over a remarkable sixfold increase in their own wealth.

The couple have racked up a fortune through property speculation and investments that have thrived even as the economy has faltered. Last year alone their wealth jumped 158% to £7.3m...

According to information the couple supplied to the anti-corruption office, they own 28 properties valued at $3.8m, four companies worth $4.8m and bank deposits of $8.4m. Last year they sold 16 properties, almost tripling their bank accounts, and expanded their hotel business in El Calafate, a tourist magnet. Their debts also jumped because of bank loans.

Knowing Argentina's history of corruption, the open disclosure by the first couple of their wealth is actually kind of reassuring.

But now, with Argentina fighting to avoid a recession and public debts mounting across the country, the Kirchners would do well to apply that same financial acumen to the country's problems. Otherwise, they will face increasingly tough questions about how they had so much time for their own finances when they were supposed to be focusing on those of Argentina. 

DANIEL GARCIA/AFP/Getty Images

Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for it. They resent intrusive advertizing on billboards, TV and the Internet. They are happy to chase content and music across platforms and devices (iPods, mobiles, streaming sites). Print media (newspapers, directories) are viewed as irrelevant.

Texting is still key and use of new data services limited due to cost.

Teenagers listen to a lot of music, mostly whist doing something else (like travelling or using a computer). They are VERY reluctant to pay for it (most never having bought a CD) and a large majority (8/10) downloading it illegally from file sharing sites.

Conclusions? Teenagers don't have any money and they like free things. Also, eight out of ten of Robson's friends are downloading music illegally.

Derek Berwin/Getty images

In contrat to vlogging, live-journaling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimiur Putin has generally preferred to let his actions do the talking. But this Friday, Putin will make his debut as a magazine columnist in the monthly magazine Russian Pioneer. But don't expect an ideological pean to the glories of sovereign democracy.

Putin's topic is management, specifically "why it's hard to fire people." But the released exceprts of the column, as printed by The Independent,  do seem to offer a few clues to recent Kremlin infighting though:

Conflicts within a team, especially within a big team, always arise," writes Mr Putin, in extracts leaked to a Russian news agency. "This happens every minute, every second – simply because between people there are always clashes of interest."...

"I can say honestly that while I was president, if I hadn't interfered in certain situations, in Russia there would long ago ceased to have been a government." ...

"In contrast to previous, Soviet rulers, I always do it personally. I usually call the person into my office, look them in the eye, and say: 'There are concrete complaints. If you think this isn't true, then please, you can fight against it; argue your case'."

Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images

Today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and President Barack Obama laid out a plan to create and enforce stricter tax regulations for U.S. corporations. Obama's opening salvo from the presser:

Most Americans meet their responsibilities because they understand that it's an obligation of citizenship...and yet, even as most American citizens and businesses meet these responsibilities, there are others who are shirking theirs. 

He went on to describe the U.S. tax code as "full of corporate loopholes that [make] it perfectly legal for companies to avoid paying their fair share."

That's right. He was talking about "tax havens": not just countries in which major U.S. corporations hide from U.S. taxes, but a big fat open season sign for fire and brimstone metaphors and sword of Damocles swinging. Democratic speechwriters must adore tax havens. They're like the Newt Gingrich of tax policy: always there to beat up.

Rhetorical fury aside, tax havens really do allow U.S. companies to shore up a whole lot of money, money which Obama hopes to use to revamp the U.S.'s healthcare system, among other things. Interesting factoids from the Treasury release: 

• In 2004, the most recent year for which data is available, U.S. multinational corporations paid about $16 billion of U.S. tax on approximately $700 billion of foreign active earnings -- an effective U.S. tax rate of about 2.3 percent
• A January 2009 GAO report found that of the 100 largest U.S. corporations, 83 have subsidiaries in tax havens.
• In the Cayman Islands, one address alone houses 18,857 corporations, very few of which have a physical presence in the islands.
• Nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by U.S. corporations in 2003 came from just three small, low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

The closing of three major tax haven loopholes should garner $190 billion in tax revenue for the government in the next ten years. 

Another big beneficiary of the changes? Lobbyists. Corporate America isn't going to like this -- and they're going to pay a lot of money to see the repeal of these changes.  

Felix Salmon writes up a World Bank report on the returns a vulture fund made off of Liberia:

Liberia, with the aid of the World Bank, has been negotiating with vulture funds holding $1.2 billion of its debt. You know what vulture funds are, right? They’re evil hedge-fund types who buy up debt at pennies on the dollar, and then sue for repayment in full, with interest and penalties and everything.

Just look at the deal they drove in this case! Liberia, one of the poorest countries in the world, is going to have to pay them, er, nothing at all. The World Bank is kicking in $19 million, a few rich countries are matching that sum, and the vultures are walking away with a not-very-princely-at-all $38 million, or just 3 cents on the dollar. Which probably barely covers their legal fees, let alone the amount they paid for the debt in the first place.

Let's read that again: the World Bank and Liberian government negotiated a deal so that vulture funds holding $1.2 billion in debt ended up with a check for $38 million -- three percent!

It's distressing that Liberia got in such a bad fix. It needed to raise funds and banked on future growth to make the payments -- but a bloody civil war meant it couldn't. The original lenders decided to sell the loans off to vulture and hedge funds who drove a hard bargain. Which meant that at one point, Liberia owed seven times its national income to creditors. 

So, the balance sheet -- in redux:

• The vulture funds (name makes it hard to feel bad for them, doesn't it?) lost $1.26 billion on paper. (I doubt they paid the full $1.3 billion for the loans, the World Bank doesn't say.) For better or worse, it means they likely aren't lending anymore. 
• Liberia, struggling with a crushing debt burden, found forgiveness. This is a good thing -- if Liberia's government has put in place measures to ensure security, stability, and economic growth. Johnson Sirleaf's at least making an effort. 
• Liberia's rich friends (the United States included) stepped in with a bit of cash to help a very ailing economy. A good thing.
• The World Bank negotiated what seems to be an amicable settlement. (Though the vulture funds might beg to differ.) A good thing for them.

Ultimately, though, Liberia isn't the story here. Emerging market and developing economies, like Liberia, will be among the hardest-hit in the Great Recession. Unlike OECD countries, they won't be able to issue debt or raise funds easily. They'll need the help of the international community -- and especially international organizations -- to ensure that their loans come with advisement and affordable repayment options. 

The hero here's the World Bank. Suddenly, it and the IMF -- especially the IMF, perhaps -- have become the world's most important international organizations. 

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Bloomberg reports that the holding company for collapsed New York investment bank Lehman Brothers is hanging on to a valuable asset until prices rebound, to help pay off the company's creditors.

The asset? Uranium. How much? Enough for a bomb, if you knew how to do it.

Lehman, once the fourth-largest investment bank, has an estimated $200 billion in unsecured liabilities left to pay. The uranium, which may be as much as 500,000 pounds, might fetch $20 million at today’s prices of about $40.50 per pound, said traders who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the data. Marsal said the traders’ estimate of Lehman’s uranium holding is “reasonable,” while declining to be more specific....

Lehman “tested” the uranium market after its bankruptcy filing in an effort to raise cash, pulling back after it did because “everyone was low balling,” Marsal said. With $10 billion in the till today from other asset sales, Lehman isn’t in a hurry any longer to sell uranium, he said.

“We plan on gradually selling this material over the next two years,” he said. “We are not dumping this on the market and have no fire-sale mentality.”

Goodness.