This is the story of organized crime's penetration of the islands and the corruption of its high officials during the time The Bahamas become politically independent of Great Britain. It describes secret U.S. Internal Revenue Service operations aimed at American criminals involved in Bahamian-based tax scams and similar crimes. Block paints a devastating picture of a symbiotic relationship among off-shore tax havens in The Bahamas, sophisticated American criminals, and complacent public officials in the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, the I.R.S. launched major investigations into American organized crime and the subterranean economy of The Bahamas. Block's access to the private papers of many of the key players in these affairs has given him a unique perspective. He has uncovered details of crime, corruption, and bureaucratic infighting within and among the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments that have been largely unrecognized by previous researchers. Block shows how important links in the international traffic in cocaine were forged in the Bahamas, in full view of American officials. Masters of Paradise raises major questions about American law enforcement officials' commitment to fighting complex international crime during the 1960s and the 1970s. While there have been other studies of tax havens, money laundering, and offshore investigations, Block's access to information and his grasp of its meaning is unique. Professionals interested in the history and sociology of organized crime and the underground economy will find this book eye-opening. General readers interested in organized crime and political corruption will find it absorbing.

An abridged translation of “Afdhalus Solawat 'ala Saiyidis Sadat” by Ash-Shaikh Yusuf Ibn Isma'il An-Nabhani – about Salawat upon the Prophet ﷺ – with foreword by Mudarris Ilyas Zakaria. The first part of the book consists of sections relating to the meaning, obligation and merits of Salawat based on transmitted texts from Quranic verses, Prophetic Hadiths and sayings of the Islamic scholars. These sections cite close to a hundred Prophetic Hadiths, mostly on the motivation and encouragement to Salawat abundantly, especially on Fridays, in order to obtain abundant and important benefits in both Dunia and Akhirah. The second part of the book consists of some of the best methods of Salawat upon the Prophet ﷺ, including those transmitted from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself or the great 'Ulama such as Al-Imam Ash-Shafi'i, As-Saiyid Ahmad Al-Badawi and As-Saiyid Ahmad Ibn Idris Radhiyallahu 'Anhum. The book ends with a 50-verse poem on the summary of the Prophetic life in sequence from the creation of his light since before the beginning of time and until the continuous existence of his Prophetic life after his human departure. The author said in the introduction of this book, “My dear Muslim brothers who love the Prophet and who wish for Salawat upon him, help yourself with this book for the sake of salvation in your religion and your world. Regardless of how much you seek, you would almost certainly not find any compilation of a book like this.” The author, Ash-Shaikh Yusuf Ibn Isma'il An-Nabhani (1849-1932), was from the Levant and was a scholar of Al-Madzhab Ash-Shafi'i. He served as the Chief Justice of the Court of Human Rights in Beirut for over 20 years and was devoted to knowledge, literature, composing poems and writing books, especially in defence of his beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. The translator, Muhammad Zulhikam Jamil, is a freelance Arabic-to-English script translator particularly in the field of Islamic knowledge. With an experience of over 10 years, majority of his translation works stem from his interest in themes relating to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

Chinese Martial Arts films have captured audiences' imaginations around the world. In this wide-ranging study, Hunt looks at the mythic allure of the Shaolin Temple, the 'Clones' of Bruce Lee, gender-bending swordswomen, and the knockabout comedy of Sammo Hung, bringing new insights to a hugely popular and yet critically neglected genre. 12 photos.

This book introduces the tools you'll need to program with the packetC language. packetC speeds the development of applications that live within computer networks, the kind of programs that provide network functionality for connecting "clients" and "servers” and “clouds." The simplest examples provide packet switching and routing while more complex examples implement cyber security, broadband policies or cloud-based network infrastructure. Network applications, such as those processing digital voice and video, must be highly scalable, secure and maintainable. Such application requirements translate to requirements for a network programming language that leverages massively-parallel systems and ensures a high level of security, while representing networking protocols and transactions in the simplest way possible. packetC meets these requirements with an intuitive approach to coarse-grained parallelism, with strong-typing and controlled memory access for security and with new data types and operators that express the classic operations of the network-oriented world in familiar programming terms. No other language has addressed the full breadth of requirements for tractable parallelism, secure processing and usable constructs. The packetC language is growing in adoption and has been used to develop solutions operating in some of the world’s largest networks. This important new language, packetC, has now been successfully documented in this book, in which the language's authors provide the materials and tools you'll need in a readable and accessible form.

Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.