In recent letters to America’s largest banks and hedge funds, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, Jr. has warned financial executives about the potential regulatory, legal and national security pitfalls of “Shariah-Compliant Finance” (SCF). These include civil and criminal exposure, as well as serious reputational risk for those engaged in SCF transactions.

The letter (an example of which is attached, as is the list of recipients) was prompted by the recent emergence in Western capital markets of Shariah-Compliant Finance (also marketed as “Islamic finance”) and by a lawsuit now before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The litigation was brought by a consortium of insurance firms, including Chubb, Ace and Allstate, and by the investment firm of Cantor Fitzgerald and accuses the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Dubai Islamic Bank and others of funding terrorism in the name of Shariah and jihad (holy war).

The Center for Security Policy’s warning was made even more timely and urgent by the revelation on June 16 that a senior Mideast executive at U.S. investment bank J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is being detained in Dubai as part of a widening fraud investigation of the Dubai Islamic Bank. The Chase executive, Omair Mooraj, is managing director and head of Islamic banking for the entire region.

Mr. Gaffney warned each of the addressee firms that they may be exposed to reputational risk and price risk if they are invested in or have prime broker relationships with banks engaged in Shariah-Compliant Finance. Such risks became evident in the Philadelphia lawsuit as several of the key defendants are “Shariah-compliant” banks and virtually all are “Shariah-compliant” businesses.

Mr. Gaffney observed that SCF is a device used to legitimize Shariah Law, a brutally oppressive theocratic-political-military doctrine. The Taliban imposed Shariah Law in Afghanistan. Today, it is the law of the land in Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, three of the most repressive regimes in the world, all of which have extensive ties to jihadist terrorism. According to its adherents, Shariah Law requires companies engaged in SCF to donate to Islamic charities using zakat (tithing for charitable purposes) and the “purification” of proceeds of investments that Shariah advisors deem to be “impure.” There are eight categories of Shariah-approved charities, of which half can be interpreted to mean vehicles for funding violent jihad.

The Philadelphia lawsuit alleges that Dubai Islamic Bank and other named Islamic Shariah banks have funneled zakat and “purified” funds to Islamic charities, which then funded al-Qaeda terror. There is growing concern on the part of the SEC, Treasury and Justice Departments and the Congress about the lack of transparency in the Shariah-Compliant Finance market and its implications for compliance with existing securities laws.

Mr. Gaffney provided each bank and fund with a legal memorandum entitled Civil Liability and Criminal Exposure for U.S. Financial Institutions and Businesses engaged in Shariah-Compliant Finance.
(http://www.stopshariahnow.citymax.com/f/Research_Memo_re_Legal_Risks_of_SCF_(3).pdf. It concludes that any U.S. financial institution promoting Shariah-Compliant Finance here or abroad is at risk of violating federal and state securities laws that require due diligence, transparency and disclosure, RICO statutes and other laws that prohibit funding of terror.
The Center’s letters strongly recommended that each firm examine their portfolios for exposure to Dubai Islamic Bank and other named defendants in the Philadelphia lawsuit. Additionally, he warned that their prime brokers may be involved in Shariah-Compliant Finance and urged their brokers to ask if they are disclosing: material facts about Shariah Law; its mandate for jihad; public verbal and written statements calling for jihad made by their paid Shariah advisors; methods of purification of funds; and the beneficiaries of such funds and zakat.

Mr. Gaffney cautioned each firm about broader questions over the United Arab Emirates’ ties to Islamist extremism, terrorism and smuggling prohibited goods into Iran:

“Directors and officers of financial institutions often profess no knowledge about Shariah. They typically claim to have no responsibility or accountability for their actions that explicitly or tacitly support SCF. On receipt of the legal memorandum, however, they can no longer maintain a willful blindness and ignore their responsibility to disclose the violent theopolitical goals and methods of Shariah.

“Specifically, the addressees can no longer claim that they know nothing about Shariah advisors, and therefore have no responsibility or accountability to disclose the statements by those advisors supporting violent jihad, terrorist organizations, warfare against all non-Muslim states and discrimination against, and, in many cases execution of non-Muslims of all faiths, ex-Muslims (apostates), homosexuals, anyone supporting separation of church and state, etc.”

For more information about the Center’s efforts to counter Shariah-Compliant Finance and related work on the dangers posed by the seditious agenda it is advancing, please visit www.StopShariahNow.org. The Center for Security Policy (www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org) is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.

EXAMPLE OF LETTER SENT BY CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY

10 June 2008
James Dimon
Chief Executive Officer
JP Morgan Chase
20 Park Avenue
New York, NY 100

Dear Mr. Dimon:

Your firm may be exposed to reputational risk and/or price risk if you are engaged in Shariah-Compliant Finance, or invested in firms that are. Such risks are evident in a lawsuit filed by a consortium of insurance firms, including Chubb, Ace and Allstate, and by the investment firm of Cantor Fitzgerald, accusing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Dubai Islamic Bank and others of funding the September 11th terror attacks in which nearly 3000 Americans were murdered. (See: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/hot_topics/19374964.html.)

At its heart, this lawsuit is about Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF, also known as Islamic Finance). SCF is a device used to legitimize Shariah Law, a brutally oppressive theocratic-political-military doctrine. The Taliban imposed Shariah Law in Afghanistan. Today, it is the law of the land in Iran, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia and Shariah controlled regions around the world.

According to Shariah Law, companies engaged in SCF must donate to Islamic charities via zakat (tithing for charitable purposes) and the “purification” of proceeds of investments that Shariah advisors deem to be “impure.” There are eight categories of Shariah-approved charities, of which half can be interpreted to mean vehicles for funding violent jihad (holy war).

In the lawsuit currently before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Dubai Islamic Bank and other named Islamic Shariah banks are accused of funneling zakat and “purified” funds to Islamic charities, which then funded Al-Qaeda terror. There is growing concern on the part of the SEC, Treasury and Justice Departments and the Congress about the lack of transparency in the Shariah-Compliant Finance market and the lack of enforcement of existing securities laws.

We have provided these policymakers - and are now providing you - with a legal memorandum entitled Civil Liability and Criminal Exposure for U.S. Financial Institutions and Businesses engaged in Shariah-Compliant Finance. It concludes that any U.S. financial institution promoting Shariah-Compliant Finance here or abroad is at risk of violating federal and state securities laws that require due diligence, transparency and disclosure, RICO statutes,and other laws that prohibit funding of terror. Providers of Islamic indices and rating agencies may also be at such risk.

To minimize your firm’s reputational and price risk, we strongly recommend that you examine your portfolios for exposure to Dubai Islamic Bank and other named defendants. The extent to which your prime brokers may be involved in Shariah-Compliant Finance should also be reviewed with care. We urge you to contact them and ask if they are disclosing: material facts about Shariah Law; its mandate for jihad; public verbal and written statements calling for jihad made by their paid Shariah advisors; methods of purification of funds and; the beneficiaries of such funds and zakat.
Connections between the UAE and terrorist organizations and their sponsors are in need of greater transparency. Examples include:

1) The UAE was one of only three countries worldwide to recognize the Shariah Taliban regime.
2) The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
3) In 2007, the UAE was the foremost exporter of goods to Iran.
4) Iranian intelligence and military operatives work freely in and from Dubai.
5) In 2007, Dubai collected $13.5 billion in zakat taxes from oil-producing companies and branches of foreign banks in the form of a “tax” on banks and companies doing business in the UAE. Accounting for these funds is opaque.
We would be happy to provide you or your legal counsel a briefing on the results of our research into these subjects.

Sincerely,

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
President and CEO
Enclosure

LIST OF HEDGE FUND AND BANK RECIPIENTS

HEDGE FUNDS

• Scott M. Amero,Chief Investment Officer - Fixed Income,BlackRock, Inc.
• Dwight Anderson,Co-Founder and Principal,Ospraie Management LLC
• Cliff Asness,Chief Executive Officer,AQR Capital
• Paul Terrence Batemen,Chief Executive Officer,JP Morgan Asset Management
• Ottavio Francis Biondi,Founder,King Street Capital

• Lloyd Blankfein,Chief Executive Officer,Goldman Sachs Global
• Kevin Cannon,Chief Executive Officer,Zweig-DiMenna International Managers
• Steve Cohen,Chief Executive Officer,S.A.C. Capital Advisors, LLC
• William Crowley,President and Chief Operating Officer,ESL Investments
• Anthony da Costa,Chief Executive Officer,KBC Multi-Strategy Arbitrage
• Stephen Daffron,Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director,Renaissance Technologies LLC

• Raymond Thomas Dalio,Chief Investment Officer and President,Bridgewater Associates
• Max Darnell,Chief Information Officer,First Quadrant Tactical Currency
• Robert E. Diamond, Jr.,Chief Executive Officer,Barclays Capital
• Joseph A. DiMenna,Managing Director,Zweig-DiMenna International
  Managers
• Mr. Robert C. Doll,Chief Investment Officer - Equities, BlackRock, Inc.
• Steve Feinberg,Chief Executive Officer,Cerberus Capital Management
• Lawrence D. Fink,Chairman and Chief Executive,BlackRock, Inc.
• Joshua S. Friedman, Managing Partner, Canyon Value Realization
• Blake Grossman, Chief Executive Officer,Barclays Global Investors

• Edward Kelly,Chief Executive Officer, Sagamore Hill Capital Management
• Mark E. Kingdon,Founder, President,M. Kingdon Offshore
• Seth Klarman, Chief Executive Officer,BAUpost
• Robert Kleinschmidt,President, Chief Executive and Chief Investment Officer,Tocqueville Asset Management
• Edward Lampert, Chief Executive Officer, ESL Investments
• Robert Lourie, Head of Futures Research,Renaissance Technologies LLC
• George Lucas, Principal,Lucas Capital Management
• Russell J. Lucas, Principal, Lucas Capital Management
• Michael Mackey, Principal, Kingdon Capital Management
• Howard Marks, Chairman, Oaktree Capital Management L.P.
• Robert Matza, President, Goldentree Asset Management
• Ravinder Mehra, Chief Information Officer,Vega Relative Value
• Jason Mraz, Co-Founder, Principal and Head of Trading, Ospraie Management LLC
• Daniel Saul Och, President, Och-Ziff Capital Management
• Robert L. Padgette, Managing Director and Founder, K4
• Clifford Press, Principal, Oliver Press Partners, LLC
• Quintin Price, Chief Investment Officer - International Equities, BlackRock, Inc.
• Allan Reed, Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Sachs Asset Management
• Bruce Richards, Chief Executive Officer, Marathon Asset Management, LLC
• David Sachs, Chief Executive Officer, Hockey Capital
• David Elliot Shaw,Chief Executive Officer,D.E. Shaw Group
• Francois Sicart, Chairman and Founder, Tocqueville Asset Management
• Nathaniel Simmons, Principal, Renaissance Technologies LLC
• James Harris Simons, Chief Executive Officer, Renaissance Technologies LLC
• Paul E. Singer, Founder and Principal, Elliot International
• Thomas Steyer, Senior Manager, Farallon Capital Management
• Henry Alexander Swieca, Managing Partner, Highbridge Capital
• Steve Tananbaum, Chief Executive Officer, Goldentree Asset Management
• John R. Taylor Jr., Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer,FX Concepts
• K. Robert Turner,  Managing Partner, Canyon Value Realization
• Eric Vincent, President and Chief Operating Officer, Ospraie Management LLC
• Leon Wagner, Chairman, Goldentree Asset Management
• Susan L. Wagner, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock, Inc.
• Alan Winters, Chief Operating Officer,Kingdon Capital Management

BANKS

• Josef Ackerman, Chief Executive Officer, Deutsche Bank
• Christopher Augustin, Chief Investment Officer, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
• Paul Terrence Batemen, Chief Executive Officer, JP Morgan Asset Management
• Lloyd Blankfein, Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Sachs
• James Dimon,  Chief Executive Officer, JP Morgan Chase
• Phillip Freeburn, Chief Investment Officer,UBS
• Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Lehman Brothers
• John Mack, Chief Executive Officer, Morgan Stanley
• Mr. Jim Nish, JP Morgan Chase
• Bridget O’Connor, Chief Investment Officer, Lehman Brothers
• Vikram Pandit, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup
• Marcel Rohner,  Chief Executive Officer, UBS
• Jim Rosenthal, Head, Firm Technology and Operations, Morgan Stanley

Please repost this to show support for this excellent investigative piece, and for the courage, integrity and acumen of this investigative journalist.  Attacks=viral distribution.

If you doubted we need a national Rachel’s law (Free Speech Protection Act introduced by Senator Lieberman) …this should convince you.  Support Rachel Ehrenfeld’s important lawsuit to protect American first amendment rights.

Connecting the Dots Between the Candidates

[UPDATE]

This article has received the attention of the subject of the article and his solicitors in the UK. As they have asked for the email to be kept private, and very strange that I get a pdf and not even a polite asking to speak with me, I will address some of the generalities they bring up. That is to keep in the spirit of the correspondence and yet address their concerns as much as possible.

First off, let me say that I am a United States citizen, born in the US, lived and worked in the US, now disabled in the US, writing in the US, and have this lovely low-traffic blog in the US that gets the ability to be read worldwide. If having readers in the UK makes me published in the UK, then that is true of Iran, Kenya, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, and quite a few other places. I really don’t keep track of who reads me or from where. Indeed, given such things as the TOR network, any attempt to filter traffic would, as the Chinese are finding out, prove well neigh impossible.

I will point out that when I utilize a blockquote or indent, I am utilizing a quotation from another source, that I link to. I also try to do that thematically, so that the same color holds to a source, but there are only a limited number of colors that I find pleasing to read, so a careful reader needs to pay attention to source citation and linkage.

From there I will say that I found The Observer article referenced to be very fascinating including the give and take between the subject of the article and The Observer, as the subject had specific points of contention that he brought up. And The Observer was addressing those. There was some problem between their original publication date, in 2001 and the subject bringing up his problems with the article. At the time, unaware that there was a lawsuit ongoing, I linked to the information brought up by the subject with The Observer. In my two extracts, I utilized 176 words and 165 words from the article for a total of 340 words, which I considered to be ‘fair use’ under US standards. The electronic media, being unlike print media in which linked material can be brought up to examine a discussion, video or other interplay by the reader allows for such linking to put the reader into the position of determining if I am giving a fair analysis of the material.

That fair analysis included reading the original, the subject’s response and the response to that.

Part of that give and take is allowing there to be a record of what was inaccurate and how such things get published. At the time, being unaware of legal proceedings and taking what was happening as an interplay between the subject and The Observer I utilized a web cache for the historical document being referenced as many of the larger media systems tend to age or pull down articles on a regular basis. There is little way for a reader to know if there is a lawsuit starting up or not, or if that is part of the regular shifting of articles. Thus I considered that I had given fair use of content, linkage to both parts of a dispute and review of both the original article, the subjects protest and the rejoinder. This includes all parts of it that I had cited, and I did my best to ensure that other articles linked to in my article had distinctive research outside of The Observer, in particular the work of Kommisar and Kommersant.

Do note that I did the exact, same, thing with regards to the later Financial Times article and the subject’s problems with it.

The next point of interest is in the lack of reading ability by the solicitor and/or the subject: at no point in my article do I say or impute that the subject gave money to Sen. Obama’s campaign funds of any sort.

With regards to having talked or spoken to Saddam Hussein: BNP-Paribas certainly had discourse with the Government of Iraq during the late 1990’s as it was the chosen source for selling oil under the Oil For Food program. As the subject has a substantial investment in BNP-Paribas during the Oil For Food scandal, it is difficult to see how there could be no gain, connection or understanding that funds gained under that system would benefit the subject. For said subject to have no connection to it he must have no interest, investment or seek no gain from such things and ensure he is isolated from them via non-investment in said financial institution. Do note that the subject is cited via linkage as being the largest shareholder out of that union of banks. While a minority it is, apparently, the largest minority.

Also, movement of funds from NY to Europe would most likely take place via Clearstream and its SWIFT system. It is that system that had particular problems show up from criminal organizations utilizing it for their funds transfers. Even after that is revealed, the subject takes an interest in Clearstream, which then goes on to have yet another scandal take place while the subject is an investor. I am astonished that the subject does not do research before investing his funds.

Further I do cite, in particular, that the subject was outside of Iraq when Saddam Hussein came to power.

Further I do cite, in particular, that Saddam Hussein killed a brother of the subject in his coup that saw 66 executed.

As the subject has banking interests in CIPAF and banking in the UK arises, it is more than fair to say that those are areas in which business is transacted for the subject. As said subject is wealthy and has substantial business interests and assets utilizing the concept of ‘empire’ sounds applicable.

One problem raised is in a fair use excerpt of The Guardian taken from Fordham University’s own fair use excerpt. Note source citation and linkage in the article. Also note that the other link to The Guardian also has the information that the author of that article apologizing to the subject.

As some of the information addresses citations to articles by Lucy Kommisar who has done hard work getting records from across Europe, the Middle East and the Americas would be in order. Those are, from my reading of her work, on the record sources from government and industry, and often court documents. Particularly that of the Italian ‘Clean Hands’ investigation, which has official court testimony about the subject on record.

As to the subject’s conviction in France in the TotalFinaElf conviction: innocence is decided by a court.

I specifically cite the Al Taqwa banking system for *its* movement of funds as a way to examine how that is done within a larger article.

Note also that the transit system for funds is described by Lucy Kommisar and I am paraphrasing her words after a quotation linking to her work on that.

I thank you for informing the world, some few decades after published reports of the subject being Saddam Hussein’s cousin that he is not. The time to correct that record, from what I have seen from multiple sites, was a couple of decades ago.

In describing how the ‘nebula’ of holders around BNP-Paribas interacted with Menatep bank and their work to shift funds via multiple systems to hide industrial gains in Russia, it is difficult to conceive of that as being ’small scale’ or limited. Being part of that ‘nebula’ of ownership, and the largest minority, plus backing Russian firms seeking to go after such gains it is then incumbent upon those backing such institutions to ensure that they have no dealings with them and seek no gain from those things. As BNP-Paribas was interested in or took part in backing such companies looking to gain profit from the fall of Yukos, it is difficult to estimate how that could be a non-connection with interest in Yukos oil assets. Note articles citing that involvement with such companies. And even that the subject might become just a bit gunshy after having one of those deals turn sour on him!

I specifically cite that the subject is a passive investor in Orascom. I also note that he sought out the partnership and leave it up to a reader to examine the many, many links from defense sources, telecom sources and more general reporting sources to decide if I am giving a fair rendition of those events.

Freerepublic you will have to deal with on your own, but do note that I am not attributing post-war bribes to the subject, but as a listing of events looked at in the article.
===
To wrap this up:

I find it highly interesting that I am considered to be published in the UK! That means I am now global in scope, and so is each and every individual who posts anything, anywhere at anytime. As I make no money, as in zero income and a substantial time investment in this work, I gain zero benefit financially from it. And as my readership is low, due to the complexity of the work I present, I can barely say that I register on anyone’s website statistics: not only is this work gaining minimal reading, but I expect that most readers will find it too challenging to read through one of my more or less normal posts.

Also, when looking to give a review, I link to multiple sides of a dispute if I can determine that: A) there is a dispute, and B) that it is ongoing. In each and every instance I have done so, to allow the careful reader to go to the linked sites. It is that discourse between individuals that can yield up facts end demonstrate how differences in viewpoint can lead to differences in opinion and recording of facts.

I have tried to give an honest effort at the ‘fair use doctrine’ while providing links to full articles. That is necessary so as to ensure that the reader can gain a good, overall feel for the larger document, present cogent viewpoints and otherwise demonstrate that excerpts are not ‘cherrypicked’. Unfortunately those not used to reading on the web may not know how to recognize when material is quoted from other sites and when a direct rendition is being given.

When dealing with those that have substantial sums to invest in institutions, it is essential to point out when the institution is doing work and when the individual is doing work. That line gets blurred when the investment goes above that of other investors.

This is some of the most complex reading that an individual can run across and I endeavor, at each and every point, to ensure that links are put in place, that I separate out the views of others by demarcating them and otherwise ensuring that readers know they are getting quotations and to otherwise make sure that there are separations between what I garner from those views and those views, themselves.

It is unfortunate that the subject wishes to have such things taken down as it is that conversation, held in the open, and openly cited and linked, that can give understanding and credence to a wider view and better understanding of events. Instead of assertions, I perform linkages, often to primary documents and, if not those, then reputable researchers who link to the primary sources. It is that honest, open dialog and understanding that can work out exactly what events are, what they mean and what they imply beyond just those involved.
[END UPDATE]

This has been a few months to remember in politics with serious swings up an down on all sides with candidates going from front-runner to no-running and vice-versa in no time flat. Through it all, however, have been some sign posts that have been coming up again and again that, really, have been showing that there is an underlying set of associations between the rich and infamous and the current crop of politicians. Now not all the candidates, it is true, got to hob-nob with these folks, but the trend amongst the front-runners and well financed is interesting.

To start out lets get on with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) smiling his way to the nomination, if only he could shake the pesky associations with the Chicago Mob, its ties to the Democratic Machine and the relationship with one Antoin “Tony” Rezko. It is not everyday that one gets to see a Presidential candidate appear on the witness list of reputed mobster, and we might even get to hear the money exchanges between said mobster, Tony Rezko, Michelle Obama’s interest in the neighbor’s yard, and a bit of funding coming from the mobster’s friend, Nadhmi Auchi, to help pay for the deal so that Mrs. Obama could have some ‘gardening space’ which would, more or less, include a whole lot next door. A lot owned by the Rezkos. Yes, all sorts of graft, corruption and cash moving around between foreign financiers, local Syrian born mobsters and a Presidential candidate will make one wonder just what the hell is going on. All of this because the friendly financier wanted to be the ‘Donald Trump’ of Iraqi origin in Chi-town, via land deals featuring lots in upscale areas… or soon to be upscale, at least. And a few folks realized it wouldn’t look good to have a Presidential candidate of the ‘new and clean’ variety get a bit dirtied knowing these sorts of folks, so better to just forget it all, hmmm?

Apparently lots of folks want you to not even think about names like Rezko and Auchi because you just may have a nerve tingling on that letter one. The reason is that Nadhmi Auchi tends to have a *lot* of connections out there, due to his past, which starts with Saddam Hussein and continues on to this day getting to meet Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria via his ties to the British parliament, Anglo-Arab organization. His main claim to infamy… no, wait a second… he has no *single* infamous claim that stands out above the rest. So it is best to start at the beginning and this article from The Observer on 06 APR 2003 (Source: waybackmachine) gives us the quick synopsis of that early life:

In a series of astonishing new developments in a story first broken by this newspaper two years ago, a fresh Observer investigation has discovered that Auchi:

· Was tried alongside Saddam Hussein for his involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate an Iraqi prime minister in Baghdad in the 1950s;

· Used money from military contracts in Iraq to establish a business and banking empire in Britain and Luxembourg; and

· Was employed to pay alleged bribes from Italian companies to win oil contracts in Iraq because of his close links to the regime.

The disclosures have already prompted opposition MPs to demand full details of Auchi’s relationship with the Blair government.

Nadhmi Auchi’s influence stretches to the highest levels of the British political establishment and he counts princes and presidents among his personal friends. The wealth of the Iraqi billionaire outstrips the Queen and Sir Richard Branson and has given him access to the rich and powerful from Crown Prince Abdullah of Jordan to Lord Sainsbury. He collects prominent former politicians from across Europe as directors of his companies.

Yes, quite the busy life! In the earlier article, that was updated on 16 NOV 2003 at The Observer in which Mr. Auchi responds to the original, we also see some of the other things that went on with Mr. Auchi including being conveniently out of Iraq when Saddam staged his final coup in 1979 and executed 66 Ba’ath party members, including Mr. Auchi’s brother. Mr. Auchi would not only include lucrative arms deals via front companies in Panama, but also dealing with the Italian Mafia. This from the report:

In the mid-1980s he got to know Pierfrancesco Pacini Battaglia, a man whose role in directing money to politicians led Italians to call him ‘the one below God’. Saddam Hussein had ordered the construction of a pipeline from Iraq to Saudi Arabia. Battaglia and Auchi secured the contract for a Franco-Italian consortium. In a statement to New York lawyers Battaglia alleged he knew how. ‘To acquire the contract it was necessary, as is usual, especially in Middle Eastern countries, to pay commission to characters close to the Iraqi government… In this case, the international intermediary who dealt with this matter was the Iraqi, Nadhmi Auchi.’ Auchi has denied any wrong-doing.

The scandals unearthed by the ‘Clean Hands’ investigating magistrates destroyed a generation of corrupt Italian politicians. But they didn’t affect Auchi. He carried on receiving the compliments of Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat leaders, a tasteful water colour from Lord Sainsbury and sober advice from the presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament.

For those of you who remember the days when Italy seemed to go through a government a year, this was part of the investigation causing the turmoil. So that gets one up to the late 1980’s… but Mr. Auchi would continue to be busy, so busy that he would get caught up in a few scandals as seen in this Institute for Ethics and Economic Policy at Fordham University cache of article summaries, from 2003:

LONDON: FRANCE DEMANDS EXTRADITION OF ARRESTED IRAQI BILLIONAIRE FRIEND OF UK POLITICIANS- Nadhmi Auchi the Iraqi billionaire with controversial links to Saddam Hussein’s regime was arrested in London this week on a French extradition warrant after two years under British protection. Auchi whose Business Empire is worth more than Pounds 1bn, is expected to appear corruption trial involving the giant oil firm TotalFinaElf. The trial, expected to start next month, will involve testimony about Mr Auchi’s alleged role in channeling a pounds 28m commission from the French oil company to buy an oil refinery from its Kuwaiti owners. British politicians linked to Auchi included former Tory chancellor Norman Lamont, former Tory health minister Gerry Malone and former Conservative Home Office minister, Tom Sackville, who resigned from a board of one of the banks Mr Auchi bought into, BCN of Germany. Scotland Yard is quoted as saying Auchi is bailed to appear at a London magistrates Court on April 8, 2003. His business empire is also involved in pounds 27m lawsuit by the National Health Service, which claims one of Auchies pharmaceuticals firms, is one of those that colluded to overcharge the NHS for the drug warfarin. (The Guardian 02 Apr 2003 summary by Davis Joseph Weddi).

He would go on to be convicted of the charges under TotalFinaElf and get 15 months suspended sentence for it. At the 10th International Anti-Corruption Conference Jean-Francois Medard presented a paper on the relationship between Elf, Angola and individuals at the head of the banking concerns involved, like Nadhmi Auchi (and for a not officially published work you can’t quote from, it is excellent). The resultant method used to ensure that funds, arms, oil and company assets would not be easily traced is what is termed ‘a nebula of networks’ and I commonly refer to as person-to-person trust-based networks. As many have heard about jobs ‘it is not what you know, but who you know’ the exact, same thing goes on for illegal transactions of arms, equipment and money laundering. It is a question of who you know and who they trust who can help lead to getting whatever needs to be done, accomplished. This includes not only the direct p2p network, but also trusted organizations and the individuals in them, so that things like Masonic Lodges (quite the societal networking group for European business and mafioso) in which the establishment, itself, represents a node on the p2p network.

It is this network that would include individuals like Pierre Falcone, Etienne Leandri, Charles Pasqua, Marc Rich, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Nadhmi Auchi and organizations like Elf, the corrupt Menatep Bank of Russia (used by the Abromovich organization) and the Bank of New York system compromised by the Berlin couple and Semion Mogilevich. By exchanging Angolan debt and cash from other parts of the system, the entire affair was able to arrange for arms to be shipped illegal to Jonas Savimbi in Angola. That entire deal, involving so many multiple level ‘cut-outs’ in the banking structure (between BNP and the corrupt BoNY system), off-shore banks and money transfers (mostly to paper front companies) plus the high level of individuals and organizations ensured that no one would be able to properly figure the whole thing out. Just to be sure, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich due to his high level of involvement in that and with the Russian Mafia.

Yes a busy 1990’s for Nadhmi Auchi that would see, beyond this, beyond his overcharging for medications in the UK and generally making money hand over fist, he would also be involved with the other TotalFinaElf scandal: Oil For Food. This would become Saddam Hussein’s main method of money laundering and moving funds outside the oversight of the UN because the UN, quite plainly, lacked the ability to conduct oversight on the entire affair. It says a lot when Saddam was able to tell the UN to use BNP-Paribas which just happens to have Nadhmi Auchi as its largest shareholder. One of the recent sidelights of BNP-Paribas is its takeover of a previous bank used to support Saddam Hussein’s regime: Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). Actually he may have been involved in that, but, as Kenneth Timmerman points out in a 01 NOV 1996 document (Source: gulfweb) it may have had so many high level individuals on both sides of the political aisle involved, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, that the Dept. of Justice let those things that might actually still be prosecutable slide under the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.

What was apparent, however, is that the system that Saddam had been setting up since the 1960’s and 1970’s to supply Iraq and launder its funds had demonstrated its capability. In the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal of DEC 2000, Amatzia Baram looks at how that system operated on a p2p level and was utilized to undermine OFF and ensure that there would be a supply of arms and munitions for the Iraqi regime, plus funds available for enticing French, German and Russian companies into pressuring their governments to remove the sanctions. On 13 APR 2003 the Times Online (UK) would publish the background on how the system set up by Said al-Mahdi for Saddam worked in the west.

Like the work seen in TotalFinaElf and its ‘nebula’, the al-Mahdi system would feature numerous offshore companies and accounts in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Panama, Bahamas and elsewhere. The account also links those to the French firms Dassault and Thomson-CSF, along with Russian arms manufacturers that continued to sell to Iraq during the sanctions. Other firms included in this web are Dumynta, Radistal and Technoservice International (Vaduz). The funding web, itself, would go much farther, however, and the reporting of Lucy Komisar on 02 JUN 2004 would show the connections between Saddam Hussein’s al-Mahdi system and the Taqwa banking system used by al Qaeda:

The Banca del Gottardo in Lugano, Switzerland, moved al-Qaida money via the Al Taqwa bank, a shell bank that operated through correspondent accounts at the Gottardo branch in Nassau. It also handled payments for the Saddam money network. The bank’s spokesman wrote, “Please be advised that we do not intend to make any comments or discuss any issues with you regarding the article you proposed in your e-mail.”

Banque Paribas, headquartered in Paris, with a significant portion of shares owned by Saddam’s cousin Nadhmi Auchi, moved money for the Al-Mahdi network in the 1980s and was the bank chosen to handle the Iraqi oil-for-food payments. In fact, Iraq insisted that Paribas handle the oil-for-food escrow account.

A corporate document for Al Taqwa Trade, Property and Industry Co. Ltd. of Liechtenstein — an al-Qaida network shell company also shut down by the United States — lists Banque Paribas, Lugano, where it had accounts. (Paribas in 2000 merged with another French bank to create BNP Paribas, with Auchi continuing as one of the largest shareholders.)

This puts Nadhmi Auchi’s role in the banking system front and center, having BNP (and then BNP Paribas) serve as the transit bank for funds shifting from the al Qaeda banks of Al Taqwa and for the corrupt Al-Mahdi banks for Saddam Hussein. Saddam had sent his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan Al-Tikriti, to Switzerland in 1968 (yes, you read that correctly) to scope out the lay of the financial land as he knew that Iraq would need a method to quietly and untraceably move funds for arms, munitions and other needs, so that Western institutions would have trouble tracking them. She then points to Said Rahim Hussein Al-Mahdi and Nadhmi Auchi as the key operatives sent in after that to establish ties with Said’s father-in-law, who had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and who was already working for Barzan in Switzerland. Nadhmi Auchi’s role was to establish multiple offshore companies and accounting systems, and would see the construction of a web of companies that were approximately one sheet of paper deep. Even more fun is that Banca del Gottardo is the subsidiary of the collapsed ‘Vatican Bank’, which had collapsed due to fraud via offshore companies. Al-Mahdi himself, however, would not resist temptation to skim funds and was executed in 1986 by beheading in Iraq.

Marc Rich, who had been indicted for tax evasion to the tune of $48 million dollars and illegally trading in Iranian oil after the revolution there, was *also* a part of this network. The Kroll report would detail the links between Marc Rich and Iranian banking sources and the ability to use those in shifting funds through the al-Mahdi and Al Taqwa systems. Before the ‘Clean Hands’ investigation in Italy, a previous Italian report had detailed the following:

After Roger Watson in 1987 became Saddam’s financial consultant, he also became an adviser to Auchi’s International Company of Banking and Financial Participations (CIPAF). According to official Italian documents, Auchi used Panama to launder kickbacks for two contracts for the Iraqi military. An Italian parliamentary report in 1987 said that one of them, Dowal, set up by Watson, was used to collect $23 million in hidden commissions on Baghdad’s purchase of warships manufactured by the Italian shipyard, Cantieri Navali Riuniti.

This sophisticated system of bribes, kickbacks, overcharges, offshore banks and companies would exist *before* the OFF scandal broke and *before* the Bank of New York penetration a bit less 6 years later by the Red Mafia. Nadhmi Auchi was no stranger to large scale financial fraud by the time OFF rolled around, to say the least, and had his own network clearly set up when the Red Mafia added its capability into as seen from the Angolagate material above. For a time the largest criminal and underground network for financial transactions and illegal purchases spanned from the Bank of New York (done by the Ivankov gang with help of Semion Mogilevich), trading in the largest industrial money laundering scheme seen in Trans World Commodities run by the Chernoy brothers and with the most complex schema of paper companies ever seen (or unseen) done by Simon Reuben, shift funds via BNP Paribas system to and from Iraq (my look at this part of the Red Mafia is here), Iran and al Qaeda, and include the burgeoning natural gas empire being shifted over to Dmitri Firtash in Ukraine (my look at DF Group is here). This banking and funds transfer system literally spanned the globe, reaching all the way to bank affiliates in China and Japan, to Australia, and across Africa and South America all the way to San Francisco and Vancouver, BC. While BCCI may have been a forerunner of this, it is dwarfed by orders of magnitude by this combined system and the complexity of it remains so opaque that multiple individuals running it remain not only free but uncharged with *anything* because no one in securities and banking investigation can figure it out. Or, as Jules Kroll points out, no one wants to figure it out.

To get an idea of how the Al Taqwa system worked there is the testimony of Steve Emerson before the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, looking at this problem of terrorist funding, on 12 FEB 2002. He goes through the informal p2p ethnic systems like the Hawala system (my previous article on that and the Black Market Peso Exchange system is here) and then goes on to the more formalized Al Taqwa banking system:

Al-Taqwa was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1988 in the Bahamas and later in 1991 in Algeria, as the beginning of —establishing a world bank for fundamentalists“ aimed to compete with Western financial institutions.64 Al-Taqwa reportedly has other branches in Liechtenstein, Italy, Malta, and Panama with its headquarters in Switzerland. As a world bank for fundamentalists, al-Taqwa was open to money laundering with a number of terrorist organizations, most notably al-Qaeda and, in the past, Hamas.

Al-Taqwa enabled al-Qaeda‘s financial network to obscure its paper trail by transferring money from one al-Taqwa branch to another. French Intelligence officials claim that by 1999, the bank was channeling funds for Osama Bin Laden.65 A Swiss investigation that started in 2000 revealed that al-Taqwa transferred funds for Bin Laden from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates to al-Taqwa‘s affiliates in Malta and then on to Switzerland and the Bahamas.

He then goes on to describe how institutions obscure their past via name changes, shifting of connections and other means so as to remove those prior connections from current institutions. Then by utilizing the paper companies and institutions offshore, the money trail becomes harder and harder to trace. After that he looks at HAMAS’ Al-Aqsa Bank, Beit al-Mal, and its working with Citibank via Joint Ventures. Finally he examines the purely p2p courier system, for securely moving documents and cash via trusted routes and individuals outside of the banking system.

It is *that* system that was added on to the Al-Mahdi system of Saddam Hussein. As Lucy Komisar reports on 15 MAR 2002, this Al-Taqwa system was going on to the knowledge of the FBI for 4 years and it was only 9/11 that drove them to actually start looking at shutting it down.

Now to catch up on *another* scandal of Nadhmi Auchi, and that is the Clearstream scandal. Clearstream is, or was, the trusted financial transaction system for Europe to exchange currencies during financial moves overseas. This system, in theory, had its own safeguards to ensure that each financial transaction was from a reputable source, covering a reputable company with assured funds. Unfortunately it didn’t work out so well and was compromised by the Bank of New York system and was then utilized by the likes of Auchi for shifting OFF funds through it via less than reputable banks and companies. This was part of the reason he was prosecuted by France on the Elf deal, as TotalFinaElf was also involved in the oil shipment end of Oil For Food.

Auchi’s contacts via Angolagate and OFF would lead in two directions during the end of the BoNY phase of the system. The two cover almost the same timeframe but two distinctly different areas: 1) Yukos and the entire financial problems and scandals around the Russian oil giant, and, 2) Orascom and the cell phone scandal in post-invasion Iraq as Auchi flexed his financial and personal relationships in Iraq to land that deal. Going by size, then, is Yukos, which was part of the great ‘oil bonanza’ period in post-Soviet Russia that saw investors trying to throw money at anything with an oil well attached to it or a funding source with it. BNP Paribas would invest in Tyumen Oil (Source: Global Finance JUN 2002, via findarticles), Russian Standard Bank (Source: Global Finance SEP 2004, via findarticles) and $10 billion into Gazprom as part of the Yukos deal (Source: The Independent (UK) 30 DEC 2004, via findarticles). As Yukos failed under investigation for fraudulent deals, the various backers would start lining up for their share of it, and that would include BNP-Paribas.

On 01 NOV 2003 Lucy Komisar would start to look at the French raid of the offices of Menatep bank, the bank behind so much of the Red Mafia and Russian Oligarchs, and lists the transactions and major front companies utilized by Menatep in its financial fraud system. In just a bit over a year the entire arrangement had come apart, and the shaky finances underlying Yukos crumbled, as described by Kommersant on14 DEC 2004. A few days later the NYT on 18 DEC 2004 described the syndicate of banks unwilling to back bad money with good as the following:

A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman in London, Joanna McCulloth, declined to comment. But the syndicate of banks - which included Deutsche, J. P. Morgan, ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Calyon and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson - will not be lending money to Gazprom in the next 10 business days or risk defying the judge in Houston.

Gazprom “strongly believes the decision was unfair and the filing of a bankruptcy proceeding by Yukos in the U.S. was an attempt to circumvent Russian law,” said Nikolai Krylov, a partner at the Winston & Strawn law firm, which is representing Gazprom. “Their main assets were in Russia.”

In one of the delightful turn-arounds of East-West relations, the Yukos representative in the US owning a single house in Houston was able to file for bankruptcy of the Russian oil giant in the US! No wonder the banks were upset… BNP Paribas, having been burned by Yukos and unable to get its money out of it also would pull out of its deal with Standard Bank. They would also try a lawsuit in the UK, but that would not work out, either, and so the thing slowly dragged on with no one wanting to declare Yukos fully dead, but not alive, either. By 21 MAR 2007 the very same syndicate of banks would try to back Rosneft’s bid for Yukos, or what remained of it, but that wouldn’t work out. This is one case where ‘writing off the loan’ just might be the best idea, but at $10 billion, I can see why they want their share of the remains.

This then takes us to the smaller part of things with Orascom, and Naguib Sawiris. Mr. Sawiris is an Egyptian who is the head of Orascom, and brought in a new IT director in 2004 to help out with the Iraq contract, but is also on the lookout to expand his cellphone business to Italy, which is pretty natural as head of one of the largest private equity groups in the region. This expansion would also see opportunity in Hong Kong and by moving into that market, Orascom would become one of the 10 largest telecom companies on the planet. That said, going into Italy it almost is a given that you will get corruption charges laid against you, as happened with Mr. Sawiris this year.

It is that Auchi backed deal in Iraq that, however, keeps coming up in the news, even once the contract was let in 2003. One of the major requirements was that anyone looking to provide cellphone service had to have actual backing inside Iraq. Also, there would be three contracts let for the North, Central and South of Iraq, so no one service would get the entire deal. Thus when Orascom backed by Mr. Auchi arrived the cry of ‘cronyism’ went up (Source: Atwola 09 NOV 2003, NY Daily News 10 NOV 2003) which would lead to investigations delaying the contracts (Source: Globalsecurity 14 NOV 2003). By 16 NOV 2003 the Guardian’s Nick Cohen would write about The Politics of Sleaze and then apologize for a few parts once Mr. Auchi complained in 2007. By 26 NOV 2003 the Financial Times was looking at how a swift cellphone process had become entirely bogged down due to the cronyism charges. They, too, would apologize to Mr. Auchi about getting some facts wrong. In DEC 2003 the African and Middle Eastern Telecom Newsletter was reporting that there were accusations of vote rigging in who would get the cellphone contracts. As would the Baltimore Sun.

On 22 JUN 2004 Defense Tech would report the military was going to cancel the cellphone contracts because Orascom was on the verge of bankruptcy. And on 01 AUG 2004 the Times Online would publish (cache here) a report on some of the problems of OFF, BNP Paribas, and Orascom, and here is what the view taken by Mr. Auchi on Orascom was:

However, last November the businessman was fined £1.4m and received a 15-month suspended sentence in France for receiving illegal commissions from Elf, the oil firm.

He has extensive hotel, banking, construction and aviation interests in the Middle East. Another company in which he has a significant stake, Orascom, won a contract to provide a mobile phone network in Iraq after the war. But American officials now allege that the firm paid bribes of more than $10m to secure this deal.

Auchi says he is a passive investor in the firm, had nothing to do with the mobile phone contract and is unaware of any wrongdoing.

Yes, just a ‘passive investor’, so don’t blame him for any problems in his home country! I am sure he had *nothing* to do with finding ‘local representatives’ or investors! A UN report in DEC 04 would be a bit more prosaic noting that Orascom had over-promised and under-delivered on service, quality and quantity of units. By 20 FEB 2005 The Age of Australia would report on the corruption involved with the Orascom deal and even that the late Yasser Arafat had been an *investor* in it. By 25 APR 2007 PM Maliki would be demanding payment of $250 million for the licenses to operate in Iraq from each of the three companies involved, as part of an extended deal. Orascom would finally have enough of this and sell its Iraqi unit to a Kuwaiti firm called Iraqna.

What did catch my eye during this, however, was a Newsmax article cache at Freerepublic of 24 NOV 2005 that looked at Mr. Auchi, post-war bribes, and the companies involved with Orascom:

Another major supplier of equipment for the Iraqi cellular system is French-based Alcatel. The French communications company has already been linked to BNP Paribas. Alcatel profited from U.S. and Iraqi money supplied to rebuild the war-torn country.

“The winners in the Iraqi cellular license tender were Saddam’s most senior financiers, their Egyptian and Iraqi supporters, the bank BNP Paribas, European cellular corporations - particularly Alcatel and Chinese telecom interests such as Huawei,” states the May 2004 Defense Department report.

“If the French had provided a couple of divisions to take Baghdad they could not have gotten more,” concluded John Shaw with disgust.

Now that is not a name that I really expected to see in Iraq, again, as the article points out the Chinese company in question had supplied a fiber optic air defense comm system to Saddam pre-war. So a bit of looking into things and, sure enough, on 24 SEP 2004 the People’s Daily Online announces that Huawei is getting backed by BNP Paribas for putting in a network in Algeria. And Nigeria. This also brings up the problem of the Huawei deal to try and buy 3COM which is *also* being backed by BNP Paribas. And that brings up a connection to another Presidential candidate in this, that I had previously written about on this exact, same, topic: Mitt Romney.

You see Mitt Romney is the head of the Bain Capital group of companies and they have been working with Huawei ever since Huawei took a bit of Cisco technology and needed some backing to strongarm their way into the long distance router/services market. This has raised alarm bells all over the place as Huawei is seen as an organ of the People’s Liberation Army of mainland China, and is more than willing to exploit any and all technical advances it can get its hands on. That deal is nearly dead, but their Joint Venture continues on. Amazing to think that there are now firm connections by Nadhmi Auchi to Barack Obama, both the Clintons (via Marc Rich) and now to Mitt Romney (via Huawei).

This, then, brings us to the next connection to make and that is going back to Russia again. Here the name is familiar to me, and I’ve been doing some side research on it and, well, lets just take a look at the article via Miningweb 03 JUL 2007:

The more insiders like Goldman and Gilbertson leave Rusal disgruntled, the more evidence that could be sought from them to indicate what, until now, the insiders have been reluctant to concede that they have even discussed - what is Deripaska’s ongoing relationship with Cherney, and why doesn’t he pay him off? This question has become especially sharp for US citizens working for Deripaska, since it was revealed that sometime between July and October of last year, the US Government decided that Deripaska’s undertakings to it lack the veracity to warrant his retaining his entry visa. US citizens with potentially culpable knowledge of Deripaska’s business practices in Tajikistan, Nigeria, and Guinea, for example, include Peter Clateman, Rusal’s general counsel, and the new coordinator of the legal side of the IPO. Under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Clateman is liable to answer the allegations lodged in ongoing or decided court cases filed in the US and UK, regarding payments to foreign officials. US bankers and banks, through which Rusal’s cash to and from Tajikistan and Nigeria, has flowed, appreciate they may be in a similar position.

It is noteworthy that the banks reported to be in line for Rusal’s IPO mandate - JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Deutsche Bank - don’t include a bank from the large syndicates which have loaned money to Rusal over the past six years, since its formation. In June, Rusal announced a $2 billion secured fund-raising by ABN AMRO, Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Calyon, Citi, ING, Natexis and Societe Generale. Why is there no overlap? Why aren’t the banks which know Rusal best also participating in the IPO?

One reason is that the banks which have been lending cash to Rusal longest also have in place the most elaborate methods to secure repayment of aluminium loans, in the event of default. Thus, they know how Rusal’s aluminium trading schemes work; why the metal changes title as it crosses the Russian frontier; and how title, metal and money move between intermediary traders, final users, and Rusal’s profit centres.

Knowing the confidential secrets of Rusal’s trading schemes - also the subject of a successful lawsuit against Rusal by the Reuben brothers of London - creates for the lending banks a knowledge of transaction risk, cashflow and taxation risk, which these banks have sworn to keep secret. They would be in a more exposed position towards unsecured share- buyers, a position they may not want.

Yes, BNP Paribas involved with Oleg Deripaska! Yes, I’ve written about him, too. He has been working hard to get a visa to get into the US, but the FBI has been shutting down that effort… but he had hired someone unexpected to lobby for him: Sen. Bob Dole. And he has worked just a bit more to spend some time with the final person to be connected to him via a meeting with Sen. John McCain.

There you have it, the billionaire once removed from all the major Presidential candidates: Nadhmi Auchi.

Who knew that Presidential politics would turn out to be so fun?

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=kgiaid=62308%2Ehtm

June 23, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Judged by any objective standard, after only a year in operation, Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy [KGIA] has been a disaster. The presence of this institution, designed by its now departed founder Dhabah Almontaser to be a madrassah - an Islamist indoctrination center - has served only to create further division in a community already fractured along religious and ethnic lines.

KGIA is at its base a quota school, a political toy conjured up - underwritten by liberal outside funding sources - to serve a noisy minority demographic, to fill a nonexistent need.

It should not be shocking then, that this type of school would be encumbered by controversy from day one, public recriminations, charges and counter charges, lawsuits, threats and retaliation against critics of the school, have all served to render it a hollow shell of what NY school chief Joel Klein had originally promised.

KGIA operates in a lockdown atmosphere; access is tightly controlled so that the public really has no idea of what goes on throughout the school day.

What little is known, is unsettling.

The school has been unable to provide for the reasonable safety of its students, to the extent that many teachers feel that their only recourse is to rely upon the local police department to deal with recurrent incidents of assault and other serious behavior problems because school’s security measures and personnel are entirely ineffective.

As we mentioned in a previous piece.

“…Security problems abound, with one teacher confiding to a member of the KGIA design team that he had been assaulted today but was forced to take the matter to the police because school security did not respond. He further stated that for his efforts he had been reprimanded by school leadership…” [see, Khalil Gibran International Academy Revealed As A Sham]

The reality of KGIA’s failure permeates staff and support groups, which are uniformly dispirited.

Reflecting that perspective, on the eve of what was supposed to be a year-end bash and celebration of KGIA’s anniversary, Lena Alhusseini, Director of the school’s flagship supporter, the Arab American Family Support Center [AAFSC], abruptly cancelled the event saying cryptically, “unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, we have reviewed the situation with several of our partners, our Board and staff, and we have decided that now is not the appropriate time to proceed with the party.”

The feeling that KGIA is on the ropes permeates the institution with possibly over 50% of parents already having taken steps to opt out of KGIA’s pan-Arabic experimentalism and switch to a more traditional educational format next fall.

Indicative of a growing sense of hopelessness among the school’s staff, KGIA Science instructor Sean R. Grogan noted, “the school has been abandoned by all those who claim to support it. We have not received the instruments and items we were told to expect. Our space is inappropriate; we have been forced to teach in a reading room and a hallway…Our social worker is being let go, against the wishes of many of the students, parents, and staff due to a personal bias on the part of the former principal…” [source, http://kgia.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/press-release-january-17/]

Mr. Grogan was recently terminated….

Read the entire article here…

Jodie Evans is second from the left, getting friendly with Chavez…

…it took awhile, but FINALLY my exclusive story about Jodi Evans, CodePink co-founder bundling money for Barack Obama has hit the mainstream …and beyond.

RedState.com has the details here.

Over at Politico, Jonathan Martin has a blog up about another Obama radical. This time, it’s big time campaign bundler and Code Pink co-Founder Jodie Evans.

Evans is a notorious figure, notorious most recently for an inflammatory interview where she suggested that Osama bin Laden was basically being a reasonable chap defending his home:

Jodie Evans:… “We were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia, that was the message of Osama, was that because we had our bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United States.”

Paul A. Ibbetson: “Do you think that’s a valid argument?”

Evans: “Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East?”

You can catch the audio here.

I am scheduled to be on Paul Ibbetson’s show next week. I am more than happy to share my original reporting (Kristinn Taylor, contributor) with him, and the rest of the blogosphere.

Excellent! The Euro-Weenies are already starting to wail over the early results of the Irish vote on the treaty.

CNN: Politicians from the government and major opposition parties — all of whom campaigned for the treaty’s ratification — appeared uniformly grim-faced Friday as counting progressed in 43 constituencies nationwide.

“I do not see how we’re going to claw back our position based on the numbers I’m seeing. It’s going pretty much all the way of the `no’ camp,” said Pat Rabbitte, former leader of the opposition Labour Party.

And anti-EU activists expressed growing confidence they would triumph when official results are declared Friday afternoon.

“People felt a convincing case for the treaty had not been made, and they felt hectored and bullied into supporting it while the wool was being pulled over their eyes,” said Richard Boyd Barrett, leader of a hard-left pressure group called People Before Profit.

No official results were available. However, Ireland’s legions of “tallymen” — seasoned political activists who observe the ballot counting and provide reports to their own parties and pressure groups — said the “no” camp appeared well in the lead in rural and urban working-class areas.

Tallymen and other observers said the pro-treaty vote appeared to be holding up only in Dublin’s more middle-class districts. But even there, they said, the “yes” votes were barely running neck and neck with the “nos.”

Heh heh heh……excellent. *L* KGS

UPDATE: Post Mortem!!!!!!!!!

Dublin - Ireland had already moved into “post-mortem” phase by midday Friday as unofficial tallies, known for their accuracy, showed that the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty was in for a thrashing in the referendum. Leader of the Libertas group, which spearheaded the no campaign, Declan Ganley said that it was “a great and proud day to be Irish.”

Another worry:  that they may come over the border into the U.S. as well:

Venezuelans recruited by the Interior Ministry trained by Hezbollah

Via Noticias 24, journalist Patricia Poleo reports that Venezuelans of Arab ancestry are being recruited under the auspices of Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela’s vice-Minister of the Interior, for combat training in Hezbollah camps in South Lebanon.

Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela’s vice-Minister of the Interior, along with others affiliated with Hezbollah, such as Lebanon-born Gahzi Nasserddine currently the Business Liaison at the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus, along with [his brother by surname] Ghasan Atef Salameh Nasserddine (a) Abu Ali, are in charge of recruiting young Venezuelan Arabs affiliated to the PSUV [Chavez’s own Venezuelan Socialist Party], to be sent to South Lebanon for combat training in Hezbollah camps.

The purpose of the training is for preparing the youths for asymmetrical war against the United States.

Once back in Venezuela, the youths are welcomed by two members of the Islamic Center of Venezuela, who were previously involved in illegally bringing Hezbollah Lebanese through the area of Margarita with fake passports. During February 2002, one of these men brought a group of Hezbollah members who came from Brazil, from Margarita, and then sheltered at the Islamic Center in El Paraiso.

Once the Venezuelas return from their training in Lebanon they meet with radical youths from the PSUV affiliated with UNEFA [the university run by the Armed Forces] and the Unversidad Bolivariana de Venezuela [Venezuelan Bolivarian University].

Read it all at Fausta’s blog here. 

And read earlier articles on Hezbollah in S. America here from Fausta’s blog: http://faustasblog.com/labels/Hizbollah.html

This is an ongoing problem, the threat to national security is significant, and we do not have a presidential candidate in either party who will protect the borders adequately or in time.

Dawa: An invitation to non-Muslims to accept Islam. Performing Dawa involves both words and actions. Is the US health care system really that bad off?

AlArabiya.net: “A group of Muslim doctors has opened the first free clinic in Ohio run by Muslim physicians, press reports said. “It is a small attempt by Muslims to help solve the health insurance crisis in America,” Dr. Esam Alkhawaga, a psychiatrist and spokesperson for the free clinic, told Al Arabiya.net on Monday.

[…]

The clinic is the brainchild of the Dayton Mercy Society, a Muslim group that promotes community service and Islamic values. “Our goal is to engage the Muslim community in outreach work and let people know that Muslims are part of this community,” Dr. Alkhawaga, who sits on the board of the society, told the Dayton Daily News. “Most of us (at Dayton Mercy) are physicians and we felt as Muslims this could be the least we could do to give back to America for what they’ve done for us.”

As far as mere words are concerned, all could be very well, fine and dandy, but the more one learns about Islamic “outreach”, one discovers that there are usually strings attached where one wouldn’t expect to find any. Also, why in the world does it have to be called a “Muslim clinic“, I wouldn’t have given it any further thought had he (Dr. Alkhawaga) stressed that it’s just a clinic that happens to be run by a group of Muslim doctors, …and open to all.

Perhaps it’s to reassure Muslim women that they won’t have to see any male doctors, so that would make the clinic’s true purpose really one of servicing the Islamic community, not the public in general. It also means that they will be reducing contact between Muslims and the non-Muslim community in the Dayton area, which carries all the hallmarks for setting up of a parallel society. Not good.

But as usual with zakat, it’s less than appears to the eye, it’s only open 4 hours a week, so big deal! It’s maximum grandiosity with minimal actual donations, or in other words, big PR, little action. If the Muslim clinic is truly resting on “Islamic values”, it will be interesting to find out exactly, what values they are promoting and to whom?

If one were to be cynical, the next logical question would be, will they be offering free clitoridectomies? More here. *L* KGS

H/T Baron Bodissey

The call-in number is (646) 915-9870.

Callers welcome!

Friday, April 4 (two hours): This week on the nearly famous Gathering Storm Radio Show, our guests are Nonie Darwish, Cassandra (USA) and Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld (Read her bio).

If you are unable to listen live to the radio show, you can listen to recordings of the radio broadcasts later by CLICKING HERE.

UPCOMING SHOWS
April 11: Amil Imani and Maccus Germanis
April 18: Pamela Geller
April 25: Bob McCarty, Elisabeth of Austria, and Allyson Taylor
May 2: Bill Warner

Right here in America, Dr. Sultan and her family have had to go into hiding!

A little less than two years ago, Time Magazine published the following about Dr. Wafa Sultan, outspoken critic of Islam: Also in 2006, Time Magazine recognized Wafa Sultan as one in "The Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World."

Whatever happened to supporting Dr. Sultan, an American citizen, in her exercise of freedom of speech here in America? A bunch of Mo cartoons got in the way?

By so sharply voicing her beliefs, Sultan crystallizes the mission for the rest of us who want to take the slam out of Islam.

Moonbats can prance around wearing kafiyyehs and carrying the flags of our enemies.  The moonbats get protection.  But Wafa Sultan doesn’t?

What is happening to America?

Islam’s ‘Public Enemy #1’
Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire.

By Raymond Ibrahim
Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

A third reason for Botros’s success is that his polemical technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme — from the pressing to the esoteric — often expressed as a question (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”). To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes — always careful to give sources and reference numbers — from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet — the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present — the illustrious ulema.

Typically, Botros’s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open — and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,” — “evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains — not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence — which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him — which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Botros played the key role in exposing this obscure and embarrassing issue and forcing the ulema to respond. Another guest on Hala Sirhan’s show, Abd al-Fatah, slyly indicated that the entire controversy was instigated by Botros: “I know you all [fellow panelists] watch that channel and that priest and that none of you

Incapable of rebutting Botros, the only strategy left to the ulema (aside from a rumored $5-million bounty on his head) is to ignore him. When his name is brought up, they dismiss him as a troublemaking liar who is backed by — who else? — international “Jewry.” They could easily refute his points, they insist, but will not deign to do so. That strategy may satisfy some Muslims, but others are demanding straightforward responses from the ulema.

The most dramatic example of this occurred on another famous show on the international station, Iqra. The host, Basma — a conservative Muslim woman in full hijab — asked two prominent ulema, including Sheikh Gamal Qutb, one-time grand mufti of al-Azhar University, to explain the legality of the Koranic verse (4:24) that permits men to freely copulate with captive women. She repeatedly asked: “According to sharia, is slave-sex still applicable?” The two ulema would give no clear answer — dissembling here, going off on tangents there. Basma remained adamant: Muslim youth were confused, and needed a response, since “there is a certain channel and a certain man who has discussed this issue over twenty times and has received no response from you.”

The flustered Sheikh Qutb roared, “low-life people like that must be totally ignored!” and stormed off the set. He later returned, but refused to admit that Islam indeed permits sex-slaves, spending his time attacking Botros instead. When Basma said “Ninety percent of Muslims, including myself, do not understand the issue of concubinage in Islam and are having a hard time swallowing it,” the sheikh responded, “You don’t need to understand.” As for Muslims who watch and are influenced by Botros, he barked, “Too bad for them! If my son is sick and chooses to visit a mechanic, not a doctor — that’s his

But the ultimate reason for Botros’s success is that — unlike his Western counterparts who criticize Islam from a political standpoint — his primary interest is the salvation of souls. He often begins and concludes his programs by stating that he loves all Muslims as fellow humans and wants to steer them away from falsehood to Truth. To that end, he doesn’t just expose troubling aspects of Islam. Before concluding every program, he quotes pertinent biblical verses and invites all his viewers to come to Christ. …read it all here….

— Raymond Ibrahim is editor of The Al Qaeda Reader.

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Friday, March 28: SPECIAL SHOW!

This week’s scheduled guest for the entire hour will be Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch. He is the author of two bestsellers: The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Others of his books include Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t; Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith; and Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West.

In advance of the show, you can submit questions for Mr. Spencer in the comments section of this post; when the show is on the air, you can submit questions in the chat room at this link.

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NOTE: Our August 31, 2007 interview of Mr. Spencer is HERE.

Statement to the UN Security Council by Ambassador Dan Gillerman, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations
“Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question”

Mr. President,

Allow me to congratulate you on your very able stewardship of the Council this month, and thank you for your principled leadership. We are grateful to the Secretary-General for honouring us with his presence and for his commitment. I also wish to thank Under-Secretary-General Pascoe for his briefing. On this note, I wish to make clear that Israel does not act against “alleged” militants but against declared and recognized terrorists. I hope “alleged militants” is not the UN’s new definition of terrorism.

Mr. President, Distinguished Excellencies,

The struggle of the moderates against the extremists which is raging around the world is the defining challenge of our day. Across the globe, forces of extremism seek to transform resolvable political conflicts into endless religious wars, using all means of violence at their disposal. They fight not for their own rights, but to deprive the rights of others. In our region, Iran, a notorious state sponsor of terrorism, uses proxies like Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas among the Palestinians to draw the moderates into a cosmic battle, where victory is not about achievement but about total annihilation.

The very ideology of the extremists makes a dialogue with them impossible. Which is why Israel - along with other like-minded states - understands that dealing with extremists is a zero-sum equation. In contrast, negotiations with the moderates, as Israel is doing with a moderate Palestinian Authority leadership that renounces terrorism and violence, can yield great benefit for both parties.

I want to believe that my Palestinian colleague represents the moderates in spite of the distorted picture he felt compelled to draw today.

As we have seen, the extremists will stop at nothing to break the coalition of moderates and destroy all prospects for peace. During the last month, Hamas fired more than 300 rockets at Israel, at least 23 of them Iranian-made Grad missiles that hit the city of Ashkelon, a quaint coastal city with a population of 120,000.

The rocket attacks marked an escalation of violence not just in number, but also in weaponry. Grad rockets - smuggled into the Gaza Strip from Iran during the breach of the Gaza border this January - have greater range, larger warheads, and fragment on impact. Hamas’ new weapon of choice means that a quarter of a million Israeli civilians now live in constant danger of rocket fire. We can all thank Iran for adding another weapon to the Hamas arsenal, in addition to its already heinous suicide attacks and deadly Qassam rockets.

Hamas and its terrorist state backers bear sole responsibility for the escalation of violence. The Secretary-General rightfully told the Council at the meeting held earlier this month (quote) “I condemn Palestinian rocket attacks and call for the immediate cessation of such acts of terrorism, which serve no purpose, endanger Israeli civilians and bring misery to the Palestinian people” (end quote). Indeed, it is terrorism - plain and simple.
    
As Hamas unleashed its terrorism on the civilians of Ashkelon, it continued to wreak havoc and daily terror on the people of Sderot - a small but resilient city of 23,000, where children no longer run around on playgrounds; they now run to bomb shelters. Such is the reality in Sderot, where 15 seconds is all you have to find safety before a Qassam rocket comes crashing down. 

Mr. President,

Though some wish to refer to the apparent lull in Hamas’ rocket attacks, I must warn that the perceived quiet is only on the surface. The bombs keep ticking, albeit quietly.

The rockets out of Gaza have not stopped. Hamas is using this time to smuggle in and produce more rockets. Building rockets is not quiet. It is a silent promise - a promise of what is to come next: more terror and more violence, more extremism and more bloodshed. 

In fact, we have seen the great lengths that the extremists are willing to go to in order to kill and maim Israelis. Just over two weeks ago, a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the Mercaz Harav rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem and ruthlessly gunned down eight young men, who were studying the Bible in the upstairs library. Eleven others were injured, many of whom remain in serious condition. The terrorist chose his target carefully; Mercaz Harav is one of Israel’s most revered institutions of Zionism and Jewish learning, and it is situated in the heart of Jerusalem, footsteps away from the seat of the Israeli Government and our most cherished democratic institutions. 

As medical and rescue teams rushed to the scene, as the Israeli public heard the news of this appalling massacre, as mothers and fathers were called to retrieve the remains of their slaughtered sons, the extremists in Gaza rejoiced at the spilling of Israeli blood. I am sure that many in this Council watched with horror and disgust as Hamas terrorists joyfully fired their rifles into the air and passed out candy to children in celebration. If anyone doubted what the extremists stand for, the reaction in Gaza to the murder of eight Israeli boys sets the record straight. It was also a stark reminder that these were the same people who danced on the rooftops after 9/11.

Which is why, Mr. President, it was so sad and disturbing that the Council could not condemn the terrorist attack - particularly in spite of your valiant efforts and those of many other distinguished ambassadors on the Council. The Security Council has a longstanding practice of condemning terrorism, no matter the victims, no matter the location, no matter the perpetrator, no matter the motivation. Yet the Council could not unanimously condemn this terrorist attack and intentional killing of civilians, for the Council was blocked by a politicized opposition, of one Member State in particular.

The hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by this state, with its long history of terror does not bode well for this Council, and draws sad and alarming conclusions as to the screening process states undergo before attaining a seat on this august body. It was indeed a sad moment for this Council, but also one that should be a wake up call to us all. 

Mr. President,

Lately, a particularly worrisome trend has been apparent when it comes to the discourse concerning our region. Some have a penchant for equating the lawful actions of states in defense of their citizens with the violence of terrorists whose goal is to endanger those very civilians. The misguided tendency to accept the “status quo” of terrorism - as expressed even by some UN officials in their statements and reports - is simply unacceptable. Such parity, which is often in the name of an ill-conceived balance, undermines the strength and credibility of moderate states to bolster one another and isolate the extremists.

Mr. President,

Israel goes to great lengths to ensure the safety and well-being of all civilian populations - Palestinian and Israeli alike. Whereas Israel makes all efforts to protect civilians in accordance with international law, Hamas indiscriminately fires rockets into Israeli civilian areas. Whereas Israel ensures that medicines and fuel enter the Gaza Strip to reach hospitals and needy civilians, Hamas hijacks those trucks and diverts them to its bomb making factories and terrorist camps. Whereas Israel allows humanitarian convoys into Gaza - more than 1600 trucks and over 20,000 tons of aid in recent weeks alone - Hamas cynically fires on those same crossing points, so it can fabricate a pretext for inciting the Palestinian public against Israel.

Moreover, the cruelty of Hamas continues to be seen in its holding of Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by that terrorist organization in June 2006 and begins today his twenty-second month in captivity. All the while, Hamas has refused to provide details of his condition or well-being. We continue to hope and pray for his safe return home.

Surely, no similarities can be drawn between Israel and Hamas. The immeasurable difference between the moderates and the extremists can be seen both in their rhetoric in this Hall and their actions on the ground.

In this context, I can only hope that my Palestinian colleague’s poignant outcry against the deliberate killing of children, describing it as a sinking to the abyss, was really directed at the Hamas terrorists he again failed to mention by name

Let us be very clear: while for Israel every dead Palestinian child is a horrible mistake and tragedy, for the terrorists every dead Israeli child is a victory and a cause for celebration.

Mr. President,

Allow me to briefly turn to the situation along our northern border. As you know, Security Council resolution 1701 (2006) changed the reality on the ground following the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and constituted an important achievement for this Council. Hence, the international community must ensure that the implementation of resolution 1701 remains a priority issue, and my delegation supports the Council taking the appropriate action to show its resolve.�