Posted on 11/08/2005 5:19:30 AM PST by SJackson
In describing his guerrilla army, Mao Tse-tung used an aquatic analogy: “Guerrillas are the fish, and the population is the sea in which they swim.” He realized that a neutral, if not supportive populace was essential to guerrilla success. Once the majority was swayed to at least tolerate the guerrillas, then only a small portion need be committed to the cause to achieve victory. Today’s Islamofascist terrorists are ignoring Mao’s dictum in dealing with populations – witness the atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians by terrorists occupying Fallujah and Tal Afar – and in so doing have alienated themselves from the populations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This arrogance will in time contribute to their failure.
But the terrorists have applied his metaphor assiduously to the financial sphere, for the modern Islamofascist terrorist movement swims in the rich waters of international finance. Far from being poor, ignorant peasants as many in the West fancifully envision the terrorists, these men and their organizations are highly sophisticated, technologically aware, and extraordinarily adept at moving money within the intricate web of international financial institutions. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of these terrorists is that many of the most virulently anti-Western have matriculated in British and American institutions of higher learning. More than one detainee in Guantanamo has an advanced degree in international finance from schools such as the London School of Economics. Admission standards may have changed, but one does not reasonably expect to find a simple Afghani opium farmer conscripted by the Taliban to be on the roster of distinguished graduates.
So for the modern terrorist money – and lots of it – is the ocean in which they swim and without which they will cease to live. Post-9/11, one of President Bush’s stated objectives was to dry up that ocean and deny the terrorists the funding needed to carry out their horrific attacks. These sorts of financial tracking operations are done by analysts in front of computer screens pouring over endless printout sheets. It is mostly thankless work that is conducted in the back offices of CIA, Treasury, FBI, and Homeland Security. Information is obtained by liaison to foreign countries intelligence agencies and banking establishments – thus bringing in State Department, and though signal and information intercepts - that means the Pentagon and National Security Agency.
The vast majority of money transfers are accomplished by electronic means. In the early days, these systems were relatively unsophisticated and vulnerable. No longer. Today’s systems are under constant attack, but are protected by sophisticated, complex security software. It is a constant war of bits and bytes as hackers fight guardians in cyberspace. But so far sophisticated technology has been good news for the terrorists and those who support their cause, because it means that transfers are extraordinarily difficult to track. Tom Clancy’s new novel, Teeth of the Tiger, discusses electronic intercept and offers an optimistic view of American capabilities. We are not there yet. Highly encrypted software, multiple accounts in a myriad of international banking and financial institutions, and covert tradecraft, such as use of electronic “cut-outs,” can preclude any but the most persistent, careful analyst from finding the money trail. This is the challenge faced by our financial specialists who try to find walk the cat backwards to the lairs of leading al-Qaeda operational leaders.
Terrorists get funding everywhere imaginable. Some fundraisers are academics or private citizens – the Sami al-Arian case in Florida is one example – but by far the largest contributors are worldwide Muslim charities. These so-called charities are significant providers to al-Qaeda. Some of the largest and most generous are in the U.S. It was only a few years ago that the charities have been identified as the terror support groups they are. They have been legally challenged, investigated, and in some cases prosecuted, for funneling money illegally to al-Qaeda and terrorist accounts. The country behind most of the charities is Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi infiltration of American Islam has been as frighteningly quiet as it has been pervasive. Virtually every imam at an American mosque is a Wahhabi – Saudi trained, funded, and vetted – a religious leader who promotes a virulent brand of fundamentalist Islam with the ultimate aim of imposing Shari’a law upon the non-Moslem world. Even more frightening, our prison system is staffed by Moslem chaplains who are products of Saudi training. As a consequence, anti-American Islamofascist ideology is being taught to some of the most dangerous, unstable, and violent members of American society. Meanwhile, the mosques continue to beat the drums for anti-Israeli causes including fundraising for groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other terror outfits.
Al-Qaeda also has its tentacles into many other fields that generate money: semi-precious gems, opium and heroin, illegal traffic in birds of prey, and money laundering at an international level. Tanzanite, a semi-precious stone originating in East Africa, has been handled by an informal consortium of Muslim African distributors. While Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan and Somalia he and his henchmen moved in on the Tanzanite dealers and pressured them to provide protection money for his organization. Similarly, after relocating to Afghanistan bin Laden took over the lapis lazuli mines (many of which later became the legendary “caves” in mountain redoubts) and controlled export sales of the stones. Many of these channels of funding remain open today despite serious setbacks to al-Qaeda.
Similarly, bin Laden’s gangs, along with the fanatical Taliban, controlled opium production, distribution, and sale outside of Afghanistan. This operation also included manufacture into morphine base and ultimately into heroin. The Afghanistan poppy fields were the origin of much of the world’s heroin. The local farmers, while ostensibly under the thumbs of regional “warlords” were in effect working for bin Laden and his cronies, helping to fund the terrorists.
Meanwhile, across the Middle East and Central Asia strange, exotic gatherings are taking place. In what the Union for the Conservation of Raptors calls the “money camps,” elaborate, ultra-luxurious temporary facilities are periodically set up in remote places in the region for gathering of the rich Arab sheiks from Saudi, the Gulf States, and other Arab countries. These people meet and indulge themselves in many of their favorite activities, including sale of protected species of falcons and eagles that are used in sport hunting. Hunting with birds of prey is a traditional Arab male activity, essential to the macho image they like to portray, along with rhino horn-handled knives, and a bevy of wives and concubines.
At these money camps, huge amounts of money are exchanged for such trinkets, including the birds. Some of these illegal birds bring payments in the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions for the very rare. During the social sessions at the camps funding is also arranged for some of the sheiks pet projects, including the promotion of Wahhabi Islam and support for terrorist organizations like bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. It is a way of both salving their Moslem consciences and paying off the wolf that may turn on them if neglected. Read more of the story at www.savethefalcons.org.
All of these operations – the charities, gems, drugs, payoffs from the money camps, and other shakedown scams – eventually result in substantial sums of money put into terrorist coffers. Even larger than that, however, is the support – direct and indirect – that the terrorists receive from legitimate corporate business interests. These are investors who, according to Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, “hold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stocks in companies that partner with Iran, the other Islamofascist regimes and their friends.” This, in fact, is where huge, below-the-radar support for terrorism is largest.
Gaffney and his Center are sponsoring a “divest terror” initiative modeled on the South Africa divestment campaign that helped bring down apartheid. This is an issue most Americans are unaware of but need to know. By pressuring investment houses and other organizations such as endowments and trusts to divest from organizations that deal with terror states, Gaffney thinks “real pressure for change can be brought to bear.”
It is time that we accept the fact that our enemies are sophisticated and deadly in more than suicide attacks. We need to fight terrorists and those who support them on all fronts including the financial battles. Responsible Americans – acting as individuals and pressuring larger organizations – can make a critical difference in this war for survival.
ping
"Hunting with birds of prey is a traditional Arab male activity, essential to the macho image they like to portray, along with rhino horn-handled knives, and a bevy of wives and concubines."
This points out the essence of an arab muslim. A small-appendaged misogynist who needs all these so-called "macho" accoutrements to make himself feel "manly". In reality, most saudi arabs are smallish, whiny pissants who, if it weren't for oil, would be eating sand.
Here is someone else that got Saudi money for a job well done..
The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Sudanese officials testified they tried to offer bin Laden to the U.S. just three months earlier, in March 1996.
In a 2002 speech to a New York business group, Clinton confirmed the Sudanese offer, and said he tried to press the Saudis to take bin Laden:
"At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan."
Citing "Saudi sources," columnist Robert Novak reported in January 2002 that the royal family came through with a donation to the Clinton library of up to $20 million.
Why is the UAE Issuing Falcon Passports?
These passports will enable falcons to travel abroad along with their owners. The passports are being issued under a new regulatory system to register all middle eastern captive falcons.
Understandably, trained falcons are valuable and need to be tracked. But these passports also require the birds to undergo a set of vaccinations. There are a couple of concerns that arise with this. Some of these vaccinations the birds receive are modified live viruses.
Viruses and bacteria could be genetically engineered to evade the human immune system, to create a more effective biological weapon, a leading researcher into bio-weapons said yesterday.
In the past 30 years biotechnology has been revolutionised by molecular biology and genetic engineering. These techniques, used to control infectious diseases, can also be used to create more effective biological weapons. Speaking at the conference on the future of weaponry, Professor Kathryn Nixdorff, of the University of Darmstadt, said that dangerous micro-organisms had already been produced inadvertently during attempts to modify vaccines and viruses.
In the veterinary field, there has been a general trend away from the use of modified live vaccines (MLV). Modified live vaccines produce a superior vaccine response compared to a killed vaccine (KV); but, they often create concerns for the animal to revert to virulence. These concerns are magnified when virulence occurs in non-adapted wildlife that people have no control or limited control over.
One of the main concerns is from viral shedding in an immunosuppressed host that is vaccinated with a modified live virus. All falcons that are successfully "infected" (vaccinated) with a modified live virus vaccine can be made to shed the vaccine virus under immunosuppressive conditions. Under normal conditions, vaccinates latently harbor the virus and do not shed. No one can be certain that the shed vaccine virus could not be an introduced pathogen for other wildlife or human hosts.
The modified live viruses that falcons with passports receive to date that are publicly known are:
Several experts in the field have made the modified live virus vaccines an issue and have publicly stated that because of the potential dangers associated with the use of modified live vaccines that the use of killed viruses (KVs) are completely safe. These experts also suggested that the UAE be more judicious in the production and use of vaccines.
Much-smuggled gem aids al-Qaida
November 16, 2001
Much-smuggled gem aids al-Qaida
Bought, sold by militants near mine, tanzanite ends up at Mideast souks
By Robert Block and Daniel Pearl
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MERERANI, Tanzania, Nov. 16 — In the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, miners with flashlights tied to their heads crawl hundreds of feet beneath the East African plain, searching for a purple-brown crystal that will turn into a blue gem called tanzanite. Many of the rare stones chipped off by the spacemen, as the miners are called, find their way to display cases at Zales, QVC or Tiffany. But it’s a long way from these dusty plains to U.S. jewelry stores, and the stones pass through many hands on their journey. Some of those hands, it is increasingly clear, belong to active supporters of Osama bin Laden.
A TRADE GROUP called the Tanzanian Mineral Dealers Association denies that bin Laden’s al-Qaida has any role in the tanzanite trade. But in the bars and cafes that dot the streets of Tanzania’s mining community, the radical connections are no secret. According to miners and local residents, Muslim extremists loyal to bin Laden buy stones from miners and middlemen, smuggling them out of Tanzania to free-trade havens such as Dubai and Hong Kong.
“Yes, people here are trading for Osama. Just look around and you will find serious Muslims who believe in him and work for him,” says Musa Abdallah, a Kenyan who has worked as a tanzanite miner for six years.
EMBASSY BOMBINGS
Many details of the trade remain murky, such as whether its main role is to earn money for the militants or simply to help them move funds secretly about the world. Still, William Wechsler, a former National Security Council member in charge of counterterrorism under President Clinton, says there is little doubt that bin Laden’s links to gemstones, including tanzanite, have been used at times to help fund his terror activities. Al-Qaida’s dealings in tanzanite in the 1990s were detailed at length during the recent federal trial that convicted four bin Laden men in connection with the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
Alex Magyane, a Tanzanian government official actively investigating the tanzanite trade, says he has recently traced bin Laden-linked smuggling of rough stones through Kenya to bazaars in the Middle East. “Beyond any doubt, I am 100 percent sure that these Muslim gem traders are connected to Osama bin Laden,” the official says.
Tanzanite is so rare it is mined in only one place on earth, a five-square-mile patch of graphite rock here in northeastern Tanzania. Legend has it that Masai tribesmen discovered the gem when a bolt of lightning set fire to the plains, and some crystals on the ground turned blue. In 1967 an Indian geologist identified the stone as a rare form of the mineral zoisite and determined that it turned a velvety blue when heated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Tiffany & Co. named it “tanzanite” and promoted it as “the most important gemological discovery in 2,000 years.” Tanzanite became a U.S. marketing phenomenon, second in popularity only to sapphire among colored stones.
HEART OF THE OCEAN
Its popularity soared when movie fans learned that the sapphire heart-shaped pendant Kate Winslet hurled into the sea in the movie “Titanic” was actually tanzanite. By then, the U.S. was selling $380 million of tanzanite jewelry a year.
Yet Tanzania’s official exports of uncut tanzanite crystal totaled a mere $16 million last year. Rampant smuggling spirits as much as 90 percent of the production out of the country, Tanzanian government statistics show. Local traders often buy plastic bags full of rough stones, paying cash and exchanging none of the paperwork that would trigger a 3 percent export duty. And in faraway places where the rough tanzanite is cooked, cut and polished, such as the Indian city of Jaipur, dealers say they don’t question suppliers closely about sources.
Mererani, which is a 30-minute drive from the mines along a treacherous dirt road, is reminiscent of a Gold Rush town, with shacks, bars, brothels and hordes of young men hoping for a strike. Besides a few big mechanized mining operations, hundreds of individuals hold tiny, 50-yard-square claims that they mine as best they can. Working with the “spacemen” who descend the tunnels are “snakes,” the term for boys who sift piles of grit on the surface and sometimes wriggle into the crevices too small for adults. Restaurants play on the dreams of prosperity, taking names like New York and The Big Apple. But alongside the dreams and the decadence, a religious radicalism is brewing.
Tanzania’s Muslims, who make up about 40 percent of the populace, have long practiced a “soft” Islam, tolerant of drinking, revealing dress and their many Christian neighbors. But Muslim radicalism began to rise in the early 1990s, fueled by poverty and financial support from Islamic charities abroad. It included the al-Qaida cell that bombed the U.S. embassy in Tanzania three years ago.
In Mererani, a new mosque called Taqwa has brought an openly radical Muslim presence to the tanzanite district. Taqwa’s imam, Sheik Omari, has issued edicts that Muslims miners should sell their stones only to fellow Muslims. The diktats breed resentment. “The fundamentalists have established a mafia to dominate the trade,” says Abdallah, the Kenyan spaceman. “Even if non-Muslims offer better prices for our stones, we are harassed by the fundamentalists not to sell to anyone but them. Many Muslim miners obey because they are scared of them.”
The Taqwa mosque is still under construction on a dusty side street. Inside a temporary prayer hall of wood and corrugated metal, miners are taught the importance of avenging the “arrogance” of America and defending Afghanistan from “U.S. oppression.” Support for bin Laden is a duty, miners are told. The faithful of Taqwa often address one another as Jahidini, a Swahili word that means Muslim militant. Some routinely greet one another as “Osama.”
After prayers, the mosque’s courtyard becomes an open-air gem-dealing space, where Sheik Omari and other mosque leaders trade tanzanite with small-time miners. In between haggling, the elders preach the virtues of suicide attacks as a way to defend their faith.
‘TICKET TO PARADISE’
“Remember, Islam teaches us that your body is a weapon,” Sheik Omari tells a group of young men in Swahili. “But if you die, you should take as many of your enemy with you as you can. This will be your ticket to paradise.”
Asked if he works with or belongs to al-Qaida, Sheik Omari gives a vague answer, as do others at the mosque. ” ‘Al-Qaida’ means ‘base.’ I don’t know any base. But Islam says we must support our brothers and sisters and those who defend Islam from its enemies,” Sheik Omari says.
The mosque traders, who aren’t licensed as dealers but act as informal middlemen, make clear the gem business must serve their militant brand of Islam. “We as Muslims must unite in dealing in gemstones to help one another and to generate funds to defend Islam from those who want to destroy it,” says Aman Mustafa, a Kenyan gem broker and teacher at the mosque, who says he has studied Islamic law in Sudan.
U.S. investigators of al-Qaida’s business say that it is designed to create self-sustaining networks and cells. Here in Mererani, some proceeds from the tanzanite trade are plowed back into expanding Taqwa’s influence. “This mosque is being built with tanzanite,” Sheik Omari says. “Our Islam is stronger with our efforts to create a Muslim force in this gemstone.”
KENYAN CONNECTION
Magyane, whose government title is regional mine officer, says some of the stones bought by the Muslim militants are smuggled through “rat routes” to the Kenyan city of Mombasa. That city is a stronghold of al-Qaida sympathizers and was a base for the 1998 embassy bombings.
Throughout the embassy-bomber trial this year in New York, several bin Laden associates or former ones, both state witnesses and defendants, referred to dealings in tanzanite in the mid-1990s. Testimony described how the stones moved through Kenya to Hong Kong via one of two al-Qaida companies, Tanzanite King or Black Giant, set up by defendant Wadih el Hage, a gem dealer and former personal secretary to bin Laden. El Hage is serving a life sentence for his role as the bombers’ financial facilitator.
Bin Laden supporters trading tanzanite today face no interference from Tanzanian authorities. “We have no proof they are involved in terrorist activities,” says the mining area’s regional governor, Daniel Ole Njoolay.
Adadi Rajabu, head of Tanzania’s counterterrorism police, adds that “before 1998, we never knew there were people smuggling gemstones on behalf of a terrorist group. But it is not an area we have looked at carefully. Most of our attention since 1998 has been focused on operatives who were likely to be engaged in activities like bombings, not business.”
ROAD TO DUBAI
Sheik Omari and Mustafa say they sell their stones to a prominent local dealer, Abdulhakim Mulla, who Mustafa says sends some of the gems on to Dubai. The dealer denies the Dubai connection. In any event, on a recent day Sheik Omari could be overheard telling miners to bring perfect stones to the mosque, because “our market in Dubai only wants perfect stones.”
To Westerners in the gem business, mention of Dubai raises alarms. For one thing, the emirate is known as a center of money laundering and the underground cash-transfer system known as hawala, much-favored by bin Laden. Dubai also has no gem-cutting industry. It lies far outside normal channels for the trade in rough gemstones, most of which go to Jaipur, to Bangkok or to a few other traditional centers of cutting and polishing.
“Dubai is the kind of place that should throw up a flag that something is definitely askew,” says Cap R. Beesley, president of American Gemological Laboratories in New York, which tests colored stones. “When you see any rechanneling through nontraditional destinations like Dubai, it means someone is finding some financial incentive not to play by the book.”
U.S. law-enforcement officials have identified Dubai as a haven for al-Qaida business interests. The FBI and the Treasury Department are currently trying to help the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, to crack down on the abuse of Dubai’s free-trade zones by terrorists and criminals. While this effort mainly focuses on gold smuggling, the U.S. also has reports that al-Qaida uses tanzanite as a way to move funds around the world, says a U.S. government investigator familiar with Dubai.
Out of more than 12,000 pounds of official tanzanite exports from Tanzania last year, a mere 13 pounds were sold to Dubai dealers. But Magyane estimates that a hundred times that amount actually made its way to Dubai, through smuggling.
CASH BUSINESS
In Dubai, on a strip of small jewel shops along a creek, Africans often go door to door trying to sell plastic bags full of unrefined gold and sometimes uncut gemstones for cash. D.B. Siroya, an Indian dealer based in Dubai for two decades, says he has sometime acquired rough tanzanite in Dubai on behalf of Indian friends, buying from sellers he knows.
The cash element is part of what makes the gem trade attractive to al-Qaida, according to Wechsler, the former U.S. counterterrorism official. He says the gem business is also attractive because it is tiered, with many layers of brokers, traders, cutters, polishers and wholesalers between miner and consumer.
A U.S. government-funded report last year for Tanzania’s mining industry noted that the country’s gem industry was “subject to abuse by money launderers, arms and drug dealers.” Afgem Ltd., a South African mining company, has been trying to change that. It advocates branding tanzanite stones with tiny laser-etched logos and bar codes, plus other regulations to discourage smuggling. But its plan last year ignited clashes with small miners, who, Tanzanian intelligence claims, were funded by foreigners with a stake in the current loose system.
The many tiers in the business make it possible for unsavory players to get in and out without leaving much of a trace. In the U.S. jewelry industry, which consumes nearly 80 percent of tanzanite gems, many participants say they have heard industry reports of tanzanite links to al-Qaida only recently, and tend to discount them.
QVC Inc. says it has met with its seven tanzanite vendors to make sure they comply with its ethics code, which says QVC won’t knowingly deal in gemstones “that originate from a group or a country which engages in illegal, inhumane or terrorist activities.” Darlene Daggett, executive vice president of merchandising, says that if tanzanite “definitively can be linked to terrorist activities, we will not continue to sell it.”
Zale Corp. says it has heard “bits and pieces” about such a link, but not enough to know if it needs to change procedures. “It comes down to knowing who we do business with and knowing where they get their stones,” says spokeswoman Sue Davidson. “But all we really know is what they’re telling us. Without some kind of gemstone authorization, certification and tracking system in place, we cannot guarantee that no stone has been smuggled.”
Zale CEO Robert DiNicola adds: “If it came to light that there is a problem with tanzanite, we wouldn’t deal with it.”
Jewelers of America, a retail jewelers’ trade group, says it has been focusing on the “far more significant consequences to human life” of “blood” diamonds, those whose sale helps to fuel African conflicts. “I’m not suggesting we are not willing to look at other connections,” but “we need more information,” says the group’s chief executive, Matthew Runci.
footnote: One of Daniel Pearl's last articles before he was killed. R.I.P. Daniel Pearl!
Let's hit them in the pocketbook and legalize heroin. LOL
~Falcon~
Noted!
Bookmarking for later.
Did anyone see the story on Fox a few days ago regarding the use of gift cards that terrorists use to launder money? Similar to drug money where the cards are bought anonymously [which is easy] and then traded for goods and/or money down the line.
Of course once again the falcon returns to our discussion.
:(
I missed that. Now we can add green stamps and coupon fraud to gift cards.
Thanks!
Shoulda gone for Riyadh first.
Saudis are our friends and need protection from us.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1517949/posts
This is the correct link
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1518136/posts
Falcons.
They travel with the owners and could shed any disease.
I am glad you found this report and posted it, as I recall thinking of all the ways it would work in the past.
I wrote that one :)
Bump for reference
thanks for the ping. What a great way to spread bird flu.
from the article: "At these money camps, huge amounts of money are exchanged for such trinkets, including the birds. Some of these illegal birds bring payments in the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions for the very rare."
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