“…Carter’s main post-presidential occupation has been founding and promoting the Carter Center… Carter spoke oddly of applying `new theories of conflict resolution’ to perennial conflicts around the world. The Carter Center, [Carter biographer] Peter Bourne explained, `was not to be a think tank in the traditional sense, turning out position papers or learned treatises. It was to be an action center, where its direct intervention would influence events.’ Or, as former secretary of state Dean Rusk put it, `Carter wanted to create a mini-United Nations in downtown Atlanta.’… [page 198]
“The Carter Center’s current annual budget is more than $35 million, and has accumulated an endowment of more than $200 million. …
“Much of the Carter Center’s early major funding, however, came from foreign sources — some of them questionable at best. … Carter also raised prodigious sums from Arabs and wealthy Palestinians. Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd supplied $1 million, and the notorious Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi underwrote a fund-raising auction. Another major funder was Hasib Sabbagh, a prominent businessman close to Yasir Arafat… The complete list of major foreign donors to the Carter Center includes the Sultan of Oman, the government of the United Arab Emirates, the Saudi bin Laden Group (yes, that bin Laden Group), the Saudi Fund for Development, the OPEC Fund for International Development, and Prince Abdallah of Morocco.
“But by far the donor who raised the most eyebrows was [Pakistani banker] Aga Hassen Abedi, the head of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). Abedi initially donated $4 million to the Carter Center in 1985, and gave an additional $17 million in 1988. … Carter traveled several times to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia aboard what [Carter biographer] Douglas Brinkley described as `BCCI’s palatial airplane.’ Carter’s prestige likely assisted BCCI’s efforts to establish substantial banking centers in the same countries Carter and Abedi visited together.” [pages 198-200]
Cited from, "Jimmy Carter's Saudi Sponsors: Benefactors of the Carter Center Have Included King Fahd and the Bin Laden Family", by Richard Poe, MoonbatCentral.com, August 2, 2005.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The House of Saud. Hypocritical little turd.
Another Democrat puts himself above the interests of his country. When does it stop?
I thought Bert Lance only gave his wife million-plus dollars of unsecured sweetheart loans fron the Calhoun National Kank?? You mean he robbed from other banks and savings and loans as well all to cross Jimmah's palms?!!
The tab was picked up by the federal S & L bailout no doubt.
Official website:
http://www.hasibsabbagh.com/
******
ARAFAT'S MONEY MAN KEEPS AWARDING HIMSELF
MID-EAST REALITIES - 4/16/2000:
If it were not for Hasib Sabbagh and his large bundles of money at crucial times
the Palestinians might not now be burdened with the Arafat regime and a "peace
process" that has robbed them of more rights, more property, and even their dreams.
A few VIP Palestinians, Sabbagh and his family among them, have benefited from
events of recent years. But the great majority of Palestinians are much worse
off than they were before, now facing a kind of double occupation as they are
converted from a once proud people to a status that can be likened to that of
the American Indian on reservations.
Indeed, if there is one super wealthy Palestinian personality who has squandered
the most multi-millions and supported the largest number of wrong people and wrong
groups for the longest period of time, it is surely Hasib Sabbagh.
Sabbagh made his money in the Gulf many decades ago working with the corrupt
regimes there. He did things for them. They did things for him. He took in large
amounts of money for his efforts, always being exceedingly careful to bend and sway
in accord with whatever the political winds of the moment, always making sure to
pay off and reward with favors those with the biggest entourage of power and money.
Sabbagh is an old and sick man now. His days doing behind-the-scenes favors
for the corrupt regimes of the Arab world are behind him. It wasn't that long
ago actually that this "proud Palestinians" was living in a big mansion on
Washington's Embassy Row handing out documents embossed with the crown of the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and working closely with King Hussein and other
captive Palestinians to put even more Palestinians under the control of the
British-installed dynasty. There are many things Hasib Sabbagh would probably
like to forget, and certainly doesn't want known.
But Sabbagh has actually spent his last few years buying himself praise and being
willingly used and unknowingly abused by a large contingent of mercenaries coming
to him for handouts and obeying the rules that come with such. His record of
supporting all the wrong things and wrong people, Yasser Arafat at the top of the
list, is legend to insiders.
A couple of years ago Hasib bought himself a banquet in Washington sponsored
by the Middle East Institute -- that conservative bastion of former oil company
and State Department hacks. He gave them alot of money. In return they
published a gushingly laudatory book about him and gave him a bunch of awards.
At the end of the lavish banquet evening there were tables full of the book
about what a great guy Hasib is -- not for sale, mind you, but rather given
away to anyone willing to take one or more.
Now on Tuesday Sabbagh, through his family and the Palestinian elite he has
bankrolled, has arranged to have himself honored by these Palestinian in Ramallah,
the biggest of the bantustans established by the "peace process" he and his
cronies have so tragically encouraged. He's probably got many more copies of
that self-subsidized book from the Middle East Institute to hand out. Plus of
course everyone is lining up hoping to get a little more money when Hasib
soon passes on, and to court his family that will inherit his many bank accounts.
In the end, this is really not a story about one lone money magnet. Rather it is
a story about a small clique of Palestinian "aristocrats" who have made so many
mistakes over such a long period of time while squandering so much money. And
this in turn is a story that helps explain why half the Palestinian people even
today remain in refugee camps and most of the rest now face the declaration of
a rump "State", one controlled by Zionist Israel on one side and Hashemite
Jordan on the other, and one which in many ways is considerably worse than
the situation Palestinians faced back before the Intifada began.
Below is the announcement from the new Jerusalem-based organization headed by
one of the most prominent of that small Palestinian VIP crowd, Hanan Ashrawi, that
has gotten the Palestinian people into this terrible mess but which is now busy
criticizing the always foreseeable results of their mistakes. Guess what...Sabbagh
and friends have put up most of the money and "His Excellency" Yasser himself
might be coming.
" MIFTAH Honors Mr. Hasib Sabbagh
Under the patronage of His Excellency President Yasser Arafat, The
Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
(MIFTAH) takes great pleasure in honoring one of the most sincere and
passionate Palestinians, Mr. Hasib Sabbagh.
Mr. Sabbagh's moral and financial contributions to the Palestinian cause are
priceless. He has been involved with several initiatives aimed at the
promotion of Palestinian issues and concerns.
The ceremony will take place on Tuesday, April 18th, 2000, at the Grand Park
Hotel in Ramallah, where prominent Palestinian officials and civil society
advocates will be present. "
http://tinyurl.com/y9tqv4
Hasib J. Sabbagh
Sabbagh was born in 1920 in Palestine and graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1942. He is founder, director, and chairman of the Consolidated Contractors Group of Companies (CCC Group), one of the Middle East’s largest and most respected construction companies. In addition to his business interests, he has long been associated with political and philanthropic causes including chairman of the Palestinian Student Fund and deputy chairman of the Health Care Organization of the West Bank and Gaza.
******
Palestinian Builder CCC Dodges Mideast Conflicts, Reaps Profits
July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Yasser Arafat smiled for the cameras as he held hands with Enron Corp.'s Middle East chairman, David Haug, and Palestinian-born entrepreneur Said Khoury on June 18, 1999. They were celebrating an agreement to build the first Palestinian power plant, a $150 million, 140-megawatt project that would supply a fifth of the power needed by the 3.6 million residents of Gaza and the West Bank.
A year later, the plant's prospects soured. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict flared up, causing the loss of 4,700 more lives. Then Enron collapsed in 2001 in the second-biggest U.S. bankruptcy. Thanks to Khoury, whose company bought Enron's stake and persuaded engineers from Paris-based Alstom SA to stay and work even amid violence, the Gaza plant opened in 2002, two years late. It's been generating power ever since, though its client, the Palestinian Authority, isn't paying in full.
Khoury's company, Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Co., known as CCC, has been negotiating political minefields in the Middle East for more than half a century. Khoury, now 82, and his cousin Hasib Sabbagh, 85, founded the construction company in Lebanon when they were young Palestinian engineers in exile. Today, CCC has annual revenue of $1.56 billion and more than 60,000 employees in 35 countries from Kuwait to Kazakhstan.
``They're a Palestinian icon because they're one of the few businesses of Arab-Palestinian origin that succeeded internationally,'' says Kamel Husseini, 39, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority's $1.36 billion investment fund. Khoury's 44-year-old son, Samer, was an Arafat-appointed director of the fund until earlier this year.
Thanks for posing this. I remember it well. Bert Lance was a truly awful person.