Free Republic

Where can you spend almost $US150,000 per square metre on a piece of land? Not the Champs-Elysees in Paris, or Broadway or New York. But Mecca! This film shows the transformation of the holiest place in the Islamic world into a real estate business for religious tourism … More than 3-million Muslims from around the world now attend the world’s largest pilgrimage, the Hajj. Following the pilgrims’ journey, this film features a rare interview with the Bin Laden Group behind much of the monumental development of Mecca, potentially Saudi Arabia’s new ‘gold’.

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business. Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

Saudi Wealth Fuels Global Jihadism Posted Oct. 27, 2003 By Kenneth R. Timmerman Generations of Muslims in the Middle East have been raised on the anti-Western, anti-Semitic theologies of Ayatollah Khomeini and in the Saudi Wahhabi system of madrassas (religious schools). This foundation set the stage for the rise of Osama bin Laden. Doaa 'Amer is a professional TV anchor who hosts Muslim Woman Magazine on IQRAA TV, a satellite channel broadcasting throughout the Arab world. As she tells it, her job is to educate the next generation of children to be "true Muslims." Readers accustomed to hearing Islam described...

Osama bin Laden tried to purchase the world's largest pearl, the Pearl of Allah, as a gift to Saddam Hussein "to unite the Arab cultures," and Hussein was prepared to accept, according to the pearl's owner. Victor Barbish, who owns sixty-six percent of the pearl on behalf of his daughter, told WorldNetDaily he received an offer in 1999 from individuals who said they were "from bin Laden's group" to purchase the pearl for $60 million to give to Hussein as an overture of unity between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government.

June 13, 2004 -- Dozens of U.S. firms continue to do business with the Saudi Binladen Group despite American companies' passionate vows to cut all ties with the group, or at least re-examine them, in the wake of 9/11. And some of that U.S. money could be making its way into the hands of al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, foreign affairs experts say. Today, the Saudi Binladen Group, owned by terrorist mastermind Osama's 54 siblings, has quietly changed its name — at least when dealing with one U.S. company — perhaps to fly under the radar of U.S. public...