Posted on 09/16/2001 4:40:00 PM PDT by etcetera
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:35:32 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Most drinks contain gum arabic, a substance that prevents particles settling in the bottom of a can or bottle. Much of it is produced in Sudan by a company in which bin Laden has owned a large slice.
Although it is not clear precisely how much involvement he now has in the gum arabic trade, he has already earned tens of millions of dollars from the soft-drinks industry -- providing years of finance for his Islamic terrorists.
"It is possible that every time someone buys an American soft drink, they are helping to fill Osama bin Laden's coffers," said Simon Reeve, the author of "The New Jackals," a recent book on the Saudi dissident's network.
Bin Laden's earnings from gum arabic, which is also used in other foodstuffs and cosmetics, make up only a part of his fortune.
He is thought to have earned more than $25 million from a building contract for the expansion of the Islamic shrines at Saudi Arabia's holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Other revenue has come from currency trading and various businesses.
Drug running in Afghanistan is now thought to be a principal source of his income. In the past, he has even been funded by the CIA.The exact extent of his fortune can only be guessed at.
The most authoritative estimates indicate that he is worth about $300 million.
"Bin Laden has resources and capabilities greater than many national governments," said Daniel Benjamin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
"Bin Laden started off with a fortune, but that is now irrelevant because of his ability to garner funds throughout the Islamic world. These come from rich sheiks in the Gulf and the charity plate in radical mosques."
He was born in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, in 1957 -- one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, the founder of a construction firm with a vast turnover.
When his father died, he used his share of the wealth to enjoy a playboy life in Beirut in the early 1970s. Soon, however, he married and trained in management and civil engineering, thus picking up business expertise.
After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he funded Islamic resistance fighters. Money flowed in to help him -- notably from the CIA -- but also, it is thought, from other governments.
When the Red Army pulled out in the late 1980s, bin Laden concentrated on expanding his al-Qaeda organization -- Arabic for "the Base" -- which had been set up during the Afghan war.
It began supporting the worldwide "Islamic struggle" through terrorist actions against those deemed to be oppressing Muslims.
Paul Wilkinson, of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, in Scotland, said al-Qaeda's various components were used to move money, information and people around the world.
This allowed bin Laden to act as a "super facilitator" for multiple terrorist groups.
"His is a hydra-headed organization," said Mr. Wilkinson.
"Its transnational nature makes it very difficult to stem the flow of funds."
A rare glimpse of al-Qaeda's inner workings came at the New York trial of four bin Laden-sponsored terrorists, convicted in July for their role in two U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 that killed 224 persons.
Jamal Ahmed Fadl, who says he was once the group's paymaster, told the court of a global web of bank accounts.
One, he claimed, was at Barclays Bank in London. The terrorist group was highly organized, he said, with its own finance committee.
Mr. Fadl fled al-Qaeda in 1996 after he was caught taking illicit commissions from its international trading business.
He turned himself over to American investigators.
Barclays Bank said yesterday that there was no record of any of its accounts being linked to bin Laden. A spokesman said: "We have carried out extensive checks to ensure that we are adhering to the legal guidelines."
Nice of the Washington Times to print this right before the market opens. Its sure to help Pepsi (or parent) and Coke stock tomorrow.
Additionally, all the sodium can make you....puffy.
Much better to drink a good old southern iced tea or a nice wine.
‘No Greater Tragedy on Earth’
George W. Discovers Sudan
In a speech to the American Jewish Committee last Thursday, May 3, George W. Bush made the first step in directly involving this country in stopping the slavery and genocide in Sudan, which he accurately described as "a disaster area for all human rights."
This follows what Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress's International Relations Committee on March 7: "I do know there is no greater tragedy on the face of the earth than the one unfolding in Sudan."
Bush has been pushed hard by a coalition of human rights organizations—particularly the American Anti-Slavery Group and Christian Solidarity International, along with Amnesty International, black pastors across the country, the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas—and Joe Madison, "the Black Eagle," of whom there will be more in this column next week.
What Bush has finally done, and this is just a beginning, has been described in the May 4 Washington Post: "Bush said he has appointed the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, as a special humanitarian coordinator to ensure that U.S. aid to Sudan 'goes to the needy, without manipulation by those ravaging that troubled land.' "
The National Islamic Front, which rules Sudan from the north, has not only engaged in slavery and ethnic cleansing in its jihad against the black Christians and animists in the south, but has also used famine as a ruthless weapon of war.
Now, American food aid will go directly to the blacks in the south. Elliott Abrams, chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, said after Bush's speech on Friday:
"Clearly, more will be needed, because food aid is only part of the Sudanese puzzle, but this is a terrific first step."
The New York Times—which is no longer a dependable paper of record on this and many other issues—has mishandled and misinterpreted this genocide from the beginning. Accordingly, if you want to know the next steps needed to deal with this "disaster area for all human rights," I strongly recommend Elliott Abrams's article, "What to Do About Sudan," in the May 7 Weekly Standard.
In it, he explains why Bush has issued his order aimed at breaking the control that Khartoum's National Islamic Front exercises over food supplies going to the south.
"Khartoum's brazen use of food as a weapon," Abrams writes, involves that regime having "veto power over food deliveries in Sudanese territory by the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan."
Just before Bush moved to break that veto power with regard to American aid, Abrams pointed out that "an immediate goal of U.S. policy should be the immediate delivery of food and medicine where they are needed, not where Khartoum desires. This means that the UN program, while invaluable, cannot be the only conduit for food. Roughly one-third of U.S. aid (which totals about $100 million a year) now flows outside Operation Lifeline Sudan, and that percentage should continue to rise. The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so they can handle an increased flow of aid"—without lethal interference from Khartoum.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has a vital proposal by which we can impose powerful economic pressure on Khartoum. During her congressional testimony reported in last week's column, she said:
"We all know that the United States has placed certain trade restrictions on Sudan. Yet gum arabic is exempted, and it is the number one export of Sudan. Coca-Cola and the other major soft drink conglomerates need gum arabic. So what do we do? We proudly proclaim that we've got sanctions on Sudan, but we exempt gum arabic." (Emphasis added.)
Here is the gum arabic story, ignored by most of the press but reported by DeWayne Wickham last September 26 in USA Today. (My thanks to abolitionist Joe Madison for alerting me to this exposé.)
"To punish the Sudanese government for its support of international terrorism [by harboring terrorists], President Clinton issued an executive order in 1997 blocking the importation of 'any goods or services of Sudanese origin.' One of the products covered by this ban is gum arabic, an ingredient used in the making of soft drinks, carbonless papers, pharmaceuticals, and the printing of newspapers.
"In July [2000], the U.S. House unanimously passed a trade bill, H.R. 4868, that includes a provision that lifts Clinton's ban on importing gum arabic from Sudan. The change is hidden in language that makes no direct mention of the substance, but instead exempts from the president's ban articles described on two pages of a 1916-page tariff schedule the bill seeks to amend."
Wickham points out that the congressman who slipped gum arabic out of the list of banned Sudanese products was Representative Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey. He quotes Menendez: "No one should do business with thugs. But if they control a product we can't seem to live without, the market will find a way to get it to our shelves and newsstands."
As Wickham emphasizes: "To accept that argument is to condone tacitly the slavery that goes on in Sudan." Congress, he adds, "should put conscience ahead of corporate profit—and extend the abhorrence this country eventually expressed for the American slave trade to the human bondage that now goes on in Sudan."
Menendez, it should be noted, has two major gum arabic processing plants in his district.
The Senate also went on to exempt gum arabic from the sanctions on Sudan. But why can't the growing number of House and Senate members who denounce slavery in Sudan—now joined by the president—get together and pass legislation banning imports of gum arabic from that country?
That too is only a beginning, but the fire of freedom can no longer be extinguished—even by the UN, which has just added the government of Sudan to its Human Rights Commission while kicking off the United States! And silent Kofi Annan wants another term as head of the UN.
If you must have something sweet, an excellent soda substitute is mineral water with a lime squeezed in. Add sugar if you must but it tastes just fine without it.
Beer, wine and lime-flavored mineral water is pretty much all I drink other than cold, clean water.
BS. Yet the IRS can figure out everything you've done. I dont buy it. The banks are making money off of Binladen so they are content to accept his business.
I prefer an ice cold beer with a Cuervo' Gold chaser...(I know, I've got the "normal" order backwards, but that's how I like it)
FMCDH
Hear Hear!!...Here Here!!...(BTW...what's a "soft" drink?...Bwahahahaha!!!)
FMCDH
Lush.
8 Posted on 09/16/2001 17:01:37 PDT by one_particular_harbour
Shay...who you callin a lush?...I take umbrageshes at that shtatementsh!...Sham Adamsh...kick hish ash!
FMCDH
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