The Sponsoring Committee welcomes your participation and appreciates the cooperation of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in co-hosting this event.
American Friends Service Committee
Mennonite Central Committee
Quaker United Nations Office
Religions for Peace
World Council of Churches — United Nations Liaison Office
Please direct further inquiries to sept25@us.mcc.org.
Yes, I agree; this is appalling. But it gets smellier and smellier the more you look into it. Here’s the bare outline of the facts:
The Grand Hyatt in NYC is owned by the Hyatt Corporation, which is owned by H Group Holding.
Penny PritzkerThe Hyatt Corporation is a private company owned by the Pritzker family. Penny Pritzker is one of four major heirs.
Penny Pritzker is Barack Obama’s chair for his campaign finance committee, sometimes also referred to as treasurer for Obama’s campaign finance committee.
So Obama’s campaign finance committee’s chairwoman is hosting Ahmadinejad on Thursday at the Hyatt.
The Pritzker family, Penny in particular, were pioneers in creating a new financial product in the late 1990s and early 2000.
It was called the subprime mortgage.
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When their bank failed, they ended up owing the government half a billion dollars in unreimbursed FDIC insurance payments.
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I’m a rank amateur when it comes to banking, and I know nothing about the details of campaign finance, especially in the Democratic Party.
But I’m fortunate to have a contact in Chicago named Lionel who knows a lot about both topics, and here’s what he sent me earlier today in an email, in addition to the facts listed above:
Stop Iran Now has organized a rally to protest the presence of Mr. Ahmadinejad at the UN. It will be held at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on September 22 in front of the UN building.
The Obama Campaign Finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker’s flagship Grand Hyatt Hotel in NYC will roll out the red carpet for wannabe mass murderer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the terrorist state of Iran, for a lavish dinner on September 25.
Mind you, this “meal of appeasement” will be just three days after the September 22 rally to protest tyrant Ahmadinejad’s UN speech. Obama’s surrogate Hillary Clinton fled from a bipartisan opportunity to join the Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin at the rally, which is sponsored by several national Jewish organizations. Clinton’s staff complained that the attendance by bipartisan speakers would make the rally a “partisan event.” Go figure.
And now Sarah Palin has been disinvited by the panicked organizers of the rally, under pressure from the Democrats.
So… let’s look at the whole picture:
Penny Pritzker, Obama’s chief fundraiser — the owner of the hotel hosting Ahmadinejad and heir to the Hyatt billions — is a pioneer in the subprime mortgage industry and a key force in that industry’s subsequent melt-down. The Hyatt businesses run by Penny Pritzker have included Superior Bank, which went bankrupt in 2002 still owing U.S. taxpayers most of the half billion dollar FDIC payout to depositors.
One of Obama’s first executive decisions in 2007 as a presidential candidate was to appoint Penny Pritzker as Chair and Treasurer of his campaign finance committee. Allegations of Obama’s campaign receiving foreign and especially Middle Eastern campaign contributions — which would be against U.S. law — have dogged the Obama campaign ever since.
There’s no word whether Obama will attend the September 25th Hyatt banquet to meet with Ahmadinejad. The Obama-Biden platform on Iran calls for diplomacy without preconditions, U.S. economic investments in Iran, and Iran’s entry into the World Trade Organization. According to the platform, “Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.”
In early September 2008, two weeks before Pritzker’s fabulous feast for Ahmadinejad, the Iranian Parliament passed a bill making apostasy — leaving the religion of Islam, or even writing about leaving the religion — a crime punished by the death penalty. This past month, Iranian human rights activists, and especially women’s rights activists, have been imprisoned in a new crackdown in preparation for Ahmadinejad’s U.S. trip.
And Obama’s platform on Iran makes no mention of human rights. Are you surprised?
Umm..., the Pritzkers are Jewish....