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The Clinton-Berger Reunion
By Abe Greenwald / October 9, 2007
I have to thank the good people of Alfred A. Knopf for my biggest surprise chuckle in recent memory. I was walking into my local Barnes & Noble yesterday when something leaped out at me from the new non-fiction table. It was a handsome hardcover book whose title and author combo stopped me in my tracks: Giving, by Bill Clinton. After composing myself, I spent the next hour or so coming up with additional titles in what I envisioned as a series of books pitched by some guerilla ironist working under cover in the offices of Knopf: Acting, by Keanu Reeves; Davening, by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Bending, by George W. Bush; Abstaining, by Keith Richards; Hiding, by Oprah Winfrey; Swinging, by Al Gore . . . You get the idea. Coming up with them is almost too addicting. But the list of titles wouldn’t be complete without Believing, by Hillary Clinton. For it was yesterday that I also first heard of Senator Clinton’s unofficial appointment of Sandy Berger (Disclosing) as a campaign advisor. This tawdry development is evidence of the Senator’s immunity to conviction. Berger, Bill Clinton’s national security advisor, was found guilty of stealing and destroying classified terror-related documents from the National archives. The case has never been treated with the seriousness it demands. Berger destroyed the documents specifically to keep them from the eyes of the 911/Commision – a body charged with reviewing all materials relevant to the September 11 attacks and making recommendations on the defense against such attacks in the future. The destroyed documents presumably painted the Clinton administration in an unflattering light. The most troubling aspect about the insouciance with which the Berger case was handled is that it never allowed for a proper inquest which may have told us something about Bill Clinton’s culpability or consent in the destruction of classified terror-related material. One assumes that Clinton and Berger at least spoke about what Berger was supposed to do when looking though the National Archives. I can’t imagine I’m alone in wanting to know more about the nature of such a conversation.
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I don't know that I can vote for Hillary now. Elvis, thanks for apprising me of this disturbing undercurrent in Senator Clinton's patform.
 Pants must be represented in a Clinton administration. If they are not, I will go door to door, informing my neighbors and colleagues of this danger. Their shocked and apprehensive expressions relate directly to the anti-pants bias, and certainly not to my unconventional pants-pants pantsuit.
For too long pants have been maligned and taken for granted. No More!
Objections to Borse Dubai’s proposed acquisition of 20 percent of
NASDAQ last week prompted Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank to
quip, “In the ports deal, the concern was smuggling something or
someone dangerous… What are we talking about here smuggling
someone onto a stock exchange?”
It is not “who” Dubai will smuggle into the stock exchange we
should worry about. It’s the arrival of the world’s first Islamic
stock exchange exerting unprecedented Islamic influence in the
heart of the U.S. and Western economies that should raise our
alarm. Dubai’s handsomely paid Washington lobbyists see nothing
wrong with that. Rather, they claim the deal benefits U.S.
financial markets, giving “NASDAQ access to rich Mideast
pockets.” Unfortunately, the deal also increases the appeal and
influence of Islamic financing in the West.
What is “Islamic” finance? Islamic, or Shariah-based finance, is
the 1920s invention of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan
al-Banna. He ordered the Muslim Brothers to create an independent
Islamic financial system to supercede the Western economy,
facilitating the spread of Islam worldwide. He set the theories
and practices and his contemporaries and successors developed
Shariah-based terminology for “Islamic economics,” finance and
banking. Attempts by Muslim Brotherhood members in the early
1930s to establish Islamic banking in India failed. Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel-Nasser shut down the second attempt in
1964, after only one year, later arresting and expelling the
Muslim Brothers for attempts to kill him. Saudi Arabia welcomed
them and adopted their ideas.
In 1969, soon after a mentally deranged Australian Christian
fundamentalist, Michael Dennis Rohan, tried to set fire to the Al
Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Saudis convened the Conference for
the Islamic Organizations (OIC) to unify the “struggle for
Islam,” and have been its major sponsor ever since. The 56 OIC
members include Iran, Sudan and Syria.
Based in Jeddah, “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” the OIC
mandates and coordinates actions to “support the Palestinian
people, assist them in recovering their rights and liberating
their occupied territories.” The OIC’s first international
undertaking was the 1975 establishment of the Islamic Development
Bank “in accordance with the principles of the Shariah,” marking
the beginning of the fast-growing, petrodollar-based Islamic
financing market. From 1975 to 2005, the bank approved more than
$46 billion in funding to Muslim countries. Since 2000, it has
transferred hundreds of millions of dollars raised especially to
support the Palestinian intifada and suicide bombers’ families
and has channeled United Nations funds to Hamas. Yet the bank
received U.N. observer status in 2007.
Overseeing Shariah finance are the 1991-Bahrain-registered and
-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial
Institutions (AAOIFI), which laid the groundwork for the global
Islamic financial network and the “de facto Islamic Central Bank”
the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), established in 2002
in Kuala Lumpur “to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce
the stability of Islamic finance.” Chairing the meeting,
then-Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir stated: “A
universal Islamic banking system is a jihad worth pursuing to
abolish this slavery [to the West].”
According to Saleh Kamel, president of the Saudi Dallah Al-Baraka
Group and the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI),
more than 400 Islamic financial institutions currently operate in
75 countries. They now hold more than $800 billion in assets
growing at a rate of 15 percent annually. All investments with
Islamic financial institutions are subject to the minimum zakat
(Islamic charitable wealth tax). On April 30, the OIC, the
organization that initiated global Muslim riots after the Danish
cartoon publications, established the clerical International
Commission for Zakat, replacing more than 20,000 organizations
that previously collected the money. Islamic clerics’ “expert
committee” in Malaysia now supervises and distributes those
funds. The new committee will shortly distribute to Muslim
charities roughly $2 billion collected during Ramadan.
But not all charities are equal. In 1999, Muslim Brotherhood
spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi decreed: “Declaring holy war
[and] fighting for such purposes is the way of Allah for which
zakat must be spent.” If past zakat distribution is any
indication, all Muslim jihadist-terror organizations (including
Palestinian Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and the many al
Qaeda offspring) will benefit.
Shortly after September 11, Osama bin Laden called upon Muslims
“to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible
means. Look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy. Strike the
key pillars of the enemy again and again and they will fall as
one.”
Most Arab and Muslim states publicly denounced bin Laden. But the
impending Nasdaq acquisition, the purchases of over 52 percent of
the London Stock Exchange and 47.6 percent of OMX (Nordic
exchange) and the vigorous expansion of Shariah financing
apparently follow the Muslim Brotherhood-bin Laden script.
President Bush on Sept. 25 at the United Nations called on all
nations to open their markets. Surely, he did not mean opening
the markets to domination by Shariah.
It makes perfect sense. Clintons have a problem keeping their pants on, Berger has a problem putting things into his pants. Prepare for a pants challenged administration
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