In which our reporter follows the money
CLAUDIA ROSETT

Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? That's the question making the rounds
about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently
written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in
Arab funding.

Even in Carter's long history of post-presidential grandstanding, this book
sets fresh standards of irresponsibility. Purporting to give a balanced view
of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Carter effectively shrugs off such
highly germane matters as Palestinian terrorism. The hypocrisies are
boundless, and include adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously
intolerant Saudi regime side by side with condemnations of democratic
Israel. In one section, typical of the book's entire approach, Carter
includes a "Historical Chronology," from Biblical times to 2006, in which he
dwells on events surrounding his 1978 Camp David Accords but omits the
Holocaust. Kenneth W. Stein, the founder of the Carter Center's Middle East
program, resigned last month to protest the book, describing it in a letter
to Fox News as "replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited,
superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments." As this
article goes to press, more protest resignations, this time from the Carter
Center's board of councilors, appear to be in the works.

If there is a silver lining to any of this, it is that Carter's book has
drawn much-overdue attention to some of the funding that pours into the
Carter Center, whose intriguing donor list includes anti-Israeli tycoons and
Middle East states. Founded in 1982 and appended to Carter's presidential
library, the center has served for almost a quarter century as the main base
and fund-raising magnet for Carter's self-proclaimed mission to save the
world.

In recent weeks, a number of articles have noted that Carter's anti-Israeli
views coincide with those of some of the center's prime financial backers,
including the government of Saudi Arabia and the foundation of Saudi prince
Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, whose offer of $10 million to New
York City just after Sept. 11 was rejected by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani
because it came wrapped in the suggestion that America rethink its support
of Israel. Other big donors listed in the Carter Center's annual reports
include the Sultanate of Oman and the sultan himself; the government of the
United Arab Emirates; and a brother of Osama bin Laden, Bakr BinLadin, "for
the Saudi BinLadin Group." Of lesser heft, but still large, are
contributions from assorted development funds of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as
well as of OPEC, whose membership includes oil-rich Arab states, Nigeria
(whose government is also a big donor to the Carter Center), and Venezuela
(whose anti-American strongman Hugo Chávez benefited in a 2004 election from
the highly controversial monitoring efforts of the Carter Center).

A recent editorial in Investor's Business Daily, headlined "Jimmy Carter's
Li'l Ol' Stink Tank," listed a number of "founders" of the Carter Center.
The names were drawn from the annual reports, and included "the king of
Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi, and Arafat pal Hasib
Sabbagh." And, writing last month in the Washington Times, terror-funding
expert Rachel Ehrenfeld described links going back to the 1970s between the
Carter family peanut business and the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International, whose Pakistani founder helped bankroll the Carter Center at
least until BCCI went belly-up in 1991, busted as a global criminal
enterprise.

There is, of course, much more to the Carter Center than this list implies.
It is large, with assets totaling $377 million (as of 2005), an operating
budget of some $46.8 million, a staff of some 150, a 200-member board of
councilors, and hundreds of donors, including not only individuals and
foundations, but the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S.
State Department. Some of the center's work is devoted to such laudable
causes as wiping out the parasitical guinea worm. Indeed, it is possible to
glean from various news items and brief mentions in the center's annual
reports that some of the more intriguing donors, such as the sultan of Oman
and the OPEC development fund, have been giving money for exactly such
causes. According to one notation on the Carter Center website, for example,
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated $7.6 million in 1993 to help Carter fight
the guinea worm.

But notwithstanding such occasional tidbits, it's stunningly hard to discern
from the Carter Center's public documents who is giving precisely how much,
and for what. Donor names, sometimes listed only as "Anonymous," are lumped
under broad categories such as "$100,000 or more" or "$1 million or more."
There is no systematic tally of just how much "more" - no clear way to know,
for example, whether Saudi money accounts for only a tad of Carter's funding
or a mighty dollop, and whether the Saudi share of total contributions has
changed over the years. Neither is there any systematic disclosure of who is
funding exactly what activities in the name of "waging peace," "fighting
disease," and "building hope" - the center's self-proclaimed missions. A
reporter's e-mail exchange with Carter Center press secretary Deanna
Congileo elicits the response that none of the anonymous donors are from the
Middle East, but no further details can be released without permission from
the donors - which, even if granted, will take some time to obtain (stay
tuned).

All this might be less disturbing had Carter confined his post-presidential
efforts to such good works as vanquishing the guinea worm. But for years he
has run his own mini-presidency - complete with a series of attempts to
outflank or shape the policies of sitting presidents. These have included -
to name just two examples - his letter-writing campaign in 1990 to members
of the United Nations Security Council, in an effort to thwart the Bush I
coalition that fought the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein; and his
1994 trip to North Korea, where he proposed to the dying tyrant Kim Il Sung
a deeply flawed nuclear-freeze deal that may well have helped Kim's son
consolidate power and develop ICBMs and atomic bombs.

It could be argued that Carter, whatever his pretensions, is, after all, a
private individual running a private foundation, and is therefore under no
obligation to disclose full details of the getting and spending of the river
of money flowing through his center. (In 2004, the most recent year for
which the center's website makes such figures available, donations totaled
$146 million.) But in all his waging and fighting and building (and
fundraising), Carter has been trading for years on the respect accorded to
his former public office. Regardless of whatever room for murk the law
allows, full financial disclosure is what sound judgment demands. The Carter
Center itself makes much in promotional materials of its efforts to
strengthen democracies by "promoting government transparency." Is Carter so
rigidly certain of his rectitude that he believes himself exempt from his
own preaching?

In a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece defending his new book (and
insinuating that the debate over it is being controlled by pro-Israeli
lobbyists), Carter wrote that he is merely seeking a "free and balanced
discussion of the facts." It is quite possible that even he may not know for
sure whether he has molded his views to suit anti-Israeli donors; whether
his center has attracted the money of such donors because they like his
views; or whether, while fighting the guinea worm, he simply made the
unrelated mistake of writing an appallingly biased and bad book. But having
parlayed his former public office into global influence, he owes the public
at least this much: Tell us, clearly and directly, enough about your
supporters and their money that we can, with full information, decide for
ourselves what is going on.

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/articl...jgzYzk0ZTk=JRA

On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:42:34 -0600, "Guerite³"
wrote:

In which our reporter follows the money
CLAUDIA ROSETT

Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? That's the question making the rounds
about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently
written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in
Arab funding.

Why don't you ****ing Jews go and post a few boo hoo stories about
grandmomma and mammy and pappy getting their asses gassed in a
concentration camp or how anti Semitic the world is and how righteous
the scumbag Israelis are for killing 9 year olds, and leave poor Jimmy
alone? Jimmy's only telling the truth, so shut the **** up fag boy.
And don't you have your own newsgroups to post in like alt.my people
are geniuses and the rest of the world is ****, or alt. everyone in my
family is a Jew homo including my mother and father, or alt. although
as a race we are the ugliest mother****ers on the planet we make a lot
of money? Or maybe you disgusting genetically ****ed faggots could
collect your rent money from the slums you run in Harlem while letting
the poor tenants continue to wade in raw sewage with no heat or
electricity? If you ****s aren't careful we gentiles will stop
****ing your women while you're at work making millions selling stolen
diamonds and ripping the rest of the world off.

wrote:

On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:42:34 -0600, "Guerite³"
wrote:

In which our reporter follows the money
CLAUDIA ROSETT

Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? That's the question making the rounds
about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently
written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in
Arab funding.

Why don't you ****ing Jews go and post a few boo hoo stories about
grandmomma and mammy and pappy getting their asses gassed in a
concentration camp or how anti Semitic the world is and how righteous
the scumbag Israelis are for killing 9 year olds, and leave poor Jimmy
alone? Jimmy's only telling the truth, so shut the **** up fag boy.
And don't you have your own newsgroups to post in like alt.my people
are geniuses and the rest of the world is ****, or alt. everyone in my
family is a Jew homo including my mother and father, or alt. although
as a race we are the ugliest mother****ers on the planet we make a lot
of money? Or maybe you disgusting genetically ****ed faggots could
collect your rent money from the slums you run in Harlem while letting
the poor tenants continue to wade in raw sewage with no heat or
electricity? If you ****s aren't careful we gentiles will stop
****ing your women while you're at work making millions selling stolen
diamonds and ripping the rest of the world off.

Do you usually post at alt.hillbilly.cb?

dxAce wrote:

Do you usually post at alt.hillbilly.cb?


Cuhulin has never mentioned seeing him there





mike

Sayyyy,by the way by the way,,,,, last night when I was getting ready to
hit the sack (move over,doggy) I heard George Noory say,You may not be a
Canadian if you celebrated your twenty forth birthday in a country other
than Canada if you haden't signed a certain form (paper) in Canada.HA!
Canadians without a Country.
cuhulin

= = = On Jan 23, 2:07 pm, dxAce wrote:
-
- Do you usually post at alt.hillbilly.cb ?
-

'cb' Country Bumpkin {CB}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_bumpkin
CB -aka- Hick = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick
CB -aka- Yokel = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokel

Not to be confused with "The Village Idiot"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_idiot
As In : It Takes a Village to Raise an idiot {Liberal} !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_A_Village
http://www.libertynet.org/edcivic/village.html


now i may be a hick -and- i may be a yokel
but you don't have to call me a liberal ~ RHF

Hicks are actually much smarter than the so-called ''smart people''
are.Hicks have good old common Horse Sense.
cuhulin