A friend of mine has been forwarding these things to me, I will be re-posting them. There are many unanswered questions I have about the Cordoba Initiative and those within it, and after some discussion realized that both of us were on a similar page here. I may, or may not, post my own further thoughts on the matter, however this article in itself is thought provoking and interesting.
Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque | The New York Observer
http://www.observer.com/2010/politics/untangling-new-intrigue-behind-ground-zero-mosque
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Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque
By Mark Ames
September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m
So far, the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has unfolded along predictable lines, with the man at the center of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, drawing attacks from the right painting him as a terrorist sympathizer with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
But meanwhile, links between the group behind the controversial mosque, the CIA and U.S. military establishment have gone unacknowledged.
For instance, one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group, the Cordoba Initiative, that is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque, is a 52-year-old Scarsdale, New York, native named R. Leslie Deak. In addition to serving on the group’s board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization’s total operating budget–though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period.
Deak describes himself as a “Practicing Muslim with background in Christianity and Judaism, [with] in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East, living and working six months per year in Egypt.” Born into a Christian home, Deak became an Orthodox Jew and married a Jewish woman before converting to Islam when he married his current wife, Moshira Soliman, with whom he now lives in Rye.
Leslie Deak’s resume also notes his role as “business consultant” for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm’s website are those of its three “strategic advisers.” These include retired four-star General Bryan “Doug” Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed “all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism,” and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he “managed the CIA’s globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget” and “served as head of America’s Clandestine Service, the CIA’s operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.”
Besides Pavitt, Brown and a third advisor, banker Alexander Cappello, the Patriot Defense Group is so secretive it doesn’t even name its management team, instead describing its anonymous CEO as a former Special Forces and State Department veteran, the group’s managing director as a former CIA officer experienced in counter-terrorism in hostile environments and the group’s corporate intelligence head as a “23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton.”
Patriot Defense Group’s primary business involves leveraging its government connections and know-how. The firm is divided into two divisions: one that “focuses exclusively on the needs of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities as well as the requirements of friendly foreign governments,” and a corporate division, which “provides business intelligence and specialized security services to corporate clients and high net-worth family enterprises.”
So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a “business consultant” to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.
Interestingly, during the same three-year period during which the Deak Family Foundation was financing the Cordoba Initiative, Deak also donated a total of $101,247 to something called the National Defense University Foundation. The National Defense University is a network of war and strategy colleges and research centers (including the National War College) funded by the Pentagon, designed to train specialists in military strategy. The organization recently announced a November 5 dinner gala in honor of Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Robert Gates. Sponsors include Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and…the Patriot Defense Group.
Deak also sits on the NDUF’s board of directors, the chairman of which is Mark Treanor, the former general counsel for Wachovia bank from 1998 through its collapse in 2008 and a major bundler of campaign donations for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo, was recently fined $160 million for laundering “at least $110 million” in Mexican drug money between 2003 and 2008, while Treanor was Wachovia’s general counsel, though the figure is likely higher since Wachovia admitted it didn’t put any controls on at least $420 billion–that’s billion–in cash moved through its network of Mexico currency exchanges.
Which leads to another odd coincidence: Laundering money for drug lords is what brought down Deak & Co., the company run by Leslie Deak’s father, Nicholas Deak, years ago. The elder Deak, a former top intelligence commander during World War II for the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA), was the founder of Deak-Perera, which became for a time one of the world’s biggest foreign currency and gold dealers. But in 1984, a Presidential Commission on Organized Crime accused the firm of acting as a money laundering operation for Columbia drug cartels, who reportedly brought sacks of cash containing tens of millions of dollars into Deak’s Manhattan offices. By the end of 1984, Deak & Co. had declared bankruptcy, and a year later, Nicholas Deak was murdered in the company’s headquarters at 29 Broadway by a deranged homeless woman.
[ I remember Deak-Perera; it was indeed a big name among gold dealers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I had not heard of the company for years, and now I know why. ]
After the firm went bankrupt and Leslie Deak was left on his own, the corporation was broken up and sold off in pieces. One company that traces its beginnings to the defunct Deak empire is Goldline International, a business concern well known to fans of Glenn Beck as well as California investigators. Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck’s TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney’s office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.
Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck’s program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf’s projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.
Coincidences happen, of course. (For instance, Pamela Geller, the blogger who’s become the leading voice denouncing the mosque project was once, bizarrely enough, associate publisher of The New York Observer.)
But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI “consultant” and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration’s propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush’s favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of “[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures,” he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It’s a little like Billy “White Shoes” Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team’s spirits.
Whether the Cordoba Initiative ever gets its way with the Ground Zero Mosque, it may well have a lasting legacy at odds with its stated intention: By damaging the very moderates and progressives who actually view New York, and the nation as a whole, as a tolerant melting pot, and strengthening the position demagogues on both sides, it will almost certainly deal a setback to interfaith relations. It will also help to hobble the Democratic party. Which just might have been the point all along.
Either that, or it’s merely a coincidence that this controversy has erupted now, during crucial mid-term elections. In which case we can all go back to what we were doing before—either denouncing the Park51 Mosque as an affront to Americans, or championing it as a symbol of our fundamental rights-playing our accustomed roles in a drama that seems too perfect, somehow, to believe.
Source URL: http://www.observer.com/2010/politics/untangling-new-intrigue-behind-ground-zero-mosque
This should be made into a movie!
I’m sure it will be…
The Cordoba Initiative’s initiative is to get all countries on this planet “Sharia compliant”. They have a list of all countries graded by their compliancy to Sharia. They should be pleased with the news that Government Officials in Victoria Australia are getting on board!
http://news.oneindia.in/2010/09/16/victoriansoutraged-over-tribunal-ban-on-uncoveredshoulders.html#comment-31752
One step forward for CI(A?), 10 steps backward for womankind!
I’m beginning to connect the dots.
The powers that be WANT to see a worldwide Islamic takeover. They are complicit in it.
I had come across a website recently that tracked many US presidents, including Bush, back to some secret, Masonic-Muslim organization.
I knew about the Masonic connection, but the Masonic-Muslim connection was a new twist.
Will temples and deities be smashed and razed to the ground again?
Will the 2 other Abrahamic faiths come under the umbrella of Islam and therefore will it be non-Abrahamic vs Abrahamic?
Speaking of “umbrella” have you seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEkANn1IBaQ&feature=related
Watch all 21.
Golly gee whiz, that sounds an awful bit like a paranoid conspiracy theory.
Hm. You’re cool and all, but sometimes you seem kinda… weird. Actually I won’t say kinda weird, just flat out weird.
I mean, almost like one of those people who are congenitally incapable of seeing reality, who somehow think Obama’s a crypto muslim. Which of course explains why he has step up a war busy slaughtering muslims in Afghanistan and conducting rone attacks against wedding parties.
And the fact that he’s married to a Christian, and has been a church goer his whole life, and his mother was some weird new age revolutionary hippie dippie.
Suuuuurre… Sure, riiight. Whatever.
For the record though I’m not going to bother censoring your comments, I view this as a bit of a free speech zone baring certain egregious breeches of good will or propriety, I’m not exactly interested in debating these matters further.
There is heartless and lacking in compassion, but anyone unable to see the massive starvation and murder of innocent Muslims, most of whom live in parts of the world peacefully converted to Islam, who are no threat to anyone, and being used as pawns in a larger game – well misogynists do say that the cruelty of women knows no depth.
Since I’m not a misogynist I prefer not to believe this, and suspect that a certain heart numbing cruelty of perspective and lacking in compassion such as lies beneath your tongue is simply the result of being educated conditioned and reared in a certain way, amidst certain communal tensions, and not having cultivated an ability to empathize with a larger world.
I’m not a bigot, I like Indian cultures and traditions and peoples, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and otherwise. I am not a village Molvi content to make wisecracks about urine drinking, and monkey worship. I’ve spent a good deal of time cultivating an appreciation for the cultures, religions, and histories of many people’s throughout Asia, and Africa, and Europe.
Since I’m not a bigot and can separate things out without tarring whole people with a brush, and see both historical good and evil in their past, and appreciating the good without sophistry in my articulation of such appreciation, I find bigots bizarre.
You – however intelligent and well spoken you are – happen to be a bigot in this one specific area. I’m simply not interested in debating these matters with bigots whose minds are made up.
You are better and probably more thoughtful than this. For crying out loud, sometimes you come off like a female, Desi, equivalent of the most bitter and sarcastic MRA and HBD types. I find you stimulating and interesting, and no doubt would find you interesting company in person, over coffee, but to a certain degree you have some rather tedious obsessions. And entertaining these rather tedious obsessions is a disservice to you, or my readers
The world’s large place, you should explore it with more open eyes and consider it with a more open mind.
For the record, on the conspiracy theory you articulate, you are actually close to something important.
There are actually one or two things you are on to – albeit in a fumbling around sort of way, approached from ignorance, pre-existing bias and bigotry, and a highly selective view of history. But you have actually stumbled on something that is mildly of interest.
However bigotry makes an otherwise intelligent and thoughtful woman sound like a complete loon. And this is a sad thing.
There actually is something to the masonic crypto-Muslim bit, something easily misunderstood and misinterpreted, but really is blatantly obvious. You may have just recently stumbled onto in bits and pieces but others have been aware of for decades.
On the Masonic crypto Muslim thing, you are mixing up the Skull and Bones society, with certain higher ranks of freemasonry, the knights Templers, and certain schools of Nizari Ismaili Islam, as well as certain expressions of Islamic Sufism, and the Afghan Roshaniyya, the Spanish Allumbrados, and certain revolutionary crypto-occult groups in the French and German underground in the early modern period. A good deal of silly speculative writings have been churned out about this crap, but there is a thread of historical truth that can be grasped beneath the fantasies, lies, and misdirection.
There is a thread that can be followed, by the open minded and intelligent reader, but certain walls beyond which it is not possible to move without either initiation into certain societies, or access to literature that is not in common circulation, and the possession of understanding of technical terms.
A good starting point for reading is Rene Guenon’s Theosophy, History of a Pseudo Religion, and Studies in Freemasonry and the Compagnonnage
Guenon was obfuscating some matters, I suspect, but he gives away certain clues.
Other useful starting points James Billington’s Fires in the Minds of Men, and Carol Quigley’s The Anglo-American Establishment.
There are few reliable histories of freemasonry, most are silly, tendentious, speculative, in particular the Christian anti-mason literature and pro-mason literature like Manley P Hall’s writings. Hall is useful on one level, as far as illustrating what many Masons believe about their own origins and role, but I recommend reading him after other historical works. Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma is also valuable reading, but should be saved a little bit later.
– On the side – I know for a fact of “radical Imams” who were more or less imported into the USA and cleared by the State department, to the great puzzlement an d concern of Moderate Muslims. I know of certain Imams who are clear MI5 assets in the UK, and CIA assets here in the USA. But I suspect that you may also be aware of a thing or two. Putting it in context is another matter.
it is clear for a fact that certain games are being played, by certain people, but your ability to understand such games is a function of your willingness to pull your head out of your – possibly I suspect – cute rear end.
Keeping your head in your ass, even if it is a cute ass, is a myopic and rather smelly preoccupation.
Fresh air is rather nice. Try it.
The history you probably think is true, was molded by specific individuals, at specific points of time, for specific political reasons. I suspect I know some of this history as well as you, and possibly better. I also know to some degree who wrote certain histories and if you cared to do the research you could even discover some of their names. Few things are outright hidden as much as very obscure and hard to find.
One thing that I will say is happening is that certain parties are cynically using specific elements in Muslim communities, but also specific elements in your own tradition’s communities, and specific elements in many other religions, to support a globalist geo-political agenda. A good deal of this is well documented for those who know where to look, and a hint you will find things far more interesting in certain libraries than on YouTube rants.
It is good to consider the question of who one chooses as friends and who one chooses as enemies, certain friends may be wont to leave you out to dry, certain enemies could, if you only realized, be real assets and even willing to help one in a time of need. A bigot who alienates potential friends because of her innate biases may find that those she thinks of as closer to her, may actually have it in for her to a far greater degree than her enemies.
The Islamophobe bigot position may seem like a justifiable one to you, but you and your people are next on the block, after the Muslims have been dealt with. Look at who is buying up millions of hectares of farm land in India, which investors, look at who is manipulating seed prices, look deeper.
Muslims make convenient scapegoats, your anger over temples demolished 500-1000 years ago blinds you to the real civilization goods Muslims and Islam has brought many parts of the world, and also to the fact that the current world wide genocidal shift of opinion against Muslims is simply the tip of something much deeper, within which people like you yourself are targets.
This should be considered. Who one supports, who one works for, who one opposes, who one works against, and for what reasons? Think with care.
The idea of the Bush’s and Obama’s of the world wanted Muslims to take over the world there wouldn’t be wars slaughtering millions of them. Muslims have been bombed, oppressed, and slaughtered around the world, used as target practice. Certain Muslims are used for certain ends and then discarded.
A good deal of this has to do with certain proxy warfare between Indian, Pakistani, Israeli, and US intelligence. And at a certain level all of these contestants are unified on certain platforms.
There is a great game afoot and the sad thing is that many Indians, much less than Palestinians, and much less than Americans will suffer. Your bigotry and bias causes you to look at certain narrow things while missing far more dangerous things in your own proverbial backyard.
It’s good to be careful about not just who one insists on making into one’s enemies, but more carefully as to who one insists on taking as friends. Lest one’s socially conditioned biases cause one to reject as allies and friends certain very useful people, and throwing in one’s lot with people who honestly simply see one as proverbial meat on the table – once one’s usefulness to them is at an end.
Your insistence on looking at the entire Muslim world through the lens of some demolished temples in Sind a thousand years ago is weird.
You seem to display no interest in really looking deeper into matters on a broader scale, thus I have no interest in debating things further.
I will say this:
To certain very powerful people, you and people like you are considered to be meat on the table, and simply beasts of burden, by your own choice and consent due to your ignorance and acquiescence to what you think is in your best interests, but really is not.
Among them are people groups and influences you might be tempted, some day, to think of as your friends – but who well may not be. This is a somewhat irrelevant Internet debate between you and I, but it is possible at a point in your life you may find yourself in a position to make choices about how and where, and with whom, you will put your stock in – and it would be best informed by a deeper understanding of what’s going on around you.
Or you can choose bigotry fear and hate of Muslims and ignoring the fact that such hate of Muslims is simply a proxy for other deeper matters, and that when Muslims are disposed of, because Muslims stand in the way of certain things, America is next and then India. For that matter so too you have no idea of who your true enemies are, or of the larger geopolitical matters afoot.
I could spend hours blathering about the caste system, devadasis, all sorts of obscure aspect of the histories of various pre-Islamic kingdoms and civilizations in India, to try to refute you in a debate trying to show that everything you would accuse Islam of was to some degree already present in Indian civilization dynamics, I could run around and show where specific histories have been manipulated, both for Muslim audiences to whip them up in communal fear and hate, and for Hindu audiences to whip them up in communal fear and hate, I could blather about all of this but I have no interest whatsoever in doing so.
History’s far more complex, and nuanced, than you may be willing to admit, more full of gray areas and less black and white. You should consider this well.
As to lunatic paranoid theories about the US govt encouraging radical Islam, certain people are used in spite of their own best interests to further specific agendas and then liquidated and thrown away, this is the case with Jews and Jewish groups, with Christian groups, with actually certain Hindu nationalist groups in India as well. Look at White nationalists in the USA and UK, and dig deeply enough and you find a similar pattern, everywhere you see someone being riled up in hate and bigotry against another dig a bit and you will soon find an agent provocateur, mole, or some sort of counter intelligence handler.
It’s not even secret when you dig and talk to the right people and observe. It does take an obsessive disregard for personal safety and frankly having nothing else better to do with one’s time. I have far better things to do with my time at this point in my life than quibble on and debating such points.
So regard this specific discourse on these matters at an end.
Again, you, like many “religious” people are unable to look objectively at their own religion. Nowhere did I say anything about supporting any wars. You are ASSuming that. However, I fail to see the difference between what the US military is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq and what the early Muslims did. That you condemn the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan YET SUPPORT the slaughter of sons, husbands, fathers and brothers AS WELL AS the capturing of their women to be made into sex slaves (and naively say, “these women were not raped” – YEAH RIGHT!), tells me that despite all of your musings over poetry and literature, when it comes to your RELIGION you are unable to take a thoroughly objective view – like most religious people.
Religious fanatics are taking over, check this out:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rel_piercing_church
At any rate, perhaps you did not know that the US military burned HUNDREDS of Bibles in Afghanistan precisely BECAUSE they did not want to upset the religious sentiments of the Muslim majority Afghani citizens:
http://www.examiner.com/christian-in-louisville/military-burns-bibles-sent-to-troops-afghanistan
I am not pro-Christian missionary either, just sharing some info with you.
As far as Islam contributing anything of value to South Asia, there is nothing that was contributed that was of higher value than what was already there.
Philosophy? Nope.
Art? Nope.
Architecture? Nope.
Language? Nope.
Literature? Nope.
Of course Islam did contribute all of these things BUT they were not higher than the philosophy, art, architecture, language and literature THAT WAS ALREADY THERE!!!
Islam did NOT “civilize” South Asia.
It’s convenient for Muslims to play the “phobe” card by calling anyone who questions these things an “Islamophobe”.
Why are many Muslims and many religious people in general unable to look objectively at their own religious histories and admit that there are whacked out things that took place that are in fact STILL taking place today????