The Terror Finance Blog

Jihad Jane's allies in the courts

2010-03-15T11:16:26-07:00

BY Rachel Ehrenfeld

The zeal with which Colleen LaRose , aka "Jihad Jane," (above) pursued a fatwa to kill the publishers of the "Mohammed cartoons" - 12 drawings of a turban-wearing bearded man with a bomb, released in 2005 in Denmark , Sweden and elsewhere - comes as no surprise. She went so far as to travel to Europe with the intention to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks in a way that would frighten "the whole Kufar [nonbeliever] world."

This is a well-understood strategy of terrorists: Using violence or the threat of violence to intimidate those who dare resist their jihad, who dare defend secular, Western values.

But another less violent but highly potent weapon is also being employed. It involves "lawfare" - exploiting pro-plaintiff libel laws to silence authors and publishers who write about Islamic terrorism. It is common not only in Europe, but surprisingly right here in the United States.

The Feb. 26 apology by the Danish newspaper Politiken for publishing the cartoons proves the success of this tactic.

In 2006, a few months into radical Muslims' violent demonstrations against those illustrations, the newspaper's publishers visited me in New York City. Discussing my own embroilment with an unjustified libel suit by a Saudi, which had been filed against me in London , the publishers recommended that settling was the optimal approach to a potentially expensive suit.

Four years later, Politiken seems to have taken its own advice, caving in to Saudi pressure and apologizing for its simple exercise of free speech.

This predictable apology illustrates the difference between the free speech protections afforded in Denmark and those guaranteed in the United States. If Denmark had laws similar to the American traditions of heightened speech protection, Politiken would have faced far less of a threat in the Danish courts than it did.

Still, not even the robust protections of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution have been capable of safeguarding the rights of American writers, artists and others from terrorist sympathizers seeking to silence us in international courts.

In recent years, claimants have exploited the anti-free speech bias of the laws in many nations to secure libel judgments against American authors and publishers for statements made in the United States.

By suing an American writer abroad in courts lacking our constitutional protections for freedom of speech, a claimant might win a libel judgment that would fail in the United States - and then try to enforce that judgment in the United States, at great emotional and financial expense to the defendant. I was an early casualty of this tactic. After I published a book with information showing how Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz funded Al Qaeda , Mahfouz sued me for libel in the United Kingdom in 2005. As I did not live or publish the book in England, I refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the British court over my case; that resulted in a default judgment against me.

I petitioned a New York federal court to declare the British judgment unenforceable. The case ultimately led to the enactment, in New York State, of the Libel Terrorism Protection Act in May 2008. Similar laws have since been passed in Illinois , California, Florida and Utah , and are pending in Maryland and Arizona.

But what we really need is a single, strong federal law to once and for all lift the dark cloud of censorship.

The Free Speech Protection Act now pending before Congress - sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in the Senate and Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) in the House - is exactly that. It would protect American illustrators, scholars, journalists and bloggers from libel judgments rendered in countries with lesser protections for free speech than the United States affords. The bill applies only to judgments given in countries where the authors do not have sufficient personal or professional ties, and allows for collection of legal fees and, when appropriate, damages from the libel tourist.

The bill is not meant to change British libel laws or impose "an American legal hegemony ... to the financial advantage of publishers in the United States," as one English lord has claimed. No act of Congress could do that.

It is simply aimed at safeguarding Americans' rights to free expression, as enshrined in our Constitution.

The Jihad Janes of the world may seek to kill those who don't share their fanatical views. Others in league with her seek to silence all of us. The passage of the Free Speech Protection Act will guarantee that Americans keep the liberties that Europeans, tragically, are losing by the day.

Ehrenfeld, author of "Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed - and How to Stop It," is director of the Manhattan -based American Center for Democracy.

Profiling & Airline Safety

2010-03-10T18:43:11-08:00

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld

The Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 brought our minds sharply back to the threat our nation faces on a daily basis from terrorist organizations and financiers.

In 2003, then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, commenting on new Al-Qaeda threats to conduct a series of homicide hijackings of U.S. airplanes, remarked that airline passengers were much more secure than they were before September 11th. However, he conceded that "it will be several years until we get the kind of robust system that we need" to protect the flying public.

Seven years and more than $40 billion later we face the same threat and similar security breaches. This attempted bombing proves that our airplanes are nearly as vulnerable as they were on September 11th.

What is worrisome is that real systemic changes have not occurred. Political correctness still rules, while passengers remain at risk. On Christmas Day, we were faced with a terrorist who made his way onto an airplane headed for the U.S. How many others like him are boarding planes heading to the U.S. right now?

The U.S. is the world's best when it comes to air safety and investigating airline accidents and mishaps. But it is performing rather poorly in trying to prevent terrorist attacks. It must adopt a proactive security system that would save citizens' lives, as well as protect infrastructure. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found over 70% of Americans would support profiling passengers who fit the profile of terrorists based on their age, ethnicity or gender, subjecting them to special, more intensive security checks before boarding U.S. flights (USA Today, January 13, 2010).

The U.S. government is increasingly relying on the latest technological innovations while ignoring the obvious: machines are necessary but machines alone do not allow for good screening. The most advanced machines can and should be fully utilized to support the profiling of passengers by educated, well-trained and properly paid personnel.

Our current screening methods - in a post September 11th world - defers to a mistaken notion of political correctness, such as not requesting passengers' place of birth, for fear of "profiling." To my knowledge, the airlines do not cross check the travelers' travel documents against Interpol's database, which includes some 13 million lost and stolen passports. Airline and airport security staffs are not allowed to ask for pertinent details and are instructed not to question passengers' background.

With new threats hindering international travel, it is difficult to argue that security agents should not pay special attention to passengers born in countries where radical Islam is rife, even those who emigrated and obtained new passports. The latest news from Yemen calls for heightened scrutiny of passengers who were born in the Balkans and Chechnya.

The effectiveness of sophisticated screening devices not only depends upon the information they are fed, but also upon the expertise and training of those operating them. U.S. airlines carry about 1.5 billion pieces of baggage each year. In 2005, 15-35% triggered a false alarm during screening. The quality of follow-up checks depends entirely on the screeners. If security agents at New York's JFK airport passed background checks that did not reveal their criminal record, how reliable is the service we are getting from the TSA?

Israel's El Al Airlines is thought to have the best security in the air carrier industry, developed during five decades of dealing with a constant, growing and changing threat. Instead of adopting what El Al has been doing successfully for years, the U.S. has been reinventing the wheel - not for the better. The secret of El Al's success is not only in the technology it uses; it is the quality of security agents it employs and the methods they use. Each employee is carefully screened, thoroughly trained, has frequents breaks to keep him/her alert, tested often, and well paid. The human factor makes the difference.

In addition, the U.S. can adopt new methods of in-flight passenger identification, such as a system implemented in some Indian cities. Upon check-in, passengers receive a boarding card containing a digital photo taken of them at the counter. Flight attendants are given a copy of each passenger 's boarding card to ensure that travelers only fly to their scheduled destination.

With new Al-Qaeda threats to our airlines and passengers, now is the time for the Homeland Security Department to discard political correctness and do the right thing: adopt the best existing profiling methods before another disaster occurs.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director, American Center for Democracy, and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed - and How to Stop It.

This article was first published by the Huffington Post, on March 8, 2010,

America must defend its writers

2010-03-01T10:56:19-08:00

Monday, 1 March, 2010

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

A bill in Congress is aiming to protect US-based authors from overseas libel judgments, not change British laws

The US Senate judiciary committee recently concluded that "foreign libel lawsuits are chilling Americans' first amendment rights", during a hearing on the Free Speech Protection Act on 23 February.

The act provides protection to all US-based authors and publishers from libel judgments in any country that has lesser protection for free speech than the US constitution. The bill applies only to judgments rendered in countries where the authors do not have sufficient personal or professional ties, and allows for collection of legal fees, and when appropriate, damages from the libel tourist.

The committee discussed the possible measures to protect Americans' rights to "candid commentary and uninhibited information that our laws are designed to foster and protect", said the chairman, Patrick Leahy .

The bill pending in the Senate, and related laws recently passed by some states, have sparked vehement criticism by prominent British figures. They have seized the opportunity to attack the US, the UN committee on human rights and me.

A recent speech by a former senior judge of the appellate committee of the House of Lords, Lord Leonard Hoffmann, expressed strong opposition to the US legislation. He also attacked the UN human rights committee's finding in July 2008 that British libel laws, especially those that facilitate libel tourism, are chilling free speech worldwide. Libel tourism is a phenomenon in which foreign claimants exploit plaintiff-friendly defamations laws to sue authors and publishers in countries in which they have not worked or published.

Hofmann's attack on me seems like an effort to silence demands by British free speech proponents to change British libel laws. These efforts followed my very public fight to stop British libel laws from infringing on my free speech rights guaranteed by the US constitution.

My story began when Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued me for libel in London in 2005. By last summer, when he passed away in Saudi Arabia, Mahfouz had bullied more than 40 publishers and authors, including many Americans, into publishing apologies and retractions. He then posted his "victories" on a dedicated website.

Since no one would take on a Saudi billionaire in the plaintiff-friendly British court, Mahfouz never had to address the merits of the allegations against him in an adversarial proceeding. Most often, he did not even have to litigate. Mere threats of suit to sue sufficed to deter all publication on his and others' alleged terror financing.

I refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the British court over my case, which resulted in a default judgment against me. As a result, I petitioned a New York federal court to declare the British judgment unenforceable. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction over Mahfouz, but acknowledged the importance relevance of my case to First Amendment rights. In reaction to that judgment, the New York legislature promptly passed the Libel Terrorism Protection Act in May 2008. Similar laws have been enacted since in Illinois, California and Florida, and are pending in Maryland and Arizona. However, these provide only patchwork protection to authors and publishers in other states.

In his attack against the pending legislation in the US and proposed reforms in the UK, Hoffmann noted irrelevancies such as my birthplace – Israel – and that I have "firm views on the Palestinian question". Furthermore, he pointed out that I "consider[s] the British to be soft on terrorism", referring to a 2006 article in which I criticised the London Bullion Market Association for declaring its intentions to provide North Korea with gold.

I could go on, but addressing all of Hoffmann's digressions would be as large a waste of time as his speech, which misconstrues the policy underlining the new US measures. Contrary to Hoffmann's claims, the Free Speech Protection Act is not aimed at changing British libel laws or towards imposing "an American legal hegemony … to the financial advantage of publishers in the United States". It is aimed at safeguarding Americans' rights to free expression, enshrined in our constitution. This is why the bill has garnered wide support among free speech organisations and the media in the United States.

The growing demand for change has spurred the British justice minister, Jack Straw, to admit that British laws "are having a chilling effect" on free expression, not only that of the media. Straw just appointed a special committee to review the laws to propose appropriate modifications.

In the meantime, the House of Common's culture, media and sport select committee, which investigated the problem for several months, recommended some technical changes to UK libel laws, but wrongly concluded that the US Congress pending legislation is a "retaliatory step" against the British courts. Far from it.

America's founding fathers rebelled against the oppressive and suppressive policies of the British crown in 1775. Over 200 years later, we are faced with the opportunity and the obligation to prevent further encroachment on our rights of freedom of expression, not only from England. With the passage of the Free Speech Protection Act, the Senate will meet that this responsibility.

Hamas may have been whitewashed: a clarification

2010-01-28T08:39:09-08:00

By David Nordell

After publishing the article ’Hamas may have been whitewashed, but it is no cleaner than before’ on this blog three days ago, a friend who is also professionally involved in counter-terror finance messaged me to say that the information on which I had based the article was inaccurate: the US Treasury continues to blacklist the main leaders of Hamas and to ban any transaction with them.

Indeed, the US Treasury blacklist of Palestinian Legislative Council members, which was last updated in April 2006, names the full Hamas leadership, from ’HANIYA, Ismail (a.k.a. HANIYA, Ismail Abdul Salah; a.k.a. HANIYYA, Ismaeel)’ down, on 11 pages, not just Musa bu Marzouk, as I mistakenly wrote.

Avi Trengo, the Israeli journalist quoted in the Israel National News report that was my source, says that INN simply didn’t understand him correctly; and I apologise for being misled in turn. But the real fault actually lies with the US Treasury itself, whose explanatory notes to the blacklist of PLC members are a typical example of opaque American bureaucratic gobbledygook:

Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) list - (This list is NOT part of the Specially Designated Nationals [SDN] List)

Section (b) of General License 4 issued pursuant to the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations (31 C.F.R. Part 594), the Terrorism Sanctions Regulations (31 C.F.R. Part 595), and the Foreign Terrorist Organizations Sanctions Regulations (31 C.F.R. Part 597) authorizes U.S. financial institutions to reject transactions with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) who were elected to the PLC on the party slate of Hamas, or any other Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), Specially Designated Terrorist (SDT), or Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), provided that any such individuals are not named on OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List).

The individuals in the following list are PLC members who were elected on the party slate of an FTO, SDT, or SDGT. They do not, however, appear on the SDN List. As indicated above, transactions involving these individuals must be rejected.

In order to uniquely identify these names, OFAC has created the program code [NS-PLC]. The prefix "NS" stands for "non-SDN".

What all this means, it seems, is that all the Hamas leaders named in the NS-PLC list are actually completely benevolent, or at least morally neutral, individuals who are only banned because of their association with Hamas, which actually is recognised as a terrorist group. This is clearly nonsense, since Ismail Haniya and his merry men continue to preach the violent destruction of Israel on every possible occasion, even if for tactical reasons they are currently keeping to a minimum the level of rocket fire against Israeli civilian targets.

But what is more nonsensical is the whole way the US blacklist -- and by extension, the global sanctions regime that it underpins -- is designed. There is no clear justification for the distinctions between SDN, SDT and SDGT (see above). ’Counter-Terrorism Sanctions’ are followed immediately by ’Cuba Sanctions,’ as if the sanctions against the Cuban regime (however unpleasant it may be) were really anything more than a political sop to the Cuban emigres in the USA and to the remains of anti-Communism. Alexander Lukashenko, the undemocratically-elected President of Ukraine, is listed (in dozens of alternative spelling variations) in the same document as al-Qa’eda and the Swiss-based Relief Association for Palestine.

Basically, the blacklist is meant to serve a very important purpose: to cut off the most dangerous and undesirable people and organisations in the world from the financial system that they need in order to function. There is even some logic in lumping together drug-smuggling barons, terror groups, dangerous states such as Iran, and the political leaders of odious regimes (whether or not they have also carried out war crimes), because to a considerable extent, they all cooperate, through finance, intelligence, weapons and operational support, in trying to subvert or conquer the free world. But the blacklist doesn’t work, partly because everyone listed there will find a way to operate through straw men, shell companies and the like; and partly because it is so huge and clumsy that the banks and other businesses that are forced by international and national regulations to use it inevitably end up with lots of ’false positive’ matches on perfectly innocent customers or would-be customers, which in turn lead to a tremendous waste of time and resources, and to the bombardment of national Financial Intelligence Units with valueless reports that divert their limited resources from real investigations.

Clearly, there do need to be rules about which organisations in the world are to be defined as ’terrorist,’ since sometimes, to be completely frank and cynical about it, we in the free world need the support of ’our terrorists,’ an uncomfortable fact that somewhat threatens the legitimacy of the global counter-terrorism regime. But there should be a clearer distinction between these groups, all of which have political aims and a few of which even have a reasonable pretext for calling themselves freedom fighters, and the drug gangs of Mexico and Colombia, to say nothing of the never-never-land regime of Raoul Castro. It’s high time that the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate took a more proactive role in trying to put pressure on the USA and the Financial Action Task Force to improve the system and make it more rational. And, considering that the increasingly heavy burden of financial system regulation is making both institutions and customers look for ways round it, it would also be valuable for the largely invisible and unknown leaders of the regulatory regime to come out of the shadows and explain to the public why we all have to suffer from this burden.

Can Taliban be bribed to stop terrorism?

2010-01-28T08:35:56-08:00

By David Nordell

An unusual international conference was due to open in London this morning. Its aim: to raise a $500mn fund to buy off the Taliban gunmen fighting the British army in southern Afghanistan, as part of Britain’s exit strategy from that country.

According to the report in the London ’Times,’ the intention of the many international delegations taking part in the conference is to raise money for President Hamid Karzai to pay Taliban leaders to reintegrate their followers into mainstream Afghani life: the money would supposedly be used to pay for projects and infrastructure that would allow the young men currently fighting among the Taliban ranks to find jobs as guards and in agriculture, instead of fighting the government.

Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was quoted as saying that "the overwhelming majority of these people are not ideological supporters of Mullah Omar and al-Qa’eda .... Based on interviews with prisoners, returnees, experts, there must be at least 70 per cent of these people who are not fighting for anything to do with these causes."

But can this strategy work, or is the belief that the majority of Taliban fighters are only

there because they have nothing else to do and no alternative source of income just self-delusion?

The ’Times’ quoted the Taliban’s own website as rejecting the move, saying that they were not fighting for "money, property and position; but for Islam and to end the foreign military presence."

Hypothetically, they could be holding out for better terms and conditions than the $500mn currently being considered. But even if this were the case, could Karzai actually deliver on the plan? His regime is a byword for corruption, even after all the billions of dollars in aid funds and the tremendous involvement of international bodies, foreign governments and armies in trying to rebuild the country. It’s no accident that one of the two authors of the book ’Failed States,’ a trenchant analysis of how even generous foreign aid can rebound in countries like Afghanistan to produce even more corruption, is the country’s former finance minister, Dr. Ashraf Ghani, who unfortunately failed ignominiously in the recent presidential election, not least because of the corruption he has tried so hard to fight. And although there have been all sorts of initiatives to raise profitable cash crops in Afghanistan to replace the opium poppies that satisfy most of the West’s heroin habit, the fact remains that a great deal of the Taliban’s income comes from smuggling drugs across the totally porous border into Pakistan.

On the contrary, it would probably be wiser to take the Taliban at their word and to rethink this initiative before any money is committed by the donor states gathered in London. With the poor controls offered by Karzai’s government, it is almost certain that at least some of the money will end up paying for more weapons, training and infrastructure for Taliban operations. And if this is part of the British exit strategy, so that there are no more British troops left in Helmand province to fight the insurgents and prevent their expansion, both within the Afghani body politic and perhaps outside as well, then the history books of 50 years from now will most probably be analysing how the free world was stupid enough to pay for Taliban’s eventual takeover of Afghanistan, after so much blood was spilled to free the country of them.

Hamas may have been whitewashed, but it is no cleaner than before

2010-01-25T07:27:23-08:00

By David Nordell

A news item entitled ’US Terror Blacklist Whitewashes Hamas, Enables Funding’ just arrived in my e-mail a few minutes ago. According to its authors, the US Treasury has removed all the Hamas members previously blacklisted as terrorists, with the exception of Musa Abu Marzouk, the deputy chairman of the Hamas political bureau, from the black list that banks almost everywhere are obliged to use in order to block known terrorists from exploiting the financial system to finance their operations.

In practical terms, the Treasury’s black list of names is a total waste of time: as it is a public document, everyone named in it knows that his name is there, and should he want to open a bank account somewhere, he will find a suitable way round the regulations, either by using a false passport or by using a third party to act on his behalf. And apart from that, the details of many entries in the black list document are simply not very accurate or practical: as a senior compliance executive of one of the biggest European banks told me a few years ago, "the black lists are lousy" as a way of preventing terror finance and money laundering.

Nevertheless, this news is absolutely alarming, not so much because of the symbolism of removing the names of known Hamas leaders and terrorists from the black lists, but because doing so will now allow the European Union to continue sending money to the Hamas-run regime of thugs in Gaza without needing to pretend that it is only financing humanitarian efforts, while boycotting the ’military’ side of the government there. There is a genuine problem of how to ensure that genuine humanitarian aid continues to flow without helping Hamas -- most of whose victims are actually Palestinians living in Gaza, rather than the hated Israelis -- but this discussion is for another occasion.

There is something deeply ironic about this change, because both the United States and the EU make a great deal of fuss about their efforts to prevent the financing of terrorist activity, both through financial regulation and the gathering and analysis of financial intelligence. But deciding that Hamas should no longer be called ’terrorist’ no more changes that organisation’s ideology and strategic aims than the decision of the Obama administration to call the ’Global War on Terrorism’ by the new politically correct term of ’Overseas Contigency Operations’ means anything more than a spineless refusal to call a spade a spade. Hamas will continue to be a terrorist organisation until it actually stops importing weaponry, both by sea and through the tunnels under Gaza’s border with Egypt, actively prevents the firing of rockets and mortar bombs at Israeli civilian targets, and returns the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, who remains in captivity in complete contravention of international law.

What is even more ironic is that last summer, the European Commission published a call for proposals in its security research and development programme for ’innovative tools’ to fight organised crime, money laundering and terror finance. This call for proposals wasn’t something done at random: the EU has genuine and completely justified fears of the continued growth of organised crime and terrorist gangs, which are increasingly working together to rob, destabilise and harm European society; and key EU institutions such as Europol are doing real work in this field. I should also mention, in the interests of full disclosure, that I recently coordinated a proposal, based on a Europe-wide consortium, in response to this call. I can’t even say, as some commentators have done, that the EU doesn’t care about terrorist activity directed against Israel, which is an associated state and firm ally of the EU, or outside Euroland in general: the problem is that the EU has such a vast bureaucracy, with different departments aligned to different political interests, that it frequently ends up supporting different combinations of mutually opposing interests.

Perhaps most ironic of all, I very strongly suspect that one set of banks will be ignoring the US Treasury’s policy reversal: the banks under the control of the Palestinian Autonomy, which justifiably sees itself as threatened by Hamas, and which -- perhaps to some readers’ surprise -- actually takes the sanctions regime against Hamas (and its even more extremist partners in Gaza) seriously.

A ‘right’ to finance terrorism?

2009-12-14T09:00:00-08:00

The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has been the focus of considerable attention recently as a result of its continuous attempts to circumscribe free and open discourse regarding Islam and terrorism, but one of its lesser-known initiatives may well already be on a collision course with US law.

On November 28, 2006, the OIC established the International Zakat Organisation (IZO), inaugurated by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, with a stated vision of “Establishing an official, and not political, global organisation emanating from the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), with which all member countries of the OIC will work and cooperate in the fields of Zakat and charity and missionary work.”

Further elaboration is given on a page entitled “What is Zakat?” in which the following appears: “For the cause of Allah (Fisabillillah): Zakah can be used to finance any form of struggle or work for the love of Allah. The following examples fall under this category, e.g. Da'wah; building & developing society's infrastructure; defending Muslims, who are being oppressed; assisting poor travellers and sponsoring a student's educational expenses.”

While many of the examples listed above are largely unobjectionable, two phrases stand out as deeply alarming when placed against the OIC’s track record, particularly the statement that Zakat may be used for “any form of struggle.” Irrespective of religious debates as to the meaning of ‘struggle’, when is utilized by the OIC, the term ‘struggle’ has a particular usage, as exemplified by the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which states that “It is the duty of all States and peoples to support the struggle of colonized peoples for the liquidation of all forms of colonialism and occupation.”

Indeed, as the OIC stated in its Kuala Lumpur Declaration on International Terrorism, “We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital” In its 2007 Islamabad Declaration, the OIC applied the term to defend those whom it perceives to be “the true representatives of the Kashmiri people in their struggle against foreign occupation.”

The United States takes a significantly different view of terrorism, including the prohibition on providing material support to terrorist entities, and of the 45 entities currently designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the US Department of State, fifteen are active in Israel, Kashmir or Iraq, while a number of others are active in Afghanistan.

Unsurprisingly, United States material support and related laws have been challenged on religious grounds. When this has occurred, several federal courts have reiterated the statement made by Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that "...there is no constitutional right to facilitate terrorism by giving terrorists the weapons and explosives with which to carry out their grisly missions." [Humanitarian Law Project v. Reno, 205 F.3d 1130 (9th Cir. 2000)]

Still, as Supna Zaidi, assistant director of Islamist Watch, which combats lawful Islamism in the US and throughout the West explains, “with the Holy Land Foundation trial and similar cases, there is already a real concern as to where Muslim charitable funding is going. With an organization like the IZO, determining where money really goes would be a logistical nightmare that could demand new transparency and oversight standards to follow the money trail.”

And even while the US and OIC have been skirmishing over definitions of terrorism and related international norms at the United Nations, a potentially significant showdown could happen within the next several years. Among the OIC’s stated “Objectives & Goals” is the development of five regional centers around the world. The first three such centers are within OIC member states Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, while a fourth is scheduled for London “by 2010/2011.” The fifth and final such location is “New York, USA.”

Considering the fact that the OIC’s views on terrorism conflict with United States law and foreign policy, there are serious questions that must be publicly asked - and answered - before a International Zakat Organisation center is set up in the United States, and prime among them is whether this OIC subsidiary will be allowed to pursue its political aims under this religious guise. By contrast, if the US allows the IZO to be active within its borders without significant oversight regarding funds used to finance forms of ‘struggle,’ it could set terror finance investigation back to an unprecedented degree.

Jennifer White on Libel Tourism

2009-10-15T10:25:49-07:00

I am posting this on behalf of analyst Jennifer White:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Money Talks: Truly Deterring Libel Tourism

By Jennifer White

During my days working as an attorney on large Wall Street financial cases, one of my mentors said, as I pondered the organizational review of what I knew would be tens of thousands of pieces of paper: “follow the money.” While undoubtedly there have been several equally wise words that I have not taken to heart, that comment has never failed to cut to the kernel of any given matter I have worked on, whether be it worth hundreds of millions or a few thousand dollars.

“The Free Speech Protection Act of 2009” has been introduced in both the House and Senate, (S. 449 introduced by Senators Lieberman and Specter on February 13, 2009 and H.R. 1304, introduced by Representative King on March 4, 2009), specifically to staunch the pernicious practice of libel tourism.

Libel tourism is a tactic used by radical Islamists and their supporters to muzzle information about their activities. Specifically, libel tourists file suits in foreign courts (generally in which they have little or no connection) in order to advantage of that jurisdiction’s law and procedure. England has been a favored spot for these suits as speech is far less protected in England than under our First Amendment, and in English courts, the burden of proof lies on the defendant.

The danger of libel tourism should never be underemphasized. Libel tourism at the heart of lawfare, or the ways in which radical Islamists use our laws against us. Lawfare, a far more subtle foe than groundfare, has already substantially furthered the radical Islamist agenda.

June 15 of this year, the House enacted H.R. 2765, “The Free Speech Protection Act of 2008.” While symbolically important, it utterly fails as a true deterrent to libel tourism. H.R. 2765 prevented courts from recognizing foreign judgments that conflicted with the First Amendment, but stopped short of providing those harmed by libel tourism with a separate cause of action. Both H.R. 1304 and S.449, on the other hand, contain three provisions absolutely crucial if we truly wish to deter libel tourism: 1) the creation of a federal cause of action that the harmed U.S. person can bring; 2) damages should the harmed U.S. person prevail in his or her action; and 3) the possibility of treble damages.

Money talks. Libel tourism was pursued in earnest in response against New York based author Rachel Ehrenfeld for her 2003 book “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop it.” Dr. Ehrenfeld was sued in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire featured in her book, which, among other things, detailed the Saudi money trail financing the radical Islamist agenda. The British court, applying English law, found for Mahfouz, and issued a default judgment against Ehrenfeld. Bin Mahfouz died August 16, but the practice of libel tourism lives on.

New York state responded to the default judgment entered against Ehrenfeld by enacting a law that prevented New York state courts from recognizing foreign libel judgments that are inconsistent with the First Amendment, referred to as “Rachel’s law.” Illinois and Florida have passed similar laws and California is poised to do so.

The 2008 predecessor to the bipartisan 2009 House and Senate “Free Speech” bills is virtually toothless as a true deterrent. While symbolically important, the law merely allows the non-enforcement of foreign defamation judgments the U.S. if the expression in question is not a violation of the First Amendment. As a number of federal courts had already reached this conclusion, H.R 2765, in fact, merely codified what a number of federal courts had already decided.

Notably, the merry band of Saudi libel tourists (of which bin Mahfouz was a leader) did not appear to give the introduction of The Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 much thought. Records reveal that little, if any, real lobbying done by the Saudis to prevent its passage. And really, why should they have bothered? Without the ability of their victims to bring a cause of action against them and collect damages, what risk were they really running by continuing to suppress the truth?

The Freedom of Speech Act of 2009, however, presents a whole new ballgame, one with real consequences for the Saudis who have, in the words of one Member of Parliament, made libel tourism an “international scandal” and a mockery of the British courts – continuing their game will likely result in large damage awards against them.

Both H.R. 1304 and S. 449 appear stalled in committee – in both cases the House and Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Courts and Competition. For actual protection against libel tourism, the critical pieces of The Freedom of Expression Act of 2009 must stay in place –the ability for the harmed U.S. person to bring an action and the corresponding damages provisions. bin Mahfouz’s son, Abdulrahman, who engaged in serial libel tourism with his father, appears ready, willing and able to continue the practice. Without the crucial protections of the Free Speech Act of 2009, this bipartisan legislative intiative will turn into yet another symbolic, but toothless, weapon against libel tourism.

Notably, a Saudi initiative to prevent the Freedom of Speech Act of 2009 from passing is newly in place. According to a Member of Parliament who has asked that the British Law Society look into this issue, Shillings is one of the two most active British law firms acting on behalf of libel tourists. Shillings recently teamed up with a prominent D.C firm, one without any involvement in any previous libel tourism suits, but one with an active practice on the Hill, to “investigate” the issue. Already “seminars” on the issue of libel tourism are planned in the District as well as in London. (London appears necessary as various members of Parliament are beginning to express concerns about the issue.)

Money talks. And it speaks in various ways. As my partner meant long ago and Ehrenfeld experienced first hand, money talks by revealing information about alliances, sources and other information. In recent years this has proven vital to our national security, as so aptly demonstrated by Ehrenfeld and others.

Money also talks in that its use influences outcomes. We cannot allow money to talk its way out of the passage of the Freedom of Speech Act of 2009. As Representative King stated: “Our journalists provide us with insight on issues that affect all Americans, such as war and terrorism…We cannot allow their voices to be silenced by those who prefer to keep secret the inner details of these issues.”

Winning the War in Afghanistan

2009-10-01T05:58:41-07:00

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

While the Obama administration is debating whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan, there may be a better solution for stabilizing the country. No one expects Afghanistan to become a peaceful, self-sustaining democracy overnight. However, without an effective strategy to turn the situation around, the surge is likely to result in the unnecessary loss of human lives and billions of dollars, while failing to remove the major reason for the instability in the region–the heroin trade.

Since its liberation from Taliban rule in 2001, Afghanistan’s opium production has gone from 640 tons to 8,200 tons in 2007, reportedly falling to 7,700 tons in 2008. The latest U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) report, however, is based only on the production in seven provinces where NATO and US forces are fighting the Taliban. Indeed, Afghanistan continues to supply over 90% of the global opiate market.

“Insecurity and drug production and trafficking…are very much inter-related,” INCB President Hamid Ghodse told a news conference in London. According to Ghodse, “It is very difficult to say which is the cause and which is the effect.”

But former Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalili is clear: “This is a source of income for the warlords and regional factions to pay their soldiers. The terrorists are funding their operations through illicit drug trade, so they are all interlinked,” he stated in 2005. Since then, the situation has greatly deteriorated.

The Commander of the U.S. Forces (USFOR-A) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, rightly views the illegal drug trade as particularly dangerous because of its corrupting effects on the Afghan government.

An effective solution for the escalating violence, devastating corruption, crime and growing radicalization in Afghanistan has been available for a while, but previous administrations failed to implement it. The Obama Administration should initiate a new policy that includes drug eradication while providing the farmers with subsidies and skills for viable economic alternatives.

The Administration should fund the final studies necessary to implement the innovative and safe poppy eradication method that previous U.S. governments spent significant resources developing. This entails the use of mycoherbicides, naturally occurring fungi that control noxious weeds. Unlike chemical controls now in use to eradicate illicit plants such as coca shrub in Colombia, mycoherbicides assail only the targeted plant, rendering its cultivation uneconomical. These fungi continue to live in the soil, preventing the future growth of the opium poppy plant, but are harmless to other crops, people and the environment.

On Dec. 29, 2006, then President George W. Bush signed Public Law 109/469, of which Section 1111 requires the Office of National Drug Control Policy to conduct an efficacy study of mycoherbicides’ use on the opium poppy and coca shrub. Yet, the one-year study was never conducted. President Obama should immediately authorize the completion of the study.

The use of mycoherbicides in Afghanistan, combined with adequate enforcement by the military, will diminish the production of heroin. It will also cut off the Taliban’s and the warlords’ hefty money supply, which in addition to funds from the Saudis and the Gulf States, fuels political corruption and the war. This strategy would free up the $150 to $200 billion now used to fight the drug trade and its byproducts–crime, addiction, diseases, accidents, etc.–in the U.S., and make these funds available to help fight terrorism directly.

Unfortunately, while the Obama administration is considering a new policy to stabilize Afghanistan, it has already shifted focus from the War on Drugs to the War on Drug Traffickers. Instead of eradicating the opium crops in Afghanistan, the Administration is now targeting Taliban-linked traffickers and drug labs. But focusing on the criminal elements alone will do little to stop opium cultivation, or boost the economy, if only because there are very few alternatives for most Afghan farmers. Afghan opium production accounts for 97% of the country’s per-capita annual GDP, or $303 of $310.

Implementing this new strategy, while subsidizing the Afghan economy until other crops and industries can replace the illegal heroin trade, seems a better way for America to succeed in fighting the Taliban and the endemic corruption. It would also free up resources for an array of social and governmental reforms, which should be clearly defined and strictly supervised. With no heroin to fund terrorism and subvert the economies and political systems of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the American agenda could take a huge leap forward.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It, is director of American Center for Democracy

Brazil Threatens Americans' Free Speech

2009-10-01T05:42:41-07:00

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Americans writers' free expression is under attack by foreign courts.

In the most recent assault, a Brazilian widow is suing an American reporter in a Brazilian court for allegedly defaming the entire nation of Brazil. She claims Joseph M. Sharkey, a New Jersey - based freelance travel columnist for the New York Times, offended the "dignity" of Brazil by criticizing its incompetent air-traffic control on his blog. Moreover, she claims that under Brazilian law, an "insult" to Brazil is also a personal insult to her as a Brazilian citizen.

The lawsuit was filed by the widow of one of the 154 victims who died in a mid-air collision of the Brazilian Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 with a U.S. business jet over the Amazon on September 29, 2006. All 154 passengers on the Brazilian aircraft died; the seven passengers on the American jet survived.

Joe Sharkey was one of the lucky seven survivors on the plane, which made an emergency landing in the Amazon in Brazil. Upon his return to the U.S., Sharkey published a front-page article in the New York Times about the disaster, and told his story on major national TV and radio outlets.

The Brazilian authorities detained the American survivors for lengthy interrogations, and immediately criminalized the accident, assigning blame to the American pilots. They proceeded to prosecute - in abstentia - the two American pilots for homicide.

In response, Sharkey published a blog, which argued against the scapegoating of two innocent American aviators in an atmosphere of hysterical anti-Americanism, and criticized Brazil's attempt to cover up the real problems in its air space over the Amazon.

Sharkey's blog, which is the putative subject of the lawsuit against him, had a major role in sorting out the truth and pressuring the Brazilian judge to release the American pilots who were held for two months. In fact, Sharkey was proved right when the United States National Transportation Safety Board issued a report in December 2008 concluding that systemic and operational faults in Brazilian air-traffic control over the Amazon were the probable cause of the collision.

Sharkey was sued for defaming Brazil late last year, but only received an official copy of the complaint, written in Portuguese, on September 16.th In the meantime, however, the Brazilian court proceeded with the lawsuit, and it is expected that he will be convicted.

If convicted, Sharkey would be ordered to pay $500,000 to the Brazilian widow and publish apologies to the Brazilian nation in major international newspapers and media outlets - a major financial undertaking.

Had Sharkey resided in New York state, he would have nothing to fear. In May 2008, New York was the first state to pass the Libel Terrorism Protection Act, shielding New Yorkers from foreign libel judgments. Illinois and Florida passed similar laws and in California, the governor is expected to sign a free speech protection bill into law by the end of this month.

Alas, Sharkey lives in New Jersey. Although the New Jersey Senate unanimously passed a similar bill (S.1643) sponsored by Sen. Loretta Weinberg, it remains enmeshed in a lengthy approval process by the legislature.

But Joe Sharkey and his family can be saved from the financial ruin they are likely to face from the Brazilian libel suit, if the U.S. Senate promptly passes the Free Speech Protection Act 2009 (S.449 ).

The bi-partisan Free Speech Protection Act 2009 is sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter (D-PA), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The bill is widely supported by major writers' and publishers' organizations in the U.S. A less protective bill proposed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) already passed the House.

The Free Speech Protection Act will defend Americans' First Amendment rights from foreign libel judgments that do not provide protection similar to the U.S. Constitution, and will allow the deterrent of countersuits for damages. The law will ensure that U.S.-based journalists, researchers and publishers no longer need to fear the pernicious threat of foreign libel judgments, and will be able to freely investigate and report on matters of national and international significance. Congress should pass the Free Speech Protection Act without delay.

This article was first published in TownHall.com on Sept. 30, 2009

Libel Tourism Continues to Threaten U.S. Writers

2009-09-17T11:44:23-07:00

This letter was published in the American Spectator as a rebuttal to a misleading claim by the Legal Project's assistant director Aaron Eitan Meyer.

The Saudi billionaire and serial "libel tourist" Khalid bin Mahfouz is dead, but libel tourism (the use of foreign courts to sue American writers) continues to threaten Americans free speech rights.

Sadly, the Special Report on Islamist Lawfare by Aaron Eitan Meyer that appeared in the Spectator on September 15 misleads the reader to think that fighting for laws to protect Americans from libel tourism is "dangerous." Specifically, Meyer hopes that "bin Mahfouz's demise will provide an end to the dangerous overemphasis that has been placed on libel tourism." Such a statement is astonishing from the assistant director of the Legal Project of the Middle East Forum, which uses the dire threat of libel tourism to raise funds for their own organization.

On its own website, the Legal Project offers my struggle against Mahfouz as its first example of silencing free speech. Mahfouz objected to my exposure of his terror financing activities in my book Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed -- and How to Stop It, which was published only in the U.S. Instead of suing me here, he chose the British libel laws and courts in an attempt to silence me. Until I decided to fight for my Constitutional rights for free expression, libel tourism was successfully used as a weapon to intimidate the American media into silence.

Mahfouz, who did the Saudi royals' bidding, was a serial suer. He frequently used archaic British libel laws that allow foreigners to sue other foreigners in British courts. Often with his son Abdulrahman, he sued more than 40 writers and publishers -- mostly Americans -- because he did not like their criticism.

Mahfouz made libel tourism a multimillion-dollar industry for the British Bar, and turned London into the "Libel Capital" of the world. On behalf of the Saudis, Mahfouz succeeded in using libel tourism as a weapon to intimidate the Western media from reporting on Saudi terror financing, and even from reporting his death.

However, due to my personal efforts, in May 2008, New York State was the first to pass the "Libel Terrorism Protection Act," aka "Rachel's Law" protecting New Yorkers from the likes of Mahfouz. Since then, Illinois and Florida passed similar laws and in California, the governor is about to sign the anti-libel tourism law.

Moreover, as a direct result of Mahfouz's libel terrorism, the bipartisan Free Speech Protection Act 2009, sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter, Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer and Ron Wyden, is now pending in Congress. The bill is widely supported by major writers and publishers' organizations in the U.S. These legislative victories were achieved with the endorseme nt of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and the Association of American Publishers (AAP); the American Library Association; American Association of University Professors, the New York City Bar Association, and many others.

This bipartisan broad-based support could be the reason behind the Saudi new initiative to prevent this bill from passing. They recently hired U.S.-based international law firms to publicly lobby against the Free Speech Protection Act.

Nevertheless, the U.S. is the only country to make free speech the foundation of its Constitution, and this bill would protect Americans free speech rights from foreign libel judgments that do not provide protection similar to our Constitution. Moreover, to deter libel tourism, the bill allows for countersuit and damages. A different version sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen, passed in the House earlier this year.

Congress passed many laws to protect us from the threats of terrorist attacks. It should now act to stop the war on our First Amendment and strengthen the protection of our rights for free expression. Congress should pass the Free Speech Protection Act 2009 without further delay.

-- Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld
Director, American Center for Democracy (ACD)

Hizbollah hit in the pocket

2009-09-06T06:22:32-07:00

By David Nordell

If there’s any happy news at the moment in the field of terror finance, it comes from Lebanon. According to the London-based Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Lebanese terrorist movement-cum-political party Hizbollah has just suffered a huge financial fraud, estimated in hundreds of millions of dollars.

The details are still unclear, but it appears that the Lebanese businessman Salah Ezz al-Din, nicknamed Hizbollah’s financial Imad Moughniyeh in reference to the late operations chief assassinated in Damascus, managed to defraud investors from Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar and other gulf states in a Ponzi scheme similar to that of Bernard Madoff. Ezz al-Din’s position within Hizbollah was perhaps not as important as Moughniyeh’s, but according to the Lebanese pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar, Salah Ezz al-Din was "a close mediator to Hezbollah ... as the majority of deposits from the families and supporters of the movement are made with him. Many people deal with him with great confidence, and this has resulted in a number of things, most notably, the rumors that he is a partner to Hezbollah."

From the little I have seen so far, Ezz al-Din had promised to invest investors’ money, including that of Hizbollah leaders and perhaps the movement itself, in rebuilding parts of Beirut damaged during the Israeli-Hizbollah war in 2006: like many other construction projects, this could be expected to produce the very high yields apparently being returned to the earliest investors -- except that, like in every other Ponzi scheme, the profits actually came from the subsequent investments.

Naturally, anything that hits Hizbollah’s financial resources and so slows down its rearmament, training and eventual operational capabilities is a good thing: it will also lose a lot of face in the rest of the Arab world, which will add to the damage. This time, the organisation’s loss seems to have been nothing more than the result of Ezz al-Din’s tremendous greed. But this incident should act as an inspiration to the more creative Western intelligence services to hit at terrorist organisations’ finances the same way that common cyber-criminals attack members of the general public -- through carefully constructed cyber-fraud. Hizbollah, in particular, is vulnerable, because it’s a legitimate political party in Lebanon with many legally-incorporated companies and other associated bodies, and it can hold bank accounts legally.

This suggestion may look like breaking the rules by which Western states are supposed to play. But both cyber-warfare and financial warfare have already entered the lexicon of modern strategy; and the laws banning money laundering and terror finance in most jurisdictions allow for sequestration of criminal and terrorist funds. If it is possible to cripple or at least damage terrorist organisations by carrying this war to the offensive, without the need to fire a single shot, so much the better.

Speak not only good of the dead

2009-09-06T03:32:22-07:00

By David Nordell

De mortuis nil nisi bonum -- speak only good of the dead -- is an old Latin proverb oft used as a pretext to gloss over the less salubrious aspects of someone’s character and actions after his death. I was very much reminded of this saying during the orgy of praise a week ago for the late Senator Ted Kennedy, both during the funeral services and in the media. And indeed, notwithstanding the many ugly rants from American far-right commentators about Kennedy’s "ultra-liberalism" (an expression that definitely puzzles Europeans, for whom liberalism means something entirely different), Kennedy did a great deal of good during his very long career as a legislator, much of it in partnership with an ostensibly very unlikely co-lawmaker, the highly conservative senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch.

But there were definitely two groups of people who must have expressed the strongest possible reservations, and probably curses too, about the eulogies that the great and the good, from President Obama down, poured on Kennedy’s memory. One, clearly, is the family and friends of Mary Jo Kopechne, whom Kennedy abandoned to a watery death at Chappaquiddick. The other, much larger but less in the public eye, is the families and friends of the thousands of British soldiers and civilians, especially civilians from Northern Ireland, killed during the ’Troubles’ from the ’60s to the ’80s.

For all that Time magazine recalled Kennedy’s role in Northern Ireland as a peacemaker who encouraged the reconciliation process that more or less stopped the killing, he started out as a firm supporter of Irish nationalism and the Catholic struggle against British rule. Political support in itself would have been legitimate, however much it jibed with the official policy of the USA’s closest ally; and this political support was only natural for a proud Boston Irish Catholic. But even leaving aside the rumours that the Kennedy clan actually contributed money to the Irish Republic Army, Ted Kennedy was definitely responsible for a grave sin of omission that cost many lives in Northern Ireland and on the mainland. Simply put, as the de facto leader of the large and powerful Irish Catholic community of the United States, he could and should have spoken out clearly against the organised collection of money there to buy weapons for the Republican cause; and he could and should have initiated legislation to outlaw it. By not doing so, he colluded in a major terror financing operation lasting for years that was aimed, not at destabilising some enemy of the USA such as Russia or Cuba, but the United Kingdom, the country at whose side American soldiers fought in two world wars (and where his father was American ambassador during the second war). He had the clout in his community to say "let the six counties of Ulster be reunited with the South, but not at the price of British or Protestant blood, only through negotiation," and he didn’t. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, did he ever express regrets about his collusion in the bloody civil war.

I don’t know what price Kennedy will have to pay on the far side of the Pearly Gates for this and his other sins of omission. But bank compliance officers and CEOs already face potential jail time in many countries for failing to stop or report money laundering and terror financing activities. Kennedy, of course, was Kennedy and would have got away with it. He always did.

Poetic justice, almost

2009-09-06T00:25:07-07:00

By David Nordell

There was a delicious irony in the assassination attempt made against Prince Muhammad bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia just over a week ago. Muhammad, who is Assistant Minister of the Interior for Security Affairs, was only about a metre away from the suicide bomber, a member of a terror cell who claimed that he wanted to surrender personally to him and even convince other conspirators to do so; he was lucky to escape with nothing more than minor hand injuries.

But Prince Muhammad is not just one of the thousands of members of the Saudi royal family who populate the country’s government and business leadership, Saudi Arabia after all being the only country in the world that is named for its ruling family and actually run as a family business. He is also one of the sons of Prince Nayef, the long-time interior minister and now deputy prime minister, who many analysts consider to be the most likely candidate to inherit the throne when King Abdullah dies. And Nayef is one of the most irredentist of his country’s leaders, who has consistently opposed the gradual and hesitant policy of social and political reforms led by Abdullah, his half-brother. In religious terms, he is one of the most extreme Wahabists in the country’s top leadership, and was noted for once saying that the country’s small Shi’ite minority were "akfar min al-yahud" -- more heretic than the Jews.

The irony, of course, is in the fact that Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the main backers of jihadi terrorism in the world. Since Jihad International doesn’t, of course, publish audited management accounts, it remains impossible to know precisely which source of terror finance is responsible for funding which part of the massive global operation, and how these allocations change from year to year. But it does seem clear that Saudi Arabia -- both members of the royal family and other members of the elite -- is the main source of funds for dawa, Islamic propaganda directed both at Muslims, to persuade them to become more religious; and non-Muslims, to induce them to convert to the true faith. And without the many billions of dollars that have been poured into this propaganda effort over the years, to say nothing of smaller sums donated to Western universities in order to establish rather more respectable ’research institutes’ and chairs of Middle East studies that provide intellectual and political backing for the Muslim and Arab worlds’ imperialist efforts, the global jihad would have remained far poorer and weaker. There would have been fewer Salafi imams preaching hatred of Jews and other non-Muslims in mosques all over the Western world; there would have been fewer recruits to the cause in general, and fewer willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of Allah. For that matter, there would be fewer Middle Eastern financial institutions willing to transfer funds to terrorist organisations, as Arab Bank did a few years ago. The fact that the actual cost of weapons and explosives for terror operations is just the tip of this iceberg is irrelevant: all the money donated to terror groups, or for that matter raised through their criminal activities, is fungible.

The attempt on Prince Muhammad’s life must have brought home to the Saudi royal family, quite literally, the threat it has created not only to the rest of the world but also to itself. Saudi Arabia has been the target of terror attacks for years, organised and executed by extremist Muslim groups that oppose the country’s general strategic alignment with the United States and its willingness to provide bases for allied operations during the first Gulf war; and which believe that the royal family and its coterie of business elites are the source of corruption in the country and have robbed the general population of its oil wealth. But these groups, including the al Qa’eda-aligned group based in Yemen that dispatched the suicide bomber to kill Prince Muhammad, have also benefitted from Saudi largesse.

Saudi Arabia has indeed made some serious efforts to fight terrorists within its own borders, although one can possibly laugh at its attempts to ’re-educate’ some captured terrorists and return them to a less violent form of Islam. But so long as it continues to support dawa around the world, it will continue to shoot itself in the foot, because even it can control the messages from the schools and academic centres it finances, it can not begin to control the messages of ever more fanatic imams, except perhaps for those within its own territory; and these imams will in many cases continue to see the Saudi regime as an enemy and a legitimate target for violent action. Yet to stop financing dawa would almost be heresy: King Abdullah, the Guardian of the Two Holy Places, by definition has a moral commitment to promote the spread of Islam, and Wahabism is hardly the kinder, gentler Islam one finds in places like Indonesia.

I don’t know anything about Prince Muhammad’s politics and am not sorry that he escaped the attempt on his life so lightly. But it would have been poetic justice for Prince Nayef, until now one of the leaders of extremism in Saudi Arabia, had he lost his son to a terrorist suicide bomber. Maybe this incident will drive the message home -- especially so if he is to become king one of these days -- that he can not back extremism and fight terrorism at the same time, nor can he encourage terrorism abroad without it coming back to bite him at home.

Korean nuclear brinkmanship: pure terror financing

2009-09-05T15:51:14-07:00

By David Nordell

North Korea, according to a report in the London Daily Telegraph, has informed the UN that it is in the "final phase" of enriching uranium, despite the UN’s economic and arms sanctions against it.

Pyongyang’s announcement that it is once again defying the rest of the world should come as no surprise to anyone. Apart from its consistent paranoid fear that any kind of openness or compromise will inevitably lead to the regime’s collapse, no doubt accompanied by the kind of fate for Kim Jong-Il that was meted out to Nicolae Ceausescu, Kim has rightly observed that the more aggressive and apparently irrational his actions, the better the deal it can wring out of the rest of the world, especially South Korea and the USA. South Korea has in the past cut off $1bn-plus of annual food aid to its perpetually hungry northern neighbour, and Kim no doubt believes that renewed talk of his nuclear capabilities will help renew the aid.

But this nuclear brinkmanship is in fact perfectly rational blackmail, directed both at potential donors and also at pressuring the international community into relaxing the sanctions regime. In today’s world, with both China and Russia increasingly assertive and the United States facing massive economic problems and very uncertain success in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and led by an overambitious but underperforming president, it’s most probable that nobody will do anything at all beyond protesting about Kim having added uranium enrichment to his existing small stock of plutonium-based warheads. And if Kim is lucky, he may even be able to squeeze economic aid or significantly relaxed sanctions, or both, out of the other countries in the Six Party disarmament talks.

But it goes without saying that any concessions Kim may manage to get out of the international community will not result in a genuine slowdown of his nuclear programme, still less actual disarmament. On the contrary, it seems almost certain that any additional economic resources he gets will be directed to stepping up the nuclear programme: after all, if the rest of the world is foolish enough to give in to his blackmail, then why shouldn’t he use their generosity to make the blackmail even more frightening in the next round?

In simple terms, this would be nothing less than North Korea pressuring the international community to finance the terrorism he is employing against the civilised world. And yes, it is terrorism, even if he doesn’t fire a single shot or let off a single bomb, because it is employing the threat of violence and war to scare political leaders into doing something they would very much prefer to avoid.

But this threat, however vile, doesn’t only affect a small chunk of east Asia. North Korea is Iran’s most important strategic ally and the source of much of its missile technology. And although North Korea is unlikely to ever need the uranium it’s enriching except as a threat, it is extremely likely to make some available to Iran, of course in exchange for hard currency: whether or not the reports are true that Iran’s centrifuge-based enrichment programme has slowed down, a secret pipeline of uranium from North Korea could easily put the lie to the various Western intelligence assessments of when Iran will actually have complete deliverable warheads, and induce Western leaders to make foolish decisions. Considering, therefore, that the financial sanctions regime the USA tried to impose on Iran has been totally ineffective and that any further economic sanctions the UN might impose in the near future will be too little, too late, the slightest weakness the world shows towards Kim’s odious regime over its nuclear grandstanding may also considerably worsen the danger from Iran.

If there is any moral to this situation, it is this: the free world’s leadership can not afford to give in to political blackmail, because every concession it makes to dangerous dictators like Kim or Ahmedinejad will only finance more terrorism.

Unindicted Co-Conspirators at the White House

2009-09-03T04:02:46-07:00

Despite the ACLU's recent report, apparently being named an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorism financing case does not carry much of a stigma. In fact, it can get you invited to the White House. As pointed out in Jihad Watch, Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was invited to President Obama's Ramadan dinner.

ISNA is an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, and as pointed out by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, has admitted links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not a good preview of President Obama's efforts to engage the Muslim World. Given the fact that he tacitly endorsed the ACLU's complaint about current terror financing prohibitions, by acknowledging that ""in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation," we may be in for more of the same in the future.

It is a very bad day when an organization linked to suicide terror and Jihad against the West gets an audience at the White House.

Iran’s Privatization Sham

2009-09-02T13:59:12-07:00

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

On September 9, Iran will stage one of its biggest economic shams, seemingly selling fifty percent of its telecommunication company, Iran Telecom (TCI), to private investors. The well-advertised “privatization” of the company, described as “the biggest of its kind in the history of Tehran Stock Exchange,” is expected to fill Iran’s depleted coffers with $7.9 billion. In addition, Iran plans to privatize 230 companies in the coming year.

Could this be the controversial, newly elected Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plan to remake his image as an economic reformer? Is he really selling off the control over the telecommunications services, including domestic and international telephone and mobile, telegraph, data transmission, and radio paging services? Moreover, this is the national telecommunications system he and his goons were unable to stop from broadcasting to the world dramatic photos, videos and messages of the brutal crackdown on demonstrations following his fraudulent re-election.

Dictators do not give up such important controls. So, who are those investors that Iran's Privatization Organization “previously approved technically and financially”?

Ahmadinejad’s privatization is no laissez-faire style capitalism. If the past is of an indication, Iran’s latest privatization sham is designed to consolidate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) power over Iran’s state controlled economy.

The Ayatollah Khomeini created the IRGC in 1979 after the successful takeover of Iran by the Islamic Revolution. The IRGC’s early mandate was to defend the Islamic Revolution from within and without. But, over the years, it expanded its security role to control most businesses. The IRGC controls all strategic industries – including nuclear, weapons, transportation, shipping, energy, commercial services, banks, clinics, and even black market industry. What the IRGC does not control on behalf of the State is owned directly by the state.

The forthcoming “privatization” of TCI demonstrates that Ahmadinejad, himself a former IRGC member, is now working to strengthen the IRGC’s power over all state assets, putting his former radical comrades in charge.

As in previous “privatizations,” domestically, the shares are sold to different companies and individuals whose names mean nothing to non-Iranians. Nevertheless, those familiar with Iran can attest that these are minimally veiled fronts for the IRGC.

A few foreign investors have been also pre-approved to buy some of TCI’s shares. Undoubtedly, pragmatic European companies in Germany, Italy, France and England would be pleased to use the pretext of this new “wave of privatization” to bolster their business with Iran.

The U.S. designated Iran as a state sponsoring terrorism on January 19, 1984. Incredibly, it took the U.S. more than thirteen years to identify the IRGC and some, not all, of its affiliated entities as supporting terrorism.

Judging by Obama Administration’s efforts to find “mutual interest” to start a dialogue with disinterested and contemptuous Teheran, perhaps the TCI privatization would be enough of a “reform” for Washington to beg Iran again to come to the negotiation table.

Instead, it is time for the U.S. to follow the money trail and to accurately identify all Iranian linked businesses and organizations as entities that work to advance Iran's nuclear weapons proliferation and accelerate the spread of the Islamic Revolution around the world.

The U.S., preferably with some allies, should then stop the money flow that allows Iran to develop its nuclear weapons, arm itself and fund its many subversive groups and terrorist organizations the world over.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of American Center for Democracy (ACD), is author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It.

The Serial Libel Tourist is Dead; But Libel Tourism is Alive and Well

2009-08-21T18:30:05-07:00

Libel tourism is so effective that the Western media apparently fears even to report serial suer Khalid bin Mahfouz's death

By Rachel Ehrenfeld & Millard Burr

Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz died in Jeddah last Saturday. The 60-year-old former owner of the Saudi National Commercial Bank and banker for the Royal family also owned a charity, the Muwafaq (blessed relief) Foundation that funded al-Qaeda and Hamas, to name but a few. He should be remembered not only because of his involvement with the shady Bank for Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) aka “banks for crooks and criminals” and the illegal purchase of the First American Bank in Washington, DC, but mostly because inadvertently he led Americans to better protect their free speech rights.

Using British libel laws that allow foreigners to sue other foreigners in British courts, a practice known as libel tourism, Mahfouz became a serial suer. He, sometimes together with his sons, sued more than 40 writers and publishers - mostly Americans - because he did not like their criticism. Singlehandedly, on behalf of his royal masters Mahfouz made libel tourism a multimillion-dollar industry for the British Bar, and London the “Libel Capital” of the world.

Many will miss him. In Riyadh, he will be missed by the ruling members of the royal family who once used his National Commercial Bank as their own piggy bank, and often used him and his family members as fronts for their business and to fund their favorite organizations and terrorist groups. Likewise, those shady characters who run the Saudi-funded Muslim World League, the International Islamic Relief Agency, and the Rabita Trust of Pakistan will miss him.

Georgetown alum (1968) Prince Turki bin Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to the U.K. and the U.S. and director of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department from 1977 until ten days before 9/11, and overseer of Saudi financial aid to the jihad in Afghanistan, will have lost an old friend.

Bin Mahfouz will certainly be missed by a circle of notorious Saudi plutocrats who make an appearance in the annual Forbes list of the world's wealthiest citizens, many as defendants in the lawsuits filed by the victims of the 9/11 attacks. There are the Rajis, the Bin Ladens, Al Amoudi, and such other disreputable individuals as designated terrorist Yassin al Qadi, who ran some of Mahfouz’s businesses and charities – the Muwafaq foundation, that funded al-Qaeda, Hamas and Abu-Sayyaf, to name but a few.

Al Qaeda, Hamas and Taliban leaders must be grief stricken and worried; will his sons be as generous as he was?

It is supposed that Mahfouz retained a powerful friend in Washington in James A. Baker, III. Baker, who served as chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush, joined Mahfouz during the roaring seventies when Houston was known as Riyadh-west. They worked together through the heady days and even through the bankruptcy of the second-largest banking organization in Texas, MCorp, in the late nineteen eighties. During the dark days of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Mahfouz could count on Baker, his man in the White House, to keep him out of jail, no matter how persistent the pressure applied by New York District Attorney Robert Morganthau.

Obviously, the ruling family of Abu Dhabi will be thinking different thoughts as they recall the $596 million they paid for the privilege of purchasing Mahfouz’s shares in BCCI, as they were then left holding the bag as the bank went under.

Irish politicians, particularly disgraced former prime minister Charles Haughey, will recall those wondrous days in 1990 when he received $85,000 from Mahfouz so that Mahfouz and nine members of his family would pay $1 million each to obtain an Irish passport -- thus allowing easy commercial entree to the European market.

Surviving members of the Hunt family of Texas likely have mixed feelings on the death of Mahfouz. Bunker Hunt, scion of one of the world's richest men, had used John Connally, former Governor of Texas and Secretary of the Navy, as his go-between in an effort to entice Mahfouz to join in his play to corner the market in silver bullion. Mahfouz then induced members of the Saudi royal family to join in and they, like Mahfouz, lost a fortune. Nearly driven to suicide, Mahfouz was comforted by Salem Bin Laden, perhaps his closest friend ever.

On the West Coast, Boeing directors must recall with fondness the 5% they paid Mahfouz, the fixer, to win perhaps their largest contract ever. And the middlemen in Saudi Arabia who also benefited from their involvement with Mahfouz in clinching the deal must be reminiscing.

As for Osama bin Laden, wherever he is, the al Qaeda leader probably remembers with some affection the days spent with his brother, Salem bin Laden, and Khaled bin Mahfouz at their jointly-held River Oaks estate in Houston, TX. With Mahfouz gone, Osama’s “golden chain” of wealthy Saudi funders has been reduced by a link.

The international law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, must be sad to have lost this wealthy and most litigious client. Likewise, the English Bar must be rather upset, especially those lawyers who represented Mahfouz.

Justice David Eady will surely miss Mahfouz. The cases he brought before Eady and Eady’s judgments made both (in)famous for making libel tourism a weapon to silence critics of Saudi Arabia the world over. Even the U.N. human rights commission warned Britain last year that its libel tourism industry has become a tool to suppress the media’s free speech rights and that it endangered national security.

The serial Libel Tourist Khalid bin Mahfouz is dead. But the jihad against the West he helped fund, together with pernicious British libel tourism practices, are alive and well. Unfortunately, the U.S. government did nothing to stop his activities on either front when he was alive. New York State, Florida and Illinois have already passed anti- libel tourism laws, and another was just passed unanimously by the California legislature.

A federal law to protect Americans’ free speech is a legacy Mahfouz never intended. Indeed, he was so successful in his efforts to stifle reports about him that amazingly the Western media refrained from reporting his death. However, his libel tourism led to the Free Speech Protection Act 2009, now pending in the Senate. One hopes the bill passes as soon as Congress reconvenes so that investigative journalists and researchers can expose others like him before they do us more harm.

Rachel Ehrenfeld’s book, Funding Evil, and Millard Burr’s Alms for Jihad were banned in the U.K. after Mahfouz’s libel tourism hobby was rewarded, as many times before, by Justice Eady ruling against them in London’s High Court.

Libyan Oil is Thicker than American Blood

2009-08-20T16:35:56-07:00

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

In a chillingly cynical excuse Scotland released the former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi who blew up Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The pretext "compassion" for the allegedly terminally ill Libyan, barely disguised the real reason -- oil buried deep in the Libyan sand.

The murder of 189 dead American, and 81 other nationals including 11 from Lockerbie matters not when Libya conditions British oil companies' concessions for exploration in the release of their imprisoned terrorist.

Justifying the unconscious release, David Blair wrote in the Telegraph: "Libya, under the newly pragmatic rule of Col Muammar Gaddafi...ideally placed to help us combat terrorism and nuclear proliferation - the two biggest threats to British national security. So keeping Libya happy matters a great deal, particularly as the country also possesses 42 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and a similar abundance of natural gas." This new friendship won BP the world's largest oil exploration. Therefore says Blair, "Britain needs to make sure that nothing interferes with..."our bilateral relationship" with Libya. If that means sending one 57-year-old prisoner back to his homeland... allowing him to be released on "compassionate grounds" - then so be it."

Blair, whose fictional reporting in 2002 on the Israeli fight against Palestinian terrorist in Jenin, took years to refute. Human Rights International and even the U.N. issued reports refuting Blair's and the Palestinian bogus claims - extols the "companionate" release of the Libyan terrorist, and praises earlier British governments who ignored large-scale atrocities the world over, because the British national interest was on the side of the aggressors.

To remove any doubt where Blair is proud of the Britain's pragmatic "national interest" policy decisions, he reminds us how smart was the decision to quash the 2006 Serious Fraud Office investigation into a £1 billion bribe from BAE Systems to Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The investigation stopped as soon as the Saudis threatened to cancel the £40 billion arms deal for which Bandar and other Saudi royal family members received hefty payments. And Blair applauds that decision because "it was a classic case of interests triumphing over values."

British values? To better comply with the latest radical Muslim dictate, growing number of municipalities in the U.K. ordered swimmers to wear ""Burkinis; The man "must cover the body from the navel to the knee and females must be covered from the neck to the ankles and wrists".

Clearly, justice and national pride are missing from the British political lexicon. In effort to downplay the terrorist release, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, wrote a personal letter to Gaddafi, asking the Libyan dictator to treat the affair "with sensitivity." The Libyan promptly leaked the letter, and the terrorist was received in as a hero by cheering crowds in Tripoli.

Yet, Blair is so hard at applauding England's "pragmatic" choices that he fails to notice that that "pragmatism" led to the downfall of the once powerful British Empire, and to the rapid pace of Islamization of the remains of Great Britain. Then again, he - like a growing number of British politicians - probably see nothing wrong with that.

In the meantime, the U.S. reaction to all this has been muted, perhaps because the U.S. is also eying prospect oil deals with Libya.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, is director of the American Center for Democracy

This article was first published on the Huffuington Post, on Agu. 21, 2009

The Doping of America

2009-08-13T18:13:04-07:00

By Rachel Ehrenfeld

George Soros must be thrilled. Two hundred days into the Obama administration, and 16 years after Soros began his advocacy for drug legalization and promoting "medical marijuana," the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is venturing into the marijuana cigarettes production and distribution. According to the Aug. 5 solicitation for proposals, the selected organizations will be controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and will have to comply with FDA regulations.

Until the early 1990s, the voices to legalize drugs in the United States were not in sync. This changed with Soros' first foray into U.S. domestic politics in 1992-1993. Soros declared: "The war on drugs is doing more harm to our society than drug abuse itself," and proceeded with his checkbook advocacy through his Open Society Institute (OSI) to give some $15 million to establish and fund several pro-drug legalization organizations. Since then, he and his like-minded friends poured many millions into different programs aimed at drug-legalization.

On Feb. 7, 1996, I observed in The Wall Street Journal that Soros' "sponsorship unified the movement to legalize drugs and gave it the respectability and credibility it lacked." I then opined that unchallenged, Soros would change the political landscape in America. But patiently, Soros has achieved what he set out to get.

Soros, whose motto is, "If I spend enough, I make it right," uses his donations and philanthropy to change--or more accurately deconstruct--the moral values and attitudes of the Western world, and particularly of the American people. While others give to the arts and higher education or to better the quality of the lives of their fellow men, Soros has been funding campaigns for drug legalization, and "medical marijuana," which is described as a "compassionate drug."

Soros and the other proponents of medical marijuana and drug legalization claim that the war on drugs cannot be won. 'People will always be addicted to somethinfg', they say. So instead of making them criminals, let's have government-provided "legal" drugs. This, they claim, would significantly lower their current price, removing the necessity to commit crimes in order to secure the drugs.

But how much would governmental administration add to the cost? And what will happen when the "tax" is added on? When the government outsources the production and distribution, would pharmaceutical and new marijuana-cigarette producers be asked to give up their profits? How much would it cost to investigate the black market that will flourish supplying groups prohibited by law from receiving drugs--adolescents, airline pilots, police officers, etc.? This new industry could create jobs. But are there going to be enough sober workers to perform them?

NIDA's solicitation for marijuana growth for research is nothing new. Marijuana studies have been conducted over decades, and thousands of them document the adverse effects of this controlled (illegal?--its not controlled yet) substance.

Yet, now, for the first time, the government is soliciting organizations that can grow marijuana on a "large scale," with the capability to "prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products ... distribute marijuana, marijuana cigarettes and cannabinoids, and other related products" not only for research, but also for "other government programs."

Since when is the U.S. government in the business of distributing marijuana cigarettes? Is this part of the health care programs the Obama administration is so keen to enforce?

Since Obama took office, "medical marijuana" dispensary owners in some of the 15 states where it's legal, or tolerated, report requests "climbed sky high." Medical Marijuana, Inc., an Oregon-based company, which has been traded on the Nasdaq since April of 2009, offers solutions for this emerging industry. Its Web site claims that "the number of ailing people turning to medical marijuana to ease their symptoms has spiked in 2009. Requests have jumped anywhere from 50% to 300%."

In California, where medical marijuana is already legal, a massive campaign is underway to legalize all uses of the drug. Soros and other pro-drug legalization organizations claim that tax revenues from marijuana sales would fill the empty coffers of the state with at least $1.4 billion for the first year. The more users, the more money for the state.

A revenue collection system is already in place to ensure the tax revenues for the states that allow "medical marijuana." The system, developed by Medical Marijuana, Inc., boasts, "The Stored Value Platform System, a point-of-sale system, is a hallmark element of Medical Marijuana's business solutions package." The company has already signed on many marijuana collectives, and lobbies heavily to sign on the City of Oakland, Calif., which is the first city in the nation that voted in favor of collecting tax proceeds from marijuana sale, "as part of the solution to Oakland's longstanding budget shortfall."

California's current attorney general is former Mayor Jerry Brown, who now runs for governor. While he was previously governor of California (this is confusing? Is he running for governor again?) from 1975 to 1983, Brown lowered the fines on marijuana possession. Yet, now he says, "If the whole society starts getting stoned, we're going to be even less competitive."

As for the harm caused by using marijuana, NIDA reports: "marijuana smoke contains 50% to 70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke ... which further increases the lungs' exposure to carcinogenic smoke." Moreover, "marijuana users have a 4.8-fold increase in the risk of heart attack in the first hour after smoking the drug ...This risk may be greater in aging populations or those with cardiac vulnerabilities."

In addition, marijuana use causes "distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, and problems with learning and memory," lasting weeks after the initial use. "As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a suboptimal intellectual level all of the time."

If the government legitimizes marijuana use and develops a new marijuana cigarettes industry, Soros will no doubt boast that he had a part in this feat.

The evidence about the harm caused by marijuana to the individual user and society is overwhelming. Yet the government is now moving for large production and distribution of marijuana. If this is part of the ObamaCare project, it would surely cause the opposite of what it is purp orting to do.

Soros, who paved the way for legalizing "medical Marijuana," because the "war on drugs cannot be won," has made similar claimes that the war on terrorism is a losing propostion. In early 2002, Soros declared that the U.S. should recognize "that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war." Instead of fighting the terrorists, Soros suggested to "Correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds."

Legalizing drugs in the U.S. would make Afgaistan's drug problems pale in comparison. Is this the CHANGE we we promised?

(A slightly different article on this subject was first published at Forbes.com)

Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, is director of the American Center for Democracy.