Federal prosecutors took steps Thursday to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.
In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court against the Alavi Foundation, seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets.
The assets include bank accounts; Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in Carmichael, New York City, Maryland, and Houston; more than 100 acres in Virginia; and a 36-story glass office tower in New York.
Neocon Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Inst. says the timing of this potential $500 million dollar heist is just a coincidence but it seems clear that such a move would not have been taken without the approval of the Obama administration in order to bring pressure on Iran.
Can one imagine the government taking a similar action against any orthodox Jewish synagogue or religious organization sending tax-exempt dollars to Israel to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank or East Jerusalem?
bizness as usual in usrael.
This is an atrocity…
I have never ever seen a bigger more disgusting use of the counter terrorism measurements enacted during the Bush era.
What are these nutjobs going to tell the jury? That the Alevi Foundation was funding schools, mosques, hospitals, and scholarships?
They are also destroying one of America’s largest institutions combating Takfiri based Islamic ideologies. Say good bye to the teachings of Rumi…
Rumi, the wonderful 12th century Sufi poet, from one of my favorite poems, Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around:
Pay close attention to your mean thoughts.
That sourness may be a blessing,
as an overcast day brings rain for the roses
and relief to dry soil.
Don’t look so sourly on your sourness!
It may be it’s carrying what you most deeply need
and want. What seems to be keeping you from joy
may be what leads you joy.
Don’t call it a dead branch.
Call it the live, moist root.
Don’t always be waiting to see
what’s behind it. That wait and see
poisons your Spirit.
Reach for it.
Hold your meanness to your chest
as a healing root,
and be through with waiting.
Thanks MRW. Great poem. I’m not too familiar with Sufi teachings, but this has a very Zen Buddhist feel to it.
It’s from a book called Delicious Laughter. Some British scholars translated Rumi’s ecstatic spiritual poems into English at the beginning of the 20th C, except for a bunch that were considered too raunchy and racy. Coleman Barks translated those in Delicious Laughter. Lots of screwing around and dripping penises over lusty women. One of them is a great long poem about a holy man who decries what soldiers do and renders himself superior to them in deed with airy pronouncements, so the soldiers hand him a sword and make him do what they do. Which he can’t. He shits his pants.
Well, you see, the more we persecute legitimate, mainstream Muslims, the more they will be driven into the arms of the extremists, and this will retroactively justify our persecution on the grounds that they’re just a bunch of terrorists. Or something like that.
You thought the US was a free country? Think again. “If you want a picture of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face… forever.”
That just scares me…
To think that Muslims in America, one of the highest achieving groups of people in this country could be maligned in such a manner.
Nevermind, the fact that Muslim women are the 2nd most highly educated group of women in the country (after Jewish women), or that Muslims in general are some of the most productive members of the American economy.
It just sickens me to see this witch hunt. Muslims in America should not have to pay because our foreign policy in the Middle East is so retard.
Nice and seamless, like a well-made dress stitched, our foreign and domestic security policies, the winner of Project Runway.
Anyone doubt that we live in a Zionist police state as pervasive as Stalin’s?
This operation proves that no one is safe.
Who do we complain to, effectively. I’m fed up with cris du coeur to the White House. Who ordered this? I want to send him a coral snake.
RE: “Who ordered this?” – MRW
FROM WAYNE MADSEN: “More Obama change. Feds seize Shi’a mosques. Action taken by US Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara, who is the son of a Hindu and a Sikh from Pakistan. Why is their sectarian nonsense being imported here?”
wow.
==============
MJ Rosenberg, if you read these comments, write about this the way you wrote about religion last week.
Here link to dailykos.com
is a piece on this subject, buried under 96,000 diaries of outrage about health care reform.
Great find, potsherd.
So this time around we’re using Yellow Crescents instead of Yellow Stars of David? By contrast, how many synagogues were seized after the organized crime racket in New Jersey that tied numerous politicians, several rabbis and an organ trafficking ring? Am I reading this wrong that it’s only a civil suit? So there’s no criminal prosecutory component, as such? Or am I missing something?
And no one will do anything about it. I’m wondering when all this madness will end.
Cliff, you’re Indian. Is there any significance to Dickerson’s fact above that this was ordered by the son of a Hindu and a Sikh from Pakistan? Or is it coincidence?
Here is some more fuel for the fire, Obama just kicked out his advisor who said we should close Guantanamo down –
OFFICIALS: TOP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER TO BE PUSHED OUT
Israel must be exceedingly pleased by this increasing US pressure on Iran and Iranian Americans. The bonus is of course that pyscho Palestinian American USA major. I see McCarthy is alive and well. Now, we will need an arab Woody Allen?
US NGOs funding illegal settlements
A Palestinian human rights NGO on Saturday called on US President Barack Obama to curb American Jewish NGOs’ support for settlements inside the occupied Palestinian territories
Sat Sep 12, 2009
JERUSALEM (Ramattan) – A Palestinian human rights NGO on Saturday called on the President of the US, Barack Obama, to curb American Jewish NGOs support for the building of settlements inside the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) reported today that there are several well known American organizations funding the illegal settlements inside the occupied territories, adding that a part of the fund is used to seize Palestinian real estate in Jerusalem.
The JCSER mentioned in its report the names of several NGOs that spent millions of dollars on settlements.
The US shut down several American NGOs in the past claiming that these organizations used to support Palestinian “terrorist” groups.
———————-
Question, when’s the last time the feds seized a church or temple? The timing is impeccable. Also, the Jewish “humanitarian” NGOs indirectly funding settlements
against US policy (and against international law) is rewarded under discriminatory application of US tax law exemption; we pay in that way for the settlements in addition to the giant annual direct foreign aid dole to Israel sans strings attached.
Whenever you have a process like the bogus “war on terror,” there is always the domestic as well as the foreign atrocities. The parties which are involved not only paint the picture through a skewed and subdued media of what is occurring overseas, but ramps up a process of vilification at home.
The two (above) are always married together, first the bill of goods is sold in regard to the Make-shift “enemy” and how they must be attacked at all costs, than this is used to anesthetize the domestic population when these exercises though various policing agencies domestically – one is meant to reinforce the other. The result it brings of impressions from the people at home, because of the barrage of propaganda regarding “those people” is predictable – “oh, its those people again, they think they can bring their terrorism here just like over there.”
The activity of “catching” those people (the “terrorists”) over here reinforces the “invaluable service” that these extra-constitutional clandestine agencies (FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, etc.). In this case it magnifies the supposed Iranian boogie man at home, so it can help to ramp up the effort to commit whatever atrocity against them over there. The situation is fluid, it can be started domestically and than spread to the foreign activity, or it can be started in the foreign exercise and than the domestic process of vilification begins.
One difference, terrorism wise, between Iran and Israel is that Iran is working furiously against US interests and Israel is working in favor of US interests. Therefore, the US government would be totally stupid to be even-handed and to treat them the same.
If the Iranian government were as pro-American as the Shah, or as Israel, then this sort of thing would not be necessary.
What flavor is that koolaid you’ve been drinking?
Iran and Israel are both working furiously in (what they believe to be) their own interests. The difference between them is that Israel has hijacked US interests on its own behalf, so that the US is working for Israeli interests against its own.
Iran and the US have a number of vital interests in common, but they are unable to work together on them because of Israeli interference.
“One difference, terrorism wise, between Iran and Israel is that Iran is working furiously against US interests and Israel is working in favor of US interests.”
I have a bridge between Alaska and Russia I’d like to sell you.
If the Iranian government were as pro-American as the Shah
Seeing as the US is a democracy, then the fact that the Shah was installed by the US after the US toppled a democratically elected government in Iran is the very definition of “anti-American”.
The US doesn’t need Iran for there to be anti-American actions. America manages to go against its own ideals without any outside help.
What US interests is Iran working furiously against?
“If the Iranian government were as pro-American as the Shah, or as Israel, then this sort of thing would not be necessary. ”
Why do we always get the rejects from the Green Footballs site?
Why do they think other nations ought to be “pro-American?”
Particularly Iran, which was the object of US imperialist plots and conspiracies throughout the 20th century, culminating in the overthrow of the independent democratic government and the installation of the repressive Shah. Iran has every reason to resent American interference in its affairs, and the US has every reason to apologize for it and make restitution – which it will never do.
Here is an interesting article: link to ynetnews.com
Just who is this guy working for? What side is he on?
Yeah, what the hell is going on? This guy supersedes our 16 Intel groups and a NIE? I’m getting tired of these treasonous statements.