talldarkandold57 Report This Comment Date: September 08, 2008 07:41PM
New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi
billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers.
In a videotaped interview this year on New York’s all news cable channel NY1,
a prominent African-American businessman and political figure made the curious
disclosures about Obama.
Percy Sutton, the former borough president of Manhattan, off-handedly revealed
the unusual circumstances about his first encounter with the young Obama
“I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,”
Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter.
“The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas,” Sutton said.
“He is the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me
about Obama.”
Sutton, the founder of Inner City Broadcasting, said al-Mansour contacted him to
ask a favor: Would Sutton write a letter in support of Obama’s application to
Harvard Law School?
“He wrote to me about him,” Sutton recalled. “And his introduction was
there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few
friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please
write a letter in support of him?”
Sutton said he acted on his friend al-Mansour’s advice.
“I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I
thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped
they would treat him kindly,” Sutton told NY1.
Sutton did not say why al-Mansour was helping Obama, how he discovered him, or
from whom he was raising money on Obama’s behalf.
A Sutton aide told CNN that Sutton, 88, is ailing and is unlikely to do
additional TV interviews in the near future. The aide could not provide
additional comment for this story.
As it turned out, Obama did attend Harvard Law School after graduating from
Columbia University in New York and doing a stint as a community organizer in
Chicago.
The New York Times described how transformative his Harvard experience became
for the young Obama: “He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community
organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left,
he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of
confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country.”
The details of Obama’s academic performance are well known: At Harvard, Obama
rose to academic distinction becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and
graduating magna cum laude.
Less known are the reasons al-Mansour, an activist African-American Muslim,
would be a key backer for a young man from Hawaii seeking to attend the most Ivy
of the Ivy League law schools.
Khalid al-Mansour a.k.a. Don Warden
In an exclusive interview with CNN from his home in San Antonio, Texas,
al-Mansour said he would not comment specifically on the statement by Percy
Sutton because he was afraid anything he said would get “distorted.”
“I was determined I was never going to be in that situation,” he said.
“Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright — in drag! — and he is a
nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made
would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack.”
But in the lengthy interview, al-Mansour confirmed that he frequently spoke on
university campuses, including Columbia, where Percy Sutton suggested he met
Obama in the late 1980s, and confirmed his close relationship with Prince
Alwaleed.
“I am not surprised to learn about this,” said Niger Innis, spokesman of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). “It is clear that Barack Obama’s ties to
the left are familial, generational, and have lasted for several years.” Innis
is scheduled to address the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn at 7:43 PM
Eastern time on Thursday.
Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour
(his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an
orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an
educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel.
A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of
California, al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi
African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to
do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President General Abdusalam
Abubakar on its advisory board.
He also sits on the board of the non-profit African Leadership Academy, along
with top McCain for President adviser Carly Fiorina, and organized a tribute to
the President of Ghana at the Clinton White House in 1995, along with pop star
Michael Jackson.
But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s disgraced former pastor.
In a 1995 book, “The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered,” he alleged that the
United States was plotting genocide against black Americans.
The first "genocide against the black man began 300 years ago," he
told an audience in Harlem at a book-signing, while a second
"genocide" was on the way “to remove 15 million Black people,
considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American
society.”
In the 1960s, when he founded the African American Association in the San
Francisco Bay area, he was known as Donald Warden.
According to the Social Activism Project at the University of California at
Berkley, Warden, a.k.a. Khalid al-Mansour, was the mentor of Black Panther Party
founder Huey Newton and his cohort, Bobby Seale.
Newton later had a falling out with Warden, who was described in a 1994 book as
“the most articulate spokesperson for black nationalism” at the time.
The falling out wasn’t purely political, according to author Hugh Pearson.
“Sometimes Newton and the other members of (Warden’s) security detail got
into fights with young whites who didn’t like what Warden had to say about
whites. Rather than ‘throw down’ along with the security detail, Warden
refused to fight,” Pearson wrote in “Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and
the Price of Black Power in America.”
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California entered an official statement of
appreciation of Warden and his Black Panther colleagues in the African-American
Association in the Congressional Record on April 23, 2007.
“Among the founding members (of the Association) were community leaders such
as Khalid Al-Mansour (known then as Don Warden); future Judges Henry Ramsey and
Thelton Henderson; future Congressman and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and future
Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,” the Democratic representative’s
statement said.
Al-Mansour’s more recent videotaped speeches focus on Muslim themes, and
abound with anti-Semitic theories and anti-Israel vitriol.
“Today, the Palestinians are being brutalized like savages,” he told an
audience in South Africa. “If you protest you will go to jail, and you may be
killed. And they say they are the only democratic country in the Middle East.
... They are lying on God.”
He accused the Jews of “stealing the land the same way the Christians stole
the land from the Indians in America.”
The Saudi Connection
But al-Mansour’s sponsorship of Obama as a prospective Harvard law student is
important for another reason beyond his Islamic and anti-American rhetoric and
early Black Panther ties.
At the time Percy Sutton, a former lawyer for Malcolm X and a former business
partner of al-Mansour, says he was raising money for Obama’s graduate school
education, al-Mansour was representing top members of the Saudi Royal family
seeking to do business and exert influence in the United States.
In 1989, for example — just one year after Obama entered Harvard Law School
— The Los Angeles Times revealed that al-Mansour had been advising Saudi
billionaires Abdul Aziz and Khalid al-Ibrahim in their secret effort to acquire
a major stake in prime oceanfront property in Marina del Rey, Calif., through
“an elaborate network of corporate shells in California, the Caribbean and
Europe.”
At the same time, he was also advising Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in his U.S.
investments, and sits on the board of his premier investment vehicle, Kingdom
Holdings.
Prince Alwaleed, 53, is the nephew if King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia. Forbes
magazine ranked him this year as the 19th richest person on the planet, with a
fortune in excess of $23 billion. He owns large chunks of Citigroup and News
Corp., the holding company that controls Fox News.
He is best known in the United States for his offer to donate $10 million to
help rebuild downtown Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. But after the prince
made a public comment suggesting that U.S. policies had contributed to causing
the attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani handed back his check.
"I entirely reject that statement," Giuliani said. "There is no
moral equivalent for this (terrorist) act. There is no justification for it. The
people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they
slaughtered 4,000 or 5,000 innocent people.”
Since then, Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Foundation has given millions of dollars
to Muslim charities in the United States, including several whose leaders have
been indicted on terrorism-related charges in federal courts.
He also has given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard and other major U.S.
universities, to establish programs in Islamic studies.
The casual statement by Percy Sutton to NY1 is the first time anyone has hinted
at a relationship between Obama and the Saudi royal family.
Although al-Mansour glosses over his ties to the Saudi mega-billionaire in some
of his public talks, he has represented the Saudi’s interests in the United
States, in Britain, and in Africa for more than a quarter century, according to
public records.
He told CNN that he has personally introduced Prince Alwaleed to “51 of the 53
leaders of Africa,” traveling from country to country on the Saudi prince’s
private jet.
He knows virtually every black leader in America, from the business community,
to community activists, to the worlds of politics and entertainment.
When Michael Jackson was on the ropes in the mid-1990s following a series of
lawsuits by the parents of children accusing him of sexual abuse, al-Mansour
introduced him to Prince Alwaleed, whose Kingdom Entertainment signed a joint
venture with Jackson in 1996.
“Jackson and Alwaleed became pals in 1994, when a mutual friend from
Alwaleed's college days in California arranged a lunch meeting aboard the
prince's yacht in Cannes,” Time magazine reported about the new partnership in
1997.
The mutual friend was al-Mansour.
“As a black American, I am exceedingly proud at the American people’s
response to Barack Obama’s candidacy,” said CORE’s Niger Innis. “But to
deny that he has long-standing ties to left-wing elements in our polity is to
deny reality. If you want to be president of the United States, it is not racism
if you ask these kind of questions, and he has to come up with an answer,
hopefully the truth.”
Sutton gives no clues as to why al-Mansour would be raising money to help Obama
go to law school. Obama has said during his campaign that he paid his way
through Harvard with student loans.
For Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the Los Angeles-based Brotherhood
Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), these latest revelations about Obama’s
ties to Saudi financiers were an important wake-up call.
“To me, this opened up more questions about Barack Obama and his relationship
to the Muslim world,” Peterson told CNN.
“A lot of people are caught up with the emotional aspect of Barack Obama, the
movie star aspect, the false promises that he’s going to take care of everyone
and their Mama.”
But when the full story of Obama’s ties to radical preachers such as Wright
and to black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan comes out, Peterson believes that
Obama’s star power will fade.
“I think there’s more to this story and to Barack Obama than we realize,”
Peterson said. “As all the truth comes out before the election, I don’t
think he has a chance. I can’t see American’s taking that kind of
risk.”
The Obama campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
90130_ Report This Comment Date: September 09, 2008 04:40PM
We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans
during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty
Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins
in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.
Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we
share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at
any time in human history."
What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats —
from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's
Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies
we did not share.
Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a
transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing
"Kumbaya."
Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want,
one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former
"post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national
president.
A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on
just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest
challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a
priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and
ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."
These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy,
expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world
of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.
Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to
cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and
impossible goal.
His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase
from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and
supported by President Clinton.
It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the
"redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of
the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.
It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's
population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite
resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the
world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the
enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon
off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.
We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its
busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of
our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending
well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.
Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development
Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to
meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional
$65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.
During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American
taxpayer around $2,500.
If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll
be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy
consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the
"international community's" foot in the door.
The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax,"
a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a
"royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal .
. . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the
skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign
exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."
Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne
Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New
Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and
Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear
nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns
over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge
us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the
U.S. Navy.
Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's
"global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have
to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where
your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing
and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming
and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans
with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for
little or no benefit.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on
72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are
going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not
going to happen."
Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of
bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?
In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species.
The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.