Protesters with the Bahrain Financial Harbor, a center of Islamic Banking (photo Ulf Mar) 

Islamic banks have been eating into the profits of conventional banks in the Middle East because: they don’t charge interest (Shariah Law), they are growing very rapidly, and (in these catastrophic economic times) they are more stable than western banks.

The New York Times article “Islamic banking rises on oil wealth, drawing non-Muslims” ( November 22, 2007) reported:   “Rising oil wealth is lifting Islamic banking – which adheres to the laws of the Koran and its prohibition against charging interest – into the financial mainstream. . . . In addition to Islamic loans, there are Islamic bonds, Islamic credit cards …In Islamic banking, financiers are required to share borrowers’ risks, meaning that depositors are treated more like shareholders, earning a portion of profits.  …And while the biggest Islamic banks are in the wealthy Gulf states, the most attractive potential markets are in Turkey and North Africa (emphasis added) and among European Muslims… .” 

  Most people of the world prefer the conventional banking model.   They don’t mind paying 20% interest on small loans (credit card).  They don’t want to share in their bank’s profits: they want their banks to grow even bigger and stronger and more powerful to compete on international markets.  They don’t mind paying income tax to bail out monster banks (i.e. too big to fail) for their bad gambling debts (i.e. TARP in U.S.) [and because that bail out is added to the government’s debt, they don’t mind paying interest on the bail out to the Federal Reserve (whose policies created the crisis)].  They don’t mind children dying in Africa due to third-world usury (countries that can’t pay down the principle have gone further into debt instead of declaring bankruptcy). 

   With the support of their governments, Islamic Finance is the fastest growing sector in the MENA region (Middle East North Africa) with huge business opportunities ahead in the untapped Muslim populations in many countries.  Middle East regimes threaten to derail the forces of globalization and unseat traditional banking because Islam is setting up an attractive alternate model to conventional banking.  Suffering a setback after the “Battle in Seattle”, the globalists have wrapped themselves in the cloak of democracy to further their agenda.  Conventional western bankers see regime change in the Middle East as an imperative to competing with the success of the Islamic banking system (Henry, Clement Moore, PhD. and Robert Springborg.  Globalization and the politics of development in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 2nd edition 2010).

In their  Islamic Finance Outlook 2010 , Standard and Poor’s says,  “Competition Is Mounting, With Conventional Banks’ Islamic Windows Actively Challenging Fully-Fledged Islamic Banks:  Pioneering Islamic banks that have managed to acquire quasi-monopolies in their domestic niche markets are now facing stiff competition in our opinion. Their first mover advantage is shrinking in their domestic markets and we understand they are now looking at business and/or geographic diversification strategies. Conventional banks entering Islamic banking currently constitute the most active competitive threat to established Islamic banks. …”

Late in 2008, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announced France’s intention to make Paris “the capital of Islamic finance” and said several Islamic banks would open branches in the French capital in 2009.  French sources estimate this area of the financial market is worth from 500 to 600 billion dollars and could grow by an average 11 percent a year.

John Sandwick, managing director of Swiss asset management firm Encore Management, characterized the opening of several Swiss Islamic banks as, “the race to control the rich prize: which today is worth hundreds of billions, but in the future will be trillions of dollars of Islamic wealth.”

  Reporting on material from Wikileaks, The Telegraph (Islamic Finance Key To Ensuring London As Top Financial Center) reported that Robert Tuttle, the then US ambassador to the Court of St. James in London as stating “Should London successfully position itself as a leading Islamic finance center, it could gain an edge on New York, when the global financial markets recover. . . . Prospects for growth from a Standard & Poor forecast [see above], assesses the [Islamic Finance] industry to potentially contain up to $4 trillion of assets. Other estimates put growth figures even higher, since Muslims account for 20 percent of the world population. Presently only about 1 percent of global financial assets are controlled under finance compliant with Islamic law.”

  Islamic banking is not yet established in North Africa (except in Sudan) and Egypt where large Muslim populations represent a very lucrative opportunity for Islamic banking in these emerging economies.  “However, despite the current poor climate, the potential for Islamic banking in Egypt is huge,” states Executive Magazine (Feb 8 2011), “ … Clearly Islamic banks in the Gulf are already anticipating the day when their home markets are saturated. And it appears that Egypt will be on the next front-line in the development of regional Islamic banking and finance.”

“African countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Sudan are keen on future sukuk exercises (issuing Islamic bonds),”  [International Finance Review (Reuters), 2008]

ROTHSCHILDS/U.S.  FINANCE REVOLUTIONS IN PLAIN SITE

(This portion was in the previous post.  If you read it already, please scroll down to the table analyzing the banking profile and activist training in each country)

The MENA (Middle East North Africa) revolutions are from the same playbook as the nonviolent “color revolutions”.  The playbook is From Dictatorship To Democracy by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institute (funded partially by George Soros).   These revolutions have been successful in Serbia [especially the Bulldozer Revolution (2000)], in Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004), in Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution and in Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution (2005).    Iran’s Green Revolution (2009) was unsuccessful.

The Guardian reported (Nov 26, 2004) that the following were “directly involved” in organizing the color revolutions:  George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute, and Freedom House.   The Washington Post and the New York Times also reported substantial Western involvement in some of these events.  The network for this strategy is outlined in the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace’s  Fact-Sheet: U.S. Actors Promoting Democracy In The Middle East.   The nature of the programs is described below: 

Liberal billionaire George Soros and the US government funded training of activists in North Africa. 

In 2007-08, Freedom House [funded by Soros and the Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative (MEPI)] ran the following program: “New Generation of Advocates, a MEPI-funded program that supports young civil society activists working for peaceful political change in the Middle East and North Africa, spearheaded the “Lawyers against Corruption” campaign in Tunisia.”(Freedom House website).  The group of “journalists, lawyers, and other activists who advocate for democratic reform” had a meeting with then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a trip to Washington on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2008.  In May 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the group of activist/dissidents.  Freedom House reported on their website that the group also visited “U.S. government officials, members of Congress, media outlets and think tanks . . . After returning to Egypt, the fellows received small grants to implement innovative initiatives such as advocating for political reform through Facebook and SMS messaging.” (emphasis added)

In 2010, Soros’ Open Society Institute funded a grant called ‘Can It Tweet its way to Democracy? The promise of Participatory Media in Africa’ described on the OSI website as being focused in Ethiopia and Egypt.

Egyptian protesters displaying the Otpor protester’s fist originally funded by Soros in Yugoslavia 

Facebook and Twitter were the primary means of organizing the revolution in Egypt:  “Activists from Egypt’s Kifaya (Enough) movement – a coalition of government opponents – and the 6th of April Youth Movement organized the protests on Facebook and Twitter . . . .” (Voice of America)

In the Foreign Policy Journal, Dr. D.K. Bolton (Jan 19 2011) writes, “NED [National Endowment for Democracy] and Soros work in tandem, targeting the same regimes and using the same methods. . . . At least ten of the twenty-two directors of NED are also members of the plutocratic think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations . . . .” (The Council of Foreign Relations is the American sister of the Rothschild’s Royal Institute of International Affairs in Britain: both are instruments of plutocratic control hiding in plain sight.)

  NED is funded by the U.S. government and private interests (including George Soros).  The following are quotes from the NED website from a few 2009 projects:     

“Al-Jahedh Forum for Free Thought $131,000 To strengthen the capacity and build a democratic culture among Tunisian youth activists.”

“Mohamed Ali Center for Research, Studies and Training $33,500 To train a core group of Tunisian youth activists on leadership and organizational skills to encourage their involvement in public life.  [MACRST] will conduct a four-day intensive training of trainers program for a core group of 10 young Tunisian civic activists on leadership and organizational skills; train 50 male and female activists aged 20 to 40 on leadership and empowered decision-making; and work with the trained activists through 50 on-site visits to their respective organizations.”

“Association for the Promotion of Education $27,000 To strengthen the capacity of Tunisian high school teachers to promote democratic and civic values in their classrooms.”

“Al-Jahedh Forum for Free Thought $57,000 [in 2008]  To train Tunisian activists.”

 In Egypt, the number of NED grants doubled in 2009 to 33 democracy projects totaling $1.4 million and the focus changed from promoting private enterprise to training young human-rights lawyers, and identifying and training youth activists:

“Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth (EULY) $33,300  To expand the use of new media among youth activists for the promotion of democratic ideas and values. EULY will train 60 youth activists to use filmmaking for the dissemination of democratic ideas and values.”

“Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies (AITAS) $48,900 To strengthen youth understanding of the Egyptian parliament and enhance regional activists’ use of new technologies as accountability tools. AITAS will conduct a series of workshops for 300 university students to raise their awareness of parliament’s functions and engage them in monitoring parliamentary committees. AITAS will also host 8 month-long internships for youth activists from the Middle East and North Africa to share its experiences using web-based technologies in monitoring efforts.”

”Egyptian Democracy Institute (EDI) $48,900 To promote accountability and transparency in parliament through public participation, and to build legislative capacity. EDI will produce quarterly monitoring reports and hold seminars to discuss the overall performance of Parliament and offer recommendations on legislation proposed in the People’s Assembly. EDI will monitor, collect, and document evidence of corruption in Cairo and Alexandria.”

“Lawyers Union for Democratic and Legal Studies (LUDLS) $20,000 To support freedom of association by strengthening young activists’ ability to express and organize themselves peacefully within the bounds of the law. LUDLS will train 250 youth activists on peaceful assembly and dispute resolution”

 “Youth Forum  $19,000 To expand and maintain a network of youth activists on Egyptian university campuses and to encourage the participation of university students in student union elections and civic activities on campus. . . .”

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George Soros is a wealthy, billionaire globalist.  His long-time trading partner was the late James Goldsmith, British banker and cousin to the Rothschilds.   James’ grandfather Adolphe Goldschmidt came to London as a multi-millionaire in 1895 and changed the family name from the German Goldschmidt to the English Goldsmith.   The Goldschmidts, like their neighbors and relatives the Rothschilds, had been prosperous merchant bankers in Frankfurt Germany since the 16th century (Wikipedia).

These revolutions are done under the pretense of bringing democracy and deposing despots, but the real aim is to initially create chaos and a leadership vacuum, then quickly offer a solution: install a puppet that will do the economic bidding of the Rothschilds.   The citizens gain civil liberties, but become economic serfs.

These revolutions are most likely coordinated at the highest levels by the International Crisis Group.  Mohamed ElBaradei is already being touted as a new leader for Egypt. ElBaradei is a trustee of the International Crisis Group.  Another board member of this group is Zbigniew Brzezinski (another frontman for the Rothschilds).  George Soros also sits on the executive committee.

TABLE I:   COUNTRY BY COUNTRY ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC FINANCE AND ACTIVIST TRAINING

(For the exact figures for this table plus oil reserves, and sources see the page on this topic in the menu on the right)

* includes similar projects from the Millenium Challenge Corporation

 Contrary to popular belief, the world’s finances are controlled by privately-owned “central banks” masquerading as federal government banks in nearly every country in the world  [The U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, ruled that The Federal Reserve (U.S.’ central bank) was privately owned in 680 F.2d 1239, LEWIS v. UNITED STATES of America, No. 80-5905].

Jacob Rothschild, senior member of the British branch of the Rothschild dynasty 

Though the shareholders of the central banks are guarded secrets, in 1976 a U.S. House of Representatives found that the shareholders of the Federal Reserve (America’s central bank) were the super-elite of domestic and international bankers (Federal Reserve Directors: A Study of Corporate and Banking Influence, Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing, House of Representatives, 1976, Appendix, Charts 1-5).  One author, Eustice Mullins, traced the ownership of these banks back to the Rothschilds–having the controlling interest in the Federal Reserve (Secrets of the Federal Reserve 1983).

 With extremely little government input, the economies of nearly all countries’ in the world are strictly controlled by private central bankers (and their tool, the International Monetary Fund) ultimately led by the Rothschild’s cartel.  Central bankers in the MENA region complain about less “independence” from the wishes of those dictators and governments.

Some countries without central banks (privately owned operating autonomous of the government) have names like Central Bank of Iran and Central Bank of Libya and appear on lists of central banks, but they are state owned or entirely state controlled.  Countries without privately-owned (or controlled) central banks are: Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba.  Iraq did not have a central bank until (after the U.S. invasion in) 2004, Afghanistan did not have a central bank until (after the U.S. invasion in) 2002 and Yugoslavia did not have a central bank independent of government control.  Sudan’s central bank may be privately owned but it is totally run by the government which embraced Islamic banking decades ago (According to an IMF study , Sudan’s score for the political autonomy of its bank is zero out of eight).

Countries labeled as “rogue states” by the U.S. in the late 1990s were Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Afganistan, Yugoslavia and Sudan.

TABLE 2:  IS THERE A CORELATION BETWEEN THE LACK OF CONTROL OF A NATION’S ECONOMY BY INTERNATIONAL ELITES AND U.S. AGGRESSION—ECONOMIC, POLITICAL OR MILITARY?

Half the countries in the first column [of the above Table I (no privately controlled central bank)] have been invaded by U.S. forces and most of the rest have been threatened.   Of the MENA countries: 1)  Iraq was subjected to crippling sanctions and then brutally invaded.  In 2002 economic reforms (a private central bank) were forced upon it.  2) Iran is still suffering under sanctions.   Citizens there have been given very high amounts of pro-democracy activist training by USAID, NED and SOROS and they did have an attempted revolution in 2009 after the election and they have had protests in the last months.  3)  In addition to a government-run central bank, Sudan also has many Islamic banks.  It has received extremely high levels of activist training and it has seen protests in 2011.  4)  Syria received moderate levels of activist training and has also had recent protests.

Countries which are financial centers for Islamic Finance (column 2 in Table I) are also targets:   1) Tunisia which had just opened its Tunis Financial Harbor with the ambition to become the financial center of North Africa received moderate levels of activist training and the ensuing protests seemed to catch the dictator by surprise and toppled The Ben Ali regime.  2) Bahrain was establishing itself with two mega-centers, Bahrain Financial Harbor and Gulf Finance House.  Bahrain received high levels of activist training and has experienced sustained protests for many weeks.   3) Iran embraced Islamic banking early on and Western-style banks charging interest are not allowed.   Seven of the ten largest Islamic banks in the world are in Iran.

If a country has an ‘X’ in columns 3 or 4 (in Table I), Islamic finance has a low market share so it represents a lucrative business opportunity (provided the country does not have a small population).  Egypt would be the prime example of a totally unexploited market for Islamic banking:  with a population of nearly 80 million, it has only 3 Islamic banks with a market penetration of only 7%.   Other countries that represent a business opportunity (low market share with a significant population size) are Tunisia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Iraq and Tunisia.

Of all the countries potentially in play (nations mentioned in the text above), based on these figures (do not include MEPI and OSI which are not available by country) for funding of activist training:

1)      Low activist funding means protesters will have the least chance of success in Libya, Algeria and Turkey.

2)     High activist funding means the greatest chance for a revolution to be successful would be in Egypt, Iran and Jordan.

       USAID, NED and George Soros have been injecting millions of dollars into the training of MENA pro-democracy teachers, lawyers, journalists and youth activists.  In 2009 they more than doubled their training efforts.   The international bankers are competing with Islamic finance in the Middle East.  They have their eye on MENA’s large untapped markets.    If they get rid of autocratic leaders, they will be able to control MENA countries and their Islamic banks through their privately-owned central banks—they may be able to discredit Islamic finance as an alternate model to usury.

The globalist banksters want Muslims to borrow from their (the globalist’s) banks and pay interest at rates their central banks decide:  they do not want them to borrow from Islamic banks and not pay any interest.  The globalist banking cartel want Muslims to trade their present political oppression at the hands of brutal dictators for a future of economic serfdom under the feudal Lord Rothschild.

A third option is for young, new MENA democracies not to let themselves be groomed by old men in Western business suits.  They should elect governments that are not from the globalist money power and they should nationalize their central banks and set up independent monetary policy that will provide a level playing field for Islamic Finance and Western-style banks.     

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