Subject: Fight terror at its roots with your gas money

Dear Friends
Please support this effort! It can achieve much more than Pres. Bush's vaguely defined chasing after some Osama Bin Ladens - rescuing others, like Yasser Arafat and his Terrorist Authority.

----- Original Message -----
Subject: Where to buy gasoline

Where to buy gasoline and not support terrorism...actually is food for thought.  Yisrael Medad of the Begin Center sent the following information.  Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. 

Just buy from gas companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis!!!!!

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family and my friends.  I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from. 

Major companies that import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00 - 8/31/01):
Shell Chevron/Texaco Exxon/Mobil Marathon Amoco	205,742,000  barrels 144,332,000  barrels 130,082,000  barrels 117,740,000  barrels 62,231,000  barrels
If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION!
Here are some large companies that do NOT import Middle Eastern oil:
Citgo   Sunoco Conoco Sinclair BP/Phillips	0 barrels 0 0 0 0

All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and can be easily documented.  Refineries located in the U.S. are required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.  They report on a monthly basis.  Keep this list in your car; share it with friends.  Stop paying for terrorism!

DO YOU REMEMBER LAST MAY, WHEN GAS PRICES WERE THREATENING TO GO TO $2.00 PER GALLON?   I ACTUALLY PAID $2.05 PER GALLON IN OHIO.  WELL, THEY ARE TRYING TO DO IT AGAIN.   WE E-MAILED EVERYONE IN OUR ADDRESS BOOKS, AND ASKED EVERYONE ELSE TO DO THE SAME. THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE:  WE JUST BOYCOTT EXXON AND MOBILE, THE TWO LEADERS IN THE INDUSTRY, AND BOYCOTT THE OTHER FOUR OR FIVE OIL COMPANIES THAT ARE BUYING OIL FROM THE MIDEAST, AND WE WILL AIM A DOUBLE BARREL SHOT GUN AT THE COMPANIES THAT SUPPORT TERRORISM IN THE MIDEAST, AND SIMPLY JUST BUY FROM THE OTHER FOUR OR FIVE COMPANIES WHO DON'T BUY OIL FROM THE TERRORIST-SUPPORTING COUNTRIES.
IT IS YOUR MONEY!  SPEND IT WISELY!  JUST SAY "NO" TO MIDEASTERN COUNTRIES WHO SUPPORT TERRORISM!

WE SENT THIS OUT IN MAY OF 2001, AND IT WORKED!!!  THE FOLLOWING WAS SENT BY AN ECONOMIST WITHIN THE FUEL INDUSTRY.  ANOTHER ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT CAL REITERATED THE SAME LAST WEEK.  I THINK IT IS WORTH TRYING.

Why are local Lebanese subsidiaries of major American corporations--like PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Western Union -- lending comfort and support to terrorists by advertising on Hezbollah television?

Al Manar--the Arabic word for beacon--is the official television station of Lebanon's Party of G-d, more commonly known as Hezbollah. That Iranian-backed and -funded group has been implicated in the attacks against the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans in 1982, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 12 Americans in 1984, the Israeli Embassy and Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people in 1994 and numerous other terrorist attacks, murders and kidnappings over the years.

Al Manar is Hezbollah's outreach to the world, a self-described "station of resistance." Founded in 1991 as a mom-and-pop operation that barely reached beyond Beirut's southern suburbs, Al Manar now transmits via satellite 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the expressed goal of waging "psychological warfare against the Zionist enemy."

As Al Manar's Chairman of the Board Nayef Krayem said to me, "There is no act of resistance that can be classified as terrorism." It is no surprise then that Al Manar's programming glorifies suicide bombers, exhorts Palestinians to kill Jews and revels in the carnage of terrorist attacks on civilians. The fact that Al Manar almost always has immediate footage of terrorist outrages or Hezbollah attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border adds to the speculation that Al Manar officials are themselves party to Hezbollah's operational planning. As emerged during a recent North Carolina trial of two Hezbollah operatives, Al Manar employees conduct pre-operational surveillance of potential targets and engage in other logistical and financial support activities for terrorist acts.

Hezbollah, of course, targets America as well as Israel. Sheik Hassan Izz-Adin, in his capacity as a member of Hezbollah's political council and director of Hezbollah's media-relations unit (which directly oversees Al Manar), said to me: "America will fall just like the Romans and the British. While it now controls the world, this will change. We cannot accept American domination and American terrorist actions."

What is most shocking is not the vitriol of Al Manar's message or its high-tech facility for international broadcasting. What is most shocking is the extent of advertising it carries by local subsidiaries of major U.S. corporations. The fact that they advertise only on Al Manar's local television outlet in Lebanon, not on Al Manar's satellite station, suggests they want to keep their commercial links to terrorists away from the prying eyes of U.S.-based viewers.

For Americans, advertising on Al Manar may not only be in bad taste; it may be illegal. Hezbollah is officially named a "specially designated terrorist group" under Executive Order 13224. This designation empowers the U.S. government to impose financial sanctions against those "that support or otherwise associate" with Hezbollah.

Additionally, Executive Order 12947 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act prohibit the provision of "financial, material or technological support" to any specially designated terrorist group.

And the U.S. code makes it illegal to "knowingly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization." At the very least, these statutes and executive orders provide the basis for an investigation into the legality of Al Manar advertising by U.S. firms.

But even if there are technical loopholes behind which corporate lawyers can hide--i.e., it is the subsidiary's fault, not headquarters'--should they? After all, the millions of Americans who hold stock in these companies would be outraged to know that these all-American brands are used to help celebrate murder, terrorism, anti-Semitism and coarse hatred of American values.

Of course, maybe corporate honchos have no idea what is going on in their names in faraway Lebanon. Regardless, all commercial dealings between U.S. companies, their subsidiaries abroad and Al Manar must come to an immediate end.

In the meantime, with American lives put at stake every day by the venality of Hezbollah and its allies in the jihad against America, Pepsi and other U.S. corporations should be put on notice--by shareholders and the Department of Justice alike--that advertising on Al Manar is not the choice of a "new generation," or any other generation for that matter.

Avi Jorisch is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Comment by clicking here.
Appreciate this type of reporting? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Picture from http://www.gamla.com (Return to Classification)

Terror nurtured by Bush's Muslim allies against Iraq

Gamla: News And Views From Israel Volume 3 Issue 59  24 November 2002

US President George W. Bush made a point of calling on Russian president Vladimir Putin directly after the NATO summit in Prague, to solicit his support for direct US military action against Iraq. However, Putin, who received his American visitor with pomp at the grand 18th century Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, was not mollified by Bush's reassurances about Russian interests in post-Saddam Iraq. Instead, he took the US President to task over the way the global war on terror was being handled, brushing aside the capture of al Qaeda's Gulf operations chief, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, as marginal to the issue.

To underscore his point, Putin asked some tough questions.

Where had Osama bin Laden taken refuge? he asked rhetorically, adding in a pointed dig at Saudi Arabia: "We should not forget about those who finance terrorism."

Putin went on to question if Pakistani President Musharraf had done enough to stabilize the area, noting: "What can happen with armies, arms, weapons that exist in Pakistan, including weapons of mass destruction?"

What Putin was saying was that while America's mind was on Iraq, the terrorists against whom they had solemnly declared war together after September 11, 2001,were getting away.

The allusion to the Saudis as financiers of al Qaeda was not lost on Bush; nor the suggestion that the Pakistan ruler is secretly promoting Islamic terrorist operations in Kashmir. Russian intelligence, like many other undercover agencies, including that of Israel, do not rule out the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, military strength and weapons falling into the hands of al Qaeda in certain circumstances. Putin's query, translated in terms of the concerns in Jerusalem, would be: What if Saddam Hussein hands over weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda or the Palestinians?

The Russian leader's blunt words to Bush were undoubtedly aimed at making his war in Chechnya more acceptable to the West. He is also worried about the damaging effect of the Iraqi war to the frail Russian economy. At the same time, Putin put his finger on a disturbing point: The roots of terror are being allowed to flourish, especially in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, while America focuses on fighting Saddam Hussein ? instead of coming to grips with both menaces.

In recent weeks, DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly have exposed certain developments in this regard:

1. In January 2002, al Qaeda fighting contingents, mostly Saudis and Yemenis, were rescued from Afghan War arenas by an airlift financed by Riyadh and carried out by Pakistan. The violent fundamentalist fugitives, allowed to return home, have become a thorn in the side of Saudi security. Osama bin Laden's arrival in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, with his key staff, two months ago, has boosted their influence and the strength of their support.

2. No progress has been made in efforts to stem the flow of Saudi cash oiling al Qaeda wheels in the Middle East, the Balkans, Chechnya, Pakistan, Central Asia and the Far East.

3. Signs are proliferating of collaboration among the terror machines of Iraqi military intelligence, al Qaeda, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah and Palestinian Authority security bodies. Yasser Arafat's key conduit to these groups runs primarily through the Gaza Strip "Preventive Security" organization headed by Muhamed Dahlan and his deputy, Rashid Abu Shbak.

DEBKAfile's military sources report that the surprise raid Israeli troops carried out on this organization's command, training and manufacturing facility in Gaza City, on Sunday, November 16, yielded a major haul of documentary evidence exposing Palestinian operational relations with Iran's Revolutionary Guards and al Qaeda going back seven years. Dahlan was recently appointed Arafat's "national security adviser" under the "reforms" executed in the Palestinian authority. The documents uncovered in Gaza attest to his longstanding personal ties with Islamic radical cells in Bosnia. In fact, he appears to have consigned Palestinian instructors to train Bosnians and Kosovars in terrorist tactics.

None of these dangers have been relegated to the past. They point to the threats in store for the Middle East before, during and after America's removal of Saddam Hussein and its installment of a pro-US regime in Baghdad.

Overthrowing the Iraqi ruler and disarming his country is Washington's primary goal. But achieving it will not break up the new military-terror menace taking shape in the region and made up of dedicated anti-Western Iranian, Saudi, Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite elements. Saddam Hussein with his back to the wall may well hand over unconventional weapons to these elements, rather than letting them fall into the hands of UN arms inspectors or an invading US army, thereby boosting their mischief-making capabilities immeasurably.

By holding off determined military action against rampant terrorism outside Iraq, focusing on and growing in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Lebanon and Pakistan - so as not to detract from the anti-Saddam assault - the Bush administration is storing up fresh trouble for tomorrow, if not sooner.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda were put to flight at the end of 2001 and early 2002, only to regroup in new bases in Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Saddam could well take a leaf out of their book and continue the war against America outside his country in conjunction with friendly terrorist groups.

The Bush administration's insistence on holding off the war on terror in order to promote the war on Iraq places in doubt all its gains thus far in the global offensive against terror and threatens the recurrence of the bane with redoubled ferocity and more powerful weapons.
-

In these circumstances, Israel's Sharon government may well be advised to reverse its tactics. At present, Washington is translating its economic and strategic support for Israel by holding it back from all-out military action against Arafat for as long as the Iraqi war is in the offing. The inference is that once that campaign is underway, Sharon may go ahead and settle Israel's long and bloody score with the Palestinian arch terrorist, who is meanwhile exploiting Israeli military inhibitions to intensify his campaign of terror. By taking the US president to task on the shortcomings of the US anti-terror war, the Russian may have articulated a notion valid for Ariel Sharon too. After the Iraq war is out of the way, it may be too late to administer the coup de grace to Arafat. He could well follow in the footsteps of Bin Laden - and even possibly Saddam - and fight on from some hideout until his next comeback.

Cartoon from http://www.gamla.com

(Return to Classification)

hhhh