Tag Archive for: New York Times

Turkey’s Erdogan: Purges Police, Stymies Corruption Investigation and Prepares to visit Iran

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Turkish Premier Erdogan has aggressively pursued a purge of police involved with public prosecutors corruption investigation in a desperate move to stave off potential losses for the AKP in the March 2014 municipal elections.   His actions reflect the internecine battle between two former Islamist allies, Erdogan of the AKP and Sheikh Mohammad Fethullah Gulen and his followers who have penetrated both police and the judiciary in Turkey. At the top of the Turkish government in the largely ceremonial post is co-founder of the AKP and current Turkish President, Abdullah Gul, a Gulenist. Gulen is being urged to exercise his powers under Turkey’s constitution that might include an independent comprehensive investigation of corruption and perhaps a call for new elections.  Despite calls for Gul to act, he remains sphinx-like on the sidelines keeping a watching brief on the swirl of the corruption charges until evidence of wrongdoing by the inner circle of Premier Erdogan surfaces.  We had reported on the alleged involvement of Erodan’s son, Bilal in a money laundering scheme benefitting Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria.  There are reports from the New York Times  and the Washington Post in the US and from Today’s Zaman and Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey on overnight developments and comments from Turkish secular political opponents of the Islamist AKP regime of Premier Erdogan.

More than 600 police were involved in the overnight purge; 350 were removed from Ankara posts, while 250 were “brought in from elsewhere”. Hurriyet Daily News (HDN)reported the removal of 16 police chiefs from provincial posts:

Police chiefs of 15 provinces across Turkey, including Ankara and Izmir, and the deputy head of the national police department were dismissed overnight by the Interior Ministry.

The dismissal of the Ankara police chief, Kadir Ay, comes only a day after 350 officers working in key operational units were relocated in one sweep. The head of the Izmir forces, Ali Bilkay, has also been relocated.

Erdogan used intimidation in personally threatening the Istanbul prosecutor. Note what the prosecutor’s remarks in this HDN article:

A prosecutor who has supervised a recent corruption probe claimed Jan. 8, 2014  he was “threatened” by two people sent by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop the investigation.

“Two people who were former members of the high judiciary were sent to me by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an,” Zekeriya Öz, who was removed from his post as deputy Istanbul chief prosecutor following a graft investigation that included the sons of three former Cabinet members, told reporters Jan. 8. 

“Those two people I met at a hotel in Bursa told me that the prime minister was angry with me, I should write a letter of apology and stop the probe immediately, or I would be harmed.”

In the midst of this were new allegations of corruption in the port of Izmir involving the Turkish National Railways. HDN reported:

Elsewhere, three senior Izmir officers were dismissed after launching fraud investigations into transactions at commercial harbors operated by the Turkish State Railways (TCDD) in which 25 people were detained.

The suspects, including eight TCDD officials, were taken into custody on charges of bribery, corruption, conspiring to rig tenders and leaking information about tenders as part of a fraud investigation launched by the Izmir Public Prosecutor.

They included senior officials such as the director of the Izmir port and his two deputies, while reports also claimed that an arrest warrant had been issued for the brother-in-law of former Transport and Urban Planning Minister Binali Yildirim, who works in the company of a CEO taken into custody during the raids.

Then the Judiciary weighed in on developments in Istanbul, HDN noted:

… the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) launched an investigation yesterday into newly appointed Istanbul Police Chief Selami Alt?nok, who replaced Huseyin Capk?n after the latter was reassigned as part of the probe.

Today’s Zaman  noted HSYK’s authority to conduct such an investigation, unusual given the unraveling corruption charges and questionable Erdogan moves:

The HSYK has the authority to launch investigations into police chiefs based on a law adopted in 2005. This is the first time the HSYK has exercised its authority to launch an investigation into a police chief.

There is a separate development arising from calls for a possible retrial of secular senior Turkish military officers convicted in alleged plots to overthrow the Islamist AKP government, see our most recent Iconoclast post.  This was a meeting today with the head of the Turkish Bar Association and the Erdogan Justice Minister.  Today’s Zaman reported that:

Turkish Bar Association (TBB) President Metin Feyzioglu [met] with Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, Wednesday.

During their meeting, Feyzioglu and Bozdag discussed possible legal avenues for the retrial of military officers convicted of coup plotting. On Thursday, Feyzioglu is scheduled to hold separate meetings with Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek, Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli to discuss the issue.

Scores of Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) members — both retired and on active duty — were imprisoned as a result of the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon coup trials. These cases were concluded in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The Supreme Court of Appeals recently upheld a lower court’s verdict in the Sledgehammer case, while the appeals court is currently reviewing the Ergenekon case.

On Jan. 3, 2014 Feyzioglu visited President Abdullah Gul at the Cankaya presidential palace to discuss the situation of the convicted officers. In a press conference after the meeting, Feyzioglu said the TBB had outlined a proposal that included nullifying decisions made by specially authorized courts; retrying cases heard by those courts at high criminal courts; abolishing regional high criminal courts that replaced specially authorized courts; and paying compensation for improper arrests and convictions.

Meanwhile the main secular opposition, the People’s Republican Party (CHP) lead by Kemal Kilicdaroglu in Turkey’s parliament has kept up a stream of constant criticism of Erdogan endeavoring to place him at the center of the corruption probe. Yesterday, he questioned the Turkish Intelligence (MIT) report on the illegal gold trading submitted in April 2013 involving Azeri Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab. Today’s Zaman reported Kilicdaroglu saying:

In a weekly meeting of his party’s parliamentary group on Tuesday, Kilicdaroglu addressed reports published Monday in a number of media outlets claiming that the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) submitted a report to Erdogan on April 18, 2013 detailing the shady relations – involving bribery and influence-peddling – of certain ministers with Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who is under arrest. “I would like to ask the prime minister about what he did upon receiving this report. Did you call these ministers and talk to them? Did you talk to your children? He didn’t. He is the one who gave these orders,” Kilicdaroglu said.

Erdogan is busy preparing for a trip to Iran later in January. According to Press TV,  the purpose of the visit is to “upgrade relations” with the Islamic regime.  Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took time out from his conduct of negotiations with the P5+1 last weekend to confer with Premier Erdogan and  Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.  The purpose of those meetings and the upcoming one late this month is to focus on trade, now that the P5+1 sanctions regime has allegedly been lifted. This despite Turkey’s membership in  NATO and as a US ally.  Press TV noted:new US Senate

During the Zarif-Erdogan meeting, Iran and Turkey underlined their determination to boost the value of bilateral trade volume.

During a visit to Tehran in November, Davutoglu said his country can become an energy corridor for its eastern oil- and gas-rich neighbor, Iran.

In October, the Turkish minister of energy and natural resources said Turkey will raise its gas imports from Iran – currently standing at 10 billion cubic meters a year – if possible.

Iran is Turkey’s second biggest gas supplier after Russia. Turkey uses a significant portion of its imported Iranian natural gas to generate electricity.

But why should Turkey be any different from British parliamentary  and French delegations, the latter seeking to exploit minerals, steel and auto investment projects and other opportunities given the lifting of sanctions?

Erdogan, as we noted earlier, is desperate to stifle the corruption investigations, and maintain calm in the roiling foreign exchange markets for the Turkish Lira amidst concerns raised by the EU, and more importantly credit rating agencies like Fitch.

Meanwhile Iran’s wrecking crew  in the US is beavering  away trying to sabotage new sanctions legislation pending in the US Senate that appears to have majority bi-partisan support for passage of the bill co-sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Chair Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL).  A Washington Free Beacon report,“Pro-Iran Shadow Lobby Launches Bid to Kill Iran Sanctions” drew attention to a letter from the Iran Project and its relations with Iranian lobbyists in Washington, DC:

Ploughshares has touted the Iran Project’s work on multiple occasions, referring to it “as a group of highly respected national security experts and former U.S. government officials.”

“The reports released by the Iran Project are very influential among decision makers in Washington,” NIAC wrote of the group in April.

“These are many of the same foreign policy experts who opposed the toughest Iran sanctions that got us to this point,” Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) tweeted on Monday.

Others cautioned against taking seriously this latest anti-sanctions lobbying bid. “This is a group run by people who support Iran, are celebrated by the Iranian media, and are deeply embedded in a network of organizations that have consistently sought to weaken the U.S.’s leverage in attempting to denuclearize Iran,” said one senior official at a Washington-based pro-Israel group.

Erdogan’s Turkey cozying up to Iran, while filtering arms and funds to the latter’s opponents in Syria would appear to be opportunistic. Is it to secure natural gas for Turkish domestic and manufacturing needs in exchange for machinery sales that just might find their way to assist in making a new generation of centrifuges for uranium enrichment?  In the meantime Erdogan might be in danger politically given the latest round of corruption investigations and possible retrials of jailed secular senior military officials.  Either way, the Obama Administration has its hands full dealing with the metastasizing Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq making hollow his 2012 campaign theme that ”Bin Laden is dead and Al Qaeda is on the run”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

The Growing Missile Threat to Israel

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Dr. Ronen Bergman, intelligence and military columnist for Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth confirmed, Wall Street Journal reports that Syria and Iran’s Qod’s Force may have successfully disassembled and  transferred  to Hezbollah 12 Russian Yakhont anti- ship cruise missiles. See New York Times article, “Hezbollah Moving Long-Range Missiles From Syria to Lebanon, an Analyst Says”.

This despite the IAF five attacks conducted against Syria facilities and supply trains in 2013 using advanced missiles fired on targets from Lebanese airspace. The IAF attacks reported to have destroyed a shipment of  advanced mobile air defense  Russian SA-17’s in January 2013, Iranian Fateh-110 surface to surface missiles in May and  a shipment of  Russian Yakhont missiles in July. Further, according to the New York Times account, Bergman said:

Hezbollah, which is also Lebanon’s strongest political party, has a network of bases that were built inside Syria, near the border with Lebanon, to give the group strategic depth and to store the missiles, Mr. Bergman said. But with a nearly three-year insurgency threatening President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, an ally of Hezbollah, keeping the missiles in Syria is no longer as secure, Mr. Bergman said.

The missiles being moved, he said, include Scud D’s, shorter-range Scud C’s, medium-range Fateh rockets that were made in Iran, Fajr rockets and antiaircraft weapons that are fired from the shoulder.

Bergman also noted the comments of former Mossad head, Meir Dagan about Hezbollah bases in Syria during the Second Lebanon War in 2006:

 Meir Dagan, advised the government not to start an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon without first hitting the militia’s bases in Syria, which were built on the strategy that Israel would not dare to strike Syria. The bases were believed to contain much of Hezbollah’s long-range missile capability,

The Wall Street Journal report,  “Hezbollah Upgrades Missile Threat to Israel” noted the potential game changer on Israel’s strategy to counter this missile threat on its doorstep:

Hezbollah already has around 100,000 rockets, according to Israeli intelligence estimates, but those are primarily unguided weapons that are less accurate. Its longer-range rockets are spread across Lebanon, meaning Israel’s next air campaign—should one come—would have to be broad, Israeli officials have told their U.S. counterparts, according to American officials in the meetings.

Hezbollah’s possession of guided-missile systems would make such an air campaign far riskier.

Current and former U.S. officials say Iran’s elite Quds Force has been directly overseeing the shipments to Hezbollah warehouses in Syria. These officials say some of the guided missiles would allow Hezbollah to defend its strongholds in Lebanon, including Beirut, and attack Israeli planes and ground targets from regime-controlled territory in Syria.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system can intercept and destroy short-range rockets. Its Arrow missile-defense system can intercept the sort of long-range ballistic missiles Iran possesses. A third system the Israelis are developing to deal with mid range guided missiles, called David’s Sling, won’t be operational until 2015 at the earliest.

                                 Arrow Anti-Missile System

Coincidentally, Israel completed another successful test of the  Arrow III anti-Missile system over the Mediterranean today. The Arrow III is a joint development of Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and Boeing. According to a Defense News, article,  “US-Israel Arrow-3 Marks Milestone Test”, “ IAI also provides the Super Green Pine fire control radar, while Elbit’s Tadiran provides the system’s battle management control center.” Defense News  further reported:

The US-Israel Arrow-3 upper tier intercepting missile passed another developmental milestone with a successful exo-atmospheric maneuvering flight after launch over the Mediterranean Sea on Friday.

In a joint statement, Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said the Arrow-3 “successfully launched and flew an exo-atmospheric trajectory through space, according to the test plan.”

The fly-out of the two-stage, hit-to-kill missile marked the second in a series of developmental milestones aimed at readying the system for a full-up intercept test in early 2015. It follows a successful maiden flight in February 2013.

Planned for initial fielding in late 2015 or early 2016, Arrow-3 is designed as Israel’s first line of defense against emerging threats from Iran. Supported by the samefire control radar and battle management systems developed for Israel’s operational Arrow-2, the smaller and much more agile Arrow-3 aims to destroy advanced, maneuvering, unconventionally tipped Shahab-class missiles in space before they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.

Hezbollah with upwards of  80,000 rockets and missiles would be a formidable threat for Israel to reduce to assure that its rocket and missile  defense umbrella can safeguard its population should it elect to undertake a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This is presuming no final agreement is reached with Iran under the current P5+1 interim agreement.  Moreover, a recently introduced bi-partisan US Senate bill, the Nuclear  Weapons Free Iran Act directed at prodding  Iran to reach an agreement  may be posed for action when Congress returns from its holiday recess. Given Iran’s addition of so-called hard liners to the Islamic regime’s negotiating team, the prospects for achievement of a definitive agreement  quickly seized upon by Obama Administration could be illusory.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Sharia Compliant Finance in America

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Yesterday’s New York Times Business Day Section had a major article reporting  on Shariah Compliant Finance, “Islamic Banks, Stuffed with Cash, Explore Partnerships in West.”  In late October 2013, we posted on the Iconoclast  about cheerleading that UK Prime Minister  David Cameron gave at the London meetings of the World Islamic Economic Forum  extolling the virtues of making the City,  “the unrivaled Center for Islamic finance.” In that post, we drew attention to some of the demonstrable problems that  the UK had encountered over the past five years accommodating  “Islamic Economic Imperialism,” the term  used by Christopher Holton, Vice President for Outreach at the Washington, DC-based Center for Security Policy and editor of Sharia Finance Watch.

The New York Times article noted the mushrooming growth of the  global Shariah compliant  financial market place:

Over the last 30 years, the Islamic financial sector has grown from virtually nothing to over $1.6 trillion in assets, according to data from the Global Islamic Financial Review, an industry publication. The financial crisis has only encouraged the growth. Industry assets grew 19 percent in 2011 and 20 percent in 2012, in contrast to the less than 10 percent growth at non-Islamic banks in most of the world.

Until recently, Islamic banks have largely put their money to work in the Middle East — or, if they invested in other parts of the world, in real estate. Real estate is among the most popular investments under Islamic law, also known as Shariah, because a deal can be structured that does not require interest payments, which are prohibited by Shariah. But as the banks grow larger they are looking for new, more diverse places to put their money.

Coincidentally, Holton, see our March 2013 NER interview with him, sent us a recent video of his presentation on Shariah Compliant Finance at an event sponsored byChildren of Holocaust Survivors of  Los Angeles  (CHSLA) on December 18, 2013, “Shariah Compliant Finance and Jihad with Money.”  Watch the CHSLA presentation of Holton, here.

Holton  made several  telling points to his lay audience. He said that the term Islamic Finance, the term of art used in the international financial and investment banking community, is cover for Shariah compliant finance aimed at perpetrating  stealth Jihad via a sophisticated call to Islam. It connotes so-called “ethical investing”  given compliance with the totality of  Islamic Shariah and Qur’anic doctrine. It is all about using the cover of the greed factor that undergirds capitalism in the West.

He gave some background of Shariah compliant finance going back to the writings in 1940 of Maulana Maududi, the Indian-born Pakistan Islamic scholar, extolling the virtuesof  Islamic Economics as part of an Islamic revival in the 20th Century. There were similar soundings about the benefits of this in the writings of Sayyid Qutb in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Qutb was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who provided the underpinnings for the Jihadist doctrine that had its manifestation in Al Qaeda. We also note that Hassan al Banna, Egyptian school teacher and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 like Maududi and his disciple Qutb, viewed  Islamic Economic Imperialism as a counterweight.Joseph Spoerl in an NER article, “The World View of Hasan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood” noted that al Banna said:

The entire Muslim world is being corrupted by Western decadence: Muslim countries are being flooded with Western capital, banks, and companies. The founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 is often explained as a reaction against Western imperialism. For Islamic imperialism al-Banna has only the most effusive praise.22 Imperialism to impose Islamic rule on non-Muslims is altogether to the good. Al-Banna is fully aware that Islam was born not only as a religion but also as an imperialistic ideology mandating the conquest of non-Muslims.

Al-Banna began a network of banks in Egypt and elsewhere that met the Qur’anic standards that prohibited  interest payments as usurious.

Holton explains as vast areas of the Muslim Ummah from Morocco in the West through the Arab heartland to South Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago were Western colonial possessions with Western banking commercial and industrial enterprises. There were few independent Islamic countries of note until the post World War Two era  when independence movements swept these areas. It was oil, and especially the 1973 and 1979 Oil Embargoes and the establishment of the OPEC Cartel that suddenly filled the coffers of Muslim autocrats and gave rise to trillions of petro-dollars for recycling.

Holton noted that the current market for Shariah Compliant finance including instruments like Sukuk or Islamic bonds has virtually doubled between  2008 to 2012, from $800  billion to over $1.7  trillion. Given UK PM Cameron’s  announcement at the World Islamic Economic Forum in London in October 2013, the  Shariah Compliant Finance market looks ready to kick into gear with the underwriting of a $324 Million Sukuk sovereign bond issue. Historically, the Iranian Islamic regime since the 1979 revolution has become the largest center of Shariah Compliant Finance. Holton noted that Iranian banks held  the top rankings of  the leading 500 Islamic finance institutions in the annual Islamic Finance Review by the UK-based publication, The Banker.

That according to Holton gave rise to providing oversight and clearance of ‘ethical’  Sharia compliant investment that  met the  so-called Qur’anic interest payment prohibitions. That meant turning to Islamic scholars like Muslim Brotherhood preacher Yusuf al Qaradawi in Qatar, Mufti Tami Usmani in Pakistan and others in Malaysia. They became advisors to Western investment groups, such as  al Qaradawi did with Dow Jones that had established an Islamic Investment Index. In the case of Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC) initially retained Usmani as Islamic legal  advisor for its Amanah  funds program.  Western investment groups did not care a fig about what Shariah is, what they wanted was someone of alleged Islamic legal background  to certify that the investment was halal. The problem was that there were not many of these Shariah experts around to satisfy the growth of  Islamic Finance and it lead to evident growth problems and conflicts of interest. There was virtually no due diligence let alone disclosures about Shariah doctrine and especially about zakat.

Zakat as we have written in an NER article on the relation to terrorism is the annual tithing of charitable contributions  to Muslim charities. One of the eight purposes of which is support for the way of Allah, Jihad. Holton illustrated the later referencing a Shariah compliant real estate mortgage firm  based in New Jersey, BMI, that prior to 9/11 had zakat funds directed via an offshore Islamic bank  to the Egyptian predecessor of Al Qaeda controlled by Ayman al Zawahiri.

Conflicts have occurred as many of  the limited supply of Islamic scholars have forced Islamic finance investment fund sponsors to employ them among competitive sponsors. He noted that both Al Qaradawi and Usmani had additional problems because of their support for terrorist groups like Hamas in the case of the former and the Taliban in the latter instance. Usmani as Holton pointed out had formed the largest Madrassa in Pakistan that harbored the Taliban. Moreover in the instance of Usmani, when HSBC was advised to cease advisory relations with him, the bank simply resorted to retaining his son. Dow Jones didn’t seem perplexed about retaining al Qaradawi for its Islamic Finance Index, despite Qaradawi’s being barred from entry by the US Government.

One peculiar instance that Holton noted was an American convert to Islam who is cited as an advisor to one of the Islamic Finance groups in the New York Times article, Yusuf DeLorenzo. He is featured reviewing a rail car finance deal for Continental Rail to make sure that the cars to be financed wouldn’t carry pork, alcohol or tobacco. DeLorenzo, Holton points out was born a Catholic raised in Massachusetts, who after a year at Cornell  University left to find his bliss in Islamic Pakistan. He converted to Islam becoming a Shariah scholar and advisor to  President Gen. Mohammed  Zia- al  Haq, arch Islamist,  who perpetrated the  bloody Jihad civil war in former East Pakistan in 1971 that morphed into what is now Bangladesh.

Holton cited examples of US government and major legal education institutions in the US complicit in promotion of Shariah Compliant Finance. In 2008, the Bush Administration had the Treasury Department sponsored a conference in conjunction with the Islamic Finance Project  of Harvard Law School on the topic of Islamic Finance 101. Holton had attended a seminar on the subject at one of the seminars of the Islamic Finance Project at Harvard Law School in which he observed that at best the participants had a nodding acquaintance of the term Shariah. He also interviewed a former Treasury official involved with terrorism finance who had joined HSBC after being fined $1 billion for engaging in illegal transactions with  Iran’s oil program. The person evinced little interest or knowledge about Shariah.

Perhaps the best comment at the conclusion of the New York Times article is by Mr. Ibrahim Mardam-Bey, a group president at  Washington, DC-based  investment firm Taylor-DeJongh. who observed:

That some American businesses were hesitant to take money from Islamic banks, perhaps a byproduct of negative associations with Shariah since the Sept. 11 attacks. But in the Texas deal, and in many others, that tends to fade as the financial possibilities become clear.

“The borrower was a Texan wildcatter who couldn’t spell ‘sukuk,’ ” Mr. Mardam-Bey said. “But at the end of the day when I brought the check he didn’t care if I prayed to Allah. He just wanted the money.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Downplaying the Holocaust — Sulzberger and the New York Times

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[youtube]http://youtu.be/Q2PQCNQH2lY[/youtube]

I received a link to this video from Dr. Beverly Newman, founder and Director of the Al Katz Center in Sarasota, FL. The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee in an email to its members stated:

If you watch nothing else about Jewish anti-Semitism, view the attached video. If you do watch it, send it on to others. It puts the anti-Semitism of the present day New York Times in perfect perspective. A classic example of how history ultimately getting the real truth out.

This is the ONE VIDEO you MUST WATCH.

It is a painful exploration of why Jews should despise the NY Times and forever remember how a Jew, the owner of the Times, turned his back on fellow Jews during the darkest days of ww2. The young woman in the video deserves a position of high honor among our people for making this historically accurate video public. Please watch it and send it to your reader lists.

A young Jewish woman of valor reveals the toxic mutation that has been baked into the genes of The New York Times from the very start.

The young woman in the video is Anna Blech, who won first prize at the New York City History Day competition for her research paper, “Downplaying the Holocaust: Arthur Hays Sulzberger and The New York Times.” For this paper, she also was awarded The Eleanor Light Prize from the Hunter College High School Social Studies Department and membership in the Society of Student Historians.

What Anna did not cover in her presentation was Sulzberger’s involvement with the Rockefeller Foundation as a trustee from 1939-1957. For you see it was the Rockefeller Foundation that developed and funded various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Edwin Black in his book War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race writes, “On January 19, 1904, the Carnegie Institution formally inaugurated what it called the Station for Experimental Evolution of the Carnegie Institution at bucolic Cold Springs Harbor, [New Jersey].” “The undertaking was not merely funded by Carnegie, it was an integral part of the Carnegie Institution itself,” notes Black, “[Carnegie Institute Chairman John] Billings and the Carnegie Institution would now mobilize their prestige and the fortune they controlled to help [Professor Charles] Davenport usher America into an age of a new form of hygiene: racial hygiene. The goal was clear: to eliminate the inadequate and unfit.”

The Eugenics movement was later funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and this funding continued while Sulzberger, a Jew, was a trustee. Black reports, “Prior to World War II, the Nazis practiced eugenics with the open approval of America’s eugenic crusaders. As Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia’s Western State Hospital, complained in 1934, ‘Hitler is beating us at our own game.'”

“Eventually,  out of the sight of the world, in Buchenwald and Auschwitz, eugenic doctors like Joseph Mengele would carry on the research begun just years earlier with American financial support including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution,” notes Black.

Black asks, “Will the twenty-first-century successor to the eugenics movement, now known as ‘human engineering,’ employ enough safeguards to ensure that the biological crimes of the twentieth century will never again happen?”

RELATED COLUMN: Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper