If Anwar is not "PM of Israel", What Then?

It is not the first excuse Anwar Ibrahim used to justify his attack on Dr Mahathir. He had used Dr Mahathir's remark on his ex-convict status and many other remark.

When listening to Anwar's entertaining speech, be analytical and extra critical to his logic of arguments and conclusions. It's usually doubt-creating logic appealing to the simpleton masses and not supported by hard evidence and fact. Evidence and fact he presents are usually heresay or circumstantial or half complete information. If documents or evidences are demanded, his reply is to request for the appropriate time for release or use excuse like Justice Augustine Paul's refusal of his "irrelevent" evidences.

Anwar was angered by Dr Mahathir's snipe labeling of himself as PM of Israel. Fine, but why would an Israeli newspaper be able to predict him as the next PM of Malaysia, before any other newspaper in the world? Could he be an ally or of interest to Israel to receive such compliments from it's mainstream newspaper?

Naturally he denied and even added an interesting twist to claim he would never pay a bloody sen to a Jew. (Notice his remark did not cause uproar in the international media.) He claim Dr Mahathir paid a Jewish lobbyist Abrahamovich to arrange meeting with President George Bush.

Good counter attack, but that was not money from the Government but arrange by some private entity. Realistically, during the heyday of the American supported Reformasi movement (remember Al Gore's remark in Kuala Lumpur), it was of urgency to meet and convince the new American President, George Bush. For the sake of the country, if we need to use a Jew to get to the President to tide things down, than use it! Why not?

Anwar may not be involved with the Jew directly but lets not be naive to not know to whose interest are the neo-cons working for. Who is not aware of Anwar's close friendship with Paul Wolfowitz, a major neo-con figure?



Anwar did deny such links. Pleaseee ... he fumbled in the BBC Hardtalk interview big time. Too much inconsistency.



A former Malaysian Political Secretary in a visit to the World Bank was introduced to Wolfowitz. Upon knowing the visitors are Malaysians, he asked if they know his good friend Anwar Ibrahim. Can we rest that denial for good?

Denying he is the Prime Minister of Israel does not change the fact that he has strong affiliation with the Americans via the US State Dept. sponsored Foundation for the Future (FFF). Expectedly he did some denial also.

As early as November 2005, this blogger was aware who buttered Anwar's bread from a phrase in his speech at Harvard University. It did not come to a surprise to hear of Anwar's involvement with FFF when it was conceived.

Jon Conspiracy Theorist emailed me a posting by b in the blog Moon over Alabama with regard to the Foundation for the Future.

April 16, 2007

Wolfowitz, CIA, Lebanon - Get the picture?

A diary by Converger at Daily Kos and a brief by Steve Clemons at The Washington Note tackle the mystery of the Foundation for the Future.

That is the place where Paul Wolfowitz's darling Shaha Riza currently works and earns nearly $200,000 a year tax-free World Bank money.


Let me add a bit to the public research on that mysterious foundation after the jump.

Before she came to the World Bank in 1997 Shaha Riza worked at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Reagan legacy, which through intermediaries is funding democratic regime changes and US friendly foreign political parties. According to rightweb:

NED’s chairman is Vin Weber, who along with current NED board member Francis Fukuyama and former board members Paula Dobriansky and Paul Wolfowitz (both of whom joined the Bush II administration in 2001), signed the founding statement of the Project for the New American Century.

Bill Berkowitz takes a longer historic look on the NED:

According to Blum, the NED funded "key components of [Col.] Oliver North's shadowy 'Project Democracy' network, which privatized U.S. foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs and engaged in other equally charming activities. At one point in 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED 'run Project Democracy.' This was an exaggeration; it would have been more correct to say that NED was the public arm of Project Democracy, while North ran the covert end of things. In any event, the statement caused much less of a stir than if--as in an earlier period--it had been revealed that it was the CIA which was behind such an unscrupulous operation."

Before(?) her relationship with Paul Wolfowitz, Shaha Riza was married to Bulent Aliriza. He is the Turkey expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
After being moved away from the World Bank Shaha Riza worked on democracy projects at the State Department under Liz Cheney.

In November 2005 Liz Cheney and Condi Rice were in Bahrain at the launch of the Foundation for the Future:

They arrived [in Jeddah] after attending the Forum of the Future in Bahrain, which saw the launch of two institutions. The first is the Fund of the Future worth $100 million set up to provide capital for small and medium businesses. The second is the Foundation of the Future worth $55 million to support NGOs and projects for promoting freedom of the press and democracy.

The Foundation for the Future was installed with some $35 million seed funds from the U.S. State Department, some $10 million from Bahrain and $11 million from various other state donors. As Clemons points out, the State Department in a recent press conference couldn't even say where the foundation has its office. It also was not sure what Shaha Riza was actually doing there. On the foundations website there is no mention of a current office and no phone number.

The domain foundationforfuture.org is registered with this data:

Admin Name: BMENA Foundation for future
Admin Organization: BMENA Foundation for future
Admin Street1: 1350 Connecticut Ave
Admin Street2: Suite 1000
Admin Street3:
Admin City: Washington
Admin State/Province: DC
Admin Postal Code: 20036
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone: +1.2022347370...
Admin Email:nstormer@hotmail.com

That address and suite is identical to the address of the Eurasia Foundation. That foundation has a project manager with the name Neil Stormer. Its phone number is (202) 234-7370.

The Eurasia Foundation's task is to support Democracy movements in former Soviet Union states. Its executive committee includes luminaries like Albright, Baker, Eagleburger and Frank C. Carlucci III of The Carlyle Group (Carlucci has been on the NED Board of Directors). It is financed by the United States Agency for International Development. USAID has been and probably is still used as a cover for CIA operations.

President of the Foundation for the Future is Bakhtiar Amin. He is an ex-pat Iraqi-Kurd who was promoting the danger of Saddam's non-existing weapons of mass destruction before the current war on Iraq. He became Minister of Human Rights in the Bremer/Allawi administration after the U.S. invasion. Allawi has worked with the CIA. Bakhtiar Amin's wife is Safia Taleb al-Suhail. She was a guest of Laura Bush at the State of the Union speech in February 2005.

The Foundation for the Future has spent no money so far on any grants - its supposed task - but has held three expensive executive board meetings.

While the Eurasia Foundation claims to have spent $360 million for democracy in former Soviet Union countries, the mission statement of the Foundation for the Future says:

The Foundation for the Future will support the people of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa in their efforts to advance and strengthen freedom and democratic trends and practices.

It is essentially the same task, but within a different region. Will we soon see a democratic Violet Revolution in Saudi Arabia or a Yellow one in Bahrain? I have my doubts there ...

The FAQ page says:

The Foundation is an independent, indigenous organization

How independent is it really when most of the original webpages of the foundation are still at the State Department website?

The FAQ also says:

The headquarters of the Foundation is being established in Beirut, Lebanon.

There I stumbled a bit. With a major donor being Bahrain, I would have expected Manama to be the central hub of the foundation's Middle East operation.

I wasn't the only one stumbling. In a comment to the D-Kos thread Billmon chipped in:

OK, now put this together with Sy Hersh's recent reporting on covert CIA support for anti-Hezbollah Sunni militia groups in Lebanon. Then go back and look a little more closely at the Iran-Contra scandal, and the use of nonprofit false front foundations both to steer money to the contras AND provide sinecures for various neocon hangers on.

Get the picture?

That's the thing about the neocons -- when they find something that doesn't work, they stick with it.

My first thought on reading that Billmon comment was that he is right, but wrong on the target country. My take was that this is not about Lebanon but Palestine with Hamas' election win demanding some democracy spending.

The Israeli occupation government initiated and of course backs U.S. plan to arm and train Abbas loyalists, but the U.S. congress initially blocked such funds. But now Congress has agreed to arm Abbas' forces against the election winning Hamas - spreading democracy with U.S. financed AK 47s I assume. So currently, there is no need for grey money there and Billmon has that point - the current target is Lebanon.

Ms. Shaha Riza, the CIA and their Foundation for the Future may now indeed go for a Hizbullah kill.

As Billmon says: It's not gonna work, but they will stick with it.

This is only one of many of Anwar's dubious international affiliations that would compromise our sovereignty, if he becomes Prime Minister of Malaysia instead of Israel. The other affiliations of Anwar are ... hold on hold on, like Anwar would always reply, it will be released at the appropriate time.

My parting question, for those independent candidates in the last general election, have they figured who their campaign donors really are?