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*Museveni: Washington’s Criminal Friend In Africa*

** * Black Star News Editorial *

June 15th, 2010

Gen. Museveni. With a friend like this –no wonder Somalis are motivated

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*[Black Star News Editorial]*

The term my enemy’s enemy is my friend has been taken to its most abominable level with respect to the United States’ relations with Uganda, under the dictatorship of General Yoweri Museveni.

U.S. taxpayer money continues to fund this African dictator and his destructive military machine. Uganda is the only African country to provide significant numbers of troops to prop up the weak U.S.-installed regime in Somalia. Washington fears Al-Qaeda sympathizers are gaining firm control in Somalia.

Other major African democracies such as South Africa and Ghana would like to help their sisters and brothers in Somalia –but they won’t venture troops so long as the operation remains limited in scope determined by America’s all-consuming anti-Al Qaeda lens. So what that countless Somali civilians conttinue to die? Popular media have cast them as a nation of pirates and terrorists after all.

Enter Uganda.

General Museveni, perhaps the most shrewd and ruthless opportunist in Africa, has sold himself as a U.S. ally in the “war against terrorism.” He knows that the “war” will not end so long as more African nations aren’t brought to the table to help Somalia. In the meantime, it provides political and financial sustenance to the Ugandan, a U.S.-ally, who is himself responsible for war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and crimes against humanity within Uganda.

It’s a strategy General Museveni has used smartly during every successive U.S. Administration since Ronald Reagan’s –renting his services, and that of his army, to fulfill U.S. interests.

Mobuttu Sese Seko once played this card, mortgaging the welfare of his country, and that of Africa, in what was then Zaire, and lasted in power for 32 years. Museveni has been in office for 25 and if he successfully steals next year’s vote –as he did with the past two elections– will give Mobuttu a run for the money.

The United States, especially under the Obama Administration, with all the President’s mouthing about “democracy” when he was in Accra last year, should be ashamed. But that’s not what moves politics. It’s information and mobilization. Most Americans aren’t aware of the heinous nature of the Museveni regime.

Here is a brief primer:

This week *The New York Times* reported that Uganda is the training ground for child soldiers –some as young as eight years old– from Somalia. These children are then sent back to fight for the U.S. puppet government in Somalia. The New York Times reports that U.S. taxpayer money is likely being used to pay for the salary of these child soldiers. Of course it is; U.S. largesse is Somalia’s only source of income for the government.

Deploying child soldiers is a violation of United Nations conventions. What’s more, the U.S. is hypocritical–President Obama recently signed a law that authorizes the U.S. to work with countries such as Uganda to fight against the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA have been widely condemned for using child soldiers. Now it turns out that Uganda is training child soldiers for Somalia and that the U.S. is paying for it; this clearly makes the U.S. culpable in this war crime.

The U.S. Congress in December issued a Congressional Directive to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to monitor the preparation for presidential elections in Uganda and the vote itself next February.

Clinton is to issue a report every four months and one month after the vote. Her initial report was damning–noting that the Election Commission isn’t independent and that security forces harassed opposition figures and even beat women who were demonstrating in demand for an independent election commission.

http://www.blackstarnews.com/news/122/ARTICLE/6499/2010-04-27.html

The International Criminal Court, which had been protecting Gen. Museveni, finally announced unequivocally, that it was investigating alleged crimes committed by Uganda’s national army, the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) in the northern part of Uganda. The announcement came from Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC Prosecutor, first in response to a challenge from Olara Otunnu, a former United Nations Under Secretary General and now leader of Uganda People’s Congress opposition party, and in response to a question posed by this newspaper when Ocampo appeared on the Voice of America’s “Straight Talk Africa” program last Wednesday. Responding to the question, he said, “On UPDF crimes we are colleting information about different crimes committed in Uganda..”

Ocampo also added, “Whoever has information about crimes that we can investigate, they can be sent to our office. We can do that. And we will answer their requests for investigation.”

It’s believed that the atrocities committed by the LRA pale in comparison to the UPDF’s in Acholi region; and most definitely in comparison’s to UPDF’s crimes in DR Congo. Yet, this same Uganda army is together training children, who are then paid for with U.S. money, for Somalia’s army–when in fact some of the commanders of Uganda’s army –including commander in chief Museveni– are possibly unindicted war criminals. Ocampo has asked for “evidence.” He should start by consulting the annual reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Uganda. He should also visit the mass graves in Acholi. And in any case, since when does a prosecutor of mass murder ask the victims to produce “evidence”?

Ocampo, claims he can’t investigate crimes that predate the ICC’s 2002 creation. First of all, there is no statute of limitation on crimes of murder; secondly, the crimes committed by the UPDF after 2002 may exceed those prior to 2002.

In 2005 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Uganda liable for what amounted to war crimes –massacres; rapes of both men and women; torching of homes with people inside; looting of Congo’s wealth– in DR Congo and awarded Congo $10 billion in compensation. Uganda has yet to pay a dime–and nothing will bring back the 7 million Congolese who died in the years of fighting, after the Uganda invasion.

Congo’s president Joseph Kablia then referred the same matter to the ICC for investigation, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2006. It’s more than reasonable to expect that the ICC would return with a similar conclusion. Certainly General Museveni knows his culpability and according to *The Wall Street Journal* article, he urged then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to block the ICC’s investigation. Yet, this same dictator, who knows that he belongs at the Hague –judging by his own actions as reported in *The Journal*– remains a U.S. “ally” in the fight against “terrorism.”

http://www.friendsforpeaceinafrica.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=110

You can’t use a mass killer to help fight “terrorism.” Mass killing is essentially “mass terrorism.”

After years of training, in October 1990, Uganda sent an invasion army into ethnically volatile Rwanda. The commander of the invading force, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) had been Chief of Military Intelligence in Uganda’s army. Gen. Museveni sent Kagame to train at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; after the invasion, he was installed RPF commander.

Uganda is believed to have provided the RPF with the missile that was used to shoot down the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi–the assassination accomplished its goal. Mayhem and massacres erupted; the RPF then seized power, claiming to stop the ethnic conflagration which in fact it had set in motion with the Uganda-sponsored invasion and assassination of the two presidents.

Yet for years major media outlets such as *The New York Times*, BBC and New Yorker magazine –with the articles of the notorious Kagame apologist Philip Gourevitch– have been selling the Hollywood fantasy of General Museveni’s former intelligence chief, Kagame, as an angel who rescued Rwanda.

Well the truth has a funny way of rearing its head when you least expect. With elections approaching in Rwanda, Kagame’s true colors are now exposed for the whole world to see: He has locked up a major presidential contender Ms. Victoire Ingabire, and her American lawyer Peter Erlinder.

Repression is rampant and even Kagame’s top generals are now fleeing.

Within Uganda itself political repression is increasing, although it may take 10 years for *The New York Times’* Kenya-based correspondent to write an article –even though stories appear daily in the Ugandan papers and Kenya’s *Daily Nation*.

This is the same U.S. ally who had a lawmaker, David Bahati, from Museveni’s National Resistance Movement, introduce a bill that calls for execution of homosexuals.

After global outcry, Museveni then stepped forward to make it appear as if he’s the level-headed peacemaker, when in fact he was behind the crusade, as demonstrated by his own hateful pronouncements in the past. When he met his party officials he told them to “go slow” because the gay community had clout in the West.

He said he had once been in New York when 300,000 gay people appeared at a rally. He neglected to say that just a few year’s earlier, he had told Uganda media that if 300,000 gay people ever assembled in Uganda, he would “disperse” them. He is a master of Newspeak.

Last year General Museveni’s security forces blocked the Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, the powerful monarch of Buganda, a traditional hereditary kingdom within Uganda, from traveling to a part of Buganda. It sparked an uprising and dozens of civilians were mowed down in Kampala.

The Baganda form Uganda’s largest ethnic group and it’s believed that a nod by the Kabaka towards a candidate could enhance his chance of winning the next presidential election; the Kabaka and Museveni have had a falling out.

A few months after the Kampala massacre, The Kasubi Royal Tombs, which contained the remains of previous Kabakas –Mutebi’s ancestors– was razed in a mysterious arson. Just today, *The Observer,* a respected Ugandan publication quoted General Museveni as saying of the Kabaka:

“Kingdoms should play their roles outlined in the Constitution, Buganda inclusive. If any kingdom crosses its boundaries and interferes with my roles, I will cut off its head and there will be no case to answer.”

General Museveni accused the Kabaka of promoting sectarian and ethnic politics. This is absurd coming from a first class racist — in a 1994 interview in *The Atlantic Monthly* magazine, Museveni said: “I have never blamed these whites for taking slaves. If you are stupid you should be taken a slave.”

This is the best friend that Washington can find in Africa to help fight “terrorism” in Somalia? It’s like Interpol recruiting a Mafia don to help fight organized crime.

No wonder Somalis fight with even more determination. They know that U.S. Africa policy is hypercritical and duplicitous.

It contains not a shred of moral fiber.

*”Speaking Truth To Empower.”

Post comments directly or submit them to **milton@blackstarnews.com* * *

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In a message dated 5/1/2010 3:31:20 PM Central Daylight Time, ProudLiberal7@aol.com writes:

The Consequences of The Con’s SB 1070 Criminalizing the Undocumented

They are already criminals! And if found to be in America illegally a second time, it is a felony.

A Must Read from Rep. Jimmy Duncan: Our Criminal “Air Marshals”

Posted by Bill Anderson on April 8, 2010 08:46 PM

Rep. Jimmy Duncan, who represents the district where I used to live in Tennessee, has blasted the government’s Air Marshals Service, calling it “probably the most needless, useless agency in the entire Federal Government.” He says:

…listen to this paragraph from a front-page story in the USA Today last November: “Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.”

Actually, there have been many more arrests of Federal air marshals than that story reported, quite a few for felony offenses. In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.

It gets better:

We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.

Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.

Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania wrote last year about the money feeding frenzy of the war on terror. And he wrote this: “Nearly 7 years after September 11, 2001,” he wrote this last year, “what accounts for the vast discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America and the scale of our response? Why, absent any evidence of a serious terror threat, is a war to on terror so enormous, so all-encompassing, and still expanding?  The fundamental answer is that al Qaeda’s most important accomplishment was not to hijack our planes but to hijack our political system.”

“For a multitude of politicians, interest groups and professional associations, corporations, media organizations, universities, local and State governments and Federal agency officials, the war on terror is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of slogans and sound bites to be inserted into budget, grant, and contract proposals.”

And finally, Professor Lustick wrote: “For the country as a whole, however, it has become maelstrom of waste.” And there is no agency for which those words are more applicable than the Federal Air Marshal Service.

LOL! Do you really think a Democrat DA, who has to be elected in Brooklyn, ISN’T going to find a rationale not to prosecute?

On Mar 1, 6:03 pm, CaliforniaLuis wrote:

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– FEBRUARY 12, 2010 -

ARGUMENT PRINT | TEXT SIZE | EMAIL | SINGLE PAGE KSM Doesn’t Deserve to Be a War CriminalTreating terrorists like warriors is exactly what they want.BY TOM MALINOWSKI | FEBRUARY 11, 2010

As the U.S. Congress threatens to block funds for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s (KSM’s) civilian trial, critics of President Barack Obama’s approach to prosecuting terrorism have a common refrain: KSM is a combatant, not a criminal. As Sen. John Barrasso recently put it, “These people are at war against the United States and our values. They deserve a military judge and jury.” COMMENTS (8) SHARE: Digg

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But does KSM really “deserve” the honor of a military trial? That is a privilege normally reserved for defendants entitled to call themselves warriors.

It’s no surprise that al Qaeda members would want to be seen as soldiers at war with the United States. Terrorist groups always want to be seen as warriors. Just think of the names they give themselves: the Lord’s Resistance Army, Lashkar-e-Taiba (*”*Army of the Righteous”), or the Irish Republican Army*, *to name a few. The warrior mystique helps them to recruit glory-seeking young men to join their cause. It helps them justify the killing of their enemies and portray all of their victims as casualties of combat. It enables men like Osama bin Laden to portray themselves not as outlaws hiding in caves but leaders of great armies, confronting the world’s superpower on a global battlefield.

When KSM was first brought before a military panel in Guantanamo, he reveled in the trappings of military justice. After confessing to the September 11 attacks, he said: “I did it, but this [is] the language of any war.” In war, he said, “there will be victims.” He then compared himself to George Washington, and said that if Washington had been captured by the British, he too would have been called an “enemy combatant.”

It makes sense that a man who plotted the murder of innocent people from a refuge thousands of miles away would want to be seen as a soldier in a war. But why would politicians who claim to be tough on terrorism want to give him that status, as many Republicans do today? Why on earth do they think that facing justice in a civilian court, where the United States prosecutes murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pimps, and yes, terrorists (over 300 during George W. Bush’s presidency), would be some sort of privilege?

Even if KSM stands accused of war crimes, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he should be put before a military tribunal. The War Crimes Act, passed by Congress unanimously in 1996, gives federal civilian courts jurisdiction to prosecute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in wartime — in other words, war crimes. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading the Republican fight against civilian trials, says that the United States has never put combatants captured on foreign battlefields in civilian courts. That is flat wrong. The George H. W. Bush administration did that to Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of the Panamanian armed forces who was captured during the U.S. military invasion of Panama. Noriega demanded the right to be tried by fellow officers in a military court. The Bush administration conceded that he was a prisoner of war, but tried him before a civilian court anyway to drive home the point that he was nothing more than a drug trafficker.

Congo: A Death Toll Rivaling The Holocaust Posted by Laura Heaton on Feb 11, 2010 [image: Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com] [image: Dusk at Mugunga IDP camp, Congo]

With an estimated death toll of six million, the Holocaust is widely viewed as the singularly most devastating period in modern history. The word holocaust, derived from the Greek words meaning “burnt whole,” is now used almost exclusively to describe the state-sponsored massacre of European Jews. In the aftermath, countries came together to create the United Nations and craft international treaties intended to build a more cohesive international community that would be better prepared to respond in the future to horrors like they had just witnessed in Nazi Germany.

Yet despite the increased interconnectedness of the world and the international provisions in place to respond to humanitarian crises, the conflict in eastern Congo rages on even today without an effective international response –- surpassing the Holocaust in number of years and now, even in number of lives lost.

In 2007, the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, released the results of a pivotal study, which found that 5.4 million people had died in eastern Congo since 1998. They also found that the death toll was mounting at a rate of about 45,000 people per month. But those figures are now nearly three years old. In a *New York Times* op-ed this week, Nick Kristof’s calculation caught my attention: “That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.” Think about that … 6.9 million. It’s hard to fathom.

Click here to continue reading.

*This post is part of a new series that will appear every Thursday on Change.org’s **Stop Genocide blog* *.*

*Photo: Dusk at Mugunga IDP camp, North Kivu (Enough/Laura Heaton)* [image: Technorati Tags:]*Technorati Tags: *Advocacy Conflict Minerals Eastern Congo International Criminal Court Protection Punishment Sexual Violence United Nations Violence Against Women

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Notorious Congo War Criminal Making News Posted by Laura Heaton on Feb 11, 2010 [image: Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com]

It seems the pressure may be rising against a Congo warlord known as The Terminator who is a regular at eastern Congo’s most posh establishments.

Wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, Bosco Ntaganda was given a command position in the Congolese army when his rebel group, theCNDP , agreed to fight alongside the Congolese government as integrated units, rather than against it. The integration came about after the Congolese and Rwandan governments struck a quiet deal that landed the charismatic CNDP leader, Laurent Nkunda, under house arrest in Rwanda. (As an upcoming Enough strategy paper will explain, the integration has been anything but smooth.) Perhaps one of the most alarming developments to emerge from this deal-making is that it left the United Nations peacekeeping force essentially in cahoots s with international war criminals.

True, the U.N. mission monitors the rosters of the Congolese army units it supports to ensure that its resources aren’t directly funneled to people accused of committing atrocities, but as a recent piece in the Guardian examines, the association between some of Congo’s most unsavory characters and the U.N. certainly conveys a distressing message in a part of the world where impunity is blamed for facilitating, or even encouraging, violence. Describing Bosco as a “casual sportsman in this oasis of luxury amid the poverty of Goma,” the Guardian piece offers this indictment:

“[Bosco] is the personification of what critics say is a ‘pact with the devil’. While the eyes of the world are distracted by wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere, many believe the thickly forested hills of eastern Congo are witnessing another shameful chapter in UN peacekeeping that ranks alongside the impotent displays in Srebrenica and Rwanda.”

In his most recent op-ed from Bukavu, South Kivu today, Nick Kristof also identifies apprehending Bosco as one of the key steps necessary for changing the calculations of would-be killers and rapists in Congo. (He also gave a shout-out to the Enough-backed conflict minerals legislation currently gaining momentum in Congress, which is appreciated.)

The more we see the names of obscure Congolese wanted war criminals in the mainstream media the better, especially when they seem to flaunt their liberty, giving leaders in the region no excuse for letting them walk free.

*Photo: Bosco Ntaganda* [image: Technorati Tags:]*Technorati Tags: *Advocacy Conflict Minerals Eastern Congo International Criminal Court Punishment

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BBC

Feed Date: 08.02.2010 Feed Time: 17:09:19 Keywords: AF1, RWANDA, COURT Language: English

http://biggovernment.com/fgaffney/2010/02/03/shariah-finance-criminal-wrongd oing-in-the-aig-takeover-will-the-special-inspector-general-for-the-tarp-fun ds-investigate-the-illegal-trust/

Shariah Finance, Criminal Wrongdoing in the AIG Takeover: Will the Special Inspector General for the TARP Funds Investigate the Illegal Trust? by Frank Gaffney

Yesterday we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in regards to the bailout of AIG by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, then Director of the New York Federal Reserve, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

It appears that, through it’s 77.9% control of AIG’s equity and voting rights, the NYFed “sought to accomplish an illegal financial transaction through false means” by creating an “independent”: trust that was in fact not independent, placing it “in violation of federal anti-money laundering statutes (18 USC § 1956).” Here we elaborate a bit further, laying out the issue in the text of a letter submitted to Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP)– as the government takeover of AIG was accomplished using funds provided to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

First, however, some context: Crucially, these facts were discovered while securities litigator David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center was representing Iraq War vet Kevin Murray in Murray vs. Geithner, et al. Mr. Murray is rightfully horrified that the very doctrines of the enemy he faced in combat would be promoted by the US government. Specifically, prior to the U.S. government’s takeover of the insurance giant AIG, the company was the world’s leading promoter of Shariah-compliant finance products and businesses. Bailing out and forcefully (and illegally) taking ownership of AIG put the American taxpayer in the position of advocating Shariah-compliant finance, which is troubling on many levels:

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First, the Shariah authorities themselves tell us that Shariah is a holistic and indivisible whole and that you cannot carve out “business law Shariah” from any other of its constituent parts, like the law of jihad. And, you can see this in that part of Shariah called civil law or fiqh al-muamalat. According to Shariah, AIG cannot invest its takaful funds in a business that might rent space to a church, because that would violate the principle of not supporting any religion other than Allah’s. Further, AIG may invest its funds in a military armament factory for Muslim armies but not US or infidel armies. In other words, these laws which seemingly have nothing to do with business concerns or ethics but rather everything to do with theo-political concerns apply as forcefully to Shariah-compliant finance as the laws on interest. And, of course the reason for this we know because the Shariah authorities tell us: Shariah makes no distinction between religion, law, politics and war. It is all subsumed under Allah’s law called Shariah.

Second, the very Shariah authorities who have the legitimacy to be Shariah board members for such an international concern are themselves advocates of violent jihad or they are the students and disciples of such Shariah authorities. For example, AIG employs Mufti Imran Usmani, who is the son, student and disciple of Mufti Taqi Usmani, the very authority who sat on the Dow Jones Islamic Index Shariah advisory board for almost 10 years beginning in 1999 and who wrote a book and had it translated into English also in 1999 which called on western Muslims to rise up and engage in violent jihad against the West. Now, either Dow Jones was recklessly blind to this fact or willfully blind to it. Now, we see that AIG and the US Treasury have succumbed to the same reckless disregard of what are now quite obvious facts.

Dear Mr. Barofsky:

I am an attorney who has worked in the securities litigation arena for more than 25 years and I also serve as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy, a highly-respected think tank in Washington, D.C., headed up by former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney, which focuses on matters of national security. I have cc’d Mr. Gaffney on this email.

In this capacity, I am representing Kevin Murray in a First Amendment/Establishment Clause case against the Fed and the Sec. of the Treasury in his official capacity as head of the Treas. Dept. We have alleged that the takeover of AIG by the US Government encourages, promotes and indeed sustains AIG’s advocacy of Shariah-Islamic insurance products worldwide in violation of the First Amendment. The government filed a motion to dismiss which was denied. I have attached that opinion. Currently, we are in the throes of discovery and awaiting the court’s ruling on our motion to compel Secretary Geithner’s deposition, which was necessitated by the fact that the Fed and Treasury Rule 30(b)(6) deponents either testified inaccurately or feigned ignorance (no surprise to you I am sure). I have attached our Motion to Compel and our companion Response to the government’s Motion for Protective Order.

I write to you today because in the course of our discovery investigation, we effectively uncovered a fraudulent artifice which allowed the Fed/FRBNY and the Treasury (using TARP funds) to accomplish that which it could not accomplish legally at the time (pre-EESA)—the acquisition of 77.9% of AIG’s equity and voting rights. We discovered this because we were looking at “standing” issues relative to the Fed/FRBNY funds provided to AIG under the Credit Facility approved in the latter half of Sept. 2008. But, what we learned was quite simply astounding.

The FRBNY wanted more than just a standard debt deal; it wanted absolute control and ownership of AIG. But, it was illegal for the FRBNY to hold equity and the Treasury Dept. did not yet have the legislative authority, later granted under EESA, to do so. But this didn’t stop then-President Geithner or his general counsel Thomas Baxter. They crafted the AIG Trust to accomplish the same goal. But the Trust was transparently invalid and illegal for two fundamental reasons: One, the FED maintained absolute control over the Trust’s existence, its terms, and the Trustees through Section 1.03 of the Trust Agreement. This, as we explain in our Response papers attached, invalidates the trust; yet the government continues to speak about this as an “independent” Trust.

Two, the Fed/FRBNY could not take legal title to the equity but neither could the Treasury Department during this pre-EESA period. So, the FRBNY named the U.S. Treasury (in the Trust Agreement) as the beneficial owner. But again, as our Response papers point out, it is elemental trust law that a beneficiary must be a person or entity that can actually hold title. While the Treasury Department can hold title, the U.S. Treasury can no more hold title than a bank account – because that is what it is. You can deposit funds or assets into a depository account but the account cannot have “ownership” because it has no more authority to do so than a tree log. But, the FRBNY had to conceal the fact that this transaction was really for the benefit of the Treasury Department (something the Treasury Dept’s Rule 30(b)(6) deponent conceded under oath (also provided in our Response papers), because the Treasury department had no legal authority. And, even if it did, as under EESA a few months later, to grant the federal government voting rights would be to create a Gordian Knot of conflicts-of-interest, which is why presumably the legislation seeks to avoid the government from taking both the equity and exercising voting rights. But, at the time of the AIG Trust, there was absolutely no legislative authority for the Treas. Dept to take control of AIG. Yet, this is what the purportedly Trust accomplished.

In the world of finance, and you certainly know this as well as I, if you seek to accomplish an illegal financial transaction (“specified unlawful activity”) through false means (the Trust structure), you are in violation of federal anti-money laundering statutes (18 USC § 1956). I have attached a ppt presentation my office has prepared for oral argument in our case (although the criminal violation is not at issue insofar as we don’t have standing to raise it). Since this artifice included TARP funds, you, in your capacity as the SIGTARP, do. Please feel free to use this material as you deem best.

I will be in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday meeting with some Congressional leaders on this point, and would be more than willing to discuss this in greater detail.

Thank you.

David Yerushalmi. Esq.

Dear Friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to forward to you the following press release from International Bridges to Justice (IBJ).

Asian Human Rights Commission

Hong Kong