This is how many on the left want most Universities to look
• Qatar gave $1 billion to elite American universities since 2011, according to Department of Education data.
• The Qatar Foundation is suing the Texas attorney general to prevent information about Qatari funding from becoming public.
• Universities are taking money from Qatar, a nation with a checkered human rights history, as students rally for social justice causes.
The nation of Qatar, a Sharia-law monarchy that has been accused of trying to influence other countries’ governments, gave $1 billion to elite American universities since 2011, according to Department of Education data.
Some universities have refused to discuss where strings are attached to that money. The Qatar Foundation, for example, filed a lawsuit against the Texas attorney general Oct. 12 to hide information about the $225 million Qatar has awarded to Texas A&M University since 2011.
The Qatar Foundation hired the politically connected powerhouse law firm Squire Patton Boggs for the suit, which was filed in response to a researcher’s public information request regarding the foreign funding.
The biggest recipient of Qatar’s educational funding, Georgetown University, repeatedly ignored requests from The Daily Caller News Foundation for basic information about the funding and whether it implicates academic independence.
Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have accused Qatar of meddling in other nations’ internal affairs as well as funding terrorism. Qatar also wields influence through its media group, Al Jazeera.
Top Foreign Funders of U.S. Universities, 2011-2016 (Source: Department of Education)
Country
Amount
Qatar
$1,024,065,043
England
$761,586,394
Saudi Arabia
$613,608,797
China
$426,526,085
Canada
$402,535,603
Hong Kong
$394,446,859
For a nation seeking sway over the U.S., Georgetown University would be a particularly tactical site of influence. Georgetown has received nearly $333 million from Qatar since 2011 — far more than any other U.S. school has received from any foreign nation.
Georgetown is situated in the seat of power, near the State Department, and its experts are frequently cited by groups shaping policy. In fact, the Jesuit Catholic university trains many of the United States’ future diplomats at its Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Its website notes that “At SFS, you can study with former Secretaries of State” and access “connections to diplomats from just about every country, and of course, the seat of the U.S. government. Our location gives SFS the extraordinary opportunity for us to engage (and sometimes even influence) the debates that lead to real action.”
Thanks to the Qatari funding, Georgetown and its foreign service program has an entire outpost in Qatar. “Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) is an additional location of Georgetown University, based in Education City in Doha,” its website says. “The University offers a four year undergraduate program in international affairs leading to the Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (BSFS) degree.”
Students from VCU’s home campus visit the Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, the national mosque of Qatar. Source: VCU
The magnitude of liberal-leaning universities’ reliance on the foreign nation, a poster child for income inequality, provides a stark contrast. As U.S. college students clamor for university endowments to divest from fossil fuels, the schools take money from the oil-rich kingdom. As they rally for social justice causes, Qatar has a checkered human rights record.
Qatar has only 313,000 citizens, and 2.3 million foreigners dwelling there, many of them laborers serving the country’s elite, according to 2017 data.
“The tragedy of 1.7 million migrant workers trapped in Qatar defines modern day slavery,” the International Trade Union Confederation said in 2015.
Nepalese laborers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, according to The Guardian.
“We were working on an empty stomach for 24 hours; 12 hours’ work and then no food all night,” one said. “When I complained, my manager assaulted me, kicked me out of the labor camp I lived in and refused to pay me anything.”
In Washington, professors of Islamic issues have engaged in activism. Jonathan A. C. Brown, a convert to Islam and the director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, which Qatar rival Saudi Arabia funds, offered an Islam-based defense of slavery, concubinage and non-consensual sex.
“The Prophet of God had slaves. He had slaves. There’s no denying that,” he said in 2017 at an International Institute of Islamic Thought talk. “Was he — are you more morally mature than the Prophet of God? No, you’re not. I’ll answer your question for you.” (RELATED: Before Killing Of Journalist, Elite Universities Took $600M From Saudis)
Studying abroad forms a bond between U.S. students and Qatar and helps Qatari nationals learn about the U.S., according to marketing materials.
Top Recipients of Qatar-Affiliated Funding to Universities, 2011-2016 (Source: Department of Education)
Country
Amount
Georgetown University
$332,818,297
Northwestern University
$277,456,289
Texas A&M University
$225,455,141
Carnegie Mellon University
$71,456,401
Cornell University
$47,577,242
Virginia Commonwealth University
$40,117,185
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
$7,860,694
Harvard University
$7,693,947
Purdue University
$2,794,462
Arizona State University
$2,276,044
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
$1,223,630
Meanwhile, college students have adopted a fondness for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions to Israel movement.
The vast majority of funds from Qatar were contracts, the Education Department data shows, requiring Georgetown to do something in return for the money, unlike gifts.
Georgetown spokesman Matt Hill ignored questions from TheDCNF about the strings attached to such funds and whether they could influence curriculum and would not provide the contract governing them.
The dean of Georgetown’s Qatar campus is Ahmad Dallal, who the Middle East Forum describes as “a long-time and enthusiastic supporter of the State Department-designated terrorist group Hezbollah. Dallal, who chaired Georgetown’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies from 2003 to 2009, is also pro-Hamas, pro-Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, co-author of an Arabic textbook whose maps omit Israel, and signatory of a letter warning that Israel would engage in ‘ethnic cleansing’ at the start of the Iraq war.”
The Zachor Legal Institute, which opposes the movement to sanction and boycott Israel, submitted a Freedom of Information request in May to Texas A&M (TAMU), a state university, for “a summary of all amounts of funding or donations received” from Qatar and a long list of proxies.
The office of state Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled “the university must withhold the donors’ identifying information … the university must release the remaining information.”
Most of the money to TAMU were contracts, not donations.
The Qatar Foundation’s high-powered lawyers intervened, arguing the relevant portion of the attorney general’s ruling “requiring release of all remaining information other than donor identity is incorrect and without force or effect.”
They wrote:
This is an action to prevent disclosure of confidential financial information concerning the relationship between QF and Texas A&M University … QF operates programs dedicated to education, science, and community development. It is responsible for funding much of the development in Education City, a hub for higher education outside Doha. … In addition to TAMU, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, and Virginia Commonwealth University have all established campuses in Education City.
The Attorney General concluded that TAMU could withhold information identifying ‘donors’ under section 552.1235. But the Attorney General stated that TAMU would be required to release all remaining information requested, which would include information related to payments made by QF to TAMU pursuant to a contract. In so doing, the Attorney General implicitly ruled that those payments were not ‘donations,’ and therefore not exempt from disclosure under the PIA … The information related to these grants and donations is also confidential commercial information and constitutes a trade secret.
The Qatar Foundation’s general counsel is Michael Mitchell, a former vice president of Ohio State University.
Marc Greendorfer, an attorney for the Zachor Legal Institute, responded to the Texas attorney general Nov. 8: “One of the Qatari entities that was the subject of our original request has taken the extraordinary step of taking the Texas Attorney General to court to suppress the information that we requested. Now, with the most recent attempt by TAMU to prevent public disclosure of information as to how Qatari entities are involved with a Texas public university, the intrigue grows, and we have to wonder what it is they are trying to keep from the public.”
TAMU and the Qatar Foundation did not return requests for comment.
The university operations by Qatar are just one prong in a massive public relations and influence push that includes millions to lobbyists and public relations firms in the U.S.
It is also not the only involvement of Squire Patton Boggs with Middle Eastern countries. The same law firm also has a $100,000-a-month contract with Qatar’s rival Saudi Arabia for the kingdom to retain former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and former Democratic Louisiana Sen. John Breaux.
According to Foreign Agent Registration Act disclosures, it worked directly with Saud al-Qahtani, the same aide who allegedly organized the killing of a
Flynn should have known better. He is a scumbag anyway with his Turkish connection.
Andrew McCabe urged Michael Flynn to meet with FBI agents without White House attorneys present, according to a court filing submitted Tuesday in the special counsel’s probe.
McCabe and other FBI officials also decided not to provide a warning to Flynn about penalties regarding lying to the FBI.
Though Flynn’s lawyers are suggesting he was trapped into lying to the FBI, the new filing does not explain why the retired lieutenant general made false statements about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador
Just days into President Donald Trump’s tenure, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe urged then-national security adviser Michael Flynn to meet with two FBI agents without White House lawyers present, claiming that a limited meeting would be the “quickest” way to have a conversation about Flynn’s discussions weeks earlier with Russia’s ambassador.
As if that scenario was not fraught with enough legal landmines, Flynn was also not warned by the two agents he met with about the penalties for lying to federal investigators. That’s because McCabe and other FBI officials decided before the fateful Jan. 24, 2017 meeting that “they wanted Flynn to be relaxed.” The officials “were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport” between Flynn and his FBI interlocutors.
Those revelations are tucked into a 178-page filing that Flynn’s lawyers submitted on Tuesday in the special counsel’s investigation.
While the filing contains new details about the White House interview, Flynn’s team does not provide an explanation for why the retired lieutenant general made false statements to the FBI agents, aside from saying that he “recognizes that his actions were wrong and he accepts full responsibility for them.”
While Flynn’s lawyers said in the filing that he is remorseful for lying to the FBI during that Jan. 24, 2017 meeting, the activities of McCabe and the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn are sure to generate outcry about overreach in the Russia investigation. Flynn’s supporters have noted that McCabe and one of the FBI agents, Peter Strzok, have run into ethical and legal problems of their own.
According to the filing, McCabe wrote in a memo just after arranging the White House visit that he suggested to Flynn that attorneys stay out of the interview in order to save time.
“I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between [General Flynn] and the agents only,” McCabe wrote.
Flynn went along with McCabe’s suggestion, telling McCabe that involving White House lawyers “would not be necessary.” He agreed “to meet with the agents without any additional participants,” according to McCabe.
Less than two hours after that conversation, Peter Strzok, the FBI counterintelligence official leading the Russia probe, visited Flynn along with another FBI agent.
According to notes cited by Flynn’s lead attorney, Robert Kelner, one of the two FBI interviewers noted that Flynn was “relaxed and jocular” during their session. The agent said that Flynn appeared to treat the FBI agents as allies.
Seemingly acting on instructions from FBI brass, “the agents did not provide General Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 before, during, or after the interview,” Kelner writes.
Flynn has since acknowledged giving false statements during that interview. He pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017 to lying to the FBI agents about conversations he had in December 2016 with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn’s lawyers are seeking no jail time for the former lieutenant general, a request that is in line with prosecutors’ recommendation in a filing submitted on Dec. 4. Special counsel Robert Mueller in that filing cited Flynn’s “substantial assistance” in three separate investigations.
Kelner noted that Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser on Feb. 13, 2017, continued cooperating with the special counsel’s office “even when circumstances later came to light that prompted extensive public debate about the investigation of General Flynn.”
The lawyer appeared to be referencing the firestorm surrounding McCabe and Strzok.
McCabe was fired on March 16 after the FBI’s personnel office and Justice Department inspector general determined that he made misleading statements under oath about authorizing leaks to the media in October 2016 regarding an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
Prosecutors are reportedly pursuing a case against McCabe.
Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigation in July 2017 and fired from the FBI on Aug. 13 of this year because of anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Kelner noted that Flynn met with the special counsel’s office five times before entering his plea deal on Dec. 1, 2017. He had 14 more meeting with prosecutors after striking the agreement.
The filing did not address other legal issues Flynn has faced.
As part of his plea deal, Flynn acknowledged making false statements when he registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent of Turkey for consulting work he did during the campaign. Flynn’s plea deal protected him from being prosecuted by the special counsel for his Turkish lobbying. Prosecutors in Virginia are investigating some of Flynn’s former business partners.
Why doesn’t the Media and the criminal elected officials ever talk about China being America’s enemy?
BOEING CANCELS CONTROVERSIAL SATELLITE ORDER FUNDED BY CHINA
Two Americans wanted to create a satellite in an effort to increase internet access in Africa, but their project quickly turned over into the hands of the Chinese government.
Boeing, who was hired to build the satellite and knew of the Chinese government’s involvement in the project, reportedly announced Thursday it was cancelling the order.
Boeing cited default for nonpayment, calling it a business decision.
Boeing decided to cancel an order for a satellite that uses sensitive technology used by the U.S. military and was reportedly being funded by a state-owned Chinese financial firm.
A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed Tuesday the troubling web of financial transactions that skirted around U.S. export laws, which would ban Boeing from selling satellites to China, and resulted in the Chinese government funneling nearly $200 million to the project and obtaining a large stake of the company responsible for the satellite.
Boeing told WSJ Thursday it cancelled the project, which was near completion at a Boeing facility in Los Angeles, citing default for nonpayment. A source familiar with the project said the cancellation was a business decision, and the company may attempt to resell the satellite. (RELATED: US Satellite May Now Be Controlled By China)
Emil Youssefzadeh and Umar Javed, two Americans who founded the startup Global IP in 2008 with the goal of improving internet accessibility in Africa, were Boeing’s original customers of the satellite. A few foreign financial transactions made in an attempt to sidestep U.S. export laws almost potentially resulted in the Chinese government repurposing the satellite’s sensitive technology for its own use.
Youssefzadeh and Javed were contacted in 2015 by executives at China Orient Asset Management Co., a financial firm owned by China’s Ministry of Finance, expressing interest in the satellite.
Javed was in Beijing days later meeting with the president of the company and Geng Zhiyuan, a man whose father was a leader in China’s military in 1979 and employed Xi Jinping as his personal secretary. Xi is now the president of Communist China.
Due to certain U.S. laws involving satellite technology, China Orient isn’t allowed to hold a large stake in the company or satellite, so Global IP planned to receive China Orient’s money through a separate shell company, according to WSJ.
A subsidiary of China Orient, Dong Yin Development, lent $175 million to Bronzelink, the company set up in the British Virgin Islands. Bronzelink then bought 75 percent of Global IP.
Global IP used the investment to pay Boeing to build the satellite.
After relations with China Orient soured, Youssefzadeh and Javed resigned in 2017 from Global IP and sued Dong Yin the following year, alleging the subsidiary was illegally trying to usurp the satellite project.
China’s involvement in the project has worried U.S. officials, who warn that the country often engages in illicit activities in an attempt to gain access to highly sought after technologies.
“It’s a multi-pronged, multi-faceted kind of attack,” Eric Hirschhorn, who served as an undersecretary at the Commerce Department during the Obama administration, told WSJ. “They’ve [China] got their hand in every pocket they can find, their nose in every crack, their eye in every keyhole.”
Right before Global IP was to sign its contract with Boeing in August 2016, Youssefzadeh and Javed received unexpected visitors in Los Angeles.
Multiple new Global IP board members, led by a Chinese lawyer who represents China Orient, demanded access to the Boeing contract and requested to see Boeing’s satellite designs, WSJ reported.
Youssefzadeh and Javed told the crew that they were already given authorization from the board to move forward with production and were confused why this team was sent to obtain more information.
The two Americans refused the multiple requests to look over the contract, which they knew contained hundreds of detailed pages on how Boeing’s technology and programs work. China is blocked from seeing this type of information under export control laws.
Executives at Bronzelink, which owned 75 percent of Global IP at the time of the visit, eventually began to make similar requests, Youssefzadeh and Javed said.
Boeing’s cancellation comes as China was moving to take tighter control of the satellite project, and in doing so obtain access to the sensitive and advanced technology.
He is right the Bob Mueller investigation is nothing but a destruction project to destroy Donald Trump. There is no such thing as justice in America for the rich and powerful.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid into special counsel Robert Mueller on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night, labeling the Russia probe a “Trump destruction project.”
Gingrich’s observation came in response to the sentencing recommendation Mueller made earlier this week regarding President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
“Mueller is not involved in a investigation,” Gingrich charged. “Mueller has a Trump destruction project. He brought on a team, all of them dedicated to destroying Trump. They have done everything they could to destroy Trump.”
Gingrich explained, “You basically threaten somebody and say, ‘I’m going to bankrupt you. I’m going to put your son in jail. I’m going to charge you with so many different crimes, you’ll never get out from under it. Now would you like to talk?’”
ABC News reported Flynn put his home in Alexandria, Virginia up for sale last spring to pay his mounting legal bills.
Additionally, a month before entering into a plea agreement with Mueller in December 2017, the retired general reportedly expressed concern about his son being prosecuted for failing to register in relation to consulting work the two did for foreign entities, according to Forbes.
“It has nothing to do with the truth. It has nothing to do with justice,” Gingrich alleged.
He predicted, “Historians one day will comment that this was one of the most extraordinary efforts to undo the will of the American people by an established bureaucracy, and its establishment friends, that we’ve seen in all of American history.”
Hannity then raised the issue of new reporting by The Hill’s John Solomon indicating that former FBI Director James Comey was in email exchanges with other top DOJ officials and FBI investigators, which provides “the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
“The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant (to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page) — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier,” wrote Solomon.
Gingrich responded, “You had the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation actively trying to destroy a presidential candidate.”
He argued that Comey and others who were involved in the efforts to undermine Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, “operated on a premise … Hillary was going to win. So they never thought this would come to light. They thought they were helping the winner.”
Gingrich believes Mueller has taken up the banner and reiterated that the special counsel’s team is “actively trying to destroy the President of the United States.”
“And I know it’s frustrating but the fact is, this is a clear cut drama. They hate him, they want to destroy him, it has nothing to do with the truth and nothing to do with the law.”
Brenda Snipes, the supervisor of elections for Broward County, Florida, will receive nearly $130,000 a year in pensions when she resigns from her position in January.
Snipes, who resigned after receiving intense scrutiny for her office’s handling of the midterm elections earlier this month, is already receiving $58,560 in state pensions from her earlier career as an educator, and is set to add almost $71,000 a year for her time in elected office, the Sun Sentinelreported Tuesday.
When Snipes walks away from her $178,865-a-year job, she’ll be eligible to collect almost $130,000 a year in state pensions for her combined 50 years as a public school educator and elected official.
She already earns $4,880 a month for her time as a teacher and school administrator. She has been receiving that pension in addition to her supervisor’s salary ever since she was appointed by former Gov. Jeb Bush to the position in 2003. She has won election to the office four times since then.
Based on salary information and state retirement rules, the South Florida Sun Sentinel determined Snipes, 75, stands to add another $5,909 a month for her 15 years as supervisor, roughly $71,000 a year. State officials said they could not provide information on Snipes’ new pension because they had not calculated it and would not do so until requested by Snipes.
[…]
[Florida TaxWatch CEO Dominic] Calabro said Snipes will also benefit from annual cost-of-living increases, averaging between 2 percent and 3 percent, that will add thousands of dollars to her pensions each year.
Calabro, whose organization is a nonprofit, nonpartisan government watchdog group, said Snipes’ pension pay “really raises the question, on top of everything else, why she’s being excessively compensated for doing a poor job. That’s the added insult to injury.”
“It just leaves additional salt in the wound,” he added.
The average annual pension for elected officials in Florida’s state retirement plan in 2017 was $53,223, the Sentinel noted.
Snipes became the subject of national scrutiny after a series of mishaps concerning the recount of the Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.) and his Republican challenger, current Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who eventually was declared the winner.
She favors Don King.
Broward County failed to submit the results of the recount by the state’s deadline; lost thousands of ballots that were initially counted but did not make it to the recount; and her office, according to the Sentinel, opened 205 provisional early-voting ballots before Broward’s Canvassing Board determined their validity.
Snipes—who was also found to have destroyed ballots earlier than allowed in a previous election and regularly lost absentee ballots, among other issues—submitted her resignation last week.
This is Brenda with no Make-up.
“Although I have enjoyed this work tremendously over these many election cycles, both large and small, I am ready to pass the torch,” Snipes wrote in her resignation letter to Scott. “Therefore, I request that you accept my letter of resignation effective January 4, 2019.”
Don’t you Americans stop or illegal felons from being here.
Students at North Carolina State University held a meeting last week to discuss how they can pressure the school into becoming a sanctuary campus to stop the police from reporting illegal aliens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The desire to make North Carolina State University (NCSU) into a sanctuary campus was spurred by the October arrest of a previously deported felon who had a detention order issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Students became offended upon learning that this individual, who is a convicted felon, had been detained by a police officer and reported to ICE.
According to the campus police, the felon is not a student, and was discovered on a construction site at the Greek Village student housing center after hours. The individual had also been previously deported.
Students reacted to what was referred to as “the ICE incident” by collaborating on a project to abolish ICE on campus, according to an email obtained by Breitbart News.
“We would like to request that Student Government take the initiative on researching the precedent for a public university having policies in which Campus Police is not allowed to call ICE,” states the email, which was circulated among students and staff at NCSU.
“We would also like to know whether there are university policies at NCSU in which ICE is not allowed on campus.”
“So the scumbags [NCSU Police] handed someone over to ICE,” said @authcom19, a Twitter account allegedly belonging to a student on the email chain, “the felony charge is a non-violent charge.”
NCSU’s Chief of Staff and Assistant Vice Chancellor Justine Hollingshead was also included on the email although she did not appear to have responded based on the emails reviewed by Breitbart News.
The email also listed a number of student organizations that were said to be “on board” with abolishing ICE on campus:
Graduate Student Worker Union
Association for Latino Professionals for America
Young Democratic Socialists of America
Latinas Promoviendo Comunidad/Lambda Pi Chi Sorority
Lambda Theta Phi Latin Fraternity
Afrikan American Student Advisory Council
Latin American Student Association
Mi Familia
Students for Immigrants Rights
Neither Chancellor Hollingshead nor the Young Democratic Socialists of America student group responded to Breitbart News’ request for comment.
