VMI Islamic Conference Grant and the Middle East Funding Connection

Let’s follow the money trail behind Virginia Military Institute’s plans to host a “celebration” commemoration of the Islamic conquest of Spain.

Previously, Patrick Poole exposed the planned March 23-25 “celebration” entitled “711 AD – 2011: East Meets West” organized by the Virginia Military Institute’s (VMI) Center for Leadership and Ethics. Then he exposed the VMI cover-up, showing that in response to public criticism, the VMI had already changed its language regarding the event on its website. Originally the event was to “celebrate” the 1300^th anniversary of “Tariq ibn Ziyad’s crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar” – in fact ushering in nearly eight centuries of oppressive Islamic rule in Spain – while the new version uses the word “commemoration” instead of “celebrate”.

That’s “commemoration” from the Latin commemorationem, meaning “to call to mind.”

So commemorate this: let’s call to mind the money trail behind the conference, and follow it to a much bigger set of questions for VMI and their funders discovered in an interesting little program at the Department of Defense, whose primary administrators and advisers are the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Politburo of Communist China. And the trail gets even more interesting after that.

It all starts with the grant for the conference.

In 2008 VMI received a $665,000 grant from the Department of Defense http://www.vmi.edu/NewsCenter.aspx?id=22465 (h/t Patrick Poole) to “enhance its Arabic studies program and provide opportunities for cadets to study the language and culture abroad.” VMI was one of 8 schools to receive funding through the program, called at that time the “Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) Language and Culture Project.” According to VMI:

In addition, the grant will support a cross-cultural conference hosted by VMI that will focus on themes including literature, religion, history, language, politics, pedagogy and Islamic-Christian amity…

Col. Kathleen Bulger-Barnett, head of the department of modern languages and cultures at VMI said:

“The conference in 2011 will attract scholars to VMI who will discuss a great range of academic topics, thus increasing our efforts to broaden the international perspective of the Institute. All of this, combined with continued undergraduate research will result in increased linguistic, cultural and historical awareness of the Arabic-speaking world by our cadets.”

Next step on the money trail: the providers of that grant for the VMI conference, a little known Defense Department project now called Project GO for “Global Officers” (originally titled the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) Language and Culture Project), started in 2007 as part of the Defense Department’s National Security Education Program (NSEP). Project GO (Global Officers) is the source for funding $665,000 of the new $200 million VMI Center for Leadership and Ethics, faculty and programs, the VMI organization sponsoring this conference. ( Of course it’s also important to ask how the rest of the $200 million was generated but that’s a subject for another day, another FOIA request.)

However, the Defense Department’s NSEP program doesn’t actually administer Project GO (Global Officers) – that’s done instead by another entity, the private Institute of International Education (IIE). And now the money trail becomes interesting. Here’s how IIE is described at Project GO (Global Officers):

The Institute of International Education – The Institute of International Education (IIE) administers the Project GO Institutional Grants on behalf of the National Security Education Program. IIE is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to building international goodwill through educational and cultural exchange among nations. By enabling more than 18,000 outstanding men and women each year to study, conduct research, receive practical training, or provide technical assistance outside their own countries, IIE fosters mutual understanding, builds global problem solving capabilities, and strengthens the international competence of U.S. citizens.

Now I’m all for international goodwill, cultural exchange, and mutual understanding, but I don’t think that’s what the VMI propaganda celebration commemoration of counter-factual disinformation on the Islamic conquest of Spain will achieve on March 23-25, so let’s pursue the money trail a little further to find out who at the IIE would have an interest in that kind of deceptive discourse.

Let’s go to two advisory groups at the IIE, administrator of the grant for VMI’s conference: the International Counselors and the IIE New Leaders Group (NLG) .

First, those International Counselors – according to the IIE website, “Dedicated internationalists from all world regions provide advice and counsel to IIE’s senior management on topics related to their geographic areas and their global expertise.” The list of those “dedicated internationalists” includes Saudi Arabia’s Consul General, the Minister of Planning for Jordan, and (my favorite, a bit off topic but just too good not to mention in the context of “Project GO – Global Officers”) Li Yuanchao, Politburo Member of the 17th CPC Central Committee, Head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, Beijing China.

You bet they’re “dedicated internationalists.” And what a great group to have administering the primary language and culture programs for ROTC across the nation. What a great group to turn what used to be “United States Officers” into “Global Officers.”

But wait. There’s more. Meet the “New Leaders Group (NLG).” According to the IIE,

“The NLG serves as an idea generation engine for IIE and helps enable the Institute to increase its responsiveness to urgent global needs. By helping to harness and leverage the Institute’s resources and capabilities, the NLG will identify and address pressing global issues and make a meaningful impact upon the world we share.”

I don’t know about you, but when I see a group that helps to “leverage” the “Institute’s resources and capabilities,” I think of leverage in financial terms – money trail terms. Leverage can mean the “power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions” and it can also mean “the use of a small initial investment, credit, or borrowed funds to gain a very high return.” I think in the case of the organizations listed as New Leaders, one might ask if it means both power and money to “address pressing global issues” like the propaganda-fest conference at VMI. Or perhaps – worth asking – additional funding for the $200 million VMI Center for Leadership and Ethics, towards the same end.

Why ask about that “leverage”? Look who’s on the list : “New Leaders” from just two countries: The New Leaders Group in the USA, and the New Leaders Group in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In fact, one of the putative “United States” group members is Serra Kirdar-Meliti, Director of the Muthabara Foundation, a UAE entity dedicated to maximizing “the potential of Arab women.”

And under the UAE list, those veterans of leverage in all senses of the word, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation. (There are others and all are well-deserving of further research, but let’s just “commemorate” a few facts about the Maktoum empire.)

Second on the UAE section’s list is Samar Al-Shorafa, Manager of Project Development at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation. The Al-Maktoum family is the ruling dynasty of the United Arab Emirates. The Al-Maktoum family controls the government-owned Dubai Ports World Corporation which caused a major political uproar stateside in 2006 when it was set to take over port security at 22 seaports across the United States.

The Maktoums have also been active in funding Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in the United States, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In 2002 the Al-Maktoum foundation provided $978,031.34 in the form of a Deed of Trust for CAIR’s (and here at Paul Sperry’s sperryfiles.com) Washington, D.C. headquarters. In 2006 UAE Minister of Finance Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum endorsed a proposal to build a property in the United States to serve as an endowment for CAIR (h/t Adam Savit, editor at Cairobservatory.org )

And now we find the al-Maktoum Foundation is a leader in the IIE, which advises and administers the Project Go (Global Officers) grant, which funds the conference at VMI – an appalling dishonorable example of disinformation and Islamic political propaganda. History, the Shariah way – a crooked path indeed.

NEXT: Two movies, propaganda with a false history of Islamic occupation of Spain, to be shown at the conference.