Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, Editor-in-Chief of ParanoiaisFact.com
Answers readers’ questions.

Dear Igor,

My cousin Fred says the mosque will be a headquarters for the sharia takeover of America. That the Muslims have mind-control techniques that turn weak-minded people like me into suicide bombers and assassins, just like that Major in Texas. He’s like, “all they have to do is play that snake-charming music and you’ll get all hypnotized and walk around like a zombie going ‘alahu akhbar.”” He’s all, “don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning with a towel wrapped around your head and a bomb strapped to your chest and the S.W.A.T team snipers have to take you down in the 7-11 parking lot.” He’s got me so crazy it takes hours for the Ativan to kick in. Is this paranoia or fact?

Scared,

Megiddo, Ohio.

Dear Scared,

It is paranoia. The mosque is a plot, but not against America. It is a desperate attempt by two struggling New York real estate hustlers to scam billions out of the doddering Wahabists who rule Saudi Arabia. They are wrapping themselves in the Koran and the Constitution at the same time. They face Mecca and rattle the rhetorical sabers against the West, while preaching “interfaith dialogue” and the First Amendment in New York. They were close to cashing in when the vengeful God of the Internet, Google be praised, rose against them.

Mosque leader Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf might be the first Sufi slumlord in the history of Islam. He’s the prodigal son of an Imam who raised millions thirty years ago to build the Islamic Cultural Center on Upper East Side of Manhattan. The business model was simple: promise to spread Islam or “Dawa” and the money would roll in. But Rauf eschewed the family trade, getting a physics degree from Columbia, teaching high school, selling insurance and real estate with little success, before declaring himself an “Imam.” He developed a profitable line in the American-Muslim “outreach” and “reconciliation” business. Became an Ambassador of Good Will for the State Department, lecturing, writing–explaining us to them and them to us. The few anti-American remarks he made in the aftermath of 9/11 were understood as a way to maintain his street cred with “them” so he could convince them to like “us.”

Like any ambitious immigrant Rauf speculated in real estate. He bought “affordable housing”, formerly known as “tenements”, at bargain prices. He used his political connections in New Jersey to get “Section 8″ status where the federal government subsidized a portion of the rent, thereby guaranteeing him an income on a minimal investment.

But Rauf failed to maintain his buildings. Tenants complained of rats, bedbugs, vermin, heating and electrical problems, hazardous structural defects. One tenant accused him of being “greedy and only caring about the money.” Another told the Sunday Record that Rauf “doesn’t respect us because we’re non-Muslim.”

Defending lawsuits and bringing tenements up to Code is an expensive proposition. Imam Rauf was stuck with a lot of real estate he couldn’t even sell at a loss.

Enter Sharif el Gamal. Son of an Egyptian immigrant, el Gamal is what New Yorkers call a “knockaround guy.” He knocked around the East Side bar scene in his early life, waiting tables at hot spots, Michael Jordan’s and Serafina, picking up arrests for disorderly conduct and petit larceny until he and his brother Sami discovered the real estate grift. They rented apartments they didn’t represent, collecting deposits they never returned. There were complaints, but the mill of justice ground exceeding slow, giving them time to go to Florida and pick up more residential properties with the help of silent partner, Nour Moussa, nephew of Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League. There they continued their thuggish ways, facing court actions for tax delinquency, non-payment of loans and assaulting a tenant.

Back in New York, el Gamal amassed what the Huffington Post called a “modest” real estate portfolio worth over $50 million. When a distressed widow put up 51 Park Place for sale he snapped it up at the bargain price of $4.6 million.

El Gamal told the seller he was thinking about renovating and putting in condos. But that would require millions of up front investment and in the volatile real estate market might take years to show a profit.

A mosque would be an instant windfall. The location, so close to Ground Zero, would be very compelling to orthodox Muslims who wanted to, in the words of Imam Rauf, send out a “call to prayer from the world trade center rubble.” It would have non-profit , tax-exempt status. Money could be raised from donations or from a technique of Sharia banking whereby a bank buys a building for cash and then sells it back in installments to the original seller. Imam Rauf and el Gamal would control $100 million with no oversight from donors. They could take a fee out of every construction contract. They could form companies to do the renovation themselves. The profit potential is dazzling.

Now protests and publicity have put their plans on hold. The NY Post reports that el Gamal owes $229,000 in taxes on the building and faces foreclosure if he doesn’t pay.

Yes, there is an Islamic plot to “enter the crumbling house of the West and hasten its destruction.” But there was also a Communist plot to infiltrate the American government and cause its downfall. And a John Birch plot to take control of the Republican Party. And a behavioral economist plot to prod and coax and nudge you into doing what some academic careerist thinks is best for you.

You should be concerned about the plot by Mega Capital to control your economic life and thus your mind and eventually your spirit. The lords of finance and their Washington lackeys have rigged the system to reduce you to a state of slavering subservience, working for starvation wages, lining up for government handouts. They have made it impossible for you borrow to start a business, get a mortgage to buy property, even have a savings account that pays a paltry 4% a year. In their zeal for “productivity” they have shrunk the labor market through outsourcing and automation. If you’re not working you’re counting the weeks until your unemployment runs out as you despair of ever finding a job again. If you have a job you are probably working twelve hours a day with no overtime just to keep it. You’re afraid to take sick days or ask for a raise or better conditions. You can be fired on a whim.

Turn off that talk radio, Scared. Flush your meds. Join with your brothers and sisters to overthrow the theocrats and plutocrats, the technocrats and bureaucrats who are plotting against you.

But first, throw your cousin Fred out of the house.

Your friend,

Igor

NEXT: DRAFTED: THE PHYSICAL

ACTIVIST INVADES PLUTOCRATS’
POVERTY PSYCHODRAMA

Robert Polet, Gucci Group CEO, an AK 47 to his head, pleaded for help.

“Please, please help me find my children,” he cried as soldiers pinned him to the muddy floor of a refugee camp.

In a moment of high psychodrama, pampered executives learned what it’s like to be one of the 32.9 million displaced persons who live in squalid, brutalized conditions around the world.

The simulation, presented by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in coordination with the Crossroads Foundation and the Global Risk Forum, a Davos non-profit, was meant to heighten executive sensitivity to the problems of the oppressed. Polet, who was called Mustafa in the play, flinched as an actress stepped on a make-believe land mine and was stretchered away, gushing stage blood.

“What a humbling experience to feel so defenseless,” Polet told the Wall St. Journal and agreed enthusiastically when UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said that the lesson of the exercise was: “We should have the same level of determination in saving lives as saving banks.”

But then someone in the audience shouted:

“This is the height of hypocrisy!”

Suddenly, the stage was invaded by a young woman leading a group of South Asian children.

“This man is responsible for the poverty and oppression of thousands of workers,” she shouted.

The woman identified herself as Leah Schikdkraut, Labor Rights specialist with the Anarcho-Feminist Coalition.

“As the head of Unilever, this man employed 25,000 child laborers, ages 6 to 11, in the cotton seed operations of his Indian branch, Hindustan Lever,” she shouted. “Hindustan Lever factories in Nepal, Mumbai and Pakistan were targeted for unfair labor practices and false police charges against workers.”

Guards tried to evict her, but she waved an official invitation in their faces. “Polet now heads a company which hides its Made in China and India labels in the folds of its thousand dollar garments,” she shouted. As Davos officials debated what to do she swung an Yves St. Laurent sweater, with embroidery by Lesage over her head.

“The rhinestones are falling off, ” a designer screamed in anguish.

“This sweater cost $23,155,” Schildkraut shouted. “Do you know how many displaced people we could feed…?”

Schildkraut was quickly surrounded by Swiss Guards. Brandishing a bottle of wine she held them at bay.

“After attending a three course gourmet dinner to discuss world hunger, these men will go to a Classic Claret wine tasting hosted by Janis Robinson, wine columnist for the Financial Times,” she said.

“Be careful for God’s sake, that’s a Latour 1952,” a sommelier pleaded.

“Do you know how much medicine we could purchase with the price of this bottle?” Schildkraut shouted.

Outside, reporters asked Schildkraut how she had managed to wangle an invite to this exclusive session. She reddened and hesitated for a moment.

“I sold myself as a sex slave to Eliot Shpritzer, a real estate mogul from New York,” she said. “The price was his invitation.”

” I, too, wanted to know what it’s like to be exploited and degraded…”

IT’S THE US AGAINST THE WORLD

Executives played the “blame game” at Davos and the US was the loser.

Chinese Premier Wen Jia Bao blamed China’s sudden slowdown on US’s “macroeconomic failures and “underregulated economy.” He threatened to stop buying US T-bills, but was then seen offstage with his head in his hands, moaning: “What am I going to do with all that money?”

Russian President Putin blamed social unrest, the price of oil, the dispute with the Ukraine and the watery borscht on the US. He then raised eyebrows when he blamed an anti-government demonstration in Vladivostock on “Communist agitators.”

Finally, the Americans had enough. When asked how American bankers could be so “stupid,” Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman Stephen Roach fired back: “How could the regulators have been so stupid? How could the borrowers have been so stupid? How could everyone have been so stupid?”

Outside, the dispute continued.

“You were stupid to give mortgages to people who couldn’t pay,” a Chinese official shouted.

“You were stupid to buy the mortgage securities of the people who couldn’t pay,” an American banker replied.

“You were stupid to sell insurance on the mortgage securities of people who couldn’t pay,” a Swiss broker accused.

“You were stupid to trade swaps on the insurance on mortgage securities of people who couldn’t pay,” the American parried.

“You hit a mulligan into a sand trap,” a Japanese CFA snorted.

“You served toxic blowfish testicles and seven people died,” the American shot back. “How stupid is that?”

TURKS SAY MODERATOR
WAS “ARMENIAN AGITATOR”

Feb. 2…Turkish sources today accused Washington Post columnist David Ignatius of being an “Armenian agitator” who deliberately snubbed and humiliated Prime Minister Erdogan at a debate on the Middle East last week.

Ignatius, an Armenian-American, has written of the world’s failure to acknowledge the massacre of a million Armenians by the Turkish Army in 1915. Sources claimed he had been planted on the panel to humiliate Erdogan. That it was all part of a plot to get Jewish legislators to vote for a Congressional resolution condemning the genocidal attacks

The debate began with four participants–Erdogan, Israeli President Shimon Peres, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa– ritually repeating familiar positions.

There were yawns. Heads bobbed in and out of wakefulness as:

Erdogan spoke of a “humanitarian crisis” and expressed annoyance that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert had been in Turkey four days before the Israeli invasion of Gaza and had given no indication of what was to come.

Moon asked for $613 billion and said the Israeli attack was “disproportionate.”

Moussa said the Israelis were enforcing a “military occupation” and demanded a peace agreement by the end of 2009.

Peres protested that Israel “did not want to shoot anybody,” and asked “why did they fire rockets? What did they want?” Then concluded by saying it was all Iran’s fault.

At that point a Pakistani delegate’s stomach grumbled so loudly that several Indian IT executives thought there was a terror attack and caused a panic. Ignatius, responding to urgent messages in his earphones, said the debate had gone overtime and that the audience was “anxious to go to dinner.” But Erdogan grabbed his sleeve and demanded a chance to rebut. He accused Peres of speaking loudly to hide a “guilty conscience.” Apologetically, Ignatius cut off Erdogan in mid-tirade. Claiming that people were “late for dinner”, he closed the session. Erdogan invoked the Sixth Commandment (Thou Shall Not Kill) and left the stage to enthusiastic applause and a fraternal handshake from Moussa, vowing never to return to Davos “because you didn’t let me speak.”

Event host Klaus Schwab mounted the podium and thanked the participants as the audience stampeded to the buffet.

Later, sources confirmed that the diplomatic and military cooperation between Turkey and Israel would continue. Turkey was set to receive a shipment of Israeli- made UAV’s and modernized tanks to be used in its ongoing war against Kurdish nationalists.

Ignatius would not comment, but a spokesperson for the Washington Post said he had been instructed to end the debate when Deutsche Bank analyst Horst von Grepps fainted from hunger and had to be given a glucose IV.