Bill Gates Funds Gulen Islamist Movement, Which Operates 25 Publicly-funded Schools in Texas; Turkey has Transferred Its Alliance from Europe and the United States to Russia and Iran

Who Is Behind The Privatization Of Education:Gates, Broad, KIPP, Pearson, WestEd & The Gulen Schools

A massive national and international organized plan to privatize education has been implemented over several decades. Billionaires, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and the Pearson corporation among others, have infiltrated hundreds of governmental bodies including school boards, city councils and our local, state and regional governments. They seek to turn our education system into a profit center worth tens of billions of dollars. This also includes the Gulen Islamic cult led by Imam Fethullah Gulen, which runs the largest chain of charters in the United States funded by public money. We will also look at the criminal conflicts that have allowed politicians to personally benefit from using their public positions to profit from their votes and actions. This forum will look at how this has come about, who did it, how it is affecting us and who is profiting from it at the cost of public education and finally how to stop this attack on our public education system.

Bill Gates Funds Gulen Islamist Movement

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the biggest supporters and financiers of this diabolical New World Order agenda. Bill and Melinda Gates are pro-death, anti-family, anti-God, and members of the insane global elite who think they have the right to decide who lives or dies amongst the poor of this world. Only God has the right to control life, not a group of rich fools who want to reduce the world's population. - JesusIsSavior.com

May 24, 2010

Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. (The Last Crusade) - The Fethullah Gulen movement, which seeks to restore the Ottoman Empire, has found a friend and benefactor in Bill Gates of Microsoft fame.

Mr. Gates is ranked the third wealthiest person on planet earth.

In 2007, through the Texas High School Project, the Gates Foundation shelled out $10,550,000 to the Cosmos Foundation, a Gulen enterprise that operates 25 publicly-funded charter schools in Texas.

The Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for Cosmos shows that the Cosmos Foundation received $41,570,721 from taxpayers.

At present, there are 85 Gulan madrassahs (Islamic schools) in the United States, and all operate with public funding.

At the Gulen schools, students are indoctrinated in Turkish culture, language, and religion so that they may be of service in making Fethullah Gulan’s dream of a universal caliphate a reality. The madrassahs sponsor Turkish clubs, Turkish language societies, Turkish dance groups, and annual trips to Istanbul.

According to Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, the 85 Gulen schools advance and promote Islamic beliefs; present the Ottoman Empire, which lasted from 1299 to 1923, as a golden age; and serve to rewrite history by denying the Armenian holocaust under the Turks during World War I.

Many of the teachers at these schools are Turkish émigrés with questionable credentials. Some possess H-1B non immigrant visas which should only be granted to individuals who possess “highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor.” The female faculty members appear in their classrooms wearing hijabs and traditional Islamic attire.

Critics can’t understand why the schools are staffed with imported elementary and secondary school teachers when thousands of trained and certified American educators are begging for teaching positions.

But are the schools really subversive?

Rachel Sharon-Krespin writes:

“His (Gulen’s) followers target youth in the eighth through twelfth grades, mentor and indoctrinate them in the ışıkevi, educate them in the Fethullah schools, and prepare them for future careers in legal, political, and educational professions in order to create the ruling classes of the future Islamist, Turkish state.”

Even more telling is a comment from Nurettin Veren, Gulen’s right hand man for 35 years, who said:

“These schools are like shop windows. Recruitment and Islamization are carried out through nigh classes.”

The use of the Islamic practice of taqiyya or deception to mask the true nature of the schools has been upheld by Gulen himself. In a 1999 sermon, the Turkish pasha offered the following advice to his followers:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.

Fethullah Gulen has been called the “most dangerous Islamist” in the world.

He has amassed a fortune—thanks, in part, to the CIA—of $25 billion.

This money has been used to transform the secular government of Turkey into an Islamic Republic under the Justice and Democratic Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma, AKP)—a party under the Gulen’s control.

Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s first Islamist President, is a Gulen disciple along with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Yusuf Ziya Ozcan, the head of Turkey’s Council of Higher Education.

Under the AKP, Turkey has transformed from a secular state into an Islamic country with 85,000 active mosques—one for every 350 citizens—the highest number per capita in the world, 90,000 imams, more imams than teachers and physicians—and thousands of state-run Islamic schools.

Despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Turkey has transferred its alliance from Europe and the United States to Russia and Iran. It has moved toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria and created a pervasive anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-America animus throughout the populace.

Gulen has also established thousands of schools throughout central Asia and Europe.

Because of their subversive nature, these schools have been outlawed in Russia and Uzbekistan.

Even the Netherlands, a nation that embraces pluralism and tolerance, has opted to cut funding to the Gulen schools because of their imminent threat to the social order.

Stop The Gulen Movement and The Theft Of Our Public Schools And Privatization-National Action Against Gulen Movement And Their Publicly Funded School System In US

Charters, Privatization Of Education & The Gulen Schools In The US: Sharon Higgins Speaks Out

The largest charter school chain within the public school system in the United States is run by a secretive Islamic Imam called Fethullah Gulen. His charter school chain is getting tens of millions of dollars from the public for their schools and there are a growing number of examples of systemic corruption and siphoning off public funds into their financial empire.

Sharon Higgins is a researcher and blogger from Oakland, California who became concerned about the growing use of charters to privatize education and began to expose them in her blog. She discusses her investigation of the Gulen schools, how they operate and the  threat they are to public education in the United States.

Turkey, Labor, The Islam Gulen Movement & The US: An interview with Ertuğrul Kürkçü

Ertuğrul Kürkçü who is a member of the parliament of Turkey representing Mersen and the Peace and Democracy Party discusses the political situation in Turkey including the the role of the AKP, the working class, the Kurdish people and the political role of the Gülen Islamic movement including their support for education changes that are destroying secular education in Turkey and the United States. Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Islamic cult leader who is based in the United States and lives in the Philadelphia area. Kürkçü also connects the jailing of Turkish journalists who expose his connections with the police in Turkey. Over 94 are in prison in Turkey for writing about the political and economic conditions. Ahmet Şık was one of the journalists jailed for writing about the Gülen movement connection to the police in Turkey.

Kürkçü also talks about the role of the United States and the Turkish government in the MIddle East. This interview took place on May 8, 2012 in Ankara, Turkey.

The AFT, Education, Common Core, Privatization, GreenDot/Concept Gulen Charters

During the June 2013 conference of Netroots in San Jose, the AFT set up a booth on privatization, high stakes testing and reform in the schools. The AFT is supporting the Common Core but says that it is not being rolled out properly. The issue of re-segregationa of the schools is also discussed along with the the privatization of education through testing by Pearson Inc., K-12 corporation and other companies. The union is seeking to make a "cleavage" of the school reform movement. The issue of organizing in the charter schools is also discussed and what challenges the union faces including union busting by the largest national charter chain run by Concept Schools which is connected with the Fethullah Gulen movement in Turkey. Gulen is connected to the police including repression of journalists and runs some of the largest newspaper in Turkey along with supporting privatization and theocratic policies in Turkey's schools.

The AFT also differentiated the for profit GreenDot chain of schools with the Gulen schools arguing that they were very different particularly because they allowed unionization of the schools and allowed the teachers to have discussion with the management about curriculum. An AFT representative agreed to provide an audio interview on issues in education.

Who Is Behind The Privatization Of Education: Education, Privatization, Bill Gates, Broad, KIPP, Pearson And The Gulen Schools

A massive national and international organized plan to privatize education has been implemented over several decades. Billionaires, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and the Pearson corporation among others, have infiltrated hundreds of governmental bodies including school boards, city councils and our local, state and regional governments. They seek to turn our education system into a profit center worth tens of billions of dollars. This also includes the Gulen Islamic cult led by Imam Fethullah Gulen, which runs the largest chain of charters in the United States funded by public money. We will also look at the criminal conflicts that have allowed politicians to personally benefit from using their public positions to profit from their votes and actions. This forum will look at how this has come about, who did it, how it is affecting us and who is profiting from it at the cost of public education and finally how to stop this attack on our public education system.

Mónica García champions the Gülenist Charter Movement in LAUSD

August 7, 2012

Indybay.org -  "This increasingly well-rooted network provides the Gulen Movement with daily access to the minds of over 45,000 students, and yearly access to hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars." — Sharon Higgins

Charter schools are privately managed entities with negligible oversight, but funded with public money. The somewhat secretive Gülenist Islamic sect, named after charismatic Turkish Imam Fethullah Gülen, runs more charter schools than any other charter school chain in the United States. While there's nothing wrong with privately financed religious schools, it's problematic at best that public funds are being used to fund religious charter chains.

The cultish Gülenist Movement currently operates eight such privately managed charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Several more are slated to open after having won approval under the woefully misnamed "Public School Choice" (PSC) resolution, brewed by former LAUSD District 5 Trustee, Yolie Flores, who was also an employee of the Gates Foundation while concurrently "serving" the school district. Flores' PSC gives brand new school facilities built with public money away to charter school corporations like the Gülenist Magnolia Science Academy.

The individual most responsible for the proliferation of Gülen Charter Schools in LAUSD is the Board President herself, Mónica García. García's ties to the Gülenists are long-standing, and she is a tenacious advocate on their behalf. She is speaking at the Gülenist Pacifica Institute in September 2012 regarding her prominent role in corporate education reform and the unprecedented privatization of LAUSD under her neoliberal reign. The Pacifica Institute ran into controversy last year, when Armenian groups protested the organization's ties to Turkish groups denying the 1915-1918 Armenian genocide. That García chooses to be so insensitive to the considerable Armenian population in her school district is most likely attributable to the fact that there are no Armenian organizations managing large chains of lucrative charter schools in LAUSD.

Advocating for the Gülenist movement and speaking at their events have paid handsome dividends for García. In addition to helping proliferate more privately managed charters schools, the Gülenists have been very generous donors to García's political coffers. García,who raised more than $100,000 in just two months for her 2013 reelection bid, counts several Gülenist operatives among her contributors. Suleyman Bahceci, CEO of Magnolia Charter Corporation, donated $250, as did Varol Gurler, Magnolia's CAO. The Pacifica Institute's Director, Ferdi Mesut Ates, chipped in $100. Pacifica's Ilker Yildiz contributed likewise. Undoubtedly, García will continue to rake in cash from the Gülenist machine, as she has from most of the lucrative corporate charter chains. In an ethical education environment, donations from corporate charters to district board members that have the power to grant them their charters and give them choice facilities would be considered a conflict of interest.

Corporate charter school magnate Yvone Chan also recently donated to García's efforts to capture a third term as a LAUSD Trustee. Milken Educator Award winner Chan, despite a vested interest in the charter school industry, is on the California State Board of Education (SBOE). Like García, Chan has a long and rewarding history with the Gülen Charter Movement. In fact, she made sure that she and her other SBOE members granted Magnolia its Statewide Benefit Charter because:

Yvonne Chan had been on a free, Gulenist-guided trip to Turkey courtesy of the Pacifica Institute in one of the years just prior.

Incidentally, California isn't the only state where the Gülen "leaders lavish gifts and dinners on" politicians.

The Gülen Movement and their ubiquitous Gülen charter schools loom so large on the American education landscape that CBS' 60 Minuntes devoted a full length segment entitled: U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam to this phenomenon of school privatization.

What's important here isn't which kind of religious group runs these schools, but that public funds are being used to support schools having overarching political and religious agendas like the Gülenist do. This is no different than the right-wing Milton Friedman inspired capitalism indoctrination American Indian Public Charter Schools and Green Dot Public Schools push on their hapless pupils. The former actually requires their charter school students to make daily pledges to our abject political economy. Nor is it any different than the charter school chain that teaches its students that Emmett Till's brutal murder was a just desert for what they termed his "sexual harassment." The selfsame Celerity Charter Chain pushes a "post-racial curriculum" that ignores institutional racism in favor of students self-colonizing by "dress[ing] for success..." rather than "focus[ing] on how the history of the country has been checkered." Because there's little to no oversight or regulation for the privately managed charter school sector, these and many more such incidents will continue unabated.

There's another major problem with García's expansion of Gülen charter schools in LAUSD. Part of the Gülenist modus operandi is to staff their schools with teachers lacking credentials (part and parcel the standard in the charter school industry), many of whom have never taught before at all. Gülen schools bring in Turkish businessmen and professionals on 1HB visas to teach, yet there is currently a glut of highly qualified, credentialed, unemployed teachers in LAUSD. Gülen supporters claim a lack of educators versed in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), but the reality is that there's neither a shortage of STEM workers nor teachers in the United States. Instead, Gülen movement watchdogs have demonstrated a pattern of abuse in regards to H1B visas.

Ultimately, the failings of Gülen Charter Schools are the same as with all charter schools. They are privately managed. They have unelected boards. They have a glaring lack of transparency both in terms of finances and operations. They contribute to the deprofessionalization of teaching. They undermine public schools and the bare semblance of democracy which those pubic commons represent. They are, to all intents and purposes, private organizations with access to a publicly financed revenue stream. Johathan Kozol's prescience prediction that our public school system was on the corporate auction block is being borne out by the expansion of Charter Management Organizations. Gülen Charter Schools are a symptom of a much deeper systemic problem known as neoliberalism.

School board trustees are elected to represent their community's interests in regards to public schools. That Mónica García is so beholden to the competing interests of the lucrative charter school sector raises serious concerns of opportunism, greed, and favoritism. Her championing of the Gülenist charter movement is further proof that she has little to no consideration of her constituents and our community's schoolchildren.

Special thanks to Sharon Higgins of The Perimeter Primate, Charter School Scandals, and The Broad Report for her copious existing research on this topic and encouraging me to write this specific piece. See this video for an idea of the breadth of her knowledge: Charters, Privatization Of Education & The Gulen Schools In The US: Sharon Higgins Speaks Out

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