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Is Madonna Conning Gucci For Kabbalah? |
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Written by Alex Cho
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Thursday, 10 January 2008 |
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 An interesting report from that bastion of journalistic accuracy, FOX News: a crazy-big Madonna-sponsored Feb 6 fundraiser for her charity Raising Malawi, underwritten by Gucci and hosted by Sarah Jessica Parker and Salma Hayek, may actually be directing money back to the LA-based Kabbalah Center. According to Roger Friedman's report, Raising Malawi isn't even a registered charity; all of its forms lead back to the Kabbalah Center, run by the Berg family—which certainly isn't hurting for money. Here's more from the story:
According to [Michael] Berg’s blog
from April 24, 2006, his first move was to bring Malawi teachers to Los
Angeles to retrofit them for Kabbalah. He wrote:
"We
have brought a number of teachers from the African nation of Malawi to
Los Angeles. This is part of our Raising Malawi initiative. They will
be learning the Spirituality for Kids curriculum for the next 3 months.
After that, they will go back to Malawi and teach the children there
these empowering spiritual life lessons. I am very excited about this
project. This morning we welcomed them to the Centre."
Here's more:
In my conversations with
people from both UNICEF and Gucci this week and last, it’s also clear
that they did not know about the background of Raising Malawi. As I
wrote in this space on October 18, 2006:
Raising Malawi is run entirely by Spirituality for Kids, or Kabbalah, according to the site.
The rest of the team besides Michael Berg is his wife Monica, SFK’s director of public relations; SFK’s Director of Development Philippe van den Bossche; SFK’s Director of Research and Global Training Dr. Heath Grant; and “philanthropist” Hedi Gores, wife of Beverly Hills “barely a billionaire” leveraged-buyout king Alec Gores, who runs Gores Technology Group.
Offical statements from Gucci and UNICEF (another beneficiary) deny that money will go to any sectarian organizations. If I was Sarah or Salma, I'd want to get to the bottom of this, quick.
[via WOW]
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