WASHINGTON (AP) — Islamic State militants are amassing wealth at an unprecedented pace, earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales alone, a U.S. Treasury Department official said Thursday.

David Cohen, who leads the department's effort to undermine the Islamic State's finances, said the extremists also get several million dollars a month from wealthy donors, extortion rackets and other criminal activities, such as robbing banks. In addition, he said the group has taken in at least $20 million in ransom payments this year from kidnappings.

"With the important exception of some state-sponsored terrorist organizations, IS is probably the best-funded terrorist organization we have confronted," Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace."

The group, which extracts oil from territory it has captured across Syria and Iraq, wants to create a caliphate, or Islamic empire, in the Middle East. Led by Iraqi militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State initially tried to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, but other groups, including al-Qaida central command, turned against IS because of its brutality.

Unlike the core al-Qaida terrorist network, IS gets only a small share of funding from deep-pocket donors and therefore does not depend primarily on moving money across international borders. Instead, the Islamic State group obtains the vast majority of its revenues through local criminal and terrorist activities, Cohen said, acknowledging that Treasury's tool are not particularly well-suited to combating extortion and local crime.

"They rob banks. They lay waste to thousands of years of civilization in Iraq and Syria by looting and selling antiquities," he said. "They steal livestock and crops from farmers. And despicably, they sell abducted girls and women as sex slaves."

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In this Dec. 1, 2011 file photo, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Da …

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, Islamic State terrorists are reportedly going door-to-door, business-to-business, demanding cash at gunpoint, he said.

"A grocery store owner who refused to pay was warned with a bomb outside his shop. Others, who have not paid, have seen their relatives kidnapped. ... We've also seen reports that when customers make cash withdrawals from local banks where ISIL operates, ISIL has demanded as much as 10 percent of the value." Cohen said, using an acronym for the group.

Most of the group's money, however, comes from extracting oil and selling it to smugglers, who, in turn, transport the oil outside territory under Islamic State control.

"It is difficult to get precise revenue estimates ... but we estimate that beginning in mid-June, ISIL has earned approximately $1 million a day from oil sales," Cohen said. Other estimates have ranged as high as $3 million a day.

Treasury said IS is selling oil at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middlemen, including some from Turkey, who then transport the oil to be resold. "It also appears that some of the oil emanating from territory where ISIL operates has been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold into Turkey," he said.

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Oil sales from captured refineries are allowing IS militants to produce some 50,000 barrels a day fr …

Cohen said the Syrian government also has allegedly arranged to buy oil from IS.

He noted that U.S-led airstrikes on the group's oil refineries are threatening the militants' supply networks and that Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government — the official ruling body of the predominantly Kurdish region of northern Iraq —are working to prevent IS oil from crossing their borders.

Cohen acknowledged, however, that IS moves oil in illicit networks outside the formal economy, making it harder to track.

"But at some point, that oil is acquired by someone who operates in the legitimate economy and who makes use of the financial system. He has a bank account. His business may be financed, his trucks may be insured, his facilities may be licensed," he said.

"We not only can cut them off from the U.S. financial system and freeze their assets, but we can also make it very difficult for them to find a bank anywhere that will touch their money or process their transactions."

Treasury also is going after individuals who donate money to IS and is urging officials in Qatar and Kuwait to do more to target terror financiers in their countries. A key, he said, is to restrict the militant group's access to the international financial system.

The growing wealth of Islamic State

Earning up to $1M per day, the militant group is close to the richest terror organization the U.S. has ever seen.
Black-market oil sales

On his Christian Broadcasting Network show on Wednesday, Robertson blasted Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is gay, for issuing subpoenas to five prominent pastors who had opposed a new anti-discrimination law.

“These people are terrorists, they're radicals, and they're extremists,” Robertson told "700 Club" viewers. “No Christian in his right mind would ever try to enforce somebody against their belief or else suffer jail. Now they did that during the Inquisition. It was horrible. It was a black mark on our history, but it isn't being done now. There's no Christian group I know of anywhere in the world that would force somebody to do something contrary to their deep-held religious beliefs or else face criminal penalties, but that's what the homosexuals are trying to do here in America and I think it's time pastors stand up and fight this monstrous thing."

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union slammed the subpoenas, saying they violated the pastors' civil rights.

"The government should never engage in fishing expeditions into the inner workings of a church," the ACLU said in a statement. "And any request for information must be carefully tailored to seek only what is relevant to the dispute.”

In response, Parker said the city would clarify the subpoenas, admitting they were “too broad.”

"If the gays want to go out and do their gay sex, that’s one thing," Robertson continued. "But if they want to force you to accept it and solemnify it by marriage, then that’s a different matter and it’s an infringement on people’s religious belief. What’s being done in Houston is a gay — the woman they elected is a homosexual, she’s a lesbian, and she’s trying to force pastors to conform to her beliefs. It’s wrong."

Earlier this month, Robertson was asked by a "700 Club" viewer if he should be concerned about traveling to Kenya in light of the Ebola outbreak. The 84-year-old televangelist replied that there was no need to worry about Ebola in Kenya. But he added: "You have to be careful about AIDS. The towels could have AIDS."

On Tuesday, Cooper dedicated his "Ridiculist" segment to respond to Robertson.

"If, Pat Robertson, you somehow missed all the research and the depth and information, you cannot get HIV if you share towels," the CNN host said.

Cooper mocked Robertson's advice, telling American travelers to remain in the United States. "Except steer clear of San Francisco [because] that is, of course, where all the gay people live, and Pat Robertson thinks they have a way of giving you 'the stuff.'"

(Watch video)

Televangelist calls gay rights activists 'terrorists'

Pat Robertson says no Christian would ever try to force others to do something against their beliefs.

Blasts gay mayor

While supplying school students with fresh fruit sounds like common sense, it wasn’t the practice in New Orleans schools (nor in many other schools across America). One of the primary ways that George and the Rethinkers thought they could reform schools was to convince them to provide healthier lunch options. So they did their own study. In 2010, the Rethinkers — aged 10 to 17 — visited various schools across the city, surveying students about their feelings about their school lunches. To little surprise, they found that most kids found their lunch disgusting.

Next step: The Rethinkers stepped to Aramark, the company contracted to provide food for the schools’ lunch programs. George was part of a round of negotiations that led to Aramark agreeing to purchase locally grown fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish for school lunches. No more of the canned, processed stuff. Aramark signed and sealed this contract in 2011, during a press conference organized and coordinated by the Rethinkers themselves. It was hosted at the Hollygrove Farmers Market, and for their guests — a packed room — they served strawberries.

This was all captured in the HBO documentary, The Great Cafeteria Takeover, which is part of its “The Weight of the Nation” series on obesity.

The kids’ logic, as expressed by Rethinker Ashley Triggs in the film: “When people don’t eat, they act out. When they act out, they get in trouble. When they get in trouble, they get suspended, so they need to eat.”

Companies like Aramark had gotten away with providing cheap, processed foods to schools for so long because no one had challenged them on it. Its bottom line did not figure in kids acting out and getting suspended. This macroeconomics lesson was explained by George’s older brother Vernard Carter, another Rethink co-founder, in the doc:

People are putting money before people’s lives and thinking that as long as they have money they’re OK. That makes me wonder what is going on with the world? Why are people leaning towards more of these beliefs? Why aren’t they leaning more towards humane ideals that keeps the human population flourishing and keeps us going?

These were thoughts and values that circulated within the Carter family. They did not arrive at this academically. George’s older brother Victor and sister Victoria were recently the first in their family to go to college. And yet academics have drawn the same conclusions. A study last year from Joan Luby, a researcher from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, found that:

The effects of poverty on hippocampal development are mediated through caregiving and stressful life events further underscores the importance of high-quality early childhood caregiving, a task that can be achieved through parenting education and support, as well as through preschool programs that provide high-quality supplementary caregiving and safe haven to vulnerable young children.

George didn’t need an empirical study to understand this, though. He was connecting these dots in elementary school. His thoughts on these matters continued to evolve.

In 2012, George sat on a panel for a conference called “Root Of It All: The State of Mental Health of New Orleans’ Youth,” which was sponsored in part by the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. MSNBC TV news host Melissa Harris-Perry was one of the keynote speakers. When George spoke, he emphasized the stressful environment of schools in his city. Compounding that were the new mandatory standardized tests, which George and his peers found inflexible if not counterproductive to their educational pursuits.

Said George, “If I get stressed I won’t be able to do my work, if I don’t do my work, I’ll probably flunk a class or drop out of school. If I drop out of school I’ll be on the streets. If I’m on the streets I’m gonna be homeless, dead, or in prison.”

He told the conference that New Orleans schools needs support teams in the classrooms that can help with tutoring and serving the students “healthy snacks” throughout the day, because — you know, “when people don’t eat, they act out. …”

“Students and teachers should work together to make the environment healthier,” said George, his voice deeper and more confident than when I first met him at the awards banquet.

As George aged, his interests expanded from biology and gardens to architecture, law, and justice. He started an internship this year through his school with theCapital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, which provides legal defense for people who’ve been sentenced to death. His first day was Monday. He was killed before he could make it to his second day. As of this writing, the police have no suspects or motives. According to nola.com he was found on a “narrow street bordered by a fenced-in field on one side and overgrown trees, weeds, and vegetation on the other.”

“I’m afraid to walk down this street,” a woman told the reporter. “The streetlights don’t work, the city don’t cut this. … They could just snatch you and pull you into the bushes.”

The city could honor George’s legacy by converting those bushes into a garden, perhaps with strawberries.

George Carter’s family is accepting contributions to cover funeral expenses. Rethink is processing these donations and 100 percent of funds received will go to the family. Go here to donate.

(*My wife, Thena Robinson Mock, is the former executive director of Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools. One of our first dates was at the awards banquet where I met George.)

(Grist)