The “Purple Revolution:” U.S. Hybrid Warfare Coming Home To Roost?

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The “Purple Revolution:”
U.S. Hybrid Warfare Coming Home To Roost?

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.  Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Even as President Donald Trump ramps up the U.S. regime change machinery to “take care of” Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Nicaragua, and Julian Assange’s Ecuador, it very well could be that the U.S. regime change machinery has already been turned inward against him! The apparent Democrat versus Republican “Public State” display masks a much more sinister (and potentially violent) Deep State clash. The only question not asked is how far will each of the contending factions go to win? I believe the Samson Option has been activated and that could very well mean that the contending factions are in a fight with each other to the death. Meanwhile the U.S. war machine continues to crush countries, creating “Sh*thole” countries in its death march. Other countries must understand what is happening inside the U.S. in order to better guard against any more hostile or belligerent U.S. actions toward them and to take advantage of any coming imbroglio that could serve as a distraction to their own targeting. People inside the U.S. must formulate a strategy to make themselves players in this deadly match, so that they might become the arbiters of the U.S. fate. And of their own.

Donald Trump is seen as a disruptor to the plans of the currently ascendant global elite and their U.S. empire building. Even Gareth Porter asks if Trump is a threat to the U.S. global empire. If not, he certainly is a threat to the empire builders. As President, Trump has threatened to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan, South Korea, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), North Africa. He has threatened to pull the U.S. from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and more! Porter writes:

“Trump’s attacks on the system of the global U.S. military presence and commitments have gotten far less notice. He has complained bitterly, both in public and in private meetings with aides, about the suite of permanent wars that the Pentagon has been fighting for many years across the Greater Middle East and Africa, as well as about deployments and commitments to South Korea and NATO. This has resulted in an unprecedented struggle between a sitting president and the national security state over a global U.S. military empire that has been sacrosanct in American politics since early in the Cold War. “

According to Porter, when the military state asked Trump for more troops in North Africa, Trump outlandishly reportedly asked for “justification.”

According to Philip Giraldi, candidate Trump put off the usual Washington, D.C. “swamp” of lobbyists during the 2016 Presidential campaign. He wrote:

“But there is one significant difference between Trump and the “establishment,” be they Democrats or Republicans that has not been highlighted. I would suggest that quite a lot of the depth and intensity of what we are experiencing is actually about Israel. Trump is the first high level politician aspirant within living memory to challenge the notion that the United States must stand by Israel no matter what Israel does. Even while affirming his affection for Israel, he has said that Washington must be even handed in its efforts to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, implying that Tel Aviv might have to make concessions.

Trump has also added insult to injury by delinking himself from the blandishments of Jewish political mega-donors, who largely call the tune for many in the GOP and among the Democrats, by telling them he doesn’t need their money and can’t be bought. His comments have challenged conventional interest group politicking in America and have predictably produced a firestorm reaction in the usual circles.”

Already, President Trump has done more by threatening to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria than all of the Congressional votes on U.S. wars made by the so-called independent “progressive” standard-bearer and Hillary Clinton-supporting Senator Bernie Sanders. Trump, according to Porter quoting Bob Woodward on the Trump Presidency, told his national security team, “We should just declare victory, end the wars and bring our troops home.”

Thus, in my opinion, President Trump is certainly a threat and disruptor to the current world order, that has a decision-making process that he describes as a “swamp” and that produces a system that Trump claims is “rigged.” I believe that only those who personally benefit from the current system (combined with those who don’t know how the current system operates) could possibly disagree with this assessment. I also believe that the efforts to dislodge Trump, seen and unseen, have some of the characteristics of hybrid warfare. Thus, quite possibly, the United States is in a position of having a hybrid war game played against its current leader by its own military/police state. The last President to amass this combination and array of enemies with this level of celebrated vitriol was President John F. Kennedy, whose brains were blown out in broad, open daylight for all the world to see, 55 years ago on November 22, 1963.

Moreover, I believe that a marriage of convenience and mutual interest between the Democratic Party has been “arranged” in desperate “Deep State” circles, the manifestations of which could portend poorly for the people of the U.S. and the change that the people voted for when they elected Trump to the Presidency. That such a marriage has taken place was evidenced uniquely in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings that took on a surreal air as the Supreme Court nominee was targeted by attempted rape allegations when he was a teenager and by sexual assault allegations as a young college student. Other alleged victims gained attention from the press and from press accomplices in the Democratic Party. What the Democrats in Congress failed to do was question Kavanaugh on the substantive policies that he approved, was aware of, or remained silent on that supported the erosion of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights: the approval of torture under the George W. Bush Presidency, the Department of Justice coverup of information regarding the death of Hillary Clinton confidant, Vince Foster. I believe that the Senate Democrats refused to tackle these real issues because, in the end, they are complicit in these policy decisions. Or know that higher powers than them want them and so chose to fight Kavanaugh on the fuzzy memories of a drunken teenager and a few now-mature women-but-then young women.

If my hunch is correct, then this marriage of convenience will show its evidence in new and disturbing ways. The entry of George Soros into domestic U.S. politics—in a huge way—is one line of evidence that points to a new trend that could spell trouble as well as present new opportunities for the people of the U.S. Add to that the disturbing rise of the CIA/intelligence marriage into the Democratic Party by way of its Congressional candidates. Moreover, when speaking of her election loss, Hillary Clinton declared the “Purple Revolution.”

Given what we now know of its contours in the 2018 midterm elections, during which many Democratic Party candidates sported purple clothing, inquiring minds want to know what might this “Purple Revolution” really mean and if it is a cause for worry.

But, before we explore the significance and the presence of George Soros in domestic U.S. politics in 2018, let’s take a look at who George Soros is to others around the world.

George Soros’s Involvement in Politics Elsewhere

From Senegal to Cote d’Ivoire, throughout Africa and beyond, the name of George Soros is synonymous with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), regime change, and so-called “color” revolutions. George Soros is a Hungarian national who has been banned from Hungary and who has filed a lawsuit in order to regain the right to enter his country of birth. But actually, Russia was the first country to outlaw Soros-financed NGOs. This came after leaked documents indicated that Soros was behind an effort to effect regime change in Russia against Putin. A search for those documents revealed that they seem to have been wiped from the internet. Despite that, stories about the leaked documents have not. Take, for example, Sputnik’s “Leaked Memos Show that George Soros Plotted to Oust Putin, Destabilize Russia.” The article ends:

“The memo was followed up with what was called “the Russia Project” which called for identifying and organizing opponents to Putin, advancing principles of globalism, and undermine Russia’s image in the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympics.”

Thus, for much of the world, George Soros IS Mr. Regime Change, Mr. Color Revolution—working hand in hand with certain U.S. Deep State players. Honing all that global experience for what was dubbed by the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign as the “Purple Revolution,”—the coming together of Republican majority (red) states and Democratic Party blue states under the leadership of the Clintons. When Hillary lost, some began to wonder if the color revolution technique, used to devastating effect in other parts of the world (like Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine), was finally about to come home to roost.

George Soros Interviewed

George Soros, born Gyorgy Schwartz in Hungary in 1930, is currently a U.S. citizen. CBS News’s Scott Pelley, on the U.S. network’s popular Sunday evening show, “60 Minutes,” described Soros as a man who “amassed billions through ruthless business decisions only to turn around and give away most of his fortune to advance his own personal philosophy.” Pelley continues, “He can move world financial markets simply by voicing an opinion or destabilize a government by buying and selling its currency. . . . But now George Soros is worried. He thinks the global economy is coming apart at the seams and that the world needs to be protected from people like George Soros.”

Soros made his billions as the co-founder of The Quantum Fund, a hedge fund that has returned an average of thirty percent to investors each year since its founding in the 1970s. With a background as a Hungarian Jew, Soros admits to helping the Nazis confiscate property from other Jews. He states in the interview that his rationale is that had he not done it, someone else would have served in that role. On this point, he is probably correct. Sadly.

Scott Pelley continues in describing Soros: “He can move world financial markets simply by voicing an opinion or destabilize a government by buying and selling its currency. . . . But now George Soros is worried. He thinks the global economy is coming apart at the seams and that the world needs to be protected from people like George Soros.” According to 60 Minutes, Soros has been blamed for the financial collapse of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia, all within the span of just two years! Soros admits that his intervention in Thailand did make the situation “catastrophic.” He also admits that he made “in excess of a billion dollars of profit” speculating on British currency that he did not own. Malaysia’s Prime Minister in the 1990s and again in 2018, Tun Dr. Mohamad Mahathir, said that Soros was punishing ASEAN countries for admitting Myanmar (Burma) into that regional organization—at a time when the U.S. was punishing Burma’s military rulers—pre-Aung San Suu Kyi.

Despite having been born in Hungary, currently, Soros is persona non grata there. The Soros-founded Central European University (CEU) was recently shut down by Hungarian authorities. The anti-Soros sentiment stems from Soros’s pro-migration stance and the feeling held by some Hungarians that Soros and his Open Society Foundations is bringing open borders and millions of African and Asian migrants into Europe. However, the attack on Soros-funded non-governmental organizations is seen as a larger attack on civil society by some in Hungary. Nonetheless, CEU is currently trying to negotiate with the government of Hungary, but is prepared to shut its doors in Hungary and move to Vienna for the 2019-2020 academic year. In June 2018, Hungary’s parliament passed the “Stop Soros” law which makes it illegal to help undocumented immigrants. Soros’s Open Society Foundations no longer operates in Hungary, having left in August 2018, transferring its Hungary-based operations to Germany.

Countries React To George Soros’s Interventions

In 2015, Russia banned Soros-funded NGOs from disbursing grants to Russian NGOs as a threat to Russian state security. Soros-funded Open Society Foundations and Open Society Institute were named in the Russia ban. The Russian Parliament also named the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy on its list of “foreign agents.” At a press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Soros’s name after addressing U.S. media allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections to the detriment of Hillary Clinton. Putin’s sly, tongue-in-cheek response was that surely no one would accuse George Soros, the private individual, of acting on behalf of the U.S. state. (But, of course, leaks of important internal Soros documents demonstrate just that!). On Austrian TV, Putin said, “Mr. Soros interferes in affairs all over the world.” He went on to say that when discussing Soros’s actions against certain countries, the U.S. responds that Soros has nothing to do with U.S. policy; so his response to allegations of Russians interfering in the U.S. election is that the actions of Russian nationals, or even dual citizens, has nothing to do with the Russian state.

More recently, the new government in Italy has also taken a swipe at Soros. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini rejected Soros accusations that his political party, The League, was financed by Russia. What is the reason that so many Europeans dislike George Soros? Part of the explanation could be found in his position on migration and the role of Soros-funded organizations in what Europeans call the “Migration Crisis.”

Soros describes himself as “one person who at one time engages in amoral activities and the rest of the time, tries to be moral.” He also states that he is in business to make money and that he does not care about the social consequences of his work. This reminds me of Roger Ver, CEO of bitcoin.com, who recently said that the means are the ends, saying: “The means are the ends. There is no unethical way of achieving ethical goals and there is no ethical way of achieving unethical goals. So every step of the way, you need to be doing the right thing.” Clearly, George Soros would disagree.

George Soros: Weaponizing Migration?

First of all, I have to remark on the irony of Europeans (and the U.S.), who carried colonialism, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism from their shores to the rest of the world—oftentimes to the detriment of other peoples, cultures, and civilizations, without regard to how many were killed in the effort—and enforced by soldiers and bombs—being offended by migration. But, more than ironic is the trans-Atlantic migrant “trade” of people rushing away from the “Sh*thole” countries that European and U.S. policy has created. However, with that having been said, there is something distinctly different about this wave of migration that makes it appear to be an orchestrated “crisis.”

The epicenter of the European migration crisis is Italy and is financed by NGOs that receive support from Soros and his Open Society Foundations (OSF). This large-scale human trafficking is fueled largely by U.S.–European–Israeli foreign policy that destroys African and Asian countries and turns them into “Sh*thole” countries. Recently, speaking at the European Council of Foreign Relations, Soros reportedly stated, “The idea of Europe as an open society continues to inspire me. . . . Now, to remain a reality, it will need to reinvent itself.” A leaked OSF document—which has since vanished from the internet—explained that migration across borders was to become the “new normal.” Thus began the global phenomenon that basically weaponizes people who flee deprivation and worse across borders. Think the European migrants and think the Rohingya of Myanmar—to which I will come shortly.

Italy’s new Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, made the following accusation: “Soros Wants to Fill Italy and Europe with Migrants Because He Likes Slaves.” According to Pew Research, over one million African refugees have migrated to Europe since 2010! GEFIRA, an organization that publishes articles “from the European Perspective” decided to investigate the mysterious source of funding that, all of a sudden, seemed to make massive migration into Europe a possibility for hundreds of thousands of Africans and Asians able to move from their war-torn countries, especially after the destruction of Libya. Here’s what was found: “NGOs are smuggling immigrants into Europe on an industrial scale.” GEFIRA found that there are seven NGOs that are primarily involved in the massive human trafficking operation reminiscent of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade when one views photos of the ships and the utter deprivation of the migrants. Among those seven NGOs are Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and Save the Children. That at least one of the organizations has close links to whatever the current iteration of U.S. mercenary outfit, Blackwater, is today, because it has changed its name several times. GEFIRA concludes that open borders activists are facilitating these massive population shifts around the world. GEFIRA traces these migrant flows to organizations financed directly or indirectly by Open Society Foundations. On the GEFIRA chart above, you will notice that the organizations financed directly by Open Society Foundations are in green; Italian NGOs financed by OSF are in blue; and organizations that share some projects with OSF are in purple. The Soros-financed, pro-open borders migrant network includes trusted media outlets like Democracy Now!, human rights groups like Human Rights Watch, political advocacy groups like MoveOn.org.

Now, consider how the Rohingya issue could be utilized by someone(s) to pressure both Bangladesh and Myanmar. Very few in Bangladesh have forgotten the U.S. request to place a military base not too far from where the Rohingya are currently encamped. Soon, one is not surprised to find George Soros circling around the very wealthy Myanmar state. Felix Haas, a German national who currently lives in Myanmar, identifies Open Society network organizations and individuals as part of a network of manipulation for the purposes of stripping Myanmar assets. In his Report, he names George Soros as someone who characterizes Myanmar as a “Long-Term Investment that Paid Off.”

In addition to Haas, Asia watcher, Tony Cartalucci, writes that the situation in Myanmar is precarious largely due to efforts to “Balkanize and then dominate” from outsiders an already-divided population. In an article entitled, “The Fruits of Globalization: Regression, Destitution, Domination—Globalists Grind Development to a Halt in Myanmar (Burma),” Cartalucci observes that the neoliberal prescription for elsewhere in the world is the same for Myanmar: “Division, Destitution, Then Foreign Domination.” Now, if that sounds familiar, it’s because that particular neoliberal, globalist prescription is exactly what was facilitated through NAFTA and other so-called trade agreements championed by the Clintons and President Obama and reviled so much by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) supporters. With Central American migrants currently massing on the U.S. border, might the U.S. be Soros’s next color revolution playground? With advocates in both Europe and the U.S. helping undocumented migrants become non-citizen voters, imagine all of the chaos, manipulation, and “divide and rule” mischief that can be created in these countries for decades to come.

George Soros’s Involvement in US Politics

As a U.S. citizen, it is not only his right, but also his responsibility to involve himself in the political life of his country. George Soros opposed the Presidency of George W. Bush and supported John Kerry and other Democratic Party candidates. A Soros-linked organization, Americans Coming Together, was fined over $700,000 for campaign finance violations. That can’t happen now because of two 2010 Supreme Court decisions; George Soros’s considerable wealth can be put to work recreating the U.S. into his likeness.

A Vast NGO Network Affecting U.S. Policy?

Astroturf, first innovated in 1965, is a type of synthetic grass first used by the Houston Astrodome for its professional athletic games. “Astroturfing” an issue in U.S. politics, then, is “the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization, to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants” and is reflective of public opinion. The purpose of “astroturfing” an issue is to persuade policy makers (and public opinion) in order to achieve a particular policy outcome. By definition, astroturf is artificial. And thus, policies that are based on astroturfing are usually deep in special interest support and shallow in public support. Special interests are the array of immediate private beneficiaries of selected public policies. Astroturfing has as a goal the creation of enough public support (or chaos) for (or against) a particular policy so that public opinion either supports the desired policy outcome or is indifferent to it, thus allowing policy changes to occur with little resistance. Sadly, for policy making in the U.S., especially when big money interests are involved, astroturfing has become a way of life in Washington, D.C. and in all of the 50 U.S. states. Nothing short of election and campaign finance reform (and in the wake of the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates of special interest money into the U.S. political system), maybe even only Constitutional amendment will stop it.

Thus, there exists a vast NGO network that supports the work of full- and part-time non-corporate activists whose policy inputs are critical to leveling the process. When Trump campaigned saying that the system is rigged, he quickly added that he had worked with policy makers and understood how the U.S. political game was played. His “The system is rigged” became a favorite line during the campaign because average, ordinary folks have long known that something was terribly wrong in a system that no longer served them. Although they might not have been able to articulate exactly the ways in which the system was rigged. Although, with the clamor for term limits, I think the people were pretty sure that it had something to do with the way elections were administered in the U.S.

However, in January 2010, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution prohibits the government from limiting independent communications expenditures which the Court considered to be “speech” and thus, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. This opened the floodgates for the kind of speech that drowns out smaller, unmegaphoned voices. Then, again, just a few months later, a federal court decision made the system even more rigged by allowing the creation of Super PACS. Super PACs can raise unlimited funds from any source and then spend those sums for independent political activity, including advocacy either for or against political candidates. According to OpenSecrets.org, as of October, 18 2018, there were over 2,200 Super PACs registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reporting almost $1 billion having been raised with expenditures of under $470 million. There are over 5,000 PACs registered with the FEC. For example, according to Open Secrets, the National Beer Wholesalers Association gave federal candidates just under $3 million in the current 2018 election cycle. Thus, money and big money are ubiquitous (and necessary?) in U.S. elections and political campaigns. Combine this with a closed-loop neoliberal economy and fewer and fewer “ordinary” Americans without billionaire backing will be able to become elected officials in the U.S.

In 1988, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky gave us “Manufactured Consent,” describing the role of the mass media in creating beliefs that become behavior. By the same process, it is also possible to manufacture dissent. And that’s basically what politics has become today in the U.S. where the winners and losers on any given issue duke it out through their consent and dissent manufacturing processes all financed by one or two wealthy self-interested donors. The structure of the U.S. political influence system is such that the biggest players, then, are not the ones whose policy rectitude contributes to the common good . . . no! U.S. politics is now all about the money—and the more money you have, the longer you can play on the field. Unfortunately, this is true in just about every sphere of life in the U.S.: from justice (prisons have become a profit center, skewing outcomes in favor of the wealthiest) to agriculture (how else could cloned meat be deemed healthy??) to health care which is also a profit center because there’s more money in illness than in good health! It should surprise no one then that the U.S. life expectancy rate is going in the opposite of the desired direction. Under neoliberal policies, where everything becomes a profit center for those lucky enough to be winners in a dog-eat-dog environment, there is no such thing as “the common good.” In my opinion, there is no longer anything like “One Man, One Voice.” And, as a result, as it stands today, I believe it is certainly possible for one group of like-minded, extremely wealthy persons to sit in one room at one table and completely control the outcome of every election in the U.S. The U.S. currently is hardly a democracy. And this is consistent with the understanding of former President Jimmy Carter who said exactly that when he pronounced the U.S. an oligarchy. Have we already had one regime change and the people didn’t notice it? Even worse, could the U.S. regime change machinery, honed to perfection against other countries around the world, actually be put to use inside the U.S.? Could that also happen while very few notice?

What’s Different About the 2018 Elections?

Well, politics in the U.S. has undergone a seismic shift with the election of Donald Trump. Instead of the globalist perspective, he has repeatedly chanted, “America First, America First.” Many in the U.S. Congress claimed not to know even what that meant! Those with a “globalist” perspective were also the ones who had pursued the interminable wars. Their perspective, since 2001, had become the “new common sense” of U.S. policy. Wars against mostly Muslim-majority countries became commonplace. “Radical Islamic Terrorism” became the new excuse for erosion of civil liberties as the War on Drugs had been before September 11. Consent was manufactured; very few dissented. However, Trump’s campaign articulated everything that was wrong with the so-called Globalist point of view and Trump, the billionaire, was viewed as a Populist: thus setting the stage for a globalist rejoinder to his win. I believe that what we are seeing is the crystallization of this duality and its Public State leaders are Trump, for the Populists, and Hillary Clinton and Senator Chuck Schumer for the Globalists. In the U.S., we have long had the special interests with which to contend. Nowadays, those special interests have names: like the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Robert and Rebeka Mercer, Pierre Omidyar, and George Soros. Money has become so concentrated, mired in neoliberal capitalist wealth inequality that is not supposed to be noticed or mentioned, and now it’s time for political power to become just as concentrated.

So, the battle lines have been drawn. And because Trump told an unspoken truth during his campaign, descriptively describing the rigged system as it works against the average folks and how Washington, D.C. politics is nothing but a “swamp,” he helped to set the stage for the epic battle that has come.

But really, in my opinion, it all goes back to Drs. Scott and Turchin. Viewed in their way, there is much more at stake than just Democrats versus Republicans winning an election. I believe the very character of the U.S. polity is at stake.

  • A Soros-funded PAC donation of over $1.5 million to support an African-American District Attorney candidate in San Diego;
  • More than $1 million to support the African American Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia;
  • More than $1 million to support the African American Democratic nominee for Governor of Florida;
  • Support for Ayanna Pressley, Democratic nominee for U.S. Representative in Massachusetts who defeated incumbent Mike Capuano in the Party’s primary;
  • National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) whose members participated in the #CancelKavanaugh protests;
  • ACLU, whose members participated in the #CancelKavanaugh protests;
  • Human Rights Campaign, whose members participated in the #CancelKavanaugh protests;
  • Planned Parenthood, whose members participated in the #CancelKavanaugh protests;
  • The lawyer for Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s accuser, is Vice Chair of a Soros-funded organization, Project On Government Oversight;
  • The Center for Popular Democracy, a Soros-funded organization, organized opposition to Kavanaugh’s confirmation and paid bail for those arrested for disrupting the proceedings;
  • An organization formed specifically to oppose Kavanaugh received funding from Soros–backed organizations.
  • Media Matters for America, a $13 million dollar Soros-supported influence organization that produced a 49-page manual of strategy to defeat Donald Trump either through impeachment or at the ballot box in 2020;
  • $133 million for Black Lives Matter and associated organizations with a significant chunk of that coming from Soros-related organizations;
  • George Soros is a contributor to a $50 million fund, created by 7–10 wealthy donors–to dig dirt on President Trump colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 election so that such an investigation can continue beyond that of Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the purpose of sharing said findings with the F.B.I.;
  • Perhaps the most damning of all possible examples of manufacturing dissent comes from the original eye witness who saw Kavanaugh protesters receiving stipends.

Initiated by the unexpected Trump victory, I believe now that everything is up for grabs. And in 2018, George Soros is on the playing field in a big way—in the way that he best knows. According to Open Secrets, he has donated more than $200,000 directly to Congressional candidates in the 2018 election cycle. (In the scheme of things, that’s peanuts. However, it’s the indirect donations that are important, and the NGO support.). Here is some of what we know so far of Soros’s political financial contributions:

Perhaps the strangest twist of all for the Democrats is the number of former intelligence agents who ran for Congress in 2018 as Democrats. It seems that the Democratic Party is verily trying to live up to its label by veteran journalist and former Black Panther Party member, Glen Ford, who now runs the Black Agenda Report (BAR) news magazine, as the “more effective of two evils.” Apparently, the Democratic Party has undergone a fundamental transformation and the tell-tale sign of that is its fielding former intelligence operatives as Democratic Party candidates for Congress. James Hohmann first drew attention to the phenomenon with his October 2017 article in the Washington Post—itself owned in part by the C.I.A. Patrick Martin took the bait and delved deeper into this unprecedented “whatever-it-is.” His two-part investigation begins:

An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

“If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress.”

In the end, in a follow-up investigation, Martin found that eleven Military/Intelligence candidates won their elections for Congress under the Democratic Party banner.

Bruce Dixon, BAR co-founder, writes that the Democratic Party is about to “pimp” progressive voters once again and correctly asks: “So what will we get when and if a 2018 blue wave sweeps a Democratic majority into Congress?”

Democrats are flush with cash, rolling in the dough, according to Bloomberg, who pronounces this as “uncharted territory,” when a system driven by cash has so much cash available for Democratic Party challengers to Republican and certain Democratic incumbents. The Democratic Party has become the champion for open borders, undocumented entry into the U.S., no immigration law enforcement, elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and even for allowing noncitizens to come into the U.S. and vote in U.S. elections. It just seems that the Democratic Party is ideologically bankrupt and Soros ideology—along with the hefty Soros pocketbook—is just good enough for them. Add to that, the increase in the level of political violence in the U.S. with one Republican Congressman already having been shot at a friendly inter-party baseball game practice. Democratic Party leaders have already actually called for marching and bleeding, if necessary, against Trump.

Danny Haiphong, writing for BAR, calls it the “Deep State” takeover of the Democratic Party and asserts that the C.I.A. is “taking the American political apparatus into its own hands.” None of this should be taken lightly.

Even the President and at least one Republican Member of Congress are expressing concern about what this all means. The implications of this in terms of the integrity of the U.S. polity, like separation of powers and the checks and balances system of the U.S. government, go both wide and deep

I believe the people of the U.S. should be asking themselves did they get what they bargained for in the 2018 elections? Or did they get more?

Weaponizing Social Media

While Soros might not like FaceBook and Google, the organizations he funds are ready to use social media in order to bring down the Trump Administration. Soros characterized Russia as a “mafia state” and described President Trump as “a danger to the world.” Thus, it would not be surprising that Soros-funded organizations seek to use social media to destabilize the Trump Administration. And that is exactly what is happening. A document leaked to the media written by a Soros-funded NGO has this to say about its mission:

“Trump will be defeated either through impeachment or at the ballot box in 2020;
The balance of power will shift back to Democrats. We will measurably impact US Senate, and State Legislative races;
We will free ourselves from solely relying on the press. Our robust digital program will reach voters directly online.”

This forty-nine page “private and confidential” document goes even further and describes exactly how the Trump Administration will be brought down and the Soros-funded network of NGOs that will do the job.

Racialized election violence has long been a part of the U.S. election scene. Going forward, political and election violence in the United States should come under more intense scrutiny.

Populism Versus Globalism: The Real Fight?

Just as the unipolar world with the U.S. as global leader has come under attack by a resurgent multipolar thrust led by Russia, China, Brazil, India, and to a lesser degree, South Africa, the unipolar faction strikes back locally, inside each country, taking advantage of cleavages (or creating them). Thus, the struggle inside the U.S. also mirrors a global struggle for multipolarity that boils down to identity. This struggle intensified after attempts to bring Russia into the unipolar fold as a colony for the U.S. failed. Russia’s truculence set the stage for the internal U.S. dynamics at play today. GREXIT, BREXIT, ITALEAVE, PODEMOS in Spain, all were harbingers of the struggle now in the U.S. and, like them, is a reaction to grossly exacerbated income and wealth inequality in each country. The situation in the U.S. is also similar. There are clear winners and losers in neoliberal globalism—but the winners are not the average citizens. This should be seen as a struggle between the majority of average citizens of the U.S. who have been hurt by the past neoliberal policies and the minority of citizens who are neoliberalism’s winners. In other words, the 99% versus the 1%. And, without the muscle of the U.S. to push the rest of the world, the globalists’ dream will have to be deferred. Thus, the outcome of the struggle in the U.S. has implications for the global restructuring that had been underway, in terms of concentration of power (the globalists’ preference) or decentralization of power (the non-globalists’ preference).

In a review of the book, The Internationalists, the Rothschild-owned The Economist opines that “Donald Trump’s America First doctrine explicitly repudiates [liberal internationalism]” or globalism as it is called in some circles. Alarmingly, The Economist writes that “The liberal order of the past 70 years is under threat.” And, echoing George Soros, The Economist identifies Donald Trump as that threat.
On October 23, 2018, Trump declared himself a “nationalist” which resulted in yet another round of his condemnation by the U.S. press: with allegations that Trump was sending “dog whistles” to White Nationalists. Imagine the state of U.S. politics when a President is condemned for being pro-U.S.!

It should come as no surprise that George Soros does not like nationalism and believes in his internationalist cause. In a January 2018 interview, he blamed Putin for the smears against him and said that he will redouble his efforts through his organizations. Quoting an interview with Financial Times (that is behind a pay wall), Business Insider writes that Soros reportedly said, “I think you can say I’m quite lucky with my enemies. It makes me feel more than ready to fight back and stand up for what is right.” Well, President Trump identifies them as a threat to U.S. military readiness. Trump supporters view them as a threat to their livelihoods and quality of life.

Hybrid Warfare

Much has been written about Hybrid Warfare. I won’t endeavor to reproduce that here because that is not my objective. Instead my goal was to explore whether or not hybrid warfare had been or could be deployed inside the United States, itself. Despite the U.S. being a master at this type of warfare, Dr. Hal Brands writes that the United States might not be “fully prepared” for this type of warfare. He concludes that succeeding in the “Gray Zone” of Hybrid Warfare requires more than just money and resources; he writes, “It is a matter of orienting ourselves organizationally and conceptually for the challenge.” That is exactly what this paper attempts to do.

Regime change without tanks is one form of hybrid warfare. It can involve states and non-state actors. It can also involve state military actors assuming the identity of a non-state entity. Al Qaeda, ISIS, Daesh, Boko Haram, Al Shabab are all non-state actors created or aided by certain states to further the state’s geo-strategic or ideological objectives. Dr. Christina Lin writes about U.S. use of the White Helmets to further its regime change operations in Syria. Dr. Rod Thornton writes that Russia is using “non-violent asymmetric means” against NATO. He writes:

“The Russian military can and is using non-violent asymmetric means to considerable strategic advantage against NATO. They are, wherever one looks, destabilising and manipulating to good effect. Given this continuing situation and the strategic results that are patently being produced in NATO countries, why would the Russian military need to consider the conventional use of force? What utility does it have?”

Seems a lot more like the pot calling the kettle black, to me. The important point to make here is that regime change is a form of hybrid warfare and the easiest entry point is in destabilizing discriminated-against minority groups. This means that every state that is not a nation-state, is subject to the tactics of hybrid warfare. Defending against such tactics is a topic for another day. But in brief, it would consist of:

Maintaining an adequate defense arsenal so that conventional and other outright conquest is avoided;
Maintaining a worst-case-scenario means of public communication;
Acknowledging and then resolving the grievances of disgruntled minority groups inside the country;
Understanding modernization without Westernization and the importance of holding on to cultural roots in order to minimize cultural invasion.

As has been noted before, today’s tools for hybrid warfare can be as simple as SMS text messages on ubiquitous cell phones, the internet, smartphones, Twitter accounts, other social media accounts, cyber warfare (including trojan horse viruses and worms) and most importantly, actors willing and trained to act. Intibah Kadi explains how Western governments used social media as a Hybrid Warfare tool in Syria:

“Western governments have outlaid millions for this purpose and countless allied agencies are involved across various languages and media, from actual military personnel managing multiple fake characters to other programs targeting online socio-political activism, even to the extent of online publications being created and “discovered” that appear as belonging to ISIS.”

I remember when a host of ISIS twitter accounts were traced back to the U.K. government that claimed that it had no control over who used its IP addresses! I was in Libya and remember when members of the “media” used their twitter accounts to relay bombing targets to the Pentagon/NATO.

Hybrid Warfare tactics can also be as convoluted as ensuring a steady supply of Chinese Uighyrs and facilitating them to make their way to Syria to fight for U.S.-backed regime change in that country. This, of course, provides a double-edged sword to the U.S. when the time comes to activate these seasoned fighters for the battle in China, their home country. The 9/11 terrorist attacks could also fall into the category of Hybrid Warfare.

With that having been said, there is not one better suited for waging Gray Zone Hybrid Warfare than George Soros. He is perhaps the most experienced; but the U.S. political system is so captured by the billionaire class, that anyone willing to spend his or her money for the task, could upend U.S. politics by implementing a slow and deliberate plan.

There is no one better suited for leading a Gray zone warfare effort than George Soros. But, George Soros is not the only one who can weigh in on this struggle and affect its outcome while the fight is being waged inside the U.S. In 2018, the United States has more billionaires than “China, Germany, and India combined.”

Conclusion

“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War


In this paper, I have tried to outline some of the recent phenomena that have become more visible since the unexpected victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. I have also attempted to outline a few ways in which the U.S. political system is transforming before our very eyes, but that very few people in positions of authority are discussing. I have tried to demonstrate that the entry of George Soros in a big way into the domestic politics of the U.S. since Trump’s victory is also materially different in potential than the involvement of oligarchs who want this or that specific policy adjustment for their businesses. These policy adjustments could be small (tax breaks, for example) or huge (wars). These policy adjustments could also be ideologically driven (support for Israel, for example). These policy adjustments, generally speaking, encourage power consolidation within the existing regime. I believe that George Soros’s interventions, could, however, transform the U.S. polity—as his interventions have done or attempted to do in other countries. But transform it into what? Hence the question asked by many, does George Soros intend regime change color revolution inside the U.S.?

The current set of circumstances inside the U.S. presents distinct threats as well as opportunities for other countries. I would like to turn to this topic at another time in our discussion.

As for me, I believe the hybrid war for control of the United States has already begun.

Rich White Kids . . .

Drunk, Promiscuous, with Absentee Parents?  Is This What U.S. “Leadership” is All About?            

By Cynthia McKinney, Ph.D.

As I read about the smear campaign being conducted by Democratic Party operatives using Dr. Christine Blasey Ford aimed to impugn the character and career of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and scupper his Supreme Court confirmation process, inevitably stained and poor first impressions spew from the pages tabloid-like accounts – including photographs of the accused and his accusers’ respective pasts as: drunks, sexually promiscuous, and brazen hedonists whose amoral lifestyles were buttressed by their inattentive and indulgent absentee parents.

The secondary education debauchery depicted in reports of Kavanaugh’s detractors contrast sharply with how I was raised.  In Atlanta, I attended a private Catholic high school, but knew well the wantonness of the “elite behavior” of privileged high school kids.  Wanting the best for my son, I made it a personal mission to see that he attended private, non-denominational “elite” schools in the U.S. and abroad.  But, I prepared him for what was to come in the same way that my parents prepared me.

Blasey and Kavanaugh, through no fault of their own, are the victims of a culture that enshrines laissez-faire absentee parents who mindlessly leave their children behind when they go on their own vacations, pursue their careers, take long business trips, and fraternize with friends at social events, etc.; and, also, these affluent, latch-key-parents shower their ethically and morally unmoored children with cars, cash, contraceptives, and credit cards which, in turn, are used to purchase alcohol, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, and bad companions.

As a high schooler, my parents NEVER left me home alone when they traveled out of town.  Moreover, I couldn’t even go to ANY house party—period—without my parents calling and actually speaking to the host parents, and, of course, as a parent I did the same with my son’s “house parties.”  

Most African Americans who attend White elite private enclaves of privilege, learn from their responsible parents that they can NEVER do what their White classmates do.  And so, most of us in such positions, don’t.  I know I certainly didn’t.  Moreover, I continued to admonish my son about the realities of his life, even into post university graduation and throughout law school.  All the law enforcement racial disparity statistics bear fruit when one bothers to search, thus rendering what I’ve read about from the wild lifestyles of both Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh and others is just beyond my comprehension to ever eng in for any reason; however, the documents that I have read are wholly consistent with what I have observed in the conduct and character of offspring of the so-called elite, both in my generation and that of my son.

Smear or not, one thing here is clear: privilege.  A certain no-holds-barred-debauched lifestyle is in full view; no wonder the U.S. is in decline if this is to what we entrust leadership and guidance of our society.

A multitude of corruptions on the personal level results in poor values on the societal level

There are two double-standards in evidence today in relation to the Democratic attack using Blasey as a foil against Kavanaugh:

First, it is clear that every Trump Republican male is now vulnerable to an orchestrated Profumo-styled scandal hit job wherein political enemies will embark on vitriolic crusades of biographical-dumpster-diving seeking to unearth and resurrect all and any rumor, lie, hearsay, and unsubstantiated character flaws without interest in facts or genuine witnesses.  In the age of #METOO, sexual allegations without foundation and outside the due process of law could well become the new normal – and now, a new allegation of drunken sexual behavior erupts against Kavanaugh from his college years—except that the new “witness,” herself, admits that she was too drunk to know if what she thinks happened actually did happen.  Clearly, we are witnessing a well-orchestrated, pre-meditated political drive-by shooting.  I’ve been there and I know exactly what that looks like.

Second, the Democrats, in their desperation to derail a Supreme Court nominee who has been investigated six times and who has dozens of  women testifying to his reliability, seem to be oblivious to their own vulnerability to similar attacks.  Beginning with the Clintons, both alleged to have engaged in an unsavory relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Joe Biden, now being challenged about videos showing him groping children on stage, there is no end to the number of Democratic “elites” vulnerable to similar attacks.  (What makes them elite is that they do illegal and licentious things and get away, with impunity, year after year while winning the blessing of media and political allies).

I cannot explain the rationale of parents who tolerate, if not encourage, such behavior from their children or who fail to realize that their laxity as parents instills in their children a radical, morally-relativistic judgment system of thought and behavior—sure to create personal and social problems.  Let’s be honest with ourselves:  The simple fact is that the children infected with acute “affluenza” come from elite families, and they rarely face any consequences for their immoral, illegal, or unethical  behavior.  But, you see, that’s where character comes in–because should one have to personally face the consequences of ethically- or values-deprived behavior before knowing that such behavior is wrong?  This multitude of corruptions of values and ethics on the personal level results in debasement of values and ethics on the societal level.

They’ve always been able to have their “youthful indiscretions” and rarely be hurt by them. I’m arguing that this is the kind of behavior on display that brings us full circle to where we are today with a society that is corrupt at every level, debasing of our humanity in every way, cutthroat politics that mean nothing except to those who win the prizes, and a civilization–if you want to call it that–in tatters.

One thing is for certain:  had Blasey Ford exercised her good judgment and said “No” to the invitation to go to a private home with three young boys, she would not have even been in a position to have this happen to her.  Even her ability to have a #MeToo moment now, is, in a way, a continuation of her privileged position in society.

Incredibly, there is no #MeToo moment for that multitude of women who do exercise good judgement and who then bear the bruises of assault; and if they’re Black, they don’t even get to “Stand [Their] Ground.”

 “Six Ways To Sunday . . .”

I now have some context for Chuck Schumer’s “Six Ways To Sunday” comment.  Knowing full well what has been sown, the U.S. Deep State knows how to reap its harvest bountifully.  Along with all of the other real and manufactured divides in this country, I also see a sexual divide being laid on top of the already well-planted gender divide.  The Black community has long been experiencing this too, through the usurpation of our culture by the popularization of “Gangsta Rap” and “Thug Life.”  Thanks to the long trail of individuals responsible for the debacle of D.C. unfolding today, the costs to U.S. society at large will be as high as they have been for the Black community.  Before the U.S. can fully recover, not only will we have to devise an effective way to bridge the extant social divides in this country, we’re also going to have to learn a way to bridge the man woman divide that is being created.

As I’ve said so many times before that I’m tired of saying it now, “Stop it when they’re doing it to us or they will surely do it to you.”  Thus, once again, the Deep State gets its way and the people of the U.S. are the ones who pay.

The Hillary faction of the U.S. Deep State just unleashed a “double tap” on the Trump faction. 

From all of the foregoing, at least one thing is clear:  Not only does the U.S. need a “Revolution of Values” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said; the U.S. needs better parents and better leaders.  

Drain the Swamp.

*Photo Credit:  WikiHow

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Listen to Cynthia’s Stirring Tribute To Lynne Stewart: America’s Activist, America’s Lawyer

Hear Cynthia’s Tribute to Lynne Stewart with a haunting Gilad Atzmon tune in the background from his latest album entitled, “Talinka.” Gilad calls this song, “Baroque Bottom.” Cynthia equates Lynne’s defense of the Constitution as an act of love for us all.

 

Cynthia’s Foreword in “We Will Not Be Silenced” Published by AK Press

As criticism mounts over Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights and international law, campaigns to silence and repress those who speak oout against Israeli apartheid and US complicity have grown alarmingly. Scholars have been denied jobs, refused tenure and promotion, rejected for funding, and expelled from institutions, while student organizations have faced harassment and sanctions. We Will Not Be Silenced offers thirteen powerful, firsthand testimonials from scholars and students whose struggle to defend their academic freedom and freedom of speech has garnered widespread public and international attention.

Includes chapters by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, Terri Ginsberg, William I. Robinson, The Irvine 11, Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton, Rabab Abdulhadi, David Delgado Shorter, Persis Karim, Joseph Massad, David Klein, Nadia Abu Al-Hajj, Max Geller, Lisa Rofel, and Steven Salaita.
“These testimonials provide a stunning and all too familiar portrait of the extent to which the forces that suppress free speech and academic freedom are at work in the US university system to stifle those who would call for social justice in Palestine. . . . These voices must be heard.”  Bishop Desmond Tutu
Read the entire press release from AK Press here

Cynthia’s Chapter On The Imperative For Peace Is Published In The Book “A World Beyond Global Disorder” By Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Book Announcement     A World Beyond Global Disorder: The Courage to Hope   

Cambridge Scholars Publishing is pleased to announce the publication of A World Beyond Global Disorder: The Courage to Hope, edited by Fred Dallmayr and Edward Demenchonok.

A world which, like ours, has been ravaged by some sixty wars in recent decades, can rightly be described as the scene of global disorder. Even today, the same world is traumatized by hot and cold wars, proxy wars, and repeated outbursts of blood-filled mayhem, not to mention the threat of a nuclear holocaust unleashed by big power rivalries. These are not mere statistics, but wounds in the body of humanity, calling for healing and reconciliation. In biblical terms, human beings are not meant to be the owners or the destroyers of the world, but rather its custodians or caretakers.

This collection is a summons to responsible care-taking, and it approaches the subject from an intercultural perspective in a variety of fields, including religion and politics. The topics covered range from accounts of major global calamities today to explorations of possible political, economic and societal reforms, and to the invocation of basic religious and philosophical resources needed for the recovery of a world beyond global disorder.

To read a full summary of the book and to read a 30-page sample extract, which includes the table of contents, please visit the following link:  http://www.cambridgescholars.com/a-world-beyond-global-disorder-2

To see the full press release from the publisher, visit this link:  A World Beyond Global Disorder announcement April_2017

Gus Savage Speaks in the U.S. Congress About the Powerful Israel Lobby: Laying Out the Facts

Gus Savage

From the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:  Mar 29 1990 / 5:01 pm

 

Library of Congress, 3/29/1990 – The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Savage] is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. SAVAGE. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to deal with the problem that occurred in my recent primary election, the one in which–let me just say that I was successful, despite this problem. However, I want to bring it to the attention of our Nation tonight. For while I mention it in reference to my own experience in the recent primary election, I am convinced that it constitutes a danger for all America and threatens to rip the fabric of our democracy.

I represent the Second Congressional District in Illinois. It is not an inner-city district. It consists mainly of bungalows , semi-professional, and blue collar workers, second and third generation families there. It is approximately 30 percent suburban, approximately 30 percent nonblack. It is an industrial district that has housed most of the heavy industry in Illinois–automobile assembly plants, stamping plants, three steel mills, at one time, four.

In this campaign a strange thing occurred. A column was written by a columnist in the Sun-Times, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, by the name of Vernon Jarrett, that raised questions about who really was my opponent, because of what appeared to be a strange tilt in the sources of his campaign funding.

I want to share some facts with Members here this evening, that perhaps could be shared by some others who have been targeted, apparently as I was in this primary, and unfortunately, they lost their reelection bid.

After seeing this column, I began to check the records in the Federal Election Commission report of my opponent for this year, which was available only for January and February, of course, and began to check the identities of those who had contributed to his campaign. I want to let Members know what I found.

It relates to an organization called the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee. So before I begin to give numbers, amounts, let me first familiarize Members with the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee, because it is not well-know beyond Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and your elected representatives. It is indeed a rather shadowy operation, and I want to not just try to describe the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, and I will refer to it from the initials, A-I-P-A-C, AIPAC. This is not to be confused, incidentially, with the term `PAC’–referring to political action committees, as Members know, are those organizations under the Federal Election Commission that organize to contribute money to campaigns for Federal candidates and others. However, AIPAC means the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee, not a PAC–has no right to contribute money to candidates, therefore, but rather than to try to describe it myself, I want to just read excerpts to Members from newspapers reports that I discovered when I began to pursue this matter. In the process, I began to realize that I had been targeted for defeat by AIPAC.

First, The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 1987, an article by John J. Failka, and reads just in part, refers to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as `one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying organizations.’ He points out in the article that `According to a computer-aided analysis of 1986 Federal Election Reports, despite AIPAC’s claims of noninvolvement in political spending, no fewer than 51 pro-Israel PAC’s, most of which draw money from Jewish donors’–I am reading a quote from The Wall Street Journal–`Jewish donors and operate under obscure-sounding names are operated by AIPAC officials, or people who hold seats on AIPAC’s two major policymaking bodies’. Continuing this article, `The analysis shows that three of seven regional chairpersons at AIPAC direct PACs’–meaning political action committees, those who can legally contribute money and do–`three of seven regional chairpersons of AIPAC direct PAC’s, political action committee, and 26 more political action chairmen or treasurers sit on AIPAC’s 131-member executive committee which meets four times a year and set overall lobbying strategy.

`Twenty-two more political action committee leaders hold seats on the second advisory body or AIPAC, a 200-member national council.’

[Page: H1343]

And it concludes: `While the pro-Israel PACs’–that is political action committees, not AIPAC–`represent diverse and supposedly bipartisan Jewish committees in almost every major city and region in the country, their spending patterns are remarkably similar.’

I ask you to bear with me as I read from three or four clippings briefly to lay the ground work to understand this obscure operation, because however obscure and disguised, if you will bear with me you will learn what should be of great concern to us all. Here is the next clipping–and I am going to relate these down the line–is from the Washington Times newspaper, January 13, 1989.

It says in part: `A group of prominent Americans concerned about Washington’s diplomatic tilt toward Israel filed a complaint yesterday with the Federal Elections Commission charging in a 100-page complaint that AIPAC has worked so closely’–I am just reading–`with legally established PAC’s to target political candidates on the basis of their positions toward Israel, that the PAC’s’–political action committees–`are in effect affiliates of the lobby group.’

That would be illegal. That would be in violation of the Federal election laws. It would be in violation of what AIPAC contends are the limits of its own activities. And I continue from the same clipping: `AIPAC’s formidable ability to monopolize congressional support is based not upon an appeal to American nation interests’–now, get this–`but upon threats by a special interests that has resorted to conspiracy and conclusion.’ That is a quote.

That is Richard Curtis, formerly the Chief Inspector of the U.S. Information Agency and one of the plantiffs in this case.

`The complaint supported by more than two dozen exhibits’–this is not longer the quote; this is in the newspaper clipping or the report–`demands that the FEC force AIPAC to register as a political action committee and disclose its activities. Such a ruling would hamper the effectiveness of the lobby which operates behind the scenes to recruit support for Israel, the largest recipient of United Sstates aid, with $3 billion annually, and to oppose weapons sales to Arab foes of the Jewish state.’

Now, that is from the Washington Times, by Isaiah Poole.

I have just a couple more, because I will bet that most of you are not familiar with AIPAC nor any of this that I am reading. This is from the Washington Post, November 14, 1989, an aritcle by Charles R. Babcock. It says:

Internal AIPAC documents made available to the Washington Post, however, show that the group’s top political operative was actively involved with pro-Israel political action committees–PACS–trying to help raise money for several condidates in the 1986 Senate races.

A memo from Elizabeth A. Schrayer, then AIPAC’s deputy political director, five weeks before that election urged an assistant to call several pro-Israel PACs and `try’ to get $500 to $1,000 donations for five specific Senate candidates.

In the Sept. 30, 1986, memo, Schrayer listed nine pro-Israel PACs and noted that some had not contributed to certain candidates.

Four other documents are 1985 letters from Schrayer to individuals in Massachusetts, California and Hawaii. In them, she offers to provide fund-raising ideas and arrange speakers for a new pro-Israel PAC, sends a sample solicitation letter and list of pro-Israel PACs to a fund-raiser for Evans, and volunteers to answer questions about starting a PAC.

AIPAC’s major goal is maintaining the level of foreign aid to Israel, now $3 billion a year. * * * and defecting arms sales to Arab countries.

Now, what this is beginning to show you is that the interest or the purpose of AIPAC is to promote a foreign nation, not in America’s interest, an organization operating within America composed of Americans, in the interest of a foreign nation interfering in the internal affairs and the elections of this Nation.

Let me go a little further now. Here, this is again from the Washington Post, dated October 7, 1988. Let us see what kind of interference this is. For what purpose, and who do they attack? Let us watch this. This article is written by the same Charles Babcock. It says this: Now listen closely.

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the nation’s chief pro-Israel lobby, has become a subject of attention twice in the past week because of reports of partisan involvement or personal attacks in the 1988 political campaign.

One case centers on a year-old internal AIPAC staff memo urging that Jewish reporters raise questions about Jesse L. Jackson’s sex life and finances.

That is AIPAC pursuing the interests of a foreign government, beginning to try to develop surreptitious means of hurting and damaging a Presidential candidate in this Nation. This gets closer and closer, as you would notice, to something un-American.

Now, here in a special report of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs of July 1989, it points out–and I am reading again–`70 active pro-Israel political action committees’–now, those are PAC’s that give money to influence the outcome of elections–`spent $3,870,052 in direct contributions * * * in the 1988 elections.’

I am skipping over and just reading excerpts.

`There are several factors * * * that make pro-Israel PAC’s unique. The first is their names.’

Now, you might ask, what is in a name? Why try to name something in a way as to not reveal its purpose and its function?

It continues in this article: `* * * Edward Roeder, whose Sunshine News Service publishes PAC’s Americana–that is a book–`to draw this admission from Robert Golder, president of Delaware Valley PAC.’

That is Robert Golder, president of the Delaware Valley PAC. That is an innocent sounding name, Delaware Valley PAC. That could be about nature. It could be about streams or whatever else might attract people to the small State of Delaware. It could be about the headquarters, about the many corporations that are located there.

But what does Golder, the president of the Delaware Valley PAC say? This is from the article: `This PAC is a group of American Jewish people working for a strong American position on Israel * * * I don’t know that it’s necessary for outsiders to know who we are * * * it’s a small group of Jewish fundraisers raising money from mostly Jewish contributors, and we can explain who we are to them.’

[Page: H1344]

The article, and I am no longer quoting Golder, but the article by Richard Curtis, continues that, `If 70 pro-Israel PAC’s active in 1988 coordinated their giving,’ and to do that through AIPAC would be illegal, `coordinated their giving, internal AIPAC documents instructing employees to contact named PACs and tell them to give designated amounts to named candidates which have fallen in the hands of both the Washington Post and the TV show, Sixty Minutes.’

Mr. Speaker, you may recall the show when Mike Wallace exposed AIPAC. They indicated that coordination involving at least 20 of the major pro-Israel PAC’s took place in 1988 and that such coordination makes AIPAC and those PAC’s into a single PAC, circumventing the law that limits donations to a single candidate.

Now let us, after I got through that, described a PAC to you and make you a bit more familiar with AIPAC; so now let me go back to where we started and relate it to my recent primary.

Here is a letter dated February 28, 1990, from a Robert H. Asher, 211 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL. Now I am going to tell you, and I will identify for you, this Robert H. Asher later. Let me first read this letter that was mailed by Robert H. Asher.

Let me just tell you right now so I do not hold you in suspense. Robert H. Asher was the president of AIPAC. But let us read.

`Gus Savage has one of the worst attendance records in Congress.’

Well, now of course that is untrue. The records of how often one votes in Congress is a matter of public records in print, and though many of you may know that in newspapers and television for the past 8, 9 years, whenever–many times when they just mentioned my name they say, `Gus Savage who has such a poor attendance record,’ and, if I say that is in print, then they can find out just what that record is, and they would discover that record was not poor except for the few months of bereavement when in 1981, I lost my wife of 34 years to a very excruciating ailment, that except for that, nowhere near poor. But yet he says this, and, as I said, I will explain later why it might be interesting to note that the press has been saying this for the past 8 or 9 years knowing that it was not true and knowing that you would have, perhaps, no interest enough to check to find out whether it was true or not and just accepted it.

And he says that, `Since he is consistently anti-Israel,’ Gus Savage, `anti-Semitic, pro-PRO, pro-Farrakhan, his lack of attendance is probably a good thing.’

That is a bit scandalous, but let us see what his purpose of disseminating such falsehoods is.

`If Savage is not defeated this time, he’ll be in Congress as long as he wants.’

Well, I hope he was correct in that regard at least.

Then he concludes, `Please send your check payable to the Committee to Elect Mel Reynolds in the enclosed envelope. The primary is less than a month away. Sincerely, Robert H. Asher.’

I wonder why he is so interested in AIPAC in influencing the outcome of a primary election in the Second District of Chicago? The main issue in the Second District in Chicago is not Israel. It is about jobs. These are unemployed steelworkers, unemployed automobile workers. Jobs. Working conditions. Wage rates. Federal assistance to avoid mortgage foreclosures as a consequence of unemployment resulting from the structural economic changes in our country. Not Israel. Why then would he be so concerned about the outcome of that election? Let us see just how concerned he actually is.

Now what I am going to do is where I really feel the point I wanted to reach that makes this all relevant. I have here a list of the executive board of AIPAC, an executive board of AIPAC and its national council and officers. That is how I know who Robert H. Asher is. What I intend to do here now is to take the Federal Election Commission report filed by my then opponent, Mel Reynolds, filed here, his signature, for January and February of this year, the only one, the latest one that is available.

Now I am making this statement because I want my colleagues to conclude or agree with me that we need to strengthen the Federal election laws. We need to enforce that which now exists against AIPAC, and we need to be concerned about an agency whose main concern is the interest of a foreign government, taking advantage of the rights and privileges of American citizenship to influence your Congress.

Now, Reynolds had to file this, as all candidates do, and, incidentally, let me say that when I go to point out to you how much money he raised, you will find during that period, though they say incumbency is protected by our capacity to raise so much money; in that period I only raised $15,000, but Reynolds raised $51,000, more than three times as much.

Never held office before in his life. Did not live in the district until a couple of years ago.

What about all of this money? Well, I can tell you something about money. I was, during our break in January, taking a little time off. I play golf; at least I claim I do. Some of those who play with me deny that. But at least I try, and I enjoy it, find it relaxing.

So, there is a great golf course down in the Bahamas called Paradise Island. So, I went to Nassau to play golf. And, after you finish a round of golf, you go back to the hotel resort, as some of you have done, I hope, and you go outside because it is such a wonderful climate there, and there is an outside bar; a refreshment stand may be a better way of putting it. You go out, and you refresh yourself, and they have entertainment outdoors there by the bar, and in this instance there is calypso singing which is very common in this part of the world, and a fellow was singing a song, a calypso song. I had not heard it before, but I do remember the lyrics because it was so interesting, and they are applicable here.

As my colleagues know, calypso is like the blues to African Americans. It is their complaining about personal problems, and in this song that is what he was complaining about. According to the lyric of this song, this man was complaining about his woman, not uncharacteristic of calypso songs, nor of the blues. Apparently she had come home very late one night. In fact, she stayed out all night long, and, as they say, the sunshine had caught up with her. The song indicates that she came in, fell asleep, and the man was so concerned and distraught, a very poverty-stricken family, and he started checking to see was she all right. And he noticed her purse, which was usually bare, was just chock full of something, just bulging, a bulging purse, and he opened the purse, and money just fell out. All kinds of money, and that is what the song says, all kinds of money from all kinds of places.

Well, of course in a resort like Nassau people come from all over the world, and, as the song goes, he tried to awake her to ask her, `Where did you get all of this money?’ That is the title of the song. And it goes, ‘`Where did you get’–I cannot sing, unfortunately. Some people say I do not speak too well either, but let me just talk it.

It says, `Where did you get this money, American money, German money, Japanese money, Jewish money, where did you get all of this money?’ That was the question I asked myself when I saw that my opponent had raised so much more money than did I. Where did he get it, all of that money?

Well, fortunately, the FEC report requires that anyone who gives you $200 or more, any individual, must be listed by name and address and any PAC, that is a political action committee that gives you money, must also be listed by name and address and the name of its treasurer shown.

All right. Now, I was a journalist before I was ever elected to office for some 20 years, an award-winning journalist, learned a lot about how to do research and, of course, it was not hard to research this, so I took this list. I looked at his individual contributors, and let me give you these figures. Just bear with me, if you please.

Now, of that amount that he had raised, $8,250 of it was itemized as individual contributors, meaning people who gave him $200 or more. Of that $8,250 let us see how much came from where. To do that I refer back to this list from AIPAC, now blown up, so you can see listed under executive committee and national council and officers. I wanted to see how many people who contributed this money, the large sums, also are on the executive committee of the national council or as an officer of AIPAC. It is called cross-checking, you know.

Let us just go down and see. First of all, the contributor is that same Robert Asher. Now, the most an individual can give to a candidate is $1,000. The most that a PAC can give to a candidate, however, is $5,000. Private corporations cannot give money. Unions cannot give money out of a union fund.

Now, let us just check it. Robert Asher, as I told you, is the President of AIPAC. His address is 5100 Oakmont Road, Highland Park, IL. That is not in the second district, not even in Chicago, but he is interested in the second district to the tune of $1,000.

Let me just read this list.

Mary Jane Asher, $1,000, Highland Park, IL.

Daniel Asher, $1,000, Highland Park, IL.

Howard David Sterling, Beverly Hills, CA, $250.

Louis A. Morgan, $500, Highland Park, IL.

Susan Asher, $1,000, Highland Park, IL, and on and on. I will not read it all to you; but I took these names, the Ashers, Robert Adler, $500.

Louis Morgan.

Irvin Wein, $500.

I took all those names and found that they were all on the Executive Committee of AIPAC, not living in Chicago, let alone in the Second Congressional District, but board members of AIPAC who were not supposed to try to finance campaigns, not legally. They do not have the legal authority.

When I added it all up, as you can, if you would like to check this, because everything I have mentioned is relative to you. AIPAC is listed in the FEC report of my opponent. All this is available to you.

Add it up. It shows the sum of $8,250 from individual contributors, itemized contributors, $6,750 was from these.

In other words, 82 percent. I am not saying that he got a few contributors who like AIPAC or love Israel to give him some money, nothing unusual at all about that, but not 82 percent of all of those contributions for people affiliated with AIPAC, one organization, not in the Second District, the primary purpose concerned about the interest of a foreign nation.

Now, from PAC’s, political action committees, people organized to give money to campaigns, he received from those $20,500. So I wanted to check to see what PAC’s. Well, you have again, all of this is easy if you know your research, and I hope you are following me so you can practice some of this yourself. It is surprising what you learn sometimes, just in a little time.

This is the almanac of Federal tax, published right here in Washington. This is a reference book. It lists all the PAC’s and their officers; but more than that, it groups them by purpose. If you have a good labor record, such as I do, you would want naturally to solicit funds from the labor unions, so they list all the labor unions and you can go solicit your money.

It also groups them by whether they are pro-Israel or not in this almanac of Federal PAC’s, 1990.

Let us see. It says, `The emergence of a network of pro-Israel PAC’s as an important source of campaign funds for Federal candidates has become an issue of intense controversy even among American Jews who want to promote Israel’s security, but don’t want to be perceived as being driven by a single issue.’

I did not say that. That is what the book says.

It goes on, `There is little doubt that contribution decisions are centralized either through a formal or informal arrangement,’ and then it proceeds to list these pro-Israel PAC’s.

It says, `It is well-documented that many of the pro-Israel PAC’s were created with AIPAC’s encouragement.’

AIPAC, despite its name, is not a PAC, but a lobbying organization. Under Federal election law, PAC’s are deemed to be affiliated if they are established, directed, or controlled by a common organization or if they have the same officers, vendors, or contributors. Then it lists these pro-Israel PAC’s affiliated with AIPAC.

So I took this list, you see, and compared it to his list of PAC contributors. The total he received was $20,500. Let us see how much of that $20,500 came from these pro-Israel PAC’s affiliated with AIPAC, AIPAC of which most of you have never heard, but which influences who represents you in this august body.

Now, let us go and take a look.

PAC’s, $5,000 to candidate for Congress from the Joint Action Committee PAC. The Joint Action Committee PAC, listed right here. Let me get the list here. Listed right here. Joint Action Committee PAC, Highland Park, IL, affiliated with AIPAC, a pro-Israel PAC, according to this almanac, this reference work, rather, that I did not write.

Washington PAC, $1,000 to Reynolds for Congress, Morris Amitay, treasurer, Washington, DC, in this list.

Multi-issue PAC, $1,000 Highland Park, IL, in this list.

Citizens Organization PAC, $5,000, Los Angeles, CA, in this list, I haven’t got to the Second District yet, you notice.

Look at these names. Nothing says anything about pro-Israel in these names, obscure names. Why?

Citizens Organization PAC, Los Angeles, CA, $5,000.

Hudson Valley PAC, Spring Valley, NY, not in the Second District of Illinois, Spring Valley, NY, no steelmills up there, $1,500 Reynolds for Congress.

Americans for Good Government, $1,000, Jasper, AL, in this list.

East Midwood PAC, $250; Garden State PAC, Union, NJ, $1,000, in this list; Desert Caucus PAC, Tucson, AZ, $1,500, in this list; Heartland PAC, Cleveland, OH, $2,500, in this list.

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What does it all mean? It means of the $20,500 that he received from PAC’s, $19,750 came from PAC’s with obscure names, affiliated with AIPAC, an organization whose main concern is the interests of Israel, not America, be that interest good or bad, right or wrong, but a foreign government. That amounts to 96 percent of all his receipts from PAC’s. That means practically all of that money in that purse or his purse, practically all came indirectly from AIPAC, more than $9 of every $10 of the money for one to challenge me in the Second District of Illinois, where Israel’s interests are far from being primary.

Now, let me say something about my position regarding Israel that may explain the concern, but certainly does not justify a body with no legal right to do so whose primary concern is a foreign nation rather than the interests of America, trying to determine the outcome of an American election for Congress. That, my friends, Mr. and Mrs. America, is dangerous, indeed.

Israel receives almost one-third of all the United States’ foreign assistance, $3 billion in the foreign assistance bill, and usually $400 million or $500 million more tacked on here and there, roughly $3.5 billion a year. That is not the Government’s money. That is your money, your tax dollars.

We do not have enough money to maintain full funding for student grants and student loans for those in need to

attend the colleges of their choice, for which they are qualified, not enough money to create jobs programs for those pockets of poverty in our Nation, not enough funds for long-term Medicare for our senior citizens in need, but $3 1/2 billion of your tax dollars to one little nation, Israel, a nation with only about 3 1/2 million citizens. That means then that you are giving $1,000 a year to every man, woman, and child citizen of Israel. Think about that.

Since I am particularly concerned about the welfare of the third world, since it is the poorest part of our Earth, one on which we are dependent and benefit greatly, this Nation; we benefit greatly from the natural resources of the 45 sub-Saharan African nations. Now, while Israel only has 3 1/2 million citizens roughly, there are some 350 million citizens in the 45 sub-Saharan African nations.

How much do we give them out of our foreign aid? A $550 million only, which comes to, compared to the $1,000 per Israeli, $1.57. Our resources are there, but our money goes to Israel. It seems to me we should drop some of the pollen where we get the honey. Even bees know that.

My position is that that is upside down. We should give the larger amount to the larger group of people who are in greater need and from whom we benefit the most materially in Africa, give the $3.5 billion to Africa, and let the $550 million go to Israel, but more than that, $1.8 billion of that $3.5 billion is for war, military aid. Well, my God, Military aid? To Israel? A nation that holds in prison presently some 9,000 Palestinians unfairly, unjustly, many without charges? Military aid to a nation that in the past 3 years has killed unarmed, defenseless 650 men, women, and children of Palestine?

Why not better take that military aid and take it over to Zambia in Africa, give it to the African National Congress so they can be sufficiently armed to chase off the face of the Earth the last remaining vestige of fascism, the apartheid regime of South Africa? That is my position.

Someone said, `Well, Gus, you receive money from PAC’s, almost always labor PAC’s, but PAC’s, organized labor unions. The checks often come out of Washington, DC. That is not the Second District. Why is that not the same?’

It is not the same because American trade unions do not represent the interests of a foreign power. They represent the interests of American workers. That is an American interest. Some 40,000 citizens of the Second District of Illinois are members of trade unions, because I said that that is an industrial district, and PAC contributions, while maybe from Washington, come on the recommendation and request of their local affiliate, the United Automobile Workers. The United Automobile Workers give you a contribution from here, but it is because of the recommendation from its region 4 back in my district. So it has a right to be involved, and its interests are not un-American. It is not putting the interests of another nation above its own. No comparison, indeed.

If I may, before concluding, point out this connection between this interest, this insidious interest, and the mass media in this country. You may think you know something about mass media, because you are exposed to it so in television, but really it is, in many ways, as obscure and mysterious as AIPAS.

Ask yourself who owns CBS. Who is the president of ABC? Who are the board members of NBC? Where does Tom

Brokaw live?

You know where I live. You know what is my salary. You know my marital stautus. You know where I went to school. You know my views. You know my children’s names.

You know Tom Brokaw far better than you know Gus Savage, or you think you do. Is he married? What is his salary? What are his views? For all you know, he may be one of those running around with a hood burning crosses, because you do not know. Powerful man. Controls your airwaves, determines whether Gus Savage can go on the air or not, determines what is said about Gus Savage, good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, unaccountable to you.

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You cannot fire him, you cannot unelect him. You did not pick him.

I want to say something about the campaign coverage, because it was rather strange. It may not be correlated by AIPAC, but the apparent influence of a network of reporters across this country and the major daily newspapers and the television stations operating in the same way, telling the same lies simultaneously, makes one wonder.

My campaign, the Chicago Tribune, that is the major daily newspaper, largest circulation in Chicago, has a Pulitzer Prize columnist named Mike Royko, who wrote a column during this campaign strongly condemning me, and falsely so.

He said in the column that I had phoned him and told him that what appears to be my concerns are really false. I am not really concerned about civil rights, racism, and so forth in America. I just use that to help stir people up.

He said when I told him that on the phone that he felt this, and then he told me what he said to me and what I said back and what he said, and so on. But the problem is, I never talked to Mike Royko in my life, by phone or otherwise. In other words, he made up the column.

When I protested to the editor of the Chicago Tribune and said, `Look, I never talked to this guy in my life. How could he write this falsehood? Would you ask him to retract it or explain it or prove it?’

Never, never, never a reply. Unaccountable.

The political editor of the Chicago Sun Times, same thing. Steve Neal. Same thing. Called me all kinds of names. I have never met him, never talked with him.

When you have, and I do not want to say that the people who may be part of such a network would be these columnists. Generally the white press would have at least one apparent African-American columnist to jump on an African-American too in case the African-American hollers too loud and says, `well, these columnists jumping on me are white.’ So you have got a page in the Chicago Tribune, a raspberry in the Washington Post, and all, and that is typical. It is the same kind of columns.

I was on `Cross Fire’ on CNN. Some of you may have seen it. And you saw what a time Robert Novak gave me. I am sure if you saw it you could see it was not fair. How much does he earn? Where is he married? Does he not attend church? Has he ever been a member of the Ku Klux Klan? I am not saying that he is. I am not saying that he is married. What are his sexual preferences? I know none of that.

All I am saying is we do not know anything about these powerful bosses or spokesmen or talking heads on television and columnist in the most powerful newspaper of our land. And democracy depends upon a free an fair press.

I held a hearing to try to save the Economic Development Administration that the President has asked to be eliminated. I held a hearing in Pennsylvania, the coal mining area, where because anthracite coal has such high sulfur content people have unemployment, are suffering unemployment in double digits. I held it in Chicago, because there the African-American community suffers unemployment in double digits and have not enjoyed the prosperity that other parts of the country has, that the country in general has enjoyed in the past 8 or 9 years. We need economic development projects in such areas.

I went into Chicago to hold one such hearing, trying to stir up interest in saving EDA, and the press would not even cover it. Not in Chicago.

I will tell you, I have been treated better by the press in Johannesburg, South Africa, than in Chicago, IL.

I sponsored the biggest set-aside in the history of this country, an amendment to the 1986 Defense Authorization Act, that could mean some $8 billion a year to disadvantaged minority-owned businesses. I am very proud of that. It is the largest set-aside of all the others combined.

During this campaign channel 2 in Chicago, the CBS affiliate, a reporter named Mike Flannery insisted right there on television that Gus Savage did not sponsor that legislation.

I said, `Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I will give you a Congressional Record. I will get it to you tomorrow. If you are wrong, would you go on your news show tomorrow and admit that you are wrong? And, of course, if I am wrong, go on there and point that out too.’

I sent him the Congressional Record showing, of course, that he was wrong. He never used it. Never another word. Unaccountable. Nothing I can do.

I am the sponsor of legislation for a third Federal building in Chicago, a project costing $153 million and employing some 50,000 people in the construction trades and the spinoff jobs that will result from that–$45 million of that amount in subcontract to small disadvantaged businesses.

On that same television interview show he insisted that I did not do that either. It is easy to ascertain whether I did or not. You have got a Congressional Record. Reporters are certainly familiar with it. Admit that that was a deliberate deceit.

Well, that kind of effort to disinform the electorate is also a danger to our democracy, and to the extent that it relates to activities such as the ones I have described from AIPAC, it makes you wonder are these connected up? In which case the danger would be enhanced.

Look at the strange attacks across this land on African-American leaders. You say, `Oh, well, that one was found guilty, and that one was found guilty.’

I do not mean whether they were guilty or innocent, but the intensity and the frequency with

which they are pursued.

Finally, let me say that I hope I have given you enough information already to cause you some concern. We operate in an atmosphere today that is not favorable to civil rights and racial equality. You might call it high-technology racism, the kind of racism that would cause a movie like `Driving Miss Daisy’ to be named the best movie of the year. `Driving Miss Daisy.’ Because maybe there are those in America who would like to turn back race relations to the old days where blacks did do the driving and Miss Daisy rode in the back.

But those days, my friends, are gone forever. Some of us may have to drive Miss Daisy, but we do not love it. And it does not make a very good movie, for it is insulting to too large a segment of the American population at a time of high-technology racism–`Driving Miss Daisy.’

I wonder how my American Jewish friends would feel if there was a movie about during the Holocaust where some Jewish man who was compelled because of imprisonment or whatever the reasons under the Holocaust to be a chamber maid for some Nazi general, and the movie was about how much he enjoyed that, which of course would not have been true, any more than `Driving Miss Daisy,’ how much he enjoyed that, and that movie received an Academy Award. I wonder how they would feel.

That is just how African-Americans in the main also feel. We are losing an understanding of each other, when we need to understand each other more than ever. Because America is losing its competitiveness in world trade. It has become a debtor rather than a creditor nation. And part of the reason is worsening race relations, where the number of male blacks in college is falling down. The number in prison is going up. Unemployment has remained at double digits for the past 10 years. More than 50 percent of black children live in single parent families. The black family is being destroyed to the disadvantage not just of blacks, but of all America.

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When we have a nation that operates in such a way as this high-technology racism that when a black becomes Miss America that the first thing that black feels it is necessary to say is that, `Being black is the least that I am;’ if you were Irish, Swedish, Jewish and you happened to win Miss America, how would you feel if the Irish victor got up and said the least thing I am is Irish or Jewish, or the victor said the least thing I am is Swedish? Why does she feel such compulsion? It is because she is trying to survive in this high-technology racist society.

So they create an image of me, a myth, that is no more accurate, no more real than Heathcliff Huxtable.

In the South I understand after World War II–and I will tell you this little bit and I will be through–in the South after World War II they said that a black veteran, and back then in the South often lynch mobs would come after blacks, you see, and a lynch mob came after this black veteran. He still has his M-1, and he was a sharpshooter, shot down 17 of the mob before they got him. And guess what? You would think they would have taken him out and lynched him twice, but no they did not, they did not even arrest him. They did not even put him in jail. Instead they put him in the insane asylum because they wanted it to appear that he was crazy. And that is what they tried to do to many outspoken blacks who said what I have said today, they say he is just crazy, in order to keep you away from him, and try to smear you, but I tell you to check the facts and you will agree with me.

I hope the following column by Vernon Jarrett, from the Chicago Sun-Times, and a letter to the editor, of the Chicago Tribune, will help you understand my renomination in the recent, controversial primary election:

From the Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 29, 1990

Why Gus Savage Keeps Winning

(BY VERNON JARRETT) What makes a man like Gus Savage keep running . . . and winning?

`Why would you [black] people want to keep a troublemaker like Gus in office, when you can elect a highly educated young man, a healer like Mel Reynolds?’

`How can you [meaning this columnist] tolerate that man’s ranting and raving about racism when there are more moderate voices in your community?’

The above represents a summary of the questions from whites directed to me ever since Rep. Gus Savage was elected to Congress from the 2nd Congressional District.

Savage keeps winning because he has two ingredients that many black voters miss in most of Chicago’s `moderate’ black leaders.

I speak from the experience of having participated in two campaigns to unseat Savage, who is in his fifth term.

Here’s what I’ve learned from direct contact with black voters:

Savage’s orations don’t turn on that many people. They’re with him because he `always has had the guts to speak out,’ to express our outrage against common injustices–while moderate blacks, as defined by whites, remain silent.

Gus may be strident, but he’s not for sale. Even though black `moderates’ also win elections, their silence and cooperation with known enemies of black political empowerment has been sickening.

Example: In 1955, when a Mississippi mob lynched a teenage Chicagoan named Emmet Till, blacks throughout the nation demanded federal action. Yet Chicago’s lone black congressman, William L. `The Man’ Dawson, refused to utter one strong word of protest. Dawson, a `moderate,’ was the late Mayor Richard J. Daley’s black lieutenant.

It was a little band of standup crusaders, including Gus Savage and the late union leader Willoughby Abner of the NAACP, who picketed Dawson, the Congress and the White House and later met with Vice President Richard Nixon.

Dawson and Daley attempted to maintain silence by ordering hundreds of black precinct captains to take membership in the NAACP and control future NAACP elections. For years, all prospective candidates for the presidency of the local NAACP had to vow not to criticize the Machine.

Years later, the Chicago Defender could describe black members of the City Council as `the Silent Six.’ And shortly before the election of Mayor Harold Washington, it was not uncommon to see black aldermen not only remain silent, but also vote against black interests. On Nov. 30, 1980, it was pathetic watching nine blacks vote for a racist ward map concocted by Mayor Jane Byrne and Ald. Edward Vrdolyak (10th). The actual motion to accept that map was made by a `moderate’ black alderman and committeeman named Wilson Frost (34th), who was a Machine sponsor of Mel Reynolds.

At the same time, blacks are continuously presented Democratic Party slates of candidates who are out to curtail black political empowerment.

`If we are asked to ignore all the faults of our enemies and phony friends, why can’t we do the same for an old friend that we know we can trust?’ a Savage supporter asked me.

More at Stake

Chicago: As one of a handful of whites who supported the re-election of U.S. Rep. Gus Savage, I want to respond to the Tribune’s unwarranted attacks on him.

There was much more at stake in this election than a simple race between Gus Savage and Mel Reynolds. The central question was one of self-determination of the mostly black voters in the district and whether they were going to be allowed to choose their own representation or return to the era of plantation politics.

As for your newspaper finding Mel Reynolds so attractive because he was a Rhodes scholar, note that Gus Savage attended law school.

Savage has fought racism all his life. He earned his way into Congress. His opponent has never been active in the black community or held any office. I had never heard of him until he ran for Congress two years ago.

The black community didn’t start racial politics, and it is not up to the black community to end racial politics: Kevin Kitchen.

Congressional Black Caucus: Deep in the Israel Lobby’s Pocket

September 5, 2016.    by Jeffrey Blankfort

“[Debbie] Wasser­man Schultz em­bod­ied the enor­mous in­flu­ence that Amer­i­can Jews have within the Demo­cratic Party. A Jew with deep com­mu­nal in­volve­ments who was a key pil­lar of sup­port for the main­stream pro-Is­rael lobby in Congress and within the party, Wasser­man was both chair­man of the Demo­cratic Na­tional Com­mit­tee and a mem­ber of Congress sit­ting on the pow­er­ful House Com­mit­tee on Ap­pro­pri­a­tions — a panel that votes on all ma­jor gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­tures.

“This put her at the nexus of U.S. pol­icy, pol­i­tics and po­lit­i­cal fundrais­ing in a way that few oth­ers matched.”

— NATHAN GUTTMAN, Forward, August 5-12, 2016

This article is not about Debbie Wasserman Schultz but of the influence of who and what she represented as chair of the Democratic National Committee until taken down by Julian Assange, and still represents, in Congress, the interests of Israel, and the power of its domestic supporters over the Black American political establishment as represented by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

To be sure, the CBC’s subjugation by what is generally referred to as the pro-Israel Lobby is not unique. Thanks largely to American Jews having long been the Democratic Party’s major source of funds, estimated by reliable sources to be at least 60% in every election cycle, the Israel Lobby has been not only able to shape the party’s’ Middle East agenda but, of equal importance, determine who will be the chairs and the ranking members on the Congressional committees and subcommittees that have an impact on US-Israel relations. (The same thing can be said about the Republicans but there we see more variety among the donors.)

What makes the Congressional Black Caucus exceptional is that its very presence in Congress has been portrayed as symbolizing the success of the often bloody civil and voting rights struggles of a half century ago of which they are the beneficiaries. Some, like John Lewis, were even notable participants.

Consequently, something more might be expected of them. That the CBC, however, regardless of who comes and goes in their congressional districts, has consistently, as a bloc, voted to send billions of US taxpayers dollars to provide weapons for a foreign government that oppresses another people of color, the Palestinians, is, under the circumstances, nothing less than shameful.

To realize the extent of the problem requires some effort, mainly on-line searches of each CBC member’s name linked to Israel. The link won’t appear on their websites or, if there, is hard to find. (This is actually the case with most members of Congress, whatever the color of their skin). Outside of Jewish audiences who they view as potential donors and for whom, quite literally, they audition, they prefer that their constituents and the general public not know the degree to which they are willing to humiliate themselves for campaign contributions.

Their collective lack of concern for the plight of the Palestinians, with but some scattered exceptions was all too predictable given that In the late 1980s, at the height of Israel’s arm sales to its sister apartheid state, South Africa, the Congressional Black Caucus was so cowed by AIPAC and the Jewish political establishment that it agreed to utter not a peep about it in public.

As chair of the DNC, Wasserman Schultz was in a position to make the critical appointments to the Democratic Party’s platform committee. From Congress, with Hillary Clinton’s pro-Israel position in mind, she selected two members of the CBC, Berkeley-Oakland’s Barbara Lee, a favorite of the liberal Left, and Baltimore’s Elijah Cummings, making the latter the committee’s chair. Their votes turned out to be instrumental in insuring there would be no criticism of Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and its construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the party’s 2016 platform while maintaining Democratic Party support for Jerusalem as Israel’s indivisible capital.

Cummings’ genuflection to Wasserman Schultz’s demands was expected since the 65 year old congressman is the very picture of the “faithful family retainer” from Old South novels and films when it comes to his relations to Israel and Baltimore’s Jewish community.

This past February, with Israeli Ambassador, US-born, Ron Dermer, Cummings co-hosted a celebration of Black History Month at the Israeli Embassy. It was Dermer, a former Republican functionary from Florida, who had collaborated with House Speaker John Boehner to have Netanyahu speak before a joint session of Congress in March, 2015 in a last ditch Israeli effort to sabotage Washington’s negotiations with Iran.

Most of the more senior members of the CBC, including Cummings, were obliged by their constituencies to view it as a slight against the first Black president—which it clearly was–but while joining some other Democrats in boycotting the Israel prime minister’s appearance, they made sure that their decision to do so was not viewed within the Jewish community as diminishing their support for Israel but as a criticism of Boehner.

Cummings was the perfect choice to be co-host. For each of the past 20 years, his Jewish-community funded Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel, “an elite two-year leadership fellowship,” according to its website, has sent a dozen Baltimore area African American high school students to Israel to be suitably indoctrinated into the special relationship between the two countries.

It dovetails neatly into the successful and aggressive outreach program focused on African-American college students conducted in recent years by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Barbara Lee is not in Cummings’ league when it comes to public bowing and scraping before Israel’s domestic supporters but, like her predecessor, Ron Dellums, for whom she served as an aide, Lee has shown herself willing to do just that when called upon by the likes of Wasserman Schultz. Dellums, a Teflon coated living legend among most Bay Area Left activists, managed to serve 13 terms in Congress without losing their support while maintaining the backing of AIPAC and the Jewish voters in his district.

Lee was the sole member of Congress to vote against giving President Bush the war authority after 9-11, for which she was justly praised. That act, apparently, took less courage than criticizing or withholding praise for an Israeli head of state as she had previously sent messages of congratulations to Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut, on his election and, later, re-election as Israel’s prime minister.

Sharon had been given that title in the wake of crimes committed by the Israeli forces under his command following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and his having given the green light to Lebanese Christian forces to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital in September of that year and, with Israeli soldiers backing them up, slaughter up to 2,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. This led to him being sacked as Israel’s defense minister. Why would a Black member of Congress congratulate him under any circumstances?

Like everyone else in Congress, Lee has consistently supported military aid to Israel. The closest she came to actually casting a vote critical of Israel was in 2006, following Israel’s most recent invasion of Lebanon when she voted “present” on a House bill strongly supporting Israel’s brutal actions.

In January, 2009, she had been one of five members of Congress, including one other CBC member, Keith Ellison, to send a letter to Hillary Clinton after her appointment as Secretary of State, calling for humanitarian aid for Gaza without saying a negative word about the country that was responsible for the need of such aid.

In August, 2014, in the midst of Israel’s last assault on Gaza, she was reproached by some of her pro-Palestinian constituents for approving an additional $626 million appropriation for Israel. In a written response to her critics she justified doing so as a life-saving measure:

Last week, I cast a vote in support of Iron Dome, which is a defensive anti-rocket missile system that saves civilian lives.

I would not have supported funding for offensive military weapons in the midst of this horrific crisis. I continue to mourn the tragic loss of innocent lives in Gaza and Israel.

I have called and will continue to call for a sustained ceasefire to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, end the blockade of Gaza and stop the loss of civilian lives.

Unless asked to do otherwise by Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

When I phoned Lee’s Oakland office to complain about her vote, I was told by a member of her staff that they had already received 150 similar calls. Lee, he said, was actually against Israel’s occupation and settlement building. Her reason for voting the way she did, he told me, was “complicated” and that Lee would put something up on her website explaining her decision. She never did and we can guess why.

She has no reason to fear being called out for it by supporters of justice for Palestine in her district any more than did Dellums who, while providing occasional lip service to Israel’s critics, his deference to the demands of AIPAC and his liberal Jewish supporters in Berkeley at critical moments is a matter of record.

While issuing a statement criticizing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as “a deadly overreaction… [which] cannot be rationalized or justified….only…deplored,” just two years later, Dellums refused to take a public stand on Measure E, a proposition on the Berkeley ballot that would have required the federal government to withhold from the annual aid package to Israel the amount of money it spent on building settlements in the West Bank that the US and the world considered to be illegal.

Early in April, 1984, Dellums received a letter from Lee Marsh, the president of the Berkeley/Richmond Jewish Community Center, demanding that he oppose the measure that concluded with a warning of “the political fact that the Jewish people will consider mere neutrality on this issue as insensitivity to our deep, near-unanimous feelings on a vitally important issue to us.”

In response, Dellums acknowledged that his “gut reaction is that the problems of the Middle East are so complex that it is of questionable value to approach solutions in such a piecemeal fashion; such efforts seem better calculated to cause anguish and divisiveness than to move us to a realistic position of solving these problems.”

“On a personal level,” he went on, “I resent being pushed into kneejerk reactions on ballot initiatives that are irrelevant to any political solution to the problem….a neutral position makes perfectly good sense.” (Emphasis added). And that’s what he took which, of course, played into the hands of Measure E’s opponents. In the end, Measure E lost by a 2-1 margin. Had Dellums stepped up and publicly endorsed the initiative there is no question that it would have influenced the vote and not only of the city’s Black residents.

At the time there were 42,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Today there are over a half million. Would Mr. Dellums still insist that Measure E was irrelevant?

In 1988, some residents of Berkeley, active in the Palestinian cause, placed a measure on the ballot that would have made the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza a sister city to join more than a dozen Berkeley sister cities across the globe including two American Indian tribes. Again, Dellums, not wanting to face down the liberal Jews who control Berkeley’s politics, remained neutral.

Dellums’ main contribution to Israel and its US supporters would come three years later when he was the point man in Congress opposing South African apartheid. Before introducing the 1987 Anti-Apartheid Act in the House, he withdrew a plank that would have penalized Israel for its arms sales to South Africa which, at the time, were estimated to be over $800 million.

The plank, added the previous year to the Senate version by retiring senator, Maryland Republican Charles Mathias, called for penalties against any recipient of US foreign aid that was found to be selling weapons to South Africa. While Israel was not mentioned by name it was the only country known to be doing so.

Had the Moony-owned Washington Times not reported on Dellums’ decision in its April 2, 1987 edition, it is likely the story would never have become public.

The change was made “to expand the scope of congressional support,” Dellums’ spokesperson, Max Miller told the paper, adding that Dellums’ bill had been modified to reflect a recent announcement by Israel that it would phase out its arms relationship with South Africa.

“He’s not so concerned about past violations as he is about future violations,” Miller said.

“But,” noted the Washington Times reporter, “the modified bill was introduced March 12, about a weekbefore Israel announced its new policy towards South Africa.” (Emphasis added).

Dellums defended his action in a letter to a constituent on June 11, writing that:

[It] quickly became clear that the bill would rapidly lose significant support among a large number of the co-sponsors if that provision [penalizing Israel] remained in the bill. We faced the prospect of daily loss of support—a situation that would have sent a wrong signal to everybody about US resolve to confront apartheid.

Consulting with the anti-apartheid groups involved in pushing the bill, we decided it would be better to withdraw the section in order to achieve a broad base of support for the main goal of the bill [imposing US sanctions on South Africa.]

The wrong signal? What it would have revealed is that the majority of Democratic members of Congress, including the Black Caucus, gave a higher priority to protecting Israel’s image in the public’s eyes, as well as its funding, than putting an end to South African apartheid. In the Senate, it should be noted, that California’s Alan Cranston, one of the major recipients of pro-Israel funding, withdrew the Mathias plank without any announcement to the public.

In the following year, Dellums was the featured speaker at an anti-apartheid conference at UC Berkeley. During the question period I had an opportunity to ask him how he had been obligated and pressured by his fellow Democrats to pull the plank censuring Israel from the anti-apartheid legislation which, beyond theWashington Times article, had been publicized only by the Middle East Labor Bulletin which I edited and Jane Hunter’s excellent Israeli Foreign Affairs. It had been ignored, to their shame, even by the publications of the anti-apartheid movement for whom Dellums had become an untouchable icon.

Drawing himself up to his full height, Dellums expressed his objections to my use of the words, “obligated” and “pressured,” but then, slowly bending over and with his voice almost a whisper, he told the packed lecture hall how one Democrat after another had come to him and said, “Ron, if you don’t pull that plank you’ll have to take my name off the legislation.” At which point a Black San Francisco State professor sitting beside me gently poked me with her elbow, saying “it sure sounds like obligated and pressured to me.”

It was only later that I learned that a dozen Black South African exiles sitting in reserved seats in the front row appeared to be stunned by Dellums’ response..

About the time the Washington Times article appeared, the State Department issued a report that had been mandated by the 1986 Anti-Apartheid Act to provide the House and Senate Intelligence Committees with a list of countries selling arms to South Africa. It included Israel.

“Nevertheless, at a press conference last week and elsewhere,” reported the No. California Jewish Bulletin(4/10/87), “black members of Congress bluntly rejected invitations to denounce Israel in particular, even as they issued a scathing broadside against all the countries cited in the State Department report.”

The NCJB article described a meeting between members of the CBC, including caucus chair, Mervyn Dymally, from Compton, California, Mickey Leland, from Texas, and New York’s Charles Rangel, and Jewish House members, Howard Berman and Mel Levine, from Los Angeles, and Howard Wolpe, from Michigan. Tony Coehlo, a Catholic from Merced and a strong supporter of Israel, sat in.

It was no coincidence that Berman, who formerly represented the San Fernando Valley and who is now a corporate Washington lobbyist, was also one of Wasserman Schultz’s appointees to the Democratic Platform Committee. A Democratic power broker in Southern California, he had once told a group of his Jewish constituents that he had run for Congress to help Israel.

Wolpe was the chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa which seemed strange except for the fact that Israel had strategic interests on the continent which, as the arms sales case indicated, needed to be protected. This obviously trumped the importance of having an African-American serve in that capacity.

That meeting came on top of another between a number of Black Caucus members and leaders from most of the major Jewish organizations led by AIPAC executive director, Tom Dine, all of whom were anxious to quash any rebellion from below.

A stated concern of the CBC members, according to the No. California Jewish Bulletin (4/10/87)—such meetings are ignored by the mainstream media–was attaining greater aid for the African continent which, despite the terrible famines it had experienced, had its appropriations cut by 37% while aid to Israel, Latin America, Asia and the Philippines had increased with Israel ending up with one third of the total foreign aid allocation.

The article noted that an amendment to the foreign aid bill proposed by Wolpe would increase aid to Africa by $115 million over last year but that, pointed out Dymally, was less than the Reagan administration had asked for which he called a “source of embarrassment” to the Democrats.

The meeting reportedly ended with the Jewish delegation agreeing to support greater aid to Africa in return for the CBC’s not making an issue of Israel’s arms sales to Pretoria.

It quickly became clear that the Israeli government had been apprised by its American agents of the CBC’s ignominious retreat since the day before the NCJB article appeared. Israel’s Ha’aretz reported that:

Senior [Israeli] government officials estimate that as a result of the relatively mild response in the US to the report on the issue of arms trade between Israel and So. Africa, at this time the government will refrain from any meaningful steps whatsoever against the apartheid regime and satisfy itself with decisions of a declarative meaning only. (4/9/87).

Four months later, on August 5, another Israeli paper, Davar, was even more straightforward in reporting that business between Israel and South Africa would be unchanged, regardless of its public statements to the world.

An official Israeli delegation headed by Efrayim Dovrat, the finance minister’s assistant director general, will shortly depart for South Africa to ratify the agreement on economic cooperation between the two countries.

This will be the first agreement the countries have signed since the cabinet decision not to strike and new agreements with South Africa.

The CBC’s decision to say nothing about Israel’s arms sales to South Africa, three years earlier, had greatly distressed Dymally.

“We’ve reached a compromise to which our constituents won’t be very receptive,” the NCJB quoted him as saying. He reportedly warned that unless Israel took further steps, that compromise will unravel and “we will want to see stronger language on Israel.” Israel must not only refrain from signing new contracts with South Africa, he said, but terminate the ongoing ones.

“In the pipeline already are enough arms to kill many innocent people,” said Dymally, but he was speaking only for himself. (He declined to be interviewed after he left Congress in 1992 and returned to the California State Assembly because, as I was told, he “didn’t want the hassle.”) Both Mickey Leland and Charles Rangel had by that time, become, like Elijah Cummings, “faithful family retainers” of the Jewish political establishment.

Leland, a civil rights activist in Houston in his youth, began serving in Congress in 1979 and died in a plane crash in Ethiopia a decade later. According to his Congressional obituary, “One of his first acts in Congress was to fund a six–week trip to Israel to allow underprivileged black teenagers from the Houston area to learn about Jewish culture and to create a cross–cultural dialogue between the youths in the two countries.”

He then prefigured Cummings by setting up the Mickey Leland Kibbutzim Internship Foundation in 1980. Financed and operated by Houston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, it sends 10 Black high school juniors annually to Israel for a six-week work and travel experience, as well as, we must assume, for political indoctrination.

Leland’s most obscene display of support for Israel followed its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when he was chair of the CBC. He flew to Tel Aviv, then bicycled throughout the country and across the Lebanese border to express his “solidarity with the people of Israel.” Hard to top that in “faithful retainer” lore.

Rangel is retiring this year after serving 45 years representing Harlem. Back in 1973, his second year in office, he participated in a very special meeting.

At that time, as the newly elected chair of the CBC, he was invited to dinner with Arthur Hertzberg, president of the liberal American Jewish Congress and Sidney Yates, a Jewish member of Congress from Illinois.

Hertzberg’s intention was to find a way to counter the more militant Black organizations of the late 60s and 70s, most notably the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC, led by Stokely Carmichael, later to become Kwame Ture that had declared their independence from white influence. Hertzberg described the meeting in his book, “A Jew in America.” (Harper, 2002):

In the course of our talks over the dinner table, we had little difficulty in understanding one another. We agreed that the continuing need for Blacks in national politics was and would remain the welfare state. Only through welfare programs for the poor could a large number of Blacks live in some minimum decency.

On the Jewish side there was one concern that united all the factions of the Jewish community: the defense of Israel. As a lamb among the wolves of the Middle East, Israel needed sufficient American support to defend itself. Therefore Jews needed friends and allies in American politics who would help make Israel more secure.

The three of us quickly saw the obvious conclusion: let an alliance be made between the Black congressmen and the Jewish congressmen so that each group would vote for the agendas of both sides. Jews would remain committed to the welfare state, even as it meant higher taxes for the middle class, and Blacks would support Israel.

The alliance that was defined that day has lasted many years. It represented a quiet consensus both among Jews and among Blacks. (p.361)

Hertzberg’s recounting of the meeting, what it says and what it implied about the Black-Jewish relationship in America demands our attention. Reeking with paternalism, it consigned the majority of African-Americans to an indefinite untermenschen status while depending on the good will and generosity of Jews for their survival. The Black Caucus would serve as the Jewish community’s intermediary.

And so it has come to pass, and despite the fact that the “welfare state,” as Hertzberg described it, disappeared almost a decade before his book was published, courtesy of Bill Clinton, the Congressional Black Caucus still does the Jewish establishment’s bidding and clearly has been rewarded for doing so. Whether the Black Americans have benefited is another matter.

That isn’t the entire story, of course. There have been periodic efforts by some CBC members to break free of the yoke that Rangel accepted that night. What happened to them is instructive.

In March, 1990, emboldened by Sen. Robert Dole’s surprise suggestion (that he was quickly forced to retract) that 5% of the aid going to the six largest recipients, of which Israel and Egypt ($3 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively) were by far the biggest, should be diverted to Eastern Europe, 10 members of the CBC sent a “dear colleague” letter to fellow House members, noting that “the current distribution [of aid] is unfair, inequitable and indefensible, and does not serve U.S. interests.”

They pointed out that in the proposed budget “every Israeli would receive $700 in US aid while every African would receive a little more than a $1. How can that be justified when Israeli per capita income is $4,990 and African per capita income is only $683?”

The letter was initiated by Rep. Charles Crockett (MI), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and its signers included Dymally, William Clay (MO), Augustus Hawkins (CA), Charles Hayes (IL) Donald Payne (NJ), Gus Savage (IL), Alan Wheat (MO), Walter Fauntroy (DC), and Dellums, then chair of the Black Caucus.

Blanked out by the national media, it was widely publicized in the Jewish community press, thus exposing the congressmen to attacks from sectors of the pro-Israel lobby in each of their constituencies. In Dellums’ district, the first shot was fired by Lucie Ramsey, executive director of the influential Jewish Community Relations Council, who, according to the NCBJ (2/16/90) was “shocked” that he signed the letter.

“I know how poor the African nations are, and perhaps in terms of equity they should be getting more than they do–but not at the cost of Israel losing out,” wrote Ramsey.

AIPAC’s Bay Area regional representative was more diplomatic, acknowledging Dellums as “a supporter, close to the [Jewish] community. We consider him a friend.”

In the end, the letter writers capitulated, not all willingly, to Dellums’ decision to walk back the call for more foreign aid budget fairness.

AIPAC’s Jonathan Kaufman, the lobby group’s chair in Dellums’ Eighth Congressional District, was a gracious winner, hailing his decision to recommend maintaining aid to Israel at its then $3 billion level

“Dellums told us he’s in favor of maintaining the amount of foreign aid to Israel,” said Kaufman, referring to a meeting that took place with Dellums and AIPAC members (NCJB, 3/30/90) “It was refreshing to hear him,” Kaufman said. “He’s all along been very much on our side. What he wants to do with the Black Caucus budget is to increase the pie so there’s more money for the third world.”

Dellums’ Oakland spokesperson, H. Lee Halterman, told the NCJB that “Dellums has been in regular contact with [congressional] members such as Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and Howard Wolpe (Mi.) about the need to forge a coalition between Black members and Jewish members to press for an expanding foreign aid pie.” (NCJB, ibid.).

At the same time, Israel’s arms sales to South Africa were ongoing. Still it was not something that Dellums and his CBC colleagues were ready to raise, even though, at a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arad in Washington, according to the Washington Jewish Week (3/15/90), “Israeli officials could offer [them] no timetable for ending Israel’s military contracts with South Africa”.

The WJW, citing “informed sources;” reported that “Israel’s failure to even offer a timetable disappointed the congressmen attending. Nevertheless, none of the congressmen even hinted at cutting aid to Israel at this time.”

“A cut in aid is not called for,” said Missouri’s Alan Wheat, “but this is not to suggest we’re pleased with the current state of affairs.”

Attending the meeting besides Wheat, were Dellums, Berman, Solarz and Wolpe. The Black congressmen were said to have repeated an extraordinary promise previously made to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir “that the [CBC] members were willing to initiate legislation to compensate Israel for any security losses it might incur from cutting its arms ties to South Africa.”

Within two years, the remaining vocal critics of Israel within the caucus: Geoge Crockett, a legendary civil liberties lawyer, who had organized the original letter, Charles Hayes, and Gus Savage, all from Illinois, and Dymally, would be gone from Congress, either through retirement in the case of Crockett and Dymally, or having been targeted by AIPAC and the Jewish political establishment as was the fate of Hayes and Savage.

Hayes, weakened by having had too many overdrafts on his congressional bank account, was successfully challenged in the 1992 Democratic primary by Bobby Bush, a former Black Panther turned Israeli bootlicker. In his position paper on Israel, one that AIPAC demands of each candidate for Congress from both of the major parties, Rush wrote, of his “strong commitment to the survival of the State of Israel [which] has long been the one strategic ally for the US in the Middle East.”

“It is also,” his statement said, “the one nation in the region to be founded upon and demonstrates the democratic values and concerns required in a country of such diverse cultures such as exists within the state of Israel.”

That same year, Savage became a victim of redistricting, a common tactic used by loyalists of both parties to keep key members in office while getting rid of those who make “trouble” and otherwise can’t be defeated at the polls. Savage was the latter.

Against Savage, AIPAC put up Mel Reynolds, who had endeared himself to prospective Jewish donors by having spent time on an Israeli kibbutz. In 1990, that wasn’t a particularly effective inducement for voters in his predominantly Black district and Savage retained his seat.

As a result of that year’s census, AIPAC was successful in having Savage’s district redrawn so that by 1992, it would contain a significant number of white voters and less Black voters and that was all that was needed to reverse the previous election result and put Reynolds in Congress.

What particularly angered AIPAC and Jewish supporters of Israel was that Savage had the audacity to read aloud at a rally the names of Jewish donors to his opponent from outside his district and the state and the amount of money each had contributed to Reynolds’ campaign.

For that he was condemned as being “anti-Semitic,” it being just fine, of course, for Jews who lived in Beverly Hills, Brooklyn, or Bel Air to determine who should represent a largely Black congressional district on Chicago’s South Side. He was also denounced in a headline in the Washington Jewish Week, as “Savage Savage,” a patently racist jibe that merited no attention at the time.

Reynolds managed only to serve two years, when he was convicted and sent to prison as a sex offender for having relations with a 16-year old campaign worker. After being released, he was later convicted and resentenced for an additional term for fraudulently obtaining bank loans and diverting campaign contributions to his personal account.

Following the defeat of Hayes and Savage and with Dymally’s retirement, the last vestiges of resistance to AIPAC’s domination were history and the Israel Lobby’s control of the CBC would never again be challenged. It was then what it remains today, another Israeli Occupied territory.

No Black member of Congress has more epitomized this capitulation than Atlanta’s John Lewis, the same John Lewis who had become a national icon when, as one of the heads of SNCC, he was so badly beaten by Alabama state police on the march to Selma in 1965 that he needed to have a metal plate inserted in his head.

Lewis kicked off the 1992 Congressional session by co-hosting with AIPAC a welcoming reception for new and old CBC members. As AIPAC’s Near East Report described it, Lewis “spoke eloquently of Israel and the common goals and principles that the Jewish and Black communities share.”

In that June, before the vote on aid, Lewis and five other CBC members toured Israel at AIPAC’s expense, afterwards telling the Near East Report that he “hopes visits such as ours will strengthen the bonds between African-Americans, American Jews and Israelis.”

In 1995, Lewis joined his Atlanta Republican colleague Newt Gingrich in signing a Congressional letter to President Clinton, reaffirming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and insisting that it maintain total control over the city.

Seeking to protect it from any Palestinian claim, the letter cautioned against “Any policy that makes Jerusalem a center of activity with officials, rather than the self-rule areas of Gaza and Jericho where they have authority, [and] would legitimize Palestinian claims at the very time that the PLO is seeking to establish symbols of sovereignty over Jerusalem.”

As I wrote at the time, “send Lewis his 30 pieces of silver and wrap them in a handkerchief.”

In 2008, Lewis was a featured guest at a “unity” meeting in Brooklyn between Blacks and Jews organized by New York Democratic state assemblyman, Dov Hykind, formerly a lieutenant in racist Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League.

At the meeting, Lewis “emphasized the shared history and values of the black and Jewish communities,” according to the Jewish weekly Forward, which he “summed up at one point with the observation that blacks and Jews “came to this land in different ships, but we’re all in the same boat,” a message that he would not dare say in the streets of Harlem, Chicago’s South Side, or his native Atlanta, but “was clearly embraced by the audience of roughly two dozen, which was divided between members of Norpac and members of the local African American community.”

Norpac is one of the wealthiest and most influential of several dozen Jewish political action committees spread across the country that exist solely to contribute money to candidates who push a hardline pro-Israel agenda. According to the Forward, Lewis was at that meeting to get some of the swag from “leaders from Norpac, who are raising money to help Lewis fend off his primary challenge.”

Norpac exemplifies why pro-Israel PACs have long been referred to as “stealth PACs.” Unlike almost every other political PAC, until the era of Citizens United, they deliberately hide their connections to Israel or American Jewry.

Lewis, since his heroic endeavors in the South a half a century ago working and marching at the side of Martin Luther King, Jr., has made part of his life’s work repeating King’s words of praise for Israel and accusations of anti-Semitism against its critics, made before his assassination in April, 1968.

On each of these occasions Lewis implies that King, had he lived, would not have been appalled by and would not have spoken out against Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian land, by its siege and wars on Gaza, by its use of cluster bombs in Lebanon, as he eventually did condemning America’s war on Vietnam and its role as the world’s “leading purveyor of violence.” Nothing, I would argue, is a greater insult to King’s memory.

Lewis likes to tell audiences and interviewers that “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to speak up, to speak out.”

That’s what he said earlier this year, when accepting the 2016 Elie Wiesel Award from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for “never [having] abandoned his commitment to promoting the human dignity of all people.” The award was entirely and ironically appropriate since Lewis, like Wiesel, excluded the Palestinians from the ranks of “all people” and like Wiesel, has never felt any moral obligation to speak up or speak out in their defense.

To set the record straight on King, he did have second thoughts about what Israel was up to almost a year before he died, thoughts he obviously felt he could not express publicly to Jewish audiences that were proving key funding for the civil rights movement.

In a recorded phone conversation with his advisers on June 24, 1967, two weeks after Israel’s quick victory over Egypt and its conquering of the West Bank and Gaza, King canceled a previously announced trip to Israel that Jewish leaders in the US and Israeli government officials had been planning for him, ostensibly to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King’s organization. Said King, speaking presciently about Jerusalem:

I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt…  Most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it they don’t plan to give it up… I frankly have to admit that my instincts – and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right – I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I could come out unscathed. (Jewish Virtual Library)

It is not only highly unlikely that John Lewis is unaware of that conversation, he well may have been a part of it.

It has been now a decade since we have seen any member of the Congressional Black Caucus, or, arguably of any color or gender for that matter in Congress, with the courage to stand up to AIPAC and the Jewish political establishment.

Cynthia McKinney, also from Atlanta, was the last one. In her six terms in office, she defined “fearless,” challenging US foreign policy, questioning the official narrative of 9-11, openly defending the Palestinians and criticizing Israel which resulted, as it had in Gus Savage’s case, in pro-Israel Jews from all over the United States sending money to her opponent in Atlanta to defeat her. It worked in 2002 when she lost in the primary to Denise Majette, also African-American, hand-picked by AIPAC, who was aided by cross over Republican votes.

Two years later, McKinney ran to regain her seat and succeeded, after Majette had angered her Jewish backers by electing to run for the Senate where she was defeated. One of those backers was so upset with Majette’s decision to give up her congressional seat that, in a letter to the editor of a local weekly, he demanded she return the money he had invested in her.

More recently, Rep. Donna Edwards, who hoped to become the first Black senator from Maryland failed to get the support of her CBC colleagues in what turned out to be a losing race with fellow Democrat Chris Van Hollen to succeed the very pro-Israel Barbara Mikulsi. It is likely that her votes on two bills heavily supported by AIPAC were the reason.

In 2009, she was one of 21 members to vote “present” on a resolution that recognized Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza. The bi-partisan resolution, co-sponsored by Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, passed by a margin of 390-5.

In 2013, Edwards had been one of only 20 members of Congress to vote against the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act, which contained measures to strengthen already existing sanctions on Tehran which has held the top spot on AIPAC’s enemies list since the US invasion of Iraq.

Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress, who was picked by Bernie Sanders to be on the Democratic platform committee, is the only member of the CBC who has not been afraid to show support for the Palestinians but that support only goes so far.

In a statement issued during the last Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, Ellison faulted Israel and Hamas while implying that the latter had initiated the violence and that Israelis and Gazans were being equally victimized:

The current escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians won’t get either side closer to security. It empowers bad actors and puts innocent people on both sides in harm’s way.

Therefore I call on Hamas to immediately stop launching rockets, and for Israel to cease air strikes and not send in ground troops.

I support strong diplomatic intervention by the United States and regional partners to help establish an immediate ceasefire agreement.

There was not a word in his statement about ending Israel’s siege of Gaza or noting that this was Israel’s third war on Gaza in six years.

The sorry state of CBC’s affairs was best expressed by Greg Meeks, its current chair, who represents New York’s 5th Congressional District.

On this past March 11, Meeks issued the following a statement from his office in honor of “Israel’s Independence Day.”

Having visited Israel many times and most recently just weeks ago, I have seen first-hand the importance of the partnership between our two nations.

The United States has an obligation to uphold Israel’s right to defend itself; it is our closest ally and the lone democracy in the Middle East.

Under constant threat, the Israeli people demonstrate tremendous strength and resilience.

Through dialogue, collaboration, and shared determination, our two nations remain committed to making the world safer and freer, and to ensuring our vital and durable bond continues for perpetuity.

Yes, reading that might be called a barf bag moment—and certainly not the only one in this article–but what is important to consider is that with only minor changes here and there, Meeks’ statement of affinity for a particularly oppressive foreign government is essentially no different from what most members of Congress, regardless of their color, gender, age, or political party have been making for decades.

If that is not a demonstration of Jewish political power, what then is it?

***

Now that power is facing a major test. On August 1st, the Movement for Black Lives, representing 50 Black organizations across the country, issued a lengthy, comprehensive platform, “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice,” detailing its views of the problems and challenges facing Black Americans and people of color, generally, and what needs to be done to meet and correct them.

The section of the platform that attracted the most attention was, predictably, one in which the movement expresses its solidarity with the Palestinians, describes the situation under which they live as apartheid and that the actions that Israel has taken against them over the decades as genocide, as defined by the United Nations and the International Court at the Hague.

That drew an angry and anguished, “How dare they!” response from the Jewish establishment whose spokespersons have long accorded themselves the right to determine the language with which Israel may be criticized in the African-American community and by whom. They were joined by Jews who saw themselves as part of the movement and who now claimed to be hurt and bewildered.

Linking of the protests against the epidemic of police killings in America to that experienced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation had already begun on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, following the murder of Michael Brown so the statement of solidarity and criticism of Israel contained in the platform should not have come as a surprise.

There doesn’t appear to have been, as yet, any statements on this issue from CBC members who were in their districts campaigning during the month of August. But at some point, unless the Movement for Black Lives leadership, bowing to threats, rolls over and pulls the offending plank, as Ron Dellums did with the anti-apartheid legislation in 1987, the CBC will be pressed to take sides. That is not likely to happen. A new movement has been born that is in no mood to be turned around.

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Jeffrey Blankfort is a radio host and journalist in Northern California and can be contacted atjblankfort@earthlink.net.