Don't Blindly Trust Southern Poverty Law Center

I question the Washington Post article, The current state of white supremacist groups in the U.S.,” using the Southern Poverty Law Center as an authority on who self-respecting people should hate or not hate.

I don’t think people should blindly accept the pronouncements of he Southern Poverty Law Center about who is a hate group and who is not.  Although the SPLC’s main goal is defending the rights African Americans, an unstated but important goal is protecting Jews. Jews in general believe that they are superior to blacks, so that if they can protect the inferior race of blacks from discrimination, they can certainly protect superior Jews from it.  (There are of course Jews who depend black on principle, not just self-interest.)  Morris Dees. the primary founder of SPLC is not Jewish and was probably motivated by his genuine concern about protecting the rights of blacks.  His cofounder and law partner, Joe Levin, was Jewish, and was motivated by an experience he had at the University of Alabama in which a fellow member of his Jewish fraternity was mistreated and discriminated against because he had argued in favor of integration in the school newspaper.  Thus, he appears at least superficially to be motivated by Jewish self-interest rather than altruism.

My concern about Jewish attitudes toward race are due in large part to what is going on in Israel.  Israel seems increasingly to be turning into an apartheid state espousing race hatred, perhaps not surprising since it was founded by Irgun terrorists like Menachem Begin, who killed almost 100 foreign officials when they bombed the King David Hotel.  There are almost no blacks in Israel.  Israelis would say that’s because there are no black Jews, I think it’s because Jews don’t want blacks to become Jews.  In any case, Israel is lily white.  And of course Jews hate Palestinians, although race is only one factor underlying that hatred.  Now Israel is in the throes of deciding whether it should be a Jewish state or a democratic state.  It can’t be both because Arabs outnumber, or will outnumber, Jews in Israel.  Netanyahu wants to define Israel as a racist, Jewish state.

An op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, “How to Fight the Campus Speech Police: Get a Good Lawyer,” about a dispute between Jewish students at Brandeis University points up the growing strength of the conservative, racist Jews in Israel.

So, the Washington Post tells us that Jews hate David Dukes.  Big deal, they hate Palestinians, Arabs in general, and lots of other people.  David Dukes has company, maybe undesirable company, but company nevertheless. The Washington Post picks sides and sides with the Jewish bigots rather than the Christian bigots.

Jewish Spies in Cuba

As this Washington Post op-ed says, Alan Gross's involvement in the US rapprochement with Cuba is a subplot that will soon fade away.  To me, however, it illustrates the enormous power of Jews in America and the Jewish lobby in Washington.  The US embargo on Cuba and related sanctions, including the Helms-Burton Act which I find horrendous, has been in place for decades and attacked by various people and groups for decades, but it took the Cuban arrest of Alan Gross, an American Jew who was working on some sort of spy mission involving Cuban Jews, to break the back of the sanctions.  The fact that Alan Gross was exchanged for three high value Cuban spies illustrates his importance and the Jewish influence behind him.  The US claimed that the three Cubans were exchanged for an unidentified American spy, not Alan Gross, but the reason the other spy was never identified is because he did not exist.  There may have been another spy exchanged, but he was nothing compared to Alan Gross and his importance to the Jewish lobby.

It's not clear to me what Gross's spy mission was.  He was setting up a clandestine internet for Cuban Jews, but I don't know if this clandestine connection was for American Jews to use to support Cuban Jews, or was to get Cuban Jews to report information about Cuba to the CIA or some other American group collecting such information.  In one case, Cuban Jews stood to benefit from outside contact, in the other they became liable to arrest as spies working for America.  The Cubans seemed to view it in the latter light, no matter what the original intent was.

Interestingly, Raj Shah, the head of USAID, resigned shortly after Gross's release, although everyone claimed there was no connection between the two events.  Shah was also accused of being involved in two other clandestine activities in Cuba, some kind of hip-hop activity and some kind of twitter set up.  The Washington Post article noted above raises the question whether Gross was an unwitting civilian contractor manipulated by USAID.  Of course the other question is whether Gross was really a CIA agent operating under USAID cover, or perhaps under the additional cover or some Jewish organization.

Cuban Relations

It sounds as if the US will restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, according to news reports.  This is something that should have been done years ago.  The terrible Helms-Burton Act denying visas to children with even the slightest connection to Cuba was one of the reasons I left the Foreign Service.

Nevertheless, I am disappointed that it happened the way it has.  It gives the impression that Jews are in control of the United States Government.  The main emphasis of the announcement was the release of Alan Gross, an American Jew, from a Cuban prison, and his return to the United States.  According to the Jerusalem Post, Gross was sent to Cuba to set up a clandestine internet service for Cuban Jews.  Although he is an American, Gross was essentially an Israeli Mossad spy sent to Cuba under American USAID cover.  Interestingly, Gross was released while the US released three Cuban spies, but to cover the Mossad connection, the US said Gross was released on "humanitarian grounds, "not as part of a swap of spies.  Despite the denials, Gross was apparently worth three Cuban spies.

So, we see the Jewish lobby is more powerful than the Cuban lobby, and also more effective than clear-thinking, normal Americans (as opposed to Jewish-Americans, Cuban-Americans, or other hyphenated Americans).  It's sad that Jews and Cubans are both so racist, but in this case the result was the correct one.

Congressional Torture Report

I think that to some extent the Congressional torture report is much ado about nothing.  I haven't read the report, but based on TV and press discussions of it, I don't think that there is much new in it.  It may just be official verification of allegations already made by journalists.  It does accuse the CIA of torture, but I think torture is a vague term.  When I was in Brazil, the military government used to do much worse things to Brazilian dissidents than waterboarding.  I had one American prisoner who was sort of my responsibility since he was a fellow Vietnam veteran, and I went to visit him frequently to discourage the Brazilians from doing anything bad to him.  He was held in the basement of an unmarked house in a very nice neighborhood with other "political prisoners."

But whether something is torture or not, it is probably good for the US to debate whether we want (or should) do it or not.  We are debating this for us, to maintain our integrity, not to coddle the prisoners.

One thing that seems to have come out is that career CIA officers did not want to do these things, waterboarding, etc.  So, the CIA hired some contractors to do it.  The fact that career officers did not want to do it seems to speak well of the CIA, and seems to call into question whether it should have been done.  The other question is whether these tactics worked, whether they got information.  There seems to be a split of opinion on whether they did or not.  It seems to me that this is a question that additional information should help clear up.  How did we learn about Osama bin Laden's courier?  Somebody must know the correct answer.  But it seems like all we get are political answers.