
Blog: Barbara Lee Sends
Message In NewsSpeak
In
the recent, Newsweek article, coauthored by Mark Pocan,“It's Time to
Repeal the President's License for Endless War,” Barbara Lee calls for a
dramatic cut in the $717 billion Pentagon budget. Lee is either urging
Congress to move in a new direction or bolstering Biden’s election bid
with newspeak.
Eugene Stovall
Oakland, California October, 2020
More
Americans have now died from COVID-19 than from the wars in Korea,
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Yet the United States is
poised to continue spending more money on the Pentagon than the next 10
countries combined with some 1 million troops deployed in about 175
countries. In other words, there's no end in sight for our forever
wars. Mark Pocan & Barbara Lee, Newsweek, September, 2020
Barbara
Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against the
post-9/11 She criticizes the blank check Congress gave the White
House to deploy military personnel, assassinate foreign leaders and
overthrow governments around the world. The AUMF sets up a national
socialist economy for the benefit of the war profiteers embedded in the
military industrial complex. With a nearly trillion-dollar war budget,
the US military has caused hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties,
created millions of refugees and destroyed property in the billions of
dollars. In addition, the military industrial complex has stolen
billions in gold bullion and oil from conquered territories. Barbara Lee
says that while America wages its endless wars, homelessness, poverty, a
global pandemic and a climate crisis threatens to destroy the homeland.
Air-To-Air
Sidewinder missiles cost American taxpayers pay $420,000 each for
Air-To-Air missiles. Air-To-Surface missiles cost $31,000 each.
Hellfire missiles cost $76,143 each. Precision-Guided bombs cost
$39,000 each.
Barbara Lee says that the military conducts invasions around the world without congressional oversight or outside public scrutiny. Lee wants Congress to repeal the laws authorizing the use of military force and reclaim its own constitutional authority to declare war. Lee amended the defense appropriations bill to repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMF laws. Her amendment passed the House Appropriations Committee and her amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act passed the full House of Representatives. But her amendments were not even considered by the Senate. Lee says her amendments could frame the debate for a Biden administration to enact stricter war guidelines.
America
has institutionalized white privilege through the process of systemic
racism, which threatens to destabilize the entire society. Yet,
America’s power elite continues to rely on repression, mass
incarceration and domestic surveillance as a means of maintaining white
supremacy while restoring domestic tranquility. The power elite does not
share Barbara Lee’s concerns about America’s endless wars of terror on
non-white populations around the world. The power elite wants to obtain a
similar blank check to terrorize and murder non-white populations
inside the United States. ICE, Homeland Security and local police
departments have already tested the limits of racial profiling, ‘stop
and frisk’ arrests, enhanced interrogations and arbitrary killings in
suppressing civil rights and human rights. But public reaction to
America’s sustained program of racial subjugation has heightened social
instability around the country. The power elite believes that
intensifying its propaganda will allay the growing impact of
homelessness, hunger, sickness and despair that is turning American
cities into powder kegs waiting to explode. Surfeit with a belief in its
own invincibility, the power elite turns a blind eye to the nightmare
that they have created. Instead, they are building multi-billion dollar
sports arenas and heating up the stock market. But the gross injustices,
economic inequities and institutionalized violence which the power
elite has instigated will not disappear.
Increasingly
the president of the United States promotes lawlessness and violence in
defense of white supremacy and white privilege. Defending his nascent
fascist government, he has announced that he will not be bound by any
election result that does not return him to power. So while Lee is
calling for democratic reform, the government continues to behave as if
an authorization to use military force applies domestically as well as
internationally.
A Biden Surrogate
During
WWII, Karol Josef Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was a
young chemist working for the Solvay Chemical Company. In
Nazi-controlled Poland. Poles collaborated with, resisted or were
victims of the Nazis. Collaborators like Karol Wojtyla worked for Polish
companies that supported the death and work camps that the Nazis
installed all over Poland. Solvay Chemical Company had a
contract with I.G. Farben to develop and produce poisonous gas. Karol
Josef Wojtyla fulfilled the contract by producing Zyclon-B, which he
distributed on
behalf of I.G. Farben to the death camps. After the war, Karol Josef
Wojtyla entered a Catholic seminary. Within a year, he was ordained a
priest. In 1958, Bishop Wojtyla became a cardinal. Following the
mysterious death, some say poisoning, of Pope John Paul I, Cardinal
Karol Josef Wojtyla was consecrated Pope John Paul II, the only Polish
pope in Catholic history.
Though
Barbara Lee’s comments are positive and represent the humanistic
approach that millions of Americans hope that a new Democratic
administration might adopt, Joe Biden is a warmonger. Barbara Lee’s
Congressional Black Caucus manipulated the black vote away from anti-war
candidates like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris to
make Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee. Ignoring the fact that Joe
Biden’s political mentors were the arch-racists, James O. Eastland and
Herman Talmadge, the Black Caucus urged black voters to make Biden the
Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
Negro Democrats Play ‘Plantation Politics’
“How we gonna get them down on the farm after they’ve seen Pariee…” Popular post-WWI song expressing concern over black veterans returning from the European War
Despite
Barbara Lee’s call to end the 2001 and 2002 laws authorizing the use of
military force, only 59 Democrats voted against the $717 billion
Pentagon spending bill. Democrats were as supportive of the bloated
defense budget and war profiteering as the Republicans. Barbara Lee was
one of only 13 members of the Congressional Black Caucus opposed to the
Pentagon budget.
Members
of Congressional Black Caucus supporting the $717 Billion Pentagon
Budget were:
Alma Adams (NC); Sanford Bishop (GA); Lisa Blunt Rochester
(DE); Anthony Brown (MD); G.K. Butterfield (NC); Andre Carson (IN); Wm.
Lacy Clay (MO); James Clyburn (SC); Danny Davis (IL); Val Butler Demings
(FL); Dwight Evans (PA); Marcia Fudge (OH); Al Green (TX); Alcee
Hastings (FL); Sheila Jackson Lee (TX); E.B Johnson, ( TX); Robin Kelly
(IL); Brenda Lawrence (FL); Al Lawson (FL); Donald McEachin (VA);
Gregory Meeks (NY); Cedric Richmond (LA); Bobby Rush (IL); David Scott
(GA); Bobby Scott (VA); Terri Sewell (AL); Bennie Thompson (MS); Marc
Veasey (TX)
Members of Congressional
Black Caucus voting against the $717 Billion Pentagon Budget
were:
Karen Bass (CA); Joyce Beatty (OH); Yvette Clarke (NY); Emanuel
Cleaver (MO); Keith Ellison (MN); Hakeem Jeffries (NY); Hank Johnson
(GA); Barbara Lee (CA); Gwen Moore (WI); Donald Payne (NJ); Maxine
Waters (CA); Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ); Frederica Wilson (FL)Only
11 Black Caucus members opposed the Protect and Serve Act, a law
proposed by John Rutherford, a Florida Republican that makes any assault
on a police officer, a hate crime. When the police beat up a citizen,
The Protect And Serve Act will allow the police to charge the victim
with a crime despite evidence to the contrary. The only Congressional
Black Caucus Members opposing the law were:
Karen Bass (CA); Yvette
Clarke (NY); Wm. Lacy Clay (MO); Alcee Hastings (FL); E.B. Johnson (TX);
Barbara Lee (CA); Gwen Moore (WI); Donald Payne (NJ); Bobby Scott (VA);
Maxine Waters (CA); Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ)
In
2014, during the Michael Brown, Ferguson Missouri disturbances, the
Grayson Amendment was introduced to stop the transfer of military
weapons and heavy equipment from the Pentagon to local police
departments. Only 8 Black Caucus members opposed militarizing the
police: John Conyers (MI); Donna Edwards (MD); Keith Ellison (MN); Hank
Johnson (GA); Barbara Lee (CA); John Lewis (GA); Bobby Scott (VA);
Maxine Waters (CA)The
Congressional Black Caucus with its 55 members including two non-voting
members fails to support key black issues. Increasingly, the caucus has
become reactionary supporting legislation like the Phase-in $15 Wage
Act, proposed by black caucus member Terri Sewell. According to the
Economic Policy Institute, Representative Sewell’s bill will force 40
percent of the workforce to earn $10.50 an hour or less beyond 2024.
Sewell crafted her bill to nullify legislation introduced by Sen. Bernie
Sanders and Rep. Bobby Scott to boost the national minimum wage from
$7.25 to $15 an hour by 2024. The Sanders/Scott Raise the Wage Act also
raised the federal minimum wage as the national median income increases.
Yet with the help of other Congressional Black Caucus members, Terri
Sewell passed legislation that would delay wage increases for millions
of low wage Americans all over the country.
Punitive
laws like Sewell’s Phase-in $15 Wage Act demonstrates that the NAACP
and the SCLC not only have a reactionary influence on the Black
political agenda, but is responsible for electing reactionary black
politicians who play plantation politics. If Barbara Lee hopes to repeal
military force laws, she would need the support of her fellow black
representatives. But the reactionary Congressional Black Caucus is as
unlikely to support a reduction in the military budget and a elimination
of laws authorizing military force around the world as Speaker Nancy
Pelosi is to support such legislation. Just as Army Intelligence and the
Ku Klux Klan control the Congressional Black Caucus, the Vatican
controls the Speakers office and the Supreme Court.
“The Squad”
Observers
of Congress call congressional representatives Ilhan Omar, Ayanna
Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib as “The Squad.”
Defiant and unapologetic, the squad voices the aspirations and concerns
of communities that are traditionally unrepresented. These four
progressive Democrats push for diversity, liberalism and progressivism.
They are criticized by mainstream Democrats who want them to observe the
traditions of Congress and mind their place, as do members of the
Congressional Black Caucus.
However
the squad has different values and a different agenda than many of the
members of the Congressional Black Caucus and possibly even Barbara Lee,
herself. Ayanna Pressley broke with tradition when she told her
constituents we don’t need black faces that don’t raise a black voice;
we need black voices to represent black faces. Rashida Tlaib’s “Lift +
Act” bill advances the radical economic principle of a universal
guaranteed income. Ilhan Omar condemned Elliott Abrams, a Trump
official, for supporting Central American death squads in the 1980s.
Though urged by Democrats and Republicans, alike, to stay in her place,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez violated protocol to introduce the Green New
Deal without obtaining party leadership support. All of the squad, along
with some few other Democrats, call for the outright abolition of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] because of its widely
publicized torture and murder of immigrant families and the caging of
their infant children. These congresswomen view their role in Congress
differently than most black congressional representatives. They are
uninterested in cozying up to the leadership for congressional perks and
personal aggrandizement. They recognize that Congress exploits minority
and low-income communities in order to support the wealthy with tax
write offs, bailouts, farm and oil subsidies and guaranteed incomes.