Oh, snap - Oprah is now getting the full Cokely treatment...
Confronted with evidence that one of his longtime aides is a fanatic anti-Semite who regards Christianity as a religion of white racism and the AIDS virus as an attempt by white doctors to kill off blacks, Mayor Sawyer has adopted a posture of magnanimous tolerance.
``He`s indicated to me that he did not mean those things in his heart,``
said Sawyer, who takes solace from his faith: ``I think God forgives.``
Even His mercy may be strained by the behavior of Steve Cokely, a $35,568-a-year ``coordinator of special projects`` for the city. In lectures tape-recorded for followers of Louis Farrakhan`s Nation of Islam, Cokely said that Jews run a global ``secret society`` bent on ruling the world: ``The Jew hopes one day to reign forever.`` The cross, he said, is one of the ``symbols of white supremacy`` that should be ``off limits for people of African heritage.`` The AIDS epidemic ``is a result of doctors, especially Jewish ones, who inject the AIDS virus in blacks.``
But when asked by reporters about these lectures, Cokely suffered an attack of amnesia. He insisted that he doesn`t remember attacking Jews and that he doesn`t believe in ``any uniform Jewish conspiracy.``
The mayor`s press secretary, Monroe Anderson, saw no reason anyone should hold this sort of thing against his boss: ``What Steve Cokely does on his own time, as long as it`s not illegal, is his own business.`` Skeptics may suspect that if Sawyer had a white aide who turned out to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan and ran around town ranting against blacks, the mayor would not be so indulgent.
Ald. Danny Davis likes to portray himself as a model progressive, yet he defended the retention of this neo-Nazi on the grounds that ``he has contacts and relationships that the mayor would not have otherwise.`` Well, let`s hope he wouldn`t.
Fortunately, those are the sorts of contacts and relationships that Mayor Sawyer ought to be able to do without. A mayoral aide who proselytizes for such dangerous lunatic causes is an affront to the groups he slanders and an embarrassment to all Chicago. So is a mayor who tolerates him. If Mayor Sawyer has any conscience or courage, he will fire Steve Cokely without delay. And that means getting him off the public payroll entirely, not just shifting him to a less visible job. A hate-spewing demagogue who panders to other haters and tries to sabotage civic institutions and civic goodwill should not be getting a dime of tax money, whatever his race or religion or ethnic group.
"The AIDS epidemic, he said, is ``a result of doctors, especially Jewish ones, who inject the AIDS virus in the blacks.``"
“He [Irvine California police detective Victor Ray] steered the investigation to Ford’s backyard, where men in Andromeda Strain suits would evacuate a neighborhood and haul away an arsenal of toxins, germs, plastic explosives, and guns. In the process they unearthed a trail that stretched all the way from the CIA to apartheid-era South Africa and Dr. Wouter Basson, the man who ran the country’s clandestine bioweapons program.”
“The question still plaguing federal, state, and local investigators is a simple but urgent one: what was Ford planning to do with his germs and bioweapons expertise? The discovery of militia-movement and racist literature among Ford’s papers has raised the possibility that he offered biological or chemical weapons to terrorist groups. Concerns have also mounted over a patented feature of his Inner Confidence suppository: the microencapsulation of beneficial bacteria. It turns out this architecture could double as an ideal delivery system for bioweapons, allowing otherwise fragile disease organisms to be seeded virtually anywhere. Ford, in essence, had patented the prescription for a perfect microscopic time bomb.”
(“The Medicine Man” by Edward Humes; Los Angeles Magazine; 7/2001; p. 3.)
What Happened in South Africa?
In 1998 South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission held hearings investigating activities of the apartheid-era government. Toward the end of the hearings, the Commission looked into the apartheid regime's Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) program and allegations that it developed a sterility vaccine to use on black South Africans, employed toxic and chemical poison weapons for political asssassination, and in the late 1970s provided anthrax and cholera to Rhodesian troops for use against guerrilla rebels in their war to overthrow Rhodesia's white minority rule.
South Africa's CBW program was headed by Dr. Wouter Basson, a former Special Forces Army Brigadier and personal heart specialist to former President P.W. Botha. Basson ran the CBW program during the 1980s and early 1990s. CBW, also known as Project Coast, was initiated in the early 1980s to provide detection and protection capabilities to the South African Defence Force. However, there was an offensive component to the program and the claims are that CBW's offensive program:
Developed lethal chemical and biological weapons that targeted ANC political leaders and their supporters as well as populations living in the black townships. These weapons included an infertility toxin to secretly sterilize the black population; skin-absorbing poisons that could be applied to the clothing of targets; and poison concealed in products such as chocolates and cigarettes. (Read the interviews with former President F.W. de Klerk, and Dr. Daan Goosen, who worked with Basson in the CBW program.)
Released cholera strains into water sources of certain South African villages and provided anthrax and cholera to the government troops of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the late 1970s to use against the rebel soldiers in the guerrilla war. In 1979 the world's largest outbreak of anthrax took place in Rhodesia where 82 people were killed and thousands became ill. Zimbabwe's current Minister of Health, Dr. Timothy Stamps, has ordered an investigation into whether South Africa was involved in the incident.
South Africa's CBW program underwent drastic changes after F.W. de Klerk became president in the early 1990s. De Klerk appointed General Pierre Steyn to investigate the CBW program and his report, known as the Steyn Report, exposed some of the alleged abuses of the program. De Klerk ordered the firing of numerous CBW scientists and officials and the destruction of all documents pertaining to CBW technology. All of the information was transferred to CD-ROMs to be kept under lock and key by the president. However, the official position of the South African government throughout the 1990s was that the program had been a strictly defensive one.
Basson was pressured to retire and became a consultant who travelled frequently, including trips to Libya which drew attention. Twice during de Klerk's presidency and once during Mandela's, the United States and Britain made démarches to express their concerns about the leaking of knowledge from the CBW program. The South African government re-hired Basson in 1995 in an effort to keep him close and under control. (Read the interview with Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's current Deputy Defense Minister.)
In 1997 Basson was arrested on charges of selling the drug Ecstasy. During the investigation, authorities found CBW documents, which were supposed to have been destroyed, stored in Basson's home. Basson was pressured to come clean with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), but he refused to seek amnesty and delayed testifying until July 1998. He was the TRC's last witness and gave limited testimony. People who worked for Basson, however, did testify and have applied for amnesty and qualified for immunity from prosecution.
Efforts continue on uncovering the truth of what happened in the CBW program. Basson is still employed by the government in the military's medical section and South Africa continues to have a CBW program but says it is strictly defensive. The country is now a member of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.
In the context as quoted by the Chicago Tribune in the orchestrated attack on Cokely by the ADL, the JDL, AIPAC and the rump of the Richard Daly Chicago political machine, May 5th, 1988 :
"The AIDS epidemic, he said, is ``a result of doctors, especially Jewish ones, who inject the AIDS virus in the blacks.``"
And yet still, that was the most damaging quote they could cite from an hour long address to the Nation of Islam in Chicago.
The phrasing is unfortunate and blunt, but quantitatively accurate.
Board certified Certified MDs are seven times more likely to self-identify as Jewish and practicing than the average member of the public.
Jews make up 1.9% of the US general population, but 14.1% of the Medical Profession.
To clarify what the numbers refer to - 14.1% of all American physicians stated their religious faith to be "Jewish"; this does not include atheists, agnostics or convertees of a Jewish disaspora background.
I don't know what the relevant statistics are with regard to the Republic of South Africa on May 5th 1988 - but the reality of Project Coast, the South African ethnics weapons program is an established fact testified to on the record by the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, as is the long and storied history of close cooperation and equal partnership on co-development and co-sponsorship of WMD production programmes and overlapping interests of the two pariah states of Israel and the Republic of South Africa.
There is no smoking gun to directly link the State of Israel and Israeli-sponsored physicians practicing in Sub-Saharan Africa to Project Coast and African Biogenocide;
But that is the ONLY piece of the puzzle not present.
And the only reason the final piece in the puzzle is not present is due solely to the refusal of the former Executive Director of Project Coast to name the State co-sponsor upon direct enquiry, under oath at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
And to be absolutely clear about the ground rules and operational dynamics of the truth and reconciliation commission - anything you admitted to, confirmed or confessed to in the record before the Commission, up to, including and beyond premeditated murder, granted that person automatic lifetime immunity from prosecution, full clemency and amnesty.
So, to be clear - this has nothing to do with burden of proof, regret or absolution.
The aim was to get the full record of the apartheid system and it's functioning indelibly etched into the historic record, first hand and without duress, so that in 100 years from now, Apartheid Denial is impossible, and there is absolutely no cleve and no quarter afforded to revisionism in any measure.
They wanted the confessions. Not vengeance, and sure as shit not justice.
If you refused to appear, or denied past crimes, you took your chances through the courts. Refusal to answer a direct question raised by the Commission in open session was taken as evidence of guilt and deception, answering absolved it.
Project Director Dr Larry Ford elected to endure a 30 month criminal murder trial rather than cooperate and answer the Commission's questions.
"Dr. Wouter Basson, the cardiologist who ran Project Coast, said Dr. Ford twice brought biological samples ''in his pocket.'' They were not dangerous, he said, and ''had no military significance.''
After the fall of apartheid, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission conducted an extensive investigation of Project Coast. In 1998, Project Coast scientists told the commission that they had produced, among other weapons, chocolates and cigarettes infected with anthrax, milk laced with botulism, and enough cholera to cause ''massive outbreaks.''
In a 30-month nonjury trial, the judge, an apartheid-era holdover, dropped six murder charges against Dr. Basson, on the ground that the killings had occurred outside the country. Last spring, Dr. Basson was acquitted of all other charges, including murder conspiracy and drug trafficking.
In a recent interview in South Africa, Dr. Basson said he had invited Dr. Ford to lecture Project Coast scientists in 1987 because the program's Dr. Knobel had described Dr. Ford as an expert on chemical and biological weapons.
''Nothing he could offer was what we could use,'' Dr. Basson said.
Asked why Dr. Ford was later paid through the project's Swiss bank account, Dr. Basson said Dr. Knobel had told him to arrange payments for Dr. Ford's AIDS research. Both officials said they had tried to help Dr. Ford find a South African laboratory for AIDS research.
Ultimately, he was given space in an aerospace medicine laboratory to work on several projects using amniotic fluid collected from thousands of women in South African military hospitals. Why these projects were sponsored by the military, and what became of them, is unclear.
However, a South African military document about AIDS research, found in Dr. Basson's possession by investigators, mentioned ''the acquisition of any relevant C.B.W. literature from Dr. Ford.'' The abbreviation C.B.W. is commonly used to refer to chemical and biological weapons.
Perhaps the deepest fear in the entire affair was that Dr. Ford had been working with anthrax. That trail, too, has run cold.
After Dr. Ford's suicide, the police got tips that he had buried anthrax in a gold mine. They searched fruitlessly in California. Four months later, documents in a Nevada trash dump showed that Dr. Ford had been in touch with people involved in antitax and antigovernment groups. Some of them had tried to use bacteria to extract gold from dirt.
In December 2000, investigators searched a derelict gold milling site outside Henderson, Nev. They found a separator funnel, a white liquid and Dr. Ford's business card. A federal agent said they also found directions for making chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax. But that was all. The site's proprietor had recently died of unrelated causes.
As for the attempted murder case, the gunman remains unknown. The getaway driver, an accountant and friend of Dr. Ford's named Dino D'Saachs, was sentenced to 26 years to life after refusing to identify the shooter in return for leniency.
Mr. Riley, who has recovered but for a faint scar, says he never suspected Dr. Ford. He has rebuilt the company the two of them ran, and he has made a settlement with Dr. Ford's wife, Diane. She has refused requests for interviews.
Even the doctor's suicide notes, scratched out while he was conferring with his lawyer on the last day of his life, offered no clues.
Dr. Ford promised to meet his wife and three children in heaven. ''I was set up by evil,'' he wrote. ''Fear not. I will be with you forever.'' "
Prior to May 3rd 1988, Steve Cokely had time and again won ringing endorsement both from Chicago Rabbis and other Community organisers and leaders in the Jewish community.
His job was the Community Liason Officer for the Office of the Mayor of Chicago - the most sharply decided and segregated urban community in America, bar none.
The act which placed him on death watch was NOT an act or remark either involving or making reference to the People of the Exodus or members of the Jewish Religion - what triggered the ADL onslaught and his public firing on live television was his refusal to organise City events commemerating Columbus Day in the Black Community in the South Side of Chicago, and his issuance of a press release in the form if a statement outlining his reasons.
In October of 1987, due solely to the actions and consciousness-raising efforts of Steve Cokely acting as Mayor Harold Washington's Community Liason, for the first time since the founding of Chicago, the black community of Chicago did not acquiesce to pay tribute to the Italians of the City, as they symbolically had in every year previously, opting not to recognise the presumed superiority of the Italian Community in the City via an act of submission.
They did not acceptor agree to the claim of the historic achievements and legacy of Christopher Columbus and his heirs by honouring the holiday.
They began to organise Black History Day (now black history month) as an alternative holiday and point of historical teaching - that's the origin of Black History Month.
Cokely got blacks in Chicago to stop deferring to the Italians - through truth-telling and scholarship.
And the moment he did so, he tipped the balance of the formula:
Intention + Capability = Threat
and the ADL forced Mayor Sawyer to fire Steve Cokely on live television, with the prosecutor who jailed the killers of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark standing at his right arm when he did so.
And only the Nation of Islam and Congressman Gus Savage stood by the truth if his research.
And the involvement of NoI enabled the ADL to portray Cokely's position as Anti-Semitic; it wasn't. It was anti- Apartheid and Anti- Mafia; anti- exploitation.
He didn't understand the nature of the attack, and he didn't realise what was happening to him in 1988, because the mechanism of the attack and the metrics of it remained hidden.
Like Brando, his poor choice of words allowed for his remarks to be misconstrued; what is relevant is not the fact that the perpetrators were disproportionately of the Jewish religion by a factor of 7 times, what was relevant was that they were OATHTAKERS, and have a Secret Loyalty, a HIGHER loyalty than to their own or other communities.
Lawyers, for example, take an Oath to Defend the Constitution - the piece of paper that says that a negro is worth 3/5ths of a White Man, that is their highest loyalty.
All medical doctors, be they of the Jewish religion or not, swear the Hippocratic Oath upon entry to the profession - this is their highest loyalty, eclipsing all others, and as of 2006, their highest loyalty is to the following concepts:
"At the time of being admitted as a member of the medical profession:
I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity;
I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude that is their due;
I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity;
The health of my patient will be my first consideration;
I will respect the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died;
I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honour and the noble traditions of the medical profession;
My colleagues will be my sisters and brothers;
I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient;
I will maintain the utmost respect for human life;
I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat;
I make these promises solemnly, freely and upon my honour."
Now: let's pair two otherwise divided loyalties; -
"I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity;
The health of my patient will be my first consideration;"
No mention of PRESERVING health - or life - just servicing the needs of the the greater good termed humanity.
The other concept never ONCE referenced is "The Individual".
This oath, therefore, grants license to those pledged to it, to euthanise, chemically castrate, sterilise, tranquilise, medicate and/or lobotomise patients under their care in service to humanity.
That's exactly what it says and that's exactly what it's intended, and very carefully structured to say, and this is what the medical profession is committed to, above any other thing in life.
Even Zionist Jewish Israeli Doctors of the Jewish Religion, whether on or off of the Mossad payroll commit to this - they may swear to defend the Jewish even at the cost of their own life; but their higher loyalty even to the survival of the Jewish State and the Jewish People is the service of "humanity, before setting about anything else.
Other things never mentioned in this oath:
Healing,
Cure,
Wellness,
Aid,
Care,
Salve,
Balm,
Sickness,
Disease,
Infection,
Affliction.
Now consider Magic Johnson, in relation to claimed HIV Status.
If Magic Johnson is indeed HIV+, and is infected and afflicted with the virus that will result in disease and sickness;
No one is committed in any aspect of his care to curing him, or purging his body of the infection.
They are committed to maintaining his best-achievable level of health, and respecting the fact that he is still alive;
There is no attempt being mounted to heal previous injuries to his system or make him well; the desired outcome is that he remains healthy, diseased, infected, alive, and under the best care available to maintain that condition indefinitely.
That's why Magic Johnson hasn't died; that's why AIDS will not be cured.
Something about the Steve Cokely affair is puzzling to me.
It`s not that I find his bigoted invective surprising. It`s not that I`m offended by the lunacy of accusing Jewish doctors of injecting the AIDS virus into black schoolchildren. It`s not that Cokely maliciously slandered the late Mayor Harold Washington when he accused him of consulting Jewish advisers.
The puzzlement is that apparently Cokely has a constituency in the black community-or at least Mayor Eugene Sawyer and some aldermen perceive that he does.
One of Sawyer`s aides was quoted as saying the mayor is ``afraid of a revolt in the black community`` if he fires Cokely. And Ald. Robert Shaw (9th) said he has ``gotten a lot of calls from people in the community, and they`ve all been from folks who certainly seem to be pro-Steve Cokely.``
Even Ald. Danny Davis (29th), a reasonable man by all conventional standards, acknowledges that while Cokely`s statements ``are what one might call extremist,`` Cokely gives the mayor an important link to the ``black activist community.``
This is the same point at which I became confused when supporting Mayor Washington. During his last primary, he spoke to a Sunday morning meeting at K.A.M. Isaiah Israel, a liberal, activist Jewish congregation that counts among its members Ald. Lawrence Bloom (5th) and city planning commissioner Elizabeth Hollander. Much of Washington`s early support came from this Hyde Park Jewish community.
The meeting generally was hospitable, even affectionate. But the one sour note came when a member of the congregation, who lives across the street from Louis Farrakhan, again asked Mayor Washington why he wouldn`t denounce the Nation of Islam minister who dubbed Judaism a gutter religion. Washington mumbled (something he rarely did) that he was mayor of all Chicago, and not in the business of denouncing anyone.
His position hurt me then, and I find Sawyer`s reluctance to dismiss Cokely equally painful.
If Harold Washington and Eugene Sawyer and Danny Davis think there`s a
``black activist`` community whose support they cherish, then Chicago has more racial problems than I thought.
What kind of black activist community thinks it`s okay to spew anti-Semitic invective, to preach religious hatred, to criticize black leaders who have Jews among their advisers?
I became politically aware in the days when a black activist was someone who refused to ride on the back of the bus, who integrated lunch counters, who demanded jobs and equal opportunities for all.
I marched with my black friends in the university when they demanded a program of Afro-American studies, a meeting place for black students, more black faculty and more black admissions.
None of those black activists felt the need to make hate a part of their message of black empowerment.
Many in the Jewish community spoke out early and passionately when the civil rights movement was young. Perhaps the time has come for our black friends to support us, to show their leaders that they can succeed without the support of the haters.
