Dennis King

Foxman's double standard undermines fight against Farrakhan

• AUGUST 6, 2005

(Part Six on ADL director Foxman and the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance)

If one goes to the ADL home page, one will find (as of Aug. 10) a prominently displayed link with the title "African-American Leaders Urged to Reconsider Support for the 'Millions More Movement.''' Click on this priority item and one can read the ADL's May 2 press release on Louis Farrakhan's planned 10th anniversary commemoration of the Million Man March, to be held Oct.14-16 in Washington DC.

The statement begins: "Saddened and disheartened by their possible involvement in the 'Millions More Movement', the Anti-Defamation League is urging prominent African-American leaders to reconsider their support for the march and its anti-Semitic organizers, Minister Louis Farrakhan and Malik Zulu Shabazz."

The press release says that the ADL had sent letters to over 30 prominent black leaders, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Rev. Floyd Flake and U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, expressing the watchdog agency's concern that the involvement of Farrakhan and Shabazz would "taint the proceeding with the baggage of anti-Semitism and hate."

ADL national director Abe Foxman is quoted as saying, "We cannot understand why good people continue to tolerate this outrage of anti-Semitic views and behavior. It seems there is a line of denial--indeed a blind spot among many--within the African-American community when it comes to anti-Semitism."

All this is accurate enough and needed to be said. But if one searches the ADL home page and indeed the entire ADL website, one finds no press release indicating that a similar letter has been sent to prominent white political leaders, either Jewish or gentile, who are involved with the Independence Party led by Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani.

Pardon me, but is there a racial double standard here? Newman and Fulani may not be able to draw the types of crowds that Farrakhan does. But they have built a powerful political machine in New York that has made them extremely influential, and they have friends in high places to a degree that Farrakhan will never have.

It is high time that the ADL supplement its public appeal to African-American leaders regarding the Farrakhan rally with an equally public appeal, re Newman and Fulani, to:

* Hungarian-American leader George Pataki (Governor of New York);

* Italian-American leader Joe Bruno (New York State Senate Majority leader);

* Lebanese-American leader Jeanine Ferris Pirro (Westchester County District Attorney); and

* Jewish-American leaders Michael Bloomberg (Mayor of New York), Chuck Schumer (senior U.S. Senator from New York) and Eliot Spitzer (New York State Attorney General).

The ADL has challenged Black leaders by name to distance themselves from the Farrakhan rally, but has issued no public criticism of white leaders who appear at public functions of the Newman-Fulani cult to praise its goals--and who steer millions of dollars in public and private funds to its political and charitable fronts. It would appear that if the ADL raises this issue at all, it is through unctuous private communications like Foxman's April 20 letter to Bloomberg that carefully avoid giving offense on any level. (You can read Foxman's letter at http://www.lyndonlarouchewatch.org/pdf/foxman.pdf.)

And why, especially, are Bloomberg, Schumer and Spitzer let off the hook? Is the ADL going to justify itself with the old chestnut that it doesn't believe in criticizing "co-religionists"? Don't even try it, Abe. It's too well known in the Jewish community that you have a double standard towards your fellow Jews, attacking those you want to attack (including those who criticized your role as the pardon pimp for Marc Rich) and showering compliments on those you hope to get big donations from.

As to public criticism of Jewish individuals by the ADL as an organization, the watchdog group's website contains strong (and to my mind, fully justified) attacks on leftwing Israel-bashers Noam Chomsky and Adam Shapiro. This type of criticism has long been ADL policy. For instance, the ADL's 1995 report on the Newman-Fulani group ("A Cult By Any Other Name") points out that Newman is Jewish yet blasts him for his anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements and for functioning as a power-hungry cult leader. As late as January 2004, an ADL press release criticized Newman's play "Crown Heights" as anti-Semitic for its portrayal of a scenario in which Jews are blamed for starting the 1991 pogrom.

So, why not criticize Michael Bloomberg? He doesn't make anti-Semitic statements or write anti-Semitic plays but he arranged for Newman and Fulani, whom he knows damn well are hate-mongers, to get an $8.7 million municipal bond to purchase and renovate the theater where they produced their infamous play--and he even gave them $50,000 out of his pocket via the Carnegie Foundation for their theater arts program. Then, when he found out that his and the city's resources had been used to insult and smear his co-religionists, he not only failed to pull the plug on Newman and Fulani's operation but also gave them an additional $250,000 for their so-called Independence Party (and lied about it to the Jewish community and the general public by calling the IP a "centrist" force).

If Newman is the anti-Semite, both as agitator and playwright, Mayor Bloomberg is his enabler--and deserves harsh, public, and unremitting criticism on this point (as indeed he has received from the New York Post and others while Foxman remains silent).

The first line of defense of the American Jewish community since World War Two has been its ability to appeal to the large majority of the American people who believe that overt expressions of anti-Semitism are morally wrong. But to retain and extend that majority, especially among segments of the population where anti-Semitic sentiments linger to a larger than average extent, it is important that the ADL--the best-known of all the major Jewish organizations--maintain a consistent moral position. It is not enough to condemn anti-Semitism at one end of the political spectrum while letting those at the other end off the hook. It is not enough to call on black leaders to repudiate a Jew-hater in their midst but to remain silent about white leaders who cozy up to the likes of Newman and Fulani.

Foxman's double standard regarding our billionaire mayor's pet bigots can only end up furnishing black leaders with an excuse (of sorts) to ignore his plea regarding the "Millions More Movement." Fortunately the ADL leader does not speak for the Jewish community as a whole. Certain other Jewish organizations have maintained a somewhat more consistent moral standard over the years. But any recipient of Foxman's May 2 letter who is still musing over how much support they should give to the Millions More Movement are not likely to see this larger picture--it is the ADL, not the other major Jewish organizations, that threw the stone from inside its glass house.

Mr. Foxman, if you want Jesse Jackson and other black leaders to do the right thing and boycott or at least downgrade their role in Farrakhan's rally, it is incumbent on you to do everything in your power to get Michael Bloomberg, George Pataki and other white politicians in New York to also do the right thing--by severing their ties with Newman and Fulani's Independence Party.

From Marc Rich to Mike Bloomberg: Foxman's addiction to billionaires

AUGUST 5, 2005

(Part Five on ADL director Foxman and the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance)

The ADL's role in running political interference for the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance is best understood as reflecting Abe Foxman's longstanding focus on opportunistic fund-raising rather than any kind of principled fight against anti-Semitism. In this context, Foxman's artful effort on behalf of New York's billionaire Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, bears comparison with his role in winning a presidential pardon for billionaire tax cheat Marc Rich in 2001. The pardon, which was signed by Bill Clinton on his last day in office at the request of Foxman, triggered a storm of Congressional and media protest.

Advocates for convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence while spies for America's enemies have usually received much lighter sentences, charged that Foxman had sold out Pollard (by presenting the Rich pardon to Clinton as an easy choice that would be a favor to the ADL and would enable the President to avoid making a decision on the much more controversial Pollard case). Rich, a fugitive living in Switzerland, paid back Foxman by making donations totalling $250,000 to the ADL.

Some in the Jewish community called for Foxman to be fired, but there was no one to do the deed--he had already purged his critics from the ADL regional directorships and the ADL national commission.

After the initial public outrage over his role in the pardon had died down, Foxman said of the incident to Forward reporter Rachel Donadio,"I'm not 100% sure that it's so terrible as it's made out to be." Donadio wrote that when she asked Foxman if the ADL would accept money from Rich in the future, he refused to comment.

Meanwhile Mr. Rich, a sociopathic swindler with no loyalty to the United States or Israel, went on to help the Saddam Hussein regime manipulate the UN's oil-for-food program, generating cash that U.S. investigators believe was used in part to reward the families of intifada suicide bombers. He is now, again, under federal investigation.

Next there was the ADL dinner Foxman organized for Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media billionaire turned prime minister, at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel in September 2003. Three weeks before the dinner, Berlusconi indiscreetly praised fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Hitler's closest ally in World War Two, saying that "Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people away on vacation, in internal exile."

When challenged on this, Berlusconi (whose 1994 government had been the first since Mussolini's day to include former fascists, and whose current government has included them on its highest levels since 2001) said that he had merely meant to say that Il Duce was not in the same league with Saddam Hussein.

This excuse was absurd on the face of it: If you add up all the people Mussolini's regime slaughtered in Libya during two decades of colonial genocide; Ethiopia, where his pilots used poison gas Chemical Ali-style during the infamous invasion of 1935-36; Spain, where his troops fought for Franco; Russia, where Italian divisions participated in the 1941 Nazi invasion; Albania, which Italy grabbed in 1939; and Greece, invaded in 1940--plus all the Italians who died during the Allied invasion and later at the hands of German occupiers--Mussolini was without a doubt a Hussein-class murderer if not quite in Hitler or Stalin's Superbowl category.

The Italian Jewish community was especially appalled by Berlusconi's statement because of the 7,000 Italian Jews deported as a result of Il Duce's policies to "vacations" in Hitler's death camps. The Forward (Sept. 26, 2003) quoted Tullia Zevi, past president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities: "I suggested that he [Foxman] postpone it [the dinner]. To celebrate a man who has said such things is insulting the memory of these people who suffered under these times."

Foxman not only went ahead with the dinner (having induced not-quite-billionaire Leonard Riggio of Barnes & Noble to chair it) but also rewarded Berlusconi with the ADL's "Distinguished Statesman" award. The ADL director justified this by saying Berlusconi was more friendly to Israel than were other European leaders. (Note: Abe Foxman is not the foreign minister of Israel; he is the director of an American nonprofit with the purported mission of combating extremists--including hate groups and Holocaust deniers who doubtless applauded Berlusconi's remarks. Foxman had no business organizing the Berlusconi dinner in the first place, and once the Italian leader's offensive remarks were made public, the ADL should have canceled the event because of the conflict of interest it created with the ADL's primary mission.)

A fitting footnote to Berlusconi's receipt of the ADL distinguished statesman award was his appointment of Gianfranco Fini, leader of the former fascist National Alliance, as his foreign minister in 2004. This is the same Fini who claimed in 1994 that Mussolini was "the greatest statesman of the 20th century."

Now we see a replay of the Rich scandal and the Berlusconi embarrassment in Foxman's attempts to be useful to Mayor Bloomberg.  To suggest what may be motivating Foxman, we quote from a New York Post article ("Sweet Charity: Mayor Mike plans to offload media empire," Jan. 11, 2005):

Mayor Michael Bloomberg may be getting ready to sell his financial information giant to fund a mammoth philanthropic effort after he quits public office.

Bloomberg L.P.--the media and financial information company that is the source of much of his wealth--will be sold to finance the charitable binge, he said recently....

Bloomberg said he views the charitable giving of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and wife Melinda as a model he'd like to emulate.

"I've watched the Gateses. Some of my priorities aren't exactly the same as theirs, but they've really gotten involved in philanthropy on a scale the world has never seen before."

Is it any surprise that Foxman wrote to Bloomberg in April to tell him he was the "best of the best" and to offer, in effect, to go to bat for the mayor at a moment when the latter was under attack for his close involvement with the anti-Semitic Newman-Fulani organization? In the months since then, the ADL has avoided any criticism of the mayor's Independence Party ties whatsoever, either direct or indirect, and has fallen into line with the mayor's campaign spin doctors to suggest that Fulani is only one person in a party of basically good people.

The ADL has thus become complicit in the Bloomberg-IP alliance--a sordid deal that has bestowed great political influence on Newman and Fulani as well as providing them with the financial resources to indoctrinate New York's kids on a significant scale (Newman and Fulani leveraged their $8.7 million All Stars loan from the Bloomberg administration into tens of millions of dollars in private donations).

The loan to All Stars could have been easily stopped in 2002 if the ADL leadership had been on its toes and Foxman had himself gone to public hearings of the city's Industrial Development Agency to denounce the proposal. But Foxman, whose organization receives roughly $40 million a year from Jews who expect it to handle this type of problem, ignored the All Stars bond proposal even after the media warned of its provisional (first stage) approval in December 2001.

Although it is true than no other major Jewish organization stepped into the breach at that time, some of these groups are now trying to force the mayor to sever his ties to the Independence Party, All Stars and the entire Newman-Fulani network.

The ADL, however, is playing no visible role in such efforts. Clearly it needs a new national director who will reorder its priorities away from begging money from billionaires and back to its original mission of waging a principled fight against bigotry and extremism.

Others speak out strongly--why doesn't the ADL?

AUGUST 4, 2005

(Part Four on ADL director Foxman and the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance)

The ADL's opportunistic role in the public controversy over Mayor Bloomberg's alliance with the Newman-Fulani cult is very different from that of certain other major Jewish organizations and of most of the media. For instance, contrast Foxman's servile (and at the time, private) letter to the mayor on April 20 (http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/pdf/foxman.pdf) with the strong public statement the American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued on April 14, the day after Fulani's appearance on NY1 News.

The American Jewish Committee today called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to denounce anti-Semitic remarks made by Lenora Fulani; to refrain from raising more funds for her enterprises; and to reject association with the Independence Party.... (emphasis added)

Also contrast Foxman's letter with the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) press release issued on April 20:

The Metropolitan region of the American Jewish Congress called upon public officers of all political parties to do more than merely distance themselves from statements made by...Lenora Fulani, but to demand her resignation or withdraw their own affiliations with the party. (emphasis added)

This press release went on to quote Jeff Wiesenfeld, co-President of the AJ Congress Met Region:

Fulani and her cohort Fred Newman ought to be thrown out of the party and not given a home, especially one where mainstream public leaders like Governor George Pataki, Senator Charles Schumer, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer or Mayor Michael Bloomberg lend them any bit of credibility. (emphasis added)

There is no talk here of the mayor's "principled position," but rather a clear understanding that the Mayor and other politicians are part of the problem--and that Bloomberg, Pataki, Spitzer & Co. should not just denounce Fulani's statements but break with the Independence Party that she and Newman control. (The AJC, which has been tracking the problem more closely, added that the politicians should "refrain from raising more funds" for Newman and Fulani's "enterprises"--a reference to their highly politicized youth charity, the All Stars Project.)

The ADL's position also stands in sharp contrast to what most of the New York media has been saying about the mayor's relationship with Fulani and the Independence Party. Indeed, in the wake of Fulani's now infamous remarks on NY1 News on April 13, virtually the entire media rejected the mayor's pro forma criticism of Fulani as inadequate and self-serving.

A New York Sun editorial ("Bloomberg's Soul," April 15, 2005) noted the confused and weak statements that the Mayor and his aides made on the day after Fulani's NY1 interview and pointed out that Fulani's sentiments "are not the sort of thing the mayor, or any mayoral candidate, can dodge without people starting to mutter about what price he has paid, beyond the millions he has already spent, to get the mayoralty he has wanted so much."

The New York Post in a April 16 editorial scornfully entitled "Profiles in Cowardice," stated: "It's time for New York's political establishment--led by Mayor Bloomberg--to sever all ties to the anti-Semitic hatemonger Lenora Fulani." The Post went on to criticize the state's top politicians for their unwillingness to break "all ties to her and her party." (emphasis added) It then zeroed in on the mayor with deadly effect: "Yesterday, having had 24 hours to think about it, the mayor decided Fulani's remarks were 'phenomenally offensive.' But offensive enough to repudiate her support--as he'd threatened after 9/11 (but never followed through on)? Not yet."

And a New York Times editorial (April 17) pointed out that "a lot of politicians who should know better--Senator Charles Schumer, Gov. George Pataki, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg--kowtow to groups like Dr. Fulani's so that they can have their names on the party's ballot line." The Times noted that "although he [Mayor Bloomberg] calls Dr. Fulani's remarks on Israel 'phenomenally offensive,' he plans to ask for her party's support in this year's mayoral race." The editorial ends by advising New York politicians to "stop bowing and scraping to the likes of Dr. Fulani."

Michael Goodwin wrote in the Daily News on April 17: "By refusing to sever his ties with Fulani, a classic anti-Semite wrapped in the guise of an activist, Bloomberg has put his reelection bid ahead of all else. You can't get any more political than that." And: "Bloomberg likes to say he doesn't need the job, that he would rather lose than compromise principle. Apparently what he means is that he can't be bought because he's rich. But Fulani seems to have found his price."

New York Sun columnist Andrew Wolf wrote on April 19:

The headlines and editorials will not and should not stop until our political elite realizes that the price of supporting Ms. Fulani and her party is greater than the benefit. It is not just Mr. Bloomberg who needs to re-evaluate his involvement with this crew. Governor Pataki, Senator Schumer, and Attorney General Spitzer have also been similarly compromised. It is time for them to just say no.

New York Post columnist Eric Fettmann wrote on April 21:

Sure, there were pro forma denunciations of her statement [Fulani's "mass murderers" quip]...by Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Pataki, Sen. Chuck Schumer--the politicians who for years have enthusiastically courted her support. But not one of those top officials washed his hands of her--or of the Independence Party, which she controls. This despite the fact that Fulani--and her mentor, Fred Newman--have a record of such hate-filled rhetoric going back decades.

Pointing out how both Schumer and Bloomberg had spoken at annual fundraisers of Fulani's All Stars, Fettmann concluded that "all this just boggles the mind."

And how about when Bloomberg accepted the endorsement of Fulani's party the following month? While Foxman remained silent, the media did not. For instance, a Post editorial on May 28 called the mayor's excuse that Fulani is only one out of 90,000 IP members "utterly cynical nonsense." And: "Sure, he [the mayor] denounces her [Fulani's] odious remarks, though only after giving the matter some careful thought. But then he cuddles up to her just the same."

If you go to the ADL web site (as of August 1) and type in the name Fulani on the search line, the only thing that pops up is an ADL press release regarding the 2004 All Stars play that blamed the Crown Heights pogrom on the Jews (a press release that conveniently forgets to mention that the theater had been built with city money provided by Mayor Bloomberg and that the theater arts program had been given $50,000 out of the mayor's own pocket). On the controversy over Fulani's NY1 appearance in April when she reaffirmed her belief that Jews are "mass murderers of people of color"--nothing. On the controversy over the mayor accepting her party's endorsement in late May--nothing.

An anti-Semitic cult has become one of the most powerful forces in New York politics--courted by the mayor, the governor, the state attorney general, the state senate majority leader, the state's senior U.S. senator, several members of the state's congressional delegation, and dozens of state and local legislators. The center of the cult's power is in New York City, which has the largest concentration of Jews anywhere in the world outside of Israel. The cult has infiltrated children's charities, high school counseling programs, and now the city's after-school programs. It has a systematic plan to recruit New York's young people through its "social therapy" and to indoctrinate them with its bigotry and its totalitarian ideology.

And where is Abe Foxman? Scheming how to get a fat check for his fundraising drive from the mayor responsible for this mess....

Next: Foxman's fascination with billionaires.

Nonsense from Foxman aide re the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance

AUGUST 3, 2005

(Part Three on ADL director Foxman and the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance)

One could argue that Foxman's April 20 letter to Mayor Bloomberg--written over a month before the mayor accepted the endorsement of an unrepentant Independence Party--was a misguided attempt to entice the mayor away from the IP with honey. But this interpretation of the letter is refuted not only by Foxman's silence over Bloomberg's post-April actions, but also by remarks of the ADL's New York regional director, Joel Levy, as quoted in the July 11, 2005 New York Observer.

"I think that the Independence Party needs to itself reject the unacceptable views of Lenora Fulani," Levy said. "People in any political party have a responsibility to be sure that its leaders stand for views that they support. And I believe that the Independence Party membership doesn't support anti-Semitism."

Here we see the same false distinction between Fulani and the rest of the IP--the same preposterous assumption that the hundreds of Newmanite cadre members in the IP are a mere cipher--that has become the mantra of the Bloomberg reelection campaign.

Fulani herself appeared to give the lie to Levy's version of the mantra by telling the Observer that (in the Observer reporter's words) "none of her Independence Party colleagues have pressed her to withdraw her inflammatory comments, despite the potential for collateral damage to the party."

Is Fulani telling the truth on this? The Observer talked to her almost three months after her remarks on NY1 News, a period during which one would think that any nominal independents on the IP state committee or county committees--i.e., those who are "useful idiots" of the Newman cult rather than actual members--would have had ample time to search their consciences and rachet up a little courage. The fact that no visible signs of outrage have come from anywhere in the IP except from tiny bands of dissidents with no capacity to influence party decisions, suggests that this is a deeply tainted organization--not the "voice of the growing centrist movement in New York politics" that Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey called it last April, and not the benign, non-bigoted agglomeration implied by the ADL's Levy in July.

One could argue that Levy, in referring to the "responsibility" of IP members to reign in their leaders, was referring not so much to the active IP membership as to the mass of IP enrolled voters. But this would make his comments even more dishonest: The party's enrolled voters (320,000 statewide) are not responsible for the present mess; the political leaders of our city and state--who allowed themselves to be seduced by the Newman-Fulani controlled IP ballot line--are the people who created the Frankenstein monster and have the duty to slay it. It was money from Governor Pataki in 2002 and from the mayor over the past four years that financed the deceptive voter registration efforts resulting in the IP's current bloated voter rolls. And both the governor and the mayor directly participated in the deception by portraying the IP as a moderate or "centrist" political organization.

And even assuming the hapless IP enrollees would listen to Levy's lecture about their "responsibility," what could they do? They have no relationship to the party organization and no practical means of expressing their disagreement except through changing their party registration. I suggested in my open letter to Mayor Bloomberg last month ("Mr. Mayor, Tear Down That Wall!") that he put resources into mailings to the IP voter rolls to inform them of the true nature of the party leadership and to urge them to vote for him on another line (http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/wall.htm). I detect no evidence that the mayor took this advice. Likewise, I see no indications that the mayor, the ADL or anyone else with clout who purports to be phenomenally offended by Ms. Fulani's April 13 remarks is beating down the doors of the tiny network of principled IP dissidents around Michael Zumbluskas to provide them with resources to wage a meaningful fight.

Given these considerations, Levy's suggestion that IP enrolled voters have the prime "responsibility" for fighting the IP leadership's bigotry is merely an attempt to avoid, at all costs, offending the real guilty parties, and especially Mayor Bloomberg.

As to the real problem inside the IP, the ADL knows full well that it's not only Fulani as an individual, but also the Independence Party cadre organization, or cult, led by Fred Newman which has moved step by step since the 1990s to gain dominance over the so-called independent political movement in New York.

How do I know that the ADL knows this? Just read the watchdog group's 1995 report on Newman and Fulani, "A Cult By Any Other Name: The New Alliance Party Dismantled and Reincarnated." (As of August 1, 2005, the ADL did not provide access to this report from its home page or its search button--possibly as a favor to the mayor--but you can find it at http://www.adl.org/special_reports/nap.asp.)

In the report's Executive Summary, the ADL clearly defines the cadre organization that now runs the Independence Party as a "vehicle used by its behind-the-scenes leader, Dr. Fred Newman, to achieve power." Not Fulani, but Newman. Not a conglomeration of non-bigoted individuals waiting for the ADL to tell them to repudiate Fulani, but a vehicle--indeed, a political "cult"--headed by a man who, along with his acolyte Fulani, has peppered his writings and speeches with "Jew-baiting remarks."

The 29-page report describes in detail how Newman and his followers had disbanded their previous electoral front, the openly pro-revolution New Alliance Party, and were operating as a disciplined force using "deceptive tactics" in an attempt to gain control of the independent political movement inspired by H. Ross Perot. The report speaks of the Newman group's success in infiltrating Perot's Patriot Party nationally at a time when the Newmanites were already playing an important role in the New York Independence Party, the vehicle for Patriot Party style activities in our state. The report is replete with terms like "co-opt," "hijack" and "power-hungry group," and it asks: "Will it [the Newman group] succeed in dominating the Patriot Party, and does it have even larger targets in mind...?" [emphasis added}

The copyright on the report is 2001, which indicates that the ADL believed the Newman group had not changed its conspiratorial and anti-Semitic nature between 1995 and 2001. By the latter year, Newman and Fulani had in fact gained dominance over the IP and were deeply involved in supporting Michael Bloomberg's initial run for mayor.

Consider the contrast between this report and what Levy told the Observer. Are we expected to believe that the Newman "cult" (as the ADL called it in the 2001-copyrighted report) has magically changed in only four years and is now like a family of nice, sincere, tolerant people saddled with a single bigoted relative? Let's see...

* Has Fred Newman (he who once called the "Jews as a people" the worldwide "stormtroopers of decadent capitalism against people of color") changed? In 2004, his All Stars theater put on a play he wrote blaming the Crown Heights pogrom on the Jews.

* Has Jacqueline Salit (head of the IP's think tank and a frequent spokesperson for the IP itself) changed? In 2003 she sent a letter to the Forward (after the Jewish weekly published an article that quoted Fulani's 1989 "mass murderers" statement as an example of the Newman group's extremism). In her letter Salit said almost exactly what Fulani would say on NY1 in 2005--that it's not anti-Semitic to call Jews "mass murderers of people of color." And last April, a New York Times article described Salit as saying, re Fulani's NY1 performance, "that Dr. Fulani is not anti-Semitic and that those who are trying to exploit what she has said are doing so for political gain."

*  Has Cathy Stewart, the chairperson of the IP's powerful New York County organization, changed? On April 17, 2005 she sent a letter to the Times (in reply to an editorial that had criticized Fulani's April 13 remarks) asking: "What are we to make of the Times' histrionics about both the Independence Party and Lenora Fulani? That New York should be content to have only two political parties and only one political position on the Middle East?"

If the Newman cult has changed, so that Fulani now only speaks as an individual, wouldn't cult members and leaders have announced it to the world? Wouldn't they have hastened to tell Fulani to zip up her mouth instead of making excuses for her? And when has any cult or extremist group turned around and renounced the fundamental principles of its own leader (which renouncing Newman's anti-Semitism would certainly amount to) unless it first engaged in a dramatic internal struggle that the media would surely hear about?

As to Levy and Foxman, is it possible that they haven't even read their own organization's report on the Newmanites? How can these ADL leaders, who solicit millions of dollars a year from the Jewish community promising to keep it safe from anti-Semitism, justify their failure to speak out forcefully and truthfully (with no political "spin") against Mayor Bloomberg's alliance with a group that the ADL's own fact-finding department defines as a power-hungry anti-Semitic cult?

Deconstructing the Foxman letter

AUGUST 2, 2005

(Part Two on ADL director Foxman and the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance)

ADL national director Abraham H. Foxman's April 20, 2005 letter giving the mayor a clean bill of health regarding his alliance with Lenora Fulani's Independence Party can only be described as a travesty of the ADL's fight against anti-Semitism. A page-image of the letter can be found on my website at http://www.lyndonlarouchewatch.org/pdf/foxman.pdf. Here is an annotated version, sentence by sentence:

"Dear Mayor Bloomberg: Time Magazine may think there are five "best" mayors, but we know that, through your creative leadership, you have shown you are the "best of the best." You and your NYC2012 Olympic team certainly showed that creativity in Berlin. It would be great for the City to host the Olympic Games. I hope the IOC will see it your way."

COMMENT: Foxman shows how eager he is to help Mayor Bloomberg get reelected, while avoiding the kind of direct endorsement that would place the ADL in clear violation of its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. This suck-up paragraph contrasts sharply with Foxman's response to pleas in past years that the ADL speak out strongly against anti-Semitic electoral candidates such as David Duke and Patrick Buchanan. When defense of Jews is needed, 501(c)(3) is the ADL director's great excuse to do nothing. When an opportunity presents itself to gain a fund-raising advantage with a billionaire politician, 501(c)(3) is out the window.

"I also want to share with you a brief observation about your principled position on the anti-Semitic statements of Lenora Fulani."

COMMENT: What "principled position"? Bloomberg has a four-year history of pretending to criticize Fulani's statements and then throwing more money at the self-styled "postmodern Bolshevik" and her guru Fred Newman. As noted in our last posting, he blasted her in 2001 for blaming the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S. government, but failed to end his alliance with her Independence Party and then compensated her and Newman by approving an $8.7 million city bond so their All Stars charity could launch a "youth development center" to indoctrinate New York's kids with the "Newmanite" ideology.

Fulani and Newman then showed their utter contempt for the mayor's appeasement by putting on as their first play at the new center in January 2004 a production (written by Newman) that blamed the 1991 Crown Heights pogrom on the mayor's fellow Jews. A Bloomberg aide expressed disapproval of the play, but the city's Parks Department bought tickets to send after-school program children to see it. The mayor then rewarded Fulani and Newman with more money--this time, $250,000 from his own pocket for Independence Party activities--and by appearing on the stage with Fulani to help raise funds for the same All Stars center that had produced the Crown Heights play.

The mayor once again ran his con on New Yorkers in April 2005 after Fulani affirmed on NY1 News that she thinks Jews are "mass murderers of people of color." He called her statements "phenomenally offensive" on his WABC radio show, but said in the same breath: "I'm happy to have their [the IP's] endorsement, and I think a lot of the things they stand for I stand for as well." (The latter statement was not reported as widely in the media as the former one.)

Obtaining his letter from Foxman with which to cool out at least part of the Jewish community, the mayor went on to accept the endorsement of Newman and Fulani's party in late May. And once again the Phenomenally Offensive One and her guru received their reward: The city's Department of Youth and Community Development announced in June that their All Stars Project had been found eligible for a $216,000 grant to run an after-school program.

Where is the "principled position" here? There is none--only a four-year record of opportunism and appeasement.

"The ADL firmly believes that everyone, politicians, civic leaders, the general public, must resist giving in to political expediency whenever anyone in our City engages in divisive hateful rhetoric."

COMMENT: By praising the mayor's non-existent "principled position," Foxman himself has done the opposite of what he professes to call for. This self-appointed leader of the Jewish community has given his stamp of approval to one of the most glaring cases of "political expediency" in recent New York politics.

"Lenora Fulani's anti-Semitic statements are no exception and we sincerely hope many others will join your call to the members of the Independence Party to stand up and say no to hate, to say no to anti-Semitism."

COMMENT: The only significant organized force inside the New York City IP is the secretive Newman-Fulani cult, which provides most of the campaign workers, raises and controls the money, runs the party's think tank, furnishes the party's lawyers (who themselves are cult members), and receives the city patronage. The rest of the membership is mostly just people who have no relationship to the party machine--former Perotistas driven out of active involvement by the Newman-Fulani cult, people who simply registered with the IP thinking they were registering as "independent" voters, and several thousand members of the hospital workers union and certain civil service unions who were pressured by union leaders to register with the IP in 2002 simply to vote for Governor Pataki in that year's IP gubernatorial primary. Thus a call for IP members to say no to hate is a nonsense statement--it implies that the Newman-Fulani cult will rise up against the Newman-Fulani cult.

By ignoring the existence of the IP's cult-machine and posing the issue in terms simply of Fulani as an individual versus an amorphous mass of well-meaning party members, the ADL is basically chanting the same mantra as Bloomberg adviser Bill Cunningham--that Fulani is only one of 90,000 members in a party that magically exists without any kind of organization.

More to come on how the ADL is running interference for Mayor Bloomberg's Independence Party alliance....

Foxman letter misled Brooklyn rabbis re Bloomberg's Independence Party ties

AUGUST 1, 2005

(Part One on ADL director Abe Foxman and the Bloomberg-Independence Party alliance)

When the Orthodox rabbinical board (Vaad Harabbanim) of Flatbush endorsed Mayor Bloomberg for reelection at its June 22 annual meeting, there was a gadfly in the ointment. Rabbi David B. Hollander stood up and asked the mayor about his alliance with Lenora Fulani, the Independence Party leader who defended on NY1 News in April her 1989 statement that Jews are "mass murderers of people of color." According to Hollander, the mayor's response was to claim that Fulani is only one out of 90,000 members in the Independence Party. Hollander recalls snapping back that Fulani is in fact the leader of the party, but since no one in the audience backed him up, the mayor was able to go on to other questions as if an adequate answer had been given.

Hollander dealt with the incident in his "Sedra of the Week" column in The Jewish Press (July 8). He wrote that he had been "reluctant to ask for the floor, hoping that one of the regulars would say something." But when it became clear that no one else was going to raise the Fulani issue, "I thought of our sages' teaching, that where there are no men, you should strive to be a man." (Not surprisingly, Hollander entitled his column "Of Mice and Men.")

Hollander later told me that he was not exactly thrilled when, after the meeting, some rabbis had expressed support for his position "privately yes, but publicly no."

"We are giving encouragement to anti-Semitism," he said. "Decent goyim who are against anti-Semitism can't understand this."

But there's another twist to the story. Rabbi Herbert W. Bomzer, president of the rabbinical board, told me that the reason he and other leaders didn't make an issue of the mayor's alliance with Fulani was that mayoral aides had produced a letter from Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, hailing the mayor's "principled position" on Fulani's anti-Semitism (this apparently was a reference to an April 15 statement in which the mayor said he found Fulani's remarks on NY1 to be "phenomenally offensive"). Bomzer said the board had been "satisfied" by the ADL director's letter and had decided that the mayor's Fulani connection didn't "pose a problem."

It would appear, however, that the mayor's campaign staff snookered the rabbis. For the Foxman letter (which you can read at http://www.lyndonlarouchewatch.org/pdf/foxman.pdf) is dated April 20--over a month before the mayor accepted the endorsement of the Fulani-led Independence Party and almost two months before the city's Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) declared the All Stars Project, a youth charity run by Fulani and her Marxist guru Fred Newman, eligible for a $216,000 grant to run an after-school program for children and teens. (Rabbi Bomzer told me he had been unaware of either of these developments, the latter of which was announced by the DYCD only one week before the mayor appeared at the Vaad Harabbanim meeting.)

In addition, Foxman's claim that the mayor had taken a "principled position" on Fulani's anti-Semitism was a misstatement of the facts even on April 20. The mayor had been giving money and patronage to Fulani and Newman for over four years in exchange for their political support. Far from being unaware of Fulani's bigotry, he had rebuked her in 2001 after she issued an open letter blaming the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S. government's "aggression and arrogance" (as well as on its support for Israel). But the mayor did not break with Fulani's party even though she defiantly continued to display her letter on the website of the party's think tank. Indeed the mayor went on to approve an $8.7 million municipal bond for All Stars in 2002 and to give the Independence Party $250,000 from his own pocket in 2004. (For more on the mayor's lavishing of money and political support on the IP and All Stars, see part two of this series.)

As to the mayor's April 15 statement criticizing Fulani's NY1 News remarks, the degree of courage and principle involved was minuscule at best. The mayor at first waffled on the issue and only criticized Fulani when his failure to do so appeared to be triggering a media firestorm. This motivation was clearly understood by the daily newspapers, and a New York Post editorial on April 16 pilloried the mayor:

First, he said he didn't "know what she is referring to." Then he tried to suggest Fulani doesn't represent the Independence Party--which is utter nonsense.

Yesterday, having had 24 hours to think about it, the mayor decided Fulani's remarks were "phenomenally offensive."

But offensive enough for Bloomberg to repudiate her support--as he'd threatened after 9/11 (but never followed through on)?

Not yet.

In light of events since April, one would think Abe Foxman would have withdrawn his unctuous praise of the mayor's "principled position." Yet the ADL remained silent when the mayor accepted the endorsement of Fulani's party on May 28. And the ADL likewise ignored the city's announcement of All Stars' eligibility for an after-school grant, even though the Jewish watchdog group had reported in years past on how the Newman-Fulani cult was spreading anti-Semitism through its youth work and through a theater program that has since merged with All Stars (go to http://www.adl.org/special_reports/nap.asp).

Rabbi Bomzer told me that although he was planning to print Foxman's letter in the Vaad Harabbanim newsletter, he would reconsider his organization's stance of non-criticism regarding the Mayor's alliance with Fulani if presented with appropriate documentation. That documentation was promptly sent. And that same week, The Jewish Press published a blistering attack by Councilman Lew Fidler on the Bloomberg-Fulani alliance, calling the mayor's financial support for Fulani and the Independence Party "repulsive" (http://www.thejewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=5191).

Will the Flatbush Vaad Harabbanim now do the right thing and publicly demand that the mayor break with the Independence Party and the All Stars Project once and for all?

Brooklyn Councilman Blasts Bloomberg-Fulani Alliance

JULY 27, 2005

The Jewish Press, voice of New York City's politically powerful Orthodox community, has published a strongly worded attack on Mayor Bloomberg's alliance with Lenora Fulani and the Independence Party.

The op-ed article is the work of Councilman Lew Fidler (D.), who represents Brooklyn's 46th District on the City Council. Fidler is the first council member to speak out against the deals that Mayor Bloomberg and other top politicians have made with New York's party of hate.

"People in government have a responsibility to stand up to all kinds of bigotry when they see it...," Fidler writes. "That can't be done by seeking the endorsement of the party she [Fulani] obviously controls. It can only be done by making her a pariah in the political mainstream."

Stating that he believes it "unlikely" the Independence Party "will choose to purge itself of bigots," Fidler says the party is like a "drug dealer," continuing to sell "so long as there are people buying." The example he gives is the mayor's donation in 2004 of "a quarter of a million dollars to the party's coffers in seeking their ballot line in November."

Fidler argues that the disease is "not limited to Mayor Bloomberg. Sure, he is the most recent example, and his use of his big bankroll to solicit Ms. Fulani's ballot line is particularly repulsive. It's important that all people seeking office turn down the Independence Party ballot line."

The councilman appeals to his readers: "What if--like moths attracted to a flame--politicians continue to seek the party's endorsement? Then, as always, the power lies with you, the citizen. Don't vote for any candidate who appears on the Independence Party line, no matter what other line he or she might be running on. Make a statement that says we cannot ignore hate, bigotry and anti-Semitism and there is no place for it in the political mainstream of our city."

It is rare for a politician in our city to speak out with such passion and in such incisive language. (For the full text, go to http://www.thejewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=5191.) Fidler's article should be reprinted in The Jewish Week or the Forward to reach the non-Orthodox Jewish community. And The New York Times should ask him to write a version for its own op-ed page (which is the least the Times could do to atone for the whitewash of Fulani's cult that it published on May 28--the very day the mayor accepted the nomination of the Independence Party).

Fidler's article is an important step in the battle to destroy the growing power of the Independence Party and the anti-Semitic cult that dominates it. But everything hinges on more people in New York's political class speaking up loud and clear, and on both the politicians and the media going beyond the issue of the cult's anti-Semitism and dealing with the fact that it has used city funds (and is about to get more city funds) to run programs aimed at indoctrinating New York's children and teens with its noxious beliefs.

Question One: Will City Council Speaker and Democratic primary mayoral candidate Gifford Miller take up Fidler's call to quarantine the IP, and make this a defining issue between himself and the mayor between now and primary day?  And win or lose in the primary, will Miller use his power as Speaker to bring Fidler's resolution condemning Fulani (which has been languishing without a hearing for almost three months) to the floor?

Question Two: Will Democratic primary front-runner Freddy Ferrer be willing to speak out with even a fraction of Fidler's passion on this issue, or will he continue to "play it safe" into political oblivion?

Question Three: Will Fidler himself, who is chairman of the City Council's Youth Services Committee, move quickly to block the mayor's provisionally approved grant of $216,000 in Department of Youth and Community Development funds to Fulani for a three-year after-school program? Will Gifford Miller also lend a hand? I'm hopeful on this, but the Council can't put this off until after August. The DYCD responsibility determination on Fulani's All Stars Project will be taking place within days, and the program is scheduled to begin operation on Sept. 1.

Will the Mayor finally realize that Fulani's cult is more trouble than it's worth, and announce that he's repudiating the IP ballot line? I must say I'm extremely pessimistic about this. The mayor is so stubborn in his support for Fulani and her psychotherapy guru Fred Newman (the eminence grise behind the IP) that one must wonder if there's something much deeper involved than the desire for the IP's ballot line. Fulani and Newman have humiliated the mayor again and again with their anti-Semitic antics, yet his response is always the same--issue a superficial denunciation of their bigotry and then throw more money at them from his own pockets and from the city's coffers.

When Fulani blamed 9/11 on the "aggression and arrogance" of the U.S. government in a Sept. 15, 2001 letter published on the Internet, Bloomberg made a great show of criticizing her, yet did not break with her party. After the election, he rewarded her with an $8.7 million city bond to finance a "youth development center" for her and Newman's All Stars charity. When the center opened in 2004, the first play it produced was the anti-Semitic "Crown Heights," which blamed the 1991 pogrom on the Jews. A Bloomberg aide responded to this clear slap in the face to the mayor (who had also donated $50,000 from his own pocket for the All Stars theater program) with a mild denunciation of the play, but not of Fulani or Newman. As in the wake of the previous incident, the poisonous duo were rewarded soon after with $250,000 from the mayor for Independence Party activities. In April 2005, the Mayor appeared on the stage with Fulani at a Lincoln Center fundraiser for All Stars; two days later, she again slapped him in the face by telling Dominic Carter in a NY1 News interview that she didn't think her statement in 1989 that Jews are "mass murderers of people of color" was anti-Semitic and that, on the contrary, it raised issues that need to be addressed. The mayor called her remarks "phenomenally offensive" but went ahead and accepted the Independence Party's nomination for mayor the following month, and, for the third time in a row, rewarded Fulani's rantings with cash--this time, the $216,000 DYCD grant.

What is really behind the mayor's strange masochistic behavior--behavior so totally at odds with the public interest and his own political self-interest?  Can any journalist in this city cite to me a single instance in which Mayors Lindsay, Beame, Koch, or Giuliani allowed political allies to repeatedly double-cross them and humiliate them without taking steps to cut the offenders off at the knees? Would Bloomberg himself have ever tolerated such behavior from an employee of Bloomberg LP? Would he tolerate such behavior from a non-Newmanite City Hall staffer or campaign aide?

I can only advise the few reporters in this city who still practice investigative journalism to heed the immortal words of Sherlock Holmes: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The All Stars grant: It's not over 'til it's over

JULY 15, 2005

Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani's All Stars Project still has some hurdles to leap (or evade) before it receives final approval of its $216,000 city grant to run a three-year after-school program under the Department of Youth and Community Development's OST (Out-of-School Time) program.

Wrote DYCD Chief of Staff Michael Ognibene in a July 14 e-mail to this blog journalist: "Prior to contracting with a service provider, the City conducts a responsibility determination. This review process includes an examination of the fiscal health of the organization as well as any pending investigations. This phase of the contracting process has not been concluded for The All Stars Project or any other proposed vendor in connection with the OST initiative."

Well, we know that All Stars is under investigation by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in regard to charges by Molly Hardy, a former employee of an All Stars-linked charity in Los Angeles, that she witnessed teens being emotionally abused by Lenora Fulani at an All Stars facility in New York. We also know that Spitzer's office has described Hardy as a "credible" witness (since this adjective was used before Spitzer's office had ever spoken to her, it must have come from conversations with federal and/or state law enforcement agencies in California that have been following up for over six months on her charges about the finances of the St. John's Well Child and Family Center, an East Los Angeles charity run by an All Stars board member who allegedly engaged in questionable money transfers between his agency, All Stars and social therapy clinics controlled by Fulani and her guru Fred Newman).

We also know that Spitzer's office finally contacted Hardy last week--over six months after her complaint to Spitzer had been "lost"--and conducted an extensive telephone interview with her.

But this is not enough to automatically halt the DYCD grant to a charity which Mayor Michael Bloomberg has shown a remarkable devotion to over the past four years. The following question thus must be posed:

* Where is Councilman Lew Fidler, chairperson of the City Council's Youth Services Committee?

* Where is Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, chairperson of the City Council's Education Committee?

* Where is Council Speaker (and Democratic primary mayoral candidate) Gifford Miller?

* Where are Democratic primary mayoral candidates Anthony Weiner, Freddy Ferrer, and C. Virginia Fields?

* Where is Republican primary mayoral candidate Tom Ognibene (no relation to Michael Ognibene)?

* Where are Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton? (The DYCD is the designated New York City Community Action Agency of the federal Department of Health and Human Services' Community Services Block Grant Program, and thus falls within the range of concern of our state's federal lawmakers.)

* Where are the Mayor's daughters, sister and other family members?  Isn't it time for a family intervention at the East Side townhouse to get hizzoner away from the Newman cult?

Details on the All Stars grant

JULY 14, 2005

A statement issued by Michael Ognibene, Chief of Staff of the NYC Dept. of Youth and Community Development, clarifies the DYCH's June 13 determination that the All Stars Project, a charity controlled by Independence Party leaders Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani, is eligible for a $216,000 grant to run an afterschool program for city youth of "mixed" grade levels (high school, middle school, and primary school).

"All Stars Project, Inc., " Ognibene writes, "submitted a proposal under the Out-of-School Time (OST) RFP in Service Option II, the OST Public/Private Match Programs." Translation: "RFP" means Request for Proposals. As to Service Option II, this is a type of program where proposers must provide cash matches of at least 30 percent from private corporations, foundations and individuals (we'll be reporting soon on which "useful idiots" provided the matching funds for self-styled "Marxist-Leninist revolutionary" Fred and self-professed "post-modern Bolshevik" Leninora).

Ognibene tells us that All Stars did not participate in the competitive proposal process that resulted in determinations of eligibility for 114 out of 200 proposals. Instead its proposal was one of an additional 113 that DYCD deemed eligible because they fit into the agency's plans to achieve a balanced distribution of services by geographic area and grade levels, and for other reasons. All proposals were "reviewed and rated by a 21-member Reader Evaluation Committee." 

The DYCD determined that All Stars was eligible for a a three-year grant: $72,000 a year from Sept. 1, 2005 to August 31, 2008. Let's factor this in with the entirely of mayor-to-cult largesse since 2001:  the $8.7 million IDA bond for All Stars in 2002, the $7.5 million the mayor spent in 2003 to back the Independence Party's unsuccessful crusade to ban party primaries in New York City, the $50,000 to the Castillo Center to boost Fred Newman's career as a playwright, the $30,000 to the Independence Party to back Bloomberg's 2001 campaign, the $250,000 to the IP in 2004 for party building, and the $1 million raised by All Stars at its annual Lincoln Center gala this year (since the mayor appeared on the stage with Fulani to provide credibility, we can attribute this final amount to him in lieu of all the probable donations from his pocket that are NOT on the public record). Thus, we come up with a grand total of $17,746,000. How much more will the Newman-Fulani operation cadge from the mayor before we finally succeed in deprogramming the poor fellow?

The boiler plate on the DYCB's web site makes for amusing reading in light of the impending All Stars grant. We are told that the city is aiming to "expand quality OST services to support young people and their families." Support young people? In the Newman cult it's the other way around--the young people support Newman by raising money on the street and by serving as poster kids in rap performances before audiences sprinkled with wealthy white liberal donors; then, if they are so unlucky as to deemed worthy of recruitment, they may end up supporting Newman as full-time members of his "development community"--living on stipends and turning the rest of their earnings over to the stone-faced "cadre" who enforce Newman's will.

Supporting their families? Isn't the grantee in the instant case the same cult that declared in the 1980s that the "bourgeois family" was as bad as apartheid and nuclear war, and should be destroyed? And isn't this the same group that exerts itself through social therapy to recruit both kids and parents into Newman's "friendosexual" community--the institution that supposedly will replace the family? (If you think I'lm exaggerating their beliefs and aims, just read social therapist Christine LaCerva's poisonous little chapter in Sexuality and the Curriculum: The Politics and Practices of Sexuality Education, ed. John T. Sears, New York: Teachers College Press, 1992, in which she describes just how the process worked at the cult's now defunct Barbara Taylor School in the 1980s and 1990s.)

Also according to the DYCD web site, the city's OST programs aim at providing "free, safe programs in a supportive environment." (In the case of All Stars one might say the environment is free, until the cult starts making demands on you; safe, if you happen to be genetically immune to cultic recruitment tactics; and supportive...if you get with the program.) Another aim of the city's OST programs is to provide "trained staff, familiar with the strengths and needs of young people." Yes, All Stars has a "staff"--all of it trained by Fred Newman and other social therapists in principles regarded as beyond the pale by legitimate psychologists (for instance, the Newmanite principle that sex between patient and therapist and the recrutiment of the patient into Newman's revolutionary underground organization are part of the growth process). And yes, Newmanite recruiters know a lot from experience about the strengths and "needs" (read: weaknesses) of teenagers, which helps them in determining which teens to recruit and what buttons to push duiring the process. (Read Newman's "Women I Live With" in Practice, Winter 1990, in which he describes how, in the early 1970s, he used his knowledge of the strengths and "needs" of a 16-year-old runaway girl--who had come to his psychotherapy clinic for help--to turn her into a full-time political follower of his revolutionary genius-ego. Then read her response in the same issue of the Newmanite magazine (after being in the cult for 18 years) in which she gives the ritual phrases of worship towards Fred and his number-one harem woman: "Fred and Rie: Thank you--for leading us in this difficult, passionate, sexy process of learning how to touch you and be touched, want you and be wanted, want the revolution and be wanted by it.")

Anyone who wants to complain to the city directly about the All Stars grant can e-mail the mayor at http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html. But don't be too hard on hizzoner; he's just following orders...from Fred Newman.

Mayor Bloomberg Gives Tax Dollars to Newman-Fulani Cult to Work with New York's Kids

JULY 9, 2005

[For an in-depth account of the Newman-Fulani cult's work with kids, see my unsolicited 2006 report to the City]

Jessica Bruder must have a puckish sense of humor, for she buried in the ninth paragraph of her hard-hitting analysis of the role of Lenora Fulani and the Independence Party in New York politics (The New York Observer, July 11), a fact that may prove to be the delayed-fuse fertilizer bomb of this year's mayoral race.

"Two week ago," Bruder casually noted, "the All Stars Project--a nonprofit youth organization run by Ms. Fulani that has ties to the Independence Party--was awarded a $215,000 grant from the city's Department of Youth and Community Development to start a new after-school program for high-school kids."

What? Does the mayor know how outrageous this decision is? The time-line suggests he does know, and that he's thumbing his nose at his critics, daring them to call him on this one.

Six weeks ago, the text of the Molly Hardy complaint regarding abuse of kids and all-round bizarro behavior at All Stars was already circulating on the Internet (although it took until last week for State Attorney General and Fulani ally Eliot Spitzer to concede, after being confronted with the timestamp on the electronic complaint form, that his office had indeed received the complaint but had somehow lost it). Also six weeks ago, detailed allegations became available on the Internet about the educational philosophy and practices of the cult (led by Fulani and her "social therapist" guru Fred Newman) which controls both All Stars and the Independence Party. These allegations ranged over the cult's 35-year history of mistreatment of kids in a succession of sleazy programs; its record of support over a 15-year period for a string of notorious child molesters (beginning with the North American Man-Boy Love Association defendants in 1983); and its attempts to recruit kids, parents, and youth-program volunteers into its "friendosexual" collective controlled by secretive Marxist cadre.

Four weeks ago, the Village Voice published a piece on how Fulani was seeking, with the help of lobbyist James Capalino, to obtain taxpayer funds to run programs in the New York public schools, and had met with a wide range of officials from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on down the food chain.

Three weeks ago, it was widely known around City Hall that several reporters were looking into the Hardy complaint and other allegations about All Stars.

Over two weeks ago, the Hardy complaint was reported on, and Hardy was quoted at length, in the Village Voice, causing the AG's office to concede that she was a "credible" witness.

But there's nothing more arrogant than a billionaire mayor who buys his way into public office and then cruises towards a second term by outspending any possible opponents ten to one. So Michael Bloomberg-- who just can't let go of his alliance with Newman and Fulani even thought he doesn't really need their smoke-and-mirrors Independence Party to win reelection--defied the growing wave of scandal surrounding the All Stars Project and Fulani, and tossed them yet another $215,000 in taxpayer money on top of the $8.7 million bond he granted them in 2002 and the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars he has given them out of his own pocket.

Does this man know what harm he may be doing to the youth of New York City by turning them over to cult recruiters? Does he care? Is he so removed from the lives and values of ordinary New Yorkers that he cannot see that bringing together public-school kids with these NAMBLA-defending "friendosexuals" is really beyond the pale?

And what power does the cult have over our mayor that he has again and again tolerated from them disloyal behavior that would result in instant dismissal for any employee of Bloomberg LP or any member of the mayor's staff?  He provides the cult with funding for a youth performance center near Times Square--and the first play they produce at the new facility blames the Crown Heights riots on his fellow Jews. He gives the Independence Party a quarter million dollars from his pocket for party building last year, then appears on the stage with Fulani at the annual All Stars fundraiser at Lincoln Center this April to help her cult squeeze the max from Wall Street donors. Two days later, Fulani repays him by going on NY1 News and reaffirming a statement she made in 1989 describing Jews as "mass murderers of people of color."

The moral weakness of this mayor--and his utter lack of self-respect in dealing with the anti-Semitism of the Newmanites, even though he himself has obviously become a target of Newman's apostatic compulsion to humiliate Jewish men--becomes an issue of urgency in light of the horror in London Thursday morning, when Al Qaeda struck in a coordinated series of bombings, killing at least 50 and wounding over 700.

New York City is still in the cross-hairs of Arab terrorism, just like London. It is therefore intolerable that our mayor should be giving taxpayer support and political legitimacy on the highest level--in the middle of the war on terror--to a cult with a history of indoctrinating kids with pro-terrorist as well as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel ideological principles. It is intolerable that taxpayer money or even the mayor's own money should be going to a woman who urged Libya's Gadhafi, in a Nov. 1987 speech, to continue to be "not nonviolent" towards America (this only one year before Gadhafi blew up Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people). It is intolerable that our city should now be paying this woman and her cult to run after-school programs in spite of the innumerable incidents in which they've crossed the line (as when they bused kids from their now blessedly defunct Barbara Taylor School--a private elementary school in Manhattan--to Washington DC in the late 1980s to demonstrate in support of Gadhafi).

What sort of message is Bloomberg sending to today's terrorists via his highly visible appeasement of Newman and Fulani, who humiliate him seemingly at will, over and over?  One can easily imagine Al Qaeda leaders drawing the conclusion that the citizens of New York are also weak (otherwise why would they have elected such a mayor?) and thus are ripe for another round of intimidation. And even if Al Qaeda never makes this connection, the mayor's alliance with Newman and Fulani has nevertheless become morally indefensible in the light of the London attacks (as if it wasn't already indefensible as of 8:46 AM September 11, 2001).

It will be interesting to see if the political class in New York is capable of taking any meaningful action in response to the Observer's revelation regarding the All Stars grant for after-school programs and the mayor's continued obtuseness.

Will City Council Speaker and Democratic primary mayoral candidate Gifford Miller speak out and demand a halt to the All Stars after-school contract?  Miller did make a low-key remark last week (as reported in The Jewish Week, July 8) that he would not favor city aid to the Fulani youth theater project that had received the 2002 bond (which is rather like a sleepy henhouse guard saying he would not favor any more free food for foxes after they've already gobbled up all the hens). But was Miller also asleep at the wheel regarding Fulani's three-year lobbying campaign to win city funding of her after-school programs? Is he willing to wake up, throw some cold water on his face, and really fight the mayor on behalf of the New York kids who otherwise will become victims of the Newman-Fulani cult?

Will Councilman Lew Fidler, head of the Youth Services committee, launch an investigation of the All Stars after-school contract and not just restrict himself to a resolution condemning Fulani's anti-Semitic remarks? (I sent Fidler a registered letter on May 25 asking for an investigation of city support for All Stars--he never bothered to reply.)

Will Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, head of the Education committee, investigate? I sent her a similar letter last month, and received a one sentence reply that she would read the material I enclosed. When I encountered her on the street petitioning, she said she was too busy with the "budget" to take up the issue of possible child abuse in a city funded program. When I pointed out that with every passing month, more kids might be drawn into the Newman cult's web of exploitation, she just snorted and walked away. (This is the same councilwoman who announced "with great sadness" last May that she couldn't accept the IP endorsement this year because of Fulani's remarks on NY1 News, but who couched her statement in buttery phrases that read like advertising copy for the Newmanites, even implying that Newman was the new Norman Thomas.)

Will Abe Foxman of the ADL, whose spokespersons have recently restricted themselves to condemning Fulani as an individual while giving the Independence Party a pass (thus echoing the mayor's aides and essentially running interference for the Bloomberg-IP alliance), finally show he's more than an opportunistic fundraiser by calling on the mayor to sever all ties with the Independence Party, which even the New York Times concedes is dominated by Newman and Fulani? Will Foxman personally speak out strongly and unequivocally against the city after-school program to be run by All Stars--an organization which has already proven over and over that its aim is to indoctrinate minority youth with the politics of hate (and Jewish youth with a philosophy of self-hate)? Will Foxman finally criticize the mayor directly by name (since City Hall will just ignore anything less)?

Will Freddy Ferrer (the heroic Freddy, who recently nixed a plan to support principled IP dissidents in a primary race against Bloomberg and Fulani) demand a halt to the latest city giveaway to All Stars?

Will C. Virginia Fields, the sole politician to speak out about the Hardy complaint, see this as something more than a sound-bite gimmick and reach out to her Baptist base to put a halt to Fulani and Newman's attempt to recruit the best and the brightest in the minority community into the exploitative, abusive, and downright weird cult of polymorphous friendosexualism?

Will Congressman Anthony Weiner, who according to the New York Times has cast himself as the "peerless champion of Israel" in the mayoral race, take on the difficult job of challenging bigots right here in the power structure of New York City--bigots who aim at indoctrinating and corrupting (with the help of taxpayer funds) the kids of Weiner's own constituents? 

Will the New York Times do the right thing for our city's vulnerable kids by finally, finally publishing what it has known for months (but suppressed in its ever-so-respectful May 28 profile of "Dr." Newman and "Dr." Fulani) about the sinister nature of the All Stars program?

Will AG Eliot Spitzer atone for his office's failure to report Molly Hardy's abuse complaint to Child Protective Services last January? (His office was mandated to do so under state law, but they have apparently rendered themselves immune to any noncompliance sanctions by concocting a childish story that they "lost" the complaint.) Will Spitzer finally take the problem of All Stars in hand and conduct the thorough probe that his office promised but failed to deliver in 2002 when he was courting the Independence Party?  Will his aides sit down and pool information with the federal and California state authorities investigating the St. John's Well Child and Family Center, an All Stars and social therapy linked charity in Los Angeles run by a member of the All Stars board of directors who allegedly transferred money illegally to Newmanite enterprises and therapists in New York? Will the AG's office examine the systematically misleading information provided by All Stars to wealthy donors in order to obtain money under false pretenses? Will it seek the help of the AG in New Jersey, where All Stars has also been bamboozling wealthy donors on a grand scale? Will Spitzer finally renounce the support of the New York State Independence Party in his upcoming gubernatorial race so he can devote himself without any conflict of interest to investigating the All Stars cult racket? Or failing that, will he call for the appointment of a special prosecutor?

Will State Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno stop throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Newmanites, as he did during the Olga Mendez campaign last year?

Will U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, whose own alliance of convenience with the Newmanites is one of the major reason that most Democrats tread cautiously on the issue of Mayor Bloomberg's strange affinity for the cult, finally recognize the consequences of becoming beholden to Newman and Fulani? Will he acknowledge that allowing a major role in the state and city power structure to people who have never apologized for their support of Gadhafi's attacks on Americans (support that continued even after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103), sends absolutely the wrong signal to terrorists overseas? Will Schumer sever his ties with Fulani and Newman's Independence Party lock, stock and barrel--and demand that other elected Democrats do likewise?

Will the City Hall press corp finally develop some backbone and ask Mayor Bloomberg the one question that will totally confound his spin doctors, i.e., why, after calling Fulani's remarks about Jews on NY1 News "phenomenally offensive" and then saying she was only one person with bad ideas in a party of good people, did he turn around and give $215,000 not to the supposed good people but to a charity controlled by the phenomenally offensive one?

This weblog will be watching closely all of the above folks in the weeks ahead, but it's only fair to point out that not everyone has been asleep at the wheel. I close with a quote from a press release issued by the American Jewish Committee on Feb. 25, 2004:

"Mayor Bloomberg should publicly address growing concerns that the All Stars Project is recruiting children from our public schools into the Newman-Fulani cult of anti-Semitism and exploitative 'therapy.'"

It's not too late to heed this advice, Mr. Mayor.