03/8/23

Highlighted Profile: Johnnie Hunter

By: Trevor Loudon | KeyWiki


Johnnie Hunter

Johnnie Hunter is the General Secretary of the Young Communist League of Britain. He also serves on the Communist Party of Britain National Executive Board and on the Political Committee.

He joined the Glasgow Young Communist League about a decade ago, soon becoming a Scottish Organizer.

Johnnie Hunter is also a member of the Glasgow Communist Party, a solicitor, and a union activist. In October 2017 Hunter was a British delegate to a World Federation of Democratic Youth-run communist youth festival in Sochi, Russia.


Johnnie Hunter, bottom left

The festival was timed to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution and was keynoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Sochi, Johnnie Hunter met with Mikhail Kononovich, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine youth wing.

Johnnie Hunter left, Mikhail Konovich right

Mikhail Konovich and his brother Aleksander Kononovich are now in jail in Ukraine, accused of acting as agents of Belorussia and the Russian invasion forces.

In April/May 2022, Johnnie Hunter, fellow YCLer Micaela Tracey-Ramos, and about thirty young British labour activists traveled to Cuba to pick crops for the revolution and to meet with Cuban Communist Party officials.


Johnnie Hunter and Micaela Tracey-Ramos in Cuba

The “highlight” of the trip for most of the delegation was joining a thousand international guests from 60 countries on the tribune in front of the José Martí memorial in Revolution Square to watch the first May Day march in three years.

They shared the viewing platform with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and former president Raul Castro.

Johnnie Hunter was also affiliated with the Zero COVID Coalition, the Communist Party of Britain front group for pushing rigorous COVID-19 lockdowns.

(See more|Johnnie Hunter…)

01/22/23

“There is No Shortage of Cruelty”

By: Cliff Kincaid

“There is no shortage of cruelty out there” is one of the comments in a public service announcement asking for donations to save animals. Pictures of dogs cowering for survival in a snow-filled landscape tug at your heartstrings. How can people abuse and mistreat animals? But how can people do this to one another?

I saw the ad after the anti-abortion March for Life occurred in Washington, D.C. and news is breaking that the world is bracing for another massive Russian military assault on the people of Ukraine. Both events have one thing in common – the philosophy of atheistic communism.

Yet, the world seems indifferent to the fate of the unborn and the fate of Ukraine

Ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers explained how the abortion mentality was the communist mentality. “Abortion was a commonplace of party life,” he wrote in his classic 1952 work Witness. “There were Communist doctors who rendered that service for a small fee. Communists who were more choosy knew liberal doctors who would render the same service for a larger fee. Abortion, which now fills me with physical horror, I then regarded, like all Communists, as a mere physical manipulation.”

It was all physical because, in the communist view, there was nothing spiritual.

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01/11/23

A Republican Church Committee?

By: Cliff Kincaid

You are hearing a lot about a “Republican Church Committee” that will uncover “the weaponization of government” against conservatives. We are being promised the “unveiling” of FBI, CIA, and other federal agency abuses. But some of the new popular conservative commentators do not understand the damage done by the Church Committee, and who its chairman, Frank Church, really was.

Equally important, we must understand how the FBI, CIA and other agencies were stripped of their ability to target our enemies and instead were directed to monitor and imprison President Trump and his supporters. That is the key issue.

In my view, these agencies were hollowed out from within by people like Frank Church and turned over to left-wing activists and foreign infiltrators, reaching the zenith of their power under Barack Hussein Obama.

A Senate website offers this analysis of how the original Church Committee came about: “In 1974 Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a front-page New York Times article claiming that the CIA had been spying on anti-war activists for more than a decade, violating the agency’s charter. Former CIA officials and some lawmakers, including Senators William Proxmire and Stuart Symington, called for a congressional inquiry.”

However, a conservative analysis shows that the purpose of the Church committee was to sabotage the ability of the intelligence agencies to conduct warfare against communist entities at home and abroad. Frank Church, an ultra-liberal Democratic Senator from Idaho, was defeated in 1980 when Republicans came to power under Ronald Reagan.

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12/13/22

Bluffing Their Way to an Art. V Convention Part 2: The Best PR Money Can Buy

By: Judi Caler

In Part 1, we saw that ever since 1907, 2/3 or more of the States have had at least one active application on record asking Congress to call a convention under Art. V. And if Congress is hoodwinked into validating all non-rescinded applications by passing H.R.8419 or its 2023 counterpart,[i] Congress will likely trigger the first constitutional convention since 1787.

So why wasn’t Congress deceived into calling a convention 50 or 100 years ago? Perhaps it’s because the PR industry hadn’t come of age yet! To justify a “call,” Congress, whose priority is getting re-elected, would require considerable constituent pressure—or the appearance of such—before casting a vote that would risk our Constitution.

Enter Mark Meckler, President of the Convention of States (COS), who has been waging a PR war with millions of dollars in dark money for almost a decade. COS is creating the impression that Americans are demanding a “convention of states” under Article V, while most Americans have no clue what an Article V Convention (A5C) is.

“Grassroots”—From the Top Down?!

In 2011—while Meckler was still with the Tea Party and just getting involved in the convention deception, he joined Eric O’Keefe’s John Hancock Committee of the States (JHCOS) as a Director and President. O’Keefe is known as the front man for the Koch brothers’ money. He is also Chairman of the Board and co-founder of Meckler’s Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG)—parent to COS.

In its 2011 IRS filing signed by Meckler, JHCOS reported over $1.8 million in anonymous contributions (pg. 1), and almost one million dollars in expenses to public relations & lobbying firms (pg. 8).[ii] At least 38% of the contributions can be traced to Donors Trust, the “dark money ATM” of the Right.

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12/2/22

Bluffing Their Way to an Art. V Convention

By: Judi Caler

Sound the alarm!! We are closer than ever before in our nation’s history to Congress’s calling a  convention under Article V of the US Constitution, where we would likely lose our Constitution. And it’s because of yet another deception from the con-con lobby.

Article V says that “The Congress…on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States [now 34], shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments [to the US Constitution]…”

There have been approximately 450 applications passed by 49 State Legislatures since 1788, the year our Constitution was ratified. So, whether or not a constitutional convention has been triggered depends upon the criteria Congress uses to determine which of the 450 applications are valid. Only then can Congress count the States that submitted those applications to find out whether or not the 34-state threshold was reached.

On July 19, 2022, US Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX), introduced H.Con.Res.101 and  H.R.8419. The former is a purported “call” for a convention.[1] And the latter directs the Archivist of the United States to “authenticate, count, and publish” all non-rescinded applications and notify Congress of its duty to call a convention, if those applications were passed by at least 34 State Legislatures.

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05/2/22

Dark Money – Not the Grassroots – Is Behind the Convention of States Organizations

By: Judi Caler

Patriots are rightly concerned that Mark Meckler, lobbyist and President of the Convention of States organizations (COS), has spent tens of millions of dollars spreading misinformation and cajoling State Legislatures into passing applications asking Congress to call a convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. Thirty-four States are needed to pass such applications to trigger a constitutional convention, where a new Constitution would likely be proposed, along with an easier mode of ratification. So, who is behind COS?

Meckler tells state legislators that COS is a grassroots movement, funded by thousands of ordinary citizens. In fact, since December, 2017, the COS homepage boasted:

WHO’S BEHIND THIS THING?

The American people. We thought you’d never ask! The Convention of States Project is first and foremost a movement of grassroots citizens who are fed up with business as usual in D.C. We’re funded by thousands of everyday patriots who have committed their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to protecting liberty for future generations.

But Andy Schlafly, attorney and son of conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, testified at a Pennsylvania hearing on Oct. 22, 2019 against COS’s Article V convention application (@ 11:55):

Schlafly: “…[W]ho’s funding them? Where’s the money coming from? There’s a lot of money behind this. And they’re not disclosing where the money behind this push to change the Constitution is coming from. That should scare everybody in this room. Who are these people who are pushing to rewrite the Constitution? I suspect some of them are globalists, but ask them…it’s not disclosed. And I’m certainly not in favor of allowing billionaires who don’t disclose their identity…[or] their real agenda…to rewrite our Constitution. That’s not a good idea.”

Meckler, at the same hearing, feigning outrage, fumed (@ 46:11):

Meckler: “…[W]ho’s funding this? Any of you at any time are welcome to visit our very fancy corporate offices in my house in Texas. In my personal home office off the kitchen, where all the billionaires apparently come visit me. It’s an outrage and a slander. And this kind of slanderous politics takes this discussion to some place it should not go, which is frankly, it’s just slander, and innuendo. It’s gutter politics. And I don’t believe in it…

“I can tell you who my donors are. See, because the person that raises the money for…this organization is my wife of 26 years who works in the office next to mine, who has raised money from over 80,000 individual grassroots patriots all over this country. So, if those are the millionaires and billionaires that Mr. Schlafly is afraid of, well, he might want to talk to the grandmas who send me checks and say, ‘it’s five bucks a month out of my fixed income, and I’m sorry I can’t afford any more.’ Again, an outrageous slander on the tens of thousands of people supporting this movement.”

Notice that in one fell swoop, Meckler masterfully deflects attention from the source of his funding, while playing the victim and accusing his opponents of slander.

So, what’s the truth? Let’s go straight to the tax-exempt returns that Meckler is required to file with the IRS every year. These returns, also known as 990s, are public information and filed by all nonprofits.

The most recent 990s available for Meckler’s organizations are for the years 2020, 2019, and 2018. The Meckler organizations appear to include Convention of States Action (COSA); Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG); Citizens for Self-Governance Action (CSG Action); and Defending Liberty, Inc. (DLI). Each year, Meckler filed a 990 return for each entity, as required by law, and signed them under penalty of perjury.

Nonprofits are not required to disclose the identity of their contributors—so all contributors are anonymous, unless the organization chooses to disclose them. That’s why the accompanying Schedule B doesn’t include the names & addresses of the donors—only the total amount of all donations totaling $5,000 or more from each numbered donor during the year. Still, those figures are revealing.

Donations of $5,000 or more to each entity are summarized by year on the accompanying Chart. The source documentation for figures on the Chart can be found mostly on Schedule B of the linked 990s.

Here’s the short version:

Between 2018 and 2020, contributions ranging from $5,000 to $2,000,000 per donor, to the four entities totaled $16,751,011, or 63% of the $26.7 million in contributions reported on Meckler’s combined 990s for the 3-year period. And that $16.7 million was from at most 168 unique anonymous persons; thus, their average contribution was almost $100,000 [$16,751,011 ÷ 168 = $99,708].

But likely, Meckler has fewer than 168 major donors, as repeat donors over the 3-year period are to be expected. So, depending upon how many major donors gave in one, two, or three years and/or gave to multiple Meckler entities, the average donation per major donor over the three-year period amounts to at least $99,708, and may be more than $200,000 or $300,000! So, COS isn’t a grassroots organization funded from the bottom up by small donors. Schedule B provides proof that COS’s agenda to replace our Constitution is coming mostly from major donors.

Meckler frequently sends out emails asking for money, to his list of unsuspecting patriots. Unsurprisingly, most of his requests are accompanied by an offer from a “generous donor” to match each contribution. The patriots on Meckler’s email list probably have no idea that Meckler has been receiving almost two-thirds of his contributions from multi-millionaires and/or billionaires while drawing salaries for himself and his wife totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

We can only conclude that Meckler is disingenuous when he ridicules the suggestion that his organizations are funded by undisclosed multi-millionaires and billionaires. And while his organizations may well receive some small donations, he denies that the bulk of his money comes from the superrich. And all the while, he yells “slander” with a straight face, and shamelessly conjures up Grandma wishing she could give him more of her paltry income, when asked about the millions in dark money he’s amassing!

We know why the liquor, drug, and tobacco industries invest millions in lobbyists to influence state legislation. But why would major donors invest millions in COS to bring about a convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution?

The total amount of money spent over the years by the Meckler organizations to trigger a constitutional convention is astonishing.  Meckler needs to be confronted everywhere he goes by opponents, supporters, & legislators alike—and asked why he is hiding the fact that he’s working for the superrich.  We have a right to know; it’s our Constitution they’re after!  You can download the 990 forms from the accompanying Chart and copy Schedule B, so you’ll have ammo to push back with, the next time Meckler plays the Grandma card.

Meckler Entities Anonymous Major Contributions (≥ $5,000) For Years 2018 Through 2020
Meckler Organizations’ Forms 990 (A)
# of Major Donors (Sched. B)
(B)
Total $ from Major Donors (Sched. B)
(C)
Total of all Contributions: Form 990 p.1, line 8
B ÷ C
Major Contributions’ % of Total
B ÷ A
Average Major Donation
COSA 2020
47-2245708
55 $4,112,370 $7,159,560 57% $74,770
COSA 2019 45        3,884,001          6,777,645 57%          86,311
COSA 2018 26        2,239,125          4,872,216 46%          86,120
CSG 2020
27-1657203
8        1,016,800          1,622,566 63%        127,100
CSG 2019 13           633,100             961,914 66%          48,700
CSG 2018 13        1,844,815          2,319,810 80%        141,909
CSG Action 2020
27-4648506
1        2,000,000          2,000,000 100%     2,000,000
CSG Action 2019 2           305,800             305,800 100%        152,900
CSG Action 2018 2           535,000             581,000 92%        267,500

DLI 2018: 812320022
[no revenue 2019-20]
3           180,000             180,000 100%          60,000
TOTALS 168 $16,751,011 $26,780,511 % of total contributions ≥ $5,000* Avg. $ per Major Donor –at the very least*
*See note below 63% $99,708
*Note: $16,751,011 in major contributions [≥ $5,000] out of $26,780,511 total contributions [63%] were reported, from 168 Major Donors giving $5,000 or more to the above Meckler entities from 2018-2020. Thus, the Average contribution given by a Major Donor was at the very least $99,708 [$16,751,011 ÷ 168] and may be over $200,000 or $300,000—if the same Major Donors contributed in multiple years and/or to multiple Meckler entities.

___________

[1] Dark money is money donated to politically active nonprofit organizations or anonymous corporate entities, which spend this money to influence political campaigns or other special interests but are not required to reveal their donors.
___________

Judi Caler is a citizen activist working to defend our Constitution from those who would risk it at an Article V constitutional convention. She serves as Article V Issues Director for Eagle Forum of California.

04/5/22

Genocide and the Next Red Line

By: Cliff Kincaid

How does it feel to watch the discovery of mass graves in Europe? This is something new for millions of Americans. But this is how world wars begin.

Once and for all, this Russian war on Ukraine, which began on February 24, demonstrates the completely ineffective nature of the United Nations, whose Security Council is powerless in the face of Russian membership and a Russian veto. It’s finally time to defund the U.N.

Meanwhile, the West’s “sweeping sanctions” on Russia, an effort to force it to withdraw its forces, have failed. Even without Kyiv, Russia has already captured significant new parts of Ukraine.

But instead of paying attention to Europe, some Americans drawn to an isolationist attitude prefer to watch hundreds of thousands of desperate people coming through our southern border and then wonder why Joe Biden’s administration doesn’t want to do something about that.  Perhaps we ought to grasp the connection between what’s happening in Europe and south of the border.

The United States is encouraging Ukrainians to continue fighting, but they are not being given enough weapons to win. Major parts of their country are in ruins and dead bodies litter the streets. The massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha is the latest example.

To make matters worse, some so-called “conservatives” are siding with Putin and his “special military operation” against an alleged Nazi regime in Kyiv.

Any American who assisted the Russians in word or deed will have to answer for these crimes.  And that includes Hillary Clinton, whose Russian re-set occurred when she was Secretary of State under Obama/Biden. Putin followed that with his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. He was advertising the future, which we captured in our book, Back from the Dead: The Return of the Evil Empire.

Ukraine President Zelensky calls it “genocide,” a sensational charge but based in fact and attributed to Putin’s so-called brain, the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin.

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04/5/22

Weekly Profile – Senator Richard Blumenthal

By: Trevor Loudon | KeyWiki.org

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) was caught addressing the  Connecticut Communist Party‘s annual Amistad  Awards dinner on  December 12, 2021. He claimed he didn’t know it was a Communist event.

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Yet Senator Blumenthal has been close to the Communist Party USA in Connecticut for at least a decade.

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Senator Blumenthal has worked with the communist-controlled Connecticut Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) since at least 2011.

Here he is with CARA  and Connecticut Communist Party member Win Heimer in the CARA T-shirt.

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Here he is again with comrade Heimer.

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And again.

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Senator Blumenthal has backed multiple communist causes in Connecticut, including the 2017 endorsement of Connecticut Communist Party supporter Toni Harp for Mayor of New Haven.

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Here’s Mayor Harp at the 2012 Amistad Awards.

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03/18/22

Russia Has Won the War

By: Cliff Kincaid

http://www.usasurvival.org/blog/what-comes-next-after-russias-victory

I received an email about an Alaskan cruise. You better go before Putin takes Alaska back for Russia. Biden won’t stop him.

Putin has no soul and Biden has no brain. That’s my position. But Biden’s handlers are smart enough to know that they don’t want to offend Putin by supporting the freedom fighters in Ukraine too vigorously. They go through the motions of providing some weapons to some fighters in some areas of the country under direct Russian assault. 

But planes and a no-fly-zone, which could turn the tide, are off the table. That means Ukraine can’t win. It’s another no-win war.

Ukraine loses more and more territory to Russia and is now engaged in “negotiations” to end the war on Russia’s terms. This means Ukraine will be neutralized and Russia will dominate Europe. Pope Francis has stepped forward, to provide religious cover for Putin’s victory. That’s what the “negotiations” are all about.

Don’t believe the TV generals who say Putin is losing and is in a “desperate” situation because he has lost several thousand soldiers and key generals. Putin doesn’t care about loss of life. He certainly doesn’t care about Ukrainian losses and refugees.

Ukraine is lost. The country has been devastated. What is happening is a continuation of the war against Ukraine that Russia launched in 2014, when Obama was president and Biden was vice-president. They knew what was coming. Our CIA knew what was coming.

They just had to wait until they could get Trump out of office for the war to begin. The Russians accomplished that through the use of their phony dossier, provided to Hillary and the Democrats for political purposes.

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02/24/22

Putin’s War Machine Was Made in Washington

By: Cliff Kincaid

http://www.usasurvival.org/blog/putins-war-machine-was-made-in-washington

The “experts” say Russia is a gas station with an army. Who made this army possible? The answer: politicians and corporate interests in Washington, D.C., and other Western capitals.

In our 2014 book, Back from the Dead: The Return of the Evil Empire, we quoted Michael Birnbaum, the Washington Post’s Moscow bureau chief, as noting that “after Russia’s brief war with neighboring Georgia in 2008, top leaders rethought their old habits. Although Russia ultimately prevailed in that conflict, its soldiers proved ill-equipped and disorganized, struggling with Soviet-era equipment that failed them on numerous occasions. So leaders turned to the West to boost their capabilities.”

In other words, the West decided to make future Russian conquests more easily accomplished by the Kremlin. The French, the Germans, and Italians began providing sophisticated military equipment to Moscow.

These deals with Moscow make the activities of Armand Hammer seem mild by comparison.

Hammer was the chairman of Occidental Petroleum and a champion of East-West trade whose father Julius laundered money to establish the first Soviet espionage networks in the United States. Armand Hammer was himself exposed as a Soviet agent who helped former Vice President Al Gore and his family become rich.

Trade with the USSR served Soviet interests then, and it serves Russian interests today.

President Obama and his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engineered a “reset” with Russia, supposedly to improve relations. It only served to bolster the regime of Vladimir Putin.

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