Obama wants emergency control of Internet

http://www.politechbot.com/docs/rockefeller.revised.cybersecurity.draft.082709.pdf
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet
by Declan McCullagh
http://digg.com/politics/Senate_proposal_gives_president_authority_over_the_Internet';
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.
The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Rockefeller's revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a "cybersecurity workforce plan" from every federal agency, a "dashboard" pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a "comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy" in six months--even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," he says.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

Translation: If your company is deemed "critical," a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

The Internet Security Alliance's Clinton adds that his group is "supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective."

Update at 3:14 p.m. PDT: I just talked to Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee, on the phone. She sent me e-mail with this statement:
The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president's authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a "government shutdown or takeover of the Internet" and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government's response.

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for an on-the-record answer to these four questions that I asked her colleague on Wednesday. I'll let you know if and when I get a response.

Aug 28, 09 North Korean Weapons Shipment seized

UAE Seizes North Korean Weapons Shipment to Iran (Update2)
By Bill Varner
Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean-manufactured munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades bound for Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions, diplomats said.
The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public. They said the ship, owned by an Australian subsidiary of a French company and sailing under a Bahamian flag, was carrying 10 containers of arms disguised as oil equipment.
The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote letters to Iran and the government in Pyongyang asking for explanations of the violation, and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received and the UAE has unloaded the cargo, they said.
The UAE and Iranian missions to the UN didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The Financial Times reported the weapons seizure earlier today.
The Security Council voted on June 12 to adopt a resolution that punishes North Korea for its recent nuclear-bomb test and missile launches through cargo inspections and enforcement of restrictions on financial transactions. The measure calls for the interdiction at seaports, airports or in international waters of any cargo suspected of containing arms or nuclear or missile-related materials going to or from North Korea.
UN Sanctions
Iran is under three sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process to isolate a uranium isotope needed to generate fuel for a nuclear power reactor or, in higher concentrations, to make a weapon.
Iran denies allegations by the U.S. and some of its major allies that it seeks an atomic weapon or the means to build one, insisting the nuclear work is intended to generate electricity.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said the Iranian government must respond by late September to his request for new talks on curbing its nuclear program. Iran last month said work is under way on proposals that may provide the basis for renewed talks.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net

Reagan: Don't say we weren't warned

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29847/
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29868/
REAGAN: Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

There are many ways in which our government has invaded the precincts of private citizens, the method of earning a living. But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this trip is with us and at the moment is more imminent.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.

So with the American people on record as not wanting socialized medicine, Congressman Ferrand said, if we can only break through and get our foot inside the door, they can we can expand the program after that. Well, let's see what the socialists themselves had to say about it. They say once the Ferrand bill is passed, this nation will be provided with a mechanism for socialized medicine capable of indefinite expansion in every direction until it includes the entire population. Well, we can't say we haven't been warned. James Madison in 1788, speaking to the Virginia Convention said: “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Now in our country under our free enterprise system, we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other. But let’s also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government.

But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. In this country of ours, took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in world’s history. The only true revolution. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. But here for the first time in all the thousands of years of man’s relation to man, a little group of the men, the founding fathers for the first time – established the idea that you and I had within ourselves the God given right and ability to determine our own destiny. This freedom was built into our government with safeguards. We talk democracy today. And strangely we let democracy begin to assume the aspect of majority rule is all that is needed. Well, majority rule is a fine aspect of democracy, provided there are guarantees written in to our government concerning the rights of the individual and of the minorities.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms and that you demand the continuation of our traditional free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen, even if we believe that he's on our side to begin with, write to strengthen his hand. Write those letters now. Call your friends and tell them to write. If you don't, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country... until one day as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.

Obama Care

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHl_RhpMh8&feature=player_embedded
http://leagueofamericanvoters.com/index.html

League of American Voters, a national organization dedicated to educating voters on their elected leaders’ support for the common sense values of free enterprise, family and national security.

Leading the Fight to Stop Obama Care — Join Us!
Today, the health of millions of Americans is threatened by a planned government takeover of our health care system. This takeover will ration health care, limit important medicines and surgeries for seniors and end Medicare as we know it. It will add 50 million new patients — including up to 13 million illegal aliens — to an system that already doesn’t have enough doctors.

The members and supporters of The League of American Voters stands against this takeover, and we need your help to take our message to Members of Congress who are putting party and politics before the health of Americans.

Obama's Man Van Jones-Many Roads Lead to Cuba, Communism

http://www.newzeal.blogspot.com/
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/
Obama File 83 Obama's Man Van Jones-Many Roads Lead to Cuba, Communism

Two big questions hang over President Obama's radical "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones.
Is he still a communist?
Is he a security threat?

Many have assumed that Van Jones' committment to communism ended when the organization he helped to lead STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) dissolved in 2002.

Yet a 2004 treatise Reclaiming Revolution: History, Summation, and Lessons from the Work of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement written and endorsed by a majority of former STORM members makes it clear that most ex STORMers are still committed to the revolutionary movement;

From page 49.
When the last sixteen STORM members decided to dissolve, each committed as an individual revolutionary to helping this emerging trend continue to consolidate.

Some are building organizations in working class communities of color...Some are promoting revolutionary ideas. Some are developing revolutionary cadre...Some are finding other ways to serve the people.

Most former STORM members are still active in San Francisco or New York. The STORM created or staffed organisations Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, POWER, SOUL, FIERCE, War Times and Women of Color Resource Center are all going strong and still receiving mega-bucks from multiple left wing foundations.

All these organizations are still networked with former STORM associates such as Harmony Goldberg, Raquel Lavina, Maria Poblet, Adam Gold, Cindy Wiesner, Jason Negron-Gonzales, Mei-ying Williams or Steve Williams active in one group while serving on the board of another.

Most former Bay Area STORMers are working closely with cadre from the Communist Party USA offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS).

Van Jones himself has long worked with people from the CCDS orbit including Betita Martinez, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, Felicia Gustin and Bob Wing.

In February 2006, just over three years after STORM folded and just over three years before being appointed to his White House position, Van Jones was keynote speaker at a Committees of Correspondence fundraiser in Berkeley.

The second annual CCDS and Kendra Alexander Foundation Banquet will take place on Sunday, February 19 at the Redwood Gardens community room in Berkeley with Van Jones, a pioneering human rights activist known as a steadfast opponent of police brutality and mass incarceration, as keynote speaker.

Jones is now working to create environmentally friendly, "green-collar" jobs for formerly incarcerated persons.

The banquet is titled "Towards Building a Progressive Majority" and benefits the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and the Kendra Alexander Foundation. The Foundation was named in honor of the visionary leader of the Committees of Correspondence.

Maybe Jones didn't realise he was addressing a Marxist-Leninist function? Maybe he thought it was a Rotary or PTA group?

Of even more concern are the close ties between STORM , the Bay Area CCDS, foreign communists and Cuba.

Venceremos Brigadistas entering US from Canada

According to "Reclaiming Revolution" page 37 several STORM members traveled to Cuba in 1999 as part of the notorious Venceremos Brigades.

One of the most formative "political education sessions" of this period was a group trip to Cuba in the summer of 1999.

Several STORM members participated in the Venceremos Brigade to see and support one of the world's few surviving socialist states.

Members came back with a heightened understanding of both socialism and capitalism and a stronger commitment to red politics.

As STORM seldom exceeded 20 members, it is very likely that Van Jones, as a leader of the organisation was on that, or another, Cuba trip.

Surely a good question for some enterprising journalist?

Three STORM leaders also travelled to South Africa in 1998 for the South African Communist Party conference.

It is woth remembering that the Venceremos Brigades were founded in 1969 by Students for a Democratic Society radicals Carl Davidson and Tom Hayden.

Davidson and Tom Hayden take credit for having launched in 1969 the "Venceremos Brigades," which covertly transported hundreds of young Americans to Cuba to help harvest sugar cane and interact with Havana's communist revolutionary leadership. (The Brigades were organized by Fidel Castro's Cuban intelligence agency, which trained "brigadistas" in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and explosives.)

Incidentally Hayden and Davidson were two of the five founders of a new organization in 2008-Progressives for Obama. Davidson has a personal history with Obama when they worked together in the Chicago New Party and in anti Iraq War activism.

STORM associate Mei-ying Ho traveled to Cuba with the 2004 Venceremos Brigade. Now married to another STORM associate Steve Williams, Mei-ying Williams is involved with the Women of Color Resource Center where she works with Linda Burnham and well known radical and CCDS leader Angela Davis.

Steve Williams, who has been to South Africa, Cuba and Venezuela, now runs POWER-People Organized to Win Employment Rights. He worked on the organizing committee of anti Iraq War magazine War Times with Van Jones, Betita Martinez, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, Felicia Gustin, Bob Wing and Adam Gold in the early 2000s.

In July 2009 Steve Williams represented POWER at the CCDS National Convention in San Francisco.

According to Carl Davidson-elected as one of CCDS's four new co-leaders at the conference;

The panel featured responses to the "Democracy Charter" by Bill Fletcher, Jr., editor of Black Commentator, Michael Eisenscher of US Labor Against the War, Jacqueline Cabasso from Western States Legal Foundation, Frank del Campo from the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Steve Williams of People Organized to Win Employment Rights. Bill Fletcher, Jr. cast the Charter as a political and social guide for mass struggle."

Jacqueline Cabasso is a Communist Party USA supporter, Bill Fletcher Jr is with Democratic Socialists of America and was with Davidson and Tom Hayden one of the five key founders of Progressives for Obama.

The conference attracted several international guests;
Helmut Scholz of Die Linke, Germany; Chris Matlhako of the Communist Party of South Africa, and Angela Davis of CCDS.

International guests included Chris Matlhako from the South African Communist Party and Marcos Garcia from the Venezuelan Embassy in DC gave a picture of protracted battles against neo-liberalism and their efforts to build and maintain unity on the left in their countries.

Helmut Scholz, a leader of Die Linke (The Left Party) of Germany, described the unity efforts between groups in East and West Germany that brought together its forerunner, the Party of Democratic Socialism, made up of the former East German Communists, and groupings of Left Social Democrats from the West. Their common task now, he explained, was making sure the burden of the capitalist crisis was not placed on the working class.

Jackeline Rivera, an FMLN deputy to the legislature of El Salvador, was warmly received. She revealed how, in their recent electoral victory, the FMLN saw two left groups break away, and the national unity efforts that followed.

Solidarity messages to CCDS were read ot from Cuba and Vietnam and "The Internationale" was sung.

Carl Davidson is of course also a big fan and promoter of Van Jones' work.

Van Jones associates Linda Burnham, Bob Wing ,Betita Martinez, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, and Bob Wing are all veterans of the Venceremos Brigades or multiple trips to former East Bloc countries.

Jones' friend and ally Betita Martinez was an early Cuban visitor;
In 1959, three months after the Cuban Revolution claimed victory, Martinez went to Cuba to witness a successful anti-colonial, socialist struggle. This trip to Cuba had a profound impact on her.

In addition to Cuba, Martinez later traveled to the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Vietnam (during the war) and China to witness and observe how people were implementing socialism.

Another close ally, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz , worked in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigades and with other revolutionaries including the Students for a Democratic Society and its terrorist offshoot the Weather Underground. She also worked in London in the 1960s with the South African Communist Party controlled African National Congress.

Not to mention over a hundred trips to Nicaragua, mainly in Sandinista times.

There is also another Cuban connection that is possibly even more concerning.

When Van Jones ran the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the organization was very close to another Bay Area institution-DataCenter.

Founded by Jon Frappier, a former supporter of the Weather Underground Organization, Datacenter is essentially the intelligence hub of the US left.

The Oakland California based organisation provides strategic information & research training to communities advocating for dignity, justice & civil rights."

According to a history published on DataCenter's website;

1977
DataCenter—an activist library and publication center—is founded in affiliation with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) by Jon Frappier, Fred Goff, Loretta & Harry Strharsky and 40 dedicated volunteers.

Further DataCenter activities included;
1979
Establish Corporate Profile Project for clients such as United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations & customized research service for immigration attorneys representing Central Americans seeking political asylum.

1980
Publish press profiles, The Reagan File, on Ronald Reagan and his policies on labor, El Salvador, foreign policy, and military policy in Asia.

1983
Expand Search Service to include corporate accountability research to support community, labor, and corporate campaigns and political asylees from all over the world. Incredibly DataCenter also admits to being an "information" gatherer for Cuban "institutions".

1991
Launch the Cuba Project/Conexiones to respond to information needs of institutions in Cuba & facilitates information exchange between U.S. and Cuban colleagues for the next ten years DataCenter's ties to Jones' Ella Baker Center are close. Diana Frappier who helped Jones establish and run the Center is believed to be a relative of Jon Frappier.

Celina Ramirez worked as a Policy Director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, 2006 and in 2006-2007 served on the DataCenter board.

In 2002 DataCenter celebrated its 25th Anniversary with a gala celebration honoring;

Youth United for Community Action, Southwest Organizing Project, and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Youth Force Coalition for their Books Not Bars campaign

This is the environment Van Jones sprang from. These are his "roots".

Has Jones abandoned the values he held and the people he worked with up until a few months ago just because he now has more power, money and influence?

Working in the White House is (or should be) a high security job.

Van Jones now has access to all sorts of high level information and gossip.

He has President Obama's ear on economic and social matters that could dramatically effect the US economy and eventually US military power and security.

Let's just hope Van Jones has abandoned his core convictions and past associations in last 6 months shall we?

After all the Obama White House claims to have extensively vetted all appointments-so he must be OK.

Obama file 84 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 8/27/2009 02:56:00 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
More Kudos for New Zeal
Glenn Beck's show has been threatened with an advertising boycott-organised by Color of Change-an organisation Van Jones helped to found.

** The strategy has backfired and now Beck's ratings are soaring.

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media has written an excellent column on the Beck/Jones "war" and has thrown some kudos New Zeal's way.

Not coincidentally, Beck has repeatedly singled out Van Jones for criticism, citing evidence of his communist past. The source of this evidence is New Zealand blogger Trevor Loudon, the same researcher who originally unearthed the fact that Obama's mysterious mentor "Frank" in Obama's book Dreams from My Father was Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

. We confirmed that identification with a separate source and ran with the story last year, even obtaining the 600-page FBI file on Davis.

. The Obama campaign eventually confirmed Frank's identity but tried to play down his relationship with Obama. Most media gave the scandal a ho-hum.

. Trevor Loudon, who deserves far more credit than he gets for smoking out the communists in and around the Obama Administration, broke the Van Jones story back on April 6 and has run several follow-ups. Among other things, he revealed that Jones was a leading member of a Marxist organization known by the acronym STORM, which means Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. A 96-page history of the organization mentions how several STORM members had traveled to Cuba in the summer of 1999 as part of the Venceremos Brigade. This is the group that was originally sponsored by the Castro regime and the Weather Underground.

. To add to the mystery, it turns out that "Van" Jones is not even his real name. His real first name is Anthony; he says he changed it because "Van" sounded cool. Various accounts say that he has been arrested twice.

. Aaron Klein of World Net Daily then wrote a story on Jones, citing Loudon's work. Since then, Beck and others have seized on it. Now, some more of this fascinating story can be told. I have been engaged for months in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests with the Obama Administration for information about Jones and how he was hired.

. It seems clear that Jones has undergone, with powerful sponsors and benefactors, an extreme makeover. Beck, to his credit, is trying to peel away the protective cover. He needs our support to remain on the air and pursue this story. The trail will most certainly lead beyond Jones himself.

Labels: Communist, Glenn Beck, New Zeal, Van jones

Information taken from New Zeal
A site by: Trevor Loudon
Trevor Loudon is a libertarian activist and political researcher from Christchurch New Zealand.

The Obama Files
The Obama File 1 Forget Islam-Look at Obama's Socialism!
Obama File 2 Barack Obama Was Endorsed by Chicago Marxists
Obama File 3 Socialist Unionists Endorse Barack Obama
Obama File 4 Obama Was Endorsed by Far Left "New Party"
Obama File 5 Barack Obama Courted Chicago Marxists, Peace Activists
Obama File 6 Bolshevik Barbara Bolsters Obama
Obama File 7 Barack Obama and the Democratic Socialists of America
Obama File 8 Baltimore Communists Back Obama
Obama File 9 US Communists Explain Backing For Barack Obama
Obama File 10 Barack Obama and the Socialist "Mafia"
Obama File 11 Communists Muster Latino Vote for Barack Obama
Obama File 12 Jan Schakowsky-Barack Obama's Loyal Socialist Supporter
Obama File 13 Top Communist Not Fooled By Obama's Critics
Obama File 14 Socialist Led Mega-Union Backs Barack Obama
Obama File 15 Socialist Octogenarians for Barack
Obama File 16 Barack Obama and the Legacy of Harold Washington
Obama File 17 Major Union Federation Endorses Barack Obama-More Socialist Links
Obama File 18 Will Obama Be the Communist Party's "People's President"?
Obama File 19 Obama '08 "All the Way With DSA"
Obama File 20 Young Communist League Backs Barack Obama-Again
Obama File 21 Top Communist Criss-Crosses the US for Obama
Obama File 22 Barack Obama, Danny K Davis and the Marxist New Party
Obama File 23 Alice Palmer-Obama's Soviet Sympathising Patroness
Obama File 24 Obama's Major Socialist Supporter
Obama File 25 CCDS Marxist-Leninists Come Out for Obama
Obama File 26 William McNary, Yet Another Obama Radical?
Obama File 27 Reds, Radicals, Terrorists and Traitors-Progressives For Obama
Obama File 28 Top US Communist-Elect Obama "Go On to Change the World"
Obama File 29 Senior US Socialist Jose LaLuz, Manipulates Latino Vote for Obama
Obama File 30 Former Terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn Involved in Key Pro-Obama Organisation
Obama File 31 Grey Power! Ageing Texan Radicals for Obama
Obama File 32 Toxic Trio! Ayers, Davidson, Klonsky Linked to Pro-Obama Organisation
Obama File 33 More Weathermen For Obama
Obama File 34 Black Radicals for Obama
Obama File 35 Even More Weathermen For Obama-Connections, Connections, Connections
Obama File 36 How Socialist Was Obama's "New Party"?
Obama File 37 Obama's Mentor, Frank Marshall Davis- Was He Still a Communist?
Obama File 38 Barack Obama, Frank Marshall Davis, Vernon Jarrett-One Degree of Seperation
Obama File 39 Barack Obama, Carol Moseley Braun and the Chicago Socialist Machine
Obama File 40 Bill & Bernardine's Buddy Bert, Backs Barack
Obama File 41 Obama Was a New Party Member-Documentary Evidence
Obama File 42 Obama's Socialist Neighbour, Jackie Grimshaw
Obama File 43 Former Weatherman Terrorists, Marxists, New Party Veterans, Unite Behind Obama
Obama File 44 More On Barack Obama and the Socialist New Party
Obama File 45 Obama's Cuddly Old, Terrorist Friendly, Socialist Friend and Neighbour-Rabbi Arnold Wolf
Obama File 46 The Axelrod Axis-Who Is Behind the Man Behind Obama?
Obama File 47 The Paid Soviet Agent Behind Axelrod and Obama
Obama File 48 Obama's Subtle Sermon-Advice to Socialist Allies
Obama File 49 How Communists, Socialists and Obama Can Change America
Obama File 50 Communist Party Strategy for Obama's America
Obama File 51 Top Communists Used Influence for Obama Victory
Obama File 52 Communists Celebrate Obama Victory, Plan Steps to Socialism
Obama File 53 Why Did Obama Appoint A Socialist To His "Transition Team"?
Obama File 54 Communist Party Leader On Obama "We Are Speaking To A Friend"
Obama File 55 Former Weatherman Terrorist and Comrade Discuss Obama-"Lenin Would Be Impressed"
Obama File 56 Son of Atom Bomb Spy "Don't Mourn Obama's Leanings -- Organize to Push Him the Other Way..."
Obama File 57 Obama's Socialist Ally Joins Powerful Congressional Committee
Obama File 58 Hilda Solis-Obama's Labor Secretary's Socialist Connections
Obama File 59 Top Socialist's Memo To Obama
Obama file 60 Institute For Policy Studies Plans Obama's America
Obama File 61 Institute for Policy Studies and the Obama "Movement"
Obama File 62 Obama "Understands What Socialism Is", Works With "Socialists With Backgrounds in the Communist Party"
Obama File 63 Obama's "Energy Czar" and the Socialists-Foreign and Domestic
Obama File 64 Symbolic? Socialist Singer Seeger Serenades Obama
Obama File 65 Obama's "Brains Trust"? More From the Institute for Policy Studies
Obama File 66 Socialist Leader-Use Obama Presidency to Create a "Permanent Progressive Majority"
Obama File 67 Breaking! Communist Leader Claims Obama Considering Nationalisation of Finance, Energy, Private Businesses
Obama File 68 Obama, Antonio Villaraigosa and the Harry Bridges Connection
Obama File 69 The Communists, Obama and the Cesar Chavez Holiday Campaign
Obama File 70 Obama's Socialist Attack Hounds to "Block" Blue Dog Democrats
Obama file 71 Former Terrorist Mark Rudd, Assesses Obama's Progress
Obama File 72 Obama Appoints "Former" Communist To White House "Green Job"
Obama File 73 Weather Alert! Obama's "Green Jobs" Czar Linked to Former Terrorist Supporters?
Obama File 74 Communists Honor Obama's Former Pastor-More Dots Connected
Obama File 75 American Rights at Work-Obama's Socialist Labor "Commissars".
Obama File 76 Leon Despres Dies-Obama's Socialist "Trailblazer" Moves On To Subvert Heaven?
Obama File 77 Sam Webb Lays Out Communist Agenda for Obama Administration
Obama File 78 Hard Evidence! Proof That Obama's Hawaii and Chicago Communist Networks Were Linked?
Obama File 79 Filling In the Gaps-More on Obama and Chicago Democratic Socialists of America
Obama File 80 Michelle and Barack's Black Panther Mentor
Obama File 81 Former Weather Underground Terrorists and '60s Maoists Nurtured Obama's "Green Jobs" Czar

Pat Caddell says follow the money

RBO is a great site. A must visit and I pulled this info from this blog. The site has much more info but I wanted to have this posted again as I only found out about it on Glenn Beck.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STORM Stories
April 9, 2009 by Procrustes
Also see related articles: Trevor Loudon’s Obama Appoints ‘Former’ Communist To White House ‘Green Job’ and RBO’s California community activist Adam Gold and More STORM Stories.
There’s a reliable saying, “you are known by the company you keep.” If you were paying attention — and you should have been — no doubt you heard it any number of times throughout Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
We don’t need to list names, as the list appears to be endless. You know of whom we speak.
But then, as always, there’s much much more.
A case in point originated with research for RBO’s April 6 article on California community activist Adam Gold.
Gold is a cohort to Anthony (Van) Jones (left), the San Francisco Bay Area radical agitator and committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist chosen March 10 to serve as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). In fact, this thread started with Trevor Loudon’s April 6 Obama appoints former Communist to White House ‘Green Job’. It was the simple matter of looking online for a picture of Adam Gold that led to many new avenues of discovery — and disquiet.
The Spring 2004 publication Reclaiming Revolution, which details the “history, summation & lessons” realized by the then-dissolved Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), is one excellent example.
As Loudon pointed out, both Jones and Gold were members of STORM. Their STORM activity, of course, could have occurred anytime between when it came into existence, in November 1994, and the approximate date of its dissolution, in December 2002. However, the digging about revealed that the involvement was not only long in time but wide in breadth.
A key factor is that, as STORM members, they would clearly have had to subscibe to STORM’s admitted Marxist ideals and shared willfully in STORM’s Marxist philosophy. Reclaiming Revolution states (p51):
STORM was never formally a “Marxist-Leninist” organization, and we never had a systematic Marxist theoretical framework. But we did have a political commitment to the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism. We upheld the Marxist critique of capitalist exploitation. We agreed with Lenin’s analysis of the state and the party. And we found inspiration and guidance in the insurgent revolutionary strategies developed in Third World revolutionaries like Mao Tse-tung and Amilcar Cabral.
We placed ourselves in the Marxist tradition, we also tried to critique that tradition and innovate within it. [...]
We also saw our brand of Marxism as, in some ways, a reclamation. In the face of the stereotype of Marxism that racialized it as white, we wanted to reclaim the history of Third World communist struggle. After all, such struggles have made up the overwhelming majority of communist movements worldwide.
But if we were firmly within the Marxist tradition, we were not bound very tightly to any camp within it. [...]
In his November 11, 2007, evaluation of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization’s (FRSO) publication Which Way Is Left?, adamfreedom at Machete408 writes of SOUL:
While there have been perhaps other very small and lesser known efforts of local level groups, the only one that has managed to have made a splash and left a legacy was Bay Area based STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement). Their politics were never very clearly defined, but drew heavily on Marxism and especially Mao, along with ideas popular during the NCM [New Communist Movement], including third world Marxism and elements of revolutionary nationalism. In their early years, the group even included a few anarchists, but became decisively third world Marxist in their later years. One of the more frustrating aspects of their politics was their tendency to fall into very vulgar and crude uses of Marxist analysis and theory (often justified as making Marxism accessible and of course laden with the assumption that oppressed people cannot think deeply) which coupled with overconfidence and leading roles in movements such a Proposition 98, led to conflict and distrust with other organizers.
As members of STORM and its Marxist-based philosophy, Jones and Gold did not function alone. They were in the company of a small group of like-minded fellow travellers.
Although Reclaiming Revolution talks strictly in terms of organizations and programs and concepts — and carefully avoids naming names — it is possible to identify some individuals from the text by their affiliations.
Before we talk about whom those might be, it’s significant that we can identify some STORM members mentioned elsewhere in contemporary sources. At least three members of STORM were identified as delivering classes at the Center for Political Action. In 1998 Cindy Wiesner, described as “organizer, H.E.R.E. local 2850, and STORM member”, presented “From Rank-and-File to Leadership: Women of Color and Unions.” A 2005 class (Reclaiming Revolution: Evaluating the Experience of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM)) was given by “former STORM members Harmony Goldberg, Raquel Lavina.” Two more STORM members’ names emerge in 2005 from a similar presentation on Reclaiming Revolution for the Catalyst Project — Maria Poblet and Jason Negron-Gonzalez. More on these fine folks below.
Adamfreedom at Machete408 comments March 23 he believes “the classic piece ‘Where was the color in Seattle?: Looking for reasons why the Great Battle was so white,’ originally published in ColorLines (Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2000) where Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez interviews Van Jones [... is] the only public reference to Van Jones’ membership in STORM.” ColorLines is a publication of the activist institute, the Applied Research Center.
As you will soon see, there are more.
Reclaiming Revolution states (p21) that, in 1998:
STORM members were building organizations that were growing and becoming important forces in the movement in their own right. STORM never organizationally directed or intervened in the work of these organizations. But, because STORM members founded and led them, they came to be seen as “STORM-affiliated.” Furthermore, these projects promoted politics quite similar to — indeed, at times indistinguishable from — STORM’s.
For example, Bay Area Police Watch was expanding to become the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC). EBC would go on to sponsor some of the Bay Area’s most important projects fighting against state oppression.
The references here to Bay Area PoliceWatch and the Ella Baker Center are clearly to Van Jones.
The Bay Area PoliceWatch Team is part of the Ella Baker Center co-founded by Jones, who is board president, and Diana Frappier, now a board member.
Trevor Loudon wrote April 8 about Diana Frappier (left) in “Weather Alert! Obama’s ‘Green Jobs Czar’ linked to Former Terrorist Supporters.” The “former terrorist supporters” are Jon and Nancy Frappier, whom the FBI identified as affiliated with Students for a Democratic Society and members of the Weather Underground and whom Trevor guesstimates are Diana’s parents. More about Diana Frappier below.
The other two board members are Belvie Rooks, Vice President of Special Projects at Carrie Productions, and independent public policy researcher and consultant, Glenn Backes, who previously served as Director of the Soros Foundation’s International Harm Reduction Development Program for which he helped “establish drug treatment and HIV prevention projects throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.”
Then, regarding STORM’s Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) Work Group (not to be confused with the RYM wing of Students for a Democratic Society), dedicated to the “development of a revolutionary internationalist trend of youth organizations in the Bay [Area]“, Reclaiming Revolution states:
RYM was STORM’s largest Work Group, including more than half of all members. Most STORM members had been engaged and playing leading roles in the Bay Area youth movement when they joined the organization.
RYM members were involved in Youth Force Coalition, the People of Color Task Force to Free Mumia (later known as the Third Eye Movement 510), Third Eye Movement 415, PENCIL (Progressive Educators Network Creating International Liberation), and SOUL (the School Of Unity & Liberation). Indeed, STORM members founded or co-founded all of these organizations. And each played a leading role in the youth and student movement.
Again commenting on Which Way Is Left?, adamfreedom at Machete408 writes (emphasis added):
Although never reaching more than 20 members, the group at their height in the late 90’s had tremendous influence as nearly every member was a non-profit staff organizer for various groups. They had direct or indirect influence over a near empire of non-profit movement groups. [...] a large number of [former STORM] activists are currently engaged in study groups on revolutionary organization in the Bay Area and NYC with partly initiated by some of their former members and those close to them. [...]
What is most interesting about STORM is that nearly all members had never been part of a previous revolutionary organization and the group maintained quotas of 60% women and 75% people of color, though many were non-natives to the Bay Are drawn to the regions top schools such as Stanford and University of California Berkeley. But undoubtedly STORM has left a legacy in the Bay Area of a largely people of color oriented brand of third world Marxism.
As discussed in RBO’s April 6 post on Adam Gold (right), the Youth Force Coalition (YFC) was a project of the Youth Empowerment Center (YEC), which was co-founded by Gold, YEC’s executive director and treasurer.
Other YEC directors included Van Jones and Harmony Goldberg (left), who served as the board’s president. Although Goldberg was identified by our source, Ron Arnold of Undue Influence, as executive director of SOUL (School of Unity and Liberation), Goldberg is also SOUL’s co-founder and co-director.
Note both YFC and SOUL are organizations listed above as “founded or co-founded” by STORM RYM members. Also note that YEC was both YFC’s and SOUL’s fiscal sponsor. Is this not looking a whole lot like the ACORN, SEIU expansive network?
Unquestionably, STORM, YEC/YFC and SOUL operated interdependently up until STORM’s dissolution in December 2002. The YEC administration was closed down as of December 31, 2004.
In a lengthy October 16, 2002, San Francisco Weekly profile, Peter Byrne wrote about SOUL, co-founded in 1996 by Goldberg and fellow UC Berkeley student, Rona Fernandez:
Like the radical left itself, SOUL is a study in contradiction.
Borrowing techniques and language from the corporate business world, SOUL hires itself out as a consultant to left-leaning groups, teaching them how to incorporate as nonprofits and how to seek grants from major philanthropic foundations. In a few short years, the school’s staff, and its graduates, have become a force in the arena of leftist politics in the Bay Area, leading activist groups working for welfare and immigrant rights, prison and police reform, tenant protection, affordable housing, and a cleaner environment.
But there is irony to spare in the funding sources that have made those inroads possible: A score of gold-plated, capitalist foundations regularly pump large sums of money into Mandela Village, even though SOUL promotes anti-capitalist ideas — including redistribution of the world’s wealth to the poor — that, if made real, would mean the end of private property, not to mention philanthropic foundations.
Byrne writes Mandela Village “houses what can aptly be described as a school of rebellion.”
Behind the irony lies the fundamental question: Is SOUL using capitalists to undermine capitalism, or are the agents of Mammon simply paying a new generation of leftists to join, rather than smash, The System? [...]
Note: Ponder this question for a moment before moving on. What do you think?
As SOUL grew, Goldberg became a fund-raiser extraordinaire. She quickly linked up with a national network of nonprofits that pursue environmental and political reforms far to the left of, say, the Democratic Party platform. America’s newest generation of social radicals is supported by private foundations — the Vanguard Public Foundation, Resist Inc., the Tides Foundation, and the Active Element Foundation — that are, in turn, funded by donations from wealthy families and individuals. SOUL also takes money from the Zellerbach Foundation, capitalized originally by profits made in the paper and pulp industry, and from the Levi Strauss Foundation, operated by Levi Strauss & Co., a multinational garment-manufacturing firm. SOUL’s board of directors draws the line at applying for government grants.
A broader historical background for SOUL comes from a 1998 Clinton administration One America Initiatives file which states:
The Summer Of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) grew out of the 1995 student movement at the University of California-Berkeley to support affirmative action. Modeled after the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), SOUL was founded by four women–Rona Fernandez, Harmony Goldberg, Tho Vinh Banh and Amanda Enoch–who were directly involved in the Berkeley campus organizing. [...]
SOUL began as a summer training program in 1996. The first summer program focused on organizing to support affirmative action in the University of California system. The second summer focused on welfare and economic justice organizing. [...]
Rona Fernandez and Harmony Goldberg are now extending SOUL into a year-round political education and organizer-training program for young people in the Bay Area.
It would appear that Tho Vinh Banh, listed since 2002 as a California attorney and currently with Disability Rights California, and Amanda Enoch, whereabouts unknown, left SOUL prior to Byrne’s 2002 article.
Byrne continues, with more information about the SOUL/Youth Empowerment Center relationship:
According to public records, SOUL’s fiscal sponsor, the Youth Empowerment Center Inc., a kind of nonprofit holding company headed by Goldberg, raised a total of $1.4 million in 2000 and 2001 from private foundations. [...]
The school’s share of the Youth Empowerment Center’s take [in 2001/2] was about a quarter-million dollars. SOUL’s six staff members receive salaries of $27,000, health insurance, and paid sick days and annual vacation time. The balance of the center’s money went to funding four artistic and community organizing groups that share SOUL’s political goals and office space, and into a hefty savings account.
Keep in mind, the Youth Empowerment Center board of directors, which included Van Jones and Adam Gold, led by its president, Harmony Goldberg, controlled the purse strings for activist groups C-Beyond, Youth Force Coalition, SOUL, the Underground Railroad, STARC (Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations), and RESYST (Resources for Youth Students and Trainers).
Byrne also interviewed Gold, who currently serves on SOUL’s board of directors, for the article:
A few years ago, Adam Gold received technical assistance from SOUL when he founded a white youth group to combat racism in Contra Costa County. Later, he went to work as a fund-raiser for the Youth Empowerment Center and was elected treasurer of its board of directors.
The “white youth group” to which Gold referred is most likely “Concord-and Beyond (C-Beyond), based in conservative, mostly white Contra Costa County north of San Francisco,” thusly described by another Van Jones-Adam Gold associate, Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez in the May 2000 issue of Z Magazine.
Martinez, the co-founder of the Institute for MultiRacial Justice, was profiled October 4, 2005, by ABC News San Francisco:
After graduating from Swarthmore College, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2000, she worked as a United Nations researcher on colonialism in Africa, an editor at Simon & Schuster; and Books and Art Editor of The Nation. During the 1960s she served fulltime in the Black civil rights movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1968 she joined the Chicano movement in New Mexico, where she edited the newspaper El Grito del Norte and co-founded the Chicano Communications Center, a barrio-based organization. As an anti-war activist, she traveled to North Vietnam in 1970.
Since moving to the Bay Area in 1976, she has taught Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies in the California State University system, conducted anti-racist training workshops, and worked on Latino community issues. She ran for Governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1982. She has spoken to hundreds of academic, student and community groups and received many awards.
In 1997 she co-founded and currently directs the Institute for MultiRacial Justice in San Francisco, a resource center that aims to help build alliances between peoples of color and combat divisions. She served as an editor of the national bilingual newspaper War Times/Tiempo de Guerras.
Another profile on Martinez, “Towards Social Justice: Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez and the Institute for MultiRacial Justice” by Chris Crass, was published by Colours of Resistance, self-described as a “multi-racial, anti-global capitalist working group.”
Trevor Loudon wrote in his article on Van Jones that Jones, Gold and Martinez worked together on the organizing committee for the anti Iraq War newspaper WAR TIMES.
Returning to Harmony Goldberg, in his Undue Influence profile on the Youth Empowerment Center, Ron Arnold provides a brief bio for her:
YEC President 1999-2001
Executive director, SOUL (School of Unity and Liberation), Oakland, CA
August, 2002: as member of [the anti-Israel group] Jews for a Free Palestine visited Nablus, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Gaza. (See Janelle Brown, Over my dead body. Activists are flocking to the West Bank to serve as human shields, protecting Palestinians and protesting the Israeli occupation. Are they part of the solution — or part of the problem?, Salon, January 15, 2003.)
July 2001: jailed for unlawful assembly after disrupting Alameda County (CA) Board of Supervisors meeting
1998: Critical Resistance conference: panelist on “Developing Revolutionary Strategies”
May 1997: graduated, University of California at Berkeley
Organizer, “Californians for Justice” and Students Against Proposition 209 (See Harmony Goldberg’s The Abolition of Affirmative Action at UC Berkeley published in ATC 71, November-December 1997.)
1995, leader of UC-Berkeley’s Diversity in Action coalition
Note that Goldberg’s SOUL co-founder, Rona Fernandez, “leads fundraising and fundraising strategy” at Californians for Justice in Oakland; she has been involved with CFJ since 1995 when it was founded “as a statewide campaign to defend affirmative action in California.”
More recently, Goldberg was a signatory to the August 2006 Petition for U.S. Jewish Solidarity with Muslim and Arab Peoples of the Middle East and, in January 2008, Goldberg, “whose activist work includes involvement with Domestic Workers United,” participated in Solidarity’s Socialist Feminist Retreat.
Diana Frappier
Although there is not a lot more that can be said about former STORM member Diana Frappier, trainer and speaker profiles for the 1999 Western States Center Community Strategic Training Initiative includes her:
DIANA FRAPPIER is the Legal Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which fights human rights abuses on several levels, including operating a lawyer referral service for victims of police misconduct, community organizing and training. Diana has facilitated numerous know-your-rights trainings with the Third Eye Movement and numerous legal trainings for attorneys who practice in the area of police misconduct litigation.
Third Eye Movement 510 (formerly People of Color Task Force to Free Mumia) and Third Eye Movement 415
STORM’s 2004 publication Reclaiming Revolution provides a pedigree of sorts for the Third Eye Movement. Note again that throughout the publication, STORM member names are not named. On p31 we find:
And it was the Third Eye Movement that played a key role in STORM’s dissolution. Again, posting from Reclaiming Revolution (p32), we find:
Note: It took awhile before the significance of Third Eye Movement 510 and Third Eye Movement 415 sunk it. The numbers belong to telephone area codes. 510 is Oakland; 415 is San Francisco as well as portions of neighboring Brisbane and Daly City; and Marin County (across the Golden Gate Bridge to the north).
Robin Templeton wrote in the April 2000 issue of Peacework Magazine:
“The by-product of the passage of Prop 21 is that we now have a stronger youth movement,” says Pecolia Manigo, a 17-year-old student organizer. “We’ll keep rising up until we overthrow the system that funds prisons instead of our schools.” Manigo’s organization, the Third Eye Movement, is part of Critical Resistance Youth Force, a northern California coalition that has swelled to include 38 youth groups united to fight Prop 21.
At least one STORM member’s name comes from a book by authors Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, who write in That’s The Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader:
Unsurprisingly, the Third Eye Movement is another “project” involving STORM member Van Jones / Ella Baker Center.
Note that Jones, identified as a “principal” in Third Eye, said “We’re willing to take issues into our hands if the system won’t work” and that the civil rights movement had “become ‘too tame and too tired’.” This was not Jones speaking in 1999 or 2000 but Jones talking to the authors prior to the book’s September 2004 publication.
Also note that both Third Eye and STORM were co-sponsors of the pro-Abu Jamal rally.
The Center’s “Brief History” explains:
1999-2000 — Third Eye Movement. The group spent a couple of years working on various local issues, including the well-publicized police murder of Sheila Detoy. But it really came into its own when Proposition 21, a draconian initiative to put 14 year-olds in adult courts and 16 year-olds in adult prisons, made it onto the California ballot. Third Eye Movement, now with chapters in San Francisco and Oakland, helped lead a broad network of youth organizations fighting against Proposition 21 in the Bay Area. With innovative, militant, non-violent direct action, Third Eye Movement became a national example of a new generation of “hip-hop activism.” Thousands of young people got involved in politics for the first time, and it was beautiful. Thanks to the youth and student movement, the five Bay Area counties were the only ones in the state to reject Proposition 21 in March 2000.
Mumia Abu-Jamal
On April 6, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s (right) original conviction 28 years ago would stand.
A former Black Panther activist, Mumia Abu-Jamal was “convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner.” (Also see the Discover The Networks article.)
On May 10, 1999, contact Kiilu Nyasha messaged on behalf of a group desiring “to build a democraticcoalition that embraces all organizations and individuals moving to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
Nyasha wrote:
To date, a number of organizations have been working to free Mumia, including the Black Radical Congress; Jericho; the Mobilization to Free Mumia; the National Peoples Campaign; the People of Color Task Force to Free Mumia; Refuse and Resist; the Santa Cruz Coalition to Free Mumia and many others.
Now is the time for all of us to come together to share our strength, resources, and ideas in order to create a powerful movement that functions on principles of unity.
The message was sent out via the Black Radical Congress, which Trevor Loudon wrote about in some detail October 4, 2008. The BRC was formed in June 1998 and the membership includes several avid Obama supporters. Trevor wrote:
Manning Marable, Bill Fletcher Jr. and Cornel West were all leaders of the New Party. Manning Marable was elected MDS [Movement for a Democratic Society] chairman in February 2007.
Bill Fletcher Jr., Robin D.G. Kelley, Gerald Horne, Charlence Mitchell, Angela Y. Davis and Akbar Muhammad Ahmed have all served on the board of Movement for a Democratic Society.
Bill Fletcher Jr. was the initiator of Progressives for Obama, while Robin D.G. Kelley, Cornel West and James Campbell are endorsers of the organisation. Prexy Nesbitt is a signatory of P4O’s online petition.
Many of those listed have been busily supporting Obama, directly or indirectly.
Amiri Baraka doesn’t like Obama-haters.
Michael Dawson spoke with Obama at a 1996 forum on Economic Insecurity sponsored by the University of Chicago DSA Youth Section, Chicago DSA and University Democrats.
Gerald Horne, who has studied the Communist Party in Hawaii was the first to publicly link Barack Obama with his boyhood mentor, long time CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis in the CPUSA journal Political Affairs.
Gerry Hudson is now a senior official of the Service Employees International Union, which endorsed Barack Obama
Robin D.G. Kelley will deliver Hampshire College’s eleventh annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture on October 15th in the Robert Crown Center. His talk will be titled “Confronting Obama: A Primer on Race and Empire for the New U.S. President.”
Manning Marable strongly endorsed Obama in a January 2008 article entitled “Barack Obama’s Problem – And Ours”
Dee Myles penned this pro-Obama piece for the Illinois Communist blog.
Leith Mullings is a signatory of the February 2008 Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama petition
Salim Muwakkil is a prominent propagandist for Barack Obama.
Barbara Ransby spoke at this forum in Chicago at The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) April 19-20, 2002 with Bill Ayers, Salim Muwakkil and Barack Obama.
In an October 4, 1999 communication that former radio reporter Abu-Jamal’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court had been denied, and that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge would be issuing a new death warrant within the next 30 days, the Third Eye Movement (formerly the People of Color Task Force to Free Mumia formed in May 1999) called for a general organizational meeting in the San Franciso Bay Area:
It’s time to turn on our emergency response networks. HOOK UP WITH YOUR LOCAL FOLKS QUICK!! DON’T WAIT FOR THE WARRANT TO BE SIGNED TO ACT!!! GET WORD OUT – THIS IS IT…………..
A 2002 Youth Media Council and the non-profit We Interrupt This Message publication, “Speaking for Ourselves,” describes Third Eye Movement 510 as a “project” of the Ella Baker Center:
Let’s Get Free, formerly known as Third Eye Movement 510, is organizing Bay Area high-school youth against police brutality, and is currently leading a campaign to stop Alameda County from building the largest per capita juvenile hall in the country. A project of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, LGF is a primary partner in the Youth Media Council.
Raquel Laviña and Cindy Wiesner
Betita Martinez, writing September 1996 in Z Magazine, said Raquel Laviña, a “Chicana-Filipina who has been active since age 15″, was “now in Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM).”
STORM members Raquel Laviña and frequent fellow traveller, Cindy Wiesner, were involved with the creation of Generation Five, founded 1995 in the Bay Area “to do direct action on child sexual abuse.”
Cindy Wiesner (left) is described as an early staff member who brought “experience with independent labor, anti-imperialist and anti-racist organizing [which were] deeply reflected in g5’s analysis and programs.” Raquel Laviña’s “contributions” are acknowledged but not enumerated. In 2004 Wiesner is described as a “community organizer” at G5.
Cindy Wiesner’s ZoomInfo.com profile states her employment history as:
Organizing Director, POWER
United States Social Forum (USSF) Coordinator, Miami Workers Center
Co-Organizing Director, Miami Workers Center
Organizer, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union
Organizer, Common Counsel Foundation
Wiesner is named by ZoomInfo.com as a Women of Color Resource Center board member. She was also a Youth Empowerment Center board member. Ron Arnold writes at Undue Influence that Wiesner was both a YEC director and an organizer with POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) in San Francisco, where she worked “for four years and developed the group’s political education curriculum.”
In October 1999 Raquel Laviña was a member of the Critical Resistance Youth Force, a “group that advocates spending money to improve education in place of building more prisons.” She said California’s Proposition 21, one of several “drafted in response to the Columbine High School shootings,” “would redefine a gang as any group of three or more people with an informal association, and that this new definition would increase the power that police have over juveniles.”
In February 2000 Laviña was the East Bay organizer for No on 21.
Of Proposition 21, Aaron Shuman wrote February 22, 2000, in Bad Subjects:
While Prop 21 is titled the Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act, it contains none of the peer mentorship, education, or afterschool programs commonly known as violence prevention. Instead, it is a 45-page rewrite of the juvenile crime code, that among other things would unseal juvenile court records while creating an extremely loose definition of a “gang.” Police would be required to register “gang” members; prosecutors could pursue far harsher sentences for crimes committed by them; and the reclassification of a host of misdemeanors as felonies-including graffiti that causes $400 in property damage-would put more convicted felons on the books. Opponents fear the sort of prejudicial policing that former Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner disclosed, when he noted in the early nineties that nearly half the city’s Black men were listed as gang members in LAPD files. At the very least, your court record from juvie could register you as a criminal for life, in the eyes of educators and employers.
Also devestating is the effect Prop 21 would have on California’s budget. According to the state’s non-partisan Legislative Analyst, Prop 21 would require a one-time outlay of close to a billion dollars and ongoing costs of $430 million/year to build and maintain the facilities to house more juveniles doing more time. Because Prop 21 proposes no new sources of funding, opponents say prevention programs would take the hit, with prisonbuilders eyeing the state education budget. California ranks first nationally in prison spending, forty-first in education.
Shuman also described Laviña thusly:
Laviña is hesitant to give her age, laughing that when high school students walked out of classes last year to protest school conditions, police threatened to book adults with them on the charge of corrupting minors. Laviña and all of No on 21’s paid staff are in their mid-twenties.
Raquel Laviña was working at Van Jones’s Ella Baker Center in 2001. The ZoomInfo.com cache file of her Center profile has been removed. However, she did represent the Center in May 2001 and, in November 2002, she was the Center’s program director and her name was found as a Center contact in late 2003. Her name is no longer listed as being with the Center.
In 2002 Laviña was also a member of Racial Justice 911’s interim steering committee.
In February 2004, Laviña was an INCITE! Women of Color Community Accountability in Organizations working group member and, in September 2004, she was identified as a protest organizer with A31 in New York City.
Laviña is named in 2006 as coordinator for California Fund for Youth Organizing, a “collaborative, community-based renewal grantmaking vehicle that promotes the civic engagement of youth in issues that impact them the most”, as recipient of a $35,000 grant, and again Fall 2007 for a $25,000 grant from the Hill-Snowdon Foundation.
In October 2008 Cindy Wiesner was listed as a co-coordinator with Michael Leon Guerrero of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance/Alianza Popular por la Justicia Global (GGJ). Wiesner was a member of the National Planning Committee/outreach organizer for the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in June 2007 and is one of the coordinators for the 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit.
Cindy Wiesner’s name heads the list of United Against Racism Coalition’s adhoc coordinating committee for signatures to an “Open Letter to the Obama Administration [as an allied call to end the US boycott; to] Attend the United Nations Durban Review Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related intolerance.” The letter urges “United States participation in the upcoming United Nations Durban Review of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), to be held in Geneva, Switzerland April 20 – 24.”
Maria Poblet
Maria Poblet, “Storm Organizer/Revolutionary Voices Poet”, performed March 31, 2001, at what was described by SFINX as a “fierce inaugural show of San Francisco in Exile Live at the Jon Sims Center, featuring local queer performers and exiles.”
On September 15, 2001, Poblet was again publicly identified as a STORM member at an anti-Israel rally:
Hundreds of peace activists rallied late Wednesday to condemn a growing tide of anti-Arab and Muslim sentiments, as well as what they call a media-driven frenzy that may fuel a military response to this week’s acts of terrorism on the East Coast. “We are not anti-American” said Maria Poblet, on the organizers of the gathering that attracted 500 to Snow Park near Lake Merritt. “War is a bad idea.” Poblet is a member of STORM – Standing Together To Organize a Revolutionary Movement. Dozens of people held lit candles and listened to speakers who said U.S. foreign policies and support for Israel has led to many deaths in the Middle East and in other Third World countries.
On January 16, 2009, former STORM member Maria Poblet (right) of Berkeley, described as “a Latina immigrant rights organizer and poet who grew up in Argentina”, was one of nine activists who “blocked the entrance of the Israeli Consulate, in nonviolent protest of [alleged] Israeli apartheid and its current attacks on Gaza.”
In August 2005, Poblet was “spokesperson for St. Peter’s Housing Committee, an immigrant rights advocacy organization in San Francisco.”
An undated speaker’s profile for Poblet for Generation M states:
María Teresa Poblet is an immigrant of Mexican and Argentine descent, who has been organizing for more than seven years with the St. Peter’s Housing Committee in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. St. Peter’s Housing Committee does housing rights advocacy and community organizing with low income tenants and immigrant Latinos, with the goal of building a broader, multi racial movement for social justice. María was instrumental in transforming St. Peter’s from a legal clinic into a grassroots social justice organization. She is a founding member of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, which fights for community based urban planning and development, and of Deporten a la Migra (Deport the Immigration Authorities) Coalition, which has been a key force in this year’s historic mobilizations for immigrant rights. She plays a lead role in local efforts towards building unity and strategic alliances among oppressed communities.
According to Generation M’s About Us page, it is:
[...] a grassroots youth organization committed to engaging Muslims within a community dialogue. The main objective of Generation M is to promote social and religious tolerance by gathering students of all ages for annual conferences and monthly Unity Halaqas to encourage community involvement.
The February 10, 2008, issue of In Motion Magazine provides another profile for Poblet:
María Poblet is a queer Latina poet. She has studied poetry under the direction of June Jordan and Martín Espada. She served as Artistic Director of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, and taught poetry workshops at Mission Cultural Center, FCI Dublin Women’s Prison, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her work has been featured in the SF Weekly, Revolutionary Voices, and the Street Sheet. She has been a community organizer in San Francisco’s mission district since 1999, fighting for immigrant Latino tenants’ rights. She agrees with Cape Verdian revolutionary Amilcar Cabral that culture is a weapon in the fight for freedom, and can often be found reading poetry through a bullhorn.
Poblet currently serves as a member of SOUL’s (School of Unity and Liberation) board of directors.
Jason Negrón-Gonzales
As we stated above, former STORM member Jason Negrón-Gonzales (left) (also found as Jason Negrón-Gonzalez) was one of three STORM members (with Harmony Goldberg and Maria Poblet) who gave a presentation about STORM’s 2004 publication, Reclaiming Revolution at the Catalyst Project.
In 2006 Negrón-Gonzales was one of three authors who delivered the presentation “Towards Land, Work, and Power: A study with organizers from POWER [People Organized to Win Employment Rights],” regarding their new book, Towards Land, Work, & Power: Charting A Path Of Resistance To U.S.-led Imperialism, which “looks] at the political economy of the Bay Area and building an anti-imperialist movement based in working class communities of color.” Presenters included Negron-Gonzalez, Marisa Franco, and Jaron Browne; a fourth author, Steve Williams, was not present.
Negrón-Gonzales is the former Director of Movement Generation, and a co-founder of the Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project:
He began his political work organizing as a student around Puerto Rican community issues. In 1998, Jason received a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from U.C. Berkeley. As a student at UC Berkeley he was involved in building multi-racial student alliances and worked against the ending of affirmative action and the cutting back of ethnic studies. After graduating he began working with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a membership based community/labor organization in San Francisco. In his time at POWER Jason served as Organizer, Campaign Director, and Education Director as well as in alliance building work locally and nationally.
Both Negrón-Gonzales and Van Jones participated as speakers at the Tides Foundation’s Momentum Conference 2006.
Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales is a former co-director of SOUL (School of Unity and Liberation) and serves on SOUL’s board of directors. Currently, she is IDEAL Student Services Coordinator for the Level Playing Field Institute. Her relationship to Jason is unknown.
PENCIL
Unfortunately, this article ends on an empty note as little could be found about PENCIL (Progressive Educators Network Creating International Liberation) founded in 1995.
Current president, Michael Haberman, has only been with PENCIL since January 2007.
Conclusion
For all that we do know about STORM, there is so much more that we don’t and most likely won’t.
As much as they were community activists, their focus was Alinskyesque in that they were — and most remain — all about two things: 1. Training activists in the Marxist mold and 2. Training activists how to raise lots of money.
Unlike a lot of other groups professing to be for the working man/woman or elevating the masses, STORM had a very clear structured plan to train activists to go out and create or work for non-governmental organizations while using the resources of well-to-do “establishment” funders.
STORM’s mandate was about social justice, educational justice, and economic justice, a theme we as American citizens are now having foisted upon us.
STORM and all the organizations which it has spawned continues through the “students” it taught and continues to teach through those it trained. One thing STORM has in common with the Obama operation (including Obama’s Hopefund “Camp Obama” in 2005 and subsequent versions) is that it preyed upon the naive and uninformed and idealistic concentrated on college campuses, starting at UC-Berkeley in the mid 1990s.
How many more of these activist “cells” existed throughout the U.S. that we are yet to learn about? Here we have Barack Obama connected in so many directions with the Communist Party USA, the New Party, and a plethora of Marxist/Leninist/Socialist actors and “Green Czar” Van Jones who was deeply involved with STORM and all the intertwined groups with their tentacles reaching out from Oakland and UC-Berkeley. It is almost, as Trevor Loudon voiced, as if both of them had been snatched up from the streets and groomed for their current roles.
See next page for cache file profile of the Youth Empowerment Center.




http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/storm-stories/
reclaiming revolution storm on revolutionariespage 51
congressmen Acorn rep darrell Issa oversight acorn operating criminally

http://leftspot.com/blog/files/docs/STORMSummation.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Together_to_Organize_a_Revolutionary_Movement

**http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/storm-stories/
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/reading-list/
" Believe here's Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin is gonna help us out a little bit more. On this book that I read. Two weeks ago it is called reclaiming a revolution. It's is terrifying Michelle and it's not an ancient book can you tell me a little bit about it."

"Well it's very creepy and what it is essentially is a case self published. History of this group. Standing together to organize a revolutionary Movement. What this group did how it splintered. And how -- essentially disbanded and yet grew it's revolutionary cadre that's out there working today.

It's important connecting the dots and following the money as Pat Caddell said on your show yesterday that's what culture of corruption my book is all about. And that's really what needs to be done here. Because in fact we don't know who they shadowy fund aware funders of the storm -- but we do know some of the funders of some of their outlined group."

Who is ColorofChange.org? Facebook16 posts - 5 authors - Last post: 10 hours ago"Reclaiming Revolution," STORM, RAW, (Roots Against War,") Ella Baker Foundation, ... one of the founders AND members of the radical Weather Underground, ...