http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-file-89-deepak-bhargava-advancing.html
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He is a libertarian activist and political researcher from Christchurch New Zealand. His web is packed with great stuff...
Obama File 89 Deepak Bhargava "Advancing Change in the Age of Obama"
Obama File 88 here
Indian born, New York raised, Harvard educated, Deepak Bhargava may have seldom crossed paths with Barack Obama-but he is a key player in 44th president's movement to transform America.
Deepak Bhargava is connected to almost every aspect of the Obama movement-from George Soros to ACORN, to Democratic Socialists of America, to The Nation, to the communist dominated United for Peace and Justice, to a whole raft of "progressive" non profits.
In the video below, Deepak Bhargava opens the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum December 10 2007 - a forum exclusively for thousands of community organizers including ACORN personnel.
Note that Obama promises to invite community organizers to the White House even before his inauguration, to contribute to setting his "agenda for change".
Deepak Bhargava's main base for activism is the Washington DC based Center for Community Change, (CCC) which he joined in 1994, after several years as legislative director for ACORN.
Bhargava became the Center's Executive Director in 2004 and has successfully pushed the organization to develop the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change the policies and institutions that affect their lives.
Deepak Bhargava has sharpened the Center's focus on grassroots community organizing as the central strategy for social justice and on public policy change as the key lever to improve poor people's lives.
Bhargava conceived and led the Center's work on immigration reform, which has resulted in the creation of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a leading grassroots network pressing for changes in the country's immigration laws.
He has spearheaded the creation of innovative new projects like Generation Change, a program that recruits, trains and places the next generation of community organizers, and the Community Voting Project, which brings large numbers of low-income voters into the electoral process.
Helping Bhargava change America, is CCC board member Heather Booth, the former Students for a Democratic Society radical, turned Democratic Party power player.
Booth runs the Midwest Academy out of Chicago-churning out hundreds of "community" and union organizers.
Booth and her husband Paul, a labor union power broker, both have close ties to the US's largest marxist organization, Democrativc Socialists of America.
As does Deepak Bhargava.
Over September 20-22 2002 Frances Fox Piven, Deepak Bhargava and Holly Sklar were billed as keynote speakers at “Confronting the Low-Wage Economy” at the First Congregational Church-Washington, DC, organized by Democratic Socialists of America.
This conference will kick off DSA’s Low Wage Justice Project, which is designed to bring the human consequences of the low wage economy to the attention of the American people.
DSA member Frances Fox Piven is the co-author of the famous Cloward-Piven Strategy developed in the 1960s-widely used by ACORN, DSA and US "community organizers" ever since.
The strategy calls for organizers to encourage the "poor" to enroll for every entitlement possible, in order to bankrupt the US government, to bring about chaos and eventual social revolution.
In his speech to the conference Deepak Bhargava refered favourably to the work of DSA founder [Michael Harrington and his book "The Other America"-which is widely credited with sparking the massive growth of US welfarism in the 1960s under Kennedy and Johnson.
So I do want to say that I enter this new period with a tremendous amount of optimism. Before nine-eleven we saw larger numbers mobilized in the streets on a whole range of issues, immigration, living wages than we'd seen in a long, long time. There is no question that nine-eleven has taken the wind to some degree out of those sails, but I think both the demographic, the organizational, the economic realities underneath that momentum at the local level are still present, and it's up to our imagination and our will to rekindle it over the next couple of years. But I think we can make great strides on this anniversary of Michael Harrington's The Other America in doing something serious about it...
Deepak Bhargava's radical ties extend in several directions.
At the higher level, Bhargava is a board member at George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI).
On November 29, 2006 Bhargava participated in a roundtable discussion at OSI New York entitled "How Do Progressives Connect Ideas to Action?"
Individuals and organizations with similarly progressive goals often dilute their power by working alone or even working at cross-purposes. As Americans who are politically left of center move forward, questions of infrastructure, communication, and collaboration are particularly important.
Participants included;
Robert Borosage-A trustee of the far left Washington "think tank" Institute for Policy Studies and founder/CEO of Campaign for America's Future.
Rosa Brooks Daughter of IPS Trustee and DSA member Barbara Ehrenreich. Now a senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy.
Anna Burger AFL-CIO, later a Progressives for Obama endorser and key player in labor union/Obama White House dealings.
Eric Foner DSA member.
Katrina vanden Heuvel IPS trustee, The Nation editor.
John Podesta Center for American Progress founder. CAP is a key source of "progressive" personnel for the Obama Administration.
Joel Rogers Key DSA aligned "progressive" activist. A founder of the radical New Party which Obama joined in Chicago in 1995.
As of July 17, 2007 Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change was affiliated with United for Peace and Justice-the US peace movement umbrella group.
UFPJ was intiated to oppose the Iraq war by the Institute for Policy Studies . It is completely dominated by communists and radicals, which doesn't seem to bother Bhargava.
Also leading organizations affiliated to UFPJ in July 2007, were Communist Party members Judith LeBlanc, Rosalio Munoz, Alfred Marder and Erica Smiley, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism aligned activists Leslie Cagan, Attieno Davis, Howard Wallace and Van Gosse, DSA leaders Jason Schulman and Lucas Shapiro, Freedom Road Socialist Organization Maoists, Dennis O'Neil and Juliet Ucelli, IPSers Phyllis Bennis, Saif Rahman and Arthur Waskow and a very familiar name to readers of this blog-Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Bhargava serves on the editorial board of the The Nation--effectively the house journal of the IPS.
Fellow Editorial board members include;
Barbara Ehrenreich DSA member, IPS Trustee, New Party and Progressives for Obama founder.
Eric Foner DSA member.
Lani Guinier Daughter of communist Ewart Guinier.
Tom Hayden SDS and Progressives for Obama founder.
Deborah Meier DSA member and speaker in 1998, with Barack Obama at the memorial service of Chicago DSA member Saul Mendelson)
Victor Navasky IPS Trustee, The Nation.
Marcus Raskin IPS founder.
Below is a video of Deepak Bhargava speaking at a The Nation forum in April 2009, on the prospects for "progressive" gains under Obama's "stealth agenda".
On February 26 2009, Mike Lux, Miles Rapoport of Demos, Deepak Bhargava and Gloria Totten of Progressive Majority spoke at the Center for Community Change in New York at a forum entitled "Progressives in an Obama World: The Role of the Progressive Movement in a Democratically Controlled Washington".
The forum blurb identified Obama as a "progressive" and went on to say;
Since the 2004 election, the progressive movement has built a powerful infrastructure of think tanks, media outlets and advocacy organizations. Frustrated by the conservative ascendancy and the dominance of conservative ideas, individuals and institutions have put forward new paradigms for government and promoted a bold vision for the future.
But now a progressive holds the highest office in the land. As the movement struggles to define its role in the Obama era, important questions remain unanswered: What is the role of such organizations in Washington and how can they best create political space for Obama to act? On what issues should the movement compromise and on which take strong stands? How can progressives build consensus to make their efforts more effective?
The panel will feature progressive leaders Deepak Bhargava, Miles Rapoport and Mike Lux; the speakers will draw on two new books, ‘Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era,’ and The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, as they discuss what progressives can do to create momentum for greater boldness at a time when opportunities and challenges abound.
Miles Rapoport is another former SDSer, DSA associate, ACORN defender and ardent Obama supporter. Interestingly Rapoport became president of New York "think tank" Demos in 2000-while Obama was still a founding Trustee of the organization.
Van Jones, incidentally is still listed as a Demos Trustee.
Below is another Bhargava speech from February 2009, given to the Liberty Hill foundation "Advancing Change in the Age of Obama".
On Wednesday, November 05, 2008 Deepak Bhargava and the Center for Community Change issued a statement on the new President-elect;
Community Organizers Welcome One of Their Own to the White House
Community organizers across the country congratulate the historic victory of one of our own and herald the role community organizing played in revitalizing participation in our democratic process.
“Community organizing helped mobilize voters like never before with grassroots organizations engaging in electoral politics. Sen. Obama’s own campaign was modeled on the tools of organizing, building the national groundswell that got him to this moment.
“Election Day is just the beginning. Community organizing will continue to play an important role in keeping an expectant and motivated electorate working together with the new Administration to find solutions for our shared problems. Together we will strive to realize the dream we voted for – an America that works for all of us.”
On December 4, thousands of grassroots leaders will host Realizing the Promise: A forum on Community, Faith and Democracy to lay out a strategy to work with President-elect Obama and the new Congress on the people’s agenda for change.
Mild-mannered Deepak Bhargava is at the heart of the US social revolution.
He and Obama may never have exchanged more than a few words, but they are assuredly working for the same future.
Obama File 90 Alice Palmer Re-examined-Was Obama's First Political Boss a Soviet "Agent of Influence"?
Obama file 89 here
Alice Palmer is a Chicago based academic, activist and former friend, employer and political ally of Barack Obama.
In the mid 1990s Alice Palmer, then an Illinois State Senator, employed Obama has her chief of staff, when she attempted an ill-fated run for the US Congress.
Obama was part of Friends of Alice Palmer, alongside controversial property developer Tony Rezko and Democratic Socialists of America members Danny Davis, Betty Wilhoitte and Timuel Black-also a member of Committees of Correspondence).
Later Palmer introduced Obama as designated successor to her Illinois State Senate seat, in the living room of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, while DSA member, former communist and long time Obama friend Quentin Young looked on.
The Palmer/Obama relationship soured after Obama refused to step down when Palmer decided she wanted her State Senate seat back, after her Congressional bid failed.
Obama went on to win the seat unopposed, after he knocked Palmer and his other rivals off the ballot, by challenging the legitimacy of their nominating signatures.
Alice Palmer was the first rung of Obama's ladder to power.
It has long been known that Alice Palmer was a communist front activist, as were many in Obama's orbit.
More seriously however-new evidence shows that Alice Palmer had high level connections behind the "Iron Curtain" and may have been a Soviet "agent of influence"-that is, a conduit of Soviet progaganda and policy, to the US and the "third world".
What is the evidence?
Alice Palmer and her husband Edward "Buzz" Palmer had radical connections in Chicago and abroad going back at least into the 1970s.
In 1980, Buzz Palmer and Alice Palmer were invited by the Maurice Bishop led government of the Caribbean island of Grenada, to attend celebrations marking the first anniversary of the country's Cuban/Soviet backed "revolution". A revolution overturned by US troops three years later.
It is unclear whether or not they attended, but Alice Palmer was to work closely, a few years later with Bishop's US educated press secretary, Don Rojas.
Alice and Buzz Palmer established the Black Press Institute {BPI) in Chicago around 1982. In a December 24 1986, interview with the Communist Party USA paper, People's Daily Word, Alice Palmer explained BPI's role in influencing decision makers such as the Congressional Black Caucus.
After the 1960s some of us looked around and observed there was no national Black newspaper...So we started the Black Press Review. We received the Black newspapers from around the country, reprinted articles and editorials that gave a sense of the dynamics and the lives of Black people, and sent them out to the Congressional Black caucus and other opinion leaders, saying "Look, here is what Black America is thinking and doing".
BPI's journal New Deliberations, carried articles such as "Socialism is the Only Way Forward" and "Is Black Bourgeoise Ideology Enough?"
In 1983 Alice Palmer travelled to Czechoslovakia to the Soviet front, World Peace Council's Prague Assembly-the firstof several known trips to East Bloc countries.
From 1983 to 1985, Alice Palmer was a an Executive Board member of the Communist Party USA front group, the US Peace Council-an affiliate of the World Peace Council.
Of the 48 US Peace Council officers in 1983-1985, at least ten- Sara Staggs, Rob Prince, Michael Myerson, Frank Chapman, Otis Cunningham, James Jackson, Atiba Mbiwan, Pauline Rosen, Jose Soler and Denise Young were known Communist Party USA members or supporters.
A further eight, were involved in the 1990s, in a Communist Party splinter group Committees of Correspondence. They were Gus Newport, Mark Solomon, Linda Coronado, Barbara Lee, Kevin Lynch, Anne Mitchell, Arlene Prigoff and Alice Palmer herself.
In 1985 Alice Palmer was part of a delegation of 16 Afro-American journalists to the Soviet Union, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
The trip was organized by Maurice Bishop's former pressman, now International Organization of Journalists executive, Don Rojas. Palmer's BPI and the National Alliance of Black Journalists also helped out.
Alice Palmer told the People's Daily World of December 24 1986;
The trip was extraordinary because we were able to sit down with our counterparts and with the seats of power in three major capitals-Prague, Berlin and Moscow. We visited with foreign ministers, we talked with the editors of the major newspapers in these three cities...
It was a very unusual trip because we were given access...Every effort was made to give us as much as we asked for...We came back feeling that we could speak very well about the interest of the socialist countries in promoting peace.
In March 1986 Alice Palmer covered the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Congress in Moscow, for the Black Press Institute.
On June 20 1986 the People's Daily World published a BPI article by Alice Palmer on the CPSU conference entitled "An Afro-American journalist in the USSR".
The article praised Soviet "central planning" and included such statements as:
“We Americans can be misled by the major media. We’re being told the Soviets are striving to achieve a comparatively low standard of living compared with ours, but actually they have reached a basic stability in meeting their needs and are now planning to double their production.”
Palmer claimed that America’s white-owned press;
“has tended to ignore or distort the gains that have been made [by the Soviets] since [the Russian Revolution of 1917]. But in fact the Soviets are carrying out a policy to resolve the inequalities between nationalities, inequalities that they say were inherited from capitalist and czarist rule. They have a comprehensive affirmative action program, which they have stuck to religiously -- if I can use that word -- since 1917.”
Alice Palmer, as editor of the Black Press Review, was elected International Organization of Journalists vice president for North America, at the organization's 10th Congress, October 20-23 1986, in Prague Czechoslovakia. Palmer's IOJ duties were to include co-ordinating the activities of chapters in the US, Canada,
Mexico and the Caribbean.
The International Organization of Journalists was a well documented Soviet front operation, based in Prague, until its expulsion by the new anti-communist Czech government in 1995.
Like other Soviet fronts of the era , IOJ was staffed mainly by East Bloc personnel and was directed by the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union-which in turn was directly answerable to the Soviet Politburo.
The International Department, often with the assistance of the KGB, used fronts such as IOJ and World Peace Council, for "active measures"-programs to covertly influence the policies of other nations, to better advance Soviet interests. These might range from spreading propaganda and disinformation to embarassing publicity stunts or hoaxes to destroying the career of an enemy of the Soviet Union , or advancing the career of a friend.
A summary of a paper by Bob Nowell entitled "The Role of the International Organization of Journalists in the Debate about the "New International Information Order," 1958-1978" states;
This paper examines the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ), which it identifies as a Soviet-dominated organization. The paper suggests that the IOJ has capitalized on "Third World" countries' discontent with Western news media by offering itself as the ideological leader and trainer of anti-Western journalists.
It then examines the function and methods of the IOJ in the context of post-World War II communist international front organizations; reviews the IOJ's structure, publications, and training centers; and explores its role in shaping "Third World" arguments in the debate about the New Information Order. The paper argues that the IOJ's efforts generally have served Soviet foreign policy on international communications.
The Sub-Committee on Oversight of the US House of Representatives asserted in February 1980 that, at that time the IOJ was in receipt of a Soviet subsidy estimated at US$515,000.
Alice Palmer also traveled to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria during the IOJ conference trip, as presumably did the other five US delegates;
Jan Carew of BPI, a radical socialist journalist from Guyana.
Simon Gerson, US IOJ, a senior member of the Communist Party USA and perhaps significantly, the Party's foremost expert on influencing election outcomes.
Jose Soler US IOJ, then a member of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and the US Peace Council, now involved with the Communist Party USA.
Gwen McKinney and Leila McDowell, National Alliance of Third World Journalists.
McKinney and former Black Panther member McDowell, went on to work in public relations, including for 10 years as a business partnership. Their clients, collectively or seperately, have included the SEIU, ACLU, NAACP, AFL-CIO, TransAfrica, Red Diaper baby Lani Guinier, Haiti's deposed Marxist president Jean Bernard Aristide, the socialist governments of Angola and Mozambique, Chavez's Venezuela and Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Change.
In the early 1990s, the McKinney/McDowell team influenced US government policy on Haiti, when they organized and publicized a hunger strike by prominent radical activist Randall Robinson.
After 27 publicity filled days, the Clinton White House US caved in to Robinson and demanded of the Haitian military, that exiled Marxist president Aristide be re-instated.
TransAfrica's Randall Robinson conducted a dangerous but successful hunger strike that changed the Clinton Administration's policy on Haiti. PR for the fasting activist was handled by the DC firm of McKinney & McDowell, whose other clients include President Aristide and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
In December 24 1986 People's Weekly World interview with Chicago Communist Party USA member Mike Giocondo, Alice Palmer explained the IOJ's use of the concept "media fairness".
Giocondo What is the IOJ's approach to the question of fairness in the media? How does it relate to the concept of "objective journalism" which is stressed here in the US?
Palmer The IOJ believes that there must be fairness in media, which is called for in a proposal for a New Information Order, which the IOJ supports. Fairness is not an abstraction, because journalists are not abstractions; we live in a world, we live in our particular societies, and therefore are caught up in whatever the dynamics of the situation are. This concept of "Objective journalism" that is taught in journalism schools...is not possible...What we are striving for is fairness and balance of information.
To give you a concrete example, the Black Press Institute recently held a media dialogue in Southern Africa in Washington DC on how to make the information more balanced as it comes out of South Africa. The IOJ and the BPI believe there should be balance, that there should be fairness in recognizing the complexities, and that a voice must be given to those who are struggling against oppression".
Perhaps this is a clue as to the origins of the "Fairness Doctrine" that was long used to stifle conservative media in the US?
During her time as IOJ vice president, Alice Palmer worked with highest levels of the Soviet propaganda machine-with the Soviet journal Izvestia, with Romesh Chandra and the World Peace Council and the IOJ leadership.
Alice Palmer told the December 24 1986 People's Daily World;
The IOJ has adopted positions on nuclear weapons, trying to do away with the nuclear threat in the world...
I will be heading a taskforce on peace and disarmament. And at the conference I was co-moderator, with the editor of Izvestia (a Soviet government publication) :, of a panel on peace and the news media. We came up with some very good suggestions. A number of the people complimented the Soviet Union for its efforts towards peace in these past few years-the moratorium and other things..
The IOJ has worked with the World Peace Council, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, Jiri Kubka and other IOJ leaders have worked closely with Romesh Chandra, the president of the World Peace Council.
IOJ delegations visit other countries to report on the peace proposals of the Soviet Union, so that people can hear about it. This by the way is an example of promoting fairness in the media.
The IOJ is the largest journalist organization in the world. its publications are published in 10 or 15 languages, and it reaches many people all over the world. So you can see that being fair in the media is very important, particularly in the Third World.
Alice Palmer saw journalists and the US "peace movement" as playing a very important role in the struggle for peace;
At the center of this is that the peace movement must stop the Soviet bashing. That is just not productive, it is not a good thing at all. I see over and over again that it is a barrier to our ability to work together in the United States and with the people of the Soviet Union for peace.
After her stint with IOJ had ended Alice Palmer continued to work closely with US communists.
Ishmael Flory, a veteran leader of the Illinois Communist Party USA, was honored at a September 21, 1991 function at Chicago's Malcolm X College, for his "outstanding contributions to the cause of peace, equality and justice".
According to the Peoples's Weekly World October 12 1991;
"Ishmael Flory is truly a man for all seasons" said State Senator Palmer, noting Flory's unflagging zeal for promoting a progressive, people's agenda for economic security, an end to racism and for world peace. "He never gives up".
As late as 1994, when Palmer was known to be working with Barack Obama, she was also working closely with members of the Communist Party splinter, Committees of Correspondence.
It is now clear that Barack Obama has worked for years with Marxists with backgrounds in the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America and Committees of Correspondence.
That these groups have promoted Obama's career, both in Chicago and nationally, is undeniable.
However the Alice Palmer case illustrates something even more concerning.
That is, a key Obama ally had, only a few years before meeting the future President, strong relationships with senior East Bloc officials.
Alice Palmer played an active role in promoting Soviet Bloc policy at the height of the Reagan era-when the Soviets and their proxies were threatening US interests in every corner of the globe.
A few years later Alice Palmer was actively promoting the career of a young activist lawyer. That man is now willing and able to negotiate arms control treaties with Alice Palmer's old friends in Moscow.
A man who seems intent on promoting the interests of the former Eastern Bloc and the "third world", over those of the USA.
Is this merely ironic, or is it potentially catastrophic?
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-90-alice-palmer-re-examined.html
Obama File 91 Barack Obama and the Socialist Healthcare Scamsters
Obama File 90 here
Despite little public clamor for government controlled health care, the US Senate is looking increasingly likely to pass some kind of Healthcare Bill in the near future.
How did this happen? Where did the pressure for change come from?
The blunt truth is this. The push to socialize US Heathcare came, not from from the "people", but from small clique of Marxists, led by a man with close persional ties to president Barack Obama.
This group's goal is fully socialized, government run "single payer" healthcare-as long promoted through Congressman John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act, or HR 676.
The leader of this Marxist clique is Quentin Young-a retired Chicago physician, a life long Marxist activist and long time friend and political ally of Barack Obama.
Physicians for a National Health Program National Coordinator Dr. Quentin Young with Sen. Barack Obama at Dr. Young’s 80th birthday celebration in 2003.
Young has known and worked with Obama for years, in Chicago and has reportedly directly influenced Obama's views on socialized medicine.
According to radical journalist John Nichols writing in The Progressive;
Obama...learned about single-payer health care from his old friend and neighbor Dr. Quentin Young, the longtime coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.
Quentin Young told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, that while an Illinois State senator, Obama was a strong supporter of "single payer"
Barack Obama, in those early days—influenced, I hope, by me and others—categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion.... ''
Physicians for a National Health Program
Who is Quentin Young and what is Physicians for a National Health Program? What influence do they actually have?
PNHP claims to be a national organization of 14,000 doctors advocating single-payer national health insurance.
In reality it was long a phonebox size operation run by Quentin Young and a handful of Marxist comrades.
Quentin Young is one of America's most committed socialists, beginning with his time in the Young Communist League in late 1930s Chicago.
After WW2, into the mid 1970s, Young was closely associated with the Communist Party and was accused of belonging to the Bethune Club (a communist doctor's club) by a US Congressional Committee investigating the riots at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
In the late 1970s Young was associated with the pro Marx/Gramsci, New American Movement and in 1982 helped found the also Marxist, Democratic Socialists of America-to which he still belongs.
In 1972, in the dying days of the Vietnam War Young led a small radical delegation to Communist North Vietnam.
In 1995 Young attended the famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn where Barack Obama was introduced as chosen successor to Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer.
Young was a founder and National Chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, which originally provided provide medical care for civil rights workers in the South, but later morphed into a "single payer" advocacy organization.
In 1987 Young and Peter Orris founded the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the US's oldest existing "single payer" advocacy organization and is currently the organization's National Co-ordinator.
Peter Orris is the son of Communist Party member and physician Leo Orris. His sister is Maxine Orris, a New York physician who received her medical training in Cuba.
Peter Orris was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society at Harvard, before going on to join the Communist Party. He was still a Party member in 1987 when he helped Quentin Young form PNHP.
In 1992 Peter Orris both joined the Communist Party splinter group Committees of Correspondence, in which he remains a leading activist.
Peter Orris is also a strong advocate of "single payer", through PNHP and also through his associations with the International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, UNITE-HERE, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, SEIU, the American Public Health Association, the Public Health Committee of the Chicago Medical Society, the Illinois State Medical Society and the American College of Physicians.
On June 25 2009, Peter Orris was one of several doctors from the the Doctors Council of SEIU who traveled to Washington, D.C. for a massive day of action for real health care reform.
The healthcare providers met with their Members of Congress and participated in a rally on Capitol Hill.
Today Peter Orris serves on the National Physicians Advisory Board of the National Physicians Alliance alongside Quentin Young
Joanne Landy is another key PHNP activist and like Young is a prominent member of Democratic Socialists of America.
n 2005 Landy wrotea pamphlet for PNHP, “Why Labor Needs Improved and Expanded Medicare for All”. The pamphlet was focused on mobilizinglabor union support for U.S. Representative John Conyer’s National Health Insurance Act (HR 676).
In 2008, Joanne Landy and PHNP President Oliver Fein wrote, "We Can Do It! The Case for Single Payer National Health Insurance" a chapter in a book entitled "Ten Excellent Reasons for National Health Insurance".
The time has come for single payer National Health Insurance in the United States. We have excellent hospitals, skilled practitioners, the technological infrastructure -- and we're already spending enough money to insure everyone and to improve access to care for many who are covered today by inadequate plans. All we need is the political will.
Mark Almberg is PNHP communications director has been a prominent member of the Illinois Communist Party, since the 1970s.
PNHP President Oliver Fein and Secretary Steffi Woolhandler, have both advocated "single payer" at the annual Democratic Socialists of America run Socialist Scholars Conferences in New York City.
Fein, representing PNHP, addressed the 1992 Socialist Conference, attended by members of Democratic Socialists of America , the Communist Party and Committees of Correspondence, on "The movement for a national healthcare program"
At the 2000 Socialist Conference Steffi Woolhandler, co-founder of PNHP and Harvard Medical School professor cited "single-payer" health care as probably the only issue in politics where the Left and the American people are in agreement.
Healthcare Now!
In 2004 PNHP joined several other socialist, labor, church and community organizations to form a wider coalition, Healthcare-NOW!
Healthcare Now! holds annual national strategy meetings with volunteer organizers and health care activists around the country, including John Conyers.
In 2007, Healthcare-NOW launched traveling Road Shows promoting "single payer" reform and also co-sponsored an Annual Health Care Justice Vigil held each September in Washington D.C.
Healthcare-NOW! worked with the California Nurses Association, to initiate the National Day of Protest Against Health Insurance Companies.
Quentin Young is an Healthcare Now! co-chair, as is Leo Gerard, President of United Steelworkers of America and Rose Ann DeMauro, Executive Director of the California Nurses Association.
Incidentally, Quentin Young was honored by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America at their annual award dinner in 1992. Leo Gerard was honored in 2007 and Rose Ann DeMauro, was to have been keynote speaker at the 2008 dinner, until an inter-union dispute caused her appearance to be cancelled.
The Healthcare Now! Board of Directors includes representatives from the Muslim Women's Institute for Research and Development, League of Young Voters, Ruckus Society, Labor Party, International Brotherwood of Electrical Workers, Progressive Christians Uniting, National Health Care for the Homeless Council, National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, United Mineworkers of America,Industrial Unions Council, Women's Economic Agenda Project, Latinos for National Health Insurance, National Black Women's Health Project and four leaders of PNHP-Oliver Fein, Ida Hellander, David Himmelstein and Quentin Young.
Other key board members include;
Medea Benjamin, right, with Hugo Chavez
Medea Benjamin of "peace" group Code Pink. In 1992 Benjamin endorsed the foundation conference of Committees of Correspondence with Peter Orris-mentioned above, and in 2002 spoke at a 2002 Committees of Correspondence conference national conference with John Nichols-also mentioned above.
Michael Lighty is Director of Public Policy, California Nurses Association. Lighty is a long time member of Democratic Socialists of America and a former National Director of that organization.
Flavio Casoy is a San Francisco based doctor and representative of the Medical Students Association.
Casoy is also a prominent member of the Communist Party USA.
Flavio Casoy, revolutionary medicine T shirt
In March 2009 the National Education Commission of the Communist Party USA, circulated a podcast by Flavoy to Party Clubs, as a Club Educational/Group Discussion Guide on healthcare reform.
Your club/group should invite guests to participate with you in a discussion of the fight for national health care reform. The podcast and reading links provided below should be distributed well in advance of the meeting. The Political Affairs podcast features an interview with Flavio Casoy on the present struggle for national health care reform...
Rev. Lucius Walker is a representative of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization.
Walker is a long time supporter of radical and Communist Party USA causes.
He has been an organizer of several Pastors for Peace Caravans to Cuba and enjoys a cozy relationship with Cuban leadership.
Applications from US citizens to undergo medical training in Cuba are administered through Walker's New York City-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization.
The British Experience
Obama's Healthcare Bill is the cornerstone of his Presidency.
Should the Bill pass, in almost any form, it will pave the way for more and more legislative changes, which will change American health and political culture beyond recognition.
The Marxist left looks to the British example. They believe that "single payer" will lock the stubbornly conservative US worker, into near permanent support for the Democratic Party-just as it did for the British Labour Party after WW2.
Leading Communist Party member Norman Markowitz wrote in the Party journal Political Affairs;
A “single payer” national health system – known as “socialized medicine” in the rest of the developed world – should be an essential part of the change that the core constituencies which elected Obama desperately need. Britain serves as an important political lesson for strategists. After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments.
Radical journalist John Nichols writes that Obama told an Atlanta town hall audience in 2008;
I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care.
Nichols also went on to discuss prospects for "single payer" under an Obama Administration;
Perhaps most impressive are the moves made by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Progressive Democrats of America to ensure that the option of single-payer is not forgotten as Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi establish their domestic policy priorities.
To that end, sixty activists from these and allied groups met one week after Election Day at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington with Michigan Congressman John Conyers, an early Obama backer and the chief House proponent of real reform, to forge a Single-Payer Healthcare Alliance and plot specific strategies for influencing the new Administration and Congress.
John Conyers, is not only an Obama ally and "single payer" zealot. The Congressman from Michigan has a long record of supporting Communist Party fronts and was an honored guest at the founding of Democratic Socialists of America in Detroit in 1982 and at DSA's 2003 National Convention in the same city.
He is also a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus-an alliance of more than 70 Democratic Congressmen, many of who are linked to Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party, or both.
Should Obama succeed in passing any form of Healthcare Bill, that will not be the end of the matter.
John Conyers, Quentin Young , his Marxist comrades and the alliance they have forged will not rest until the US has a fully socialized "single payer" health system.
There is evidence that that is what Obama secretly wants as well.
Unless stopped, Obama , willing or not, will preside over the "Englandization" of the US health sector and the "Europeanization" of American political life.
If successful Quentin Young and PNHP will have pulled off the greatest socialist "scam" ever perpetrated on the American people.
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-file-91-barack-obama-and_26.html
Obama File 92 Some Christmas Reading for Your Senators-Obama, Young, Conyers and Socialized Healthcare
Obama File 91 here
My last post dealt with Barack Obama's Marxist personal physician of more than 20 years, Quentin Young and his decades long campaign to socialize US healthcare.
Young and his comrades in Physicians for a National Health Plan and Healthcare Now! have driven the US healthcare debate for years. Now they have a friend in the Oval Office and both Houses of Congress controlled by the Democrats.
Soon the Senate may pass a Healthcare Bill-but whatever form it takes, the drive to fully socialized, government controlled "single payer" healthcare will only accelerate.
The socialist's agenda goes far beyond tinkering or minor reforms-they want fully socialized "single payer" healthcare.
Quentin Young is a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He and his DSA comrades and his allies in Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) and the Communist Party USA, all want socialized healthcare as a major stepping stone to a socialist America.
Health and Medicine Policy Research Group
This post looks at another arrow in Quentin Young's "single-payer" quiver-his Chicago based Health and Medicine Policy Research Group (HMPRG).
We're a 28-year old 501c3 nonprofit that operates as an independent, freestanding center driven by a singular mission: formulating health policy, advocacy and health systems to enhance the health of the public.
HMPRG was founded in 1981 by Quentin Young and John McKnight, a radical community organizer turned academic. McKnight trained Barack Obama for three years in the late '80s and wrote a letter of recommendation which helped the young activist gain entry to Harvard Law School.
HMPRG's board of directors includes Yolanda Hall, who was in the Young Communist League with Quentin Young before joining the Communist Party in 1939-plus two more recent Party members, Linda Rae Murray and Mildred Williamson.
On March 7 2008 HMPRG organized an 85th birthday tribute dinner for Quentin Young in Chicago-themed "Rebel without a pause".
Guests included Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and the state's Governor, Pat Quinn.
Host Committee members included;
Timuel Black- formerly with the Socialist Party USA-now with both DSA and CCDS. Black was Chicago DSA's Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner honoree in 2009. He is a long time friend and supporter of Barack Obama.
Danny K Davis- Illinois Congressman and DSA member, with past ties to both the Communist Party and CCDS . Davis was active with Obama in the DSA/Committees of Correspondence influenced New Party in the mid '90s.
Leon Despres-formerly with the Socialist Party USA. Chicago DSA Debs-Thomas Dinner honoree in 1975. A mentor to Barack Obama.
Miguelle del Valle-Chicago City Clerk. ChicagoDSA Debs-Thomas Dinner guest speaker in 2001. Del valle supported obama in his 2003 US senate campaign.
Jacky Grimshaw-Chicago DSA Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner honoree in 1987. Barack Obama's Hyde Park next door neighbour and long time supporter.
Roberta Lynch -DSA member. Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner speaker in 1983.
William McNary-Chicago DSA Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner guest speaker in 2005. MacNary also has close ties to the Communist Party and is a close friend and supporter of Barack Obama.
Calvin Morris-Chicago DSA Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner honoree 2006.
David Orr-Cook County Clerk. Chicago DSA Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner guest in 1983 and 1993 and guest speaker in 1988.
Peter Orris- a founder with Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Plan. A Communist Party member until 1991- now a leader of CCDS.
Jane Ramsey-ChicagoDSA Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner honoree 2009, with Timuel Black.
Bettylu Saltzman-A long time Obama supporter and fundraiser.
Jan Schakowsky -Chicago DSA Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner honoree in 2000, guest speaker in 2004 and a guest in 1993. A long time Obama supporter.
Jeremiah Stamler-A life long medical and activist colleague of Quentin Young and Yolanda Hall. A 1960s "Fifth Amendment" Communist.
John Conyers
One of the key speakers at the Quentin Young event was Michigan Democratic Congressman John Conyers-a leading proponent of "single payer" Healthcare.
Conyers praised Quentin Young , Danny Davis and Jan Schakowsky for their efforts on the health issue.
He stated that "we" were pushing "single payer" long before Barack Obama came out in favour of the idea while still an Illinois State Senator.
He also makes it very clear that he and the comrades will not be satisfied with anything but fully socialized healthcare.
Conyers of course has a long Communist front record. He is also very close to Democratic Socialists of America-addressing their founding conference in Detroit in 1982 and their National Convention in the same city in 2003.
Promoting "single payer"
HMPRG personnel promote "single payer" in every possible forum, at every possible opportunity.
In June 2008 HMPRG vice president Claudia Fegan addressed the "How Class Works" conference at Stonybrook New York-on the subject "Putting Single-Payer Health Care in the Mix."
Other conference speakers included Progressives for Obama founder Bill Fletcher Jr. and Michele Rossi of DSA, Harry Targ, Meta Van Sickle, Carl Bloice, Ira Grupper, Mark Solomon and Manning Marable of CCDS, plus recently elected AFL-CIO president and "single payer" advocate, Richard Trumka.
Claudia Fegan spoke on "single payer" health care and HR 676, Rep. John Conyers' bill, at the HR 676 Congressional caucus reception during the Democratic National Convention, August 26, 2008-she is introduced by former Democratic Socialists of America National director, Michael Lighty.
Mildred Williamson-an HMPRG board member and Illinois Public Health official, was a member of the Communist Party until 1991, when she left to join CCDS.
She is also is an admirer of the Cuban health system. On April 24 2007 at the School of The Art Institute Auditorium, Chicago, Williamson and CCDS comrade Dr Peter Orris held a discussion following the screening of "Salud" a documentary exploring Cuba’s healthcare system & global initiatives...
Mildred Williamson strongly advocated "single payer" at a CCDS midwest regional meeting in August 2007. The meeting went on to to recommend that national CCDS should;
...develop a position paper and a variety of informational materials on the health care crisis, the threat to the basic healthcare infrastructure in the United States, and a single payer national health care system. These materials should be broadly disseminated.
Mildred Williamson is one of several CCDS endorsers of the Progressives for Obama website.
Linda Rae Murray is immediate past president of HMPRG. Like Mildred williamson she was a member of the Communist Party until 1991 and has since been close to CCDS-and to to DSA.
At Chicago DSA's 1993 Debs - Thomas - Harrington Dinner;
Dr. Murray cautioned about what might be presented as a national health plan and the need for a real radical change in the medical delivery system in our country: the need for public health to be given the consideration it needs, the need to realize that the Canadian single payer plan was the way to go... The insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry have to be met head-on.
In May 2005, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America honored Linda Rae Murray at their annual Debs - Thomas - Harrington Dinner.
For your advocacy of universal health care as a right of all citizens;
For your service to the community in the field of public health;
For your willingness to speak out against the injustices of an unequal society;
The Debs - Thomas - Harrington Dinner Committee does hereby present you with its annual award this 6th day of May, 2005.
Linda Rae Murray has addressed forums organised by the Spirit of 1848 caucus within the American Public Health Association. The Caucus is openly Marxist and claims that I848 was the year of many "progressive" social advances including the writing of the Communist Manifesto.
At the October 2008 APHA conference in San Diego, the Medicare, Spirit of 1848, Women's and Socialist Caucuses within APHA co-sponsored the P. Ellen Parsons Memorial Session, on “Health Access & The Elections: What Happened, What Didn’t”
Linda Rae Murray used the occasion to attack private healthcare provision and promote the socialist alternative.
Linda Rae Murray, as discussant, then spoke to the importance of not staying stuck in an overly complicated policy-wonk mode but instead appealing to people’s sense of fairness, framing health care as a human right, and making clear the current system does not work and incremental efforts at reform have made little or no difference.
She also emphasized that one reason that efforts over the past 100 years have failed is that creating a system that fairly provides universal health coverage is a way of redistributing wealth, which goes against capitalist ideology, such that it requires taking this ideology head-on...
In November 2009 Linda Rae Murray, a 30-year member of American Public Health Association —the largest public health organization in the world, was elected president of the organization on a platform that stated;
If we are going to make progress toward a healthy nation we have to overcome those issues which divide us; issues of racism, immigrant rights, gender discrimination and workers’ rights. It is only through unity that we will have the strength to the changes our country needs...
The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world in guaranteeing the right to medical care to everyone, including those in the country without proper documents. I agree with the APHA position that the best way to accomplish this is through a single payer insurance plan.
Socialists won't quit on "single payer"
Quentin Young (left), Linda Rae Murray (second from left), Claudia Fegan (center) Barack Obama (right) at Quentin Young's 80th birthday celebration, 2003.
CCDS leader Manning Marable, wrote in the British Marxist journal Socialist Review December 2008;
What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is.
A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...
Indeed there are-and many of them are "single payer" advocates.
Quentin Young claims credit for turning Barack Obama into a "single payer" advocate when the President was an Illinois State Senator.
It is clear that the Marxists who guided Obama's career in Chicago want a return on their investment.
It is also clear that he socialists and communists around Quentin Young and John Conyers will accept no compromise measures.
If the US Senate passes even the mildest of Healthcare Bills, the socialists will use the leverage to push for greater and greater changes, until US medicine is under complete state control.
With one sixth of the US economy socialized, the far left will then turn their attention to the rest.
It will be downhill coasting for the socialists and a downhill slide for America.
Please send this post to both of your Senators for some Christmas reading and reflection.
Please let them know that America's freedom and prosperity lies in their hands.
Obama File 93 here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-file-92-some-christmas-reading.html
Obama File 93 Obama's Marxist Doctor Once Supported Google Health Advisor
Obama File 92 here
As the world's largest search engine, Google is the planet's most powerful information provider.
Google rankings can determine whether a story becomes "top of mind" for millions of people-or sinks without trace.
Healthcare is a huge issue in the United States. The Senate is about to debate a Healthcare Bill which could hugely impact the economic and political direction of the US.
A few years ago, Google established an Health Advisory Council;
We often seek expertise from outside the company, and health is no exception. To help us think about the ways we can contribute to the healthcare industry, we formed the Google Health Advisory Council. The Google Health Advisory Council is made up of healthcare experts from provider organizations, consumer and disease-based groups, physician organizations, research institutions, policy foundations, and other fields.
The mission of the Google Health Advisory Council is to help us better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and to offer us feedback on product ideas and development.
Clearly this Council may have some impact on the way Google handles the health debate-or else why have it?
Therefore Americans should be concerned at the background and connections of one of Google's Health Advisory Board members-John R. Lumpkin.
On the face of it, John Lumpkin has impressive credentials.
He earned his M.D. and B.M.S. degrees from Northwestern University Medical School and his M.P.H. from the University of Illinois School of Public Health. He has served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and University of Illinois at Chicago and has taught at Princeton University.
John Lumpkin, is responsible for the overall planning, budgeting, staffing, management and evaluation of all program and administrative activities for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Care Group.
He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American College of Medical Informatics. He has served on the boards of directors for the Public Health Foundation and National Quality Forum, as president of the Illinois College of Emergency Physicians and the Society of Teachers of Emergency Medicine.
What his bio doesn't tell us is that John R . Lumpkin was once a publicly identified supporter of the Communist Party USA.
John Lumpkin is the son of two Chicago Communist Party stalwarts, Frank and Bea Lumpkin.
Frank and Beatrice Lumpkin, 2005
In their day, the senior Lumpkins were leaders of the Illinois Party.
In the 1980s both worked for the election of Chicago's first Black mayor, the radical Harold Washington-the man who inspired Barack Obama to first move to the "Windy City".
Working through his Save Our Jobs Committee Lumpkin also helped elect communist connected Senator Carol Moseley Braun in 1992. Barack Obama contributed too, through his work with Project Vote.
According to Communist Party USA paper Peoples Weekly World;
Lumpkin also led SOJ into independent political action. They played an important role in the election of Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago, a historic victory...Washington and Lumpkin had a special relationship ... Washington seemed to draw strength from Lumpkin's participation...
SOJ was also an important factor in the election of of Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.
Barack Obama benefited from the same socialist/communist coalition when he won Carol Moseley Braun's former Senate Seat in 2004.
In 1979, John R. Lumpkin ran for Alderman in Chicago's 7th Ward.
Leading members of the "Committee to elect John R. Lumpkin" included Harold Washington, Carol Moseley Braun and Communist Party members Roberta Wood, Scott Marshall, Joe Kransdorf and Frank Lumpkin.
Timuel Black-now a member of both the Communist Party breakaway group Committees of Correspondence for Democracy Socialism and Democratic Socialists of America, was on the list. Blacklater became a close friend and supporter of Barack Obama.
Also there was Quentin Young, now a member of Democratic Socialists of America. For more than 20 years Young has been a close friend, personal physician and political mentor to Barack Obama.
Though he has denied Party membership, Quentin Young was a member of the Young Communist League in his teens. He was also accused of membership of the Bethune Club of the Communist Party ( a party doctor's group) by a government commission investigating the 1968 Democratic Party Convention riots in Chicago.
Quentin Young has been the US's most active proponent of "single payer" or socialzed healthcare for decades-firstly through his medical committee for Human Rights, then his Physicians for a National Health Program and his Health and Medicine Policy Research Group.
The next exhibit is a list of signatories to an Illinois Communist Party to an electoral petition for the 1976 US Presidential Elections.
John R. Lumpkin is listed, as are three prominent Party members , all of whom are active in the modern "single payer" movement and all of whom are close to Quentin Young-Mark J Almberg, Peter Orris and Linda Rae Murray.
Mark J. Almberg is still a leading member of the Communist Party USA in Chicago. Mark Almberg is also the Communications Director of Quentin Young's Physicians for a National Health Plan, one the US's main "single payer" advocacy groups.
Dr Peter Orris left the Communist Party in 1992 for the Committees of Correspondence , in which he now plays a leading role.
While still in the Communist Party, Orris helped Quentin Young to set up the Physicians for a National Health Plan.
Orris serves as Professor and Associate Director of the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health of the University Of Illinois School Of Public Health.
Orris holds several union advisory roles, including with SEIU and uses his positions to promote "single payer" at every opportunity.
Linda Rae Murray also left the Communist Party in 1992 and has since worked closely with Committees of Correspondence and Democratic Socialists of America.
Linda Rae Murray is a prominent Chicago health professional and the the immediate past president of Quentin Young's Health and Medicine Policy Research Group.
She is a leading and very active advocate for "single payer" and has just been elected president of the American Public Health Association-a post Quentin Young held in 1988.
Quentin Young and Linda Rae Murray (left), Barack Obama (right) 2003.
John Lumpkin grew up in the Communist Party, most of his his extended family were, or are still Party members. All of them, in line with Communist Party policy, strongly support "single payer' socialized healthcare.
John Lumpkin supported the Party. He benefited from the assistance of Party members in his own short political career. He worked in the incestuous "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" world of Chicago left politics.
Now his old comrades are making considerable progress towards their dream of socialized healthcare. If an Healthcare Bill is passed, the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America and the Committees of Correspondence will not rest until the US health sector is completely socialized.
Several of John Lumpkin's old allies are now vocal single "payer advocates". One of them, Quentin Young is the father of the US socialized healthcare movement and proudly admits to having tutored his friend Barack Obama in the subject.
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-file-93-obamas-marxist-doctor.html
Obama File 94 Concert or Coincidence? Obama and the Committees of Correspondence Connections
Obama File 93 here
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism is one of the US's most significant Marxist-Leninist parties.
The organization was born in 1992 out of a major split in the Communist Party USA, incorporating Trotskyites, former Maoists, socialists and anarchists to form an entirely new party.
The party has strong ties to Cuba , Vietnam, Venezuela and the communist parties of France and the former East Germany.
Committees of Correspondence, was and is strong in Chicago. I have written here how two leading CoC members have worked closely with Barack Obama.
Committees of Correspondence leader Manning Marable wrote in British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review in December 2008;
What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...
He was almost certainly referring to his Chicago CoC comrades.
I have in my possession a Chicago Committees of Correspondence "Membership, Subscription and mailing list" dated October 14, 1994.
Of the nearly 400 names on the list, many have been identified as CoC members from other sources.
The list does not prove CoC membership per se, but it does indicate some degree of contact with the organization.
What struck me as significant were the names of several people who have promoted, or impacted on the political career of Barack Obama.
They include;
Carl Davidson Now one of four Co-leaders of the Committees of Correspondence. Davidson worked with Obama in the radical New Party in the 1990s. He later helped organize the famous 2002 peace rally in Chicago's Federal Plaza where Obama first became famous as an opponent of the Iraq War.
Danny Davis An Illinois Democratic Congressman and a member of Democratic Socialists of America with proven ties to the Communist Party and CoC.
Davis has been a long time Obama friend and political ally who campaigned with Obama in the New Party in 1995/96.
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers Former leaders of the terrorist Weather Undeground. The couple hosted Obma's first known political gathering in their home in 1995.
Bill Ayers' ties to Obama run deep;
The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system. They appeared together on academic panels, including one organized by Michelle Obama to discuss the juvenile justice system, an area of mutual concern. Mr. Ayers’s book on the subject won a rave review in The Chicago Tribune by Mr. Obama, who called it “a searing and timely account.”
Mr. Obama further expanded his list of allies by joining the boards of two well-known charities: the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.
These memberships have allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants over the years to groups that championed the environment, campaign finance reform, gun control and other causes supported by the liberal network he was cultivating. Mr. Brazier’s group, the Woodlawn Organization, received money, for instance, as did antipoverty groups with ties to organized labor like Chicago Acorn, whose endorsement Mr. Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.
Earl Durham A former member of the Communist Party national committee. Professor Durham later went into education reform in the 1970s and in the 1990s founded the organization Community Organizing and Family Issues.
Barack Obama served on the organization's sponsoring committee in 1994/95
Marilyn Katz Now a prominent Chicago public reations professional and Democratic Party activist, Katz has a background in Students for a Democratic Society and the socialist New American Movement.
Katz, with Carl Davidson helped organize Obama's appearance at the 2002 Chicago anti Iraq War rally.
Marilyn Katz has worked closely with Barack Obama since meeting him through his position at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in the 1990s.
It was through the law firm that Mr. Obama met Marilyn Katz, who gave him entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s.
“For better or worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home. “Everyone is connected to everyone.”''
Katz was a major fundraiser and a delegate at the Democratic Party convention for Obama. She was also an endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Fred Klonsky A former Students for a Democratic Society activist, brother of Mike Klonsky and endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Mike Klonsky Is a former leader of Students for a Democratic Society and the pro China Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).
Mike Klonsky is a long time friends with Bill Ayers and was involved with some of the educational project which Ayers and Obama worked together on.
Until June 2008 Mike Klonsky ran a Blog on Barack Obama's campaign website.
It was pulled at very short notice after adverse publicity began surfacing on the blogosphere.
Alice Palmer A long time Communist Party sympathiser, Alice Palmer has travelled extensively in the old Soviet Bloc and was a leader of the soviet front International Organization of Journalists.
Obama was Alice Palmer's chief of staff when she ran for congress in the mid 1990s. She was the main sponsor of Obama's early political career until he took her old Illinois State Senate seat in 1996.
It was Alice Palmer who introduced Barack Obama to the meeting in the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Lou Pardo Also a member of Democratic Socialists of America. Pardo worked with Obama on voter registration in 1992. In the mid 1990s Pardo was active, with Obama in the Chicago New Party.
Dan Swinney A Chicago labor unionist and endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Kevin Tyson A former member of the Communist Party. Kevin Tyson has been a long time activist and co-parishioner with Obama in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.
Mildred Williamson A Chicago health professional, former Communist Party member and Committees of Correspondence leader.
An endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Is it significant that all these people, several of them previously unconnected, all supported Barack Obama's career?
Were they working, at least some of the time, in concert, to promote their mutual friend? Or are the Committees of Correspondence connections merely coincidental?
What do you think?
Obama file 95 here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/01/obama-file-64-concert-or-coincidence.html
Obama File 94 Concert or Coincidence? Obama and the Committees of Correspondence Connections
Obama File 93 here
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism is one of the US's most significant Marxist-Leninist parties.
The organization was born in 1992 out of a major split in the Communist Party USA, incorporating Trotskyites, former Maoists, socialists and anarchists to form an entirely new party.
The party has strong ties to Cuba , Vietnam, Venezuela and the communist parties of France and the former East Germany.
Committees of Correspondence, was and is strong in Chicago. I have written here how two leading CoC members have worked closely with Barack Obama.
Committees of Correspondence leader Manning Marable wrote in British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review in December 2008;
What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...
He was almost certainly referring to his Chicago CoC comrades.
I have in my possession a Chicago Committees of Correspondence "Membership, Subscription and mailing list" dated October 14, 1994.
Of the nearly 400 names on the list, many have been identified as CoC members from other sources.
The list does not prove CoC membership per se, but it does indicate some degree of contact with the organization.
What struck me as significant were the names of several people who have promoted, or impacted on the political career of Barack Obama.
They include;
Carl Davidson Now one of four Co-leaders of the Committees of Correspondence. Davidson worked with Obama in the radical New Party in the 1990s. He later helped organize the famous 2002 peace rally in Chicago's Federal Plaza where Obama first became famous as an opponent of the Iraq War.
Danny Davis An Illinois Democratic Congressman and a member of Democratic Socialists of America with proven ties to the Communist Party and CoC.
Davis has been a long time Obama friend and political ally who campaigned with Obama in the New Party in 1995/96.
Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers Former leaders of the terrorist Weather Undeground. The couple hosted Obma's first known political gathering in their home in 1995.
Bill Ayers' ties to Obama run deep;
The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system. They appeared together on academic panels, including one organized by Michelle Obama to discuss the juvenile justice system, an area of mutual concern. Mr. Ayers’s book on the subject won a rave review in The Chicago Tribune by Mr. Obama, who called it “a searing and timely account.”
Mr. Obama further expanded his list of allies by joining the boards of two well-known charities: the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation.
These memberships have allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants over the years to groups that championed the environment, campaign finance reform, gun control and other causes supported by the liberal network he was cultivating. Mr. Brazier’s group, the Woodlawn Organization, received money, for instance, as did antipoverty groups with ties to organized labor like Chicago Acorn, whose endorsement Mr. Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.
Earl Durham A former member of the Communist Party national committee. Professor Durham later went into education reform in the 1970s and in the 1990s founded the organization Community Organizing and Family Issues.
Barack Obama served on the organization's sponsoring committee in 1994/95
Marilyn Katz Now a prominent Chicago public reations professional and Democratic Party activist, Katz has a background in Students for a Democratic Society and the socialist New American Movement.
Katz, with Carl Davidson helped organize Obama's appearance at the 2002 Chicago anti Iraq War rally.
Marilyn Katz has worked closely with Barack Obama since meeting him through his position at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in the 1990s.
It was through the law firm that Mr. Obama met Marilyn Katz, who gave him entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s.
“For better or worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home. “Everyone is connected to everyone.”''
Katz was a major fundraiser and a delegate at the Democratic Party convention for Obama. She was also an endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Fred Klonsky A former Students for a Democratic Society activist, brother of Mike Klonsky and endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Mike Klonsky Is a former leader of Students for a Democratic Society and the pro China Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).
Mike Klonsky is a long time friends with Bill Ayers and was involved with some of the educational project which Ayers and Obama worked together on.
Until June 2008 Mike Klonsky ran a Blog on Barack Obama's campaign website.
It was pulled at very short notice after adverse publicity began surfacing on the blogosphere.
Alice Palmer A long time Communist Party sympathiser, Alice Palmer has travelled extensively in the old Soviet Bloc and was a leader of the soviet front International Organization of Journalists.
Obama was Alice Palmer's chief of staff when she ran for congress in the mid 1990s. She was the main sponsor of Obama's early political career until he took her old Illinois State Senate seat in 1996.
It was Alice Palmer who introduced Barack Obama to the meeting in the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Lou Pardo Also a member of Democratic Socialists of America. Pardo worked with Obama on voter registration in 1992. In the mid 1990s Pardo was active, with Obama in the Chicago New Party.
Dan Swinney A Chicago labor unionist and endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Kevin Tyson A former member of the Communist Party. Kevin Tyson has been a long time activist and co-parishioner with Obama in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.
Mildred Williamson A Chicago health professional, former Communist Party member and Committees of Correspondence leader.
An endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Is it significant that all these people, several of them previously unconnected, all supported Barack Obama's career?
Were they working, at least some of the time, in concert, to promote their mutual friend? Or are the Committees of Correspondence connections merely coincidental?
What do you think?
Obama file 95 here
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Obama File 95 Obama's Socialist Advisers Push Immigration Reform to "Create a Governing Coalition For the Long Term"
Obama file 94 here
Why, in a time of high U.S. unemployment, is the Obama Administration seriously considering Rep. Luis Gutierrez's "Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity" bill which would grant citizenship to up to 12 million illegal immigrants.
The answer has little to do with humanity, national security or prosperity.
It is all about power- raw socialist power. It is all about 8,000,000 more Democratic Party votes and the creation of a "governing coalition for the long term".
At the "progressive" America's Future Now! conference in Washington, DC on June 2, 2009, SEIU International Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina addressed attendees on the issue immigration reform.
Speaking of Latino voters, Medina said "when they voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up"
So I think there's two things that matter for the progressive community.
Number one, if we are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants, that we'll expand and solidify the progressive coalition for the future..."
When you are in the middle of a fight for your life you will remember who was there with you. And immigrants count on progressives to be able to do that.
Number two.
We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three?
If we have eight million new voters who care about ...... and will be voting. We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.
There you have the strategy. Fight for the illegal immigrants, grant them citizenship, then exploit their gratitude in the form of votes to create a "governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.."
Who is Eliseo Medina?
As vice president of the radical SEIU, Medina has been the US's most effective immigration "reform" activist. His union, SEIU is also the major backer of the Gutierrez bill.
Selling the legalization of millions of illegal workers to the US labor movement has always been an uphill battle.
It was a huge turnaround in February 2000, when the AFL-CIO reversed its longstanding anti 'illegals' policy, calling for a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986 law that criminalized hiring them.
Eliseo Medina was one of the chief instigators behind that resolution.
That fact is recognized by Democratic Socialists of America, the Marxist organization to which Medina has long belonged.
According to the DSA website;
Eliseo Medina is widely credited with playing a key role in the AFL-CIO's decision to adopt a new policy on immigration a few years ago, and was one of the organizers of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Bus Rides in 2003.
When Medina was honored by Chicago Democratic Socialists of America at their 2004 awards dinner, it was for his "vital role in the AFL-CIO's reassessment of its immigration policy".
Eliseo Medina, Carl Marx Shier, Chicago 2004
Had Eliseo Medina not turned around the AFL-CIO and had the SEIU not supported it, Congressman Gutierrez's bill would never have gotten off the ground.
Medina's first interaction with the the fore-runners of Democratic Socialists of America came in Chicago when, in 1969, he was sent by Cesar Chavez to lead the Chicago grape boycott campaign.
Medina came into contact with Carl Marx Shier, a member of the local Socialist Party of America chapter , later to be a key founder of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Shier connected Medina with the Chicago Labor movement, a decision that "propelled Medina’s success with both the grape boycott and his career".
Eliseo Medina, second from left, Chicago DSA's 1975 awards dinner
In 2004 Eliseo Medina became a Democratic Socialists of America honorary chair.
In 2008, Eliseo Medina joined Barack Obama's National Latino Advisory Council, where he worked with DSA linked future Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Luis Gutierrez and the co-sponsor of Gutierrez's immigration bill, the radical New York Congresswoman, Nydia Velasquez.
Luis Gutierrez is regarded in Chicago as one of Barack Obama's biggest supporters.
Eliseo Medina and Barack Obama , both have ties to Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, so it is not suprizing that Luis Gutierrez also has "connections".
When Luis Gutierrez ran for Congress in 1998, Democratic Socialists of America did not officially endorse any candidates, as they did Barack Obama in 1996.
But he was "recommended" as worthy of a vote, because of his membership of the DSA/Institute for Policy Studies created Congressional Progressive Caucus and for his support of Progressive Challenge-also a DSA/IPS "baby".
In the mid 1990s, Luis Gutierrez served on the board of Illinois Public Action alongside DSA members Ron Baiman and Quentin Young , DSA supporters Jan Schakowsky, David Orr and Tom Balanoff, Communist Party member Frank Lumpkin and Soviet front leader Alice Palmer.
Luis Gutierrez got his start in politics as an Chicago Alderman elected as part of the Harold Washington "movement". Washington was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983 by a coalition led by Chicago DSA and the Communist Party. It was Washington's election that inspired the young Barack Obama to move to Chicago - he even unsuccessfully applied for a job in the Washington administration.
In the late 1970s, early 1980s, Luis Gutierrez was one of the leading US members of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party.
Openly Marxist-Leninist, the PSP campaigned for Puerto Rican independence from the US. The organization maintained an unofficial "embassy' in Cuba and in the US was close to several revolutionary organizations including the terrorist Weather Underground Organization.
Gutierrez was able to use his contacts in the Chicago City government to to secure government funds for the PSP sponsored cultural center and for Party sponsored social services and ESL and GELD programs.
Incidentally, one of Eliseo Medina's comrades, DSA vice chair Jose LaLuz had also been a leading member of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party.
Jose laLuz, right at Chicago DSA's 1992 awards dinner
In January 1976, Jose LaLuz, representing the PSP Central Committee attended the Weather Underground organized "Hard Times" conference, at the University of Chicago. The conference unsuccessfully attempted to unify several radical groups into a new unified communist party.
In 2008, Jose LaLuz was Chairman of Latinos for Obama-a major Democratic Party effort to swing the Latino vote behind Obama.
LaLuz explained his tactics to the Communist Party's Peoples Weekly World September 19 2008;
"The Obama campaign is working in both New Mexico and Colorado, among other states, telling Latino voters about McCain’s terrible stands on the economy and about the horrible role Republicans have played and continue to play on immigration... “We are showing how the companies and outfits that exploit Latino workers are the people behind McCain,”
Between now and Election Day LaLuz said that the Obama campaign is registering voters in New Mexico and Colorado and developing lists of tens of thousands of Latino supporters for Obama. “Those lists will constitute the people we bring out on Election Day.”
In 1999, Congressman Luis Gutierrez was one of a small group who successfully lobbied President Clinton to pardon 14 imprisoned members of the Puerto Rican terrorist group the FALN.
In September 2007, controversy erupted in Chicago when it was discovered that Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich had hired Steven Guerra as an $120,000 deputy chief of staff for community services.
It turned out that Guerra had spent nearly two years in a federal prison for refusing a federal judge's order to testify before a grand jury investigating a wave of FALN bombings that terrorized Chicago and New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. Guerra chose to be convicted of contempt even though he was offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.
Steven Guerra, center
A government informant had told investigators that Guerra was a member of FALN and recounted a June 1982 trip Guerra took to Puerto Rico to attend "a meeting of a cross section of terrorists." Guerra was identified at the meeting as "one of the leaders of the resistance in the United States..."
"The discussion at the meeting included detailed plans for the ambush of police officers and the destruction of dams through the use of explosives."
Steven Guerra had originally been hired by Chicago City in 2003, on the recommendation of Luis Gutierrez.
Defending Guerra, Congressman Gutierrez praised his longtime acquaintance who "made what he considered a principled decision, and he paid a heavy price for that decision." "I have known Steven for a long time. He is a good man who cares about making our state a better place to live," said Gutierrez.
The question is-will Gutierrez and Medina's plans to "reform' immigration make the United States of America a better place?
Is that even the intention?
Or are America's illegal immigrants merely pawns in a cynical scam to give Obama's Democrats and their Marxist allies indefinite power-a governing coalition for the long term?
What do 12 million human beings matter, when a socialist America is at stake?
Obama file 96 here
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posted by Trevor Loudon at 1/27/2010 12:12:00 PM
Obama File 96 Coincidence? Obama, Frank Marshall Davis and the Earl Durham Connection
Obama File 95 here
In this post I highlighted the link between Barack Obama's communist childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis and Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett, father-in-law of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
I cited the link as evidence that the communist networks that touched Obama in both Hawaii and Chicago were connected.
Vernon Jarrett and Frank Marshall Davis worked together in a communist front, the Citizen's Committee to Aid Packinghouse Workers in 1948 Chicago-the same year Davis moved to Hawaii.
More than forty years later Vernon Jarrett followed Obama's career in Chicago and used his newspaper column to promote Obama's successful Senate campaign in 2004.
The question is-did some of Frank Marshall Davis' old Chicago comrades aid Barack Obama's career in Chicago more than four decades on?
This post looks at another link between Frank Marshall Davis and Obama's Chicago network
The Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences was a Chicago institution of the 1930s and 1940s, run by the Communist Party USA.
The faculty members included known Party members Frank Marshall Davis, David Englestein, William L. Patterson, Geraldyne Lightfoot, Claude Lightfoot, Ishmael Flory and Earl Durham.
Frank Marshall Davis went off to work for the Hawaiian Communist Party, gradually sinking into obscurity. His former comrade and colleague, Earl Durham rose to the top of the communist ladder and went on to make a major impact on Chicago education and politics.
Earl Durham served in numerous leadership posts in the Communist Party USA. He was elected to the Communist Party National Committee at the Party's 16th National Convention held in New York City on February 9-12, 1957, at which time he was also chosen to serve on the party's 11-member national administrative committee.
At a meeting of the Party National Administrative Committee in May 1957, Durham was named as youth affairs secretary of the party. He was subsequently appointed as one of nine party secretaries, who functioned as "a collective leadership" for the Communist Party USA.
After working studying the psychopharmacology of heroin addiction, Earl Durham made the decision to earn a master's degree at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. On graduation he was hired by the School as a professor, where "he was able to influence many students to consider community organizing as a career".
One former student Ron Sanfield blogged;
I was a graduate student at the U of Chicago in the 1970s, and had Earl Durham for a professor.
Even though it was more than 30 years ago, I can still vividly remember those exciting sessions in his classroom. He challenged us to confront the realities of community organization, and what it REALLY meant. He challenged us to confront our feelings about race, about class, about the gap in America between rhetorical words and deeds.
One day, he told us, "If you really wanted to be doing community organization, you would be 'out there in the streets', not in here in this ivory-tower university" ---
and taught us about Saul Alinsky who had walked those very same streets of Hyde Park and other Chicago neighborhoods.
In the early 1980s Earl Durham worked with the Communist Party and Democratic Socialists of America to elect Chicago's first black mayor, long time communist front activist Harold Washington.
It was Washington's election in 1983 that inspired Barack Obama to move to Chicago. Obama even unsuccessfully wrote away for a job in the Washington administration.
Earl Durham's brother, writer Richard Durham, served as Washington's speechwriter.
While never a confirmed party member , Richard Durham participated in several communist controlled organizations. In the 1950s, Durham worked as the national program director of the communist controlled United Packinghouse Workers of America. At the same time he founded the Chicago's Du Bois Theater Guild, with Vernon Jarrett and Oscar Brown, Jr. , a Communist Party member member and another former official of Frank Marshall Davis' "Citizen's Committee to Aid Packinghouse Workers".
In the ealy 1980s, until Richard's death in 1984, both Durham brothers served on the board of the Black Press Institute, the Chicago propaganda organization run by pro-Soviet Illinois State Senator, Alice Palmer.
In 1995 Alice Palmer launched the political career of her chief-of-staff Barack Obama, at a meeting in the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
In 1989, Earl Durham had served on the board of the Chicago Committee in Solidarity with Southern Africa, along with Alice Palmer another long time Obama friend and supporter Timuel Black.
Later, Timuel Black was a leader of the Communist Party breakaway group Committees of Correspondence.
A 1994 Chicago Committes of Correspondence "Membership, subscription and mailing" in my possession includes the names of Earl Durham, Alice Palmer, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Earl Durham wrote the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which shifted decision-making to the school level and created Chicago's unique Local School Councils.
These reforms created an opening which was heavily exploited by radicals like Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky and the up and coming Barack Obama.
In the mid 1990s Earl Durham and Barack Obama almost certainly crossed paths in a new Chicago organization, Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI). Earl Durham was founding board member of the organization, while Barack Obama served in 1994-95 on the COFI sponsoring committee.
COFI, like many Chicago community groups was a respectable "front" for radical activism.
Some of Obama's radical COFI colleagues included;
*Ken Rolling, signer of a 2008 statement in support of Bill Ayers
* Jackie Grimshaw, Obama's Hyde Park next door neighbour, Democratic Socialists of America honoree board member of the radical DSA controlled Midwest Academy.
* Barbara Engel, served with Bernardine Dorhn in 1991 on a committee of the communist front organization, Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.
*Anne Hallet, signer of a 2008 statement in support of Bill Ayers, active with both Illinois and national ACORN.
*Judy Hertz, involved with Illinois ACORN and the Midwest Academy.
*Elce Redmond, recently close to the Chicago Communist Party and active in the Committees of Correspondence/Democratic Socialists of America dominated Chicago Political Economy Group.
*Mary Scott-Boria, 1998 co-president of the Democratic Socialists of America influenced Progressive Chicago Area Network (PROCAN).
*Ellen Schumer, board member of the Committees of Correspondence/Democratic Socialists of America infiltrated, Obama, Ayers, Dohrn and Earl Durham supported Crossroads Fund.
That Barack Obama has mixed with Alinskyites, communists and socialists for his entire time in Chicago is beyond doubt.
That Barack Obama was mentored in Hawaii from the age of 11 to 18 by communist Frank Marshall Davis, is also well documented.
Vernon Jarrett and Earl Durham were both connected with Frank Marshall Davis.
Both men and their interconnected circles helped, directly or indirectly, Barack Obama's rise through the world of Chicago far left politics.
Would Barack Obama be the leader of the Free World today, had it not been for Frank Marshall Davis, Vernon Jarrett, Earl Durham and their Chicago comrades?
What do you think?
Does it matter?
Obama file 97 here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/02/obama-file-96-coincidence-obama-frank.html#links
Obama File 97 Obama and the Weissbourds - Was There a Frank Marshall Davis Connection?
Obama file 96 here
Barack Obama has received the help of socialists and communists at every step of his political career - right back to his boyhood days in Hawaii, where he was mentored by the communist poet, Frank Marshall Davis.
Frank Marshall Davis, who was not a native of Hawaii, began his radical career in Chicago.
In 1985 Obama left New York for Chicago to work as a "community organizer".
There is evidence that Obama was supported in his Chicago career, by people with ties to Frank Marshall Davis.
Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett who was the father-in-law of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, promoted Obama's career through his newspaper columns. In the late 1940s he worked with Davis on the publicity committee of a communist controlled organization-the Citizen's Committee to Aid Packing House Workers.
Earl Durham worked with Frank Marshall Davis in the Chicago Communist Party run Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences.
In the mid 1990s Earl Durham and Obama helped establish the radical dominated Community Organizing and Family Issues organization.
This post looks at a third possible connection between the Frank Marshall Davis networks of the 1940s and the Obama movement of today.
Also teaching at Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences with Davis and Durham, was a woman named Bernice Targ.
I believe that Bernice Targ may be Bernice Targ Weissbourd, a well known Chicago activist and philanthropist. Born in 1923, she is certainly of the right age group and political inclination.
In March 2009 Bernice Targ Weissbourd attended an 85th birthday tribute dinner for retired radical physician Quentin Young.
According to the event program;
Quentin began his activist life in the 1930s, as a teen, fighting fascism with his friend Bernice Weissbourd.
Quentin Young was a member of the Young Communist League in those days, so it is very likely that Bernice Targ was also a comrade.
After WW2 Quentin Young was an activist doctor and according to the House Un-American Activities Committee, was also a member of the Bethune Club of the Communist Party USA.
In the early 1970s, many Chicago communists left the party and linked up with ex Students for a Democratic Society militants to create the Gramscian socialist, New American Movement (NAM).
Quentin Young and his wife Ruth both supported NAM. When NAM and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and NAM combined to form Democratic Socialists of America in 1982, Quentin Young joined the new organization.
Young went on to meet, treat and mentor over many years, an ambitious young Chicago lawyer/activist named Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, Bernice Targ had married a young chemist-turned lawyer named Bernard Weissbourd.
As a chemist, Bernard Weissbourd had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic Bomb and had contributed towards the discovery of Plutonium.
After the War, Bernard Weissbourd studied law and practiced as a lawyer for several years before becoming one of America's leading commercial property developers.
Despite his business success, Bernard Weissbourd was a man of the left. During the Civil Rights era he held meetings of the radical Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in his backyard.
In 1983, Bernard Weissbourd served on the transition team of Chicago's DSA/Communist Party backed Mayor Harold Washington - alongside Quentin Young.
This was the year Obama first moved to Chicago, where he states that he was inspired by the victory of Mayor Washington.
In 1992, Quentin Young, Ruth Young and Bernice Weissbourd were all members of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights - probably the most successful Communist Party USA front ever. Earl Durham was also close to the organization in the late 1980s.
By that time the Committee was dominated by Democratic Socialists of America activists and members of the Committees of Correspondence, who had split from the Communist Party in 1991.
Besides Quentin Young, several leaders of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights including Timuel Black, Saul Mendelson and Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf joined the Democratic Socialists of America and later became friends and supporters of Barack Obama.
In 2005 several of Obama's friends, colleagues and mentors including Earl Durham, Bernice Weissbourd, Quentin Young, Timuel Black, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Doctor Michael Pfegler, Alice Palmer, Abner Mikva and Leon Despres gathered together in the Chicago Area Friends of the Students Non Violent Coordinating Committee, to commemorate the Civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Clearly, Bernice Targ Weissbourd knows Earl Durham well. Did she know him at the Communist Party's Abraham Lincoln School, with Frank Marshall Davis?
The direct Weissbourd/Obama connection comes through Bernard and Bernice's son, Chicago lawyer/businessman/activist Robert M. Weissbourd.
Like his wealthy parents, Robert Weissbourd has not let his commercial success dim his "social conscience".
Robert Weissbourd founded RW Ventures, LLC in 2000. He had previously served for ten years in executive positions at Shorebank Corporation, where he worked "to strengthen Chicago neighborhoods by investing in entrepreneurs, real estate and community organizations, and to help market institutions understand the benefits of returning to the inner city".
Before joining Shorebank, Weissbourd was a partner at Hartunian, Futterman & Howard, specializing in "federal constitutional and class action litigation, school desegregation and representation of government and non-profit agencies
In 1981, Robert Weissbourd helped found the Chicago based Crossroads Fund, with socialists including Jean Hardisty and Rona Stamm.
Crossroads is a major funder of the Chicago left and has been supported by a veritable who's who of Windy City radicals from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to the current US president.
In the late 1980s, Weissbourd was a board member of the Progressive Chicago Area Network (PROCAN) , alongside several prominent Democratic Socialists of America members, including current Illinois Congressman Danny K. Davis, Roberta Lynch and Dr Ron Sable, and DSA honoree and Obama's Hyde Park next-door-neighbor, Jackie Grimshaw.
Later Grimshaw and Weissbourd were both board members of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago based Environmental group.
Over A Two-Year Period In The U.S. Senate, Barack Obama Requested $3.2 Million in earmarks for the Center For Neighborhood Technology. Executives and board members of the Center For Neighborhood Technology later contributed $20,688 to Obama's campaigns.
During the presidential campaign, Robert Weissbourd served as Chair of Obama for America's Urban and Metropolitan Policy Committee. Also involved with this committee was Harry C. Boyte, a veteran of the New American Movement and Democratic Socialists of America.
In 2009, Weissbourd also served on the Obama Transition Department of Housing and Urban Development Agency Review Team.
According to RBO, Robert Weissbourd was not only an Obama bundler committed to raising a minimum of $50,000, but he also contributed significant funds to Obama’s campaigns from his own bank account: $3600 in 2007 to Obama for America and $29,373 to the Obama Victory Fund (thereby achieving Mega-Donor Status in 2008); $5000 in 2005 to help launch Obama’s Hopefund Inc., with another $5000 in 2006 and $9113 in 2003-2004 to Obama for Illinois for Obama’s U.S. senatorial campaign
That Barack Obama worked closely with Chicago communists and socialists, is beyond doubt.
That some of these activists were directly linked to Obama's Hawaiian boyhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis is also becoming increasingly clear.
This raises several questions.
Did Obama come to Chicago, because Davis' old friends could help him?
Did Obama seek these networks out, fall into them by accident, or did he arrive with a list of introductions?
When was Obama first marked out for high office? Was it only in 2004? Was it early in his Chicago days? Even earlier in the piece?
Are the answers to these questions important to you?
Obama file 98 here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/02/obama-file-97-obama-and-weissbourds-was.html
Obama File 98 Obama Science Czar Holdren's Pro - Soviet Associations
Obama File 97 here
Obama's "Science Czar" John P. Holdren, was once involved in a publication that included two accused Soviet informants among its founding sponsors.
Several other socialist and communist sympathizers worked for the publication, including some with family ties to Barack Obama.
The publication is the Bulletin of The Nuclear Scientists - world famous for its ominous symbol, the Doomsday Clock.
The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by former scientists from the Soviet spy-riddled Manhattan Project, creator of the US Atomic Bomb.
From the start, the Bulletin and its associated organizations, worked to weaken US nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, through East/West scientific exhanges, conferences and a a steady stream of anti- nuclear propaganda designed to terrify the US public with tales of nuclear destruction and looming Armageddon.
In doing so, it followed the Soviet propaganda line to a "T".
It was not surprizing then, when in 1994, a former senior Soviet Intellignce officer named two of the Bulletin's founding sponsors, Leo Szilard and Robert Oppenheimer as sources of atomic information to the Soviet Union.
According to Sudaplatov, a former wartime director of the Administration for Special Tasks, an elite unit of the Soviet intelligence service, Leo Szilard, Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, knowingly supplied information to Soviet contacts during their work on the Manhattan Project.
Sudaplatov claimed in his 1994 book "Special Tasks, Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness-A Soviet Spymaster".
The most vital information for developing the first Soviet atomic bomb came from scientists engaged in the Manhattan Project to build the American atomic bomb - Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard.
Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard, and Szilard's secretary were often quoted in the NKVD files from 1942 to 1945 as sources for information on the development of the first American atomic bomb. It is in the record that on several occasions they agreed to share information on nuclear weapons with Soviet scientists...
As early as 1940, a commission of Soviet scientists, upon hearing rumors of a superweapon being built in the West, investigated the possibility of creating an atomic bomb from uranium, but concluded that such a weapon was a theoretical, not a practical, possibility. The same scientific commission recommended that the government instruct intelligence services to monitor Western scientific publications
We were able to take advantage of the network of colleagues that Gamow had established. Using implied threats against Gamow's relatives in Russia, Elizabeth Zarubina pressured him into cooperating with us. In exchange for safety and material support for his relatives, Gamow provided the names of left-wing scientists who might be recruited to supply secret information...
Another route was from the mole who worked with Fermi and Pontecorvo. The mole in Tennessee was connected with the illegal station at the Santa Fe drugstore, from which material was sent by courier to Mexico. The unidentified young moles, along with the Los Alamos mole, were junior scientists or administrators who copied vital documents to which they were allowed access by Oppenheimer, Fermi, and Szilard, who were knowingly part of the scheme.
We received reports on the progress of the Manhattan Project from Oppenheimer and his friends in oral form, through comments and asides, and from documents transferred through clandestine methods with their full knowledge that the information they were sharing would be passed on. In all, there were five classified reports made available by Oppenheimer describing the progress of work on the atomic bomb.
Not only were we informed of technical developments in the atomic program, but we heard in detail the human conflicts and rivalries among the members of the team at Los Alamos. A constant theme was tension with General Groves, director of the project. We were told of Groves's conflicts with Szilard. Groves was outraged by Szilard's iconoclastic style and his refusal to accept the strictures of military discipline. The "baiting of brass hats" was Szilard's self-professed hobby. Groves believed that Szilard was a security risk and tried to prevent him from working on the Manhattan Project despite Szilard's seminal contribution to the development of the first atomic chain reaction with Fermi...
According to Sudaplatov, Oppenheimer and Szilard were also to play an important role after WW2.
We knew that Oppenheimer would remain an influential person in America after the war and therefore our relations with him should not take the form of running a controlled agent. We understood that he and other members of the scientific community were best approached as friends, not as agents. Since Oppenheimer, Bohr, and Fermi were fierce opponents of violence, they would seek to prevent a nuclear war, creating a balance of power through sharing the secrets of atomic energy. This would be a crucial factor in establishing the new world order after the war, and we took advantage of this...
After our reactor was put into operation in 1946, Beria issued orders to stop all contacts with our American sources in the Manhattan Project; the FBI was getting close to uncovering some of our agents. Beria said we should think how to use Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard, and others around them in the peace campaign against nuclear armament. Disarmament and the inability to impose nuclear blackmail would deprive the United States of its advantage. We began a worldwide political campaign against nuclear superiority, which kept up until we exploded our own nuclear bomb, in 1949. Our goal was to preempt American power politically before the Soviet Union had its own bomb. Beria warned us not to compromise Western scientists, but to use their political influence. ..
They started as antifascists, and became political advocates of the Soviet Union.
Several of Oppenheimer's relatives were Communist Party members.
Szilard was almost sacked from the Manhattan Project as as a "security risk". In the 1960s he was involved with radical Washington DC "think tank", the Institute for Policy Studies - infamous for its ties to foreign intelligence services and currently a source of policy ideas for the Obama administration.
Another Bulletin founding sponsor, Edward U. Condon was mentioned by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in a May 1947 letter to US secretary of commerce Averill Harriman.
Hoover claimed that that Condon was, as late as 1947, in contact with an alleged spy who had engaged in espionage for the Soviets in Washington from 1941 to 1944.
Condon was also close to Polish Embassy personnel, several members of the Communist Party USA and served on the executive of an affiliate of the National Council of American-Soviet Science Friendship.
Other Bulletin founding sponsors included Harold C. Urey, a veteran of more than 20 Communist Party USA fronts, communist sympathizer Hans Bethe and "security risk" Isidor Rabi.
By the time John Holdren was working on the Bulletin's Board of Editors in 1984, the situation had not greatly improved.
Holdren's fellow board member Deborah Shapley, was the grand-daughter of astronomer Harlow Shapley, a veteran of dozens of Communist Party fronts.
Sponsors of the Bulletin at that time included the old hands, Edward U. Condon, Hans Bethe, Robert Oppenheimer, Isidor Rabi and Harold C. Urey.
Added to the roster were David Baltimore, an affiliate of the Institute for Policy Studies, Linus Pauling, a life long communist front activist and Jerome C. Wiesner , an Institute for Policy Studies affiliate and Lyndon Johnson Arms Control appointee.
Serving on the Bulletin's Board of Directors in 1984 were:
* Aaron Adler, Board chairman in 1988, Adler also served on the board was Board of Directors of the Chicago Center for US/USSR Relations and Exchanges, alongside Larry McGurty of the Communist Party USA and Betty Willhoite - later with Democratic Socialists of America and Progressives for Obama and a supporter of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.
Adler was also a member of the Communist Party front Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and was involved in a committee to celebrate the 100th birthday of Communist Party member Paul Robeson.
*Bernard Weissbourd of Chicago, a former Manhattan Project scientist, turned wealthy property developer. Weissbourd, a leftist, was married to Bernice Targ Weissbourd, possibly the Bernice Targ, who taught at the Communist Party's Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago in the late 1940s, with Frank Marshall Davis - later a mentor in Hawaii, to the young Barack Obama.
Bernice Targ Weissbourd was also a member of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights. The Weissbourds' son, Robert M. Weissbourd served as Chair of the Obama for America Campaign Urban and Metropolitan Policy Committee and on the Obama Transition Housing and Urban Development Agency Review Team in 2008.
Working more directly with John Holdren in the Bulletin editorial team were;
*Bernard T. Feld, Editor-in-Chief. Feld was an affiliate of the Peace Research Institute, which became the Institute for Policy Studies and number 11, on Richard Nixon's famed "enemies" list.
*Ruth Adams -Editor. Adams was a chair of the Institute for Policy Studies and supporter of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.
In the early 1960s Adams served on the Advisory Committee of the Hyde Park Community Peace Center. Other Council members included life long communist front activist Robert Havighurst - a founder of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights , Sydney Lens (aka Okun), a radical Trotskyist, later active in the Communist Party controlled Chicago Peace Council, Timuel Black and Quentin Young.
Black and Young had both been accused of Communist Party membership by government investigative authorities. Timuel Black later joined the Communist Party offshoot, Committees of Correspondence. Both became officials of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and the Democratic Socialists of America.
More importantly, both became personal friends, mentors and advisers to Barack Obama.
*Ruth Young - Managing Editor. The wife of Quentin Young and later also a member of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.
*James Cracraft - Senior Editor. In 1988, Cracraft served on the board of the Chicago Center for US/USSR Relations and Exchanges, under Aaron Adler.
That is the milieu in which John Holdren worked in the 1980s.
Jeff Jacoby has written in the Boston Globe;
"Holdren opposed the Reagan administration's military buildup in the 1980s for fear it might "increase the belligerency of the Soviet government." He pooh-poohed any notion that "the strain of an accelerated arms race will do more damage to the Soviet economy than to our own." But that is exactly what happened, and President Reagan's defense buildup helped win the Cold War.
Maybe John Holdren was influenced by the pro-Soviet, anti-American set he worked with?
Today, John Holdren is President Obama's "Science Czar" - officially director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President.
Holdren's brief encompasses global environmental change, fusion science and technology, comparative analysis of energy options, ways to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and materials, population control and the interaction of content and process in science and technology policy.
All these areas have huge implications for America's national security, prosperity and future liberty.
Should a man with John Holdren's past associations be entrusted with such a position?
Was Holdren given a proper security vetting, or did he "slip through the cracks" like communist "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones?
Obama file 99 here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/03/obama-file-98-obama-science-czar.html
Obama File 99 Security Risk? Obama "Science Czar" John Holdren and the Federation of American Scientists
Obama file 98 here
Obama "Science Czar" John Holdren, has a history with the communist influenced journal, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Of even more concern are Holdren's deep ties to a related organization, the Federation of American Scientists.
Holdren has held important posts in the Federation and still listed as a member of the F.A.S. Sponsor's Board.
Like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the F.A.S. was founded immediately after WW2, by left-leaning scientists, many of whom had worked in the Manhattan Project to create the U.S. atomic bomb.
After the defeat of the Axis Powers, these scientist feared that the U.S. would use their creation against their beloved Soviet Union.
Therefore some of them they worked to ensure that the Soviet Union was given every chance to develop better nuclear weapons, while American efforts where countered at every opportunity.
Both the Bulletin and the F.A.S seemed to have followed this agenda.
Original founders, or sponsors of the F.A.S included;
J. Robert Oppenheimer - former head of the Manhattan Project.
Oppenheimer was allegedly a secret Communist Party member in Berkeley from 1938 to 1942.
Oppenheimer's wife Kitty was an ex Party member and his mistress Jean Tatlock, was also a communist.
His brother Frank Oppenheimer, and Frank's wife Jackie, were both pre-War communists. Robert Oppenheimer's Los Alamos assistant, David Hawkins, had also been a Party member.
Oppenheimer admitted he knew by August 1943 that two of the scientists working under him were Communist Party members. Three scientists under Oppenheimer's direct supervision were later accused of leaking information to the Soviets.
Leo Szilard - a key Manhattan Project scientist. As a schoolboy in Hungary, Szilard founded the Hungarian Association of Socialist Students and was an enthusiastic supporter of Bela Kun's short lived 1919 communist revolution. Later, Szilard was involved in a Soviet study group in Germany, before emigrating to the U.S.A.
In a 1994 book by Pavel Sudaplatov, former wartime director of the Administration for Special Tasks and an elite unit of the Soviet intelligence service, both Oppenheimer and Szilard were accused of knowingly supplying atomic information to the Soviet Union.
Philip Morrison - an assistant to Szilard in the Manhattan Project. A Communist Party member until at least 1942, Morrison was later accused of being a Soviet agent with the code name, "Relay".
Edward U. Condon - head of the U.S. Bureau of Standards. In May 1947, F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote that, as late as 1947, Condon had been in contact with an individual alleged, by a self-confessed Soviet espionage agent, to have engaged in espionage activities with Soviet agents in Washington, D.C. from 1941 to 1944.
Hoover added that Condon and his wife associated with several individuals from the Polish Embassy in Washington, including the wife of the Polish Ambassador, the secretary of the Embassy, and a former counselor of the Embassy. The latter, Ignace Zlotowski, a nuclear scientist, had worked as a Soviet espionage agent in direct contact with the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
Condon was also active in at least one communist front and was an associate of several Communist Party members.
Harlow Shapley - a prominent astronomer. Shapley had been involved in at least 25 Communist Party fronts.
Harold C. Urey - director of War Research, Atomic Bomb Project, Columbia University. Urey was affiliated with at least ten Communist Party fronts and had attended a 1947 meeting in Paris, of the Soviet controlled World Federation of Scientific Workers.
In the late fall of 1945, the F.A.S. scored a major political victory. While Congress was debating who should control atomic weapons, the F.A.S. rented a room near the Capitol, equipped it with a typewriter, lobbied Senators and Representatives and talked to reporters. Harold Urey, led the charge, promoting a bill calling for the creation of a purely civilian Atomic Energy Commission, led by a panel appointed by the president- with no military representation. The debate continued into 1946, with the F.A.S. working to make sure the bill passed. To the amazement of many observers, they won, though the bill was softened to allow some military input.
Moscow Center was probably very happy, as it was considered much easier to influence or infiltrate a civilian body than a military organization.
In October 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy placed a statement in the Congressional Record charging that the Federation of American Scientists was "heavily infiltrated with communist fellow travelers."
In the 1970's F.A.S. described itself as the "voice of science on Capitol Hill".
By the 1980s the F.A.S. was working to oppose president Reagan's proposed space based missile defense system.
The Soviets were extremely concerned about "Star Wars", knowing that if successful, it would make the U.S. much less vulnerable to Soviet nuclear missile attack.
In 1983, a group of Soviet academics had sent an open letter to U.S. scientists, asking whether, in the light of president Reagan's "Star Wars" speech of March that year , there had been a change in the professional consensus in the US, regarding the feasibility of effective missile defenses.
Only the F.A.S. responded and were subsequently invited by senior Soviet scientist, Evgeny Velikhov to visit the Soviet Union.
In November, the F.A.S. sent a party to the Soviet Union, which included F.A.S. chairman David W. Hafemeister, deputy chairman John Holdren, president Jeremy Stone and staffer John E. Pike.
Velikhov told Hafemeister, that the reason he decided to organize the Committee of Soviet Scientists was to educate a new generation of Soviet scientists about nuclear arms control and to re-open the US-Soviet dialog on strategic defense with the roles reversed.
Now it would be the Soviet scientists who would try to convince the the US government, with US scientists as intermediaries that the pursuit of ballistic missile defenses would be counterproductive.
Delegate John E. Pike went on to become "one of the country's most credible space industry observers" and an often quoted "security" expert.
In the 1980s however, he was a key opponent of "Star Wars".
Pike helped form the Space Policy Working Group and the National Campaign to Save the ABM Treaty, to campaign against Reagan's missile defense policies.
In 1994 Pike wrote an article entitled "Uncloaked Dagger: CIA Spending for Covert Action" for Covert Action Quarterly, a journal founded by C.I.A. renegade and K.G.B. contact Philip Agee.
Holdren's other co-delegate, Jeremy Stone was also an interesting case .
Stone, who led F.A.S. from 1970 to 2000, has been an extremely influential lobbyist and activist in the "peace" and foreign policy arena. He is the son of radical journalist I. F. Stone, an identified Soviet agent of the pre -WW2 period.
Like his father, Jeremy Stone has been close to the radical Washington D.C. based "think tank", the Institute for Policy Studies, once notorious for its ties to Soviet operatives.
U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, of Alaska, has written of his freshmen speech against Anti Ballistic Missiles;
Marcus Raskin, a co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, and Jeremy Stone helped me write the speech. Jeremy was I. F. Stone's son , who had been an expert opponent of ABM since 1963. His opposition to Pentagon spending later earned Jeremy a place on Nixon's enemies list.
Evgeny Velikhov was no gray Soviet bureaucrat either. The Soviet Union's top scientist/activist, Velikhov was an adviser to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Today he is close to Russia's de facto leader and former K.G.B chief, Vladimir Putin.
John Holdren later collaborated with Velikhov on a report on Weapons grade Plutonium, writing a June 1997, letter to Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton, on their findings;
We respectfully submit the Final Report of the U.S.-Russian Independent Scientific Commission on Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium. We strongly urge that the U.S. and Russian governments, with support and cooperation from the international community, take additional steps - beyond those already underway - to more rapidly reduce the security risks posed by excess weapons plutonium, ensuring that this material will never again be returned to nuclear weapons.
Our report recommends specific steps to meet this objective, including the technologies that can be used, a step-by-step plan of action for bringing these technologies into operation as rapidly as practicable, an international cooperative approach to financing the program, and establishment of an international entity to coordinate the necessary financing and implement the effort.
Today, John Holdren remains listed on the F.A.S. Board of Sponsors. Not surprisingly his Co-sponsors include several interesting characters.
Ann Druyan - a former secretary of F.A.S., Druyan is an open Marxist. In 1998 she endorsed a New York event commemorating the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto".
Stanley Sheinbaum - a West Coast philanthropist and supporter of radical causes including Democratic Socialists of America and Progressives for Obama.
In 1988 Sheinbaum led a delegation of American Jews that "persuaded" Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat to recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce terror. Arafat's promises, later graphically proven insincere, helped earn Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mark Ptashne - an Harvard geneticist. During the Viet Nam War, Ptashne was deeply involved in antiwar politics at Harvard and went to the extent of lecturing at the University of Hanoi.
In 1978 Ptashne attended a genetics conference in Moscow. In the 1980s, the scientific director of a Cuban genetics laboratory , spent three months working with Ptashne at Harvard.
In the 1940s, Mark Ptashne's father, Fred Ptashne, was a tutor at the Communist Party's Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago.
Coincidentally, several of Fred Ptashne's fellow tutors went on to intersect in some way with the career of Barack Obama, including Earl Durham, possibly Bernice Targ and Obama's Hawaiian boyhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis.
John Holdren held high office in two organizations shot through with socialists, Soviet sympathizers and "security risks". Both organizations have worked with Soviet officials for policies arguably beneficial to the former Soviet Union and detrimental to the U.S.
Holdren personally collaborated with a key figure in the Soviet/Russian scientific/political apparatus and traveled to the Soviet Union at the height of the "Cold War".
Now John Holdren holds the most important scientific post in the Western World and has the ear of the President of the United States of America.
Van Jones resigned his White House post, after his radical background was exposed.
John Holdren is in a position to do far more damage to U.S. interests, than Van Jones ever dreamed of.
Should John Holdren's past be subjected to at least the same level of scrutiny?
Obama file 100 here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/03/obama-file-99-security-risk-obama.html
posted by Trevor Loudon at 3/08/2010 03:32:00 PM
Obama File 100 Obama's "Faith Adviser" Jim Wallis Mixes With Socialists, Radicals and "Truthers"
Obama file 99 here
What could be a greater guide to a man's true nature, than those from whom he seeks spiritual counsel?
President Barack Obama spent 20 years under the ministry of Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Chicago's South Side.
Wright is a Marxist and admirer of the founder of "Black Liberation Theology", James Cone - who wrote in 1969 "All white men are responsible for white oppression. . . . Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'"
In June 1998 Wright attended the Black Radical Congress in Chicago where he shared a panel with Cornel West and and former parishioner Michael Eric Dyson of the Democratic Socialists of America Religion and Socialism Commission, plus a former Communist Party member from his own Trinity United Church of Christ named Kevin Tyson.
The panel was entitled "Faith as a Weapon: Spirituality and the Role of the Church In The Radical Movement."
Maybe Rev. Wright even met another Congress participant - a young radical from Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, named Van Jones.
Today President Obama gets his spiritual nourishment from another source, a leader of American "progressive" Christianity, named Jim Wallis.
Jim Wallis is white and oh so smooth and reasonable. He is no firebrand like Jeremiah Wright. He is a registered Democrat and the respectable face of the Christian left.
Rev. Wallis has served on Obama's White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, or "Faith Council" since 2008, but the relationship is personal and goes back at least a dozen years.
In early 2008, Wallis a wrote defense of his friend Obama, after the candidate was baited over alleged Muslim allegiances.
So let's set the record straight. I have known Barack Obama for more than 10 years, and we have been talking about his Christian faith for a decade. Like me and many other Christians, he agrees with the need to reach out to Muslims around the world, especially if we are ever to defeat Islamic fundamentalism. But he is not a Muslim, never has been, never attended a Muslim madrassa, and does not attend a black "separatist" church.
Rather, he has told me the story of his coming from an agnostic household, becoming a community organizer on Chicago's South Side who worked with the churches, and how he began attending one of them. Trinity Church is one of the most prominent and respected churches in Chicago and the nation, and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is one of the leading revival preachers in the black church...
And one Sunday, as Obama has related to me and written in his book The Audacity of Hope, the young community organizer walked down the aisle and gave his life to Christ in a very personal and very real Christian conversion experience. We have talked about our faith and its relationship to politics many times since. And after Obama gave his speech at a Sojourners/Call to Renewal conference in June 2006, E.J. Dionne said that it may have been "the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican."
Undoubtedly, the Obama/Wallis relationship is close. But who is this man, who is obviously as deeply committed to the Christian faith as the President himself?
Jim Wallis was raised in a devout Plymouth Brethren household, but broke with the Church at fourteen over its failure to commit to political causes.
Wallis went on to join and then lead the militant Students for a Democratic Society, at Michigan State University.
After College Wallis went on to attend Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois where he joined with other young seminarians in establishing the community that eventually became Sojourner. In 1979, Time magazine named Wallis one of the "50 Faces for America's Future.
In 1977 Wallis moved his radical Sojourner community, to Washington D.C., specifically to a small district named Columbia Heights, only a mile from the White House.
Meanwhile, many of Wallis' old SDS comrades had founded a new Marxist organization with some older Communist Party veterans , patriotically named, the New American Movement. In 1982, NAM, in turn, merged with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee to form Democratic Socialists of America.
The new organization took penetration of organized religion very seriously, immediately forming a Religion and Socialism Commission.
Below is clipping from a July 1982 DSA newsletter, listing the three Religion and Socialism Commission co-chairs.
Note the center name Jim Wallace. Spelled differently, but is this a typo? Note the address - Quincy Street - one of five streets running through Columbia Heights in Washington D.C.
Was this actually Barack Obama's future spiritual adviser?
Step forward to 2010. Contributing editors to the Sojourner journal, include Black Liberation theologian James Cone and two prominent members of DSA's Religion and Socialism Commission, Cornel West and Rosemary Ruether.
n 1987, DSA member Joanne Landy, of Campaign for Peace and Democracy, circulated a statement Against Loans to Chile , calling upon the Reagan Administration to oppose all loans to the anti-communist government in Chile.
Jim Wallis signed the statement as did DSA members Noam Chomsky, Michael Harrington, Adam Hochschild, David McReynolds, James Weinstein , Ed Asner and Rosemary Ruether, as well as "Penatagon Papers" leaker Daniel Ellsberg.
Incidentally, in 2004, Asner, Ruether and Ellsberg signed another statement calling for an investigation into possible US government involvement in 9/11.
An alliance of 100 prominent Americans ... today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.
Van Jones also signed this statement. No doubt to his lasting regret.
Cornel West didn't sign the "Truther" statement, but he, Adam Hochschild and Daniel Ellsberg were all later endorsers of the Progressives for Obama website.
West went on to serve with yet another radical Obama mentor, Charles Ogletree on Obama's Black Advisory Council in 2008. He calls Obama his "comrade."
West is also very close to William Julius Wilson, who in February 1996 addressed a Democratic Socialists of America organized forum in Chicago - alongside a young local lawyer named Barack Obama.
Cornel West has also long worked with Rabbi Michael Lerner - yet another 9/11 "truth" petition signer. In 2005, West and Lerner set up the Network of Spiritual Progressives to challenge " the Misuse of Religion, God and Spirit by the Religious Right".
Lerner, like Wallis is an old SDSer. In the period after the formation of the Weather Underground Organization , Michael Lerner and Weathermen Chip Marshall, Jeff Alan Dowd and Joseph H. Kelly moved to Seattle to form the Seattle Liberation Front "to Bring the Revolution to Seattle."
A federal grand jury would later indict three of their SLF recruits for a February 17, 1970 attack on a government building.
The same year, Lerner was a founder of the New American Movement in Chicago and in the 1980s was active in Democratic Socialists of America.
In July 2005 Rev. Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner were the keynote speakers at the launching of Cornel West and Lerner's Network of Spiritual Progressives."
Wallis used his talk to lambast the "religious right", arguing that the time has come for the left to take back American religion.
Wallis condemned the “seduction” of key leaders of the religious right by the Republican Party. He remarked that conservatives have painted a picture of Jesus as “pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-American,” Wallis lamented, “We need to take our religion back.”
Wallis also quoted a "young activist", who when asked where the new leaders were, was fond of remarking, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Sound familiar?
President Obama has a more than25 year history with the Marxists of Democratic Socialists of America.
Barack Obama has several DSAer personal friends , including Congressman Danny Davis, Quentin Young, Timuel Black and the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf (also a member of DSA's Religion and Socialism Commission).
The President has appointed several DSA connected activists to key positions, including Ron Bloom, David Bonior, Rosa Brooks, Carol Browner and Hilda Solis.
Is the President's "spiritual advisor" cut from the same cloth?
Jim Wallis, is socialist, a fervent believer in the state redistribution of wealth. He is connected to some of the most radical people in America.
Wallis works hard to portray himself as moderate and a "bridge-builder". He is a Bible scholar and comes across as sincere and as trustworthy as the President himself.
But maybe the millions of Christians and Jews who voted for Obama, should remind themselves that it is not only men of God who can quote the Scriptures to suit their purpose.
Obama file 101 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 3/15/2010 08:14:00 PM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/03/obama-file-100-obamas-faith-adviser-jim.html
Obama File 101 Who's Been Fibbing Then? Evidence That Obama Was Deeply Involved in Socialist New Party "Sister Organization"
Obama file 100 here
Did Barack Obama, or someone close to him, deliberately mislead voters about the extent of the US president's involvement in the socialist Chicago New Party?
In the run up to the November 2008 elections, evidence surfaced that Barack Obama had joined and been endorsed by the Chicago New Party, during his successful 1995/96 Illinois State Senate run.
According to Obama's "Fight the Smears" website;
Right-wing hatchet man and conspiracy theorist, Stanley Kurtz is pushing a new crackpot smear against Barack falsely claiming he was a member of something called the New Party.
But the truth is Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party. In all six primary campaigns of his career, Barack has has run as a Democrat. The New Party did support Barack once in 1996, but he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement.
Stanley Kurtz also queried Carol Harwell, Obama's campaign manager at the time: She said
“Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.”
This despite evidence that Obama was heavily involved in the New Party in 1995 and according to New Party News of Spring 1996, page 1, was a bona fide New Party member (see below).
I now present evidence that Obama was involved as early as 1993, with a New Party "sister" organization - Progressive Chicago.
This organization was formed by members of the New Party as a support group for "progressive" candidates. It's main instigators included New Party members Madeline Talbott of Chicago ACORN and Dan Swinney, a Chicago labor unionist.
In an April 27, 1993 letter to prospective Progressive Chicago members, Dan Swinney wrote;
"I recently have become interested in the New Party as well as committed myself to see if we can build a Progressive Chicago network, working with Madeline Talbott of ACORN - the local New Party convener.
I wanted to introduce you to the NP and Progressive Chicago and would like to talk to you about it to see if there is a role you want to play."
A circa 1993 Progressive Chicago introductory pamphlet stated;
Progressive Chicago was started by members of the New Party who wanted to be able to put together an organization strong enough to win: If that means supporting a candidate running as a Democrat, then fine. If that means running our own candidates in aldermanic or state representative races on whatever line that gives them the best chance of winning, fine.
A Chicago New Party organizing report of June 2 1993 specifically named Progressive Chicago as a "sister organization";
At some point in the future we will have elections for a steering committee, but at this point we are concentrating on building up the internal organization...to build up our sister organization, Progressive Chicago. Once we have built up our membership for the two organizations, we will then elect a steering committee and move forward...
Progressive Chicago would be a support organization for progressive political activity...This organization is modeled on Progressive Milwaukee and Progressive Dane...
We hope that Progressive Chicago will be able to rebuild the shattered Harold Washington Coalition and be a leading force in supporting progressive coalitions and progressive change...
The New Party and Progressive Chicago were always financially intertwined. According to an undated Progressive Challenge call for members;
If you're already a member of the New Party, we have an agreement with them that $5 of the New Party dues will automatically go to Progressive Challenge.
According to the organization's literature, Progressive Chicago aimed to;
Unite progressive activists and organizations for progressive, grassroots electoral activity in local elections.
It is a renewal of the old Harold Washington coalition; activists and academics; women; unemployed and union; gay and straight; community organizations and churches; African American, Latino, Asian, native American and white; seniors and people with disabilities; low income and middle income; west and south side..
It was the election of the leftist Harold Washington in 1983 that inspired Barack Obama to move to Chicago two years later.
The Harold Washington coalition, was led by an alliance of Chicago communists, socialists and "community activists", just like both of its direct descendants, the New Party and Progressive Chicago.
Key Progressive Chicago leaders included;
•Ron Sable - A member of Democratic Socialists of America and former associate member of the Marxist New American Movement
•Dwayne Harris, 21st Century Vote
•David Orr Cook County Clerk, closely tied to Democratic Socialists of America and once linked to the the Communist party front US Peace Council
•Ernestine Whiting, ACORN.
•Madeline Talbott, ACORN and New Party. Former colleague of Barack Obama in Project Vote
•Bessie Cannon, President SEIU Local 880
•Keith Kelleher, Head organizer SEIU Local 880. Husband of Madeline Talbott
•Joe Gardner Commissioner, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, former colleague of Barack Obama in Project Vote
•Lou Pardo, Northwest Voter Registration Project, an Obama associate, New Party and Democratic Socialists of America member and an affiliate of the Communist Party USA offshoot Committees of Correspondence
•Dick Simpson, a close associate of Democratic Socialists of America
•Danny Davis, New Party member with Obama. A member of Democratic Socialists of America and an associate of Committees of Correspondence and the Communist Party USA. Now an Illinois Congressman
•Carol Harwell, United Voter Registration League, later Obama's campaign manager.
•Barack Obama, New Party member, long time associate of Democratic Socialists of America, Committees of Correspondence and Communist Party USA
•Carl Davidson, Networking for Democracy, New Party member. A member of the Committees of Correspondence and a long time Obama associate and enabler. Later a founder of Progressives for Obama
•Dan Swinney, New Party member and an affiliate of Committees of Correspondence. Later a founder of Progressives for Obama
People targeted or solicited to join Progressive Chicago included Obama political mentor and Communist Party affiliate Alice Palmer, Communist Party member Frank Lumpkin, Rev. Jim Reed of Christians for Socialism and Democratic Socialists of America associates Miguelle Del Valle, Carole Travis, Clem Balanoff, Sue Purrington and Jane Ramsey.
Barack Obama was probably approached to join Progressive Chicago as early April 7, 1993 as this unsigned handwritten note suggests.
According to the same note Obama was "more than happy to be involved";
By September 1993 Obama was one of 17 people listed as a signatory on all Progressive Chicago letters - as shown by the second page of this September 22 Progressive Chicago letter to Joe Gardner.
On December 31, 1993, Progressive Chicago wrote to all key members, including Obama, inviting them to a January 19, 1994 meeting.
Clearly Obama's involvement in Progressive Chicago was high level and lasted at least several months.
It appears beyond doubt that Barack Obama was involved, more than two years before his Illinois State Senate run, with a New Party founded, "sister organization" - Progressive Chicago.
It is clear that ACORN and SEIU played a big role in Progressive Chicago, as did Marxist activists from Democratic Socialists of America and Committees of Correspondence.
In 2008, the US media went into a frenzy when it was alleged that Sarah Palin's husband had been involved in the Alaska Independence Party.
The same media apparently believed the Obama camp's assurances that their candidate had never been meaningfully involved in the New Party - and even if he was, it wasn't really socialist anyway.
Here is hard evidence that Obama was involved in a New Party "sister organization", founded by New Party members and run by hard core socialists.
Perhaps some brave journalist might seek redemption and forgiveness from the American people by asking the President some tough questions?
It shouldn't be too hard. The evidence is all here.
Obama file 102 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 4/07/2010 11:29:00 AM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/04/obama-file-101-whos-been-fibbing-then.html
Obama File 102 America's Little Lenin? Joel Rogers and the Obama Movement.
Obama file 101 here
It is becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama did not create a movement. A movement created Barack Obama.
One of the key leaders of that movement is a Madison, Wisconsin, law professor and sociologist - Joel Rogers.
While not widely known outside "progressive" circles, few people have exercised more influence in more strands of the movement that selected and elected Barack Obama, than has Joel Rogers.
Obama's former "Green Jobs" Czar, the Marxist-Leninist Van Jones has been part of Rogers' network for some years.
Rogers has served with Jones on the board of the Apollo Alliance , a radical led coalition of green groups and labor unions that had considerable input in writing Obama's massive "stimulus package". Rogers has served as Senior Policy Adviser to Jones' Oakland based Green For All - the Northern California affiliate of the Apollo Alliance.
In the video below Van Jones, takes time in his address to the January 2009 Mayors Innovation Project conference to praise his friend Rogers.
Jones points out three "great gifts" that Joel Rogers "has given our movement".
Firstly, there is "a new economic model ...high road development ...the best thinking that he represents is now reflected in the White House."
Secondly , "...the New Party, which is now the Working Families Party...the idea of a 'new politics' that you could actually have in this country bringing together labor, civil rights, feminists...and actually make a difference...is the basic framework for what just took over the White House."
Thirdly, ..."his idea of a new energy paradigm. His founding the Apollo Alliance. I believe the stimulus is going to put something like $80 billion in this direction..."
Jones credits Rogers with dreaming up the White House economic model - basically a 21st century "green" version of corporate socialism. Rogers also allegedly masterminded the electoral alliance that put Obama in the driver's seat. He then founded the organization that helped write the "stimulus bill", which is now funneling billions into a movement primarily designed to keep the Obama and the Democrats in power.
That's a lot of influence for one man. Does Van Jones exaggerate? Let's investigate.
The New Party which Rogers and Dan Cantor founded in the early 90s, was an attempt to to unite the poor, Blacks, Latinos , labor and "community groups" to work with and inside the Democratic Party to elect large numbers of leftist candidates to public office.
The party was essentially amalgam of four organizations -radical Washington DC "think tank" the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
The first strategic meetings to plan the New Party were held in Joel Rogers' home in Madison Wisconsin in the very early 1990s. Present were Rogers' wife Sarah Siskind, Dan Cantor (now leading the New party spin-off Working Families Party in New York) , ACORN leaders Wade Rathke , Zach Polett , Steve Kest and Jon Kest and IPS linked activists Steve Cobble , Harriet Barlow and Sam Pizzigati .
The very first meeting included Gerry Hudson from DSA and SEIU and early ACORN leader and IPS affiliate Gary Delgado. Anthony Thigpenn, from Los Angeles was also approached, but though supportive, did not wish to play a leadership role.
Incidentally, both Delgagdo and Thigpenn were later supporters of Van Jones' anti Iraq War magazine War Times.
The party was socialist in character, but only revealed its true nature to friends.
In March 28-30 1997 Democratic Socialists of America convened their annual Socialists Scholars Conference at Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York. Barack Obama, incidentally, attended some of these conferences in the early 1980s.
The 1997 conference was themed "Radical alternatives on the eve of the millenium".
Invitees were asked to join the debate on "changes in the labor movement, Marxist theory, the state of the economy, market socialism, and other areas where theory and practice meet...listen to the United States' only independent and socialist congressman, Rep. Bernie Sanders..."dialogue with Joel Rogers of the New Party... "
Barack Obama joined the New Party in Chicago, during his 1995 Illinois State Senate run. Obama was also a leader of the Chicago New Party sister organization , Progressive Chicago, as far back as 1993. Other Progressive Chicago leaders included Keith Kelleher of SEIU and ACORN, Kelleher's wife, Madeline Talbott (ACORN) and Ron Sable, Danny K . Davis and Lou Pardo of DSA.
The New Party relied on "fusion" voting for its success. Candidates ran on both the Democrat and New Party lines, combing the vote totals from both. This practice was illegal in many states, so in 1997, Rogers and his wife Sarah Siskind took a case to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the state bans.
According to the The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel December 5, 1996;
With allusions to possible electoral chaos, justices of the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skepticism Wednesday over an effort to overturn 40 state laws that forbid nominations of the same candidate by more than one political party.
The high court heard arguments in a case from Minnesota that was orchestrated by a Wisconsin couple Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, and his wife, Madison attorney Sarah E. Siskind.
Rogers is a co-founder and national chair of the New Party, which describes itself as progressive and claims 10,000 members nationwide. The party has elected candidates for local offices in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
The case failed and '"fusion" voting was ruled unconstitutional. Deprived of its main tactic, the New Party, went into sharp decline, surviving under the Working Families Party banner in New York and a few other states.
Coincidentally, Sarah Siskind worked for the the Madison Wisconsin office of Barack Obama's Chicago law firm, Miner, Barnhill and Galland.
In 2002 Sarah Siskind represented ACORN in a successful class action against sub-prime mortgage lender Household Finance Corporation.
According to Miner, Barnhill and Galland.;
For the last ten years, the firm (principally Sarah Siskind) has also represented individual consumers and organizational plaintiffs in class action lawsuits challenging predatory lending practices. These include a series of deceptive practices actions brought in Illinois, California and Massachusetts against Household Finance Corporation, and recently consolidated in In re Household Lending Litigation, Case No. C-02-1240 and Related Cases, N.D. Ca.) and settled for $152 million in benefits and future practice change relief...
Siskind won a settlement against Household Finance Corporation which gave delinquent borrowers interest rate reductions, waivers of unpaid late charges, deferral of accrued unpaid interest and principal reductions.
It was a socialist "win-win" situation. Siskind and Miner, Barhill & Galland made money, ACORN was able to force another mortgage lender to make more soft loans to its "core constituency" and the 2008 sub-prime mortgage collapse was brought one step closer.
Some commentators have surmised that some socialists leftists, working through ACORN and similar groups may have deliberately promoted sub- prime lending as a way of creating economic chaos, thereby provoking a subsequent increase in government involvement in the economy.
They point to the now famous Cloward-Piven Strategy devised in th e 1960s by Richard Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven. The "Cloward-Piven" plan involved enrolling as many people as possible onto state welfare programs. The point was to overload and collapse the state systems, leading to a Federal takeover of welfare.
Interestingly, when Richard Cloward died in 2001, 500 people gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City to celebrate his life and work. Speakers included Frances Fox Piven, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, (all New Party founders and DSA members) Gus Newport (DSA member) Howard Zinn (New Party founder) , Joel Rogers and Miles Rapoport.
Coincidentally Rapoport was the president of the New York based "think tank" Demos, an official partner organization of the Institute for Policy Studies and a close ally of ACORN.
Barack Obama helped establish Demos in 1999-2000 and became a Trustee of the organization. Van Jones also later served as a Demos Trustee, but is currently on leave.
In 1998 Chicago DSA activist and IPS affiliate James Weinstein presided over a major Chicago "Back to Basics" conference designed to re-align the U.S. left back to "class politics"
To explore how we (the Left) can increase our presence in the mainstream of American political and intellectual life.
Speakers included Dr. Quentin Young (DSA member , New Party founder , Barack Obama long time friend , mentor and physician) Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (a San Francisco based activist and comrade of Van Jones'), plus DSA comrades Christine Riddiough, Joseph Schwartz and Roberta Lynch.
Joel Rogers, founder of The New Party, listed people's concerns: education, campaign finance reform, environment, raising the minimum wage, and concern about global capitalism. Neither Democrats nor Republicans take this list seriously. Liberalism relied on favorable government regulation and mass politics to deal with problems. A new time calls for new politics, emphasizing economic strategy, citizen participation, and electoral strategy.
In 2004, Joel Rogers from the Center On Wisconsin Strategy, and Robert Borosage from IPS enlisted DSA friendly Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and SEIU President Andy Stern, to propose a new alliance of labor, environmental groups, business and "social justice" leaders - the Apollo Alliance. The Alliance, which soon included over 200 supporting organizations, released a report "High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy" arguing for a ten-year program of investment in a “clean energy, good jobs” economy.''
Joel Rogers was the Alliance's founding chairman and continues to serve on its board. Borosage is also a board member, as is Leo Gerard. John Podesta from the Center for American Progress also serves, but took a break while co-chairing President Obama's "transition", where he
"coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees."
Podesta also looked after another Apollo Alliance board member Van Jones, giving him a job with Center for American Progress , when Jones was forced to exit the White House.
Besides Rogers, two old New Party affiliates are involved in the Apollo Alliance. Gerry Hudson of DSA and SEIU serves as a board member. Anthony Thigpenn serves on the Apollo Alliance advisory board and runs the Apollo affiliate in Los Angeles - which trains "anti racist environmental organizers."
Thigpenn is a former member of the Maoist leaning Black Panther Party, but that's pretty mild by Apollo standards. The former head of the New York Apollo Alliance Jeff Jones, once led the terrorist Weather Underground Organization with he and President Obama's 's mutual friends , Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Former DSA youth leader and SEIU organizer Ron Ruggiero, serves as Apollo Alliance National Field Director.
It's a safe bet that a good portion of the "stimulus package" $80 Billion dollars will be going to Van Jones' Green For All in San Francisco in San Francisco, to Anthony Thigpenn's "environmental anti racism" trainers in Los Angeles and Jeff Jones' former crew in New York.
Any good Leninist will tell you. It is not gaining power that is important, it is the KEEPING of power.
Joel Rogers' New Party, modeled the movement that put Obama in power. His Apollo Alliance provides a means for holding that power.
It is essentially a massive patronage system, where huge amounts of taxpayer's money is channeled into radical led "green" camouflaged mass organizations.
These "green" armies will be the vote herders of the future. They will confront the Tea Party movement and other patriots on the streets of America. They will be the paramilitary armies used to intimidate the very people who fund them.
In a January 2 2009, tribute to late to Democratic Socialists of America founder Michael Harrington, Gerry Hudson of the Apollo Alliance/SEIU/DSA wrote;
It’s tragic for so many reasons that Michael died too young; his voice and his wisdom are sorely needed. How he would marvel at the election of Barack Obama and the promise that this victory affords all of us on the democratic left! He is sorely missed. But were he alive, I would hope—and expect, that he and others who are informed by this vision of democratic socialism would join with us in SEIU as we seek to take advantage of a moment most of us have spent our lifetimes only dreaming of.
Joel Rogers is the glue that ties many of these threads together - Institute for Policy Studies, Democratic Socialists of America , ACORN, SEIU, New Party, the Apollo Alliance - even possibly the sub -prime mortgage crisis.
I believe, had there been no Joel Rogers, there likely would have been no President Barack Obama
Obama file 103 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 5/01/2010 08:53:00 PM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/05/obama-file-102-americas-little-lenin.html
Obama File 103 Barack Obama's "Respectable" Socialist Mentor - Abner Mikva
Obama file 102 here
President Barack Obama and his latest Supreme court nominee Elena Kagan have a friend in common -prominent former Congressman and Chicago lawyer, Abner Mikva.
Fresh out of Harvard law School Elena Kagan clerked for then Judge Mikva in Washington DC in 1986-87. In the 1990s Obama, Kagan and Mikva were all on the Faculty of the University of Chicago Law School.
Obama's relationship with Abner Mikva is long and deep, but has been subject to little scrutiny. After all Abner Mikva is no radical, he is a highly respected "liberal" and Chicago elder statesman.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times April 14, 2009;
Abner Mikva, a revered figure in Illinois politics, was an early Barack Obama booster and mentor. Mikva's backing--he is the gold standard for integrity in Illinois politics--was important in Obama establishing his credentials in the early days of his political career and in his U.S. Senate run.
Abner Mikva, was one of Obama's early admirers, beginning in 1990 when he tried to hire the first black president of the Harvard Law Review for a coveted clerkship. (Obama turned him down, saying he was going to move to Chicago and run for public office). "I thought that showed a lot of chutzpah on his part," says Mikva.
When the Obamas settled in Hyde Park and Obama became a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Mikva, "whom Obama already knew from Washington", also taught there, and the two renewed their acquaintance and became close. "We would have lunch and breakfast together and talk about a lot of things, different issues,"
How the pair knew each other "from Washington", where Obama never lived or worked, or studied, is an interesting question.
When Obama, won the Presidency Mikva, summed up Obama’s victory as also a victory for Chicago;
Really what we’ll get out of this is, it will make clear once and for all Chicago is not just full of pork-barrel, sleazy politicians who know only Machine politics… We also will have a very special president.
Obama repaid those kind words by appointing Mikva's daughter Laurie Mikva, to the board of the Legal Services Corporation in June 2009.
But who is Abner Mikva really? This is a man who mentored the President of the United States and employed a possible Supreme Court Justice. Is there anything in Abner Mikva's background that should concern us?
After service in WW2, Abner Mikva studied law at the University of Chicago. In 1949 communist led students went on strike at the City College of New York. Twenty University of Chicago campus leaders met in April that year, to show support for their New York counterparts, Abner Mikva among them. Several of the 20 had communist connections including Elias Snitzer and Sid Socolar, both of whom later took the 5th Amendment during government security hearingswhen questioned over alleged Communist Party membership .
In 1947 leftist lawyer Arthur Golberg became senior partner with Abner Mikva in the Chicago law firm of Goldberg, Devoe, Shadur, & Mikva.
Arthur Goldberg sponsored several local Communist Party fronts, including the Chicago Conference on Race Relations, the Conference on Constitutional Liberties in America and the National Emergency Conference. He was also president of the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, accurately described in government hearings a "the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party". Surprisingly these affiliations did not stop Goldberg later becoming a Supreme Court Justice and US Ambassador to the United Nations under Lyndon Johnson.
In the early 1950's George Anastaplo a classmate of Mikva's at the University of Chicago Law School sparked controversy, when he refused to deny Communist Party membership to a Character and Fitness Committee of the Illinois Bar. The Committee investigated and because he had not answered its questions, he was told he could not become a lawyer.
Mikva was one of the first to come to Anastaplo's aid.
In 1954 ''amicus curiae'' briefs were filed on Anastplo's behalf by two radical dominated organizations, the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild. The ACLU brief, filed in the Supreme Court of Illinois was signed by Mikva and Leon Despres (a friend of Saul Alinsky, an associate of Leon Trotsky and later a mentor to Barack Obama). The NLG brief filed was signed by Pearl Hart, a veteran of several communist fronts, including the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.
Mikva too, would work with Alinsky, the legendary father of "community organizing".
In the 1966 Democratic primary election, Abner Mikva, then an Illinois State legislator, challenged the Daley machine-backed incumbent Barrett O'Hara for the 2nd Congressional District. Abner Mikva was supported by "liberal, independent forces and The Woodlawn Organization". To avoid jeopardizing the organization's nonpartisan tax exemption, TWO staffers went on the Mikva campaign payroll. They even recruited the notorious Blackstone Rangers street gang to put up yard signs warning against bribes offered by the "machine" team. Saul Alinsky was organizing TWO at the time and believed that a Mikva victory, made possible by TWO's political muscle, could have been a springboard to bigger things on the South Side.
Alinsky was reportedly furious when Mikva narrowly lost the primary.
In January 1969, the Chicago radical newspaper, Hyde Park- Kenwood Voices, listed those who had helped produce its first 16 monthly issues as "writers, researchers, photographers, artists and clerical workers".
The list included Abner Mikva, who wrote a regular column for the paper.
The "Voices" was a mouthpiece for Students for a Democratic Society, Cuba sugar cane cutters, anti Vietnam War activists and radicals of every stripe.
Proprietors were David S. Canter and Don Rose. Canter was a Communist Party member and importer and distributor of Soviet literature. As such , e was once required to register as an official agent of the Soviet Union. Rose was equally as radical, but never a proven Party member. He was however a leader of the communist front Chicago Committee to defend the Bill of Rights.
After the "Voices" folded in the mid 1970s, Rose and Canter went on to mentor a promising young journalist named David Axelrod - the man who put Barack Obama in the White hose and now serves as the President's chief adviser.
In April 1975, the Communist Party controlled Chicago Peace Council convened a "Nationall conference for a drastic cutback in military spending" in Chicaqo;
The purpose of the National Conference is to mount a national campaign and a vigorous program of action which will speak to the hundreds of thousands who were part of the inspiring resistance to the war in Indo- China. The people of the U.S. can and must turn this country around...
Speakers at the conference included Richard Criley and Norman Roth of the Communist Party and the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights, Fr. Gerard Grant and Frank Rosen (also "Committee" members) , Ed Sadlowski of the United Steel Workers Union and later Democratic Socialists of America and of course Congressman Abner Mikva.
Mikva had been elected to Congress in 1968. In Washington, Mikva became involved with the far left Institute for Policy Studies. At the the time, the IPS was a magnet for "liberal" Democrats (and even a few Republicans), Marxists, third world radicals, Eastern Bloc diplomats and at least few known KGB agents and contacts. It was (and remains) a center of subversion in the heart of the nation's capital.
In 1983, IPS celebrated its 20th anniversary with a giant "bash" at the National Building Museum, attended by approximately 1,000 staffers, politicians and supporters. Abner Mikva, of course attended, while his wife Zoe handled arrangements for the function.
IPS held regular seminars and schools, attracting people from all over the US and abroad. Could it have been through IPS that Mikva first met Barack Obama in Washington? Certainly Obama was in the IPS "orbit". In 1999 IPS affiliate Charles Halpern recruited Obama from Chicago to help establish and serve as Trustee of the New York based "non-profit" Demos, an official IPS partner organization.
Coincidentally Obama's former "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones was also a Demos Trustee.
After his Congressional career, Mikva served as a judge in Washington DC (where he employed Elena Kagan) and later as White House counsel under Bill Clinton.
After leaving the White House Mikva returned to his Chicago roots.
Not people to abandon old friends , Abner and Zoe Mikva sent a message ""Hooray for Progressives" to the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America 44th Annual Eugene V. Debs - Norman Thomas - Michael Harrington Dinner, held on May 10, 2002.
On Sunday October 29, 2006, the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights held a "Celebration of the The Dynamic Life of Frank Wilkinson (1914-2006)." Frank Wilkinson, a founder of the "Committee' had been a 40 year veteran of the Communist Party , before going on to join the almost as radical Democratic Socialists of America.
Abner Mikva served on the honoring committee with past or current Communist Party supporters Donna Wilkinson, Joan Elbert, Ruth Emerson, Yolanda Hall, Peggy Lipschutz, Bea Lumpkin, Frank Lumpkin, Harold Rogers, Mark Rogovin, Norman Roth, Emile Schepers, Studs Terkel and Tim Yeager.
Democratic Socialists of America members on the committee included Congressman Danny K. Davis, Timuel Black and Dr. Quentin Young - all coincidentally close friends and supporters of Barack Obama.
The left side of Chicago politics is so much part of the mainstream, it is almost "respectable". Democrats, communists and socialists work together, join each others front groups and even each others political parties.
Barack Obama, Abner Mikva are both steeped this culture. Elena Kagan is at least peripherally connected to it. young lawyers tend to clerk for those who share their outlook.
Chicago socialism has been a powerful force in Illinois politics since the election of far left mayor Harold Washington in 1983. Now it has spread to Capitol Hill and the White House and threatens to infect the entire country.
Obama file 104 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 5/15/2010 10:31:00 PM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/05/obama-file-103-barack-obamas.html
Obama File 104 Radical Royalty - Obama's Federal Reserve Pick - Sarah Bloom Raskin
Obama file 103 here
A seat on the U.S Federal Reserve Board, carries tremendous power. The seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. A full term is fourteen years. During that time, a board member can influence the financial policies of the world's most powerful economy. In some ways the seven men and women, have more power than Congress or even the President himself.
That's why appointments to the Federal Reserve Board deserve as much scrutiny as those to the Supreme Court.
President Barack Obama recently made three nominations to the Federal Reserve Board, Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin.
Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond, Sarah Bloom Raskin
While most "Obama watchers" said little, some commentators from the left did take notice;
Democratic Socialists of America member, Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute was pleased with the appointments;
I think these are all great choices, and ones that will move Fed policy in the needed direction -- responsive to the needs of middle-class and working families.
Of the three named, one stands out in particular- Sarah Bloom Raskin. That surname should ring alarm bells.
That's because Sarah Bloom married into what is perhaps the closest America has to a radical "royal family".
Sarah Bloom Raskin is the wife of Jamin (Jamie) Raskin, a legal academic, Maryland State Senator and the son of Marcus Raskin - founder of the deservedly notorious Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In 1963 Marcus Raskin and his partner, the late Richard Barnet founded their radical "think tank" in Washington DC. IPS quickly grew to become a highly influential, source of ideas, guidance and training for the U.S. and international left. Its critics claimed that IPS consistently supported policies that aided the foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union and weakened the position of the United States.
Since its founding, IPS has consistently followed a pro-socialist line on foreign policy, defense and the economy and has spawned a large number of spin-offs, other think tanks and public affairs organizations following the same radical agenda.
In 1978, in an article in National Review, Brian Crozier , director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict described IPS as the "perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB".
IPS became a place where leftist Congressmen, Senators and Capitol Hill staffers could mingle with third world radicals, East Bloc diplomats and even a few identified KGB agents.
The FBI was intensely interested in Raskin's institute, until IPS sued the agency and extracted a written agreement forbidding any further FBI surveillance - an agreement, I believe, that still stands today.
In the early 1990s IPS worked with Democratic Socialists of America and socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders to set up the now more than 80 strong Congressional Progressive Caucus. In 2003 IPS also helped set up the communist dominated "peace" umbrella organization, United for Peace and Justice.
Jamie Raskin admits that he grew up "in an environment of progressive politics".
An Harvard graduate and a "lifelong progressive Democrat", Jamie Raskin has brought "innovative ideas and a hands-on approach to government and politics at every level."
He has served on the Montgomery County Hate Crimes Commission, the Takoma Park Election Redistricting Task Force, and the Takoma Park Gun Policy Task Force.
In 1992, he served on President Clinton's Justice Department Transition Team for the Civil Rights Division. He was elected as a Kerry-Edwards Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
A member of the board of FairVote, the nation’s leading electoral-reform group, Raskin is best known as "a champion of voters’ rights". In his 2003 book, “Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus The American People,” Raskin documented the Rehnquist Court majority’s "assault on voting rights" in the 2000 election, and "placed Bush v. Gore in the context of a series of Supreme Court decisions undermining the participatory rights of the people."
Focusing on the Rehnquist majority’s statement that the “individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote” for president, Raskin argued for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote (and to get one’s vote counted) to all Americans.
Raskin has served as a Washington-area Board Member for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's heavily communist infiltrated National Rainbow Coalition.
He has worked closely with far left Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. to advance a voting rights amendment in Congress, and with IPS affiliated Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton to "advance a voting rights agenda for the people of Washington, D.C."
Unsurprisingly Jamie Raskin has done pro bono legal work for SEIU, ACORN, Greenpeace and the radical led Students Against Sweatshops. He has written for two Democratic Socialists of America and IPS affiliated journals, The Nation and In These Times.
Raskin has also served on the board of Progressive Democrats of America, an IPS spinoff , which is effectively the activist wing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
On March 10, 2006, IPS supporters, Yolande Fox and former Algerian Ambassador, Cherif Guellal hosted a book launch, in their Washington home, for Jamie Raskin's most recent book entitled "Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Versus the American People" at their home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Fox was a former Miss America (1951) from Alabama. Cherif Guellal was a former top lieutenant to Algerian revolutionary leader Ahmed Ben Bella - winner of the 1964 Lenin Peace Prize. Guellal also had ties to the British Fabian Socialist Society in the early 1960s. During the 1967, Six-Day War, Algeria severed diplomatic relations to protest United States support for Israel. Instead of returning to Algeria, Guellal became a Fellow at IPS.
Other attendees included Jamie's father and Marcus Raskin, , James L. Hudson and Ira Lowe.
Cherif Guellal, Marcus Raskin, James L. Hudson
Jim Hudson, a long time Washington "insider' was recently appointed by President Obama to the Directorship of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Ira Lowe is a trial lawyer and IPS supporter. He formerly represented IPS affiliate and Progressives for Obama founder Tom Hayden.
Incidentally, IPS Trustee , Democratic Socialists of America member and Progressives for Obama co-founder Barbara Ehrenreich said of Raskin's book "This brilliantly argued and meticulously researched book both alarms and inspires"
Sarah Bloom has no known direct ties to the Institute for Policy Studies, but she did work for IPS connected Washington law firm Arnold & Porter from 1988 to 1993.
A current Arnold & Porter partner , Jeremy Karpatkin, is a former Democratic Socialists of America youth organizer. In 1992, in Chicago Karpatkin directed field operations during the successful Senate run of far left Democratic Party operative Carol Moseley Braun. Coincidentally Barack Obama ran the Project Vote voter registration drive that year that helped Moseley Braun to win. In 2004 Obama took over the same Senate seat.
Nearly three decades earlier, pioneering trial lawyer Charles Halpern became involved with IPS through Arnold & Porter. The firm handled IPS's legal work and partner Thurman Porter had been an IPS trustee.
Halpern became corporate secretary to IPS, keeping minutes and records. he began to attend IPS seminars and parties at the Institute and at the home of founder Marcus Raskin, where he met radicals "like Paul Goodman and Ivan Ilich".
When Raskin and several other activists were arrested for conspiring to obstruct the military draft, Halpern helped with the defense. Halpern flew with Raskin to a meeting with the other defendants and their lawyers at the Greenwich Village home of radical lawyer and secret Communist Party USA member Leonard Boudin - father of Weather Underground terrorist Kathie Boudin. Fellow terrorist Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn would later raise Kathie Boudin's son Chesa Boudin after she was jailed for her terrorist crimes.
The radical Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) was founded in 1968 by Charles Halpern and three other lawyers, with the assistance of former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who chaired the CLASP board.
A veteran of several communist fronts, Goldberg was, in the late 1940s, a Chicago law partner of Abner Mikva. A life long time associate of communists and socialists and an IPS affiliate, Mikva went on to employ a young law clerk named Elena Kagan and to mentor and befriend a young Chicago lawyer named Barack Obama.
In 1999 Charles Halpern went on to found a New York based "think tank" Demos, an official partner organization of IPS. Among those recruited to set up and join the first board of Demos was a then obscure Illinois State senator named.......Barack Obama.
Several years later a young San Francisco communist named Van Jones was also recruited to serve on the Demos Board.
Strangely, Jones was suggested as a possible "Green Jobs Czar" for the Obama administration by Demos and IPS staffer Chuck Collins, in an article written several months before the 2008 Presidential elections.
Robert Kuttner is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos and serves on the board of the Economic Policy Institute with Larry Mishel. He is closely aligned to to Democratic Socialists of America, which has described Kuttner as a "socialist".
Kuttner was very pleased when Obama nominated Sarah Raskin to the Fed. He wrote in the Huffington Post March 14, 2010;
Obama has also just appointed three relative progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of the state financial regulators. There is not a single businessman or banker in the lot...
Will Sarah Bloom Raskin sail into fourteen years at the helm of the U.S. economy, on a pleasant face and zero scrutiny?
Or will Senate Republicans and the media do their job and ask some serious questions?
Obama file 105 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 5/26/2010 04:54:00 PM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/05/obama-file-104-radical-royalty-obamas_26.html
Obama File 105 "A Pattern of Socialist Associations" - Obama's Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan (the Early Years)
Obama File 104 here
President Barack Obama's nomination to the U.S. Supreme court, Elena Kagan, has been sold to the public as a "moderate" - yes, a little liberal leaning, but moderate none the less.
In this first of a series of posts, I look at Elena Kagan's patterns of association.
If Elena Kagan is a moderate, why then has she long associated with people connected to three interrelated organizations - the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee/ Democratic Socialists of America and the far left Washington D.C. think tank, Institute for Policy Studies?
Raised on New Yorks' Upper West Side, Elena Kagan's parents were both politically active in a place and era where politics was dominated by the Democratic, Socialist and Communist parties.
Elena's mother Gloria Kagan campaigned to elect far left Democratic Congressman, William Fitts Ryan. Her older brother Marc Kagan was active in the socialist influenced New Directions movement in the Transport Workers Union. When one of its leaders, Roger Toussaint, was elected union president in 2000, Mr. Kagan became his chief of staff, until a falling out occurred in 2003.
Marc Kagan's former comrade and boss, Roger Toussaint is prominent in the communist initiated Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, which now led by D.S.A. member William Lucy. He also serves in the leadership of the Center for the Study of Working Class Life at Stony Brook University, alongside Ray Markey from the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence and D.S.A. leaders Gerry Hudson, Mark Levinson, Stanley Aronowitz and Frances Fox Piven, co-originator of the infamous Cloward - Piven Strategy.
Elena Kagan would later dedicate her Princeton history thesis on socialism in New York City to her activist brother.
I would like to thank my brother Marc whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism and in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.
Kagan first became interested in politics in high school and worked as a legislative intern for Rep. Ted Weiss, a Democrat from New York, during the summer of 1978, and as deputy press secretary for Rep. Liz Holtzman in the summer after her junior year.
The late Ted Weiss was very far to the left. In 1978 Congressmen Ted Weiss, John Burton, Ron Dellums (D.S.A. member), John Conyers (D.S.A. supporter) , Don Edwards, Charles Rangel and others, attended a meeting organized for the Soviet front World Peace Council on Capitol Hill.
W.P.C. delegation members included President Romesh Chandra (Communist Party of India), KGB Colonel Radomir Bogdanov and Oleg Kharkhardin of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union International Department.
In 1981 another World Peace Council delegation led by Romesh Chandra toured the U.S. to publicize the "nuclear freeze" then being promoted by Leonid Brezhnev.
This group met with several far left Congressmen at the Capitol, including Weiss, John Conyers, George Crockett, Ron Dellums, Don Edwards and Mervyn Dymally.
During one of the meetings in these Congressmen's offices an official of the Communist Party USA reportedly was present and made a speech recommending that the "peace movement" unite in supporting the cause of several terrorist groups including the PLO and the communist guerillas in EI Salvador
Weiss was also close to the Institute for Policy Studies. In 1983 I.P.S. celebrated its 20th anniversary with an April 5, reception at the National Building Museum attended by approximately 1,000 I.P.S. staffers and former staff.
The Congressional I.P.S. committee members included Ted Weiss, Philip Burton , George Crockett, Ron Dellums , Tom Harkin and Leon Panetta, later appointed by President Obama to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
Liz Holtzman is also way left of center. In the late 1980s and early 1980's the Marxist based Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, or D.S.O.C. (later to become Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A.) was highly influential inside the New York Democratic Party and city government - even Mayor David Dinkins was a member.
On August 6 1993, a rally to commemorate Hiroshima Day was held in Dag Hammarskjold Park, New York. The rally was designed "to kickoff a national campaign to collect a million signatures supporting a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, commend president Clinton for extending the nuclear testing moratorium, urge renewal of the Non Proliferation Treaty, urge swift and complete nuclear disarmament."
The event was sponsored by the radical Metro New York Peace Action Council.
Speakers included Liz Holtzman, then NYC Comptroller, leftist Congressmen Charles Rangel and Edolphus Towns, Leslie Cagan of Committees of Correspondence and the Cuba Information Project, Congressmen Major Owens (D.S.A. member) and Jerry Nadler (D.S.O.C. member) NYC City Councilor Ruth Messinger (D.S.O.C./ D.S.A. member) and David McReynolds, a leader of the Socialist Party USA and also a D.S.A. member.
Nearly 5 years later, in March 1998, McReynolds delivered a eulogy at a memorial service for Chicago D.S.A. activist Saul Mendelson. Fellow D.S.A. comrades Carl Marx Shier and Deborah Meier also spoke, as did then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.
At Princeton Elena Kagan’s political beliefs emerged in an opinion piece she wrote for the Daily Princetonian a few weeks after Ronald Reagan's victorious 1980 election night. Kagan described her disappointment at Liz Holtzman’s Congressional loss (Kagan had worked on her campaign) and her own "liberal views". “I absorbed ... liberal principles early,” she said. “More to the point, I have retained them fairly intact to this day.”
In the column, Kagan also expressed her despair the state of the political left at the time, bemoaning the lack of “real Democrats — not the closet Republicans that one sees so often these days” and the success of “anonymous but Moral Majority-backed ... avengers of ‘innocent life’ and the B-1 Bomber, these beneficiaries of a general turn to the right and a profound disorganization on the left.”
At Princeton, Elena Kagan's law school room mate was Sarah Walzer, the daughter of Princeton social sciences professor Michael Walzer.
Coincidentally Michael Walzer was a leader of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, both nationally and on campus..
In 1990 Michael Walzer was identified as a member of Democratic Socialists of America.
Professor Walzer was also upset at Ronald Reagan's famous victory
Daily Princetonian, March 4, 1981
In her undergraduate thesis at Princeton entitled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933," Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the country as "sad" for those who still hope to "change America." She asked why the "greatness" of socialism was not reemerging as a major political force:
In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?
"Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness,” she wrote in her thesis. “Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation.”
Kagan called the story of the socialist movement’s demise “a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America ... In unity lies their only hope.”
Elena Kagan spent a year working on her 1981 thesis, under the direction of Princeton historian Sean Wilentz.
When news of the thesis recently sparked controversy, Wilentz came out in defense of his former student.
Said Wilentz "sympathy for the movement of people who were trying to better their lives isn’t something to look down on... Studying something doesn’t necessarily mean that you endorse it. It means you’re into it. That’s what historians do...
Elena Kagan is about the furthest thing from a socialist. Period. And always had been. Period."
Few would be more qualified to identify a socialist than Sean Wilentz
In May 1980, Princeton University's Progressive Forum sponsored a May Day rally opposite the Firestone Library. An advertisement for the event in the Daily Princetonian, "Workers of Princeton unite for a May Day rally" named speakers as Sean Wilentz and Stanley Aronowitz - a prominent D.S.A. leader
Daily Princetonian, May 1, 1980
Today Sean Willentz serves on the board of Dissent magazine, which is effectively a mouthpiece for Democratic Socialists of America.
Dissent's masthead is Marxist heavy and lists several well known D.S.A. affiliates including the late Irving Howe, Joanne Barkan, David Bensman, Mitchell Cohen, Maxine Phillips, Mark Levinson, Bogdan Denitch, Erazim Kohak, Deborah Meier, Harold Meyerson, Jo-Ann Mort, Carol O'Clearicain (NYC Finance Commissioner under David Dinkins) and Cornel West - a member of Barack Obama's 2008 Black Advisory Council.
One of Dissent's two editors is Elena Kagan's old room mate's Dad, Michael Walzer.
The other is Michael Kazin, an historian of the Communist Party and a veteran of the 1969 Venceremos Brigade to Cuba.
At Princeton, Elena Kagan won a fellowship to Oxford University, in England, where she studied “the history of British and European trade unionism.”
President Obama himself, has a long history with Democratic Socialists of America.
Is it possible that Elena Kagan shares similar associations?
Should she be asked some questions on the subject?
Obama File 106 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 6/29/2010 02:26:00 PM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/06/obama-file-105-pattern-of-socialist.html
Obama File 106 Obama's Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan's Socialist Associations (the Middle Years)
Obama File 105 here
President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has a history of association with people tied to three interrelated organizations, the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee/Democratic Socialists of America and the far left Washington DC "think tank" Institute for Policy Studies.
My last post looked at the radicals Kagan associated with during her college years at Princeton.
This post looks at two of Elena Kagan's employers post college, Congressman/Judge/White House official Abner Mikva and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
From 1986 to 1987 Elena Kagan worked as a Judicial Clerk for , Hon. Abner Mikva in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Usually regarded as a "liberal' or "progressive", Mikva in fact has a long history with the far left, in both Washington DC and his Chicago base.
Abner Mikva worked with Communist Party supporters like Elias Snitzer and Sid Socolar, during his time at the University of Chicago Law School in the late 1940s.
From 1947 Mikva practiced labor law in Chicago in partnership with with Arthur Goldberg, general counsel for the communist dominated Congress of Industrial Organizations and the United Steelworkers of America.
Arthur Goldberg sponsored several Communist Party fronts in Chicago . These included the Chicago Conference on Race Relations, the Conference on Constitutional Liberties in America and the National Emergency Conference. Goldberg was also president of the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, accurately cited by Congressional investigators as "the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party".
Arthur Goldberg was later appointed to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson.
In the 1950s Mikva and his wife Zoe Mikva, both worked with another communist infiltrated organization, the American Civil Liberties Union.
In the 1960s when first standing for Congress in South Chicago, Mikva worked closely with radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, a man to whom, President Obama owes a considerable intellectual debt.
Mikva also worked closely with two radical journalists who ran the Hyde Park - Kenwood Voices newspaper. Don Rose and his partner, Communist Party member David S. Canter would become key Chicago power brokers. One who they personally mentored and promoted was a young journalist named David Axelrod - later Barack Obama's key campaign strategist and now senior White House adviser.
In April 1975, the Communist Party controlled Chicago Peace Council convened a "National conference for a drastic cutback in military spending" in the "Windy City"
The purpose of the National Conference is to mount a national campaign and a vigorous program of action which will speak to the hundreds of thousands who were part of the inspiring resistance to the war in Indo- China. The people of the U.S. can and must turn this country around.
Speakers at the Conference included Congressman Abner Mikva, Richard Criley and Norman Roth, both members of the Communist Party and leaders of the very successful Party front group, Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights. Ed Sadlowski, of the United Steelworkers and later identified as a member of Democratic Socialists of America, also spoke..
During the 1980s. Mikva was very close to the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC- a place where leftist Democrats and the occasional "liberal" Republican, mingled with socialists, communists, third world revolutionaries and East Bloc "diplomats".
Abner Mikva attended the organization's 20th anniversary celebrations on April 5, 1983 - he was obligated really, as his wife Zoe personally organized the affair.
Abner Mikva, was one of Barack Obama's early admirers, beginning in 1990 when he tried to hire the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, for a clerkship. Obama turned Mikva down, saying he was going to move to Chicago and run for public office.
Mikva was later close to both Barack Obama and Elena Kagan at the Chicago Law School where they all taught during the mid 1990s. Mikva acted as a mentor to Obama during his early political career.
Through all this, Abner and Zoe Mikva never forgot their Chicago communist and socialist friends.
"Ab & Zoe Mikva" sent the message ""Hooray for Progressives" to the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America 44th Annual Eugene V. Debs - Norman Thomas - Michael Harrington Dinner, May 10, 2002.
In 2006 Abner Mikva served on a committee to honor the life of Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights founder, Frank Wilkinson, a forty year Communist Party veteran turned Democratic Socialists of America comrade.
Serving on the Committee (though not all pictured below) with Mikva were Obama friends , mentors and D.S.A. members Quentin Young, Timuel Black and Congressman Danny Davis, plus current or former Communist Party supporters Joan Elbert, Ruth Emerson, Yolanda Hall, Peggy Lipschutz, Bea Lumpkin, Frank Lumpkin, Harold Rogers, Norman Roth, Emile Schepers and Tim Yeager.
The National Lawyers Guild - Chicago chapter, was also represented.
In 1987 - 1988 Elena Kagan worked as a Judicial Clerk for Hon. Thurgood Marshall in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Though sometimes mistakenly identified as an anti - communist, Thurgood Marshall, had a radical past.
At the all Black, Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania in the 1930s, Marshall's classmates included future socialist President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah and poet and author Langston Hughes, later a close associate and fellow Communist Party comrade of Barack Obama's teenage mentor Frank Marshall Davis.
In 1946, according to communist linked historian Herbert Shapiro, Marshall was saved from a probable lynching near Columbia Tennessee , by a passenger in his car - Communist Party journalist Harry Raymond.
In the late 1940's Thurgood Marshall was active in the leadership of at least two Communist Party infiltrated organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild - in which he served on the National Executive, representing New York.
Other New York members of the N.L.G. National Executive in 1949, included Communist Party members Leonard Boudin, Lee Pressman, Henry (Harry) Sacher and Abraham Unger.
Lee Pressman was a fully fledged Soviet spy, a member of the famous Ware Group which had operated inside the U.S. government, before and during WW2.
Leonard Boudin's daughter Kathie Boudin, studied at Moscow University in 1966, before becaming a leader of the terrorist Weather Underground Organization, with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn. After Boudin was jailed for her part in a botched 1981 robbery, which left three men dead, her son Chesa Boudin was raised by Ayers and Dohrn.
It is likely that Barack Obama would have met Chesa Boudin through his friendship with Ayers and and Dohrn.
In 1959, Kenyan independence activist and labor unionist Tom Mboya visited the U.S. and met Thurgood Marshall. Mboya was so impressed with Marshall that he invited him to Kenya to help draft a new constitution for independent Kenya.
Marshall visited Kenya in 1960 on Mboya's invitation to attend a conference. His visit however didn't impress the British and the Americans authorities, who considered him a radical. Under pressure from the British, the Kenyans barred Marshall from attending the conference.
However, it is Marshall's friendship with Mboya that is credited with a wave of Kenyan students coming to the U.S. for further studies, beginning in the 1960s.
One of these, a Marxist economist named Barak Obama, studied in Hawaii, where he met 18 year old Stanley Ann Dunham, with whom he fathered a future president of the United States.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Thurgood Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. He was nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967.
Elena Kagan spent her youth in New York and Princeton mixing with people linked to the Communist Party, Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee/Democratic Socialists of America and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Elena Kagan's first two employers, Abner Mikva and Thurgood Marshall also had similar connections.
Now Kagan has been nominated to the Supreme Court by a President with similar affiliations.
Is there a pattern here?
Obama File 107 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 7/01/2010 09:30:00 PM
Obama File 107 Neil Abercrombie, Yet Another Covert Socialist in the Obama "Orbit"
Obama File 106 here
Neil Abercrombie was a long time Hawaii Democratic Congressman and is currently running for the Governorship of that state.
Barack Obama, Neil Abercrombie
While in Congress, Neil Abercrombie was one of Barack Obama's earliest and most vocal supporters.
This is not surprising, as there is a close Obama/Abercrombie family connection and seemingy many shared values.
While studied at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in the early 1960s, Abercrombie attended classes with and befriended current United States President Barack Obama's parents, Stanley Ann Dunham and the young Marxist economist Barak Obama. Sr.
Obama, father and son, 1971
Neil Abercrombie claims to have been Barak Obama's "best" friend.
He also claims to have known young Barack Obama as a child and to know the values the future president of the United States was raised with.
There maybe however another reason why Neil Abercrombie has been such a committed and zealous Obama supporter.
I have written previously of Barack Obama's close ties to the the U.S.'s largest Marxist based organization, Democratic Socialists of America (D.S.A.).
Obama attended socialist conferences in New York in the early 1980s at the Cooper Union, the usual venue for for the annual D.S.A. organized Socialist Scholars Conferences.
Barack Obama worked with D.S.A. member Lou Pardo on voter registration in Chicago in 1992. From 1993 to 1996, he was a member of the D.S.A. influenced Progressive Chicago and its sister organization, the Chicago New Party.
Obama dressed a D.S.A. forum and the University of Chicago in February 1996 and earned a D.S.A. endorsement for his Illinois State Senate run the same year.
Obama's personal friends and mentors include D.S.A. members Quentin Young, Timuel Black, Congressman Danny K. Davis, Cornel West and the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf.
Obama has appointed several D.S.A. connected individuals to positions of authority including Transition Team member and former Democrat Party whip David Bonior, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense and daughter of D.S.A. leader Barbara Ehrenrich, Rosa Brooks.
Now it turns out that Neil Abercrombie also has D.S.A. ties. He has almost certainly been a covert member of that organization.
According to D.S.A.'s magazine Democratic Left, Nov./Dec. 1990, page 4, in 1990 the D.S.A. Political Action Committee endorsed two Congressional candidates, "DSAer Democrat Neil Abercrombie seeking to regain the House seat representing Honolulu and Vermont independent candidate Bernie Sanders...."
Democratic Left Nov./Dec. 1990, page 4
Does the phrase "DSAer Democrat" imply that Abercrombie was a member of that organization? Or was he simply a close associate and supporter like Bernie Sanders - also coincidentally a strong Obama supporter.
According to Democratic Left, Winter 2007, Neil Abercrombie and D.S.A. and Communist Party USA connected Congressman Dennis Kucinich spoke at a Democratic Socialists of America Political Action Committee event in Washington DC at the home of leftist "philanthropist" Stewart Mott. The event was in support of Bernie Sanders.
He (Sanders)flew to Washington and the next day attended the Washington, D.C., DSA PAC party at the home of Stewart Mott. Not only did Bernie Sanders speak; so did members of Congress Neil Abercrombie (HI) and Dennis Kucinich (OH). Christine Riddiough, former DSA National Director, served as host/ moderator'.
Neil Abercrombie was also a member of the radical Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was founded by bernie sanders, with the help of D.S.A.
George (Skip) Roberts, who has long served as a D.S.A. rep to the Socialist International has also worked as an aide to Congressman Abercrombie. In recent years Roberts has been active in the Republican Party representing his boss, then SEIU president, Andy Stern.
More conclusive proof of Abercrombie's ties to D.S.A. , is the fact that his wife Nancie Caraway, an academic, noted for her far left views, has also been a D.S.A. member.
In 1985, Dr. Nancie Caraway of Hawaii was listed as a member of the Feminist Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America.
DSA Feminist Commission Directory, 1985
Note the presence of Barabara Ehrenreich on this list. in 2008, Ehrenreich founded Progressives for Obama , with D.S.A. comrades Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Tim Carpenter.
Nancie Caraway is also a big Obama supporter.
At Hawaii's Democratic Party headquarters, on Hawaii primary election night, February 2008, Caraway said that there were upwards of 5,000 people in her polling station...she described the turnout as inspirational. "I'm a postmodernist cynic," she said. "This is a new page in American political culture."
At the "request of the Obama Administration", Dr. Caraway currently serves as a consultant to U.S. Ambassador Luis C. de Baca in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
To my knowledge Neil Abercrombie as never declared his affiliation with the D.S.A. Marxists to the voters of Hawaii.
Perhaps he was concerned they might unnecessarily worry as to where his true allegiances lay?
While an ardent opponent of almost every U.S. War from Vietnam to Iraq, Abercrombie finished his Congressional term as chairman of the Armed Forces Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces.
It would be interesting to know if Abercrombie ever declared his socialist affiliations to government security bodies before accepting this sensitive post.
It is worth noting that D.S.A. affiliated senator Bernie Sanders, addressed, a conference of the Communist Party USA controlled and Soviet affiliated U.S. Peace Council in November 1989, with then D.S.A. leader Manning Marable and D.S.A. affiliate Holly Sklar.
It is also worth noting that 1990s D.S.A. National Political Committee member and Obama admirer, Kurt Stand is currently serving a very long jail sentence for spying for the former Soviet Union and East Germany.
As an aspiring Governor of Hawaii, President Obama's old family friend and supporter, Neil Abercrombie, needs to answer some serious questions.
Obama File 108 here
P.S. Please follow the blue links in the post above, for comprehensive KeyWiki profiles of those featured individuals and organizations.
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posted by Trevor Loudon at 7/12/2010 11:05:00 AM
Obama File 108 Pro Obama "JournoLista" Outed - New "Can of Worms" Opened
Obama File 107 here
JournoList was an email group of approximately 400 journalists, bloggers and academics, who reportedly worked to influence news reporting in favor of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party during and after the 2008 Presidential elections.
The latest list of alleged "Journolistas" has turned up a very interesting name - Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect. This man is no basement blogger or CNN hack, he is the author of two books on the President and is connected to some of Obama's most influential enablers.
Robert Kuttner's March 2008 "Obama's Challenge:American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency" is a call to use the Obama presidency to change America in a more "progressive" direction.
According to leftist "think tank" Demos;
In this urgent and important book, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect, explains what a President Obama must do to solve America's economic crisis--the gravest since the Great Depression--and, in the process, become a truly transformative leader.
Kuttner's March 2010 book "A Presidency in Peril" , is an acknowledgement that Obama hasn't entirely lived up to some "progressive's" hopes, but that things could yet still be salvaged;
From Demos;
In this hard-hitting, incisive account, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow Robert Kuttner (author of the New York Times' Obama's Challenge Best-Selling) shares his unique, insider view of how the Obama administration not only missed its moment to turn our economy around-but deepened Wall Street's risky grip on America's future. Carefully constructing a one-year history of the problem, the players, and the outcome, Kuttner gives readers an unparalleled account of the president's first year.
More importantly, Kuttner shows how we could-with swift, decisive action-still enact real reforms, and how Barack Obama could redeem his promise.
Note the phrase "insider view". Clearly Demos believes that Kuttner has some kind of access to Obama Administration thinking and policy.
That view is probably accurate. Back in 1999, then obscure Illinois State Senator Barack Obama was brought to New York, to help establish a new organization.
Demos was founded by "social entrepreneur" Charles Halpern. Most of Halpern's recruits to Demos were well known politicians or activists - except Barack Obama..
From the Demos website;
By 1999, Halpern had assembled a talented working group to develop Demos. Among them were David Callahan, a fellow at the Century Foundation; Rob Fersh, a long-time policy advocate; Stephen Heintz, Vice-President of the East-West Institute; Sara Horowitz, founder of Working Today; Arnie Miller, a leading executive recruiter; Barack Obama, then a state senator from Illinois; David Skaggs, a congressman from Colorado; and Linda Tarr-Whelan, an internationally recognized expert on women and economic development. This working group would eventually form the core of Demos' staff and Board of Trustees.
Barack Obama was an early Demos trustee, as was some years later another obscure young radical, this time from San Francisco, named Van Jones.
Interestingly Demos staffer, Chuck Collins in a September 26 2008 article, posited several names he thought would make suitable appointments for an Obama administration.
One of them was;
"Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center, to direct the Commerce Department’s new “green jobs initiative..."
Collins, was incidentally a founder of the radical New Party, which Obama joined in the early/mid 1990s in Chicago.
Kuttner and Obama have something else in common - a close relationship to America's largest Marxist based organization Democratic Socialists of America.
To quote D.S.A. connected "JournoLista" Joel Bleifuss;
In particular, Obama can be linked to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Democratic Party-oriented organization that is a member of the Socialist International
Obama has been close to D.S.A., possibly back to the early 1980s. Certainly key Obama friends and allies such as Quentin Young, Timuel Black, the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Cornel West and Congressmen Danny K. Davis and Neil Abercrombie have been "DSAers".
Other D.S.A types, such as Eliseo Medina, Harry Boyte and David Bonior have worked on Obama's campaign, or in his Administration.
Kuttner's ties to Democratic Socialists of America, go back almost as far as Obama's.
In November 1989 Robert Kuttner addressed the D.S.A. November 1989 national convention in Maryland, on "the state of domestic politics".
In 1990, Democratic Socialists of America was selling a list of pamphlets, including "Democratic Promise:Ideas for Turning America in a Progressive Direction", by D.S.A. founder Michael Harrington, William Julius Wilson and Robert Kuttner.
William Julius Wilson, incidentally, addressed a Democratic Socialists of America organized forum at the University of Chicago, with Obama in early 1996.
Over three hundred people attended the first of two Town Meetings on Economic Insecurity on February 25 in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago. Entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America", the meeting was sponsored by the UofC DSA Youth Section, Chicago DSA and University Democrats.
The panelists were Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman of Chicago's 4th Ward, Barack Obama, candidate for the 13th Illinois Senate District, Professor William Julius Wilson, Center for the Study of Urban Inequality at the University of Chicago, Professor Michael Dawson, University of Chicago and Professor Joseph Schwartz, Temple University and a member of DSA's National Political Committee
In 1998, Robert Kuttner was honored at a Boston Democratic Socialists of America awards ceremony alongside D.S.A. member Deborah Meier. In March that year, Deborah Meier spoke at a Chicago memorial service for "DSAer" Saul Mendelson, as did Barack Obama.
In 1998 Democratic Socialists of America described Kuttner as a "socialist".
American Prospect The journal of "liberal" intellectual politics, though half of the writers, and one of the co-founders, Robert Kuttner, are socialists. This journal sees its mission as the reinvigoration of "liberalism," betraying a clear disregard for liberalism's expressed desire to accept death
So far at least eight identified "JournoListas", have ties to Kuttner's, "The American Prospect".
In 1996, Robert Kuttner helped found, with at least two dozen "D.S.Aers", the highly influential "progressive" umbrella group Campaign for America's Future.
Fellow C.A.F. founders Robert Borosage, John Cavanagh, Barbara Ehrenreich (D.S.A.), Frances Fox Piven (D.S.A.), Mark Ritchie (a Communist Party "friend") and Joel Rogers had helped establish Obama's New Party.
C.A.F. founders Tom Hayden and Barbara Ehrenreich went on to found, in 2008, Progressives for Obama, which was support by other C.A.F./D.S.A supporters Dick Flacks, Todd Gitlin, Adam Hochschild, Frances Fox Piven and Stanley Sheinbaum.
Besides Kuttner, three other C.A.F. founders, James Galbraith, Todd Gitlin, and Michael Kazin , would later turn up as "JournoListas".
C.A.F. has run for several years the successful Take Back America and America's Future Now! conferences, which annually attract the cream of the U.S. "progessive" movement, including many "DSAers", "JournoLista's", Robert Kuttner and then Senator Barack Obama.
Earlier this year Robert Kuttner was serving on the Advisory Board of the Cry Wolf Project. This organization caused some controversy after it was found to be offering money to academics for articles countering conservative attacks on "progressive" programs.
Serving on the advisory board with Kuttner was Janice Fine of Rutgers University, an early founder of the New Party and a member of the Editorial Advisory group of Wade Rathke's D.S.A./ACORN linked journal Social Policy.
Cry Wolf's three co-leaders were "DSAers" Peter Dreier and Nelson Lichtenstein and Donald Cohen, a member of the board of Directors of Van Jones' Oakland based Green For All.
Another close tie to the Obama Administration comes through Kuttner's membership of the board of the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington based "think tank" is led by "DSAer" Larry Mishel and boasts several D.S.A affiliates on its board, including Barry Bluestone, Teresa Ghilarducci (a Demos fellow), Julianne Malveaux and Bruce Raynor. New Party founder Larry Cohen and Campaign for America's Future founders Thomas Buffenbarger, Jeff Faux, Ray Marshall, Gerald McEntee, Robert Reich, Andy Stern (also Progressives for Obama) and Richard Trumka also serve.
Two E.P.I board members have joined the Obama administration, William Spriggs as a Senior Adviser in the Department of Labor and Rebecca Blank as Under Secretary for Economic Affairs in the Department of Commerce.
More importantly long time E.P.I. staffer and "JournoLista" Jared Bernstein has served as an Obama campaign adviser and currently works for Vice President Joe Biden.
Interestingly, leftist economist and "Journalista" Paul Krugman, argued in November '08 that, given the "centrist makeup" of President Barack Obama's economic inner circle, the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board could be used to "give progressive economists a voice," and mentioned Jared Bernstein and fellow E.P.I economist, and E.P.I. president, "DSAer" Larry Mishel as "progressive economists" who might be suitable for the board.
The Biden appointment was a step in that direction.
Were the "Journolistas" really just a "chat group", or were they a conduit of information to and from the Obama Administration?
Did some of their members actually have some influence on policy and/or appointments within the Obama Administration?
Was JournoList, actually an intelligence and influence brokering network for the Obama campaign and Administration?
Somebody needs to ask Robert Kuttner and other "Journolistas" some serious questions.
Obama file 109 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 7/27/2010 01:26:00 PM
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/07/obama-file-108-pro-obama-journolista.html
Obama File 109 "JournoList" - the Soros, Google, Free Press and Obama Connections
Obama File 108 here
JournoList was an email group of up to 400 prominent U.S. journalists, academics and "new media" activists, who reportedly colluded in the run up to the 2008, to influence public opinion in favor of the Barack Obama and the Democrats and against their Republican opponents.
Many "JournoListas" were involved with Marxist based based organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America, or the far left Institute for Policy Studies.
Some, like Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect, had close ties to the Obama campaign and Administration.
An overlapping group of "JournoListas" , at least eight strong were centered on another organization, which has close ties to the three highly influential power centers - financier and "change agent" George Soros' , internet giant Google and DC based non profit Free Press - accused by its opponents of aiding Obama Administration attempts to censor and manipulate information on the internet.
The organization in question, the Washington DC based New America Foundation has close ties to the Obama Administration, stretching back to Obama's alma mater Occidental College in the early 1980s.
While claiming to be non - partisan, New America clearly leans left.
The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. The foundation's mission is animated by the American ideal that each generation will live better than the last. That ideal is today under strain. Our education and health care systems are struggling with problems of quality, cost and access. The country requires creative means to address its fiscal challenges and pay for needed public, social and environmental investments. Abroad, the United States has yet to fashion sustainable foreign and defense policies that will protect its citizens and interests in a rapidly integrating world
This is "progressive" code for domestic socialism, paid for out of a decreased defense budget.
Frida Berrigan, is Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation.
In 2007 Berrigan represented the socialist dominated War Resisters League on the Steering Committee of the communist dominated United for Peace and Justice. In 2009 Frida Berrigan was a Contributing Editor and a member of the Editorial Board of Chicago based socialist journal In These Times, where she served alongside former Weather Underground terrorists and Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Sid Hollander of Democratic Socialists of America and David Moberg a veteran of the Gramsci/Marxist New American Movement and the 1976 Weather Underground organized National Hard Times Conference.
Parag Khanna, Senior Research Fellow, American Strategy Program and Director, Global Governance Initiative, at New America, provided "expert" foreign policy advice and opinion to Barack Obama's Presidential campaign.
Khanna also spoke at the Change the World conference, hosted by Britain's socialist Fabian Society on January 19, 2008.
The eight known "JournoListas: affiliated to the New America Foundation are:
•Shannon Brownlee - Senior Research Fellow, Economic Growth Program, N.A.F.A former senior editor atU.S. News & World Report, her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Glamour, More, Mother Jones, New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, Time, Washington Monthly, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times
•Michael A. Cohen - Former Co-Director, Privatization of Foreign Policy Initiativ, N.A.F. Cohen's work has appeared in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, the St. Petersburg Times, the World Policy Journal, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, the New York Daily News, Forbes.com, Courier de la Planete, Talkingpointsmemo.com, Politico, Worth Magazine and he is a frequent blogger at www.democracyarsenal.org. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign he was a regular contributor to the New York Times Campaign Stops blog. He has also been featured on ABC News, Fox News, BBC TV and radio, South African television, Al Jazeera, Air America and XM Radio's Potus '08.
•Tim Fernholz - Research Fellow, Asset Building Program N.A.F., Writing Fellow of The American Prospect
•Christopher Hayes - Schwartz Fellow N.A.F. Former senior editor of In These Times, Washington editor of The Nation. In April 2010 Hayes spoke at a Georgetown University, seminar "Labor, the Left, and Progressives in the Obama Era" with Barbara Ehrenreich, Gerry Hudson and Harold Meyerson of Democratic Socialists of America and fellow "JournoLista" and D.S.A. associate Michael Kazin
•Daniel Levy -Senior Research Fellow, American Strategy Program and Co-Director, Middle East Task Force N.A.F.During the Barak Government of 1999-2001, Levy worked in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office as special adviser and head of Jerusalem Affairs, following which Mr. Levy worked as senior policy adviser to then Israeli Minister of Justice, Yossi Beilin. In this capacity he was responsible for coordinating policy on various issues including peace negotiations, civil and human rights, and the Palestinian minority in Israel.He is a Founder of the Democratic Socialists of America influenced JStreet organization.
•Sara Mead - Senior Research Fellow, Education Policy Program and Workforce and Family Program, N.A.F.
•Mark Schmitt -Senior Research Fellow, American Strategy Program N.A.F. Former Director of Policy and Research at George Soros' Open Society Institute
•Steven Teles -Schwartz Fellow N.A.F., writer for The American Prospect. Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently writing a book on how politics affects policymaking.
Another New American Foundation Schwartz fellow is Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and the chairman of Free Press. He is the co-author of Who Controls the Internet?.
Free Press was founded in by open Marxist Robert W. McChesney. Free Press, which has the ear of the Obama Administration, is responsible for a report written by McChesney and Democratic Socialists of America associate and "Free Presser" John Nichols - entitled "National Journalism Strategy" which calls for “massive public intervention” into the news business.
At Chicago D.S.A's 2006 awards dinner, John Nichols of The Nation, spoke to the "need to go beyond taking back our country, beyond things just not getting worse, and the need for a progressive agenda".
Chairman of the New American Foundation Board of directors and a member of the N.A.F. Leadership Council is none other than Eric Schmidt, Chairman & CEO, Google, Inc.;
Schmidt is a member of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
There is another, more obscure Obama/Google connection. A couple of years ago Google appointed Dr. John Lumpkin to its Health Advisory Council. John Lumpkin came from a well known Chicago Communist Party family. When John Lumpkin unsuccessfully stood for Alderman in Chicago's 7th Ward in 1979, the "Committee to Elect Dr. John R. Lumpkin" was led by several Communist Party members, as well as activists Timuel Black and Quentin Young.
Black and Young both went on to join Democratic Socialists of America. Both also became personal friends, mentors and political supporters of Barack Obama. Quentin Young was Obama's personal physician at one stage and attended the famous meeting where Obama's political career was launched in the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Serving with Eric Schmidt on the N.A.F. Leadership Council is Jonathan Soros, President & Co-Deputy Chairman, Soros Fund Management, LLC.
Jonathan Soros serves on the board of directors of his father's Open Society Institute. Before graduate school, Johnathan Soros was a program manager at O.S.I. in Budapest. He also served as a staff member on the Clinton/Gore ’92 campaign and inaugural committees.
The Open Society Institute funded the New America Foundation to the tune of at least $250,000 in 2008.
President and CEO of the New America Foundation is Steve Coll.
It turns out the Steve Coll and his wife Susan Keselenko Coll were pretty good friends of Barack Obama back at Occidental College in the 1980s.
In February 2008, in response to accusations that Obama had used drugs while a student , journalist and blogger at The Washington Note Steve Clemons , interviewed Steve and Susan Coll about Obama's drug use at the time - without mentioning his connection to Steve Coll.
A separate couple I found on my own and who knew Barack Obama at Occidental College are New America Foundation President and New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll and his wife Susan. I asked Coll what the depth of his and his wife's relationship with Obama was -- and whether he'd seen the presidential aspirant get "wild."
Coll told me that he was two years ahead of Barack -- and his wife one year ahead -- and that they were all pretty good friends. They are friends now, but at a more pronounced distance and don't see each other much.
Coll recounted that he and Susan were impressed with Obama then and saw absolutely nothing on the drug front with him -- though he can't say the same about a lot of his other Oxy pals. He said that his one wild thing that got him a lot of accolades was his hard lobbying to get the trustees to divest Occidental College holdings from South Africa, which they did.
Steve Clemons is the Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation Could he be one of the more than 200 as yet unidentified "JournoListas"?
Clemons is also contributor to the website Havana Notes, which is dedicated to easing U.S. government sanctions against Cuba, alongside one time Democratic Socialists of America member Patrick Doherty, Anya Landau French , (both also of the New America Foundation) and long time pro Cuban propagandist Gail Reed.
Had Clemons delved a little deeper he might have found that Steve and Susan Coll hung around with leftists like Caroline Boss and Rick Cole at Occidental. Many of their friends were involved with Occidental's "Democratic Socialist Alliance", which in turn had ties with the radical New American Movement and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee - which amalgamated to form Democratic Socialists of America in 1982.
Susan Keselenko took classes with Barack Obama from Prof. Roger Boesche who is also a socialist, a proponent of the radical philosopher John Rawls.
Today Susan Coll is a writer, the author of novels "Rockville Pike" and "KarlMarx.com".
It seems that the concept of leftist journalists and writers covering their friends is not confined to confirmed "Journolistas".
The "JournoListas" who helped Barack Obama into the White House are not unique. They are merely part of a movement to promote a promising young leftist that may have begun more than thirty years ago.
Without sympathetic socialist journalists, it is unlikely that Barack Obama would be President of the United States today.
Obama file 110 here
posted by Trevor Loudon at 8/02/2010 09:27:00 PM
Also see: http://commieblaster.com/
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