Mike Klonsky
Next Left Notes (NLN) is an independent New Left journal. NLN offers coverage of ongoing struggles - from a radical perspective.
Posted on 09/27/2008 7:46:43 AM PDT by GVnana
Subversives for Obama
Friday, 26th September 2008
There are two American election campaigns currently running. The first, in the mainstream media, accepts Barack Obama at face value, no questions asked, while it viciously turns over Sarah Palin and her family whom it subjects to lies, smears and character assassination. The second, being conducted in the blogosphere and (with one or two notable exceptions such as the Wall Street Journal) not alluded to at all by the mainstream media, is the site of verbal warfare between Camp Obama and bloggers who are practising journalism as it used to be practised – going behind the propaganda to dig out information and asking questions about it. The blogosphere is not only rebutting the Palin lies but also piling up the most disturbing revelations about Obama’s background and associations -- compounded by the troubling manner in which Camp Obama responds to these discoveries.
A few months ago, a claim was made by former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton that Obama had been funded through Harvard law school by Khalid Al-Mansour, a ‘mentor’ to the founders of the Black Panther party and advisor to ‘one of the world’s richest men,’ Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. It was Prince Alwaleed whose $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan after 9/11 was refused by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani because the Saudi prince hinted publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the attacks.
According to this story by Kenneth Timmerman, Camp Obama denied this claim -- and referred to a story on Politico.com in which reporter Ben Smith wrote that ‘a spokesman for Sutton’s family, Kevin Wardally’ said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments. But when contacted, Sutton’s family not only denied that Sutton had misspoken but also said they had never even heard of Kevin Wardally – who appears to work for a Harlem political consulting firm.
So the claim that Obama was funded through Harvard by a radical Black Muslim activist with ties to the Saudis remains on the table.
Some of the most troubling questions, however, arise from Obama’s relationship with the unreprentant former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. Obama has been at pains to play down this relationship, dismissing Ayers as just ‘a guy who lives in my neighborhood,’ and ‘not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis.’ But thanks to the exemplary and important journalism of Stanley Kurtz, it is becoming ever clearer that such claims are deeply disingenuous and conceal a significant and long-lasting working relationship with a man who has never renounced his terrorist past. This relationship centred upon a fund called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), which although founded by former ambassador Walter Annenberg to improve Chicago’s schools, funnelled some $100 million into the hands of radical activists. The CAC was the brainchild of Ayers – and for four years in the 1990s, Obama was chairman of the board.
In the Wall Street Journal, Kurtz writes that documents in the CAC archives make it clear that William Ayers and Barack Obama were partners in the CAC.
In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the ‘Collaborative,’ which shaped education policy... The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda...
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto. In works like ‘City Kids, City Teachers’ and ‘Teaching the Personal and the Political,’ Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. ..
The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.
Kurtz has also been trying to discover just who appointed Obama to the CAC board.
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's ‘recruitment’ to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
Here, Kurtz adds that Obama has sought to obscure the role Ayers played in choosing Obama to lead the CAC -- and also details how the CAC tried to obstruct Kurtz’s inquiries by blocking his access to the records. And here Camp Obama responds to these claims, along with Kurtz’s demolition of that response.
Nor is the relationship with Ayers the only radical question-mark over Obama’s associations. Indeed, Obama appears to be the front-man for a vast network of the most subversive radicals in the USA – an alphabet soup from the FBI menu, a veritable Rolodex of the American counter-culture. WorldNetDaily reveals:
The official campaign website of Sen. Barack Obama has completely scrubbed a series of user-generated blog postings on the candidate's site by a former top communist activist who is an associate of former Weathermen terrorist leader William Ayers. The move has raised questions regarding Obama's relationship with the deleted blogger, Mike Klonsky, who runs an education organization that was founded by Ayers and that received a substantial grant from a group directed by Obama.
Small wonder Camp Obama is sensitive to the association. Klonsky, a professor of education and leader of the New Communist movement, was national secretary of the radical group Students for a Democratic Society. In 1969, he was one of five SDS members arrested at the organization’s Chicago national headquarters for assaulting a police officer, interfering with a firefighter, and inciting mob action. As Global Labor and Politics has reported, Klonsky went on to form a pro-Chinese sect called the October League that later became the Beijing-recognized Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). As chairman of the party, Klonsky travelled to Beijing itself in 1977 and, literally, toasted the Chinese Stalinist leadership who, in turn, ‘hailed the formation of the CP(ML) as “reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people,” effectively recognizing the group as the all-but-official US Maoist party.’ (Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 228).
In 1991, Klonsky co-founded the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago – and his co-founder was one William Ayers.
As Trevor Loudon continues to document, Klonsky and his Weather Underground friends Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are part of a far more extensive -- and organised – network of Subversives for Obama. In his latest post, Loudon concludes:
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are involved in an organisation uniting three Marxist parties, a host of ‘60s radicals and terrorists and a new generation of militant activists. That organisation has spawned a spin-off organisation specifically designed to put Barack Obama in the White House and to bring about massive social change across the US.
Barack Obama appears to sit on a nexus between Marxist revolutionary activists, unrepentant former terrorists, Black Power racists, Chicago mobsters – oh, and a Saudi who is trying to buy up America. If you were to turn up at US immigration control with a background of such associates, it’s a fair bet they wouldn’t let you off the air-bridge. Yet this man may well become President of the US! If any other candidate had had merely a fleeting relationship with William Ayers, his candidacy would have been terminated before it was even articulated -- let alone what we now know about Obama’s key role in Ayers’s CAC and its funding of radical groups; let alone the fact that Obama had been mentored during his formative years by a Communist Party plant; let alone his work for organisations modelled on the seditious philosophy of Saul Alinsky; let alone his two-decade membership of a Black Power church; let alone his relationship with fraudster Tony Rezko.
And yet despite all of this, virtually no-one in the mainstream media is asking any questions. Has there ever been a more staggering, surreal and scary race to the White House?
Good stuff, thanks for putting it all together, excellent job!!
You make a difference!!
Frankly, I don't understand why thinking people spend their time on ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, etc. I guess it's just habit.
You’re welcome, FRiend. I appreciate that. :)
And which election in the last 20 years hasn't?
Thanks for the ping!
Here we are still breathing, the day after the Great One declared war on Pakistan on national TV !!
I guess the Brits aren’t all a lost cause. I going to pass the source around to a couple other forums.
btt
Thanks for all the links! I love going over the latest and forwarding info to others. :))
hard bump
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Contact: Jessica Robinson, 573-751-0290
Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign’s Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.
“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.
“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.
“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.”
The governor no less! Love it!!!
BM and BOOMED !!!
I still can’t believe this guy is so close to being President . SCARY..
Come on MSM at least do half of what you’ve done to Palin .....
Bookmarked for later
Your dedication and commitment to the truth is admirable and greatly appreciate!!
Be Ever Vigilant!!
Ping.
bump! bump! bump!
Thank you very much for the ping, Granny! We don’t have much time left now till the election, but I’m praying earnestly that we catch a few breaks between now and then. People really do need to know WHO is behind Obama.
former Hillary Clinton Harlem campaign chief Kevin Wardally
Kevin Wardally, the Harlem political operative spearheading the New York senator’s efforts
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Rangel spokesman Kevin Wardally
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”Who is this person?” asked Sutton’s assistant, Karen Malone. When told that he portrayed himself as a “spokesman” for the family, Malone told Newsmax, “Well, he’s not.”
Wardally refused to retract his false retraction, stating to Newsmax that, “he had been retained by a nephew of the elder Sutton, who is in our office almost every week.”
Timmerman reports, “Wardally works for Bill Lynch Associations, a Harlem political consulting firm. The nephew, Chuck Sutton, no longer works with the elder Sutton at Inner City Broadcasting, but for a high-tech start-up called Synematics.”
******
Mr. Wardally, 32, a Harlem native and veteran field organizer, was in the Democrats’ ‘’convention response team’’ headquarters on Seventh Avenue. While sweaty protesters marched 15 floors below, he was working the phones, coordinating the movements of a busload of activists who were headed to City Hall for a rally through impossible traffic.
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Kevin Wardally, former City Council deputy chief of staff and director of political and government operations at Bill Lynch and Associates, said that if he does not, one player stands out as the lead contender to succed him.
Adaku Wardally (who is married to Kevin Wardally), former press aide for Dickens
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Kevin Wardally ,33 Director of Political & Governmental Operations, Bill Lynch Associates
ACORN’s political action committee and Harlem powerbroker Bill Lynch.
Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator and political activist, a leader of the New Communist Movement.
Klonsky’s father, Robert Klonsky, had been arrested as a communist in the 1950s and convicted of violating the Smith Act. In the late 1960s Michael Klonsky was the national secretary of the Students for a Democratic Society, which he joined as a student at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge). He was one of five S.D.S. members arrested on May 12, 1969, when prank phone calls sent police and firefighters to the S.D.S. offices in Chicago. In the 1970s he headed the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), in which role he was one of the first westerners allowed to visit the People’s Republic of China.
More recently Klonsky has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago; his academic work focused on small school size as a solution to the problems of inner city schools. He is now the director of the Small Schools Workshop, a school outreach program associated with UIC.
Mike Klonsky
Next Left Notes (NLN) is an independent New Left journal. NLN offers coverage of ongoing struggles - from a radical perspective.
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