Tied to Ayers' group, extremist groups operating on campus
Posted: June 11, 2010
12:00 am Eastern
WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A recently released book uncovers untold aspects of President Obama's mysterious college years, tying the politician to associates of Weather Underground founder William Ayers and to radical groups operating at the time.
The new book, "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's ties to communists, socialists and other anti-American extremists," charges Obama has deep ties to an anti-American extremist nexus that has been instrumental not only in building his political career but in crafting current White House policy.
The book exposes an extremist coalition of communists, socialists and other radicals working both inside and outside the administration to draft and advance current White House policy goals.
With nearly 900 citations, the New York Times best-selling title from WND senior reporter and WABC Radio host Aaron Klein bills itself as the most exhaustive investigation ever performed into Obama's political background and radical ties. Klein's co-author is historian and researcher Brenda J. Elliott.
Read the inside story on the president and his friends, get your autographed copy of "The Manchurian President" at WND's Superstore
In one of the many strange features of Obama's presidential candidacy, his 2008 campaign went to great lengths to conceal normally routine information about the candidate's college years.
The information included his first two undergraduate years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, followed by his final two years and graduation from Columbia University in New York City.
(Story continues below)
No official or unofficial records were ever made available. No college transcripts, published records, or even contemporary newspaper announcements about his education have been released.
Obama remarkably relates in his autobiography "Dreams from My Father" that, beginning at Occidental, he surrounded himself with an assortment of radicals, socialists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists and communists.
Obama, however, provides neither names nor clues.
"The Manchurian President" uncovers a slew of radicals with whom Obama associated during his college years.
SDS founder
It was at Occidental that Obama first engaged in community activism, delivering what has been described as the first political speech of his career. On Feb. 18, 1981, Obama addressed students gathered outside Coons Hall administration building, exhorting Occidental's trustees to divest from South Africa.
Obama writes in "Dreams" about the rally in which he took part, reportedly led by the Black Student Alliance and Students for Economic Democracy.
Obama agreed to deliver the opening remarks for the rally, for which, he writes, "the agenda had been carefully arranged beforehand." In the middle of his speech "a couple of white students" were to come onstage, "dressed in their paramilitary uniforms," to drag him away. "A bit of street theater, a way to dramatize the situation for activists in South Africa," Obama writes.
Students for Economic Democracy, or SED, was a national student advocacy group established by soon-to-be California State Representative Tom Hayden, now a professor at Occidental, and his former wife, actress Jane Fonda
Hayden authored the 1962 "Port Huron Statement," the first official political manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS – the radical 1960s protest movement from which Ayers' Weathermen terrorist organization splintered.
An example of Hayden's brash rhetoric dates to his December 1968 testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities on the Chicago "anti-war protests."
At the committee, a portion of Hayden's SDS manifesto was read:
"Disobey your parents: burn your money: you know life is a dream and all of our institutions are man-made illusions effective because YOU take the dream for reality. … Break down the family, church, nation, city, economy; turn life into an art form, a theatre of the soul and a theatre of the future; the revolutionary is the only artist. … What's needed is a generation of people who are freaky, crazy, irrational, sexy, angry, irreligious, childish and mad: people who burn draft cards, burn high school and college degrees; people who say: "To hell with your goals!"; people who lure the youth with music, pot and acid; people who re-define the normal; people who break with the status-role-title-consumer game; people who have nothing material to lose but their flesh. …"
When asked if this was "the way to have a better America," Hayden called them "beautiful sentiments."
The official mission statement for Hayden's SED, for which Obama delivered a major speech, espouses socialist ideology:
"Economic democracy means that ownership and control will be spread among a wide variety of public bodies: city, state and Federal governments, churches, trade unions, cooperatives and community groups, small business people, workers and consumers."
Hayden later was a founding member of Progressives for Obama, a matrix of radicals who supported Obama's presidential candidacy.
Meanwhile, "Manchurian" relates Obama's involvement with the anti-apartheid movement, which sparked a firestorm of activism at Occidental.
Political mentors
The book rejects as unlikely speculation from various media outlets that two Occidental professors, Roger Boesche and Eric Newhall, served as Obama's political mentors at the time.
Instead, "Manchurian" finds the most likely candidate to be Occidental professor Gary Chapman, whose background includes "military service, academic research and organizational experience."
Chapman's political organization and campaign experience also includes "peace issues" with the New American Movement, or NAM. The lineage of NAM is associated with that of the Democratic Socialists of America. NAM also is identified as a "splinter group" of Hayden's and Ayers' SDS.
Appeared with Columbia activist, Ayers
Obama has revealed almost nothing about his last two years as an undergraduate at Columbia University's Columbia College.
Obama has said he was involved with the Black Students Organization, which emerged in the 1960s in response to a growing black student population at Columbia. Undergraduates formed the Student Afro-American Society, "which was concerned with the affairs of black students and issues of the greater black community."
The Coalition for a Free South Africa, or CFSA, began as a Black Students' Organization committee to promote Columbia University's divestment in stock in companies doing business in South Africa.
CFSA, which split from the Black Students' Organization in 1981, was a loosely structured group with a predominantly black steering committee of about a dozen individuals who made decisions by consensus, and a less active circle of about fifty students who attended meetings and the group's protests and educational events."
Early CFSA leaders were Danny Armstrong, a Columbia College student who played forward for Columbia's basketball team, and Barbara Ransby, a student from the School of General Studies
As CFSA spokeswoman, Ransby famously convinced Columbia's student senate "to support full divestment."
Ransby, now an associate professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the executive director of Public Square, was in the class of 1984 at Columbia, only one year behind Obama, who would later publicly appear with both Ransby and Ayers.
In April 2002, Ransby appeared at a University of Illinois-Chicago forum and sat on the same panel – "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis: Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations" – with both Obama and Ayers.
Obama knew FCC chief from Columbia activism?
Another name that emerges from Obama's involvement with the Black Students' Organization and Coalition for a Free South Africa is that of Julius Genachowski.
In October 2008, Genachowski, co-founder of the venture capital firm LaunchBox Digital, was described as "an adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama."
Obama and Genakowski were later Harvard Law School classmates.
In August 2008 it was reported in the New York Times that Genachowski, who led the Obama campaign's technology working group, was also a big fundraiser. Genachowski raised at least $500,000 as an Obama "bundler."
In March 2009, Obama nominated Genachowski to chair the Federal Communications Commission, and he was sworn in June 29, 2009.
Book uncovers radical nexus
Along with a chapter on Ayers, "The Manchurian President" includes an extensive investigation into Obama's own background. The work uncovers, among many other things, Obama's early years, including his previously overlooked early childhood ties to a radical, far-left church connected to Ayers' ideology.
Obama's associations with the Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and black political extremists are also revealed, with extensive new information on the subjects.
Also detailed are Obama's deep ties to ACORN, which are much more extensive than previously documented elsewhere. The book crucially describes how a socialist-led, ACORN-affiliated union helped facilitate Obama's political career and now exerts major influence in the White House.
"The Manchurian President" contains potentially explosive information not only about President Obama but also concerning other officials in the White House, including top czars and senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.
Obama has said he was involved with the Black Students Organization, which emerged in the 1960s in response to a growing black student population at Columbia. Undergraduates formed the Student Afro-American Society, "which was concerned with the affairs of black students and issues of the greater black community."
The Coalition for a Free South Africa, or CFSA, began as a Black Students' Organization committee to promote Columbia University's divestment in stock in companies doing business in South Africa.
CFSA, which split from the Black Students' Organization in 1981, was a loosely structured group with a predominantly black steering committee of about a dozen individuals who made decisions by consensus, and a less active circle of about fifty students who attended meetings and the group's protests and educational events."
Early CFSA leaders were Danny Armstrong, a Columbia College student who played forward for Columbia's basketball team, and Barbara Ransby, a student from the School of General Studies
As CFSA spokeswoman, Ransby famously convinced Columbia's student senate "to support full divestment."
Ransby, now an associate professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the executive director of Public Square, was in the class of 1984 at Columbia, only one year behind Obama, who would later publicly appear with both Ransby and Ayers.
In April 2002, Ransby appeared at a University of Illinois-Chicago forum and sat on the same panel – "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis: Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations" – with both Obama and Ayers.
Obama knew FCC chief from Columbia activism?
Another name that emerges from Obama's involvement with the Black Students' Organization and Coalition for a Free South Africa is that of Julius Genachowski.
In October 2008, Genachowski, co-founder of the venture capital firm LaunchBox Digital, was described as "an adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama."
Obama and Genakowski were later Harvard Law School classmates.
In August 2008 it was reported in the New York Times that Genachowski, who led the Obama campaign's technology working group, was also a big fundraiser. Genachowski raised at least $500,000 as an Obama "bundler."
In March 2009, Obama nominated Genachowski to chair the Federal Communications Commission, and he was sworn in June 29, 2009.
Our World: Hamas rises in the West
By CAROLINE GLICK, 15/06/2010
By backing the terrorist group against Israel, western countries are backing Hamas against Fatah and Islamist states against ME moderates.
Since the navy’s May 31 takeover of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his advisers have deliberated around the clock about how to contend with the US-led international stampede against Israel. But their ultimate decision to form an investigatory committee led by a retired Supreme Court justice and overseen by foreign observers indicates that they failed to recognize the nature of the international campaign facing us today.
Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas. It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama’s friends, former Weather Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fund-raiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is James Abourezk, a former US senator from South Dakota.
All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself.
Obama has made his sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood clear several times since entering office. The Muslim Brotherhood’s progeny include Hamas, al-Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last June, Obama infuriated the Egyptian government when he insisted on inviting leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo. His administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counterterror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of its support for radical Islam.
Given Obama’s attitude toward jihadists and the radical leftists who support them, his decision to support Hamas against Israel makes sense. What is alarming however is how leaders of the free world are now all siding with Hamas. That support has become ever more apparent since the Mossad’s alleged killing of Hamas terror master Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at his hotel in Dubai in January.
In the aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, both Britain and Australia joined the Dubai-initiated bandwagon in striking out against Israel. Israel considers both countries allies, or at least friendly and has close intelligence ties with both. Yet despite their close ties, Australia and Britain expelled Israeli diplomats who supposedly had either a hand in the alleged operation or who work for the Mossad.
It should be noted that neither country takes steps against outspoken terror supporters who call for Israel to be destroyed and call for the murder of individual Israelis.
For instance, in an interview last month with The Australian, Ali Kazak, the former PLO ambassador to Australia, effectively solicited the murder of The Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. Kazak told the newspaper, “Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor.”
Allowing that many Palestinians have been murdered for such accusations, Kazak excused those extrajudicial murders saying, “Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere.”
Not only did Australia not expel Kazak or open a criminal investigation against him, as a consequence of his smear campaign against Abu Toameh, several Australians cancelled their scheduled meetings with him.
AND OF course, this week we have the actions of Germany and Poland. They are considered Israel’s best friends in Europe, and yet acting on a German arrest warrant, Poland has arrested a suspected Mossad officer named Uri Brodsky for his alleged involvement in the alleged Mossad operation against Mabhouh. Israel is now caught in a diplomatic disaster zone where its two closest allies – who again are only too happy to receive regular intelligence updates from the Mossad – are siding with Hamas against it.
And then of course we have the EU’s call for Israel to cancel its lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the official position of the EU is that an Iranian proxy terrorist organization should be allowed to gain control over a Mediterranean port and through it, provide Iran with yet another venue from which it can launch attacks against Europe.
For their part, the Sunni Arabs are forced to go along with this. The Egyptian regime considers the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood took over Gaza a threat to its very survival and has been assiduously sealing its border with Gaza for some time. And yet, unable to be more anti-Hamas than the US, Australia and Europe, Mubarak is opening the border. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa’s unprecedented visit to Gaza this week should be seen as a last ditch attempt by Egypt to convince Hamas to unify its ranks with Fatah. Predictably, the ascendant Hamas refused his entreaties.
As for Fatah, it is hard not to feel sorry for its leader Mahmoud Abbas these days. In what was supposed to be a triumphant visit to the White House, Abbas was forced to smile last week as Obama announced the US will provide $450 million in aid to his sworn enemies who three years ago ran him and his Fatah henchmen out of Gaza.
So too, Abbas is forced to cheer as Obama pressures Israel to give Hamas an outlet to the sea. This will render it impossible for Fatah to ever unseat Hamas either by force or at the ballot box. Hamas’s international clout demonstrates to the Palestinians that jihad pays.THERE ARE three plausible explanations for the West’s decision to back Hamas. All of them say something deeply disturbing about the state of the world. The first plausible explanation is that the Americans and the rest of the West are simply naïve. They believe that by backing Hamas, they are advancing the cause of Middle East peace.
If this is in fact what the likes of Obama and his European and Australian counterparts think, apparently no one in the West is thinking very hard. The fact is that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are backing Hamas against Fatah and they are backing Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hamas and Hizbullah against Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They are backing the most radical actors in the region – and arguably in the world – against states and regimes they have a shared strategic interest in strengthening.
There is absolutely no way this behavior advances the cause of peace.
The second plausible explanation is that the West’s support for Hamas is motivated by hatred of Israel. As Helen Thomas’s recent remarks demonstrated, there is certainly a lot of that going around.
The final plausible explanation for the West’s support for Hamas is that it has been led to believe that by acting as it is, it will buy itself immunity from attack by Hamas and its fellow members of the Iranian axis. As former Italian president Francesco Cossiga first exposed in a letter to Corriere della Serra in August 2008, in the early 1970s Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed a deal with Yasser Arafat that gave the PLO and its affiliated organizations the freedom to operate terror bases in Italy. In exchange the Palestinians agreed to limit their attacks to Jewish and Israeli targets. Italy maintained its allegiance to the deal – and to the PLO against Israel – even when Italian targets were hit.
Cossiga told the newspaper that the August 2, 1980 bombing at the Bologna train station – which Italy blamed on Italian fascists – was actually the work of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Eighty-five people were murdered in the attack, and still Italy maintained its agreement with the PLO to the point where it prosecuted and imprisoned the wrong people for the worst terrorist attack in its history.
Cossiga alleged that the deal is still in place today and that Italian forces in UNIFIL have expanded the deal to include Hamas’s fellow Iranian proxy Hizbullah. It isn’t much of a stretch to consider the possibility that Italy and the rest of the Western powers have made a similar deal with Hamas. And it is no stretch at all to believe that they will benefit from it as greatly as the Italian railroad passengers in Bologna did.
True, no one has come out and admitted to supporting Hamas. So too, no one has expressed anything by love for Israel and the Jewish people. But the actions of the governments of the West tell a different tale. Without one or more of the explanations above, it is hard to understand their current policies.
Since the flotilla incident, Netanyahu and his ministers have held marathon deliberations on how to respond to US pressure to accept an international inquisition into the IDF’s lawful enforcement of the legal blockade of the Gaza coast. Their deliberations went on at the same time as Netanyahu and his envoys attempted to convince Obama to stop his mad rush to give Hamas an outlet to the sea and deny Israel even the most passive right of self-defense.
It remains to be seen if their decision to form an investigative panel with international “observers” was a wise move or yet another ill-advised concession to an unappeasable administration. What is certain, however, is that it will not end the West’s budding romance with Hamas.
The West’s decision to side with Hamas is devastating. But whatever the reasons for it, it is a fact of life. It is Netanyahu’s duty to swallow this bitter pill and devise a strategy to protect the country from their madness.
Flotilla raid fails to boost Hamas status: poll
Tuesday, 15 June 2010, JERUSALEM (AFP)
Most Palestinians now view Turkey as the country most supportive of their cause (File)
The May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that dealt a major blow to Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run enclave has failed to bolster the Islamist group's popularity among Palestinians, a poll said on Tuesday.
The poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found that if parliamentary elections were held today 45 percent of Palestinians would vote for the secular Fatah and just 26 percent for Hamas.
The results are almost identical to those of a March poll by the same group, "which means that Hamas has not benefited from (the) Gaza flotilla incident which took place only a few days before the conduct of the poll," PSR said.
However, the poll was in the process of being carried out when the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority postponed local elections on June 10, an unpopular decision widely blamed on the dominant Fatah.
"The public is likely to view the cancellation as an indication of a major failure in state and institution building... and an indication of fragmentation, panic and lack of leadership within Fatah," the report said.
Unsurprisingly, most Palestinians (43 percent) now view Turkey as the country most supportive of their cause following its harsh condemnation of Israel's seizure of the flotilla, in which nine Turkish activists were killed.
The next most supportive country was Egypt, with 13 percent.
Sixty percent believe the flotilla raid, which sparked global outrage, will lead to the weakening or end of Israel and Egypt's four-year blockade of Gaza, while just 18 percent think it will be strengthened.
The poll of 1,270 adults interviewed face-to-face in 127 random locations was carried out June 10-13 and had a margin of error of three percent.
56 Opposition leader calls for vote fraudsters to go on trial
countries join declaration on Iran rights
The 2009 post-election street protests were the worst unrest since the Islamic republic was founded (File)
GENEVA/TEHRAN (Agencies)
Some 56 countries on Tuesday signed up to a declaration calling on Iran to investigate a deadly crackdown on street protests following the contested presidential election a year ago.
Norway and the United States have spearheaded a bid at the Geneva forum to chastise Iran for its violent suppression of demonstrations, including arrests and executions of dissidents, following presidential elections a year ago.
Some 55 states from across all regions -- half of them European Union (EU) members -- have endorsed the statement, which calls on Iran to uphold fundamental freedoms of expression, of the media and of assembly, diplomats say.
As Norway's ambassador Bente Angell-Hansen began to read out the text, Iran's ambassador Hamid Baeidi Nejad interrupted, invoking procedural grounds to object to being singled out.
Pakistan, speaking for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), as well as African and non-aligned countries, swiftly backed Iran. The objection was to Iran's record, a "country-specific situation", being addressed under an agenda item on a landmark human rights meeting held in Vienna in 1993.
"Allowing this to happen ... is leading to a repeat of the practice of the Human Rights Commission where 'naming and shaming' was the name of the game and led eventually to the demise of the Commission," Pakistan's envoy Zamir Akram said, referring to the Council's largely discredited predecessor body.
Belgium's ambassador Alex Van Meeuwen, who currently chairs the forum, said that as long as a text addressed a relevant human rights situation it was admissible. He adjourned the session for several hours to allow private negotiations.
Marking one year anniversary
The United States and Norway have heavily lobbied countries to endorse the statement, according to diplomats and activists.
"We cannot let this Human Rights Council session go by without marking the one year anniversary of these events this month," reads the statement.
The 2009 post-election street protests, the worst unrest since the Islamic republic was founded in 1979, were put down violently by the Revolutionary Guards. Mass detentions followed. Two people were hanged and scores of detainees remain in jail.
The statement would add to pressure after extended sanctions agreed by the U.N. Security Council last week to punish Iran for what Western countries say is a nuclear weapons program.
It voices concern at "events including the violent suppression of dissent, detention and executions without due process of law, severe discrimination against women and minorities including people of the Baha'i faith and restrictions on freedom of expression and religion."
The Human Rights Council, dominated by developing nations wary of interference in their own affairs, rarely "names and shames" states. The main exception is Israel, regularly condemned for alleged abuses in its occupied territories.
“Fraudsters must go on trial”
Earlier on Tuesday Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi called for those who "committed fraud" in last year's presidential poll to be prosecuted, as he vowed to keep the anti-government movement alive.
"A fair trial of those who committed the election fraud, tortured and killed protesters must be held," Mousavi said, in a statement to mark the anniversary of the June 12, 2009 election.
Mousavi, along with the opposition's other key leader Mehdi Karroubi, has steadfastly rejected the re-election of Ahmadinejad in what they said was the result of a "fraudulent" election.
In the statement released on his website Kaleme.com, Mousavi, who was once a pillar of the Islamic regime but has turned into a bitter critic, announced a "new charter" of policy aims for the opposition movement.
He called for an "end to the involvement of police and military forces in politics, the independence of the judiciary, and prosecution of those in plainclothes," referring to Islamist vigilantes.
Mousavi urged authorities to release political prisoners and lift restrictions on political parties, and social movements.He criticized the siege of Karroubi on Sunday by pro-regime supporters at the house of Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanaie in the holy city of Qom, central Iran.
"Attacking people, university students, offices of Grand Ayatollah Sanaie and Montazeri, and insulting Mr. Karroubi show the level of crisis among the attackers," Mousavi said.
"Those who ordered and executed the attack on sources of emulation will only help destroy the legitimacy of the regime," he said, referring to the Shiite religious leaders
Sunday, 27 June 2010 Al Arabiya
Israel-US relations suffering a 'tectonic rift.'
Israeli-U.S. relations have undergone a huge shift amounting to what Israel's ambassador to Washington has termed "a genuine tectonic rift," media reports said on Sunday.
Briefing officials at the foreign ministry last week, ambassador Michael Oren described the state of ties between Israel and its closest ally as worse than a crisis, something akin to that of two continents drifting apart.
According to one diplomat quoted by the Haaretz daily, Oren used bleak terms to explain the changes which have taken place under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
"Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart," Oren was quoted as saying by the diplomat.
Another diplomat who spoke to the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily said there had been an historic change in Washington's approach to Israel.
"There is no crisis in Israel-U.S. relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs," he quoted Oren as saying.
Both papers quoted Oren as attributing the shift in sentiment to "interests and cold considerations" by Obama who did not have the same historical-ideological bent towards Israel as his predecessors.
The Israeli foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment on the reports, which came just over a week before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to the White House for talks with Obama.
Israeli-U.S. relations have taken a battering in recent months amid a row over settlement building in east Jerusalem and the fallout from a deadly Israeli raid on an international aid fleet trying to break the blockade on Gaza.
The two leaders had been due to meet on June 1 for a reconciliatory meeting that was called off at the last minute after the flotilla raid.
No comments:
Post a Comment