Socialism

Obama’s American Socialism: Decades In The Making

Author’s Note:

As a preface to this series of articles, major kudos need to be awarded to Ms Placed Democrat, Matthew Weaver, Shtuey, Eastan McNeil, Steve Diamond, Christmas Ghost, RabbleRouser Rev. Amy, and especially John W. for all the research that has gone into these separate pieces of the puzzle.  Please visit their sites and thank them for the hours they toiled increasing everyone’s knowledge of the Obamanation.

Without the amazing tenacity of these individuals, (and a few unnamed), connecting the dots of the socialist agenda for the “New Democratic Party” would not have been accomplished.  I have tried to organize the articles in the series based on the timeline I have been able to put together according to all the research that has been provided. I am sure there are gaps and possible inconsistencies that will be pointed out by my astute readers, as we are all trying to piece this puzzle together from the smoke and mirrors that Barack Obama has created to hide his true past and real agenda.  We were all very fortunate when he spoke recently with Joe (the plumber) and showed America what we have been coming to learn about him for months.

Also, please be advised that the investigation that I have undertaken will take many democrats to places they would rather not go; be prepared.

Obama’s American Socialism: Decades In The Making

Part I

A plethora of articles have been written about the death of the Democratic Party, or as some bloggers and Clinton Supporters state; the coup or hostile takeover by the liberal left wing of the democratic party.  They cannot believe that their party has now become the party of violence, sexism, misogyny, racism, thuggery, deceits corruption, caucus fraud, and voter registration fraud.  What is missing from the equation is that this is not the liberal left wing; far from it, this is a group of people with socialist/marxist beliefs, with a pinch of fascism thrown in, being led by the marketed messiah under the guise of “progressivism”, with a belief system that states the ends justify the means.

Centrist dems and all other Americans must stop looking at the current Democratic Party through the perception they have of what the Democratic Party once meant.  That party is dead and was buried on May 31st, 2008.  Once this perception is shattered, these dems, undecided voters, former Clinton dems and possibly even some Obama dems may flip their votes, and more importantly, their loyalty away from the party that has become the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.  What is being uncovered may also explain why 90% of the African American population is voting for this candidate, and though some of it has to do with his race, more maybe because of his socialist philosophy.

Since so much of what our perception is can be taken from what we think certain terms mean, I am listing the definitions of political party concepts as a way to put everyone on the same page, and to facilitate the understanding of where this “alien” democratic party is actually heading with Obama in the front and his numerous radical socialist/marxist associates in the background.  These quotes come from Encyclopedia2/The Free Dictionary.

Democratic Party:

When political alignments first emerged in George Washington’s administration, opposing factions were led by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.  In the basic disagreement over the nature and functions of government and of society, the Jeffersonians advocated a society based on the small farmer; they opposed strong centralized government and were suspicious of urban commercial interests. Their ideals—opposed to those of the Federalist Party — came to be known as Jeffersonian democracy, based in large part on faith in the virtue and ability of the common man and the limitation of the powers of the federal government. This group of Anti-Federalists, who called themselves Republicans or Democratic Republicans (the name was not fixed as Democratic until 1828), supported many of the ideals of the French Revolution and opposed close relations with Great Britain.

Progressive Party:

U.S. independent political party. The first Progressive Party, known as the Bull Moose Party, was organized in 1911. The second was assembled in 1924; it nominated as its presidential candidate Robert La Follette, who received 17% of the national vote on a platform calling for a “housecleaning” of executive departments, public control of natural resources, public ownership of the railways, and tax reduction. The party dissolved upon La Follette’s death in 1925. The third Progressive Party, founded in 1947 by Henry Wallace, differed from the previous groups in its focus on foreign affairs; it favoured a conciliatory policy toward the Soviet Union. Though Wallace received more than one million votes in the 1948 election, the party was never again influential.

Progressivism:

The term “progressive” is today often used in place of “liberal“. Although the two are related in some ways, they are separate and distinct political ideologies. According to John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress, “Progressivism is an orientation towards politics, It’s not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept… that accepts the world as dynamic.” Progressives see progressivism as an attitude towards the world of politics that is broader than conservatism vs. liberalism, and as an attempt to break free from what they consider to be a false and divisive dichotomy.

American progressives tend to support interventionist economics: they advocate income redistribution, and they oppose the growing influence of corporations. Conversely, European and Australian progressives tend to be more pro-business, and will often have policies that are soft on taxation of large corporations. Progressives are in agreement on an international scale with left-liberalism in that they support organized labor and trade unions, they usually wish to introduce a living wage, and they often support the creation of a universal health care system. Yet progressives tend to be more concerned with environmentalism than mainstream liberals, and are often more skeptical of the government, positioning themselves as whistleblowers and advocates of governmental reform. Finally, liberals are more likely to support the Democratic Party in America and the Labour party in Europe and Australia, while progressives tend to feel disillusioned with any two-party system, and vote more often for third-party candidates.

Socialism:

1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

Socialism (in the strict or radical sense) aims to establish a fundamentally different society from the one that currently exists in most countries. While there are different schools of socialism, which often tend to have differing views of the ideal socialist society, some general examples of socialist concepts are: The desire to abolish capitalism, to place the means of productionexploits the working class, and they desire for workers to play a vital role in moving society from capitalism to socialism (either by rising up in a revolution or general strike, or by voting en masse for socialist political parties). under the collective ownership of the people, and to achieve a very high degree of economic and political equality. Socialists argue that capitalism

In contrast, by definition progressivism aims to achieve gradual social change, and most progressives are outright opposed to any form of radical revolution. When the progressive movement split on economic principles, some progressives moved towards the socialist camp, advocating a planned economy. Other progressives moved towards the regulated mixed economy camp, with both public and private ownership of companies. Between these two extremes is social democracy (not a term in popular U.S. usage), a branch of socialism that became increasingly moderate and moved towards the political center. Regulated-capitalism progressives and socialist progressives still tend to support similar progressive social policies, outside of economic principles.

Communism:

1. A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.

2. Communism

• a. A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.
• b. The Marxist-Leninist version of Communist doctrine that advocates the overthrow of capitalism by the revolution of the proletariat.

National Socialism, Naziism, Nazism:

national socialism, Naziism, Nazism - a form of socialism featuring racism and expansionism and obedience to a strong leader

German history the doctrines and practices of the Nazis, involving the supremacy of Hitler, anti-Semitism, state control of the economy, and national expansion

The ideology and practice of the Nazis, especially the policy of racist nationalism, national expansion, and state control of the economy.

Capitalism:

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, in which personal profit can be acquired through investment of capital and employment of labor. Capitalism is grounded in the concept of free enterprise, which argues that government intervention in the economy should be restricted and that a free market, based on supply and demand, will ultimately maximize consumer welfare.

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After reading those definitions, would you not agree that it is more than apparent the Democratic Party is now the Progressive Socialist Party.  Income redistribution, universal health care, nationalization of the economy through our banks, centralized government, and a drive to destroy the free market capitalist system upon which our nation was built.

Remember these Obama quotes:

1. “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
2. “It’s no secret that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track,” Obama told the group. “But the reason isn’t just failed policies.  It’s a system in Washington that has failed the American people.  A system that has not kept the most fundamental trust of American democracy; that our government is of the people, and that it must govern for all the people - not just the interests of the wealthy and well-connected.”
3. “We don’t need the people, we just need their checks.”

Barack Obama is their hand picked, groomed and marketed candidate.  This is why Hillary Clinton was destroyed by the “Democratic Party” in the primaries.  She is either too weak, too strong, too smart, or is too independent for this “new” party to achieve her election, and then control her.  On the other hand, Barack has been spoon fed these beliefs for years, and is a willing participant in the downfall of America as we know it, besides now being so far in political debt to these radical associations, even if he were to change his philosophical mindset, he will never be able to climb out of the personal hell most of us would consider that position to be.

All one has to do is put the pieces together starting with William Ayers, Obama’s most publicized associate with radical beliefs and actions, and leading to Bernadine Dohrn, Michelle Obama, Marilyn Katz, Frank Marshall Davis, Alice Palmer, George Soros, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Carl Davidson, Robert Blackwell, Tony Rezko, Dorothy Tillman, Robert Malley, Cornel West, Howard Dean, Donna Brazille, Nancy Pelosi, MoveOn.org, Center for American Progress, Open Society Institute, Arab American Action Network, The Democracy Alliance, The New Party, the Democratic Socialist Party, The Working Families Party, Socialist Scholars Conference, Campaign for America’s Future, The Progressive Caucus, Public Allies, ACORN, Citizens Services, Inc., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ken Rolling, The Woods Fund, The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, The Joyce Foundation, Gamaliel Foundation, Students For A Democratic Society, Saul Alinsky, Richard Andrew Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, Zbigniew Brzenzinski, Penny Pritzker, The Superior Bank, The Broadway Bank, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, Reverend Wright, Rather Pfleuger, Raila Odinga of Kenya, Rashid Khalidi, Nadhmi Auchi and only halting at Fusion Elections because more has not yet come to light.  (And most Americans thought there were only a couple-three crazies in the background, right?)  I am sure I will be adding to this list.

If you head is spinning or about to explode, just take a few breaths and notes if need be, it will become clear enough that this campaign to remake the Democratic Party into the Progressive Socialist Party has been in the making for well over 20 years, and according to many, Saul Alinksy and his students; radical socialist and Columbia University professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven who came up with the Cloward-Piven strategy best described by the American Thinker is probably the Godfather of this movement.

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama’s connections to his radical mentors — Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama’s radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama’s life comprise a who’s who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn’t fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

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The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation’s wealth.

In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of “crisis” they were trying to create:

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

In 1970, one of George Wiley’s protégés, Wade Rathke — like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) — was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn’t accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke’s group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income “rights.” Shortly thereafter they changed “Arkansas” to “Association of” and ACORN went nationwide.

Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN’s website: “ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low-and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country,” It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts. (Let’s not get ahead of the whole story though.)

The Woods Fund financed the hiring of Obama in 1985 by the Developing Communities Project.According to The Nation: “The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political identity. In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project (aka the “DCP”), which hired Obama, at 24, as an organizer on Chicago’s economically depressed South Side.”

The Woods Fund was founded by the Woods family which owned the Illinois-based Sahara Coal Company, a major supplier of coal from its mines to major Illinois power companies. Commonwealth Edison, the giant Chicago-based electric power company was headed by Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers.

Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund from 1993 until 2002.  Bill Ayers joined the board of the Fund in 1999 and continues to serve on the board today.  He chaired the board for two years during that time.

Another strand in this massive spiderweb is Ken Rolling, introduced here, and also the person behind the cleaning and containment of the Annenberg papers when Stanley Kurtz was originally investigating the Ayers/Obama connection. Look for the information about Ken rolling and the hold on the papers after the next two quote sections.

Obama’s DCP supported radical school reform project together with Bill Ayers.

In 1987 in the wake of a controversial strike by the Chicago Teachers’ Union, the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs, was formed to lobby for a new Illinois law that would mandate the establishment of a new power center in Chicago public schools.  Local school councils would be established to watchdog union teachers and their principals and they would have the power to fire principals at will.

Bill Ayers was a contact person for the ABCs (although we do not know precisely when he attained this position) and later its chair.  Barack Obama worked on school reform efforts for the DCP at that time, the DCP played a leading role in the school reform effort and the DCP was a member of the ABCs. Chicago United, a business group established by Tom Ayers, Bill’s father, was also a leading organizer of and member of the ABCs.

The Woods Fund also provided additional financial support to the DCP in 1988 to support its school reform efforts. A program officer of the Woods Fund at the time was Ken Rolling who would later be hired by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama as Executive Director of the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

An informative WSJ article explains that Bill Ayers has not changed his radical thinking; it has morphed over into teaching our teachers how to produce radical thinking children.  Ayers Is No Education ‘Reformer’.

One of the most misleading statements during the presidential debates was when Barack Obama claimed that William Ayers was just “a guy in the neighborhood.”

But that piece of spin is nothing compared to the false story now being peddled by Mr. Obama’s media supporters that Mr. Ayers — who worked with the Democratic nominee for years to disperse education grants through a group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge — has redeemed his terrorist past.

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I’ve studied Mr. Ayers’s work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational “reform” efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn’t going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country’s politics and public schools.

The education career of William Ayers began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College at the age of 40. He planned to stay long enough to get a teaching credential. But he experienced an epiphany in a course offered by Maxine Greene, who urged future teachers to tell children about the evils of the existing, oppressive capitalist social order. In her essay “In Search of a Critical Pedagogy,” for example, Ms. Greene wrote of an education that would portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.”

That was music to the ears of the ex-Weatherman. Mr. Ayers acquired a doctorate in education and landed an Ed school appointment at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

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In this Chicago, where there are no enemies on the left, Mr. Ayers’s second career flourished. It didn’t hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was the CEO of the Commonwealth Edison company, a friend of both Daleys and a major power broker in the city.

Mr. Ayers was hired by the Chicago public schools to train teachers, and played a leading role in the $160 million Annenberg Challenge grant that distributed funds to a host of so-called school-reform projects, including some social-justice themed schools and schools organized by Acorn. Barack Obama became the first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization in 1995. When asked for an opinion on the Obama/Ayers connection, Mayor Daley told the New York Times that Mr. Ayers had “done a lot of good in this city and nationally.”

In fact, as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.

He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America’s future teachers.

Back to Ken Rolling; the donor that wanted to examine the records prior to the release.  Once again, Steve Diamond.

As Global Labor readers are well aware the University of Illinois at Chicago denied Stanley Kurtz of National Review access to the official records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the six-year-long $160 million education reform project led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.

The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal.  It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the “donor” of the records. That “donor” wanted to examine the records prior to their release to the public.

This is highly unusual in light of the fact that the records had been deposited with UIC in 2002 and had been processed by UIC librarians and made ready for access by researchers.  Only when Mr. Kurtz, a conservative, requested that he be allowed to see them was the “donor” contacted.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of a 3rd year law student in Chicago who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with UIC, Global Labor can reveal tonight that the alleged “donor” who was contacted by UIC and who tried to block Dr. Kurtz’ access to the CAC records was Ken Rolling, former Executive Director of the CAC and a former staff member of the Woods Fund in the 1980s when the Woods Fund provided financial support to the Developing Communities Project which was then headed up by Barack Obama.

Thus, someone with a 20 year history with Senator Obama was tipped off in advance and in secret by a public University about the interest of a political opponent of the Senator in these public records.  The CAC was a non profit corporation organized under the laws of the state of Illinois to serve the interests of the people of Illinois.  Of course, Ken Rolling now has no legally cognizable interest that I am aware of in the long defunct CAC.  Legally, the successor organization to the CAC is the Chicago Public Education Fund, on whose board sits Obama Campaign Finance Chair Penny Pritzker and Obama supporter Susan Crown. (Do you recognize that name; Penny Pritzker of the Superior Bank Sub-prime Mortgage Meltdown?)

I realize that there is some stone-skipping around, but the web is intricate; take notes.

Obama and Dohrn worked for elite law firm Sidley and Austin

After surfacing from the Weather Underground in 1980 Bernardine Dohrn, wife of Bill Ayers, pled guilty to criminal charges related to the violent Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969 and received three years probation. She later refused to testify in front of a grand jury convened to investigate a bank robbery carried out by former comrades of Dohrn’s from the Weather Underground.  Currently a clinical faculty member at Northwestern University School of Law, she told the New York Times that she thought grand juries were “illegal” and “coercive.”  She served seven months in jail.

Because of the criminal convictions Dohrn, who received a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967, was refused admission to the New York bar. Nonetheless, she was hired as a legal clerk by Sidley and Austin, a major Chicago law firm, in their New York office in 1984. Howard Trienens, then managing partner of the firm, recently told the Chicago Tribune that he arranged the hiring of Dohrn as a favor to his fellow Northwestern University trustee and classmate, Tom Ayers. Tom Ayers’ firm, Commonwealth Edison, has used Sidley as outside counsel for many years. She later worked in their Chicago office when she and Bill Ayers moved back to Chicago in 1987. She left Sidley in 1988.

Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour is a Muslim lawyer and a black nationalist who made news in 2008 when it was revealed that he had been a patron of Barack Obama and had recommended the latter for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988.

Before becoming a Muslim, al-Mansour in the 1960s was named Don Warden. He was deeply involved in San Francisco Bay Area racial politics as founder of a group called the African American Association. A close personal adviser to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, al-Mansour helped the pair establish the Black Panther Party but later broke with them when they entered coalitions with white radical groups.

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Al-Mansour is an outspoken hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally. In recent years he has accused the U.S. of plotting a “genocide” designed “to remove 15 million black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society.”…

There is more information at the link, but I could not bring myself to reprint it, and yet, it may explain why Barack Obama and Reverend Wright are so close.

Steve Diamond:

Chicago lefty lawyer and Dohrn classmate Judson Miner hires Barack Obama out of Harvard.

Barack Obama returned to Harvard after his summer at Sidley and Austin in the fall of 1989. That academic year he was elected the president of the Harvard Law Review, the first black person to hold the position. Although Obama could have returned to Sidley or perhaps clerked for the United States Supreme Court, a natural step for Law Review officers, he chose instead to work for Judson Miner, a partner in a small civil rights law firm in Chicago.  Miner had been counsel to Chicago’s late black mayor, Harold Washington.  Miner was also classmates with Bernardine Dohrn at the University of Chicago law school in 1967 where they were both were involved in anti-war activity.

Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, yet as editor, no evidence of written or published papers has been uncovered to date, as would be required of the editor.

The connection between the Obamas and the Ayers started in 1985 as far as anyone can seem to ascertain.  It really revved into high hear with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge spearheaded by Wiliam Ayers and chaired by Barack Obama in 1995.

Ayers is named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Bill Ayers

In late 1993, Bill Ayers, now an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, organized a team to put together a grant proposal to secure nearly $50 million from the Annenberg Challenge.  The money was to be used by Ayers and co. to bolster the radical Local School Councils reform project that Ayers and Obama had championed back in 1988.

The grant application was successful and in early 1995 Barack Obama was named chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Ayers was named co-chair of the Challenge’s operative and strategic body, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative.  Ayers and Obama work together for the next five years on raising an additional $60 million in matching money from local foundations and corporations and using the money to intervene in the governance of the Chicago public schools.

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The Chicago Annenberg Challenge paid for a team headquartered at the University of Chicago to assess the impact of the more than $100 million they spent in Chicago public schools over that six year period,1995-2001. Their conclusion in a 250 page 2003 report was that the money had no impact at all: test scores in schools that received money from Annenberg went up, but at the same rate as all other schools in Chicago. There was, in the words of the report, “no Annenberg effect.”

My understanding is that the chairing of the CAC was one of the only true executive experiences Barack Obama has had and the challenge was considered a flop.

During the course of this phase, Barack met Michelle in 1989 while they were both at Sidley Austin.  They were married in October 1992, and according to Investor’s Business Daily, Barack Obama is the founding member of Public Allies and Michelle became the executive director of the Chicago Chapter.  This is where the beginnings of their socialist views started to come to light.

Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use the nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, “Universal Voluntary Public Service.”

Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they’ll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of “social change.”

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn’t seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year “community leadership” positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They’ll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.

In exchange, they’ll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about “social change” through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul “The Red” Alinsky.

“Our alumni are more than twice as likely as 18-34 year olds to . . . engage in protest activities,” Public Allies boasts in a document found with its tax filings. It has already deployed an army of 2,200 community organizers like Obama to agitate for “justice” and “equality” in his hometown of Chicago and other U.S. cities, including Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Washington. “I get to practice being an activist,” and get paid for it, gushed Cincinnati recruit Amy Vincent.

Public Allies promotes “diversity and inclusion,” a program paper says. More than 70% of its recruits are “people of color.” When they’re not protesting, they’re staffing AIDS clinics, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare.

Public Allies brags that more than 80% of graduates have continued working in nonprofit or government jobs. It’s training the “next generation of nonprofit leaders” — future “social entrepreneurs.”

The Obamas discourage work in the private sector. “Don’t go into corporate America,” Michelle has exhorted youth. “Work for the community. Be social workers.” Shun the “money culture,” Barack added. “Individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”

Also during this time, Barack directed the Illinois’ Project Vote (April to October 1992).  Enter ACORN and Midwest Academy, besides being part of the Shadow Party are funded, among others, by the Woods Fund of Chicago, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  Allow me to back up just a bit here though.  According to Discover The Networks:

Trained in the Saul Alinsky Method:

Obama was trained by the Saul Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Chicago. (The Developing Communities Project itself was an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, whose modus operandi for the creation of “a more just and democratic society” is rooted firmly in the Alinsky method.) Alinsky was known for helping to establish the aggressive political tactics that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.

In the Alinsky model, “organizing” is a euphemism for “revolution” — a wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of America’s social and economic structure. The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted — a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of salvation. Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than that status quo’s complete collapse — to be followed by the erection of an entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal “changes” are needed.

But Alinsky’s brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. As Richard Poe puts it, “Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.” Alinsky advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes from that platform.

One of Obama’s early mentors in the Alinsky method, Mike Kruglik, would later say the following about Obama:

“He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better.”

For several years, Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method.

Now enter ACORN:

Introduction to ACORN and Project Vote:

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Obama worked with ACORN, a creation of the Alinsky network. ACORN was a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley’s National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), whose members in the late 1960s and early 70s had invaded welfare offices across the U.S. — often violently — bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law “entitled” them.[2]

Obama also worked for Project Vote, the voter-mobilization arm of ACORN. Project Vote’s professed purpose is to carry out “non-partisan” voter-registration drives; to counsel voters on their rights; and to litigate on behalf of voting rights — focusing on the rights of the poor and the “disenfranchised.”[3] Obama was the attorney for ACORN’s lead election-law cases, and he worked as a trainer at ACORN’s annual conferences, where he taught members of the organization the art of radical community organizing.

snip

Also in 1995, Obama sued, on behalf of ACORN, for the implementation of the Motor Voter law in Illinois. Jim Edgar, the state’s Republican Governor, opposed the law because he believed that allowing voters to register using only a postcard would breed widespread fraud.

ACORN would later invite Obama to help train its staff. Moreover, Obama eventually would sit on the Board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which gave a number of sizable grants to ACORN.

Completely confused yet?  Curious about the Shadow Party?  Please do not say I did not warn you at the start of this journey….

The “Shadow Party” is a term originally devised by journalists to describe 527 political committees promoting Democratic Party agendas. It is here used more specifically to refer to the network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources – money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising and policy iniatives – to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left. The Internet fund-raising operation MoveOn.org is a key component. The Shadow Party in this sense was conceived and organized principally by Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold Ickes. Its efforts are amplified by, and coordinated with, key government unions and the activist groups associated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The key organizers of these groups are veterans of the Sixties left.

In the next article in this series, the connections between Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and the continuing relationship between William Ayers and Barack Obama will be revealed as Barack starts his political career with the help of the endorsement of the New Party:

• Marxist political coalition
• Was active from 1992-1998
• Endorsed Barack Obama for Illinois state senate seat in 1996

Co-founded in 1992 by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials – most often Democrats. The New Party’s short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.

Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN. The party’s Chicago chapter also included a large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members.

The New Party’s modus operandi included the political strategy of “electoral fusion,” where it would nominate, for various political offices, candidates from other parties (usually Democrats), thereby enabling each of those candidates to occupy more than one ballot line in the voting booth. By so doing, the New Party often was able to influence candidates’ platforms. (Fusion of this type is permitted in seven states — Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, and Vermont — but is common only in New York.)

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Author’s Note: First, a personal thank you to Wilma and you know why!!!  Keep up the great work!  Secondly, there is such a volume of information that no one can actually read and digest all of it in just one day.  Also, the spiderweb of Obama’s associations, mentors and funders is not linear; therefore, my condolences for any confusion you may experience while trying to stay with the group.  I had to map this out on a very large whiteboard to keep track myself.   I personally have never seen a candidate with so many anti-American associates protected to valiantly by the MSM.  Meanwhile, the hottest news story is about Governor Palin’s wardrobe….

These articles ARE NOT an attack on Black Liberation Theology, Islam, or other various political viewpoints.  These articles are about putting forward information that is vital to making a decision about hiring the most important executive in our country; the President.  Information that has been unreported except for a few journalists and bloggers, and information that would explain the scrubbing that has been done on so many pro-Obama websites and why the elite, liberal MSM has not reported these facts to the American public; knowing most Americans would come to the same conclusion.  Nobama.  It is up to Americans to make up their minds about who they want steering the country.  Personally, a “dem” President and a “dem” congress leaves me more than uneasy about this country’s future; add the wealth of socialist and anti-almost everything associates, I would not be able to sleep at night.

In Part I, the radical socialist associations that have shaped Barack Obama’s political, American and world view were starting to be explored.  In Part II, another very important influential movement must be shown.  Just as Obama is half white and half black, he has been influenced not only by Alinsky, Cloward, and Piven; he has been influenced by Black Liberation Theology and the Nation Of Islam through Reverend Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Leah Daughtry; (the Daughtry reference goes to the influence inside the leadership of the Democratic Party).  I will bring us back to the timeline and the beginning of Obama’s political career in due time, but important background needs to be imparted, and this information could explain why the McCain camp has decided not to open this particular can of worms because it could cause some major civil unrest if the whole story were known.  I am putting it forward because Obama’s associations explain his behavior and why he has made choices you and I would not.  Also, the tossing of associates under the bus is another of his trademarks, starting way back when with Alice Palmer.

All of this begs the question: Why does a candidate for President of the United States and Leader Of The Free World hide his past and create a situation where all of this investigative research, and chasing the truth down rabbit holes even has to be done by everyday Americans WHO ARE NOT THE MSM?

When asked for documents, John McCain produced his birth certificate and other important documents immediately.  Barack Obama has not yet produced anything that is verifiably authentic and the election is days away.  Have Americans lost their common sense? Are Americans going to elect someone that has not been vetted as well as one would vet your child’s school, broker, or potential business partner?

Obama’s American Socialism: Decades In The Making

Part II

Islam, Marxism, Black Liberation Theology

Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  We have all heard about him.  We have all heard the “facts” as presented by Team Obama.  He was Obama’s pastor or 20+ years, married Barack and Michelle, baptized their children, and was only speaking volatile sermons when Barack was not in attendance.  The big question back in March and April was “do you believe Barack never heard those sermons?”  The question should have been, “Did Barack and Michelle stay in that church and were close with Rev. Wright because they held the same viewpoint?”  The evidence of associations points to Obama agreeing and moving forward with Reverend Wright’s views well before 1995 and the Million Man March.

What is it that we are not aware of because everyone has been so focused on these little details and the videos of Reverend Wright losing his mind in church?  How about some nuggets of truth?:

From Newsmax back in the good old primary days of January 2008:

“We are a congregation which is unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian,” says the Trinity United Church of Christ’s website in Chicago. “We are an African people and remain true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.” That’s just the beginning. The church has a “non-negotiable commitment to Africa,” according to its website, and its pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. subscribes to what is called the Black Value System. While the Black Value System includes such items as commitment to God, education, and self-discipline, it refers to “our racist competitive society” and includes the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness” and a pledge of allegiance to “all black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System.” It defines “middle-classness” as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.” … In sermons and interviews, Dr. Wright has equated Zionism with racism and Israel with South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. On the Sunday after 9/11, Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later, Wright suggested that the attacks were retribution for America’s racism. … Obama says he found religion and Jesus Christ through Wright, whom he met in the mid-1980s. He has been attending Wright’s church regularly since 1988. … Just before Obama’s nationally televised campaign kickoff rally last Feb. 10, the candidate disinvited Wright from giving the public invocation. Wright explained: “When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”

What this article does not say is this; 10 years after starting to attend TUCC:

Million Man March (1995): In 1995 Obama — along with such notables as Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright — helped organize the Washington, DC-based Million Man March which featured Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Said Obama in the immediate aftermath of the March: “What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society…. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing.”

Want a couple more money facts?

Wright sees no reason to believe that Islam may be incompatible in any way with Western traditions. “Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize,” he has written. “Islam comes out of Christianity.”[5] …

Wright detests America’s capitalist economic structure, viewing it as a breeding ground for all manner of injustice. “Capitalism as made manifest in the ‘New World,’” he says, “depended upon slave labor (by African slaves), and it is only maintained by keeping the ‘Two-Thirds World’ under oppression.”[ Wright's anti-capitalist perspective is reflected in TUCC's "10-point vision," whose ideals include the cultivation of "a congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY." (Emphasis in original.) The TUCC mission statement plainly declares its goal of helping "the less fortunate to become agents of change for God who is not pleased with America's economic mal-distribution!"

This view is entirely consistent with Rev. Wright's devotion to the tenets of liberation theology, which is essentially Marxism dressed up as Christianity. Devised by Cold War-era theologians, it teaches that the New Testament gospels can be understood only as calls for social activism, class struggle, and revolution aimed at overturning the existing capitalist order and installing, in its stead, a socialist utopia where today's poor will unseat their "oppressors" and become liberated from their material (and, consequently, their spiritual) deprivations.

An extension of this paradigm is black liberation theology, which seeks to foment a similar Marxist revolutionary fervor founded on racial rather than class solidarity. Wright's mentor in this discipline is James Cone, author of the landmark text Black Power and Black Theology. Prior to the controversy sparked (in early 2008) by Wright's racially charged statements and by Wright's reference to Cone's influence on his thinking, the website of Wright's church identified Cone's writings as required reading for parishioners who wished to more thoroughly understand the church's theology and mission.

The words "Black Liberation Theology" have been spoken on news stations and in print, but what they have not said is the following quote from James Cone's own text:

Claiming that "black values" are superior to American values, Cone’s writings posit a black Jesus who leads African Americans as the “chosen people.” "This country was founded for whites, and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective," he writes. "What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

...and now we go back to Reverend Wright who was so influenced by James Cone and then influenced Barack Obama enough that Obama named a book after one of Wright's sermons.

On December 4, 2007, Wright was named as a member of the Barack Obama campaign's newly created African American Religious Leadership Committee. Other notable members of the Committee included Rev. Joseph E. Lowery and Rev. Otis Moss III. Rev. Wright retired as pastor of TUCC on February 10, 2008. He was replaced by Rev. Otis Moss III. In March 2008, Wright stepped down from Senator Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee after videotapes of his controversial sermons had repeatedly ignited fierce public debate and criticism.

...

Wright is a great admirer of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. "When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens," says Wright. "Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen … His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest. Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience. His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation's most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose."

Moving on....Louis Farrakhan; who has said that Obama is the Messiah.

On numerous occasions, Farrakhan has made alliances with avowed foreign enemies of the United States. In January 1996, for instance, he formed a partnership with Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, who pledged $1 billion to help Farrakhan develop a Muslim political lobby in the U.S.  According to Libya's official news agency Jana, Qadhafi announced: "We agreed with Louis Farrakhan and his delegation to mobilize in a legal and legitimate form the oppressed minorities -- and at their forefront the blacks, Arab Muslims and Red Indians -- for they play an important role in American political life and have a weight in U.S. elections." The Jana story further stated that Qadhafi and Farrakhan had pledged to fight America from the "inside."  "Our confrontation with America," said Qadhafi, "was [previously] like a fight against a fortress from outside, and today [with the NOI alliance] we found a breach to enter into this fortress and confront it.” This was not Farrakhan’s first friendly encounter with Qadhafi. Eleven years earlier, the Libyan strongman had granted NOI a $5 million interest-free loan, in gratitude for which Farrakhan later visited Libya to personally thank his benefactor. Qadhafi once told a crowd of NOI followers at a Chicago convention that he sought to sponsor an armed black revolution in America. On yet another occasion, Farrakhan and his aides — violating a travel ban imposed on Americans by President Reagan — flew to Tripoli to meet with Qadhafi, who Farrakhan has proudly called ”a friend,” “a brother,” and “a fellow struggler in the cause of liberation for our people.” In 1996 and again the following year, Farrakhan went on “World Friendship Tours” to exchange pleasantries with government leaders in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Sudan — all of which were on the State Department’s list of nations that supported terrorism. Many times during these tours, Farrakhan publicly denounced the United States as “the Great Satan.” Particularly noteworthy was his visit as an honored guest of Sudan’s Islamic fundamentalist government, which had slaughtered a million black Christians and enslaved hundreds of thousands of its black inhabitants. … Also in February 2008, Farrakhan called Obama “a herald of the Messiah.” “Barack has captured the youth,” said the NOI leader, referring to the passionate support Obama had drawn from young people in America. ”And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the messiah speaks, the youth will hear. And the messiah is absolutely speaking.” Farrakhan is a longtime friend and ally of Michael Pfleger, pastor of Chicago’s Saint Sabina Catholic Church. As of April 2008, he had preached in Pfleger’s church on three separate occasions.

Next up….Father Michael Pfleger:

Pfleger’s views on race were shaped, in large measure, by black radicalism in the 1960s. “I got very educated by the [Black] Panthers — very educated,” Pfleger once told Trumpet magazine, a publication of Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. … In February 2003 the Marxist professor Cornel West appeared, at Pfleger’s invitation, as a guest speaker at Saint Sabina. On another occasion, Pfleger invited Kareem Irfan, former Chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, to speak at Saint Sabina on the fourth anniversary of 9/11. A member of the Islamic Society of North America, Irfan has characterized Islamic beheadings of non-Muslims not as acts of evil, but rather as manifestations of “a primordial sense of retaliation and revenge.” … Pfleger has had a longstanding friendly relationship (since the late 1980s) with Barack Obama and has played a significant role as a spiritual advisor for the latter. Between 1995 and 2001, Pfleger contributed a total of $1,500 to Obama’s various political campaigns — including a $200 donation in April 2001, approximately three months after Obama (who was then an Illinois State Senator) had helped steer $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs. (After Obama’s 2004 election to the U.S. Senate, he would earmark an additional $100,000 in federal tax money for Pfleger’s work.) … Pfleger is also a great admirer of Louis Farrakhan: “I’ve known the minister [Farrakhan] both as someone who I have great respect for as a prophetic voice, as a mentor but also as a friend and as a brother,” said Pfleger. “We’ve become very close friends over the years. Our families have been close; he’s shared dinner at my house as I have at his many, many times. He has preached from our pulpit here at this church on three different occasions. We’ve worked together on issues not only for this community but in the city and in the nation.”

Cornel West:

In 2008 Senator Barack Obama named West to his presidential campaign’s Black Advisory Council. West is a great admirer of Obama’s former pastor and longtime spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. … Cornel West is a Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University. The recipient of more than twenty honorary degrees and a National Book Award, he is a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America, for which he currently serves as Honorary Chair. He is also a co-chair of Michael Lerner’s Tikkun Community. … In addition, West is a friend to Louis Farrakhan, among the most influential anti-Semites in America. And in 1999, in his role as then-presidential candidate Bill Bradley’s advisor on blacks, West encouraged Bradley to meet with Al Sharpton (whose own campaign for a U.S. Senate seat West had supported in 1994). … Viewing capitalism as the root cause of these alleged American lusts, the Marxist West warns: “Free-market fundamentalism trivializes the concern for public interest. It puts fear and insecurity in the hearts of anxiety-ridden workers. It also makes money-driven, poll-obsessed elected officials deferential to corporate goals of profit – often at the cost of the common good.” As noted above, West is a proponent of black liberation theology — a variation of liberation theology, which teaches that the New Testament gospels can be understood only as calls for social activism, class struggle, and revolution aimed at overturning the existing capitalist order and installing, in its stead, a socialist utopia where today’s poor will unseat their “oppressors” and become liberated from their material (and, consequently, their spiritual) deprivations. Black liberation theology seeks to foment a similar Marxist revolutionary fervor founded on racial rather than class solidarity. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the aforementioned socialist utopia.

Are you seeing the pattern here?  Columbia University, Bill Ayers, Cloward, Piven, Alinsky on one side and Black Liberation Theology on the other side dovetailing into a movement to turn America towards socialism.  The Columbia years are shrouded as are all documents about Barack Obama.  We are expected to buy his books and believe what is written in them as being the complete truth.  Columbia University seems to be a hub a radical dissent and during that time, Obama actually did meet and interact with some interesting characters.  And can anyone tell me why Columbia University is such a hub of radical thought? Rashid Khalidi:

Precisely because they shared the same views, Obama and Ayers also worked comfortably together on the board of the Woods Fund. There, they doled out thousands of dollars to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church to promote its Marxist “black liberation theology.” Moreover, they underwrote the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by Rashid Khalidi, a top apologist for Yasser Arafat. As National Review’s David Pryce-Jones notes, Khalidi once directed WAFA, the terrorist PLO’s news agency. Then, like Ayers, he repackaged himself as an academic who rails at American policy. The AAAN, which supports driver’s licenses and public welfare benefits for illegal aliens, holds that the establishment of Israel was an illegitimate “catastrophe.” Khalidi, who regards Israel as a “racist” “apartheid” state, supports Palestinian terror strikes against Israeli military targets. It’s little surprise that he should be such a favorite of Ayers, the terrorist for whom “racism” and “apartheid” trip off the tongue as easily as “pass the salt.” And it’s no surprise that the like-minded Obama would be a fan. Khalidi, after all, has mastered the Arafat art of posing as a moderate before credulous Westerners while (as Martin Kramer documents) scalding America’s “Zionist lobby” when addressing Arabic audiences. The Obama who decries “bitter” Americans “cling[ing] to guns or religion” when he’s in San Francisco but morphs into a God-fearing Second Amendment enthusiast when he’s in Pennsylvania — like the Obama who pummels NAFTA before labor union supporters but has advisers quietly assure the Canadians not to worry about such campaign cant — surely appreciates the craft. Obama and Ayers not only demonstrated their shared view of Khalidi by funding him. They also gave glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia’s greener pastures. That would be the same Columbia from which Obama graduated in 1983.

More from DiscoverTheNetworks.org:

• Professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University
• Former PLO operative
• Has justified as legitimate Palestinian “resistance” that results in death of armed Israelis
• Rejects the possibility of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said (not to worry, we’ll get to Edward Said) Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute (MEI) at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. In his role as MEI Director, Khalidi presides over a $300,000 annual grant from the federal government. He ranks among the most prominent members of the Middle Eastern studies community in the United States. His books are among the most frequently assigned works on the Middle East in American college syllabi. Arab and American media outlets alike seek him out regularly as a leading authority on the Middle East. Khalidi is also a Board of Trustees member of the non-governmental organization MIFTAH; a notable fellow Board member is Khalil Jahshan, President of the Washington, DC-based National Association of the Arab Americans. Khalidi was born in New York in 1950, the son of a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1970 and a Ph.D. from Oxford in 1974. During the Seventies, Khalidi taught for a brief time at a university in Beirut, where he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Khalidi was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he served as Director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for International Studies. Khalidi has long cited the late Edward Said as his major academic influence. Following the latter’s death in 2003, Khalidi penned an obituary that valorized Said for “giving a voice to the voiceless” via his “eloquent espousal of the cause of Palestine.” In this context, Khalidi likened Said to another of his idols, Noam Chomsky: “Like Noam Chomsky and very few others, he [Said] managed not only to reshape his own field of scholarly endeavor, but to transcend it, influencing other fields and disciplines, and going well beyond the narrow boundaries of the American academy to become a true public intellectual, and a passionate voice for humanistic values and justice in an imperfect world.” As with Said before him, Khalidi’s involvement with the Palestinian cause goes beyond mere support. News reports — including a 1982 dispatch from Thomas Friedman of the New York Times — suggest that he once served as Director of the Palestinian press agency, Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, was reportedly the agency’s main English-language editor between 1976 and 1982. Khalidi so strongly identified with the aims of the PLO, which was designated as a terrorist group by the State Department during Khalidi’s affiliation with it in the 1980s, that he repeatedly referred to himself as “we” when expounding on the PLO’s agenda. Additional evidence of Khalidi’s intimacy with the PLO can be seen in his involvement with the organization’s so-called “guidance committee” in the early 1990s. Khalidi’s 1986 book, Under Siege: P.L.O. Decision-Making During the 1982 War, was dedicated to Yasser Arafat. Opening with a glowing tribute to anti-Israel fighters (”to those who gave their lives during the summer of 1982 … in defense of the cause of Palestine and the independence of Lebanon”), the book offered an airbrushed account of PLO-instigated violence against Israelis and Lebanese. By contrast, Syria’s brutal occupation of Lebanon elicited no criticism from the author. In 1995 Khalidi and his wife founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), noted for its view that Israel’s creation in 1948 was a “catastrophe” for Arab people. … Characterizing Israel as a “racist” state that is “basically an apartheid system in creation,” Khalidi claims that the Israeli army is in possession of “awful weapons of mass destruction (many supplied by the U.S.) that it has used in cities, villages and refugee camps.” Khalidi formerly expressed some tepid support for the notion of an Israeli state alongside a Palestinian one. In more recent years, however, he has taken to dismissing such a solution as hopelessly unrealizable. At a February 2005 conference at Columbia, titled “One State or Two? Alternative Proposals for the Middle East,” Khalidi agreed with his Columbia colleague, Joseph Massad, in declaring that the two-state solution was an impractical “utopian vision.” Khalidi further assailed Israel’s very legitimacy, proclaiming it to be “a state that exists today at the expense of the Palestinians,” an existence that “fails to meet the most important requirement: justice.” … Khalidi deceptively styles himself as a “severe critic of Hamas.” But mere days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he rebuked the news media for what he termed their exaggerated “hysteria about suicide bombers.” Scholarly institutions that do not promote anti-Israel propaganda have incurred Khalidi’s wrath. Appearing on Al-Jazeera TV in 2004, Khalidi took aim at the prominent Middle Eastern Studies think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). That the non-partisan center is headed by Dennis Ross (a respected diplomat and a former Middle East envoy in the Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations), and that it regularly hosts speakers from the Middle East who are critical of Israel, did not prevent Khalidi from execrating WINEP as “the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the United States.” Khalidi strongly opposed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In an illuminating polemic which he penned for the January 2003 issue of the far-left journal In These Times, Khalidi, even as he conceded that “international terrorism has been sponsored by Iraq,” dismissed the notion that such an invasion could have any legitimate justification. Instead, he put forward a farrago of theories that he described as the “real reasons” for the impending war: “First, it will be fought because of an aggressive, ideological vision of America’s place in the world, propagated by the neo-conservatives who dominate the commanding heights of the American bureaucracy. Their vision proposes unfettered world hegemony for the United States, to be consecrated by the demonstration of U.S. power crushing a weak Iraq. “Second, this war will be fought because of an obsession with control of the strategic resources (read: oil) and geography offered by the Middle East, with the view of neutralizing potential challengers to American hegemony in the 21st century [meaning primarily China].” As Khalidi saw it, the looming war against Iraq was the brainchild of “racist” neo-conservatives who were: (a) doing the bidding of the Israeli Likud party to which they paid an undeclared allegiance; (b) aiming “to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony”; and (c) acting upon their ”racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force.” ”For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts,” wrote Khalidi, “sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel’s enemies.”   In March 2008 Khalidi called for the recompense of the Iraqi people for the suffering they had endured at the hands of the U.S. “We owe reparations to the Iraqi people,” he told an audience at Columbia University. Also speaking at that event was the socialist writer Anthony Arnove. Both Khalidi and Arnove called for mass anti-war activism and demanded America’s unilateral withdrawal from Iraq. Khalidi similarly had opposed the first Gulf War in 1991, when he characterized public support for the U.S.-led defense of Kuwait as an “idiots’ consensus.” Khalidi is longtime a friend of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. In the 1990s, Obama and his wife were regular dinner guests at Khalidi’s Chicago home. During the 2000 election cycle, Mr. and Mrs. Khalidi organized a fundraiser for Barack Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid. In 2001 and again in 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, while Mr. Obama served on its board, made grants totaling $75,000 to Khalidi’s Arab American Action Network. In 2003 Obama would attend a farewell party in Khalidi’s honor when the latter was leaving the University of Chicago to embark on his new position at Columbia. In a 2008 interview, Khalidi praised Obama effusively, stating that, if elected President, Obama would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than other politicians. “He has family literally all over the world,” Khalidi noted. “I feel a kindred spirit from that.” Obama is not the only political figure whom Khalidi has supported. In 2003, for instance, the professor contributed $1,000 to Democrat Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s congressional campaign. Among the donors to Khalidi’s endowed chair at Columbia are: (a) the United Arab Emirates; (b) the Hauser Foundation, a New York charity headed by Rita Hauser, a controversial philanthropist whose onetime law firm — Stroock, Stroock & Lavan — was registered with the Department of Justice as an agent for the Palestinian Authority until 2001; and (c) the Olayan Charitable Trust, a New York-based charity with ties to the Olayan America Corporation, an arm of the Saudi organization the Olayan Group.

From DiscoverTheNetworks.org; Edward Said:

The Palestine Monitor Website’s official biography of Edward Said declares that he “was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, Palestine. In the 1947 partition of Palestine, he and his family became refugees and moved to Cairo where they lived with relatives.” In truth, however, Said was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. He received a master’s degree from Princeton University, and a doctoral degree from Harvard. He thereafter took a position as a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. One of academia’s most influential radical theorists, Said is best known for his extremely influential 1978 book Orientalism, which holds that it is impossible for Westerners to write valid accounts of Middle Eastern affairs because their ideas are tainted by cultural biases — and a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority. In The Weekly Standard, Stanley Kurtz writes: ”The founding text of postcolonial studies, Orientalism effectively de-legitimated all previous scholarship on the Middle East by branding it as racist. Said drew no distinction between the most ignorant and bigoted remarks of nineteenth-century colonialists and the most accomplished pronouncements of contemporary Western scholars: All Western knowledge of the East was intrinsically tainted with imperialism.”

and now, the Obama link to Edward Said:

Khalidi was leaving to become director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, assuming a professorship endowed in honor of another Arafat devotee, the late Edward Said. A hero of the Left who consulted with terrorist leaders (including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah) and was once photographed hurling rocks at Israelis from the Lebanese border, Said was exposed by researcher Justus Reid Weiner as a fraud who had created a fictional account of his childhood, the rock on which he built his Palestinian grievance mythology. We know precious little about Obama’s Columbia years, but the Los Angeles Times has reported that he studied under Said. In and of itself, that is meaningless: Said was a hotshot prof and hundreds of students tooke his comparative-lit courses.  But Obama plainly maintained some sort of tie with Said — a photo making the Internet rounds shows Obama conversing with the great man himself at a 1998 Arab American community dinner in Chicago, where the Obamas and Saids were seated together. Said had a wide circle of radical acquaintances. That circle clearly included Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. When they came out of hiding in the early 1980s (while Obama was attending Columbia), Ayers took education courses at Bank Street College, adjacent to Columbia in Morningside Heights — before earning his doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College in 1987. Said was so enamored of Ayers that he commended the unrepentant terrorist’s 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days — the book in which the haughty Ayers brags about his Weatherman past — with this glowing dust-jacket blurb:

What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers’s America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or “second thinking.” For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading.

Sorry mess, indeed. For his part, Ayers is at least equally enthralled by Said, of whom, even in death, Ayers says “[t]here is no one better positioned … to offer advice on the conduct of intellectual life[,]” than the man who was “over the last thirty-five years, the most passionate, eloquent, and clear-eyed advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Two more players; the first is Ali Abunimah; Vice President of the Arab American Action Network (which has received money from The Woods Fund).  According to DiscoverTheNetworks.org:

Born in Washington, DC on December 29, 1971, Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian American who serves as the Board of Directors Member for the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, which was created by activists affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement. His personal website, abunimah.org, acts as a clearinghouse for his writings, which are fiercely hostile toward Israel and the United States.

But these are not the most interesting facts.  From Militant Islam Monitor:

IsraelNN.com) Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama is currently hiding his anti-Israel views in order to get elected, according to a well-known anti-Israel activist. The activist, Ali Abunimah, claimed to know Obama well and to have met him on numerous occasions at pro-Palestinian events in Chicago. In an article he penned for the anti-Israeli website Electronic Intifada, Abunimah wrote: “The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. “As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.’ He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy [and said:] ‘Keep up the good work!’” …

Barack, Michelle, Edward and Mariam Abunimah’s report included a photo of Obama with his wife Michelle seated at a table with virulently anti-Israeli Professor Edward Said and his wife Mariam, in what Abunimah said was a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Said gave the keynote speech. In an interview earlier this year for the leftist radio show “Democracy Now!,” a daily TV and radio news program hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Abunimah said he knew Obama for many years as his state senator “when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time.” “I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank,” he recounted. “And that’s just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation.” About face ‘to get elected’ The Arab-American activist went on to say: “In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

“Obama’s about-face is not surprising,” Abunimah wrote. “He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.” When Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, the Chicago Jewish News interviewed him on his stance regarding Israel’s security fence. He accused the Bush administration of neglecting the “Israeli-Palestinian” situation and criticized the security fence built by Israel to prevent terror attacks: “The creation of a wall dividing the two nations is yet another example of the neglect of this Administration in brokering peace,” Obama was quoted as saying. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125656

The photo and the caption.  Some of my readers may recognize Michelle and Barack from other photos taken the same night. This photo from 1998 has been circulating on the Internet for a while now, but nobody seems to ask a very basic question: Why was a relatively obscure State Senator seated next to the high and mightily Keynote speaker, Edward Said, at this May 1998 Arab community dinner in Chicago? These types of events ordinarily do not have random seating. Someone obviously thought it important to seat Obama next to the Palestinian radical and guest of honor. Why? In the next article in the series, we will be following the money of Rezko, Auchi and Soros among others and showing the intricate web that has been woven between all of the “organizations” backing Barack Obama. And now, for something completely different but back to the original William Ayers.  I have verified that Prairie Fire is a true and actual manifesto. Once again, ChristmasGhost sent me a link to more Bill Ayers disturbing documentation.  Zombietime has obtained a copy of Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, Political Statement of the Weather Underground.  Please make sure you take the time to read this whole article.  Some bread crumbs to add to the trail from Zombie:

Ayers was n