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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Obama File 33 More Weathermen For Obama

Obama File 32 here

My last three posts have looked at Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) and the organisation's relationship to Barack Obama and his campaign.


Despite its innocuous sounding name, MDS (founded August 2006) is a coalition of former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) its terrorist splinter the Weather Underground and three Marxist organisations, Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Every one of these strands has supported Barack Obama since at least the mid '90s-some even further back.

Today many MDS activists are working in the Obama campaign, particularly through the MDS offshoot, Progressives for Obama.

Much as been written about the links between Barack Obama and his "patrons" former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

I've shown that Dohrn has been an MDS board member, while her husband Ayers is at least an active supporter.

That's two known former terrorists involved in MDS, but there are at least three more in the MDS/Progressives for Obama orbit-Jeff Jones, Howie Machtinger and Mark Rudd.

Ayers, Dorhn, Jones, Machtinger and Rudd are old revolutionary comrades. In the late '60s the five were key leaders of the faction of (SDS) that split to form the Weather Underground. All attended the famous 1969 Flint War Council that effectiveful gave birth to the Weathermen faction of SDS.

All were virulently anti-American in their radical heyday.
Bernardine Dohrn has been accused of planting a bomb that killed San Francisco policeman Brian V. McDonnell. When police raided a Weathermen bomb factory in Pine Street San Francisco in 1970, they found the fingerprints of Ayers, Machtinger and Rudd.

All are still radicals today and all are proven Obama supporters.

This post profiles the three neglected Weathermen in the MDS/Progressives for Obama network-Jones, Machtinger and Rudd.

Who is Jeff Jones?

According to Jeff Jones's own website

Jeff Jones went to his first rally against the Vietnam War in 1965. Within a year, he had quit Antioch College to become a fulltime organizer for Students for a Democratic Society.


In 1966 he traveled to Cambodia to meet with high-level leaders of the NLF. In 1967 and 1968 he served as SDS Regional Organizer for New York City. In 1969, he was elected, along with Bill Ayers and Mark Rudd, to SDS national office. Then, in the spring of 1970, he disappeared. As a leader of the Weather Underground, Jeff evaded an intense FBI manhunt for more than a decade. In 1981, they finally got him. Twenty special agents battered down the door of the Bronx apartment where he was living with his wife and four-year-old son.

Jeff Jones serves on the board of MDS.


Jeff Jones right, at the MDS Conference New York City February 2007

Jeff Jones is also a signed up supporter of Progressives for Obama.

Who is Howie Machtinger?

Today Howard Machtinger is director of Teaching Fellows at the University of North Carolina.

According to Frontpage Magazine

Machtinger was on the barricades at Columbia University in 1968 and was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. He co-authored a tome that stated, “At the right moment, revolutionaries within the United States were to wage a ‘people’s war’ and attack from within. The government would fall and ‘world Communism’ would eventually be instituted.” He also spoke about “how the black liberation movement is so far advanced at this point that the only thing left for white revolutionaries is to support blacks by fighting cops as a diversionary tactic.”


Machtinger is not a confirmed member of MDS, but does contribute to Next Left Notes, which is edited by MDS board member and Progressives for Obama endorser Tom Good.

Ayers, Dohrn and Rudd are also Next Left Notes contributors.

Machtinger has signed on as a supporter of progressives for Obama, on the same page incidentally as yet another former Weatherman, Steve Tappis. Further along Jennifer Dohrn-sister of Bernardine Dohrn has also signed up.

Machtinger is also the author of a widely distributed essay entitled Obama and the Left

If we, as a Left, are content to smugly and dismissively critique the Obama phenomenon, we trade self-fulfilling sectarianism for the chance at political impact. A victory for Obama will not only be a boon for the African-American community and for people of color, it will offer a unique opportunity for the development of an organized and aggressive Left movement that retains its independence at the same time that it is willing to risk everyday involvement in the strange world of American politics.

If we just critique, we will miss a moment that may not come again for a while. If our politics are meaningful, effective, and get to the root of problems, we should put them to the test in political work that connects to large numbers of people struggling to find direction in an increasingly dangerous world. Something wonderful is happening. We must be alive to it. I hope we can figure out how to relate to it effectively before we consign ourselves to continued marginalization


Who is Mark Rudd?

Today Mark Rudd is a New Mexico school teacher.

From Mark Rudd's website

As he traveled the country, from the fall of 1968 to the summer of 1969, Mark met many other activists in SDS who were thinking along the same lines as he, that SDS could move from anti-war resistance to full-scale socialist revolution...

White students would reject their “white skin privilege” and actually begin armed struggle against the U.S. government; this, in turn, would attract broad youth support as the struggle increased, following the Cuban model. This theory became fully articulated in a paper presented to the SDS National Convention in Chicago in June, 1969, authored by a collective of eleven, of which Mark was a member. Its title was “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows,” from which Mark’s faction of SDS became known as “The Weathermen.”

That convention proved to be SDS’ last. Following a titanic ideological battle concerning “the correct revolutionary direction,” a split occurred between the Weathermen and allies grouped around the National Office and a competing faction of Maoist Progressive Labor Party members and their allies. When it was all over, Mark found himself elected National Secretary of SDS, along with comrades Billy Ayers as Educational Secretary, and Jeff Jones as Inter-organizational Secretary, and the Weathermen in control of the National Office backed by a small number of chapters around the country...




More from his Mark Rudd's website

A few national SDS leaders had met with Vietnamese and Cubans to find out about their resistance to U.S. imperialism. Out of these meetings came an invitation for SDS to send a group of students to Cuba in January, 1968. Because of his active work with the chapter, Mark was invited by the National Office to join the trip, which was openly defying the U.S. government’s ban on travel to Cuba. He accepted, working out a month-long absence with his professors...

Mark met young Cubans in positions of responsibility such as running schools and farms and medical institutions who were fired up with revolutionary enthusiasm: they were remaking society along non-capitalist lines, creating socialism! Meeting with Vietnamese delegates in Cuba, he learned about the nature of the resistance to American aggression, that these people believed they would inevitably drive the Americans from their country, no matter how long it took. As if to prove their point, the Tet Offensive was raging at the time in Vietnam, giving the lie to the American military’s claims that they were winning the war. His group was told by a Vietnamese diplomat in Havana, “The American people will eventually tire of the war and the troops will have to be withdrawn.”


According to the FBI Mark Rudd's trip to Cuba also involved terrorist training in camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine.

Today Mark Rudd serves on the board of MDS.


Mark Rudd addressing the MDS Conference New York City February 2007

Rudd is also an endorser of Progressives For Obama.

Clearly Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are not the only former Weathermen backing the Senator from Illinois.

Add their old comrades Jeff Jones, Howie Machtinger, Mark Rudd and even Steve Tappis to the mix and you are starting to get beyond coincidence.

That former terrorists are working with Marxist groups to elect Barack Obama is beyond doubt.

Should US voters know this?

Obama file 34 here

9 Comments:

Blogger winni said...

Excellent post. Thank you.

10:25 AM  
Blogger rocky31 said...

Excellent. Why can't we find more of this in the mainstream media? Why do the Obama supporters refuse to acknowledge these disturbing ties? A visual blog type post on other associations Obama has had is at http://vizmojo.net/Canvas.aspx?ZXVC=146D344C1EA92305

1:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are we to assume that everyone working for or ever affiliated with the McCain campaign is squeaky clean? I'll bet if folks were searching in McCain's backyard, they'd find something there, too. How about the issues? Are we focused on how our tomorrow looks or on how someone's insignificant yesterday was?

7:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So Obama is bad because of supportes of his?
your logic is as weak as your backbone. Show that Obama has ties to them in a supporting role not that a few of the thousands that support Obama are bad apples.

8:42 AM  
Blogger rocky31 said...

http://vizmojo.net/Canvas.aspx?ZXVC=17C4982E8E8AE433

there are way too many unanswered questions for Mr. Obama.

8:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Are we to assume that everyone working for or ever affiliated with the McCain campaign is squeaky clean? I'll bet if folks were searching in McCain's backyard, they'd find something there, too. How about the issues? Are we focused on how our tomorrow looks or on how someone's insignificant yesterday was?

So what you are saying is that experiences do not matter? I assume you support Osama, er um, Obama? If experiences do not matter, then your party's challenge about Senator Palin's qualifications (should something happen to McCain) as President are moot. You can't say past experiences don't matter for your side and then attack mine for the same reason. And PS my side says the past does matter. Check the records. They are clear. If you want no rights, higher taxes, more problems, no military, no defense and the same problems France and Germany have had for the last 2 decades, go live there. You want free health care? Move to England or Canada. If you want a free, strong America, vote McCain. And before you uppity Oxford types say those aforementioned countries are great because mommy and daddy let you go to school for a semster there, I'll tell you they ain't all that, because I've lived and worked there.

2:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Every time i see someone use the Osama "oops" Obama phrase, or intended mistake it makes me laugh and truely question there statements. We all know that because someones name is close to another they are the same right? LOL. All i can say is Fanatical JM supporters almost always use comparisons that mean nothing, to try and make themselves or there side look better. Just realise already ITS OVER Obama has won. JM would need to do what Bush did in 2004 and buy votes at this point in order to win.

6:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of the many “anonymous” commentators asked about McCain’s background and his ability to stand up to the scrutiny. I have to say that traditionally [whether we like it or not] the US main stream media is truly left leaning and tend to support the Democrat party, the closest they come to supporting a Republican is someone like McCain who is truly a moderate and has had his fair share of arguments with the RNC.

McCain ran for president in 2000 and did not make it out of the primaries as he was ruthlessly attacked not only by the other candidates as “too moderate” but also by the media.

Additionally, let’s talk a bit about Sarah Pallin. She has been beaten up by the media and set up to look as foolish as possible. Yet, when you look at the Governor from Alaska, and the 300 plus researchers sent up there to dig up dirt on her, all they found was: 1) Her daughter was pregnant, 2) Troopergate and 3) the RNC spent $150 thousand on her clothes. Not a lot for all that expense, don’t you think?

Now to the real issues of the campaign, let me quote my least favorite president since Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton who’s first campaign was renowned for the internal slogan “It’s the Economy, Stupid”. Bill Clinton, if I were dead I’d roll over in my own grave for saying this, had that right back then and he has it right today. Too bad Obama does not.

First, in a recession, [yesterday the US government published numbers that show that the 3rd Quarter GDP dropped 0.3% (first of two quarters in a row needed to define the start of a recession), today the government also published that income fell by an average of 0.3% and that consumer spending fell by also an equivalent 0.3%, I think we can agree that if we’re not in a recession today by definition, we certainly shall be by January when the numbers come out] the last thing you want to do is raise taxes on businesses. Senator Obama proposes raising taxes from 35% to 39.5% taking 4.5% off the top of every business in the United States with income greater than $250,000 (or is it $200,000 as an Obama add said, or is it $150,000 as Joe Biden said on October 30th, or is it $120,000 as Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico said today). He further plans to raise dividend and capital gains taxes from 15% to 20% further eroding investor confidence.

These two tax increases alone will take re-investment capital from business when it needs it the most, in the middle of a recession. The last time such tax moves were made, it was during Herbert Hoover’s presidency at the beginning of the Great Depression, and then again during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency that further eroded business ability to increase employment by increased labor costs plus increasing taxes to almost confiscatory rates.

Obama pushes for larger government, the loss of secret ballot union elections (note the similarity to FDR’s errors 70 years ago), the transfer of wealth through increased taxes, and further increase in taxes to cover the one trillion dollar government expansion plans.

The election of Barrack Obama, is not only a problem for the United States, but also for the rest of the world since all the economies are now so globally tied together that anyone of the major 8 economies can bring the rest down, and Obama has all the ingredients of pushing us into a deep recession, or even into a depression.

These are the real issues of the campaign, the fact that he is connected to radical left wing activists with socialist tendencies just goes to support the depth of his belief in socialist ideals of large government, government control, high taxes, redistribution of wealth, nationalized retirement plans (say bye bye to the 401(k), per Barmy Franks), and nationalized health care. They are truly all tied together.

The Lee's Summit Conservative
http://leessummitconservative.blogspot.com/

11:16 AM  
Blogger rocky31 said...

Please don't forget or discount his stand on abortion and the Right to Life - one of the best videos this election has been the one at this link - please take a moment to view it.
http://vizmojo.net/Canvas.aspx?ZXVC=CCA27C8A32D52A1A
There is nothing more important than Life itself.

2:35 PM  

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