"The Blogger Who Nailed Van Jones"

Cliff Kincaid from Accuracy in Media interviewed me yesterday. Here's the result.

The Blogger Who Nailed Van Jones

If the Van Jones resignation is blamed on his statements about Republicans and 9/11, a great lesson will have been lost. As we argued in a previous column, "It's the communism, stupid." If people don't recognize the dangers of having a communist in the White House, then the nature of the scandal will not have been understood. Blogger Trevor Loudon of New Zealand broke the story on April 6 and has some thoughts on what happened and where this story is heading.

His main point is that Van Jones and Barack Obama share the same Marxist ideology and background. Obama, however, is more careful and clever.

There's an old saying, "If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which road you take." As Trevor Loudon argues, Jones and Obama know precisely where they're going. And the Jones resignation doesn't mean that Obama will take a detour from the road that he wants to take the country on. Indeed, as Loudon explains, they are both on the same road.

The development of the scandal, which was seized upon by World Net Daily, Glenn Beck and other media outlets and personalities, began in Loudon's research into the existence of communist networks. Loudon blogs at www.newzeal.blogspot.com A compilation of his most important articles on Jones can be found here.

Loudon tells me, "I began to investigate Van Jones after seeing several separate pieces of information. I first came across the name in the mid 1990s in a New Zealand socialist publication which had a small clip about Van Jones-a Yale educated lawyer involved in STORM-Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The name stuck."

While researching the far-left think Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which Loudon considers the Obama administration's "ideas bank," Loudon found a piece by IPS staffer Chuck Collins recommending Van Jones for a top government job. A September 26, 2008 article, posted on the IPS website by Chuck Collins, offered 22 names they thought would make suitable appointments for an Obama administration. He included, "Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center, to direct the Commerce Department's new 'green jobs initiative.'"

Remember that this was before the election.

"I researched Jones again at that point and found he was a fellow at the Center for American Progress," Loudon says, referring to the George Soros-funded entity.

Then a few days after the election he found a statement from former Weather Underground terrorist leader Mark Rudd, who was trying to ease fellow leftists' concerns at some of Obama's so-called "moderate" or "conservative" appointments, mostly in the economic realm. Rudd declared:

"Obama plays basketball. I'm not much of an athlete, barely know the game, but one thing I do know is that you have to be able to look like you're doing one thing but do another. That's why all these conservative appointments are important: the strategy is feint to the right, move left. Any other strategy invites sure defeat. It would be stupid to do otherwise in this environment.

"Look to the second level appointments. There's a whole govt. in waiting that [John] Podesta has at the Center for American Progress. They're mostly progressives, I'm told (except in military and foreign policy). Cheney was extremely effective at controlling policy by putting his people in at second-level positions."
Podesta was co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Team.

When Jones was appointed "Green jobs Czar" in March 2009 at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Trevor got serious. His first article about Jones' communist connections appeared on April 6, prompting me to file a series of Freedom of Information Act requests into the question of who recommended and hired Jones. I reported the results, which amounted to Obama Administration stonewalling, in an August 25 column.

Loudon explains how relatively easy it was to ascertain the basic facts about Jones: "It didn't take more than a few keystrokes to realize that STORM was very influential in the San Francisco Bay Area and had ties to both the Cuban and South African Communist Parties. Jones' group-and particularly Jones himself-had ties to two former Weather Underground supporters-Jon and Nancy Frappier and the Bay Area branch of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Jones was the keynote speaker at a CCDS fundraiser in Berkeley as late as February 2006."

This Bay Area branch of the CCDS is basically the same "alliance" of former Weathermen, 60s Maoists and modern communists who supported Obama in Chicago, Loudon explains.

Explaining more of the connections, Loudon goes on, "Two of Jones' Bay Area radical friends, Betita Martinez (a former Maoist and CCDS member) and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (a former Maoist and one-time Weatherman supporter), served on the board of Movement for a Democratic Society, along with Weather underground leaders Mark Rudd and Bernardine Dohrn."

He adds, "Obama's old friend Bill Ayers was also involved, as were leaders of CCDS, including Angela Davis, who works with several Bay Area STORM alumni, leaders of the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America and several Institute for Policy Studies trustees and personnel, including E. Ethelbert Miller, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. The last two are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and founders in 2008 of Progressives for Obama."

Obama's socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the DSA. Our February 14, 2008, AIM Column, "Obama's International Socialist Connections," explains all of this.

Now that Jones has resigned, Loudon says that "the focus needs to go on who hired him and why an easily identifiable communist revolutionary with a police record could serve as a presidential adviser."

He explains, "The Obama administration boasted of its extreme vetting procedures, so I find it unlikely that if a blogger from New Zealand could identify Jones as a communist militant that the White House didn't know."

In terms of the evidence about who recommended and hired Jones, Loudon says that the focus that Accuracy in Media has put on far-left Oakland Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee is correct, since she was "almost certainly complicit in getting Jones hired." Lee is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was a presidential campaign adviser to Obama, and is a friend of Jones and Obama. Jones and Lee worked together on "green jobs" in Oakland.

At the same time, Obama's "brain" Valerie Jarrett is on tape as saying "they" have been watching Jones for years and were happy to recruit him. Since Jarrett is in the White House, "the spotlight must go on Jarrett," Loudon argues. "But eventually it must come back to the president himself."

He explains, "Jones and Obama have worked with the same people all the way."

For example, Loudon notes that "In 1999 Obama was called to New York to set up a left-wing think tank called Demos. He served for a time on the Demos board of trustees. Jones is still listed a member of the Demos board. Demos is a partner organization to the Institute for Policy Studies and also works closely with ACORN and Project Vote-names very familiar to any Obama watcher."

Explaining the rise of Van Jones, Loudon says, "Seven years ago Van Jones was a Bay Area Alinskyite street communist. After hooking up with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, Democratic Socialists of America, former '60s Maoists, Weather Underground supporters and Demos, he managed to land a job in the White House."

By comparison, "Twenty-two years ago Barack Obama was a Chicago Alinskyite 'community organizer.' After hooking up with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, Democratic Socialists of America, former '60s Maoists, Weather Underground supporters and Demos, he managed to land a job in the White House."

Just a coincidence?

Loudon concludes, "Jones' resignation is a blow for the left and a victory for freedom, but it is only the beginning in unmasking a whole series of White House radicals. They may not have been as loud mouth and indiscrete as Van Jones -but that makes them more dangerous, not less. Millions of Americans now have some inkling of what is happening to their country. Now is the time to amp up the pressure and research."

New Zeal-thanks Cliff.

Lots more to come on Barabara Lee, Valerie Jarrett, Demos, Center for American Progresss, Institute for Policy Studies and Barack Obama-stay tuned.