Obama File 75 American Rights at Work-Obama's Socialist Labor "Commissars".

Obama File 74 here
Control of organised labor is a key component of the Obama administration's power plan.

The Communist Party USA's Peoples Weekly World January 31st '09 quoted President Obama as saying;

"I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution."


Obama wants to unify the labor movement under a centralised socialist leadership, answerable to him.

This will provide President Obama and the Democrats with money and armies of loyal foot soldiers for their battles with the Republicans, "disloyal" Dems and non compliant businesses.

It will also enable Obama to neutralise resistance to amnesty and citizenship for more than 10 million illegal workers curently in the US-which will almost certainly lock in millions of extra votes for Obama and the Democrats.

One organisation, American Rights at Work (ARW) has served as a key transmission belt from Obama to the labor movement. It is now looking increasingly like becoming Obama's key control mechanism over the union movement.

ARW has strong ties to Obama's old friends Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the ultra left "think tank" Institute for Policy Studies (infamous in the 1970s and '80s for its reported links to Soviet and Cuban intelligence services)and surprisingly one of the US's largest mosques.

Here's a "who's who" of key American Rights at Work personnel.

David Bonior ARW President-A confirmed DSA member, Bonior was honored in December 2008 by Detroit DSA at its 10th annual Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner.


Bonior with Detroit DSA leader David Green at the 2008 Debs Dinner


According to Talking Union;

David Bonior served in Congress for 26 years rising through the leadership to become the Democratic Caucus Whip. During his tenure in Congress, Bonior fought to raise the minimum wage, protect pensions, support unions, and extend unemployment benefits. He led the fight to oppose NAFTA in 1993. He worked to prevent war in Central America in the 1980s and again to prevent the Iraq War in 2002. After leaving Congress, Bonior co-founded American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy and research organization, which has made passage of the Employee Free Choice Act its major legislative priority. Bonior was recently appointed to the Obama economic team.

Bonior was touted as a likely Obama Labor Secretary but withdrew his name from contention. Obama then delegated Bonior to broker a re-unification of the US labor movement, bringing the Change To Win grouping and the AFL-CIO back together under one banner.

According to RBO

The NYT’s David Greenhouse reported that, on January 7, the union presidents first met with Bonior, a member of Obama’s economic transition team...Bonior helped “arrange and oversee” the meeting.

The union presidents issued their joint call after the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama signaled that it would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices.


In 2002 Bonior and two other Democratic Congressmen Jim McDermott and Mike Thompson traveled to Iraq on a fact-finding mission. It was later revealed that Iraqi intelligence had funded the trip through a Michigan based Muslim group headed by Muthanna Al-Hanooti.

David Bonior also has IPS connections

Representative David E. Bonior (D-Michigan), House Democratic Whip, presented the 1997 Letelier-Moffitt Memorial Human Rights Domestic Award to Carlos and Alicia Marentes from Sin Fronteras, during a joyful and moving ceremony held at the historic Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Saturday September 27, 1997... The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS}... organizes this event to honor the memory of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who where murdered in 1976 when a bomb exploded in their car near Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C. Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the Unites States and Moffitt were at that time working in the IPS.

Letelier reportedly was an agent of the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI.


Hilda Solis-Until her appointment as Obama's Labor Secretary, Solis was a California Congresswoman and ARW Treasurer.

Hilda Solis has ties to DSA, the Socialist International and Communist Party USA. She travelled to Cuba "purpose not disclosed"" in April 2001 sponsored by the radical William C. Velasquez Institute, to the tune of $1,214.50

Mary Beth Maxwell Also once tipped as a potential Obama Labor Secretary, Maxwell was ARW executive director until recently appointed as a senior adviser to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.


Prior to her 5 years at ARW Maxwell was National Field Director for Jobs with Justice an IPS partner organization known for employing DSA and Communist Party USA activists.




Julian Bond Serves on the ARW Board of Directors and was a longserving chairman of the NAACP and is a veteran of the Communist Party/Students for a Democratic Society organized Venceremos Brigades to Cuba. In the late 1970s Bond was vice president of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee-predecessor of DSA.

Bond was honored at Chicago DSA's 1993 Debs Dinner.

In November 2006, Bond returned to Cuba "to take a first-hand look at the island’s health system, and especially to find out about the Latin American Medical School (ELAM) and its nearly 90 US students."

During the 1970s Bond was an occasional lecturer at IPS and a board member of the IPS spin-off Institute of Southern Studies.

Carl Pope Serves on the ARW Board of Directors and is Executive director of the Sierra Club.

In 1966 Pope was active in Students for a Democratic Society protests at Harvard University.

Pope is a board member of the green/labor caolition, the Apollo Alliance with DSA member Gerry Hudson and IPS Trustee and former director Robert Borosage.


Carl Pope left, Van Jones




Pope also works closely with another former Apollo Alliance board member, Van Jones. A "former" revolutionary communist, Jones now works with Hilda Solis as a "green jobs" advisor to president Obama.

In September 2007 Pope addressed an IPS organized Teach In "Confronting the Global Triple Crisis at George Washington University.


Wade Henderson Serves on the ARW Board of Directors and is president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of some 200 organizations.

Henderson presented the IPS's 2007 Letelier-Moffitt human rights award to anti Iraq War group Appeal For Redress.

Wade Henderson, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, described the domestic award winner Appeal for Redress as "a democratic movement within the military" calling for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from the war in Iraq.

The organization is composed of more than 2,000 active duty service members, war veterans, and military families and "has rapidly become the most influential force within the U.S. armed services to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq," according to IPS.


Harley Shaiken Serves on the ARW Board of Directors and is director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the university of California, Berkeley. Shaiken is a leading anti globalisation activist and advocate for relaxing US sanctions against Cuba.

Shaiken has worked closely on "disarmament, economic conversion and economic democracy" with IPS founder Marcus Raskin and IPS scholar and DSA member Noam Chomsky.

Shaiken also has close ties to David Bonior and other DSA members. According to the website of DSA's Greater Detroit local;

Seventy people attended the eighth annual Frederick Douglass-Eugene V. Debs Dinner held at UAW Local 600 in Dearborn on Saturday, November 18th.(2006)The dinner is the major fundraising event each year for Detroit DSA...The keynote speaker was globalization expert Harley Shaiken who gave a chilling description of the consequences of corporate globalization as well as some suggestions as to how progressive activists can fight this phenomenon.

Shaiken was also widely touted as a potential Obama Labor Secretary.

Imam Sayed Hassan Al Qazwini Serves on the ARW Board of Directors and leader of the Dearborn Michigan (David Bonior's old congressional district) based Islamic Center of America (ICOA) and founder of the Young Muslim association. Born in Karbala, Iraq Qazwini's family moved to Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After a religious education in Iran, Qazwini followed his family to the US in 1992.

According to Discover the Networks;

On November 15, 1998, Qazwini’s ICOA sponsored an event -- attended by more than 1,000 primarily Arab Muslim-Americans -- where the featured speaker was Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Qazwini and his fellow organizers introduced Farrakhan as “our dear brother,” “a freedom fighter,” and “a man of courage and sacrifice.”

According to political journalist Debbie Schlussel, Qazwini professes to oppose al Qaeda but nonetheless: (a) maintains a close affiliation with the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; (b) is friendly with Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who issued the 1983 fatwa that resulted in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 American servicemen; and (c) openly supports both Hamas and Hezbollah.


Qazwini met with then presidential candidate Barack Obama in May 2008.

According to journalist Debbie Schlussel;

Imam Hassan Qazwini, head of the Islamic Center of America, said in an email that he met with Obama at Macomb Community College. A mosque spokesman, Eide Alawan, confirmed that the meeting took place. During the meeting, the two discussed the Presidential election, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Iraq war, according to Qazwini.

At the end of the meeting, Qazwini said he gave Obama a copy of new book, "American Crescent," and invited Obama to visit his center.

The meeting with Obama came about after Qazwini had asked David Bonior, the former U.S. Rep. from Michigan, if he could meet with Obama during his visit. Qazwini was not selected to be part of a group of 20 people who met with Obama, but Qazwini later got a private meeting with Obama, Alawan said.

"They gave him an opportunity for a one-on-one," Alawan said. . . .

John Sweeney Serves on the ARW Board of Directors and is president of the US's largest labor federation the AFL-CIO.


Sweeney joined DSA around 1995 shortly before becoming AFL-CIO president. Sweeney soon reversed the ban on Communist Party members holding office in AFL-CIO affiliated unions. Sweeney now heads a federation almost totally dominated by communists, socialists and former "new lefters".

Sweeney is also a member of the powerful Trilateral Commission and enjoys close ties to IPS, even honoring Brazil's Marxist president "Lula" on their behalf.

From the website of the IPS affiliated TransNational Institute;

September 23, 2003
27th annual Letelier-Moffitt Memorial Human Rights Awards
The Institute for Policy Studies invites you to celebrate the legacy of
Orlando Letelier & Ronni Karpen Moffitt
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
The Organization of American States
6 pm Reception / 7 pm Dinner and Human Rights Program

International Award Recipient: Nancy Sanchez Mendez
Presented by Jan Schakowsky, United States Representative...

Special Recognition Award: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil*
Presented by John Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
*in absentia

There are several clear threads running throug American Rights at Work-pro Cuba, anti-Iraq War, pro DSA, pro IPS.

Most AWR officials would struggle to get a security clearance to clean latrines at any US military base. Yet three AWR alumni-Bonior, Solis and Maxwell now work closely with president obama at the heart of the US government.

No less than four ARW board members were touted for the Labor Secretary job. Talk about socialist nepotism-did anyone else have any chance at all?

Several ARW figures are close to DSA, IPS or both. DSA and IPS both have close ties to the Communist Party USA and the equally militant Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

All four organisations have had members or associates convicted or accused of spying for foreign governments. All are militantly anti-American and openly or covertly pro Marxist socialism.

ARW is perfectly positioned to build a socialist led, Obama friendly labor movement.

But will Obama's Labor "Commissars" be tough enough to keep America's unruly "proletariat" in their place?

Obama file 76 here

Another Quality Press Release From Sir Roger

Bill English A Sheep In Cullen's Clothing

Hon Sir Roger Douglas, ACT New Zealand
Wednesday, April 29 2009

ACT New Zealand Finance Spokesman Sir Roger Douglas today described Finance Minister Bill English as nothing more than a National Party version of Dr Michael Cullen - who promised New Zealand tax cuts but never actually delivered the goods.
"The Government pretends it has no choice but to renege on the promised tax cuts - Mr English is just too scared to get his hands dirty and actually make the much-needed, tough decisions," Sir Roger said.
"But National is down-playing the fact that it actually has two options: honour its tax cut promises and make up for reduced tax revenue by cutting low-quality Government spending, or continue to collect high taxes to throw at low-quality Government projects - as it is now.
"While the first is the quality option, we can be sure that Mr English will take the second.
"Thanks to Labour we are now well-versed in the outcome of high Government spending: high taxes, low productivity, and low wages. To break this cycle we must lower Government spending which, in turn, will allow us to lower taxes and result in high productivity growth.
"Government spending is not a panacea for our problems. Our net external debt currently stands at $167 billion - should we really wait until it reaches $200 billion before we do something about it?
"It's time for National to put New Zealand first - to stop blaming Labour for poor quality spending and start dealing to it. National must live up to the principles it claims to stand for: individual freedom, competitive enterprise, and limited Government.
"New Zealanders voted for National because it was time for a change - so isn't it time for National and Mr English to actually make some changes?" Sir Roger said

Dick Morris on Obama's Anti US Foreign Policy

A scathing attack on Obama's foreign policy from former Bill Clinton advisor Dick Morris.

Daniel Hannan-A Tory I Can Relate To

British Tory MEP flays Gordon Brown and the European Union.

Listen for the great story about Churchill and Clement Attlee





Thanks to Matthew.

How To Fix The Apprenticeship System

I have been banging on about this for years.

National has woken up to the huge, wasteful scam that is labour's "Modern Apprenticeship" scheme.

From Stuff

A $250 million Government job scheme is in line for a shake-up after a report showing that fewer than one in 10 agriculture, forestry and fishing apprentices completes training within five years.

Education Minister Anne Tolley is unhappy with the findings of a Ministry of Education report, Modern Apprentices Completion Analysis, and is seeking advice on the scheme’s future. The report reveals just one-third of all modern apprentices complete their training within five years.

As someone who has trained apprentices and served on an ad hoc group trying futilely to reform a totally screwed system, I can tell Ann Tolley exactly what the main problem is.

UNIT STANDARDS

Instead of learning a trade, apprentices are forced to waste time and energy on meaningless, farcical and dishonest box ticking. Great for the training bureacrats, crap for the apprentice and the employer.

Below are some extracts from a speech I gave to ACT's 2004 annual Conference in Christchurch. Unfortunately little has improved since that time.

Here is my simplified 5 point plan for fixing the very very broke apprenticeship system.

Abolish Unit Standards

We must abolish the unit standards system that is probably the main disincentive to employing apprentices. The unit standards system attempts to train by dividing trades into numerous physical skills that must be mastered. This produces apprentices who are basically trained monkeys. They can do a series of tasks on command but may not necessarily understand why they are doing them.

Learning should be an organic process. Principles should be learned, and then applied in practical reality to produce understanding. A good tradesman instils in his apprentice the principles of the trade; whether it is how yeast works in baking, how paint flows or how to bone out a cattle beast.

By understanding basic principles, the apprentice can apply their skills to varied situations. They can learn to integrate skills, to problem solve and become real masters of their art. Unit standards, is an extremely clumsy and primitive approach to learning. All New Zealand’s universities have rejected it, and few, if any, other countries have adopted this inferior system.

Abolishing unit standards would immediately eliminate the need for assessors. Currently large firms must train an on site assessor to mark off their apprentices “progress”. Smaller firms must do this job themselves or pay an outside assessor $40 or more an hour to do it for them. Trained teachers are getting bogged down with unit standards in our high schools.

How is a one-man band paperhanger meant to cope? Small wonder that very few small companies now employ apprentices.

Broaden the System

We should extend apprenticeships and cadetships back into areas like primary teaching, journalism, nursing, and new areas like computing, retail and tourism. Even some professions such as the law, surveying and accountancy should return to training at least some of their staff through apprenticeships.

In Germany, young people can and do apprenticeships in almost any area. The mighty German economic machine exports skilled tradespeople and technicians, and has very low youth unemployment. Throughout Western Europe, it is the norm for non-university-bound teenagers to start their working life in an apprenticeship. Why shouldn’t we have the bulk of our school leavers in apprenticeships?

Start Them Early

We should lower the school leaving age, especially for those starting an apprenticeship. Once a teenager could leave school at 15, start an apprenticeship and be qualified at 19. Now most will leave school at 16 or 17, do a year at polytech on a pre-apprenticeship course (with a student loan), and then, if they’re lucky, start their apprenticeship.

People in this situation have commitments and want an adult wage. They don’t want to start at the bottom and are often less teachable. Pre-apprenticeship courses are no substitute for the real thing and are often actually counter productive.

Many employers complain that many of these trainees think they are above the simple tasks that real apprentices are required to learn. Life has its hierarchies and by starting at the very bottom of the ladder, apprentices tend to learn them very well. Apprenticeships should be geared as much as possible to start in the mid teens.

Reduce Government Involvement

We should reduce government involvement in apprenticeship training as much as possible. Each industry should run its own training to its own standards. The 2002 Budget committed an extra $41 million to “Modern Apprenticeships” over the next four years.

Last week, the Government announced that it would pump in $9 million to produce an extra 1,000 apprentices - that’s $9,000 per apprentice. Why pay to do what people will do for free if left alone? Apprenticeships are a bit like marriages, only they last longer. Does the Government have to pay people to get married?

The beauty of apprenticeship is that it is (or should be) self-funding. A properly run apprenticeship system should cost the taxpayer virtually zero. In fact, there should be a net gain as apprentices each pay a small amount of tax rather than taking out a student loan.

Industry should be awarding its own qualifications, so NZQA involvement could be axed and even the small polytech input could be privatised. Governments love to bureaucratise and complicate things.

A recent Human Rights Commission document on the modern apprenticeship scheme proposed that taxpayer-funded apprentice co-ordinators should take over the role of apprenticeship recruitment from employers. Further, it proposed that these co-ordinators be set recruitment quotas based on race, sex and disability. Even worse it wants co-ordinators to be paid bonuses for recruiting from the appropriate minorities.

Do you pay taxes so that that your car can be fixed by a Tongan lesbian with a gammy leg? Labour’s modern apprenticeship scheme is an expensive, politically correct bureaucratised scam. Don’t be fooled by it. Industry likes to simplify. The cheaper and simpler we can make apprenticeships, the more employers will embrace them. Get the government out of the way and employers will quickly rediscover the benefits of training apprentices.

Utilise the Military

We should expand the one area where government should play a role in apprentice training –the military. The army, navy and air force used to train hundreds of diesel mechanics, radio technicians, aircraft engineers, carpenters, chefs and sign writers. Some industries, such as aircraft maintenance, were built largely on ex-military staff.

The forces have the infrastructure and the skill base to turn out highly skilled people, and we’re paying for it through our taxes anyway. In the late ‘80s the Government abolished the army cadet scheme and with it most of the army’s apprenticeship programme.

Today the army employs approximately 10 apprentices a year. The situation isn’t much better in the navy or what used to be our air force.

The coming ACT/National Government should immediately implement an extensive system of military apprenticeships. This would help both the military and future civilian employers. It’d also very inexpensively increase the pool of military-trained people for any future defence emergencies. Some funding for this could come from part of the education vote that remains unspent each year. The rest could come from an unused student loan budget.

Read the full speech here.

I'm proud of it. It was very well received. Hopefully it will help restore what was once a very fine system to its former glory.

Workers Party Communists Expose "ANZAC Myth"

The far left hates the fact that every ANZAC Day, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis, young and old turn out to Dawn Parades, to pay their respects to our armed services.

They especially hate the fact that the parades are getting bigger every year.

The Workers Party is doing its best to counter this "unhealthy" trend.


That's socialist "patriotism" for you.

"Air Con" Hits Shops Tomorrow

Ian Wishart's new book on the "Climate Change" scam hits NZ bookshops tomorrow.


The book will also be available overseas. Track it down. Buy it. Read it. Promote it. Get googling.

Former Communist Terrorist Leader Joins Anti Israel Movement

Ronnie Kasrils, Soviet trained former South African cabinet minister has joined the anti Israel "Apartheid" movement.



From Links



Ronnie Kasrils spoke at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow on March 20, 2009, at a talk organised by Pulsemedia.org and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. During the years of apartheid rule in South Africa, Ronnie Kasrils was a leader in the banned South African Communist Party and African National Congress, and its military wing Umkonto we Sizwe. Hunted by the security police, he was described as ``armed and dangerous''. Kasrils served as a government minister in post-spartheid South Africa until 2008.

Today Kasrils is an activist in the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, which recently won support from Durban dock workers to adopt a policy of boycotting Israeli ships that dock in South African ports.

`Worse than South African apartheid'

``I will state clearly, without exaggeration, that any South African, whether involved in the freedom struggle, or motivated by basic human decency, who visits the Occupied Palestinian Territories are shocked to the core at the situation they encounter, and agree with Archbishop Tutu’s comment that what the Palestinians are experiencing is far worse than what happened in South Africa, where the Sharpeville massacre of 69 civilians in 1960 became international symbol of apartheid cruelty.''

`Four pillars of struggle'

``With that moral advantage, on the basis of a just liberation struggle, we learnt the secret of Vietnam’s victory and strategies according to what we termed our `four pillars of struggle': political mass struggle; reinforced by armed struggle; clandestine underground struggle; and international solidarity."

Boycott, divestment and sanctions

"But unquestioningly, what helped tip the balance, in Vietnam and South Africa, was the force and power of international solidarity action. It took some 30 years but the worldwide anti-apartheid movements and campaigns -- launched in London in 1959 -- for boycotts, divestment and sanctions not only provided international activists with a practical role, but became an incalculable factor in (a) isolating and weakening the apartheid regime, (b) inspiring the struggling people, (c) undermining the resolve of those states that supported and benefited from relations with apartheid South Africa, (d) generated a change of attitude amongst the South African white public generally, and political, business, professional, academic, religious and sporting associations in particular.

``Boycotts made them feel the pinch in their pocket and their polecat status everywhere -- whether on the sporting fields, at academic or business conventions, in the world of theatre and the arts -- they were totally shunned like biblical lepers. There was literally no place to hide from universal condemnation backed by decisive and relentless action which in time became more and more creative."

For ANZAC Day

In the spirit of remembrance.

Obama File 74 Communists Honor Obama's Former Pastor-More Dots Connected

Obama File 73 here

When the pressure came on during last year's presidential primaries, Barack Obama dropped his pastor and spiritual mentor of 20 years like a hot potato.


While Obama regarded Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a major liabilty, the now retired pastor still has some friends in Chicago.


On April 18, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression (NAARPR)awarded former Reverend Wright its highest honour.

According to a report from the Communist Party USA's People's Weekly World.

Human Rights awards were granted to honorees at the event whose work includes ending the death penalty, overturning wrongful convictions, the fight against racism and efforts to help victims of the prison industrial complex. The honorees included:
Patricia Hill, executive director of the African American Police League; Jane Raley, senior staff attorney with the Northwestern Law School; Judith Stuart, an anti-prison activist, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, retired Pastor with the Trinity United Church of Christ; and Karen Yarbrough, Illinois state representative.

Jane Raley is a colleague at Northwestern Law School of Obama's friend and former neighbour Bernardine Dohrn.


Karen Yarbrough is an Obama supporter who "shares the philosophy" of Obama and Congressman Danny Davis-who happens to be a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and has close ties to Communist Party USA.

What is NAAPRPR and why does it matter that it should honour a man who helped shape the views of the world's most powerful politician?

What can a study of NAARPR possibly tell us about Barack Obama?

Dr. Barbara Ransby, a professor in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, emceed the award ceremony.


“As activists we’re always protesting what we’re against, but tonight we are celebrating people who are long distance runners in this struggle,” said Ransby. “Tonight we’re here to seek inspiration and highlight the fight to forge lasting change,” she said. Ransby also noted the historic election of President Barack Obama last November was a detrimental blow to racism in this country.

Barbara Ransby attended Columbia University in New York from 1980 to 1984. Barack Obama was there from 1981 to 1983, while his Chicago friend, former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers (husband of Bernardine Dohrn) studied at nearby Bank Street College of Education during the same period.


Years later Barbara Ransby was a founder of the Black Radical Congress;

On Juneteenth, 1998, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago more than 1,000 Black radicals - activists, scholars, and artists will gather to reflect on our collective past, analyze our contemporary reality and explore strategies and visions for the future...We will also celebrate the long and rich tradition of Black resistance from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Ella Baker and Audre Lorde

Participants came as individuals but represented connections to groups ranging from New Afrikan People's Organization, Black Workers for Justice, The Labor Party, The Communist Party, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, African American Agenda 2000, The Chicago Ida B. Wells Forum and the Committees of Correspondence.

Democratic Socialists of America should also have been added to that list.

A "Call for the Congress" was drafted and issued with the names of over 100 conveners. Some of those who endorsed the call and have participated in the process include: Abdul Alkalimat, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Manning Marable, Leith Mullings, Barbara Ransby, Barbara Smith, Cornel West, Salim Muwakkil, Charlene Mitchell, Angela Y. Davis, Amiri and Amina Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Sam Anderson, Evelynn Hammonds, Julianne Malveaux, Jarvis Tyner, General Baker, Ahmed Obafemi, Cathy Cohen, Robin D. G. Kelley, and many others

Jarvis Tyner and Amiri Baraka were Communist Party members. Manning Marable, Charlene Mitchell and Angela Y Davis were from the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence, While Bill Fletcher and Cornel West represented DSA.

Marable, Mitchell, Davis, Fletcher, West, Barbara Ransby and Robin Kelley would all re-unite in 2007 when they joined the board of Movement For A Democratic Society (MDS)-an alliance of CPUSA, Committees of Correspondence and DSA with key founders of the Weather Underground including Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.


MDS board partial roster February 2007. Mark Rudd, far left, Manning Marable, center, black shirt, Charlene Mitchell, center red top, Jeff Jones, second from right.

In early 2008 several MDS board members, including Bill Fletcher, went on to found Progressives For Obama.

Manning Marable told a British Trotskyist paper in December 2008;

What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...

In April 2002, a conference Intellectuals: Who Needs Them? was held at the University of Illinois.

Panel IV. Intellectuals in Times of Crisis featured;

William Ayers, UIC, College of Education; author of Fugitive Days
Douglass Cassel, Northwestern University, Center for International Human Rights
Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago, Political Science
Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune; In These Times
Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator
Barbara Ransby, UIC, African-American Studies (moderator)

Salim Muwakkil, Cathy Cohen and Ransby were all leading founders of Black Radical Congress. Ayers, Obama and Ransby were all former New Yorkers.

Panel I. Why Do Ideas Matter? featured;

Timuel Black, Chicago activist; Prof. Emeritus, City Colleges of Chicago
Lonnie Bunch, President, Chicago Historical Society
Bernardine Dohrn, Northwestern University Law School, Children and Family Justice Center
Gerald Graff, UIC, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Richard Rorty, Stanford University, Philosophy

The late Richard Rorty was a member of DSA's Religion & Socialism Commission. Black, a personal friends of Barack Obama is a DSA supporter and serves on the Committees of Correspondence advisory board with MDS board members Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Noam Chomsky and Ella J Baker Human Rights Center supporter Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez.


In 2004 Bernardine Dohrn wrote a glowing review of Barbara Ransby's book "Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision"

Ella Baker was close to the Weather Underground in the mid 70s. She was also the inspiration for the Oakland based Ella J Baker Human Rights Center, founded by Obama's recently appointed " Green Jobs" advisor Van Jones-who in turn is linked to former Weather Underground supporters Jon and Nancy Frappier. Van Jones also attended the 1998 Black Radical Congress, while still a leader of the communist organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). In fact Van Jones got to work with Angela Davis.

Angela Davis and Nelson Peery were paired up with younger activists Van Jones, Kim Diehl, Kim Springer, Fanon Che Wilkins, Kashim Funny, and Quraysh Ali Lansana, respectively

Even Barack Obama's then spiritual guide Rev. Jeremiah Wright participated in the Black Radical Congress.

One session at the Congress was entitled;

Faith as a Weapon: Spirituality and the Role of the Church In The
Radical Movement. What are the lessons we can learn from Nat Turner,
Absalom Jones, Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and
other Black ministers as leaders in the struggle? What is the history of
spiritual motivation in the radical/liberation movement?

Panelists: Michael Eric Dyson, Cornel West, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Linda
Thomas, Kevin Tyson


Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson

Kevin Tyson was formerly a leader of the Communist Party's youth wing Young Worker's Liberation League. Dyson and West were both active in DSA's Religion & Socialism Commission.

In 2008 Barack Obama appointed Cornel West to his two member Black Advisory Council.


Angela Davis was keynote speaker at the Chicago NAARPR awards ceremony;

“The election of Obama was a millennium transformation, and we’re in a new historical conjunction in 2009,” noted Davis. “In a short period of time so much has changed,” she said.

Given the current economy there is a very serious crisis erupting in the capitalist system, said Davis. “Many assume Obama is going to save capitalism, but a lot of us here have other ideas about changing the system,” said Davis.

People's Weekly World correspondent Pepe Lozano went on to explain a little about Angela Davis's background;

Davis came to national attention in 1969 when she was removed from her teaching position at UCLA as a result of her social activism and her membership in the Communist Party USA. In 1970, she was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on false charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. During her 16-month incarceration, a massive international “Free Angela Davis” campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.

Incidentally Davis's lawyer was Haywood Burns, founder of the the "legal arm of the black revolution" the National Conference of Black Lawyers-an affiliate of the Soviet front International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

Burns had close ties to Cuba and was involved in several other communist fronts including the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee.

After successfully defending Angela Davis, Burns went on to marry Jennifer Dohrn, sister and supporter of terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.


NAARPR was organized from the organizations formed to support Angela Davis.It was led by Communist Party members and supporters including Davis herself, Charlene Mitchell, Anne Braden and Frank Chapman.

By the early 1980s Frank Chapman led NAARPR and represented the organization in another Communist Party front, the US Peace Council.

Chapman served on the Peace Council executive alongside several party members, including future US Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Chicago activist Alice Palmer.

Later a Democratic Illinois State Senator, Alice Palmer employed Barack Obama as her chief of staff. When considering relinquishing her State Senate seat to run for US Congress Palmer chose Obama to succeed her. She introduced her aide to the Chicago left, starting with a gathering at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Also in attendance was the Obama family's doctor and friend, DSA member and former communist Quentin Young.


Obama and Quentin Young, 2003

When Palmer lost her Congressional bid, Obama refused to stand aside and got her disqualified from the ballot on a technicality. Palmer's friend Timuel Black was called in to mediate and ended up becoming an Obama supporter-even joining Obama's campaign committee during his 2004 US Senate race.

Before the Palmer/Obama relationship collapsed, both joined the Chicago branch of the New Party. The New Party was an alliance of DSA, Committees of Correspondence and the radical community organisation ACORN.

Nationally the New Party was led by such familiar names as Manning Marable, Bill Fletcher jnr, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky and Quentin Young.

The New Party was designed to gather left wing support for "progressives" standing on the Democratic Party ticket. In Chicago Obama worked closely with New Party activist Carl Davidson (a Committees of Correspondence leader, Progressives For Obama founder and long time friend of Bill Ayers) and DSA member Danny Davis.


New Party colleagues Danny Davis center, Barack Obama right


Today NAARPR's strongest branch is in Chicago. it is chaired by Ted Pearson, former state chair of the Communist Party USA, now a leader of the Committees of Correspondence and a supporter of Progressives For Obama.

NAARPR treasurer is Norman Roth, once also leading member of the Chicago Communist Party.

In the 1970s Roth was a leader of the Communist Party front Alliance to End Repression with comrades Abe Feinglass, Jack Spiegel and Jesse Prosten.

Other radicals active in the Alliance included Quentin Young, Timuel Black and Obama friend and across the street neighbour, the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf-another member of DSA's Religion & Socialism Commission.

Another leading Alliance member was journalist Don Rose, who with another former communist David Canter went on to mentor Obama campaign manager and White House advisor David Axelrod.


David Canter with Harold Washington

Rose, Canter and Axelrod all played leading roles in the 1983 election of Chicago's first black mayor Harold Washington. DSA and the Communist Party both backed Washington, creating a movement which later fell in behind Barack Obama.

It was Washington's victory that inspired Barack Obama to first move to Chicago in 1983.

David Canter worked with Obama in the DSA infiltrated Independent Voters of Illinois. Don Rose worked with Carl Davidson to organize the famous 2002 Chicago peace rally where Obama first achieved fame as an opponent of the Iraq War.

In January 2008 former NAARPR leader Frank Chapman wrote an intriguing letter to the People's Weekly World.

Now, beyond all the optimism I was capable of mustering, Mr. Obama won Iowa! He won in a political arena 95 percent white. It was a resounding defeat for the manipulations of the ultra-right and their right-liberal fellow travelers. Also it was a hard lesson for liberals who underestimated the political fury of the masses in these troubled times.

Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary “mole,” not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.

I'm inclined to agree with Frank Chapman. What about you?

Obama File 75 here

Jesus Was the First Communist

Leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation expounds on FDR, Obama, the successes of the Chinese Communist Party, George Bush, "faith" and the re-surgence of communism.



Hat tip Zionist Anti-Communist

Hamas Calls to Exterminate Jews

How is israel expected to reason with men like this?

Ohio Communist "We Are Now in a Time of Great Opportunity and Tremendous Danger"

Bruce Bostick is a retired Ohio steelworker, activist and veteran of the 1970s Venceremos Brigades to Cuba.

He is also a senior member of the Communist Party USA.


In a recent article in the CPUSA's Peoples Weekly World, Boston confronts the problems and opportunities facing the US far left in the Obama era.

Bostick realises, as do we, that the US (and the planet)is at a crossroads. The communists want to build a union led "people's movement" to work with Obama to move the US permanently to the left.

US patriots want to restore their constitution and their republic. They are starting to fight back. The T.E.A Party movement was a great start. Local Republican opposition to Obama's bail-out plans are another promising sign.

To Bruce Bostick and his comrades, such protests (if not checked) are the beginnings of US "fascism".

The communists understand that Obama brings great opportunities to advance ther agenda.

They are going fight tooth and nail to prevail.

In Bruce Bostick's own words;

This past year, our nation’s people were active and mobilized like no time since the New Deal. We rose up and gave the boot to the ultra-right corporate Bush regime. It was, and is, a time of mass revulsion with the wars, lies, union-busting and pension-stealing of Bush and his cronies.

Leaders of organized labor and the mass people’s movements were unanimous in saying they intended to “hit the ground running” after the elections, in order to mobilize people to push for strong progressive reforms: universal health care, labor law reform, jobs, K thru 12 fully funded public education and more.

Our people won a tremendous victory. Barack Obama is now our president, and we have seen some positive gains. The stimulus bill passed and millions of jobs have been saved or created, Bush’s anti-labor executive orders were reversed; a new, more positive budget has been passed, with big money set aside for health care reform; troops are beginning to leave Iraq and a new, friendlier policy toward Cuba is beginning to take shape. All these steps are definitely in a positive direction.

However, corporate, conservative forces in the administration are pushing for more monies for the banks, General Motors bankruptcy and busting the United Auto Workers union. Without a major mobilization of the people, led by organized labor’s massive power, the system will remain intact, with only minor shifts. The far-reaching, progressive reforms that we’ve fought so hard for are in danger and the anger of the people could be turned in self-destructive directions.

I believe that those who declared that we’d “hit the ground running,” meant every word they said. Even President Obama was very clear in stating that “change comes from below.” However, life and times have a way of exerting their own imprints on events. That great people’s mobilization has, as yet, not materialized. There are a number of very real reasons why this is the case. Yet, there is a great urgency, demanding that very organized people’s upsurge.

It is true, as some now say, that a massive mobilization of labor is a very expensive proposition, and the unions and mass organizations spent far above their budgets to defeat Bush and our main enemies.

On the other hand, the cost of not organizing that needed mobilization may be far worse.

Warning signs

Our ship, the Obama administration and a new, more positive balance of forces, has docked. Missing this ship could mean missing the opportunity to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and rebuild our nation’s labor movement. Would it be “cost effective” for our people to miss the best chance we’ve ever had to win national health care? The cost in the suffering of working people is just too horrible to consider.

Seeds of possible consequences of continued inactivity by labor can be seen in recent mobilizations by the extreme right. While many would like to dismiss the right-wing “tea-party” demonstrators as only nutcases yelling at the wind, they may represent far more negative developments.

I knew we had a real problem a month ago, when Republican governors began turning down the stimulus money that would’ve gone for unemployment comp in their home states. I thought we’d see unemployed workers organized to camp out on statehouse grounds, holding rallies for relief. Instead, when I drove past the Ohio Statehouse, I saw right-wingers protesting “taxes and spending.”

If we don’t offer leadership, our enemies will

People out here in “real America” are extremely angry, frustrated that all they had is being taken away, while billionaires, deaf to our pain, continue — with the new administration — to live like sultans, now on our public dime! The tax structure has been twisted into a giant scheme to funnel working folks’ monies to the richest of the rich, and while the tax demonstrators were, actually, rallying against Bush’s tax structure, the people out here only know that they are hurting.

Working people are justifiably angry and are begging for leadership to help them express their pain, and help them fight their way out. Make no mistake about it: if we do not offer real positive leadership, our enemies will. The result of that would not be pretty. It could actually BE fascism! Not the phony “fascism” the ultra-right is calling Obama’s efforts now, but the real, home-grown, lynch-rope toting, union-busting, “we don’t have to pretend that you have any rights” kind of fascism. That is how big the stakes are.

If democracy is a spectator sport, the millionaires win

Some may say, “It’s early yet.” However, early becomes late awfully quick in times of great crisis, like now. More to the point, there is a political culture that we must break, one that says democracy is a spectator sport and that the only players are the millionaires that can afford to play. Our job is to vote once every four years, then go home.

But the new people’s democracies in Latin America are redefining democracy. And our own history, with the labor-led people’s upsurge of the 1930s and ’40’s, showed that a mobilized people, pushing and supporting a progressive government, can bring about great positive changes. That upsurge brought us Social Security, unemployment compensation and the Wagner Act that enabled workers to organize the mass production industries. It took both — the organized, mobilized people allied with the progressive New Deal government.

We have one of those two: the new progressive Obama administration. History awaits the development of the other needed component: the organized, mobilized labor-led people’s movement.

Obama cannot win the Employee Free Choice Act, real health care for all, real pension reform for all, and more, by himself. He even told us so! And no sector of society has the organized power, the long-range view and the ability to create massive coalitions and move them forward, except the labor movement. Obama’s administration is a mixed bag, including, alongside many progressives, some pro-corporate “liberal” forces. These will push to repair the old, corrupt system, leaving it intact with only minor reforms.

The mass labor-led people’s movement can move things much further. Employee Free Choice can be passed and massive gains made by working folks. Real health care for all and pro-worker pension reform for all are at stake, and much, much more. We need to speak out at union meetings, central labor bodies, state federations and retiree groups, calling for labor to act now to mobilize our people.

Pack the city councils, pound the state capitol walls

Mobilization can mean a million or two working families, led by labor, marching on D.C. to support our demands. It can also mean dozens, or hundreds, packing city councils or county commission meetings to urge those bodies to act in the people’s behalf. Demonstrations can pound the walls of state capitals, as well. It may also mean organizing our folks to write letters to Congress or state reps, set up phone banks or run postcard campaigns.

Whatever the form, we need to build this people’s movement now. In all we do, we need to help others understand that what is good for labor is also good for our nation as a whole.

Well now we can't say we haven't been warned!

Sound Advice From Sir Roger

While the National led government is being more responsible and financially prudent than many western countries, that is not enough to bring New Zealand quickly through the recession.

Hard decisions have to be made-now!

ACT's Sir Roger Douglas offers some sound advice to Finance minister Bill English.

Do We Really Want More Of The Same?

The OECD report released last week confirms all of ACT's warnings: New Zealand is one of the world's most indebted countries, has one of the largest current account deficits, and has had low productivity growth for the past 12 years.

This has created a low-wage economy - but Finance Minister Bill English is unwilling to heed the report's advice.

Denying reality is never a good way to determine policy. National must seriously consider the OECD's advice and, unless he considers all the options on the table, Mr English cannot claim to be genuinely interested in fixing the economy.

But Mr English continues to either sit on his hands or move in the wrong direction. While the OECD tells us to sell poorly-managed State assets, National promised to retain State assets - and is now beginning to stack them with political appointments just as Labour did.

The OECD reports that health spending is out of control and can only be tamed by introducing greater public/private competition. National TALKS about allowing competition in health services - but we need action. We need to privatise ACC and utilise private health services before we will see any benefits.

Further, the burgeoning cost of superannuation caused by retiring baby boomers is unsustainable. If we act now, we can decrease the pain in the long term. In the short term, the age of entitlement will have to rise - as the OECD advises - or we will continue to slide behind other nations even faster. In the longer term, we must move away from the current superannuation system towards one that encourages people to save.

When you're in a hole, you need to look at all possible ways to get out. We shouldn't ignore advice simply because Mr English doesn't want to hear it. In fact most of the advice, if followed, would create the kind of growth that occurred from 1984-96. While Mr English is not listening, Labour is moving in the opposite direction to that needed - continuing to have faith in politicians and bureaucrats to spend money more wisely than individuals.

Today, after 12 years of Labour, the average family is $50,000 worse off per year than they would have been with lower taxes and higher growth. Are you really willing to make that sacrifice again so that smug politicians in Wellington feel powerful?

Alternatively we can aim for productivity growth. The reforms of 1984-96 created a platform for high growth, high wages, and healthy economic wellbeing. The OECD is asking us to consider our options and, when you're stuck in a hole, you have little to lose. If we implemented the reforms well, we would all gain.

So come on Bill. Do the RIGHT thing.

Us Banks to be Nationalised? Communists Say Yes

If you want to know the Obama administration's agenda and priorities, read the US communist press. Then look at what the socialist controlled US labor movement is demanding. that will tell you all you need to know.

I am NOT joking.

From the Communist Party USA's People's Weekly World 04/20/09

New moves by administration seen as step toward bank nationalization

In a major change of course, Obama administration officials are saying they don’t have to ask Congress to add money to the Bush administration’s bank bailout and that they can convert the government’s existing loans into common stock. Although the move would turn federal bailout money already handed out into available capital for the banks, it would give the government a major ownership stake in the nation’s largest 19 banks.

Some Republicans are already complaining that the move will make the government the largest shareholder in several banks and that it is really just a back door to nationalization. Others are saying the administration is making the move because it is unwilling to ask Congress for more money when mass opposition to bank bailouts is so high.

In the next few weeks federal bank regulators will finish the so-called stress tests they are conducting on the nation’s largest 19 banks. Several major banks, including Bank of America, are expected to fail those tests with results showing that they need billions. Under the administration’s new approach the “stress” would be relieved, not by pumping in more federal tax dollars, but by changing existing loans to common stock.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said, on a television news program Sunday, that the government had enough money to shore up the banks without asking Congress for any additional money. He did not elaborate further. The shift in administration strategy announced today clarifies his statement.

The 19 big banks have received more than $140 billion from the government, and all of that has been in exchange for nonvoting preferred shares that pay an annual interest rate of 5 percent.

The Obama administration already decided in January in its deal with Citibank what it is now prepared to do with more of the big 19 banks. The Citibank deal would convert $25 billion of preferred stock, in effect, a loan, into common stock, which represents equity for taxpayers.

After doing this, the government would hold 36 percent of Citigroup’s common shares, making it the largest shareholder and bringing it close to having nationalized a major bank.

If the common stock deal is done with all the other large banks that don’t perform well on the stress tests, the government could end up with the controlling interest in several major banks.

Republicans can’t be happy about the Obama administration’s apparent ability to gain so much political space on this issue. Some Republicans could hardly conceal their glee over what they expected would be a tough struggle for the administration in Congress, where Democratic leaders had warned that they would not be able to muster votes in support of more bailout money for financial institutions that had precipitated the economic crisis.

The Republicans are even less happy that there appears to be more support for steps that go in the direction of nationalization than there is for either the approach of more tax cuts for big business or for the approach, as some Republicans have advocated, of doing nothing about the economic and financial crises.

The labor movement has been, since the AFL-CIO’s January executive council meeting in Miami, calling upon the Obama administration to get some control over the institutions bailed out by taxpayers with measures up to and including nationalization.

If anything, labor can be expected to continue “upping the ante” by putting forward additional bold solutions for the nation’s economic problems. Author and economist William Greider, speaking to a crowd of 200 at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington D.C. April 17, said “It’s time for labor to dream bigger dreams” and that “our current economic crisis runs deeper than just the financial meltdown.” He urged workers and their unions to “jump into the discussion of the nation’s future in a large way. It is time for the union movement to lay down the markers and tell Congress, including the Democrats and the White House, that when they meet the marks, we are with them and when they won’t, we can’t support them. The ongoing economic meltdown demonstrates what working people have been saying for years – an economy built on what’s good for Big Business is not good for the country as a whole.”

Justice Will be Done In The End

This moved me to both tears and anger.



Thanks Matthew.

"Chavismo: Christian, Anti-Nazi, Pro-Muslim, and Pro-Jewish"-So Says Chavez's Proposed Ambassador to US

Venezuela's Marxist leader, Hugo Chavez wants to appoint Roy Chaderton Matos as his ambassador to the US.

Who is this man? Why would Chavez choose him for such an important post?


Born in 1942, Chaderton is Venezuela's Ambassador to the Organization of American States (since 15 April 2008). He began his diplomatic career under the Rafael Caldera government as Secretary of the Venezuelan Embassy in Poland (from 1969to 1972). Under the Hugo Chávez government, he was Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2004; Ambassador to France from 2004 to 2006; diplomatic advisor to Francisco Arias Cárdenas, Venezuela's Ambassador to the United Nations, in 2006; and Ambassador to Mexico in 2007.

A February 2009 article by Chaderton, translated for the leftist US journal Monthly Review and published on leftist websites worldwide gives some insight into the man's thinking. It is worth reading in its entirety.

Chavismo: Christian, Anti-Nazi, Pro-Muslim, and Pro-Jewish

Watching television footage of one of the necessary and legitimate protests against the Israeli Embassy in Caracas, I spotted a lone sign with a slogan that left me thunderstruck. The slogan was something like: "We condemn Hitler for not having completed his work of extermination. . . ."

The frightening message, totally alien to the Bolivarian process and the Chavista commitment to liberty, democracy, equality, and social justice, shows that, every now and then in our struggles and protests, "loose cannons" come dog us and that we have to detect them and neutralize them and expel them like any foreign body.

Those hidden anti-Semites are much like other "loose cannons" such as professional anti-clericalists who shout, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" when they encounter a believer, incited by the undeniable fact that a majority of the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy refused to use their potential capacity to become a bridge between Venezuelans in the opposing camps and instead embraced the ultra-right-wing Creoles and the immoral dictatorship of the media. What's lost on these pseudo-Chavista infiltrators is the deep Christian foundation of our socialist process and the social fact that most Venezuelan Catholics, including nuns and priests at the grassroots, are committed to the Bolivarian revolution.

None shall ever be permitted to use the recurrent crimes against humanity committed by the mediocre and murderous militarist elite of the State of Israel as justification for twisting the just rebellion of the Palestinians and solidarity with them into anti-Semitic aberrations.

No leftist has the right to forget that the Jews -- historically persecuted, not by the Muslims who for centuries opened their doors for them, but by first the Christian crusaders, then the inquisitors, and finally the Nazis -- have a historical tradition of pioneering solidarity with social rebellions and progressive thought. Never forget such illustrious Jews as Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Bob Dylan.

Never forget the participation of Jews, even at the cost of their lives, in civil, labor, social, and anti-war struggles in the United States or struggles against the ultra-Catholic military dictatorships in the Southern Cone. Never overlook the fact that, in the United States, against the organized anti-Chavista campaign supported by the "Israel lobby" in that country, American Jewish intellectuals have spoken up: the most famous intellectual in the world, Noam Chomsky, so often cited by President Chávez, and Joseph Stiglitz, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, who has supported us in our struggles against the dictatorship of neoliberalism.

But even if there had been no progressive Jew in history, which isn't the case, it would still be a mortal sin to silence the Jews or call for their extermination. What we must do is to discuss, openly and face to face, the Zionist deviations and the systematic violations of human rights of the Palestinian people. The killing of innocents or righteous fighters in Gaza cannot be solved by applying the radicalized lex talionis which is precisely the barbaric adventure undertaken -- with the cruelty of criminals and electoral opportunists -- by the Israeli battalions.

Repeatedly during the Fourth Republic in Venezuela, crypto-Nazi groups were established, which occasionally vandalized synagogues and other Jewish buildings with anti-Semitic symbols and slogans (e.g., "MSN," "Tradition, Family, and Property," etc.). In general, those were ultra-radical Catholics -- of whom Hitler was one -- of the upper-middle class, who, instead of setting up a vulgar corner bar decorated with a bullfighting theme in their home, opted for a Nazi corner with flags and swastikas, old editions of Mein Kampf, Wehrmacht helmets or Gestapo caps, and sometimes also a fine Luger awaiting an opportunity to kill a Jew. To my surprise, by the way, some compatriots from the Jewish community in Venezuela, whether due to anti-Chavista conviction or sheer lack of awareness, have ended up marching in protest against our Bolivarian government side by side with those crypto-Nazis, inflamed by the poisons spewed by the media's dictatorship.

In those days, too, the Venezuelan diplomats, at the United Nations and other international forums, supported the vast majority of decisions in favor of the Palestinian cause. We just abstained, as in fact I personally did more than once, from any draft resolution containing untenable ultra-radical propositions. I especially remember that, during my time as a member of the Venezuelan Mission to the UN, I organized a meeting, in 1978 at the Tudor Hotel New York, between a group of Venezuelan diplomats, recent graduates guided by the director of our School of International Studies, Carlos Guerón, a Jewish Venezuelan, and the head of the Washington office of the Palestine Liberation Oraganization, Hassan Rahman.

In this international political battle, we, who have a balanced attitude to the problem but are committed to the Palestinian people, come across two manipulative visions that we must not accept. One comes from those who insist on the Holocaust denial as if it were a matter of statistics. One wonders: at what number does the Holocaust begin? Six million? Four million? Two million? One million? Half a million? The controversy would be laughable if it were not tragic. For me there is no doubt that there was a policy of extermination of the Jews in Christian Europe. To trivialize it is to disrespect the memory of its victims and the truth, as it would be to deny the genocide in Armenia, in Rwanda-Burundi, in Hiroshima-Nagasaki, or in Palestine, including the genocide of the indigenous population in Latin America.

The other is the blackmail that gets imposed on us, through the international media dictatorship, which accuses any persons or organizations of being anti-Semites when we raise our voice for the Palestinian cause and denounce the ghettos and concentration camps in Palestine, whose inhabitants are being exterminated by those in search of a final solution, with the First-World "Christian" support, deliberately massacring Arab children in order to eliminate future "terrorists."

Familiar as I had already been with the suffering of the Jewish people since my childhood, through my conversations with my family and my readings, upon arriving at my first diplomatic assignment in Warsaw, the first thing I noticed was the climate of terror sown, among the already decimated Jewish community in Poland, by the anti-Semitic purges designed by the then Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar in 1968, which affected even key Jewish leaders of the Polish Communist Party. Familiar as I am since my adolescence, through my personal dialogues and readings, with the suffering of the Arab-Palestinian people who have been forced to pay for the crimes committed by the Nazis, I cannot but recognize what has been done to the Gaza ghetto as a policy of genocide.

There is much more to say about all this, but for now it's enough that we are filled with spiritual oxygen, and we proclaim the brotherhood of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists, all who believe and pray, and all who don't believe and don't pray.

Meanwhile, the specters of historical anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe, including the Vatican, are stirring again. . . .

Chaderton-an appointee of leftist Rafael Caldera, the man who freed Hugo Chavez from jail and pardoned him for his 1998 coup attempt.

A former ambassador to communist Poland, with contacts in the Palestine Liberation Organisation. A Palestinian supporter and an obvious anti Catholic and Israel hater.

This is the man Hugo Chavez deems appropriate to build bridges to the Obama administration?

Well on second thoughts...

We're All Chavistas Now!

From the Communist Party USA's Peoples Weekly World

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced that he is restoring his country's ambassador to Washington.


After exchanging greetings with US President Barack Obama at the Americas Summit in Trinidad and handing him a Spanish-language copy of Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano's book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, the Venezuelan premier voiced hopes of beginning a "new era" in relations - and said that he had already chosen the new envoy.

Mr Chavez expelled the US ambassador from Caracas in September in solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales, who ordered the top US diplomat out of his country for helping the right-wing opposition incite violent anti-government protests.

Washington hit back by kicking out both countries' ambassadors.

Mr Chavez said: "I have spoken with former foreign minister Roy Chaderton and I have designated him as the new ambassador to the United States.

"Now we just have to wait for the US to give Mr Chaderton the approval to take up this most important post to direct a new era in our relations."

The US State Department said later that it would "work to further" diplomatic relations.

Chinese Chips-Checkmate!

We are s-o-o-o-o lucky China is our friend.

Seriously-why do we tolerate Beijing when its clear intention is domination of the West? Are we blind or just plain suicidal?

From the Times of India

WASHINGTON: The Chinese cyber spies have penetrated so deep into the US system — ranging from its secure defence network, banking system,
electricity grid to putting spy chips into its defence planes — that it can cause serious damage to the US any time, a top US official on counter-intelligence has said.

“Chinese penetrations of unclassified DoD networks have also been widely reported. Those are more sophisticated, though hardly state of the art,” said National Counterintelligence Executive, Joel Brenner, at the Austin University Texas last week, according to a transcript made available on Wednesday.

Listing out some of the examples of Chinese cyber spy penetration, he said: “We’re also seeing counterfeit routers and chips, and some of those chips have made their way into US military fighter aircraft.. You don’t sneak counterfeit chips into another nation’s aircraft to steal data. When it’s done intentionally, it’s done to degrade systems, or to have the ability to do so at a time of one’s choosing.”

Referring to the Chinese networks penetrating the cyber grids, he said: “Do I worry about those grids, and about air traffic control systems, water supply systems, and so on? You bet I do. America’s networks are being mapped. There has also been experience of both Chinese and criminal network operations in the networks of some of the banks”.