Trevor Loudon's New Zeal blog has moved to

TrevorLoudon.com

redirecting you there now

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Terror Suspects were Active in Obama's Socialist "New Party"

On September 24, about 20 FBI agents spent most of the day searching the Logan Square residence of Chicago activists Stephanie Weiner and her husband, Joseph Iosbaker, reports the Chicago Tribune.

Working for Willie Delgado


In 1998 the duo worked as leaders of the Chicago New Party, alongside Frankie Torres, Deborah McCoy, Jose Kader, Bob Palmer, Rafael Rodriguez (Board of Directors, Rosenberg Fund for Children), Yakira Nunez, Vinnie Izurieta, Pryianka Basu, Dave Rolston, and Mary Robles. Joe Iosbaker was at the time serving as Precinct Captain for Miguel del Valle in the 13th Ward (Remember that name, we investigate del Valle a little further down). He had been working election day at this same precinct for "progressive" candidates for about a decade - since far left Chicago mayor Harold Washington won re-election in 1987. Weiner and Iosbaker supported New Party candidate and member, Willie Delgado in his bid for the 35th Ward seat in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Delgado had signed up to the New Party in 1995, along with Barack Obama, Lou Pardo and Communist Party supporter Alice Palmer. Like Obama himself, Delgado was also endorsed by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. In 1998 won the seat against Elba Rodriguez by a very slim 241 votes. Delgado was to hold the seat until 2006.

Willie Delgado supported (and succeeded) Miguel Del Valle


As at 1995, Delgado was a key supporter of Illinois State Senator Miguel Del Valle. Del Valle had also enjoyed the endorsement of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. He met Barack Obama in 1992, when the latter was directing a voter-registration drive called Project Vote. In 1993 he was listed as a "contact or potential member" of Progressive Chicago (parent and sister-organization of the Chicago New Party). Then in the mid-90s, he was listed as a member of Friends of Alice Palmer, alonside Danny K. Davis, Tony Rezko, Timuel Black and Barack Obama. While both Illinois State Senators, Miguel Del Valle and Barack Obama, along with State Rep. Mary Flowers were to work closely together with ACORN representative, April Troope on the passage of "energy assistance legislation".

In 2006, Del Valle left the Illinois State Senate, rewarding Willie Delgado's ongoing support by appointing him to his old seat.

What was the New Party, and what was Obama's involvement?


The New Party was an electoral alliance dedicated to electing leftist candidates to office-usually through the Democratic Party. It dissolved in 1998. Three organizations formed the backbone of the New Party - the Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S.'s largest marxist organization, ACORN and radical labor union SEIU. Also heavily involved were the Communist Party USA breakaway group Committees of Correspondence and far left "think tank" the Institute for Policy Studies.

Obama not only worked closely with these New Party candidates, he himself was a both a member of the New Party and its parent organization Progressive Chicago.  New Party News Spring 1996 page 1, celebrated the Danny K. Davis’s Congressional victory and went on to say;
"New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)..."these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work' said Obama".



New Party News Spring 1996 page 2: "Winners! NP-endorsed candidates Patricia Martin (far left), Danny Davis (center), and Barack Obama (far right), celebrate with Chicago New Party members Ted Thomas and Ruth Schools after their victories in the Democratic Primary last month. (click here for full page)
What goes around comes around. In 2004, Barack Obama was able to win his 2004 U.S. senate race by stitching together a coalition of socialist/communist dominated unions and "community organizations".
He also received the backing of several independent Latino elected officials led by State Sen. Miguel del Valle, Rep. Cynthia Soto and Alderman Ray Colon. Alderman Joe Moore also backed Obama, as did USAction leader and Communist Party sympathizer William McNary. Returning the favor once again on the event of del Valle's election as Chicago County Clerk in 2006, Obama stated, "I am thrilled that Miguel Del Valle is now our City Clerk and I can think of nobody better to serve out a full term than Miguel Del Valle."

The New Party folded in 1998 after its voting tactics were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The FBI is now undertaking what has become a high-profile investigation of former members of the organization. Was Barack Obama a member? Undoubtedly. Will the FBI investigate him? What do you think?

Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Enemy of Liberty-Dennis Brutus-Dies in Capetown

An enemy of liberty on two continents, Dennis Vincent Brutus (1924-2009) died early on December 26 2009 in Cape Town, South Africa


Brutus is remembered for the good work he did against South African Apartheid, but his real life's mission was promoting socialism.

Brutus was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia in 1924, but his South African parents soon moved to Port Elizabeth, in the Republic of South Africa.

Brutus entered Fort Hare University on a full scholarship in 1940, graduating with a distinction in English and a second major in psychology. Further studies in law at the University of the Witwatersrand were cut short by imprisonment for anti-apartheid activism.

Brutus’ political activity initially included extensive journalistic reporting, organising with the Teachers’ League and the African National Congress movement, then already extensively infiltrated by the Communist Party of South Africa.

He was also an early leader in the new South African Sports Association as an alternative to white sports bodies. After his "banning" in 1961 under the Suppression of Communism Act, he fled to Mozambique but was captured and deported to Johannesburg. There, in 1963, Brutus was shot in the back while attempting to escape police custody. He nearly died while awaiting an ambulance reserved for blacks.

While recovering, Brutus was held in the Johannesburg Fort Prison cell which more than a half-century earlier housed [[Mahatma Gandhi]]. Brutus was transferred to Robben Island where he was jailed in the cell next to Umkhunto We Sizwe terrorist leader [[Nelson Mandela]].

Forced into exile, Brutus resumed simultaneous careers as a poet and anti-apartheid campaigner in London, and while working for the [[International Defense and Aid Fund]], was instrumental in achieving South Africa's expulsion from the 1968 Mexican Olympics and then in 1970 from the Olympic movement.

Brutus moved to the US in 1971, serving as a professor of literature and African studies at Northwestern (Chicago) and Pittsburgh. He defeated efforts by the Reagan administration to deport him during the early 1980s.

While in the US Brutus worked closely with the Communist Party USA, Institute for Policy Studies, Africa Action and various other Marxist organisations.

In 1972 he was a sponsor of the Communist Party's National Anti-Imperialist Conference in Solidarity With African Liberation, held at malcolm X College in Chicago.

In the 1980s Brutus served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago based Black Press Institute, a Soviet/Cuban/Grenadan connected operation run by Alice Palmer-later a political mentor to Barack Obama.

Following the ANC/South African Communist Party takeover of South Africa in 1994, Brutus resumed activities with "grassroots social movements in his home country"-mainly Trotskyist oriented operations.

In the late 1990s he was a featured speaker each year at the Marxist controlled World Social Forum and joined protests against the World Trade Organisation, G8, Bretton Woods Institutions and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

In October 1998 Brutus returned to the US to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, by speaking at the "Manifestivity" at Cooper Union's Great Hall, New York.


In 2006 Dennis Brutus contributed a foreword to "Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in an Age of Globalization" by US Trotskyite writer Paul Le Blanc.

Up until this year Brutus still served on the Advisory Committee of the US based Independent Progressive Politics Network-a group linking activists from Democratic Socialists of America, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and other Marxist tendencies.

Among awards Brutus recieved were the US War Resisters League peace award in September 2009, two Doctor of Literature degrees conferred at Rhodes and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in April 2009 -- following six other honorary doctorates – and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the South African government Department of Arts and Culture in 2008.

Brutus was also awarded membership in the South African Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, but rejected it on grounds that the institution had not confronted the country’s racist history. He also won the Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes awards.

Brutus loved Venezuela and Hugo Chavez-seeing him as a leader of world socialism.

Below is a poem presented by Dennis Brutus, when in Venezuela for the eighth meeting of the "Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity" and the "World Forum for Alternatives", October 18, 2008.

There will come a time
There will come a time we believe
When the shape of the planet
and the divisions of the land
Will be less important
We will be caught in a glow of friendship
a red star of hope
will illuminate our lives
A star of hope
A star of joy
A star of freedom


In thanks to President Hugo Chavez and the people of Venezuela,

Dennis Brutus

Even in his last days, Brutus was fully committed to revolution "advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from apartheid".

In August 2009 Brutus called for the "Seattling" of the recent Copenhagen summit because sufficient greenhouse gas emissions cuts and North-South "climate debt" payments were not on the agenda.

Brutus made the following comment in an open letter to the UN Climate Change Gathering in Copenhagen on Oct. 12, 2009,

The danger in falling short of setting deep cuts of 45% from 1990 carbon emission levels is that it puts us beyond the tipping point where unknown additional and more catastrophic changes will be wrought in the earth's water and rainfall systems, ultimately killing millions in sudden and violent storms, droughts and fires.



Brutus intended to attend the conference as he states in the video above, filmed on the occasion of his 85th birthday, however he died shortly afterwards.

Dennis Brutus led a vigorous and committed life, but ultimately a served tyranny and destruction far more than human liberty.

He lived a whole life without learning that liberating South Africa's blacks and coloureds, could be achieved without enslaving everyone else on the planet.

Labels: , , , , , ,