Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

Van Jones: "We want a new system; young people, that's why you were born."

Is Van Jones a dangerous radical who espouses black nationalism, and an avowed communist?

For months articles and television exposés have painted Jones as a "radical," a self-proclaimed communist, who also espoused nationalist ideology. The reason for focus on this person is that he has been appointed as a special adviser to President Barak Obama in a position on the White House Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, D.C.

A civil-rights lawyer, author, and founder and co-founder of various organizations: Green for All, the Ella Baker for Human Rights, and Color of Change, Jones has been characterized as "an early green jobs visionary," the "new face of environmentalism", and a dangerous radical who has gained entrance to the White House and influence with the President of the United States.

Here is a contemporary video depicting Jones explaining his program where he seems downright mainstream:

T.V. commentator Glenn Beck has taken it upon himself to focus on Jones' racial side. Michelle Malkin provides links to those that support Beck. Of course there is a counter attack, saying "And the truth is: Beck is fabricating his facts."

Is he? Is Glenn Beck fabricating for the purpose of ratings?

Here he is giving the keynote speech at Powershift 09, Green for All:

Is Van Jones a communist, a demagogue, a former radical turned mainstream? You decide. Below are more links to videos that should be viewed. As citizens of the United States, and especially those that have taken an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is our responsibility to find out about advisers to the president that escape formal FBI scrutiny because of a loophole in the vetting system.

More videos on and by Van Jones.

Google video: Lecture - Building a Green Economy with Van Jones, 106 minutes.

Van Jones Video Series, Shift in Action, "Conversations at the Edge" lectures series.

A Busy Earth Day: Van Jones video, All-Day Live-Blog

Van Jones on Government's Role in the Green Economy

The above a just a few of the resources out there that feature information by and about Van Jones.

Update: Van Jones was affiliated at one time with STORM, a third worldist Marxist/Maoist group that disbanded in 2002 because of "problems of internal dynamics and problems around the leadership roles that members played in youth groups."

Other STORM fronts included a Marxist training organization - School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) and an unemployed rights group - People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER).

STORM worked with "mainstream" communists and Jones was seen supporting International ANSWER, a front for the pro North Korea Workers World Party. STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party, with three "core" comrades attending the SACP Congress in 1998. STORM also very much admired Amilcar Cabral, the late revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands.

And they were also very active in anti-Iraq demonstrations in the early 2000s.

STORM apparently has officially "disbanded."

Here is the STORM manifesto, Reclaiming Revolution, published Spring 2004, scrubbed from the most of the internet, but still available in archive sites. Get it while you still can.

Spies STILL among us

KGB successful recruited spies in important government positions who were attracted to communist ideals.

The Soviet-era KGB began life in 1917 as the Cheka as a "temporary organization that Bolsheviks relied to consolidate their rule. It was meant to be abolished once Lenin came to power."

Cheka was abolished after the civil war of 1918 to 1921. Its place was taken by State Political Directorate (GPU) in 1922. Joseph Stalin used the GPU for crushing his opponents.

What triggered the formation of the secret police was not an armed insurrection against Bolshevik rule but a nonviolent strike by government workers. The Cheka's founding decree was a direct response to what Russian history calls "counterrevolutionary speeches" by "upper-level bureaucrats." Thus, on December 20, 1918, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, known by its Russian initials VChK, or Cheka, was created by decree and given its first task: "pursuit and liquidation" of the opposition."

From: The Secret History of the KGB:

"The struggle with these elements," according to a Communist Party Central Committee diktat quoted in the secret history, "must be conducted most decisively, energetically and mercilessly, stopping at nothing. Judicial institutions of the Soviet republic cannot remedy this problem. The necessity of a special organ of merciless execution has been recognized by our entire party, from top to bottom. Our party has entrusted this task to the VChK."

By 1918, the Cheka's full name was expanded along with its functions; it now was known as the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counter-Revolution, Speculation, and Crimes in the Government Bureaucracy. This process continued through a series of name changes.

Even after 60 years, the successor KGB was fixated on the need to murder citizens who led nonviolent resistance to the Bolshevik successor regimes and to infiltrate and disrupt every possible avenue of non-Bolshevik expression. This was necessary, according to the history, "to defend the Soviet state from attacks of the internal and external counterrevolutions."

The Cheka had opponents "shot at the scene of their crimes." Its methods, according to one of its early communiques, called for "merciless destruction" of the government's critics and foes. The secret police quickly spread through Russia's regions, then within the rail- and water-transport systems and inside the Red Army itself. The KGB text decries attempts by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, a minority party in the early Soviet government, to limit the Cheka's powers, have it operate through decentralized structures and subordinate itself to civil control. Soon afterward, according to the history, the entire Cheka was purged of non-Communists, and criticisms of Cheka excesses, even if true, were banned from the party-controlled press.

Later,in 1934 Stalin renamed it ‘the People's Comissariat for Internal Affairs’ and gave it vast punitive powers. Because it was no longer under party rule, Stalin used it as a personal tool in oppressing his people during the ‘Great Terror’ years of the 30’s. The secret police was the most feared institution in the Stalinist years.

After the death of Stalin, the MVD abandoned extreme violence and was reorganized to form the KGB in March 1954. All of KGB’s predecessors used terror as the means to control public dissent while using idealism to recruit agents in foreign countries.

Russian president Boris Yeltsin split the organization after the Soviet breakup. As a result five agencies were formed, each with a separate function. KGB ceased to exist on November 6, 1991.

Here are a few of the known individuals that were recruited in the UK and also in the United States.

Is KGB really dead? A plethora of articles showcasing the fact that ex-KGB Vladimir Putin used KGB training to install himself and "his pals" again in the leadership of Russia where revisionism is rehabilitating the institution. And once again, the network of spies is again at work in the West.

Or, did they ever leave their posts?

More on Internment Camps

Be jealous of your liberty. Be wary; keep a watchful eye; listen for reports, however implausible. If they are bogus, you have lost nothing; but if they are real, you could end up losing your liberty.

Distrustful of government, especially now that we have an executive that is surrounded by known radicals, advisors that are not vetted by the FBI, and one that is proposing changes that are more than unpalatable, changes that are downright unacceptable, for which many Americans will not stand still. What will be done with those intractable, recalcitrant individuals and groups that simply will not conform? Perhaps the beginning step will be placement in facilities that administrations vehemently have denied.

Eric Holder's Hidden Agenda - Let the "howling" begin ...

Do not trust the government to put your [read American] interests first.

The investigation [of the CIA] isn't about torture, but about transnationalism.

Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review:

‘This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law. And to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it.”

It was springtime in Berlin and Eric Holder, a well-known “rule of law” devotee, was speaking to the German press. He’d been asked if his Justice Department would cooperate with efforts by foreign or international tribunals to prosecute U.S. government officials who carried out the Bush administration’s post-9/11 counterterrorism policies. The attorney general assured listeners that he was certainly open to being helpful. “Obviously,” he said, “we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it.”

As the Associated Press reported at the time, Holder was “pressed on whether that meant the United States would cooperate with a foreign court prosecuting Bush administration officials.” He skirted the question in a way Americans ought to find alarming. The attorney general indicated that he was speaking only about “evidentiary requests.” Translation: The Obama administration will not make arrests and hand current or former American government officials over for foreign trials, but if the Europeans or U.N. functionaries (at the nudging of, say, the Organization of the Islamic Conference) want Justice’s help gathering evidence in order to build triable cases — count us in.

"Legal Jihad": How Islamist Lawfare Tactics Are Targeting Free Speech

From: ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law, pdf file, Spring 2009.

Islamist-Friendly Self-Censorship in the United States Marches On

Anti-SLAPP Statutes in the US by State

A Shield for Free Speech, but no Sword against Islamist Lawfare, yet

The Government's Jihad on Jihad

Squelching free speech

" 'Lawfare' gains ground", Brooke Goldstein and Aaron Eitan Meyer, The Washington Times, May 19, 2009

"The Next Phase of Islamist Lawfare", Goldstein & Meyer, The Washington Post

"Lawfare: How Radical Islam Seeks to Silence Its Critics, Aaron Eitan Meyer, New Majority, May 14, 2009

OIC Censors video game depicting Muhammad

Harris condemns Islamist CAIR-CAN and its apologist, the taxpayer-funded centre for faith and the media, Point de Bascule, 15 Juillet 2009

UK Libel Law and Lawfare in the EU

Frank Gaffney interviews Douglas Murray: Freedom & Blasphemy in Europe

The Pending Tax Nightmare of 'Cap and Trade'

C. Austin Burrell

Our Congress is pending receipt of legislation that will produce the most egregious and regressive tax ever levied on the American people and our economy. This is coming at a time when no one can afford the escalation of all energy prices such a tax will produce in every area of the American economy, from top to bottom, front to back.

The proposed structure of this tax would be to , from buses and trucks, to autos, to energy production. According to Congressional Watch, the price of every vehicle manufactured to the new emissions standard would be upped by $1,300 per vehicle, the price of gasoline would jump by 76 percent, and the price of electricity would jump by 95 percent.

In addition, the estimate is that the GDP would be reduced by $2 trillion – minimum –every year beginning with its implementation. Approximately 1.1 million jobs would be lost, before application of economic magnification to a multiple of these losses.

Overall, every American family would be paying over $3,100 a year for these new programs best case, a staggering number for the average family, a hit they can’t absorb. Tax revenues are crashing all over the country as jobs are lost, and opportunities are de-materialized. California’s tax base loss is putting it into crisis as we speak. It is one of a vast majority of states and municipalities that face similar losses.

We are seeing a fantasy focus on job creation, one that has no connection to reality. We have to hope that our legislative processes moderate the extreme elements out of this. If this program isn’t done gradually, this economy will implode: period, no hedge.

I am hard pressed to find any element of our economy not in crisis, and as the financials improve, many looking for simple solutions think this will revive our economy by itself, only to run into taxation policies from Sweden and the old Soviet Union.

This is such simple economics that it’s hard to imagine that the American people can be taken in by this logic, but anyone making that systematic bet for the last hundred years would have been systematically wrong.

Our leaders want us to believe it is different this time. Is it ever, or has it ever been?

This simply manages to touch literally every sector of the U.S. economy, but puts the greatest burden directly on those least able to afford it.

More importantly, this is the Obama equivalent of Bush Sr.’s legendary quote regarding the promise of (read my lips) NO NEW TAXES.

Obama ran on a platform of no new taxes for anyone earning less than $250,000. Given that, is this cap and trade thing going to be called by another name? It doesn’t matter what they call it; it will fall like a ton of bricks on those least able to afford it. How many middle class and marginal poor citizens can afford to pay 45 percent more for gasoline and diesel fuel, or 45 percent more to heat and cool their homes? How many will be able to afford our products whose production and shipping costs will jump also by at least 45 percent?

This goes to the fundamental issue of practical micro-economics. What are we missing here? I think we miss nothing except for those who bury their heads in the sand, hoping for a miracle. To me, miracles are like coincidences: I don’t believe in either. Neither should the American people.

At a time when it appears our government can’t find $49 billion worth of assets stolen by Bernard Madoff and when they have shown themselves to be total clowns about monetary economics, how can they ask us to trust them with a straight face? The Federal Reserve, working with the Treasury, recently injected $1 trillion into the economy in a SINGLE DAY. That was the deficit incurred for the entire World War II era.

Many people have missed this staggering new tax and its implications. This includes some of my wealthiest and most successful friends and acquaintances, well-educated, and presumably rational and logical. As one person said to me, the new tax rate for those earning over $250,000 is only going up five to 10 percent. But that is before they exclude certain previous allowed deductions, or reduced charitable contribution rates.

This is a bad time to engage in social engineering. What is it about this recession and corruption that four consecutive administrations have been unable to understand? We that are involved in trying to stop this enormous manipulation of our entire financial system on a treasonous level, through the mechanisms of fraud and counterfeiting of commercial securities, know what is going on. We have no excuse to remain silent, as with silence goes consent.

I will say something here that has no place in our courts today. This is about the duties of citizens in a democracy. Right now, they are allowing these duties to be defaulted to others who have demonstrated no commitment to the values consistent with these duties.

Shame! This shame will be visited on our children, but only too far after anything short of a revolution can correct it.

Eleanor: It's a no-brainer that this tax is totally unnecessary.

There is no consensus on "global warming," and the United States, Mexico and Canada have many sources of energy that can be exploited now.

It's an outrage. This is a tax to cripple the American economy, to reduce the standard of living and to reduce the population to penury, in the mode of "social justice," equalizing the outcome for all!

Knowing It and Stopping It Are Two Different Things - Obama's Assault on America

Who would have thought that 21st Century Americans would have a reason to distrust and fear their own government? Every day we are assaulted by news reports of outrages committed by the Obama administration and the dredged-up-news of outrages that were glossed over during several past administrations, beginning with: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton (Bill Clinton), and George W. Bush.

A sitting American president is said to be the "most powerful man on the planet Earth," but if that were true, a president wouldn't need the consent of Congress to implement programs, the participation of the Supreme Court to verify, and that person would be able positively implement immediate changes in the bureaucracies of the Federal government through Executive Order, or fiat.

Many have tried to make changes, leaving the office with the belief that system has a life of its own that is impossible for any one man, or administration to effectively and permanently change. That is, until the arrival of to Washington, D.C. of the "Chicago Cabal," and the ascent of Barak Obama to America's throne.

Americans are beginning to wake up to a horror story and nightmare scenario that they believed impossible because of the "protection" of their Constitution. Experiencing a frightening blitzkrieg against their freedoms in the form of legislation that few read or can understand, they are beginning to know and understand, but will they have the fortitude and the time to do something about it?

And what will they do if the nightmare scenario includes something more draconian than legislation?

A self-explanatory message from Washington, D.C.

Whatever Happened to the Work Ethic?

A First Principle: Work Must Be Valued

The financial bust reminds us that free markets require a constellation of moral virtues.

Author Steve Malanga, senior editor of City Journal, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute at The City Journal:

Values like thrift, which remained strong through the 1950s, eventually gave way to a culture of controlled consumption and debt.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville worried that free, capitalist societies might develop so great a "taste for physical gratification" that citizens would be "carried away, and lose all self-restraint." Avidly seeking personal gain, they could “lose sight of the close connection which exists between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all” and ultimately undermine both democracy and prosperity.

The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued “productive industry” without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America’s balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion, which Tocqueville called “the first of [America’s] political institutions, . . . imparting morality” to American democracy and free markets. Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the “Protestant ethic” and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism. Like Tocqueville, Weber saw that ethic most fully realized in America, where it pervaded the society. Preached by luminaries like Benjamin Franklin, taught in public schools, embodied in popular novels, repeated in self-improvement books, and transmitted to immigrants, that ethic undergirded and promoted America’s economic success.

Drug Insurgency on the Southern Border

Mexican drug cartels are operating with impunity in hundreds of cities and towns within the United States. In spite of Indictments against cartel members, including cases in Brooklyn and Chicago, few are in custody.

Oliver North's "War Stories" episode "Drug Insurgency in Mexico:"

Part 1; Part 1; Part 2.

The Border Patrol has attempted to tell the American public, but for some reason, the media doesn't seem interested.

Now Mexico has added a new tourist attraction legalization of pot for "personal use." Perhaps this is because remittances from the U.S. have shrunk because of economic problems and Mexicans are being asked to send money to their relatives still in the United States. Also the Mexican economy has shruk 10.3 percent.