I can’t find a video of it, but beck also sat that Van Jones had been to prison for his participation in the Rodney King riots. Van was never at the riots, as corroborated by his employer at the time, and was not arrested there.
I never thought I would have to do this.
I find myself having to facepalm this thread yet again.
Haha, you are unbelievable. “They’ve been known to bomb things before.” That’s just fantastic. Hmmm…did he “lie” well that’s just beyond you isn’t it. All you fools asked for were lies so I gave you two. You’re a big boy, look it up. Hell, if you’re not careful you might even find more!
John, everything you say is worth reading.
OK Glen Beck lied when he claimed no previous President (before Obama) had been sworn into office without swearing on a Bible.
Glen Beck Lied when he said that $1.4 Milliond Dollars of stimulus money had been used to repair a door at Dyes AFB (actual cost was $246000 to repair an aircraft hanger door.
Glen Beck lied when he claimed that the US is the only country with a neutral birthright provision.
Glenn Beck lied when he said that the director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, “has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.”
Glen Beck lied when he claimed that you needed to agree to a privicy act provision to claim money on the cash for clunkers website.
Glen Beck lied about Babara Walters and her attitude on a train (we have already discussed that one)
Glen Beck lied about Van Jones’ involvement in the Rodney King riots.
He didn’t lie about the fact that the gold price would go up but then again given that he gets paid money by Goldline for saying that it was kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.
After smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show, Glenn Beck said on August 27, 2009: “I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts – they just attack me personally.”
Well, the White House is wise to stay above the fray but someone has to set the record straight. And as the person who first hired Van Jones, initially as a legal intern and later as a legal fellow, I am in a unique position to know the truth.
And the truth is: Beck is fabricating his facts.
For instance: several times on his show, Beck has said or implied that Van went to prison for taking part in the Rodney King riots.
No Criminal Convictions
Van has never served time in any prison. He has never been convicted of any crime. And just to be clear: Van was not even in Los Angeles during those tumultuous days.
I know because he was working for me – in San Francisco – when the four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. I was the Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area when Van was an intern.
The verdicts came down on April 29, 1992. I remember Van (who was then a legal intern working with me from Yale Law School) coming into my office in San Francisco. Many of us, including Van, sat there together, listening to the news and weeping. We were all in a state of shock. That night, TV showed the tragic images of LA burning.
The next day, when an initially peaceful march in downtown San Francisco devolved into chaos, Van left the area in tears. He was not involved in any destructive activity. He even penned an essay despairing of the violence and the state of the country.
So how can Beck make such unsubstantiated claims?
The True Story (From Someone Who Was There)
This is what really happened. On May 8, 1992, the week AFTER the Rodney King disturbances, I sent a staff attorney and Van out to be legal monitors at a peaceful march in San Francisco. The local police, perhaps understandably nervous, stopped the march and arrested hundreds of people – including all the legal monitors.
The matter was quickly sorted out; Van and my staff attorney were released within a few hours. All charges against them were dropped. Van was part of a successful class action lawsuit later; the City of San Francisco ultimately compensated him financially for his unjust arrest (a rare outcome).
So the unwarranted arrest at a peaceful march – for which the charges were dropped and for which Van was financially compensated – is the sole basis for the smear that he is some kind of dangerous criminal.
Van has spoken often about that difficult period 17 years ago – and its impact on him, as a young law student. But to imply that he was somehow a rioter who went to prison is absurd. Beck also bizarrely claims that Van was arrested in the Seattle WTO protests. That is just a flat-out falsehood.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Arrests and convictions are all a matter of public record. Beck is at best relying on Internet rumors or even inventing claims to boost his ratings.
Beck is no more accurate with present facts than he is with past ones.
Not a Mysterious 'Czar"
Beck has said repeatedly that Van is some kind of a mysterious “czar,” accountable to no one but the President. A simple Internet search shows that this claim is false. A March 10, 2009, press release announced that Van was hired by the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality - to work on her staff as a “special advisor.”
In other words, Van is within the normal White House chain of command, reporting to an office confirmed by the United States Senate, just like most White House staffers. Media outlets sometimes use the “czar” shorthand. But the facts show that Van has no mysterious role or extra-constitutional powers.
Beck has implied on two occasions that Van Jones and other Obama appointees were not vetted by the FBI. False. I was interviewed in my own office by an FBI agent, dutifully vetting Van. Yet another fabrication on the part of Mr. Beck.
Beck also claims that Van has somehow gained control over $500 million in Green Jobs Act funding and can hand out millions of dollars at his whim. Again, that is patently ridiculous.
No Authority to Hand out Billions
The law is clear that the Department of Labor has authority over the program, with normal rules governing the funds. Anybody who thinks that a lone government official can pass out money, arbitrarily and without oversight, knows nothing about our legal system. A blizzard of lawsuits would stop any such scheme in its tracks, if one were ever put in place.
Perhaps more importantly: final authority at the Department of Labor lies with the Secretary of Labor. Anyone who thinks that a Senate-confirmed, Cabinet-level Secretary would cede control of a $500 million program to some mid-level White House staffer knows nothing about our political system. It is ridiculous.
Promoting Business-Based Solutions
But I have to take on the worst one: Beck repeatedly and mistakenly asserts that Van is presently a communist.
Once again, this charge is easily refuted - most obviously by the pro-business, market-based ideas Van has promoted for years, including in his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy. Van’s book is a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind.
Yes, for a while, Van and his student-aged friends ran around spouting 1960s rhetoric and romanticizing revolutionary icons. But that was years ago. Way back then, I counseled him to rethink his tactics and to work for change in wiser ways.
In time, he jettisoned his youthful notions and moved on to seek more effective and attainable solutions.
Fortunately for all of us, it looks like he has found some. Over the past several years, Van has emerged as the perhaps the nation’s chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment. In his book and his speeches, he highlights the key
role of entrepreneurship in solving our nation’s problems.
From Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
…Glenn Beck lied when he said that the director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, “has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.”[/quote]
Really? Did he now? Hmmmm…“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”
Excerpted from page 787 - 788 of “Ecoscience” coauthored by John Holdren in 1977.
BlueCock, your apology accepted in advance. “Please try to spend at least 0.05s fact checking before posting in the future as it helps avoid weakening your argument unnecessarily.”
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/[/quote]
You evidently haven’t read the book and haven’t seen the context that passage is set in. Try spending a little more than 0.05 seconds on your fact checking so that you actually have some substance to what you write instead of just parroting from someone elses bullshit.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
…Glen Beck lied about Van Jones’ involvement in the Rodney King riots…
[/quote]Did he now?
"Jones says he became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the now-infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th,” says Jones, “and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist.”
In early May 1992, after the L.A. riots had ended, Jones was dispatched by LCCR Executive Director Eva Patterson to serve as a legal monitor at a nonviolent protest (against the Rodney King verdicts) in San Francisco. Local police, fearful that the event would devolve into violence, stopped the proceedings and arrested many of the participants, including all the legal monitors. Jones spent a short time in jail, and all charges against him were subsequently dropped.
Recalling his brief incarceration, Jones says: “I met all these young radical people of color. I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’ I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.”
In Jones’ own words,
"In the wake of the verdicts, Los Angeles exploded in blood and flames.
Also that week, there were disturbances and rebellions in 100 other U.S. cities. One of them was San Francisco (where I was then working as a law student intern).
Recently, I discovered an essay that I wrote at the time. It captures the pain, frustration and aspirations of a much younger person. But I think it speaks well to the thought process of many young activists at that time.
Ironically, days after I wrote this essay, San Francisco police officers illegally arrested me and hundreds of other participants in a peaceful protest march."
BlueCock, I have a feeling this is going to be fun. Thanks for posting that list. Adios a lo que poca credibilidad usted tenia.
[/quote]
Did you even read what you cut and pasted?
Beck claimed that Van Jones had spent time in prison for being involved in LA riots. Van Jones was in fact briefly detained by the police without being formally charged for his involvement in a peaceful demonstration in San Francisco. Beck was lying, again.
Any chance you are going to respond on the Gold issue?
By the way, isn’t it interesting that all the videos where Beck makes these wild and factually incorrect claims are being pulled from youtube? I am not saying anything here, I am just asking questions. It is almost as if someone wanted to cover up the lies.
Now I am not a journalist, I am just an ordinary guy, asking questions. Questions that the right wing infotainment channels are too afraid to ask. It’s just that I sniff I love my country sob I love my country so much wail.
[quote]siouxperman wrote:
After smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show, Glenn Beck said on August 27, 2009: “I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts – they just attack me personally.”
Well, the White House is wise to stay above the fray but someone has to set the record straight. And as the person who first hired Van Jones, initially as a legal intern and later as a legal fellow, I am in a unique position to know the truth.
And the truth is: Beck is fabricating his facts.
For instance: several times on his show, Beck has said or implied that Van went to prison for taking part in the Rodney King riots.
No Criminal Convictions
Van has never served time in any prison. He has never been convicted of any crime. And just to be clear: Van was not even in Los Angeles during those tumultuous days.
I know because he was working for me – in San Francisco – when the four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. I was the Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area when Van was an intern.
The verdicts came down on April 29, 1992. I remember Van (who was then a legal intern working with me from Yale Law School) coming into my office in San Francisco. Many of us, including Van, sat there together, listening to the news and weeping. We were all in a state of shock. That night, TV showed the tragic images of LA burning.
The next day, when an initially peaceful march in downtown San Francisco devolved into chaos, Van left the area in tears. He was not involved in any destructive activity. He even penned an essay despairing of the violence and the state of the country.
So how can Beck make such unsubstantiated claims?
The True Story (From Someone Who Was There)
This is what really happened. On May 8, 1992, the week AFTER the Rodney King disturbances, I sent a staff attorney and Van out to be legal monitors at a peaceful march in San Francisco. The local police, perhaps understandably nervous, stopped the march and arrested hundreds of people – including all the legal monitors.
The matter was quickly sorted out; Van and my staff attorney were released within a few hours. All charges against them were dropped. Van was part of a successful class action lawsuit later; the City of San Francisco ultimately compensated him financially for his unjust arrest (a rare outcome).
So the unwarranted arrest at a peaceful march – for which the charges were dropped and for which Van was financially compensated – is the sole basis for the smear that he is some kind of dangerous criminal.
Van has spoken often about that difficult period 17 years ago – and its impact on him, as a young law student. But to imply that he was somehow a rioter who went to prison is absurd. Beck also bizarrely claims that Van was arrested in the Seattle WTO protests. That is just a flat-out falsehood.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Arrests and convictions are all a matter of public record. Beck is at best relying on Internet rumors or even inventing claims to boost his ratings.
Beck is no more accurate with present facts than he is with past ones.
Not a Mysterious 'Czar"
Beck has said repeatedly that Van is some kind of a mysterious “czar,” accountable to no one but the President. A simple Internet search shows that this claim is false. A March 10, 2009, press release announced that Van was hired by the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality - to work on her staff as a “special advisor.”
In other words, Van is within the normal White House chain of command, reporting to an office confirmed by the United States Senate, just like most White House staffers. Media outlets sometimes use the “czar” shorthand. But the facts show that Van has no mysterious role or extra-constitutional powers.
Beck has implied on two occasions that Van Jones and other Obama appointees were not vetted by the FBI. False. I was interviewed in my own office by an FBI agent, dutifully vetting Van. Yet another fabrication on the part of Mr. Beck.
Beck also claims that Van has somehow gained control over $500 million in Green Jobs Act funding and can hand out millions of dollars at his whim. Again, that is patently ridiculous.
No Authority to Hand out Billions
The law is clear that the Department of Labor has authority over the program, with normal rules governing the funds. Anybody who thinks that a lone government official can pass out money, arbitrarily and without oversight, knows nothing about our legal system. A blizzard of lawsuits would stop any such scheme in its tracks, if one were ever put in place.
Perhaps more importantly: final authority at the Department of Labor lies with the Secretary of Labor. Anyone who thinks that a Senate-confirmed, Cabinet-level Secretary would cede control of a $500 million program to some mid-level White House staffer knows nothing about our political system. It is ridiculous.
Promoting Business-Based Solutions
But I have to take on the worst one: Beck repeatedly and mistakenly asserts that Van is presently a communist.
Once again, this charge is easily refuted - most obviously by the pro-business, market-based ideas Van has promoted for years, including in his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy. Van’s book is a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind.
Yes, for a while, Van and his student-aged friends ran around spouting 1960s rhetoric and romanticizing revolutionary icons. But that was years ago. Way back then, I counseled him to rethink his tactics and to work for change in wiser ways.
In time, he jettisoned his youthful notions and moved on to seek more effective and attainable solutions.
Fortunately for all of us, it looks like he has found some. Over the past several years, Van has emerged as the perhaps the nation’s chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment. In his book and his speeches, he highlights the key
role of entrepreneurship in solving our nation’s problems.
From Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society[/quote]
Wow no less an authority than (cough) Eva Paterson of the Equal Justice Society. That is what we who are informed call one liar covering for another one.
Glenn Beck told the truth about Van Jones, just as he has on a regular basis about all of Obama’s hand picked czars. But, for some reason you want to continue to engage me in this mindless little game of yours. You couldn’t think of even one darn lie that Beck told so you did it, you googled something like “Beck lies”. And low and behold all of these left wing nut job sites pop up and there you are in front of your computer drooling: “I’ll show that mean Mr. Zeb, that Beck is a liar. Eva Paterson says so…(big smile).”
Oh my, oh my oh my.
Okay kid, (deep sigh) time to get your education:
Who really cracked the Van Jones story? It wasn’t Beck but “blogger Trevor Loudon of New Zealand on April 6.”
"If the Van Jones resignation is blamed on his statements about Republicans and 9/11, a great lesson will have been lost. As we argued in a previous column, “It’s the communism, stupid.” If people don’t recognize the dangers of having a communist in the White House, then the nature of the scandal will not have been understood. Blogger Trevor Loudon of New Zealand broke the story on April 6 and has some thoughts on what happened and where this story is heading.
His main point is that Van Jones and Barack Obama share the same Marxist ideology and background. Obama, however, is more careful and clever.
There’s an old saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which road you take.” As Trevor Loudon argues, Jones and Obama know precisely where they’re going. And the Jones resignation doesn’t mean that Obama will take a detour from the road that he wants to take the country on. Indeed, as Loudon explains, they are both on the same road.
The development of the scandal, which was seized upon by World Net Daily, Glenn Beck and other media outlets and personalities, began in Loudon’s research into the existence of communist networks. Loudon blogs at www.newzeal.blogspot.com A compilation of his most important articles on Jones can be found here.
Loudon tells me, “I began to investigate Van Jones after seeing several separate pieces of information. I first came across the name in the mid 1990s in a New Zealand socialist publication which had a small clip about Van Jones-a Yale educated lawyer involved in STORM-Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The name stuck.”
While researching the far-left think Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which Loudon considers the Obama administration’s “ideas bank,” Loudon found a piece by IPS staffer Chuck Collins recommending Van Jones for a top government job. A September 26, 2008 article, posted on the IPS website by Chuck Collins, offered 22 names they thought would make suitable appointments for an Obama administration. He included, “Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center, to direct the Commerce Department’s new ‘green jobs initiative.’”
Remember that this was before the election.
“I researched Jones again at that point and found he was a fellow at the Center for American Progress,” Loudon says, referring to the George Soros-funded entity.
Then a few days after the election he found a statement from former Weather Underground terrorist leader Mark Rudd, who was trying to ease fellow leftists’ concerns at some of Obama’s so-called “moderate” or “conservative” appointments, mostly in the economic realm. Rudd declared:
"Obama plays basketball. I’m not much of an athlete, barely know the game, but one thing I do know is that you have to be able to look like you’re doing one thing but do another. That’s why all these conservative appointments are important: the strategy is feint to the right, move left. Any other strategy invites sure defeat. It would be stupid to do otherwise in this environment.
“Look to the second level appointments. There’s a whole govt. in waiting that [John] Podesta has at the Center for American Progress. They’re mostly progressives, I’m told (except in military and foreign policy). Cheney was extremely effective at controlling policy by putting his people in at second-level positions.”
Podesta was co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Team.
When Jones was appointed “Green jobs Czar” in March 2009 at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Trevor got serious. His first article about Jones’ communist connections appeared on April 6, prompting me to file a series of Freedom of Information Act requests into the question of who recommended and hired Jones. I reported the results, which amounted to Obama Administration stonewalling, in an August 25 column.
Loudon explains how relatively easy it was to ascertain the basic facts about Jones: “It didn’t take more than a few keystrokes to realize that STORM was very influential in the San Francisco Bay Area and had ties to both the Cuban and South African Communist Parties. Jones’ group-and particularly Jones himself-had ties to two former Weather Underground supporters-Jon and Nancy Frappier and the Bay Area branch of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Jones was the keynote speaker at a CCDS fundraiser in Berkeley as late as February 2006.”
This Bay Area branch of the CCDS is basically the same “alliance” of former Weathermen, 60s Maoists and modern communists who supported Obama in Chicago, Loudon explains.
Explaining more of the connections, Loudon goes on, “Two of Jones’ Bay Area radical friends, Betita Martinez (a former Maoist and CCDS member) and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (a former Maoist and one-time Weatherman supporter), served on the board of Movement for a Democratic Society, along with Weather underground leaders Mark Rudd and Bernardine Dohrn.”
He adds, “Obama’s old friend Bill Ayers was also involved, as were leaders of CCDS, including Angela Davis, who works with several Bay Area STORM alumni, leaders of the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America and several Institute for Policy Studies trustees and personnel, including E. Ethelbert Miller, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. The last two are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and founders in 2008 of Progressives for Obama.”
Obama’s socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the DSA. Our February 14, 2008, AIM Column, “Obama’s International Socialist Connections,” explains all of this.
Now that Jones has resigned, Loudon says that “the focus needs to go on who hired him and why an easily identifiable communist revolutionary with a police record could serve as a presidential adviser.”
He explains, “The Obama administration boasted of its extreme vetting procedures, so I find it unlikely that if a blogger from New Zealand could identify Jones as a communist militant that the White House didn’t know.”
In terms of the evidence about who recommended and hired Jones, Loudon says that the focus that Accuracy in Media has put on far-left Oakland Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee is correct, since she was “almost certainly complicit in getting Jones hired.” Lee is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was a presidential campaign adviser to Obama, and is a friend of Jones and Obama. Jones and Lee worked together on “green jobs” in Oakland.
At the same time, Obama’s “brain” Valerie Jarrett is on tape as saying “they” have been watching Jones for years and were happy to recruit him. Since Jarrett is in the White House, “the spotlight must go on Jarrett,” Loudon argues. “But eventually it must come back to the president himself.”
He explains, “Jones and Obama have worked with the same people all the way.”
For example, Loudon notes that “In 1999 Obama was called to New York to set up a left-wing think tank called Demos. He served for a time on the Demos board of trustees. Jones is still listed a member of the Demos board. Demos is a partner organization to the Institute for Policy Studies and also works closely with ACORN and Project Vote-names very familiar to any Obama watcher.”
Explaining the rise of Van Jones, Loudon says, “Seven years ago Van Jones was a Bay Area Alinskyite street communist. After hooking up with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, Democratic Socialists of America, former '60s Maoists, Weather Underground supporters and Demos, he managed to land a job in the White House.”
By comparison, “Twenty-two years ago Barack Obama was a Chicago Alinskyite ‘community organizer.’ After hooking up with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, Democratic Socialists of America, former '60s Maoists, Weather Underground supporters and Demos, he managed to land a job in the White House.”
Just a coincidence?
Loudon concludes, “Jones’ resignation is a blow for the left and a victory for freedom, but it is only the beginning in unmasking a whole series of White House radicals. They may not have been as loud mouth and indiscrete as Van Jones -but that makes them more dangerous, not less. Millions of Americans now have some inkling of what is happening to their country. Now is the time to amp up the pressure and research.”
There were also others who, in print, spoke not so kindly of Van Jones. Are they liars too kid? I bet Eva Patterson doesn’t like them huh?
Look what those nasty right wingers in Teliv (of all places) had to say about your hero’s pick, are they liars too?
"White House adviser immortalized socialist activist
Founded group named after leader with ties to Weathermen terrorists
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Van Jones
TEL AVIV, Israel â?? The man appointed as a special environmental adviser to the White House previously founded a major human rights center named after a known socialist activist with close ties to the Weathermen Underground terrorist organization.
Van Jones, an environmental activist, has been tapped to serve as the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to the White House blog, Jones’ duties will include helping to craft job-generating climate policy and ensuring equal opportunity in the administration’s energy proposals.
Jones, formerly a self-described “rowdy black nationalist,” is also co-founder and president of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, named after a little-known civil rights firebrand.
A bio of Baker on the center’s website focuses on her contributions to racial equality â?? her involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP; an organization she founded to fight Jim Crow laws; and her work with Martin Luther King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Not mentioned, however, is that Baker was an avowed socialist who worked closely with communist activists. She also participated in events that were close to the radical Weathermen group.
In the 1970’s, Baker collaborated with Arthur Kinoy, a civil rights leader, to form the Mass Party Organizing Committee, a socialist organization. Baker’s ideas have been credited with influencing the philosophy of the Students for a Democratic Society, from which the Weathermen evolved.
Although she expressed mixed attitudes toward communism, she worked with several communist activists, including secret party member Stanley Levison, who was identified by communist researcher Trevor Loudon as the moneyman for the Communist Party USA. Loudon leads the New Zeal blog.
Baker was also involved with several far-left organizations, most notably Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, which was the “legal” support network for the Weather Underground, according to Loudon.
In 1976, Jennifer Dohrn, sister of infamous Weathermen leader Bernardine Dohrn, organized a large Chicago conference, entitled “Hard Times,” designed by the Weathermen to unite the U.S. far-left into a new communist party. According to minutes from the meeting, Baker participated in the conference.
Bernardine Dohrn and her husband, Weathermen radical Bill Ayers, were the focus of major recent news media regarding their relationship with President Obama.
‘Radical communist’ advising White House
WND reported earlier this week that Jones, Obama’s new environmental adviser, recently was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader.
He boasted in a 2005 interview that his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice.”
“I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward,” he told the left-leaning East Bay Express in a 2005 interview. "I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.
“There is a green wave coming, with renewable energy, organic agriculture, cleaner production,” Jones said. “Our question is: Will the green wave lift all boats? That’s the moral challenge to the people who are the architects of this new, ecologically sound economy. Will we have eco-equity, or will we have eco-apartheid? Right now we have eco-apartheid.”
Jones was a founder and leader of the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. The organization had its roots in a grouping of black people organizing to protest the first Gulf War. STORM was formally founded in 1994, becoming one of the most influential and active radical groups in the San Francisco Bay area.
STORM worked with known communist leaders. It led the charge in black protests against various issues, including a local attempt to pass Proposition 21, a ballot initiative that sought to increase the penalties for violent crimes and require more juvenile offenders to be tried as adults.
The leftist blog Machete 48 (link:) identifies STORM’s influences as “third-worldist Marxism (and an often vulgar Maoism).”
Jones did not return WND requests for comment left at his Green for All organization or with a New York publicity firm that says it represents him.
Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots, during which time he was arrested.
“I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. "By August, I was a communist.
“I met all these young radical people of color â?? I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’ I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary,” he said.
Loudon identified several Bay area communists who worked with STORM, including Elizabeth Martinez, who helped advise Jones’ Ella Baker Human Rights Center, which Jones founded to advocate civil justice. Jones and Martinez also attended a “Challenging White Supremacy” workshop together.
Martinez was a long time Maoist who went on to join the Communist Party USA breakaway organization Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, or CCDS, in the early 1990s, according to Loudon. Martinez still serves on the CCDS council and is also a board member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, where she sits alongside former Weathermen radicals Ayers and Dohrn.
One of STORM’s newsletters featured a tribute to Amilcar Cabral, the late Marxist revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands.
The tribute is noteworthy because Jones reportedly named his son after Cabral and reportedly concludes every e-mail with a quote from the communist leader.
STORM eventually fell apart amid bickering amongst its leaders.
Jones then moved on to environmentalism. He used his Ella Baker Center to advocate “inclusive” environmentalism and launch a Green-Collar Jobs Campaign, which led to the nation’s first Green Jobs Corps in Oakland, Calif.
At the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007, Jones announced the establishment of Green For All, an environmental advocacy group which last year held a national green conference where most attendees were black. Jones also released a book, “The Green Collar Economy,” which debuted at No.12 on the New York Times’ bestseller list â?? the first environmental book written by an African American to make that list.
His appointment as a White House environmental adviser was announced March 10.
White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley announced, “Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs, and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities.”
[b]“STOP, STOP ALL THE LIES MY GOSH ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST LYING ABOUT VAN JONES”.
Why do you say that?
Because (sniff, sniff) Eva Patterson say so. LOL[/b]
You see Van Jones is really a nice guy just read a little more about him here:
"President Obama’s “green jobs” adviser is distancing himself from the “9/11 truthers” – Americans who say the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks may have been an inside job – releasing a statement late Thursday that says he didn’t read carefully a petition he signed in 2004 calling for an investigation into the Bush administration’s knowledge of an impending attack.
In the statement, Van Jones also apologized again for several inflammatory remarks he made prior to joining the Obama administration. It was his second apology in two days.
“In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration – some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize. As for the petition [9/11 statement] that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”
Whether he agrees with the views expressed, Jones was a signatory on a 2004 statement calling on then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests “people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”
The statement asked a series of critical questions hinting at Bush administration involvement in the attacks and called for “deeper inquiry.” It was also signed by former Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.
An aide to Jones told FOX News on Thursday night that the green jobs czar “did not carefully review the language in the petition.” The aide did not say when Jones signed the petition or when he became aware of the controversy.
Jones’ second mea culpa comes after a Wednesday apology in which Jones said he uttered “offensive words” in February when he called Republicans “assholes.” He said the remarks “do not reflect the views of this administration” and its bipartisan aims.
But such statements just scratch the surface of Jones’ past commentary, and could present a dilemma for the Obama administration as it struggles to pass health care reforms and other priorities, including a climate change bill championed by Jones.
Jones has consistently leaned on racially charged language, pointing the finger at “white polluters and the white environmentalists” for “steering poison” to minority communities, as he makes the case for lifting up low-income and minority communities with better environmental policy.
A declared “communist” during the 1990s, Jones once associated with a group that looked to Mao Zedong as an inspiration.
Jones’ exceptional past is reminiscent of associations noted during the presidential campaign, when then-Sen. Barack Obama doggedly fended off claims that he was tied to radicals and overzealous activists.
But with now-President Obama entering the perhaps trickiest phase of his young presidency – building the kind of consensus around health care reform that President Clinton could not – a divisive figure could prove disfiguring.
“In this environment, I think the Obama administration should be very careful of its dealings with anybody who can be labeled communist accurately,” said Christopher C. Hull, an adjunct government professor at Georgetown University and public affairs consultant.
“That’s just going to play to the political sensibility that those on the right have that the Obama administration is socialist, literally socialist. … It is unwise to bring in people who actually do label themselves socialist or communist.”
Jones has mellowed considerably since the '90s. In some respects, he is about as mainstream as environmentalists come – with recognition streaming in from high places over the past few years.
He’s won plaudits from former Vice President Al Gore, who declared, “I love Van Jones,” in an interview with The New Yorker.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio penned the write-up on Jones when the presidential adviser was featured in Time magazine’s 100 “Most Influential People.”
“Steadily – by redefining green – Jones is making sure that our planet and our people will not just survive but also thrive in a clean-energy economy,” DiCaprio wrote.
Jones was also named one of the magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment 2008.” He’s earned a slew of other recognitions from other publications and institutions. He was even named one of Salon.com’s “Sexiest Men Living” in late 2008.
Plus he’s the author of the 2008 New York Times best-seller, “The Green Collar Economy.”
Now a member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, his book’s central premise is that environmentalism and green jobs can lift up the economy and lift up low-income Americans.
He is the founder of Green for All, which focuses on creating green jobs in poor areas. He helped the city of Oakland pass a “green jobs corps” program in 2007. Green jobs is also one platform of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which he co-founded in 1996.
He also co-founded Color of Change, an advocacy group that focuses on black issues, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In Thursday’s statement, Jones addressed his work current work.
“My work at the Council on Environmental Quality is entirely focused on one goal: building clean energy incentives which create 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and use renewable resources.”
Jones’ history has drifted between mainstream activism surrounding issues of race, poverty and the environment, and activity he has described as “revolutionary.”
Originally from Tennessee, Jones graduated from Yale Law School in 1993. But his life took a turn after he was swept up in arrests during a rally following the Rodney King verdict.
Jones has claimed he was monitoring police activity at the time, but that he met people in jail who changed his thinking.
“I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of,’” he said in a 2005 interview with the East Bay Express. Jones told the newspaper he stayed in San Francisco, and for the next 10 years worked with a lot of the people he met in jail. Months after the King verdict came down, Jones said, “I was a communist.”
At the time he became involved with a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which described itself as committed to Marxist and Leninist ideas. He also started putting pressure on police in San Francisco, monitoring and drawing attention to allegations of police brutality. He was quoted accusing the police department of “killing black people.”
He became a vocal critic of the federal government during the Bush administration. He and groups he was associated with assailed “U.S. imperialism” after the Sept. 11 attacks and called the assumption that an Arab group was responsible a “rush to judgment.” He later co-signed the petition calling for an investigation into government involvement in the attacks.
For conservative critics, he has – as Hull warned – served as a ready target.
“You can’t nominate all of these czars … and then say, well, you know, I’m not responsible for all these people,” said conservative commentator Ann Coulter. “People will start to blame Obama.”
The White House has voiced great confidence in Jones, announcing in March that the “green jobs visionary” would in his new role advance the goal of improving energy efficiency and tapping renewable resources."
Okay your lesson is over for today run along. If you can try to come up with an actual lie. This time use facts. You won’t find any on the lefty sites, you actually have to go a place where people make sense and speak the truth.
Off you go.