Is Obama Following the Leninist Line?

Is Obama Following the Leninist Line?

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/12/09/is-obama-following-the-leninist-line/

2008-12-09
by Cliff Kincaid

Is former Weather Underground terrorist Jeff Jones claiming that
Barack Obama's "centrist" appointments are a "smokescreen" and that
he is pursuing a strategy of governing that would "make Lenin proud?"
That shocking information is being reported by many different
conservative blogs and Internet sites as proof that the
President-elect is pursuing a political strategy designed to confuse
people about his revolutionary agenda.

Obama may be a Marxist attempting to fool people, but the "Jeff
Jones" post on the Rag Blog website doesn't necessarily prove it. It
turns out that the "Jeff Jones" claiming Obama to be a disciple of
Lenin is NOT the Jeff Jones from the communist Weather Underground.
However, to further complicate matters, the Mark Rudd who is
defending Obama on the same blog IS the former Weather Underground
terrorist Mark Rudd.

On the Rag Blog website, Mark Rudd makes some revealing remarks of
his own, defending the "conservative appointments" of the
President-elect and saying that they are part of a deliberate
strategy to "feint to the right" and "move left." He explains, "Any
other strategy invites sure defeat." Rather than immediately propose
cutting the military budget, for example, Rudd suggests that Obama
will pursue security "through diplomacy and application of nascent
international law" and lay the groundwork for eventual defense cuts.

Rudd also declares that left-wingers questioning Obama's cabinet
picks should "Look to the second level appointments. There's a whole
govt. in waiting that 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
is John Podesta, a co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, who
runs the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

Rudd's comments are themselves revealing and newsworthy. But the
remarks of "Jeff Jones" about Lenin really provoked interest and
controversy. Obama's "centrist appointments are a smokescreen; they
co-opt the moderate center, but he's still the commander in chief,"
wrote Jeff Jones. "Even Lenin would be impressed!"

However, the Jeff Jones of the Weather Underground told me that he
was not the Jeff Jones on the Rag Blog praising Obama for following
the Leninist line. He thought that individual was a "Jeff Jones" from
Austin, Texas. Weather Underground member Jeff Jones, by contrast,
now works in New York as a political consultant and environmentalist.
Among other things, he promotes windmills as a solution to America's
energy crisis. Still, he is an Obama supporter, like Rudd and other
members of the Weather Underground.

Richard Jehn of The Rag Blog in Bellingham, Washington, confirmed
this account, saying that "The article posted on the Rag Blog on 28
November 2008 is not by Jeff Jones, the former Weather Underground
member, but rather was written by another Jeff Jones who was an
activist in Austin, Texas in the late 1960s. The article by Mark
Rudd posted on 27 November 2008 on the Rag Blog is indeed by Mark
Rudd the former Weatherman."

Mark Rudd confirmed that he was this Mark Rudd. "Yes, I wrote that,"
he said. But the reply comment was not by the Jeff Jones, formerly of
the Weather Underground. Rudd added, "The right wing is freaking out
because he made a little joke 'Lenin Would be Proud.'"

A little joke?

The controversy has erupted because of interest in what former
terrorists are saying about the new U.S. President, and whether they
know something about him or his political strategy that the public
doesn't. Some conservatives in the media, including Fred Barnes, Bill
Kristol and Mona Charen, have stated that they are impressed by some
of Obama's high-level appointments and that he is coming across as
mainstream and moderate.

But what are the former terrorists who are backing Obama saying?

This interest has been growing because of the continuing controversy
over Obama's relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill
Ayers and other controversial far-left figures, including his
childhood mentor, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. Many
people suspect that the full truth has not been told and, needless to
say, the major media show no interest in continuing to pursue the
question of Obama's past associates and influences.

Blogger Trevor Loudon, a respected anti-communist researcher and
analyst in New Zealand, discovered the "Jeff Jones" and Mark Rudd
articles on the Rag Blog website and his article about their comments
was picked up far and wide as evidence that Obama was adopting a
sophisticated Leninist strategy of making moderate appointments to
his cabinet while seeking to implement revolutionary "change."

Loudon was the first writer to note that the mysterious "Frank" in
Barack Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, was the communist Frank
Marshall Davis. AIM confirmed the identification with another source
and did a series of articles about Davis's involvement in communist
and subversive activities. AIM eventually wrote about the 600-page
file that the FBI had maintained on Davis, covering 19 years of his life.

Loudon acknowledges the error about "Jeff Jones" but says that the
Mark Rudd article may be even more important to the point that he was
making. He says that Rudd is "at most one degree separate from Obama
and as such may well know more of Obama's true agenda than do most voters."

Beyond this controversy, he also points out that former Weather
Underground members Rudd, Jones, Ayers and Dohrn are all now working
through an organization called Movement for a Democratic Society
(MDS), which is operating as "a parent body for Progressives for Obama ."

The Jeff Jones of the Weather Underground, who says he voted for
Obama, openly advertises his past on his own website, as well as his
current activities in the firm "Jeff Jones Strategies." Under the
"Protest" section he even includes an FBI mug shot and his
fingerprints. It declares, " As a leader of the Weather Underground,
Jeff evaded an intense FBI manhunt for more than a decade. In 1981,
they finally got him. Twenty special agents battered down the door of
the Bronx apartment where he was living with his wife and four-year-old son."

Jones told me that he was arrested in October of 1981 but was only in
jail for a couple of weeks. He said he was "not really guilty of all
that much" and got community service and probation after pleading
guilty to an explosives possession charge.

Larry Grathwohl, the former FBI informant in the Weather Underground,
recalls that Jones was a member of the Central Committee of the
Weather Underground and that other members were Bill Ayers,
Bernardine Dohrn and Mark Rudd. He thinks Jones got off easy because
the FBI had used extra-legal tactics to track him down and that most
of the case against him was thrown out.

However, Grathwohl says that Jones' fingerprints were found in a San
Francisco apartment around the time of the Park Police station
bombing in 1970 that killed police officer Brian V. McDonnell . "It
was never clearly stated that Jeff was an active participant in the
Park Police station bombing, but he was in the area at the time it
took place," Grathwohl says. The bomb included industrial metal
staples that ripped through McDonnell and other injured officers.

He also notes that Jones was one of four authors of the Weather
Underground statement, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary
Anti-Imperialism, which was dedicated to Robert F. Kennedy's killer
Sirhan Sirhan and others. The other authors were listed as Billy
Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Celia Sojourn.

"I knew Larry," Jones acknowledged. "I knew him before we went underground."

Jones, who says that he has since " rebuilt my life," includes a
photo on his website of him and New York First Lady Michelle Paterson
at the Healthy Schools Gala in the New York Times building in New
York City on May 12, 2008. In addition to the Healthy Schools
Network, his clients include the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Despite the confusion over the "Jeff Jones" on the Rag Blog, and the
fact that he also supports Obama, Jeff Jones of the Weather
Underground said that he didn't want to comment on the article about
Obama's moderate appointments being a smokescreen.

He did offer the opinion, when asked, that Obama is "not a Marxist."

For his part, during the campaign, Obama said that he shared toys in
Kindergarten and jokingly wondered if that made him a communist.
--

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media.

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