09/10/15

Joe Biden’s Secret Backers

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

Author and analyst Trevor Loudon discusses the U.S. presidential election and the various candidates on the Democratic and Republican sides, in the context of the Russian role in global conflict and the Middle East refugee crisis. Loudon exposes how Joe Biden, Obama’s “moderate” Vice President and possible presidential candidate, is linked to the far-left Council for a Livable World, Al Gore, and the Soviet agent of influence Armand Hammer. Trevor also addresses the controversy over whether Bernie Sanders is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the same group which backed Barack Obama’s political career. Members of the DSA “are communists,” says Loudon, who notes that Sanders helped set up the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the U.S. Congress. This is the group (80 members strong) behind Obamacare, illegal alien amnesty, and the gutting of the American military. Sanders “is a hard-core communist,” Loudon says. He is “lying about his true intentions” while “popularizing socialism.” What’s more, convicted communist spy Kurt Stand is campaigning for Bernie!

08/18/15

New Agers Back Socialist Sanders as Messiah

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The huge crowds greeting socialist Bernie Sanders in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination cannot just be attributed to large numbers of left-wingers. There is a hard-core left-wing element to the Sanders candidacy, of course. But Sanders has tapped into what used to be one of Hillary Clinton’s key constituencies, the New Age Movement. A top Sanders adviser is the influential “spiritual teacher” Marianne Williamson, whose self-help books have been heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey and sold millions.

The New Age Movement is a growing group of people in America who have broken with the Judeo-Christian tradition to instead endorse the notion of God as a mystical force inhabiting humans, the earth, or spiritual “masters.” Oprah’s website describes it somewhat differently: “For 20 years, Marianne Williamson has been a pioneer on the front lines of a worldwide spiritual movement aimed at creating a global shift in collective consciousness.”

Taking this perspective into the political realm, Williamson has advocated a Department of Peacebuilding and has created a group called the Peace Alliance to bring this about.

Constance Cumbey has written two books on the New Age Movement and says its “toolbox is mysticism,” or “altered states of consciousness,” which are said to draw people into a relationship with spiritual forces in the world that are part of a “New World Order” and global religion to be headed by an anticipated “messianic figure” of some kind.

Whatever this mean for the world as a whole, it appears that Williamson sees Sanders as the savior of the American political system.

Williamson, who writes on the Sanders-for-president website about the need for “revolutionary power,” has used her vast influence to mobilize her followers on behalf of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. She says the Marxist presidency of Barack Obama hasn’t been radical enough. “Having invested so much hope in 2008 in a candidate who turned out in many ways to disappoint, it’s not easy to summon our internal forces for another big wave of revolutionary fervor,” she says. But Sanders, the “independent” socialist senator from Vermont, is a true revolutionary, she says. “If we all show up and exercise our power as citizens, Senator Sanders can win the presidency in 2016,” she adds.

Analyst Trevor Loudon has documented that Sanders, the only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is actually a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that backed Obama’s political career and works with openly communist groups. “DSA works very closely with three of America’s leading communist groups—the Maoist leaning Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the ‘old guard’ Communist Party USA, and the CPUSA spin-off Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,” notes Loudon. “The four groups have even seriously considered merging in recent years.”

We have noted Sanders’ history of involvement with Communist Party-controlled groups such as the U.S. Peace Council. In the 1980s, he was part of the Soviets’ “nuclear freeze” campaign to undercut President Ronald Reagan’s military build-up.

A former nightclub singer, Williamson herself ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2014 on a platform that included abortion rights, gay rights, socialized medicine, and the need to combat what she perceives as man-made global warming, nowadays called climate change. “While a lifelong Democrat herself, Marianne ran the congressional race as an Independent, making the statement that she was not beholden to either party,” noted writer Tabby Biddle.

“While America has some serious enemies—and it’s certainly our responsibility to protect our country and our children—I believe our country’s way of dealing with security issues is increasingly obsolete,” Williamson declared. “We cannot simply rely on brute force to rid ourselves of enemies. In so doing, we overburden our military by asking them to compensate for the work that we ourselves are not doing. The only way to make peace with your neighbors is to make peace with your neighbors.”

She added that, if she won, she would co-sponsor the bill to establish a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding that would examine “non-violent problem-solving options” to global conflict. The department was to be paid for out of the defense budget.

Labeled by The Hollywood Reporter as “Hollywood’s favorite New Age Guru” because of her influence with movie producers, directors, and actors, Williamson hosted Sanders at her own feminist-oriented “Sister Giant” conference earlier this year. Described personally as a “radical feminist mother,” Williamson has a daughter whose father is not known and whom she refuses to name.

While some of the New Age rhetoric and books can be dismissed as expensive but harmless fun, it’s when these “spiritual teachers” exert political influence and address global issues that we can see a tendency that seems even more radical than the usual Marxist drivel emanating from Democratic Party politicians such as Obama.

However, there is overlap. Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding, which was to be headed by a Secretary of Peacebuilding, was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), one of Fidel Castro’s closest friends in the U.S. Congress.

Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who also works with Williamson, had introduced a similar bill. “The intention is to develop an organized approach, tapping the intellectual and spiritual power of America to develop programs that would include teaching children the principles of peace: teaching them peace giving, peace sharing, mutuality, seeing the other person as an aspect of oneself, of teaching the inner equality of all people,” Kucinich said in a post on Williamson’s Peace Alliance website.

Like Sanders, Williamson is considered by some to be pro-Israel. But in her book,The Healing of America, she discussed how Egypt’s highest Muslim cleric had once approached her “to make sure you understand that Islam is a religion of peace.” She didn’t say whether the Muslim leader condemned and rejected the passages in the Koran that call for killing the “Infidels” who resist Islam.

She also wrote, “The creative challenge of spiritual life is to know enough about God to be hopeful. From Jesus to Buddha to Moses to Mohammed, wayshowers have risen out of the timeline of history to draw maps and pave roads to a more perfect world.” The comparison of Jesus—who led a perfect life and preached love—to the Muslim Prophet Mohammad, is offensive on its face. Islam began in violence and Mohammad himself was a violent warrior.

The term “wayshowers” is common in New Age circles and refers to spiritual beings supposedly leading us into a new world of community and harmony.

When Keith Ellison became the first Congressman to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran, Williamson commented, “Fantastic story.” Ellison, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, endorsed Williamson in her run for Congress.

For a time, Williamson and her associate Jean Houston of the Foundation for Mind Research were considered to be in Hillary Clinton’s political camp. Houston had tried to help Mrs. Clinton, when she was First Lady, “communicate” with Eleanor Roosevelt during a mystical “channeling” session. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote about these sessions in a book on the 1996 presidential election.

At some point, however, Cumbey says Houston and Williamson abandoned Hillary. Williamson said in 2008 that she was supporting Barack Obama and not Hillary because “I am not going to vote with my vagina.”

This was a dramatic turnaround, since Mrs. Clinton in her memoir Living Historyhad discussed hosting Williamson and Houston and other New Agers at Camp David. “You were wonderful to me back in 1994 when you invited me to the White House. It’s a memory I will treasure always, and you gave it to me,” Williamsonwrote back to Hillary in a Huffington Post article.

But the 2014 Williamson article, “An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton,” was actually prompted by Williamson’s revelation that the former First Lady was getting too close to powerful interests in society. Williamson pleaded with Clinton to, “Stop cozying up to the banks, to the chemical companies, to the military-industrial complex, to the party machine, and to all the various financiers who make up the plutocracy now ruining this country.”

The pleas apparently went unheeded, since Williamson eventually broke completely with Hillary and now promotes Sanders for president and writes for his website. Through Sanders and other such candidates, she insists, America can experience a revolution “of light, of consciousness, and love” and “break out of this ridiculous corporate straightjacket that imperils us the way it does now.”

Whatever this means, it has occurred to some on the far-left that while Sanders is taking on “corporate power and oligarchy” and calling for vast federal spending increases for social welfare programs, the “issues” section of his presidential website says absolutely nothing about foreign policy. The group called RootsAction complains that his stump speech hardly mentions the “huge military budget” and says he must challenge “militarism and ongoing war.”

Perhaps Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding will be the focus of one of Sanders’ next speeches, a development that will make the socialist senator not only look like a pawn of Williamson and the New Age Movement, but the true leader of the Loony Left.

07/21/15

THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE

Arlene from Israel

It is Obama himself who has primary responsibility for having moved – traitorously – to empower a dangerous and radical terrorist entity (and more on this below).

But Obama doesn’t operate in a vacuum: Those members of Congress who truly know better, but hesitate to stand up to him (because as Democrats they believe they must ally themselves with a Democratic president or for other political reasons) certainly also have responsibility for the current situation.

And lastly, there are those American citizens who also know better, but have been too busy with their own lives, or too apathetic, to stand up and make their voices heard. The United States is a democracy, and so the people must assume a measure of responsibility. There is much to be done – and no time to be lost! Elected representatives in Congress must hear from their constituents, calling for a resolute stand against the accord with Iran. They must know that they will be held accountable for what transpires.

America, my friends, has lost her way. I do not write this lightly. I grieve. Lose sleep. But I face the reality. And so must each of you.

The reality is that only the people of America can redeem the situation, which has gone beyond horrendous.

Only the people can instill in hesitant members of Congress the motivation to act, when they are focused on what they perceive to be politically expedient. They must understand what is expected of them – starting, but not ending, with a vote against the Iran accords.

As for those elected representatives who have had the courage to stand up, they must be supported and encouraged: They must be urged on to ever greater strength and acts of leadership.

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Please, share this with everyone you know, and in every possible venue – on FB, on websites, on discussion group lists. Now. Because if you decide to do it later, you run the risk of forgetting to do it at all.

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Contact your Senators. You can locate them here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Contact your Congresspersons. You can locate them here:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Emails work. Phone calls are much better. Go for it. Now. Because if you put it off for later, you may forget.

Keep your communication short and polite, but deliver a message that is strong and clear.

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I want to urge everyone living in New York to contact Senator Chuck Schumer:

http://www.schumer.senate.gov/.

I have read several reports indicating that he may be waffling on his challenge to Obama. Let him hear from you.

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Also for those in the NYC area and those prepared to travel to NYC tomorrow:

The STOP IRAN NOW RALLY -Times Square, 7th Avenue and 42 Street in Manhattan. Wednesday, July 22, 5:30 PM.

A huge turnout is needed and you are urged to do your best to make it.

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In conjunction with the NYC rally, there will be a rally in Broward County, Florida:

Federal Courthouse in Ft. Lauderdale, corner of Broward Boulevard and 3rd. Avenue, Wednesday, July 22, 5:30 – 7:30 PM.

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Bring your signs to these rallies, please!

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In Phoenix, Arizona:

An Emergency Meeting on the dangers of the Iran accord and what you can do to stop it.

Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus, Room 101-102, Wednesday, July 22, 6:30 PM.

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In Toronto, Canada:

A rally opposite the US Consulate, 360 University Avenue, Wednesday, July 22, Noon – 1:30 PM.

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Additionally in NYC:

TODAY, Tuesday, July 21, 7:00 PM

STOP IRAN FROM GOING NUCLEAR – Bipartisan Iran Education Campaign

Featured Speaker: Josh Block, President & CEO of The Israel Project

Community-Wide event at Lincoln Square Synagogue, 180 Amsterdam Ave., NYC

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Wednesday, July 22, 1:00 – 2:30 PM.

Analysis of the Iran Deal & Global Islamic Jihadism Featuring Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, sponsored by EMET.

Lunch (dietary restrictions observed)

For more information and to register: [email protected] . $10 entrance fee, bring an ID for security clearance.

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I have previously mentioned EMET, which is working hard at lobbying Congress. Here I also want to note AIPAC, the largest lobby group for Israel – which is working overtime to deliver the message to Congress about the dangers of the Iran deal.

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For clarity on some of the major issues regarding the accord, see this column by Charles Krauthammer, “Worse than we could have imagined” (emphasis added):

“When you write a column, as did I two weeks ago, headlined ‘The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history,’ you don’t expect to revisit the issue. We had hit bottom. Or so I thought. Then on Tuesday the final terms of the Iranian nuclear deal were published. I was wrong.

“Who would have imagined we would be giving up the conventional arms and ballistic missile embargoes on Iran? In nuclear negotiations?

“When asked Wednesday at his news conference why there is nothing in the deal about the American hostages being held by Iran, President Obama explained that this is a separate issue, not part of nuclear talks.

“Are conventional weapons not a separate issue? After all, conventional, by definition, means non-nuclear. Why are we giving up the embargoes?…

“Obama claimed in his news conference that it really doesn’t matter, because we can always intercept Iranian arms shipments to, say, Hezbollah.

“But wait. Obama has insisted throughout that we are pursuing this Iranian diplomacy to avoid the use of force, yet now blithely discards a previous diplomatic achievement — the arms embargo — by suggesting, no matter, we can just shoot our way to interdiction.

“Moreover, the most serious issue is not Iranian exports but Iranian imports — of sophisticated Russian and Chinese weapons. These are untouchable. We are not going to attack Russian and Chinese transports.

“The net effect of this capitulation will be not only to endanger our Middle East allies now under threat from Iran and its proxies, but also to endanger our own naval forces in the Persian Gulf. Imagine how Iran’s acquisition of the most advanced anti-ship missiles would threaten our control over the gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, waterways we have kept open for international commerce for a half-century.

“The other major shock in the final deal is what happened to our insistence on ‘anytime, anywhere’ inspections. Under the final agreement, Iran has the right to deny international inspectors access to any undeclared nuclear site. The denial is then adjudicated by a committee — on which Iran sits. It then goes through several other bodies, on all of which Iran sits. Even if the inspectors’ request prevails, the approval process can take 24 days.

And what do you think will be left to be found, left unscrubbed, after 24 days? The whole process is farcical.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/worse-than-we-could-have-imagined/2015/07/16/aa320b42-2bf0-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html

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Krauthammer wrote this before the vote was taken on the accord in the UN Security Council. Anticipating the vote, he said:

“Approval there [in the U.N.] will cancel all previous U.N. resolutions outlawing and sanctioning Iran’s nuclear activities.

“Meaning: Whatever Congress ultimately does, it won’t matter because the legal underpinning for the entire international sanctions regime against Iran will have been dismantled at the Security Council. Ten years of painstakingly constructed international sanctions will vanish overnight, irretrievably.

“Even if Congress rejects the agreement, do you think the Europeans, the Chinese or the Russians will reinstate sanctions? The result: The United States is left isolated while the rest of the world does thriving business with Iran.

“Should Congress then give up? No. Congress needs to act in order to rob this deal of, at least, its domestic legitimacy. Rejection will make little difference on the ground. But it will make it easier for a successor president to legitimately reconsider an executive agreement (Obama dare not call it a treaty — it would be instantly rejected by the Senate) that garnered such pathetically little backing in either house of Congress.

“It’s a future hope, but amid dire circumstances. By then, Iran will be flush with cash, legitimized as a normal international actor in good standing, recognized (as Obama once said) as ‘a very successful regional power.’ Stopping Iran from going nuclear at that point will be infinitely more difficult and risky.”

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Weep for this, my friends, and then let your elected representatives in Congress know that they must not give up. That you expect better of them.

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You might also like to see Jennifer Rubin on 17 ridiculous things the president said at the Iran news conference. Her counter to Obama’s major misrepresentations is helpful.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/07/15/17-ridiculous-things-the-president-said-at-the-iran-news-conference/

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There are matters I did not get to today, which will keep for yet another time. I want to close here with analysis by Omri Ceren of The Israel Project. Along with Krauthammer’s column, what Ceren tells us is the stuff of nightmares (emphasis added):

“[The political debate] is about how dropping the arms embargo will enable Iran to push the U.S. out of the Gulf, about how giving the Iranians $150 billion will bolster their terror and military programs, about how putting Iran on a 10 year glidepath to zero breakout will trigger Sunni nuclear proliferation, about how coziness between the Obama administration and Iran has detonated American alliances in the region, about how an economically resurgent Iran will become a hostile regional hegemon, and so on. The criticism is that even if the deal successfully prevents Iran from building a nuclear weapon for 10 years, the Obama administration will be funding and boosting Iran’s conventional military capabilities.

“The JCPOA introduces an additional wrinkle… The agreement commits the international community to actively helping Iran perfect its nuclear program over the life of the deal (!) On a policy level, it means Iran’s breakout time will be constantly shrinking. On a political level, it means that the deal will be seen as accomplishing the exact opposite of what the Obama administration promised Congress: instead of rolling back Iran’s nuclear program, it will commit the U.S. and its allies to funding and boosting it.”

05/3/15

Marxist Democrats and the Return of the Hanoi Lobby

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The main failure by top Republicans—and even many conservatives—is that they do not challenge President Obama as the Marxist he is, and they have no coherent alternative to his strategic plan of supporting America’s enemies.

Reflecting the current mindset—that Obama is just a misguided liberal—Republican strategist Karl Rove failed to anticipate or understand the nature of the growing anti-Obama movement, and the potential it holds. He had predicted the GOP would pick up only six seats in the House, when the Republicans picked up 14 seats. He had predicted that Republican would win the Senate with 51 seats, when the actual figure turned out to be 54.

Republicans like Rove do not understand the nature of the Democratic Party and how it has been taken over by Marxist forces. He had advised Republicans in 2008 and 2012 not to refer to Obama as a socialist. However, grassroots conservatives increasingly understand the dangers we are facing.

The 40th anniversary of the end of United States military involvement in Vietnam—and the 50th anniversary of the start of that U.S. military involvement—provide an opportunity to understand how the Democratic Party has changed. During that 10-year period, 1965-1975, more than 58,000 Americans sacrificed and died to save that country from communism.

Today, with the help of the Republican leadership, President Obama is trying to wrap up a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that includes communist Vietnam, a dictatorship with the blood of those Americans on its hands, which has no respect for the human rights of its own people. Interestingly, Obama is trying to sell the agreement as a counter to China’s influence throughout the world. He wants us to believe that China and Vietnam somehow differ on their common objective of achieving world communism at the expense of America’s standing as the leader of what used to be the Free World.

Both countries would gladly welcome the U.S. to help pay to accelerate the growth of their socialist economies and expand their markets.

Vietnam would be free today except for a Democratic-controlled Congress that decided otherwise. Lewis Fanning’s excellent book, Betrayal in Vietnam, notes that “…it was not the Hanoi communists who won the war, but rather the American Congress that lost it.” Fanning writes, “It was not until after the United States elections in the fall of 1974 that North Vietnamese field commanders received the go-ahead in their plans to conquer South Vietnam. As a result of the Watergate scandals, the Democrats had gained forty-three seats in the House. This liberal victory meant that in the 94^th Congress there would be 291 Democrats and only 144 Republicans. In the Senate, the Democrats had gained three seats and the lineup was now 61 Democrats to 39 Republicans. This leftward shift of both congressional chambers played a significant role in the North Vietnamese decision to unleash its army.”

Going through the provisions of various bills offered by Democrats in Congress, he presents the case that “A Democratic caucus of the Congress of the United States, aided and abetted by a few liberal Republicans, cast the South Vietnamese people into Communist slavery.”

That left-wing caucus, Members of Congress for Peace through Law, decided that American military involvement would end, and dramatically reduced aid to the government of South Vietnam. Republican President Gerald Ford, who took power after Richard Nixon’s resignation, understood that Congress would not provide enough assistance to keep the country free of communism. Hundreds of thousands of “boat people” tried to escape the Hanoi communists who took power in Saigon while the communist Khmer Rouge took power in neighboring Cambodia, eliminating almost two million people.

The Members of Congress for Peace through Law eventually grew to became the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest group of congressional members within the Democratic Party. This faction is the subject of Trevor Loudon’s book, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress, which is now being made into a major film.

The only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is Vermont’s “independent” Senator Bernie Sanders, who has just announced he is running for president. It is telling that Sanders, an open socialist who collaborated with the communists through the Soviet-run U.S. Peace Council, thinks he has sufficient stature and credibility within the party to rally the “progressives.”

Sanders worked closely with the communist fronts which were busy in the 1980s trying to undermine President Ronald Reagan’s peace-through-strength policies toward the Soviet Union.

As we have noted, the name of Bernie Sanders, then identified as former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, even showed up on a list of speakers at a 1989 U.S. Peace Council event to “end the Cold War” and “fund human needs.” Other speakers at the U.S. Peace Council event included Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan; Gunther Dreifahl of the East German “Peace Council;” Jesse Jackson aide Jack O’Dell; and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Zehdi Terzi.

In 1981, the Soviet-front U.S. Peace Council held its second national conference. Endorsers included Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis, one of Obama’s associates in Chicago, and David Cortright of a group known as SANE, for the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

Rep. Davis got an award from the Communist Party in 2012 and the major media ignored it. Jeremy Segal recorded video of the Democratic Representative getting the communist award—and still the media ignored it

Today Cortright is the Associate Director of Programs and Policy Studies of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which offers a Ph.D in “Peace Studies.” He is in charge of a conference this week in Washington, D.C. titled, “The Vietnam War Then and Now: Assessing the Critical Lessons.”

The Kroc Institute is named after Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald’s Corp. founder Ray Kroc. She contributed $69.1 million to establish and support the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

The final conference panel, “The Anti-War Movement: What were the impacts of the anti-war movement?,” includes Cora Weiss and Tom Hayden, supporters of the communist enemy, and Cortright himself, an agent of influence or dupe.

Hayden is probably the best known of the “anti-war” activists, having become “Mr. Jane Fonda” when he married the actress after she posed with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down and kill American pilots over Vietnam. Hayden had personally written a June 4, 1968, “Dear Col. Lao” letter to a North Vietnamese official that ended, “Good fortune! Victory!”

Not surprisingly, Hayden, a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the 1960s, would later join “Progressives for Obama.”

The Democrats in Congress at that time were working with what became known as the “Hanoi Lobby,” a collection of communist and socialist groups that played a key role in America’s defeat. The remnants of the Hanoi Lobby are active today in such areas as backing Obama’s normalization of relations with and recognition of communist Cuba.

Then, like now, their plan is to work on behalf of enemies of the United States. Although they usually call themselves “anti-war” peace activists, they don’t seem to be concerned about wars started by anti-American regimes and movements which undermine U.S. interests. The Sanders candidacy will help smoke them out.

Ironically, Sanders is opposing Obama’s Asia trade agreement, largely because Big Labor is against it, while top Republicans in the House and Senate are trying to round up enough votes to approve fast track trade promotion authority for Obama and then pass the agreement itself. These are the same Republicans who have been complaining that Obama has assumed too much executive authority.

It seems as if the Republicans never learn. Or else they don’t want to.

01/12/15

Rep. Kathy Castor: The Castro Brothers’ Best Friend in Florida

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

No Florida Congress member can take more credit in laying the groundwork for President Barack Obama’s “normalizing” of diplomatic relations with Communist Cuba than Tampa area Democratic Party Representative, Kathy Castor.

Despite a very strong Cuban-exile, anti-Castro lobby in her home state, Rep. Castor has been relentless in her quest to make life easier for the terrorist-sponsoring, revolution exporting Castro brothers.

Using commercial opportunities and trade as bait, Rep. Castor has helped build a powerful lobby in her own state, which has set the stage for President Obama’s unilateral decision.

Rep. Castor is not a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus or similar pro-communist alliances.
She emphasizes commercial advantage over ideology in her campaign. Castor will also criticize Cuba’s abominable human rights record when convenient.

However, I believe she is just as ideologically committed to the Castro cause as is President Obama himself.

Interestingly, a report to the Communist Party USA was supportive of several Democratic candidates in the 2004 election cycle, including “Barak” Obama and Kathy Castor’s mother, Betty Castor, in her race for the US Senate from Florida:

It would be helpful for each district to single out House seats that can be swung from Republican to Democrat to develop our list of key races, which includes progressive Frank Barbaro in New York and Cynthia McKinney in Georgia.

A number of exciting candidates are emerging in the Senate, in the first place Barak Obama in Illinois, and also several progressive women including Betty Castor seeking to retain retiring Bob Graham’s seat as Democrat…

Incidentally, Betty Castor was appointed by President Obama in September of 2011, to the J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board, which oversees the worldwide Fulbright Program. On November 13, 2014, the Board elected her as Chair to begin a one-year term on January 1, 2015.

If the Communist Party liked Betty Castor, they should just love her daughter.

Much of Kathy Castor’s pro-Cuba activism has been in conjunction with the Washington, DC based Center for Democracy in the Americas, a spinoff of the far left Center for International Policy, and the notoriously pro-Castro Institute for Policy Studies.

In April 2013, the Center for International Policy partnered with the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation to host “Rapprochement With Cuba: Good for Tampa, Good for Florida, Good for America.” Rep. Castor provided the opening remarks at the Friday evening cocktail event in Tampa, FL and welcomed the panelists. The following day, the panelists discussed the Obama Administration’s Cuba policy, the State Department’s list of terrorist states, the Cuban-American vote, the US Congress’ Cuba policy, doing business in Cuba, deep water oil drilling in Cuba’s territorial waters and travel to Cuba at the Historic Cuban Club.

The highlight of the evening was hearing Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL) express her specific interest in normalizing relations with Cuba. According to Representative Castor, “Congress needs to change its policy towards Cuba, but Congress doesn’t have to act for the U.S. to begin to engage.”

“I am confident that change is on the horizon,”Castor began. “Think about what can happen at the Port of Tampa, ports all across the Southeast. All across America. These are values that we share as Americans — trade, travel and the ability to have a productive dialogue. There’s no reason any longer that it should not move forward.”

Among those cheering Castor that evening was panelist and The Nation magazine contributor, Peter Kornbluh, of the DC-based National Security Archive (another Institute for Policy Studies spin-off). He called Castor a “trailblazer for a new, modern, post-Cold War policy towards Cuba,” and said that the four-term congresswoman can be the catalyst to redefine the Florida-Cuba relationship, which until now has generally been controlled “by Castro-hating exiles who live in Miami.”

Kornbluh has a history of cheerleading for communism.

When a $14 million aid package for the anti-communist Nicaraguan “Contras” came up in the spring of 1985, Congress initially voted it down. Just forty-eight hours before the vote, Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) traveled to Nicaragua. Their “celebrated meetings with the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista junta leaders, which captured the headlines and helped sway Congress, were arranged by Peter Kornbluh, then a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Within a week, the Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega, flew to Moscow and secured $200 million in Soviet aid.” “Shocked and embarrassed, Congress reversed gears” and granted $27 million in aid to the “Contras.”

The Institute for Policy Studies’ 33rd Annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards were granted, Thursday, October 15, 2009. One of those the Award was named for was Cuban intelligence officer and Institute for Policy Studies staffer Orlando Letelier, killed by a Chilean government ordered car bomb in Washington, DC, September 21, 1976. Kornbluh was on the Award selection panel.

Rep. Kathy Castor also attended the Center for Democracy in the Americas’ 7th Anniversary Event, July 11, 2013.

Kathy Castor, left

Kathy Castor traveled to Cuba in early April of 2013, with members of her staff and representatives of the Center for Democracy in the Americas.

As she told the May 19, Tampa Bay Times on her return:

Cuba is changing, however, as I learned on my recent fact-finding visit. Cuba has embarked on meaningful economic reforms, which deserve encouragement by the United States, not continued isolation. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have a window of opportunity to engage and encourage reform in Cuba and should act now…

Reforming Cuba policy will improve our diplomatic standing in the region and, at a critical moment, strengthen the credibility of our policy against terrorism. The Summit of the Americas concluded in 2012 with a warning from our allies that if Cuba is not allowed to attend the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama, they will boycott this important regional conference. The Obama administration should use the next two years to put U.S.-Cuban relations on a constructive path.

Castor said Fidel Castro is no longer in power and described his brother, President Raul Castro, as “a much more practical ruler.”

“They are still a hard-core communist nation, but they are embarking on market reforms in their economy that deserve encouragement,” said Castor.

Castor said she plans to ask President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry “to open talks to lead to greater trade and travel opportunities.”

In December of 2013, the Center for Democracy in the Americas convened “Cubans in the New Economy: Their Reflections and the U.S. Response,” C.D.A. co-hosted at George Washington University and featured Cuban guests, plus Alex Lee, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Rep. Kathy Castor and several other mainly leftist “experts.”

The Center for Democracy in the Americas connection is problematic from another angle.

Until recent times, the Center listed as one of its key Advisory Board members as the infamous Julia Sweig.

Also listed among “former fellows, project co-ordinators and staff” of the Institute for Policy Studies, Julia E. Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In October of 2008, in Miami, Christopher S. Simmons, one of America’s foremost authorities on Cuban Intelligence, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army and a career counterintelligence officer, identified several Cuban spies and their operations in the US. He later added several other names.

Speaking of Sweig, Simmons noted:

She may be one of two very unique categories of agents – an Agent of Influence or a “Persona de Confianza,” – another DI intelligence category. She has directed numerous Council-sponsored Task Forces on Latin America, currently serves on the Board of Directors for Foreign Affairs en Español; consultant on Latin American affairs, Congressional Program, The Aspen Institute (1999-present); Project Director, Center for Preventive Action Commission, Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region (2004); Director, Independent Task Force, U.S.-Cuban Relations in the 21st Century, A Follow-On Chairman’s Report (2001). Wrote OPED pieces re Elian scenario and “Cuban terrorists” in the U.S.

In 2002, Sweig published her book, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. Among those she thanks in her acknowledgements are six Cuban Intelligence Officers: Jose Antonmio Arbesu, Ramon Sanchez Parodi, Fernando Garcia Bielsa, Hugo Yedra, Jose Gomez Abad and Josefina Vidal. Not surprisingly, Sweig does not acknowledge that the six are career Intelligence Officers. The six Cuban spies she thanks are:

Ramon Sanchez Parodi Montoto: Became the first Chief of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, DC on September 1, 1977, when the US and Cuba re-established diplomatic missions. This career spy served in Washington until 1989… Experts remain undecided as to whether he is DGI or from the infamous America Department (DA). In testimony before the US Senate, Dr. Daniel James charged Sanchez-Parodi with targeting the Congressional Black Caucus to foment opposition to existing US policies toward Cuba.
Jose Antonio Arbesu Fraga: Director of the America Area (formerly the DA) of the International Department of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC/ID). Following the 1992 resignation of legendary Cuban Intelligence officer Manuel Pineiro, Jose Antonio Arbesu Fraga, one of the DA’s Vice Directors, was selected as his replacement. In May 2004, Mexico forbade future visits by Cuban officials Arbesú and Pedro Miguel Lobaina-Jimenez de Castro.
Fernando Miguel Garcia Bielsa: As a 1st Secretary at the Cuban Interests Section, he was one 14 spy-diplomats expelled in May 2003. Earlier this year, Garcia Bielsa served as the Political Counselor in Santiago. Normally, Garcia’s extensive DA service, long-term ties to US terrorist groups (i.e., Puerto Rican extremists) and past service in the US would make his Santiago posting an anomaly. However, Santiago is likely a relatively benign operational area for a “burned” spy to continue to work with leftists groups and American agents.
Josefina de la C. Vidal Ferreiro: First Secretary at the Cuban Interests Section. One of 14 expelled in May 2003.
Hugo Ernesto Yedra Diaz: Yedra attracted considerable attention on November 22, 1977 when his briefcase exploded in the lobby of an Upper East Side apartment building. Yedra had set the case down to call for an elevator and apparently failed to activate the safety device on the case’s self-destruct device. Yedra lived in the building, but gathered his documents and fled the scene before police could arrive to investigate.
Jose Gomez Abad: A central figure in an attempted terrorist effort known as the “Black Friday Attack” on November 17, 1962, just weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The FBI detained three Cuban Diplomats from its UN Mission and seized a cache of explosive and incendiary devices. Washington detained the Cubans on espionage-related charges and stockpiling munitions for use against US installations. Cuba’s targets included the Statue of Liberty; retail giants Macy’s, Gimbels and Bloomingdale’s; the main bus terminal on 42nd Street; Manhattan’s busiest subway stations – including Grand Central Station and several oil refineries along the New Jersey riverbank. Twelve detonators, several incendiary devices, grenades and 500 kilos of TNT were to be used on Black Friday – the busiest shopping day in the US.

Many of us forget the murderous intent shown by Castro’s agents in the United States.

Rep. Castor is knowingly, or unknowingly, serving the interests of an enemy nation with a long history of spying, subversion and aiding and planning terrorist attacks on US soil.

She has also allied herself with some of America’s worst homegrown subversives.

Should Kathy Castor and her associates be investigated by the incoming Republican controlled Congress?

For more information on Rep. Castor and more than 70 other US representatives and Senators, read Trevor Loudon’s 2015-2017 Edition of “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress.”

The book is timed for release on April 11, 2015, but you may order your personally signed copy, or copies here:

“Trevor Loudon does the job that few in the media ever attempt” – Glenn Beck

New Zealander Trevor Loudon has addressed more than 400 events, in the United States of America.

He is an internationally known blogger and researcher, noted among other things for exposing the communist background of Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, which led to his eventual resignation from his White House position. Loudon was also the first to publicize Barack Obama’s ties to Hawaiian Communist Party member, Frank Marshall Davis.

Loudon’s research has been cited by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, in many articles, blog posts and in books by well known authors Paul Kengor, Aaron Klein and Jerome Corsi. He has given hundreds of radio interviews and addressed audiences in more than 40 states in several tours of the United States.