Obama and Communism: bumped and updated

Executive Summary: Barack Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers appears to go beyond their Woods Fund board membership. Even today, Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, sound utterly unrepentant over their attempts to overthrow the U.S. government in order to install a pro-communist regime.

Perhaps coincidentally, Obama's name was recently discovered on a captured FARC computer. In the documents, FARC -- Colombia's brand of pro-communist terrorists -- implied that it had met with Obama's representatives to secure his support after the election. Interestingly, Dohrn has traveled to Colombia in the recent past in order to organize against Colombia's pro-U.S. government. Is it possible that Dohrn served as a cutout between Obama and FARC? That much is not yet clear, but the question deserves to be asked.

Additionally, Obama's official campaign blogger is Sam Graham-Felsen, who appears to be a hardcore communist by dint of his relationship with Socialist Viewpoint, which promotes the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Barack Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. While sources such as the Chicago Sun-Times provide a laundry list of Obama's problematic relationships (Rezko, Farrakhan, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Austan Goolsbee), none may prove more damaging than fellow Woods fund directors William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

While the Woods Fund backs highly questionable groups such as the Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) -- with attendant ties to MEChA and the New Black Panther Party -- it is Obama's relationship with Ayers that merits additional scrutiny.

Obama's longtime friendship with Ayers goes beyond their dual presence on the Woods Fund board.

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn... [they are] unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends...”

“...Ayers was a terrorist. Bernardine Dohrn was a terrorist. Ayers has never offered one word of apology — he glories in it, thinks it’s terrific. And that to me is not what I would call acceptable or mainstream behavior,” said Dan Polsby, a former law professor at Northwestern who is now dean of George Mason University Law School. “If Obama takes a different view on that — well, OK, that’s data about Obama.”

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune adds:

Obama minimized his relationship by acknowledging only that he knows Ayers. But they have quite a bit more of a connection than that. He's appeared on panels with Ayers, served on a foundation board with him and held a 1995 campaign event at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers even gave money to one of his campaigns... Yet [Obama] showed no qualms about consorting with Ayers and Dohrn.

But who is Ayers? And what did he really do?

Documents provided by the FBI, released under a freedom-of-information act request, provides some unique insights into the nature of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), which was founded by Ayers. I've reproduced a few key snippets of information from the site as background.

This material documents the WUO's unchanging belief in armed struggle and the necessity of the international communist movement to guide their struggles to create revolution in the United States...

Whereas in 1969 the Weatherman extolled CASTRO... and CHE GUEVERA..., in 1976 their formulations relate more closely to the... Chinese revolution... [the statements of the group include:]

"The goal is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."

...Today the main tasks of our movement are: 1) to build an anti-imperialist working class movement that can join with the oppressed peoples, overthrow imperialism and establish socialism; and 2) To build a communist part to lead the struggle."

One of the central figures of the WUO was its co-founder, William Charles Ayers, who helped organize the Flint, Michigan "War Council" held Dec. 27-31, 1969.

It was at [this War Council] that the decision was made to go underground and to engage in guerilla warfare against the U.S. government... all of the attendees...


...were highly sympathetic to [the Marxist-Leninist] ideology.

As part of their plan to overthrow the U.S. government, the Weather Underground created weapons caches and bomb factories. An accidental explosion in one factory killed several WUO members.

Inspection of the apartment yielded an amount of explosives and bomb making paraphernalia... fingerprints of [Weather Underground] members were found in this apartment [including] William Charles Ayers.

...BILL AYERS is a while male who was born on December 26, 1944, in Oak Park, Illinois. AYERS was one of the authors of the "Weatherman Statement" upon which the WUO was founded... [and is] one of the leaders of the organization since its founding... AYERS submerged into the underground in early 1970 and remains therein. [WUO speakers have stated:]

"People still thank that U.S. imperialism is inevitable. Not only is it not inevitable, but it is losing... What we are about is becoming a part of a struggle that is going to defeat imperialism... World communism is going to turn around the process that has existed for thousands of years. The reason Cuba is poor now is because of 300 years of Spanish imperialism and 100 years of American imperialism..."

"Liberation comes only with the gun."

"...the WUO is headed towards a red-white army which will attack the U.S. from inside while the Viet Cong attacks from outside."

Lest anyone think Ayers is any less radicalized today, despite his collegiate credentials, one need only peruse a recent blog entry from April 13, 2008.

We need to organize and mobilize against illegal wars of conquest and domination, send a sharp warning right now as the powerful mobilize to bomb Iran under the banner of the same exhausted lies and rationalizations, and press the demand for peace in concrete terms:

1. Withdraw all mercenary forces immediately.

2. Set a date-certain—within three months—for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

3. Dismantle all U.S. military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

4. Renounce all claims to the natural resources of Iraq.

5. Call for the creation of an independent international commission to assess and monitor the amount of reparations the U.S. owes to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is only a start, and it is still a choice—solidarity with all people, or endless war and death. As King reminded us, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable...

I’m against [imperialism], and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good—must win.

His wife, Bernardine Dohrn, is no more repentent than he. According to Next Left News, Dohrn spoke at the 2005 National Conference on Organized Resistance. In 2007, Dorhn wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation stating her disappointment in the coverage of her speech to students.

[There is an urgent need] to reject the framework of US military and economic empire, to forge active opposition to white supremacy and grapple with the issue of multiracial organization, and to reckon with the importance of direct action to organizing and educating...

To this day, she appears to recommend a revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a socialist (Marxist-Leninist) state.

“We are living with a permanent war…and a…national security state. How do we go towards building a radical movement?" ...“Terrorism means any opposition to the US government.”

Turning to alternative models of development in the world, Dohrn spoke about Venezuela as a counterpoint to US cultural hegemony. In Venezuela she pointed out a “Democratic, Peaceful, Bolivarian, Revolutionary” government is feeding the people and providing healthcare, thanks to the presence of Cuban doctors... We must remember that “the Black freedom movement” is the cornerstone of our struggle...

“The US invented modern day terrorism".

...A committed radical and revolutionary at 63, Dohrn offered this insight: “The difference between reform and revolutionary struggles is linking the issues…” Addressing the entire audience she offered an apology: “I’m deeply sorry, we never thought we’d leave you this world.”

Put simply, Ayers and Dohrn -- Obama's friends and backers -- are Marxist-Leninists who decry capitalism and refuse to repent for their violent attempts to overthrow the U.S. government.

Interestingly, the twin themes of Obama and communist revolution echoed in a recent discovery of a terrorist computer in South America.

Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker notes an important snippet in Investor's Business Daily. Documents captured by the government of Columbia, which has battled a Marxist guerilla insurgency known as FARC, point to a relationship between the terrorist group and the Obama campaign.

...Admittedly, it pales compared with other material from the dead thug's computer - such as FARC efforts to obtain uranium or Hugo Chavez's $300 million support.

But the little Obama reference within the 15 FARC letters released by the Colombian government signals a disturbing pattern of contacts with rogue actors. It's not the first time, and Obama has yet to distance himself.

In a Feb. 28 letter, FARC chieftain Raul Reyes cheerily reported to his inner circle that he met "two gringos" who assured him "the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support 'Plan Colombia' nor will he sign the TLC (Free Trade Agreement)."

Aside from some interesting possibilities about who these "gringos" are - a congressional delegation did visit Ecuador and an international leftist "congress" was held in Quito around this time - the real question is why anyone secretly consorting with FARC would be able to speak for presidential candidate Obama...

Interestingly, Dohrn has visited Colombia to rail against the pro-U.S. government! Is it possible that she served as a cutout to FARC for the Obama campaign?

At the request of ... human rights groups, Cassel conducted another major investigation in 1998. He was asked to organize an unofficial tribunal to investigate a Colombian Air Force bombing... With help from colleague Bernardine Dohrn, director of the law school’s Children and Family Justice Center, Cassel convened an unofficial “tribunal of opinion” in Chicago. The tribunal, chaired by former Illinois Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon, unanimously found the Colombian government responsible for the bombing and recommended proper prosecutions. The government was invited to the tribunal and declined to participate, so Cassel and Dohrn went to Colombia to present their case to the people.

The American Thinker's Lance Fairchok provides one more data point. Obama's official campaign blogger is Sam Graham-Felsen, who appears to be a hardcore communist by dint of his relationship with Socialist Viewpoint, which promotes the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

The mission of Socialist Viewpoint is anything but mainstream. Except, perhaps, if you work for Barack Obama.

The Socialist Workers Organization was formed to advance the revolutionary Marxist political program in the United States. Our members are long time active participants in the socialist and labor movements. We agree with Karl Marx that society is divided into social classes whose interests are irreconcilable.

The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars, and the degradation of the natural environment...

Socialism, the ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the working class, and the removal of profit from the system of production, is the aim of Socialist Viewpoint, which reflects the political views of the Socialist Workers Organization.

Didn't we try that experiment in the Soviet Union? I mostly forget how it turned out, except for the one hundred million dead.

Just what is it with Barack Obama and Communism? His father, his spiritual mentor, his fellow Woods Fund board members and his official campaign blogger all seem to fit the Communist mold. I think Obama needs to explain his position on Communism and his odd reliance on the principles and personnel devoted to Marxism.

* * *
These important questions remain unanswered:

* Will Obama disclose his full relationship with Ayers and Dohrn?
* Will Obama disavow his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn as well as return any money that they have donated to him in the past?
* Were Obama's representatives speaking directly or indirectly with the communist terrorists known as FARC?
* Will Obama completely denounce Marxist-Leninist ideology, which was espoused by his father as well as friends like Ayers and Dohrn and groups such as FARC?
* Why did Obama employ a hard-core Marxist as his official campaign blogger?

Someone needs to ask these questions... and they need to be asked sooner rather than later.

Update: Gateway Pundit has intriguing new insights into the relationship between Ayers and Obama.