{"id":1943,"date":"2016-01-01T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2024-09-23T13:25:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T19:25:54","slug":"bill-ayers-and-truthout-org-helping-obama-hillary-bernie-look-moderate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/bill-ayers-and-truthout-org-helping-obama-hillary-bernie-look-moderate\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Ayers and Truthout.org: Helping Obama, Hillary, Bernie Look Moderate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Ayers. Remember him?: Unrepentant terrorist<\/a>, SDS riotmaker, pal and political mentor of young Barack Obama, and putative author\/ghostwriter of Obama\u2019s famous 1995 memoir,\u00a0Dreams of My Father<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/a>In 2011, Ayers (shown) publicly claimed authorship of Dreams<\/em> (see video of Ayers here <\/a>) after Dr. Jack Cashill\u2019s forensic literary analysis\u00a0\u2014 in a 2008 article<\/a> and his more extensive book-length analysis in 2011, Deconstructing Obama<\/a><\/em> had convincingly made the case that Ayers, a talented wordsmith, had written the book for the unskilled Obama to help launch the up-and-coming young comrade\u2019s political career.<\/p>\n

During Obama\u2019s 2008 run for the White House, his longtime association with Ayers and Ayers\u2019 terrorist wife Bernadine Dohrn became a burning issue, at least for conservatives; the liberal-left establishment media either ignored the issue completely or unquestioningly accepted Ayers\u2019 assertion that he and Obama barely knew each other, having merely served together on the boards of a couple of non-profit organizations.Obama\u2019s radical mentor Ayers continues to publicly resurface, on his weblog, in speaking engagements at colleges and universities, in friendly interviews with media organizations that dependably lob easy questions, and in his regular op-eds for \u201calternative\u201d media, such as the ultra-left Truthout.org, where Ayers is listed as not only a contributing writer, but also a major financial contributor and a member of the board of advisers.<\/p>\n

In a September 25, 2015 cordial interview<\/a> with the Yale Daily News<\/em>, Yale University\u2019s student newspaper, Ayers casually described himself as \u201ca socialist, anarchist and communist.\u201d (And he looked the part. The portrait photo accompanying the article showed Ayers in his revolutionary chic glory: grizzled Arafat-style stubble-beard, earrings, Mao cap, red shirt and vest.) Not surprisingly, the Yale reporter asked Ayers a powderpuff question about \u201callegations\u201d that he had committed terrorism. \u201cIt\u2019s not true,\u201d Ayers responded, before launching off into his typical tirade about how he and his fellow Weathermen Underground terrorists were righteous prophets sounding the alarm against American genocide in Asia. Naturally, the Yale reporter did not challenge any of Ayers\u2019 \u201cfacts\u201d or assertions, nor did he follow up with the obvious questions that begged to be asked.<\/p>\n

What\/Who Is Truthout.org?<\/strong><\/p>\n

On December 16, I received in my e-mail box my daily message from Truthout.org, this one a fundraising appeal for the organization by Bill Ayers. Ayers holds up for inspiration and emulation Communist-anarchist Rosa Luxemburg, a leading 20th century figure of the Communist movement and a founder of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The unrepentant Weatherman writes:<\/p>\n

This is an extraordinary time of movement-making \u2014 the world we need and desire is being forged in action by people struggling for something better, working together in common cause, gathering momentum and energy.<\/p>\n

Whether we know it or not, we\u2019re always caught up in the whirling vortex of history-in-the-making.\u00a0What we do or fail to do collectively matters.\u00a0Always. But what can each of us do?<\/p>\n

The great revolutionary and loving life-force Rosa Luxemburg, jailed for her opposition to World War I, sent a letter from prison to a friend and comrade who\u2019d complained to her that their movement work was suffering terribly without Luxemburg\u2019s day-to-day leadership.<\/p>\n

First, Red Rosa wrote back, stop whining (excellent advice in any circumstance). She went on to urge her friend to try to be a\u00a0mensch. Oh, I can\u2019t define\u00a0mensch\u00a0for you, she said, but a\u00a0mensch\u00a0strives to love her own life enough to appreciate the sunset and the sunrise, to enjoy a bottle of wine over dinner with friends, or to take a walk by the sea.\u00a0But a\u00a0mensch\u00a0also loves the world enough to put her shoulder on history\u2019s great wheel when history demands it.\u00a0Working that out in practice is a daily challenge\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s also the way forward for all of us.<\/p>\n

Be a\u00a0mensch\u00a0right now:\u00a0donate to Truthout. Because I believe so strongly in Truthout\u2019s mission, I\u2019ve donated a set of signed books, including\u00a0Fugitive Days<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Public Enemy<\/em>, for one lucky reader who contributes tonight.\u00a0Pitch in any amount\u00a0and they could be yours!<\/p>\n

The appeal is signed: \u201cIn solidarity, Bill Ayers, Member of Truthout’s Board of Advisors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truthout\u2019s \u201cAbout Us\u201d webpage lists Ayers as both a contributing writer and a board member. The website also bestows on him the honorific title of \u201cpublic intellectual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truthout\u2019s\u00a0 Annual Report for 2014-2015 lists Ayers as one of less than 50 members of its \u201cI.F. Stone Donors Circle\u201d of individual contributors. The Ayers\/Truthout association with I.F. \u201cIzzy\u201d Stone is appropriate: Long considered an icon for the Left, Stone was held up as an exemplar of \u201cfierce, independent journalism.\u201d Anti-communists, on the other hand, had often suspected that Stone\u2019s longtime, close association with the Communist Party and numerous Party front groups indicated he was far more than a mere fellow traveler and sympathizer. Those suspicions were confirmed in 2009, when documents from the KGB archives revealed <\/a> that Stone had been a Soviet agent for decades for mass-murdering dictator Stalin and the Kremlin thugs who succeeded him. His KGB codename was \u201cPancake.\u201d So, Truthout\u2019s hero, Stone, was helping tyrants stamp truth out and covering for them while they wiped out (ie., \u201cliquidated,\u201d killed) truth tellers. That gives a slightly different meaning to the \u201cTruthout\u201d name, yes?<\/p>\n

Although Ayers may be the most notorious \u201ccelebrity\u201d on the Truthout masthead, he is surrounded there with comrades of similar hue. Other Truthout writers include: Bill Moyers (of PBS fame), Prof. Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman (New York Times<\/em>), Dean Baker, Richard D. Wolff, Robert Naiman, Dahr Jamail, Jeff Cohen, William Rivers Pitt, and Henry Giroux. That\u2019s a short list; there are many more.<\/p>\n

Prof. Henry Giroux, besides writing for Truthout, sits on the organization\u2019s four-man board of directors. A founding theorist of \u201ccritical pedagogy\u201d and a leading spirit in the philosophical subversion known as \u201ccritical theory\u201d and Marxism\/deconstructionism, Giroux is another Truthout \u201cpublic intellectual\u201d whose writings are regularly force-fed to our youth in college courses.<\/p>\n

Truthout writers can be depended upon to stake out ground to the left of the Democrat Party, and even to attack Democrat leadership for \u201cselling out,\u201d which serves to make the socialism of the Democrats appear centrist and moderate by comparison. Whether the issue is federal spending, health care, gun control, abortion, homosexual \u201cmarriage\u201d, LBGTQ \u201crights,\u201d racial politics, global warming, regulation, etc., Truthout can be relied upon to push for more and more centralized control and governmental power.<\/p>\n

This is not surprising when one considers that Truthout writers are also frequently writers for The Nation<\/em>, Mother Jones<\/em>, Democracy Now<\/em>, In These Times,<\/em> and other far-Left publications. Nevertheless, that does not seem to hinder CNN, the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em>, the Washington Post<\/em>, and other establishment media megaphones from citing Truthout propaganda as authoritative \u201cinvestigative reports\u201d in their own reporting.<\/p>\n

Who funds Truthout.org? Blogger\/researcher Bob Feldman notes that Truthout is not as \u201cindependent\u201d as it professes to be. He writes:\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

On its website, the Truthout.org alternative media group makes the following claim:<\/p>\n

We are almost entirely reader-supported. There is absolutely no controlling financial interest behind this organization. Over 95% of our financing comes from small, individual donations. The remainder comes from a small number of grants\u2026We depend solely upon our readership for survival, and so we answer to them alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet according to the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy\u2019s Form 990 filing for 2007,\u201d Feldman notes,\u00a0 \u201cTruthout.org was given a grant of $500,000 by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy \u2018for general support to strengthen editorial content through 2008.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy that subsidizes the Truthout.org website is Bill Moyers, the former Johnson White House Press Secretary turned-PBS show producer\/host,\u201d Feldman continues. He also noted that\u00a0 besides funding the Truthout.org website, the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy owns stock in many of the big corporations that Truthout likes to attack in their anti-capitalist, anti-Wall Street diatribes: Goldman Sachs; American International Group; Fannie Mae; J.P. Morgan Chase; Wachovia; Washington Mutual; Wells Fargo; Exxon Mobil; Chevron; ConocoPhilips; Royal Dutch Shell; General Motors; Ford Motor; Time Warner; Time Warner Cable; Time Warner Telecom; Viacom; CBS; Yahoo; Microsoft; Google; General Electric\/NBC; Disney\/ABC; United Technologies; Boeing; United Health Group; Starbucks; McDonald\u2019s; and Coca-Cola.<\/p>\n

Moyers and the folks at Schumann have used the money generated from these companies to fund other radical groups such as ACORN, Citizen Action,\u00a0Earth Action Network,\u00a0Earth Island Institute,\u00a0Earthjustice, the Environmental Working Group;\u00a0Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting;\u00a0Friends of the Earth,\u00a0The Nation<\/em> magazine, National Public Radio, the\u00a0Natural Resources Defense Council, \u00a0Public Broadcasting Service;\u00a0 the\u00a0Sierra Club,\u00a0 the\u00a0Tides Foundation, and\u00a0the\u00a0Tides\u00a0Center.<\/p>\n

The Moyers\/Schumann claque seems to have no qualms about milking the system to destroy the system. And the folks at Truthout apparently decided long ago to kick the truth out, in favor of ultra-leftwing dogma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Ayers. Remember him?: Unrepentant terrorist, SDS riotmaker, pal and political mentor of young Barack Obama, and putative author\/ghostwriter of Obama\u2019s famous 1995 memoir,\u00a0Dreams of My Father.\u00a0 In 2011, Ayers (shown) publicly claimed authorship of Dreams (see video of Ayers here ) after Dr. Jack Cashill\u2019s forensic literary analysis\u00a0\u2014 in a 2008 article and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[179],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-volume-49","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15872,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/15872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}