Hugo Chavez, whose ties with Hezbollah have finally made the MSM news recently, just hired former London mayor Ken Livinstone (h/t Siggy; emphasis added):
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has got himself a nice little earner - from his old friend and fellow socialist, Hugo Chavez (pictured right with Livingstone). The Venezuelan president has invited him to work as a consultant on policing, urban planning and transport in the country’s notoriously badly-run capital, Caracas, in the run-up to local elections in November.
“I believe that Caracas will become a first-world city in 20 years,” Livingstone told reporters on a surprise visit to Venezuela. “I have a very extensive network of contacts both domestically and internationally which I will be calling on to assist in this.”
It is two years since Livingstone and Chavez first attempted an arrangement between the two capitals with a deal to supply London with cheap fuel for its bus fleet in return for advice on city management. When Boris Johnson became Mayor in May, he made the cancellation of this agreement one of his first priorities, at the cost of £7m in compensation.
Yesterday, the mayor’s office said of Livingstone’s new arrangement: “Boris Johnson made it clear during his election campaign that he did not want to be on the payroll of Hugo Chavez and did not believe a poor South American country should be subsidising one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
“Ken Livingstone is free, as a private individual, to offer his advice and services to whomever he wants.”
Asked by journalists in Caracas what he was being paid, Livingstone said: “It depends to what extent we will be tapping into our individual resources. The whole cost of this trip has been paid for by the government of Venezuela and as an unemployed citizen I would not be able to pay for my own fare otherwise.”
Some might call this arrangement the reverse of former NY City’s Rudy Giuiliani’s national security expertise.
And I guess that £7m had to go somewhere after all.
Most recently, Dr. Kurtz has turned his attention to a subject that Global Labor has been exploring - albeit from a left perspective - the relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers particularly on the $160 million six year long Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) from 1995 to 2001.
In fact, Kurtz was in Chicago this week to examine the records of the CAC held at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). UIC had invited him to look at the records and then, very oddly, revoked their invitation after a discussion with the donor of the records. Then they reversed course again and invited him back, along with a host of mainstream media representatives who were now paying attention to this issue for the first time.
Caller after caller to WGN read off talking points provided them by the Obama campaign alleging that Dr. Kurtz, and by implication and sometimes directly, Milt Rosenberg, was “smearing” Barack Obama and finding Obama “guilty by association.” They also accused Kurtz of lying.
Yet, when pressed for specifics, these callers had none.
Now keep in mind for those of you not familiar with the Rosenberg show: it has run for decades and has always been thought of as a quiet sober discussion space; generally conservative but usually open to a range of views.
Because Dr. Kurtz has found out as we have been discussing here for some time, that, indeed, Bill Ayers co-founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and then co-chaired its Collaborative arm while Barack Obama was selected to chair the board of directors of the Challenge.
Together Ayers and Obama worked to hand out more than $160 million in and around the Chicago school system to groups that allegedly were going to work to improve student achievement. The effort failed, miserably, at least on the level of achievement.
But Ayers and others claim it was a success - no doubt because it helped them in their battle with the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley Jr. who was trying to wrest control of the Annenberg Challenge grant away from Ayers and Obama. Daley was also trying to crush the Local School Councils set up in 1988 after a campaign that Ayers and Obama both participated in. Those Councils were aimed to be a watchdog over the Teachers Union and the School Board. They were failing too and Ayers and Obama viewed the CAC money as a conduit to prop them up.
So it is a hard fact that Ayers and Obama knew each other well before the time the Obama campaign has stated in the past. And clearly Obama well knew that Ayers was not just a guy from the neighborhood as he stated on national TV.
That must be a difficult problem for the Obama camp to swallow - they pushed their candidate to deny, deny, distance, distance, when, in fact, they long knew of the close political relationship between Ayers and Obama. For all we know, the relationship continues. Ayers backs a key policy proposal of Obama education advisor, Linda Darling-Hammond: to wit, the repayment of the alleged “education debt” to people of color.
Mind you, the attack on WGN was no coincidence: the Chicago Tribune has the Obama campaign email, which reads,
Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse.”
The thing is, these are not baseless attacks, Kurtz is not s “smear-merchant”, and the political discourse is lowered when a candidates’ minions call to insult a talk-radio host.
Stanley Kurtz is an adjunct fellow of Hudson Institute and a fellow at the Hoover Institution with a special interest in America’s “culture war.” In addition to his regular contributions to National Review Online, Kurtz’s writings on the family, feminism, homosexuality, affirmative action, and campus “political correctness” have appeared in Policy Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Commentary.
Before turning his attention to America’s cultural battles, Kurtz was a social scientist specializing in family life and religion. He received his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University and later taught at Harvard, winning several teaching awards for his work in a “Great Books” program. Kurtz was also Dewey Prize Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Chicago.
Back to Lindgren:
If Obama or his campaign had ever denounced Ayers with the fervor that his campaign has now used in denouncing Kurtz, Obama wouldn’t be having trouble on his connection to Ayers.
We know for a fact that Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist who in this interview at the Chavista CIM in Caracas explicitly stated that leaving the terrorist life was a setback to him and the movement.
Rick Moran also reminds us of Obama’s alliances with other radicals, like the Maoist New Party, to advance his carreer.
Just this morning I was posting about Richard’s questions regarding another shady character in Obama’s resume.
For all Obama’s talk of hope and change and post-partisanship and post-racialism, his campaign — whose very call for “unity” of a type that supresses unfavorable speech, is proving itself to be an enemy of the very heteroglossia progressives always ostensibly champion.
But, as is the case with even the best postmodern novelists, the appearance of openness is one that needs to be carefully constructed and maintained, with the narrative always controlled by an abiding intent — even if that intent is something so seemingly open-ended as a desire not to intend.
In today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, Baldilocks’s birthday is in Friday and we’re celebrating early with an update on the Obama Kogelo Kenyan school. We’ll also talk about the LA Weekly article on Baldilocks, too.
Chat’s open at 10:45AM and the call-in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!
Yaacov Ben Moshe’s beautiful 10 yr old son David has Neurofibromatosis and will be having surgery tomorrow:
Dave has already been through a great deal in his life. Before Ravital and I adopted him and his little brother Yishai from Ukraine, (the picture here is them dressed in their new clothes -ready to leave Ukraine Dave is on the right) they suffered through the death of their biological father (bone cancer- probably from an NF related tumor that was not understood or properly treated over there) and a year in an orphanage. I can assure you he is a good deal more courageous than I am about this.
Almighty God, into your loving hands I commend David. Please guide the hands of his doctors as they remove the tumor from him, please sit with him as he recovers.
God of our fathers, we know that your love trancends all, insure that this family feels that love through the trials of the coming days and that they will be bouyed by that love.
Townhall links to a video in which civil rights activist Percy Sutton claimed he was asked by a certain “Dr. Khalid al Mansour”, supposed adviser to ‘one of the richest men in the world’, to write a letter of reccomendation on behalf of Barack Obama to help him gain acceptance to the Harvard Law Review many years ago. Mansour was raising money for Obama at the time,according to Sutton, a circumstance strange enough in itself.
“I was introduced to him by a friend who was raising money for him and the friends name was Dr. Khalid al Mansour from Texas. He is the principle adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama. He wrote to me about him and his introduction was ‘there is a young man that has applied to Harvard and I know that you have a few friends left there becasue you used to go up there to speak, would you please write a letter in support of him?’…I wrote a letter in support of him to my friends at Harvard saying ot them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I sure hoped they would treat him kindly.”
Richard asks,
There are just two questions in my mind. Did a Khalid al-Mansour request Sutton to help BHO get into Harvard or the Law Review? Second, who is Khalid al-Mansour? I’m not sure BHO has anything to do with it, except as a person referred to in Sutton’s recollection.
Western anti-terrorism officials are increasingly concerned that Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim militia that Washington has labeled a terrorist group, is using Venezuela as a base for operations.
Linked to deadly attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina in the early 1990s, Hezbollah may be taking advantage of Venezuela’s ties with Iran, the militia’s longtime sponsor, to move “people and things” into the Americas, as one Western government terrorism expert put it.
As part of his anti-American foreign policy, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has established warm diplomatic relations with Iran and has traveled there several times. The Bush administration, Israel and other governments worry that Venezuela is emerging as a base for anti-U.S. militant groups and spy services, including Hezbollah and its Iranian allies.
“It’s becoming a strategic partnership between Iran and Venezuela,” said a Western anti-terrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the issue’s sensitivity.
Several joint Venezuelan-Iranian business operations have been set up in Venezuela, including tractor, cement and auto factories. In addition, the two countries have formed a $2-billion program to fund social projects in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America.
Threats against Israel:
Fears about the threat from Hezbollah’s global networks intensified after the slaying in February of Imad Mughniyah, a notorious leader of the militia, in Damascus, the Syrian capital. Hezbollah and Iran accused Israel and promised revenge, putting Western authorities on guard against attacks on Israeli or Jewish targets around the world.
Possible kidnappings:
In March 2007, the intensified ties between Venezuela and Iran led to the start of weekly IranAir flights from Tehran to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, that stop in Damascus.
The flights were highlighted in the State Department’s annual assessment of global terrorism, which noted in April of this year that Venezuelan border officials at the Caracas airport often neglected to enter the arriving passengers into their immigration database and did not stamp passports. The Venezuelans have since tightened up on their procedures, informed sources say.
Despite those improvements, the IranAir flights also feature in recent intelligence gathered by Western anti-terrorism officials. Agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah have allegedly set up a special force to attempt to kidnap Jewish businesspeople in Latin America and spirit them away to Lebanon, according to the Western anti-terrorism official. Iranian and Hezbollah operatives traveling in and out of Venezuela have recruited Venezuelan informants working at the Caracas airport to gather intelligence on Jewish travelers as potential targets for abduction, the Western anti-terrorism official said.
Extortion and drug trade:
Hezbollah has long operated in the Lebanese communities of Latin America. In addition to receiving a multimillion-dollar infusion from Iran, the militia finances itself by soliciting or extorting money from the Lebanese diaspora and through rackets such as smuggling, fraud and the drug and diamond trade in South America and elsewhere, Matthew Levitt, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Congress in 2005.
Three years ago, police in Colombia and Ecuador broke up an international cocaine-smuggling ring that functioned in Latin American countries, including Venezuela, and allegedly sent profits to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The lawless “tri-border” region connecting Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has been a center of organized crime activities and finance linked to Hezbollah, Western anti-terrorism officials say.
Jihad Watch also has a prior post on Hezbollah in Nicaragua and the Iranian expansion there.
UPDATE
Welcome, Gates of Vienna readers. Please visit often.
With apologies, I had a business appointment that unexpectedly ran over time (waaaay over!) so there will be no podcast today. Tomorrow, however, Baldilock’s back, and we’re celebrating her birthday. Chat opens at 10:45AM Eastern and the call-in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!
Yes. A Greek temple for the Messiah! Come to think of it, how appropriate a send-off for a candidate whose proposed economic policies will send us to prehistoric times.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.
The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos’ National Football League team plays.
Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.
He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.
Let me guess: Zeus The Annointed one will rise as the full orchestra plays Thus Spake Zaratustra!
The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
This will give everyone present the opportunity to chant “Obama, Obama”, just like the Germans. Of course, beams of light will radiate from his brow, Zeus-like:
Once Obama speaks, confetti will rain down on him and fireworks will be fired off from locations around the stadium wall.
combined with the so-called “sign of progress”, Barack Obama may be better suited to run for the presidency of the United Federation of Planets than the USA.
TigerHawk invites “your own suggestions for additional Original Trek imagery that ought to be incorporated into the Obama campaign.”
By the way, Commenters have mentioned that the Ivesco temple is supposed to be reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial, and of Martin Luther King’s speech in Washington, the anniversary of which is the day of Obama’s speech. May I point out two things:
1. Lincoln was a Republican.
2. Martin Luther King was a Republican.
Chavez gives Livingstone a job
