Rightbloggers 1, Van Jones 0
Friday, September 04, 2009 at 10:19 am
My story about WorldNetDaily today makes the case that a “fringe” Website can actually have an impact on the mainstream political debate if, as WND does, it gives readers what they want while reporting every nugget of scandalous information that comes its way. That’s definitely what’s happening with Van Jones, the White House adviser on green jobs. If Jones resigns, it will be because of the spadework of Gateway Pundit, a very right-wing blogger who found two pieces of evidence that Jones had signed onto to the politically toxic “9/11 Truth” movement.
Yesterday, he found Jones’s signature on the 2004 911Truth.org petition, alongside the signatures of Ed Asner, Howard Zinn and Ralph Nader. It was damaging enough for Jones to release this walkback.
Today, Gateway Pundit has a January 2002 article from the conspiracy site rense.com listing Jones as an organizer of an event outside Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) office demanding an investigation of 9/11. On the surface, that’s not so out there. At the time, the Bush administration was stonewalling on an investigation. But the article (and keep in mind, rense is a wild conspiracy Website) reports that “the delegation will demand that these questions (and others) be raised and answered publicly,” and the questions include “What is the relationship between Bin Laden, his family and the Bush family and the Carlyle Group?” and “Did the CIA have foreknowledge of the attack, who tried to profit with put options on American, United, Merrill Lynch stock just before the attack?”
Gateway Pundit is pretty far out there: he refers to the president as “Dear Leader” (as North Koreans refer to Kim Jong-Il) and he has a botched post about an old interview of Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), which was uploaded to YouTube a year ago. GP calls it a new video in which Stark “explains Obanomics.” But you don’t need to be a reporter for The Washington Times to reveal something damaging about an Obama administration official.
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14 Comments
Pingback posted September 4, 2009 @ 11:28 am
[...] brings us to the case of Van [...]
Comment posted September 4, 2009 @ 3:41 pm
Yay for right wing bloggers! Glenn Beck and these bloggers have ultimately DESTROYED Van Jones political career</ b>. That's good, becasue we don't need self proclaimed communists, felons, truthers (or birthers), and racists in the government. Bottom line: Van Jones needs to GO!
Comment posted September 4, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
This Gateway Pundit article does not prove what it purports to prove.
The link leads to TWO items:
(1) an email (Jan. 11, 2002) by Carol Brouillet, which craftily mixes early “truther” dogma with boilerplate anti-war language
and (2) a Prospectus (dated Jan. 3, 2002) with instructions to “FREELY DISTRIBUTE AND POST” which calls for the creation of an anti-war biweekly newsletter called the War Times.
You can read the War Times here: http://www.war-times.org/index.htm
Van Jones's name is on the 1/3/02 Prospectus, NOT the 1/11/02 letter.
The Prospectus doesn't contain even a HINT of early truther language or dogma, though Rense.com decided to post it. Thing is, ANYONE could have posted it ANYWHERE.
Comment posted September 4, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
The crazy is simply propagating geometrically and soon we will have crazy coming out of our ears to our detriment. Why does Bin Laden have to do anything at all if the crazies of America are willing to paralyze this country with crazy? If Russia had known that the crazy was so strong here they would have released documents thanking McCarthy for his high level congressional crazy, double mindforking the American people into a cascading death spiral of self-inflicted super crazy that would have resulted in a lunacy singularity forming in Kansas.
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 12:41 am
This guy has $hit for brains.
If WND is a fringe site then HuffPo and DailyKos are too.
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 12:57 am
One takes him at his word, and he has exhibited a deep hatred of American institutions, that leads to a desire to destroy or alter every single of one of them. Why trust him with any monies
or authority.
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 5:24 am
Gateway Pundit erroneously cut and pasted two separate articles together. I received phone calls from the ACLU and National Fox News asking me whether Van Jones was actually on the organizing committee or a participant on the first rally/march to demand a Congressional Investigation of 9/11. He was not. He had nothing to do with it. He was on the organizing committee for an anti-war publication in Oakland, where he is very well respected that was posted beneath the small article about the rally that I organized.
I still think that wrong questions are being raised here. The official report on 9/11 is based on tortured evidence, full of distortions and omissions, we have not had a realinvestigation of 9/11, nor have the victim's families' questions been answered. There is an effort to get a new investigation on the ballot in New York City that over 80,000 people have signed. I wish Van Jones had the courage and strength to stand up to the attacks upon him, support the efforts towards a new, independent genuine investigation of 9/11, and challenge the obvious flaws in the official story, and the foundational myth of the bogus “War on Terrorism.”
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
World Net Daily a fringe web site? That just displays your naiveté and provincial views…what a joke you are!! You are the fringe!!!!!
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Here are the facts about Van Jones and the “Swift Boat” slander campaign led by Glenn Beck:
1) Van Jones is not a “communist”: That's a completely fabricated charge in classic McCarthy style.
2) Van Jones was never in jail: This didn’t happen. His enemies made this story up.
3) Van Jones is a strong advocate of economic growth that is tied to protection of the planet and our natural resources. He has been a brilliant leader in this area, praised by Republicans and Democrats alike; he has many business allies.
4) Van Jones never claimed that “9/11 was an inside job” or anything remotely like that. He did sign a petition—that he admits was poorly worded when he read it again, years later—that asked our government to appoint another 9/11 type of commission to investigate facts that may have been overlooked in the first official inquiry. (And now learning that Karl Rove was on the phone daily with people who ran the first 9/11 inquiry, trying to influence them, is reason enough to question some of their work.)
5) Van Jones did call some Republicans “assholes” in a public forum and has acknowledged this and publicly apologized for it. In that same talk, he also called himself an “asshole”. This tells you something about the tongue-in-cheek tone of that discussion.
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush called Adam Clymer of the New York Times an “asshole” in 2000 when they thought the microphones couldn't pick up their voices. They never apologized for that. Cheney also told a US Senator, to his face, to go “F..K yourself”. And of course, Cheney never apologized for that either.
What this is REALLY all about is the rage and bitterness of the far-right extremists after they lost last year's election. They want to destroy President Obama's administration and they see Van Jones as their current target. Next month it will be someone else.
The REAL reason for these vicious and personal attacks on Van Jones is that he is three things the right-wing despises: liberal, black, and an environmentalist. They can't admit that publicly, so they have to invent slander like “communist”. It's pathetic and shameful.
The facts demonstrate that this is nothing more than a savage attack from extremist elements. They're only confirming why people no longer trust them to hold political power.
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
Actually, you're wrong. Van Jones is in his job and will remain there. Years from now, when he is at the top of the heap, politically, the little boys who slandered him will be left on the sidelines, reduced to SCREAMING and whining about it. Like you.
Comment posted September 5, 2009 @ 9:42 pm
Van Jones is absolutely right to reject the official narrative of what happened on 9/11. It was a false flag operation designed to enrage the normally peace-loving Americans into supporting a series of wars in the middle east.
There are over 800 architects and engineers at ae911truth.org who have signed a petition demanding a real investigation into the “collapses” of the THREE World Trade Center buildings that day. Do a youtube of WTC7, and watch it fall at freefall acceleration. There are also pilots, former ATC, former government insiders, firefighters and many others who have formed similar groups! All these people can't be wrong!
If this concept seems so foreign to you, if you think the American govt could never dream of such a thing, google “operation northwoods” from 1961, a prototype scenario similar to 9/11. Please America, wake up! Check out PatriotsQuestion911.com. Watch (youtube) Richard Gage's lecture “Blueprint for Truth.” Once you're informed, become active.
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