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Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: October 18th, 2011

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Who’s Behind The

Anti-Wall Street Protests?

A public relations firm closely partnered with the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation represented last week’s newsmaking anti-Wall Street march past millionaires’ homes in New York, this reporter’s website, KleinOnline, has learned.

Fenton Communications has been behind the public relations strategy of a who’s who of far-left causes, organizations and activists, from Soros himself to Health Care for America Now to crafting strategies for MoveOn.org and a litany of anti-war groups.

Fenton, which works closely with Tides, first made its name representing communist dictatorships in the 1980s.

Fenton’s founder is tied to President Obama and to a slew of Saul Alinsky-style community organizing groups directly involved in recent U.S. street protests, including in Wisconsin and New York.

The find brings further evidence that the anti-Wall Street movement is a well-planned campaign and not the spontaneous uprising its leaders claim. Already, questions have been raised by the news media about Adbusters, the magazine that is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The media has been probing Adbusters source of funding – the Tides Foundation.

Tides acts like a massive clearinghouse of donations to a slew of liberal groups. Critics have alleged the center acts to obscure the ultimate sources of donations by collecting significant sums of money from a few large donors and then funneling the money to thousands of liberal causes. Soros’s Open Society Institute is a prominent Tides Center donor, giving the group $3.5 million between 2007 and 2009 alone.

Last week’s Occupy Wall Street protests march past millionaires’ homes was first announced in a press release entitled, “Community Groups and Progressive Organizations Join Together to Plan ‘Millionaires March’ with Occupy Wall Street Protestors.” The press release was sent to reporters and was also posted in various Occupy Wall Street affiliated websites. It listed contact information for Doug Gordon, senior vice president of Fenton Communications, who was named as an Occupy Wall Street spokesman.

Fenton Communications was founded in 1982 by David Fenton, an activist who served as a photographer for Bill Ayers’s domestic Weather Underground terror group. It works in conjunction with the Soros-funded Tides Center that funded Adbusters.

Fenton used the Tides Center to set up its Environmental Media Services in 1994. Tides reportedly originally ran EMS’s daily operations.

David Fenton serves on the board of numerous Tides-funded groups while his firm represents more than 30 Tides Center grantees, as well as Soros himself and the billionaire’s Open Society Institute. Fenton helped to craft Moveon.orgs attacks on Gen. David Petraeus.

While David Fenton first photographed Ayers in the 1960′s, he later served alongside both Ayers and Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit which channeled money to a slew of progressive groups, including the Tides Center and the Alinsky-style Midwest Academy training outfit. Obama served as a paid director on the Woods Fund board from 1999 to 2002.

Midwest’s founder, Heather Booth, has been training unions on how to use the economic crisis. Citizen Action of Wisconsin, an arm of Booth’s Midwest Academy, is part of the Moving Wisconsin Forward movement, one of the main organizers of the major Wisconsin protests in February.

Is The White House Returning

Favors To Its Friends?

The sister-in-law of John Podesta, President Obama’s influential White House transition director, served as the lobbyist for a wind power firm that was just awarded a $135.8 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. The company is Brookfield Asset Management. It boasts a board of nine directors, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s long-term girlfriend.

The Energy Department’s promise to Brookfield marks the latest in controversial massive alternative energy loans to companies with strong ties to the Obama White House and to top Democrat lawmakers.

Last month, the grant was finalized to build the 99 megawatt Granite Reliable wind project in New Hampshire’s Coos County, making it the state’s largest wind plant.

Since 2009, Brookfield has been represented by the lobby firm Heather Podesta and Partners, LLC. Podesta, a top financial bundler for Democrat politicians, is wife of lobbyist and art collector, Tony Podesta, who is the brother of John Podesta.

John Podesta is director of the Center for American Progress, which is reportedly highly influential in helping to craft White House policy, reportedly including the stimulus bill from which the loan to Brookfield was granted. The center is funded by billionaire George Soros. Its board includes Van Jones, Obama’s former green jobs czar, who resigned in September 2009 after reports surfaced that he had founded a communist revolutionary organization.

Brookfield, meanwhile, has been much in the news because of Zuccotti Park, which Brookfield owns and where the Occupy Wall Street protesters are currently holed up. The protesters have reportedly been making a mess of the park, which is named after Brookfield’s co-chairman, John Zuccotti.

Hamas Chief: Gilad Shalit

Deal Emboldens Us

Mahmoud al-Zahar, the chief of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, admitted in an interview that the exchange of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners emboldens his group to think about kidnapping more Israeli soldiers to extract more concessions from Israel.

Al-Zahar was asked about this possible emboldenment on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio. The Hamas chieftain replied: “Then Palestinian Authority in Ramallah negotiated for many years and they failed to release anybody. Now by the kidnapping [of Shalit] and the release, the Palestinian people succeeded to set free this number [of prisoners] by this way.”

He continued, “I think it’s good for the Israelis to think thoroughly, solve the problem smoothly and not to give a chance for the repetition of this event. It is wise to the Israelis to schedule the release of the rest of the Palestinians.”

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About the Author: Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m (CHANGE TO 7-9 p.m.). His website is KleinOnline.com

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

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