State Dept. Appointee Tied To Radicals
A recent State Department appointee is wife of the founder of a radical organization whose leaders include communists, a socialist party founder, and a leader of the 1960’s anti-American Weatherman terrorist organization.
Barbara Shailor, appointed by the State Department as special representative for international labor affairs in May, also carries her own ties to some of the same radicals.
Prior to her appointment, Shailor was director of the international department of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest union, and served as senior advisor to the union’s President John Sweeney on foreign and international policy issues. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Her husband, Bob Borosage, is a longtime progressive activist who co-founded the Apollo Alliance, a far-left group that has been instrumental in helping draft key policies of the Obama administration.
Apollo has been credited by the Obama administration with helping craft portions of the $787-billion “stimulus” bill signed into law.
The Apollo Alliance has boasted in promotional material that it was behind several of the Obama administration’s green initiatives, in addition to crafting green sections of the stimulus bill.
Shailor herself is tied to some of the same Apollo radicals. She reportedly worked closely at AFL-CIO with activist Bill Fletcher, a former Maoist and current leader of Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. Fletcher was also a founder of the Black Radical Congress, closely linked to the Communist Party USA, which advocated for “progressive social justice, racial equality and economic justice goals within the U.S.”
Shailor reportedly worked with Fletcher to shape the AFL-CIO’s international work in what the union described as “dramatically new directions.”
U.S. Backs Palestinian Airport Near Jerusalem
The Obama administration supports the opening of a Palestinian Authority airport near Jerusalem, according to PA sources speaking to WorldNetDaily.
The PA is planning to start the infrastructure of the airport in the town of al Buqya, between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. WND has learned that PA official Saadi el-Krunz is heading the PA campaign to raise money for the airport.
In line with the demand that Israel freeze all Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern section of Jerusalem, WND has learned that the U.S. is aiding the Palestinians in building infrastructure in largely Arab eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods controlled by Israel.
In so doing, the U.S. is working with the PA to change the facts on the ground, which could affect the outcome of a future Israel Palestinian agreement.
A WND investigation previously determined the U.S. has been aiding the Palestinians in developing infrastructure in eastern Jerusalem, including on property owned by Jews.
Palestinian Authority officials have threatened to halt the direct negotiations that began in early September if Israel does not reinstate the 10-month-old freeze on Jewish construction in the West Bank that expired Sunday.
Palestinian officials have told WND they received a U.S. pledge that Israel will free a number of Palestinian prisoners as well as transfer to the PA security control of several West Bank areas in the coming months as part of a series of Israeli gestures to the PA.
The U.S. has called on Netanyahu to extend the freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. As a U.S.-imposed precondition for negotiations, Netanyahu in late 2009 had agreed to the 10-month West Bank construction moratorium. The Israeli leader had repeatedly claimed he would not extend the freeze beyond the 10-month period.
PA officials, meanwhile, said the U.S. has been negotiating the borders of a future Palestinian state that would see Israel eventually withdraw from most of the West Bank and some areas of eastern Jerusalem with the exception of three main settlement blocs.
While the PA does not believe it will see an actual Palestinian state within a year, it expects in that time it will take over many more neighborhoods in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem that are normally controlled on the ground by Israel.
The PA said the expectation is based on pledges by the Obama administration. Apparently the U.S. received a pledge from Netanyahu to transfer more security control of West Bank towns as well as release a number of Palestinian prisoners as gestures to entice Abbas to continue negotiating.
FBI Terror Probe Targets Group
Funded By Obama
President Obama and Weather Underground terrorist group founder William Ayers provided funds in the 1990s to an Arab group whose executive director had his home raided last week in a terror probe by the FBI.
“The [search] warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” Steve Warfield, spokesman for the FBI in Minneapolis, told reporters.
Warfield was referring to the FBI’s raid of seven homes Friday, including that of Hatem Abudayyeh, the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.
WND was the first to report that Obama worked as a paid director of the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit, from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002. He served on the fund together with Ayers.
The fund, with Obama and Ayers on the board, provided a $40,000 grant to the AAAN in 2001. The fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
The co-founder of the AAAN, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, has been a close associate of Obama. A harsh critic of Israel, Khalidi has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly did work on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group. The AAAN president is Khalidi’s wife, Mona.
The $40,000 grant from Obama’s Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about one-fifth of the Arab group’s reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WND. The $35,000 the Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN’s reported grants for that year.
The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago’s Palestinian immigrant community, describes itself as working to “empower Chicago-area Arab immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of community organizing; advocacy; education and social services; leadership development; and forging productive relationships with other communities.”
It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which supports open borders and education for illegal aliens.
The AAAN in 2005 sent a letter to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in which it called a billboard opposing a North Carolina-New Mexico joint initiative to deny driver’s licenses to illegal aliens a “bigoted attack on Arabs and Muslims.”
Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line.
Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant 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.
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