Van Jones Resigns; Taken Out For Cursing Republicans and Signing 9/11 Truth Statement?
Van Jones called Republicans what most of the people who voted for Obama call them. And he signed a statement calling for further inquiry and explanation of 9/11-- the original 9/11 truth document. Was he left hanging by the Obama Administration for doing what scores of millions of Americans would also do?
Van
Jones has been the target of a vicious smear campaign for weeks.
Tonight, he resigned his position as special adviser for green jobs at
the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Apparently, the White House and president Obama did not stand behind
Jones, one of the most respected leaders in the ecological movement.
The Washington Post reported,
'White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday that Jones
"continues to work for the administration" -- but he did not state that
the adviser enjoys the full support of President Obama, instead
referring all questions to the environmental council where he worked,
signaling the resignation was imminent.'
Jones recently issued two apologies. One was for calling Republicans
"a**holes." The other was for signing a statement in 2004 supporting a
call for further investigation of 9/11, which suggested that the Government might have had a role in the 911 attack. The original
document can be found here, with Van Jones the 46th signatory (and this writer was the 47th.) Ironically, one of the most vocal "birthers, who question the validity of Obama's birth certificate, Phillip J. Berg, was also a signatory of the same statement, 8th on the list.
This resignation will probably seen as a double victory for Glenn Beck
and his fans. Beck mounted a toxic attack campaign against Jones, with multiple lies and false accusations
cast against Jones. I say a double victory because the right wing echo
chamber, including many members of Congress played a role in the
attempt to destroy this man's reputation.
I've followed Van Jones ascent for a number of years. He's been
featured on the covers of countless magazine covers as a man of
sparkling vision and integrity. He exudes it when you meet him. There's
something wrong with the Obama administration's failure to stand behind
him.
Jones issued a statement just after midnight, early on September 6th, stating,
"I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today. On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy,
opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against
me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.
I have been inundated with calls -- from across the
political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to
fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my
colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining
my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."
Perhaps it wouldn't have come to this if the Obama administration had
made a clear statement backing Jones. Instead, Glenn Beck and the right
wing get to claim a major victory in taking out a rising progressive
star. Let's be clear. This was not handled right by the White House. It
is one more nail in the coffin of the relationship between the Obama
administration and the left-- the progressives who handed Obama and the
Democratic Congress their victory in 2008.
I say that this is a double victory because the Obama White House
response will do damage to the relationship of the White House and
perhaps the Democratic Party with progressives, 9/11 Truthers and
perhaps all of the people who still question the report and findings of
the 9/11 commission. Multiple polls have indicated that over 40% of
respondents feel that questions were unanswered.
Over the past few weeks, Glenn Beck repeatedly hammered false claims
that Jones was a "Czar"-- a term that some media people had applied to
him, and that he was a communist. All across America, Beck listeners
were citing this at the town halls of the August congressional break.
With the taste of fresh blood, one has to ask, who will Beck and his
right wing dogs go after next, now that they know Obama and his team
will leave them hanging?
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)