An advisor to President Obama founded a group that has been helping the Arab TV network Al Jazeera

By Aaron Klein
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 26: Author, American academic and political activist Lawrence Lessig attends the conference on Making Art And Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy at the New York Public Library on February 26, 2009 in New York City (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

A technology advisor to President Obama founded a group that has been helping the Arab TV network Al Jazeera disseminate news footage of Israeli attacks inside the Gaza Strip.

Lawrence Lessig also works closely with a Marxist activist who has argued for the dismantling of the U.S. capitalist system and whose George Soros-funded group petitions for more government control of the media.

Lessig has been mentioned as a future candidate to head the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC. He is an activist for reduced legal restrictions on copyright material and advised Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

He reportedly has known Obama since their days teaching law at the University of Chicago. Lessig now teaches at Harvard.

In 2001, Lessig founded Creative Commons, a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.

In January 2009, Creative Commons launched a massive repository of broadcast-quality video footage, working with Al Jazeera to make the Arab network's video footage available for free downloading. Lessig's group mass marketed Al Jazeera's footage of Israel's December 2008 war in Gaza targeting Hamas.



Al Jazeera has been widely criticized for disseminating Hamas propaganda, including claims civilians were targeted in Israeli operations.

During the time it worked with Lessig's group, Al Jazeera said its online broadcasts increased by over 500 percent, while views of videos on its YouTube channel increased by more than 150 percent.

Lessig, meanwhile, drew some controversy during the 2008 campaign after he circulated a video depicting Jesus lip-syncing to Gloria Gaynor's late 1970s disco hit "I Will Survive." In the video, a mock Jesus is seen stripping down to just a diaper while he effeminately struts along a city street and finally gets run over by a speeding bus.

Lessig is a close associate of Robert W. McChesney, an avowed Marxist who favors the dismantling of capitalism. McChesney founded Free Press, a Soros-funded organization with close ties to the White House that petitions for more government control of the news media.

Lessig has penned numerous op-ed pieces with McChesney, and the duo have worked together on numerous media projects.

WND previously reported Free Press published a study advocating the development of a "world class" government-run media system in the U.S.

In May, WND reported Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott was named a policy adviser for innovation at the State Department.

McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois and former editor of the Marxist journal Monthly Review.

"In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles," wrote McChesney in a column.

The board of Free Press, meanwhile, has included a slew of radicals, such as Obama's former "green jobs" czar Van Jones, who resigned after his founding of a communist organization was exposed.

Obama's "Internet czar," Susan P. Crawford, spoke at a Free Press May 14, 2009, "Changing Media" summit in Washington, D.C., revealed the book "The Manchurian President".

Crawford's pet project, OneWebNow, lists as "participating organizations" Free Press and the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Crawford and Kevin Werbach, who co-directed the Obama transition's Federal Communications Commission review team, are advisory board members at Public Knowledge, a Soros-funded public-interest group.

A Public Knowledge advisory board member is Timothy Wu, who is also chairman of the board for Free Press.

Like Public Knowledge, Free Press also has received funds from Soros' Open Society Institute.

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott