October 13, 2008
An Australian gets it
Why can't some Americans get it?
But even if there was a long-term association between Obama and Ayers and Dohrn, is that necessarily a bad thing?The answer requires a brief review of the turbulent time of the 1960s when Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Weathermen and signatories of the ultra-radical manifesto You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows, released at the national convention of the revolutionary Students for a Democratic Society in June 1969.
This 20,000-word manifesto called for a communist revolution in the US; the victory of communist North Vietnam in the Vietnam War; and the creation of "two, three, many Vietnams" designed to consume all of America's military resources. It denounced all police as "pigs" and detailed strategies to defeat them; and advocated a vanguard role for black people, supported by university students and young people, in the revolutionary overthrow of American society.
The Weathermen advocated urban guerilla warfare and terrorism and undertook an intense campaign of bombings, violent demonstrations, riots and jail breaks from 1969 into the early '70s, beginning with the Days of Rage, held in October 1969, to correspond to the trial of the Chicago Eight. In 1970, the group issued their Declaration of a State of War against the government of what they dismissed as AmeriKKKa.
Ayers participated in 30 bombings in this period, including attacks on the New York Police Department headquarters in 1970, the US Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.
Ayers had gone underground as a terrorist following a lethal mistake in a Greenwich Village townhouse, in which three members of the Weathermen were killed (including Ayers's then girlfriend) when a nail bomb being constructed as an anti-personnel device exploded.
In 1970, Ayers (whose father was a wealthy chief executive of a large telecommunications company and later obtained his son's freedom from prison) described the Weathermen's message: "Kill all rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."
Similarly with Dohrn. After the Charles Manson-led Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969, Dohrn enthused: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"
Bizarrely, in September 1970 the Weathermen were paid $20,000 by a psychedelics distribution organisation called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love to break out of prison the leading advocate of LSD, Timothy Leary. Leary escaped to Algeria, where he joined the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver in exile.
Ayers published his autobiography Fugitive Days: A Memoir on September 10, 2001, and was quoted in The New York Times on 9/11 as saying: "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough". When asked if he would "do it all again", he responded: "I don't want to discount the possibility." A month earlier he was photographed for a magazine interview standing on the American flag.
Posted by George Moneo at October 13, 2008 10:54 AM
Comments
Dreams from my Father and Fugitive Days were written by the same author: Bill Ayers as just concluded in intensive study by a Pardue University PHD.
Posted by: Doorgunner ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.babalublog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 13, 2008 11:29 AM
According to a PHD from Pardue University Dreams From my Father and Fugitive Days were written by the same person.
Posted by: Doorgunner at October 13, 2008 11:31 AM
I have one question: Do you think Ayers would be teaching, or even alive, if he had set off bombs, in opposition of the government , and he lived in say; Cuba, North Korea, or China?
Posted by: kenko at October 13, 2008 11:47 AM
"Kill all rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."
Huh. I suspect that Ayers has become what he railed against. I wonder if he'd be upset if his children tried to live up Weathermen credo.
Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at October 13, 2008 02:01 PM
The worst thing about this is that so many people are fully aware of all this, yet they are voting for him anyway. Those people are more abhorrent than Obama himself.
Posted by: Cheo "El Gallo" Valdes at October 13, 2008 02:29 PM
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