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Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemency (Eric Holder - Thursday) Hussein & terrorists?
Seattle Times ^ | PETE YOST

Posted on 01/14/2009 9:20:24 PM PST by Libloather

Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemency
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
Originally published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:05 PM

WASHINGTON — New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general.

Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of commuting the prison terms. Three years earlier, that pardon attorney's predecessor had recommended against clemency.

In newly disclosed documents, officials expressed concerns about a department report on possible clemency for the prisoners becoming known publicly.

Holder was expected to face aggressive questioning over the clemency and other issues Thursday from Republicans during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. GOP lawmakers have indicated they expect to approve Holder as Barack Obama's pick to run the job. But the hearing promised to be the most contentious so far among Obama's Cabinet choices.

"Everyone is asking why would a man who helped terrorists get out of jail be nominated for a Cabinet position, especially now that our whole world is infected by terrorism?" said Senft, who retired from the police department weeks ago.

Senft suffered hearing damage and other injuries, including a broken hip, when he hit the ground in the 1982 bombing at a federal building in Manhattan. Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN for its Spanish initials, claimed responsibility for that bombing and more than 100 others, which killed six people and injured dozens more.

Among the matters confronting Holder:

(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 1975; 198004; 19800404; 1982; 1988; 1993; 199311; 19931109; 199804; 19980409; 199808; 1999; 19990811; 200004; adams; algore; arlenspecter; bhoag; bhodoj; billclinton; blagojevich; bombers; bombings; cardinaloconnor; carter; chicago; chile; cookcounty; corettascottking; crookcounty; cuba; desmondtutu; elian; eliangonzales; eric; ericholder; evanston; faln; freeh; fundraising; gambling; gamingboard; gore; gutierrez; hahn; hatch; hillaryclinton; holder; jimmycarter; johnoconnor; joseserrano; kevinohlson; king; losmacheteros; luisgutierrez; manhattan; marcrich; nlg; nydiavelazquez; nysenate; obama; oconnor; ofensiva92; ohlson; orrinhatch; pardongate; pardons; paulsherry; puertorico; realestate; rich; richardhahn; rogeradams; safrica; secrecy; senft; serano; sherry; southafrica; specter; terrorism; townsend; tutu; velazquez
What is it with Hussein and terrorists?
1 posted on 01/14/2009 9:20:25 PM PST by Libloather
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To: Libloather

Hussein gives them a pass just as he has been given one in the MSM.........the man has to cover his tracks you know/sarc


2 posted on 01/14/2009 9:25:40 PM PST by MissDairyGoodnessVT (Good Morning Mr & Mrs Scooter and All The Ships At Sea)
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To: Libloather

Exactly how is it that the wife of the President who pardoned these terrorists isn’t catching any flak?


3 posted on 01/14/2009 9:25:54 PM PST by Dahoser (America's great untapped alternative energy source: The Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.)
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To: Libloather

The American people need to rise up and scream

It is CLEAR that Obama was endorsed and supported by someone who, along with his group, planted bombs that killed Americans here with the intent that they overthrew the government

Now, We have the imposition of people in power, through apppointment, of people who supported other acts of terrorism, like Holder

We just had a revolution, folks, and it happened without a shot

Our system of government just ended, and it is being replaced by Obama and the dems


4 posted on 01/14/2009 9:29:35 PM PST by RaceBannon (We have sown the wind, but we will reap the whirlwind. NObama. Not my president.)
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To: Libloather

He’s disgusting and sick just like they are. It makes me puke just to think what joy he and his minions are getting out of seeing people suffer.


5 posted on 01/14/2009 9:49:54 PM PST by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
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To: Libloather
Re: Eric Holder, Obama's pick for Attorney General...

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
PROFILE: ERIC HOLDER

(note that this is just an excerpt on one issue. The linked piece addresses all of Holder's record)

Holder and the Pardon of FALN Terrorists:

Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton's August 11, 1999 pardon of 16 members of the FALN, acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation—a violent terrorist organization (as designated by the FBI) that was active in the U.S. from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s.

The FALN was a Marxist-Leninist group whose overriding mission was to secure Puerto Rico's political independence from the United States. Toward that end, between 1974 and 1983 the group detonated nearly 130 bombs in such strategically selected places as military and government buildings, financial institutions, and corporate headquarters located mainly in Chicago, New York, and Washington DC. These bombings were carried out as acts of protest against America's political, military, financial, and corporate presence in Puerto Rico. All told, FALN bombs killed six people—including the Chilean ambassador to the United States—and wounded at least 80 others.

On April 4, 1980, eleven FALN members were arrested in Evanston, Illinois. More of their comrades would also be apprehended in Chicago in the early 1980s. All were charged with seditious conspiracy, but they refused to participate in their own trial proceedings—claiming defiantly that the U.S. government was an illegitimate entity and thus had no moral authority by which to sit in judgment of them. All the defendants were found guilty and were sentenced to federal prison terms ranging from 35 to 105 years.

On November 9, 1993, a self-identified "human rights" organization named Ofensiva '92 filed a petition for executive clemency on behalf of 18 members of the FALN and another violent organization seeking Puerto Rican independence, Los Macheteros ("The Machete-Wielders"). According to a December 12, 1999 report issued by the House Committee on Government Reform, the prisoners themselves "refused to take part in any process that would legitimize the government's actions against them, therefore they refused to file their own petitions."

This presented a problem because the Department of Justice (DOJ) traditionally stipulates that clemency will be considered only if a prisoner first files a petition on his or her own behalf, an act which the Department views as a sign of contrition. Nonetheless DOJ made an exception in this case and accepted Ofensiva '92's petition, a document which cast the FALN prisoners as blameless freedom fighters analogous to those Americans who had fought in the Revolutionary War against Britain.

Among the notables who joined Ofensiva '92's clemency crusade were Cardinal John O'Connor, Coretta Scott King, Jimmy Carter, and the National Lawyers Guild. Perhaps the most passionate support came from Democrat Representatives Luis Gutierrez (IL), Jose Serrano (NY), and Nydia Velazquez (NY), each of whom echoed Ofensiva '92's claim that the FALN members were "political prisoners" who deserved to be released.

The attorneys and advocates who were fighting for the freedom of the FALN prisoners first met with the Justice Department's Pardon Attorney on July 19, 1994. In October 1996 they met with Jack Quinn, Counsel to the President. They were unsuccessful, however, in their efforts to convey the legitimacy of their cause to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), which in 1996 contacted the Justice Department and recommended against clemency; that recommendation, in turn, was forwarded to the White House.

But the matter was not over; OPA continued to meet with groups and individuals lobbying for clemency on behalf of the FALN terrorists. Then in 1997, Eric Holder -- who was President Clinton's new Deputy Attorney General (in the Justice Department headed by Janet Reno) -- became involved in the case.

In this role, Holder was responsible for overseeing clemency investigations and determining which of those requests were ultimately worthy of President Clinton's attention. As evidenced by a September 1997 memorandum from the Pardon Attorney, the Justice Department was, at this point, receiving numerous inquiries about the FALN and Macheteros—from the White House and from supporters of the prisoners. The aforementioned House Committee on Government Reform report stated: "Throughout the closing months of 1997 it appears that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was active in the issue. The privilege log reflects at least two notes regarding his questions on the clemency or his thoughts on the matter."

On November 5, 1997, Holder met with Representatives Gutierrez, Serrano, and Velazquez to discuss the clemency issue. He advised the legislators that they might greatly increase the likelihood of a presidential pardon if they could convince the prisoners to write letters testifying as to the personal remorse they felt for their past actions. But no such letters would be produced for five months, during which time the clemency issue remained on hold. Meanwhile, in a January 6, 1998 letter a senior Justice Department official expressly referred to the FALN members as "terrorists."

Then on April 8, 1998, Holder again met with FALN supporters. This time, they finally delivered statements from the prisoners as Holder had advised in November. But all the statements were identical—indicating that not one of the prisoners had made an effort to craft his own personal expression of repentance.

Undeterred, Holder then raised the question of whether the prisoners might at least agree to renounce future violence in exchange for clemency. One of the prisoners' backers, Reverend Paul Sherry, made it clear that they surely "would not change their beliefs"—presumably about the issue of Puerto Rican independence—but was vague as to whether they were apt to eschew violence altogether.

Over the next few weeks, Holder and the Justice Department continued to meet with numerous advocates of clemency and to review pertinent materials which the latter brought forth on behalf of the prisoners. Holder clearly was the point man for these clemency negotiations. As Brian Brian Blomquist wrote in the New York Post, "A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while [Janet] Reno's role was minimal." Similarly, New York Daily News reporter Edward Lewine wrote that Holder was "the Justice Department official most involved with this issue."

Throughout the clemency review process, neither Holder nor anyone else in the Justice Department contacted any of the people who had been victimized (or whose loved ones had been victimized) by the FALN. Most were never aware that clemency for the terrorists was even being contemplated. And those few who were aware of the possibility were rebuffed in their efforts to participate in the review process.

On May 19, 1998, the Pardon Attorney sent Eric Holder a 48-page draft memorandum "concerning clemency for Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners." Seven weeks later, on July 8, Holder sent President Clinton a "memorandum regarding clemency matter." Indeed the Deputy Attorney General was methodically spearheading the march toward clemency -- despite the fact that the sentencing judges, the U.S. Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI were unanimous in their opposition to pardoning the individuals in question.

In late July 1999 an attorney from Holder's office spoke to White House Counsel Charles Ruff regarding the clemency matter. On August 9, 1999, Holder's office and OPA held one final meeting to hammer out the details, and two days later the President made his announcement: clemency was granted to sixteen terrorists, most of whom had served only a fraction of their prison terms. Of the sixteen, twelve accepted the offer and were freed, two refused it, and two others, who already were out of prison, never responded.

Congress, for its part, was not pleased—condemning the clemencies by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.

In the aftermath of August 11, 1999, a report by the Justice Department stated that the FALN posed an "ongoing threat" to national security. And in late October 1999 the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report from Attorney General Janet Reno stating that the FALN members' "impending release from prison" would "increase the present threat" of terrorism.

In an October 20th Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and again with reporters the following day, Eric Holder denied that Reno was referring to the same FALN terrorists whose pardons he had worked so long and hard to secure. Yet when Holder was asked to identify whom Reno was in fact talking about, he responded as follows:

"I don't know, no, I don't know that. We might be able to get you some more information on that, but, I mean, you know, there were certain people who are due to be released, or who were at least eligible for parole, had a release date in the next, as I said, three, four years. I don't know exactly who they were. Maybe—we might be able to get you that information."

Neither Holder nor the Justice Department ever provided any additional names. The December 1999 House Committee on Government Reform report stated:

"The 16 [FALN] terrorists appear to be most unlikely candidates. They did not personally request clemency. They did not admit to wrongdoing and they had not renounced violence before such a renunciation had been made a quid pro quo for their release. They expressed no contrition for their crimes, and were at times openly belligerent about their actions…. Notwithstanding the fact that the 16 did not express enough personal interest in the clemency process to file their own applications, the White House appeared eager to assist throughout the process. Meetings were held with supporters, and some senior staff [i.e., Holder] even suggested ways to improve the likelihood of the President granting the clemency. Overall, the White House appears to have exercised more initiative than the terrorists themselves."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2357

6 posted on 01/14/2009 9:49:54 PM PST by ETL (Smoking gun evidence on ALL the ObamaRat-commie connections at my newly revised FR Home/About page)
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To: Libloather
What is it with Hussein and terrorists?

Like Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground, the FALN were Marxist-revolutionary terrorists.

7 posted on 01/14/2009 9:51:26 PM PST by ETL (Smoking gun evidence on ALL the ObamaRat-commie connections at my newly revised FR Home/About page)
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To: Libloather

“GOP lawmakers have indicated they expect to approve Holder”

WHY??? This is ridiculous. When will the Republicans get a backbone?


8 posted on 01/14/2009 9:54:44 PM PST by Humal
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... Clinton said in 1999 his clemency decision was influenced by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter. At the time, the government said none of those whose sentences commuted was directly responsible for deaths or injuries. That was disputed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who then led the Judiciary Committee. Republicans complained that under today's sentencing guidelines, the prisoners would have been sentenced to 30 years to life.
In newly disclosed documents, first reported by the Los Angeles Times last week, then-U.S. pardon attorney Roger Adams expressed concerns that the department's recommendation raising the possibility of clemency would become publicly known. "It is particularly important that the proposed report be kept on very close hold," Adams wrote in August 1998 to Kevin Ohlson, who was Holder's chief of staff. "A 'leak' of the proposed report would be disastrous."

Translation: "screw the American people, keep them in the dark."

9 posted on 01/14/2009 10:35:55 PM PST by piasa
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To: ETL; Cindy
... Clinton said in 1999 his clemency decision was influenced by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter.
10 posted on 01/14/2009 10:46:23 PM PST by piasa
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To: piasa; ETL; Cindy; VOA; Tijeras_Slim
Speaking of FALN & Jimmy Carter:

1950 : (PUERTO RICAN "NATIONALISTS" TRY TO ASSASSINATE US PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN; ONE IS KILLED AND THE OTHER LATER WON A PARDON FROM DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER, A LEFTWING TERRORIST SYMPATHIZER) Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Harry Truman in 1950. The one that survived the gunfight was pardoned by Jimmy Carter in 1979.----6 posted on 02/13/2006 12:50:29 PM PST by Tijeras_Slim | To 3
*******
See : American Gunfight : The Plot to Kill Harry Truman--and the Shoot-out that Stopped It by Stephen Hunter, J. S. Bainbridge http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743260686/qid=1139864851/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-8757544-7920640?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 16 posted on 02/13/2006 1:08:52 PM PST by VOA | To 1

11 posted on 01/14/2009 10:51:34 PM PST by piasa
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To: ETL
Note also that those Clinton pardoned - thanks to Obama's pick Eric Holder- were FALN terrorists whose bombings had largely taken place in the state of Illinois :
On August 11, 1999, President Clinton offered clemency to 16 members of the FALN and Macheteros Puerto Rican groups, most of whom had been convicted of building and planting a series of bombs at 28 locations in Illinois during the 1970's. --- "Jesse Helms: 'The Castro Regime and the United Nations Can Go Jump In a Lake' ," Author: Lora Bright, CNSNews, Published: 6/20/00 [prob 7/20.2000]

Does anyone have a list of what these targets were? I wonder if they were working with the unions or mobs at the time.

12 posted on 01/14/2009 10:59:14 PM PST by piasa
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To: ETL; LurkedLongEnough
Like everything else about Obama why is there always a real estate connection? At the time of the release of these FALN terrorists there was a bit of real estate speculation going on:

1999 : (VIEQUES, PUERTO RICO : CIVILIAN GUARD IS ACCIDENTALLY KILLED BY AN ERRANT BOMB FROM A US MILITARY EXCERCISE; REAL ESTATE SPECULATORS JUMP AT THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR POPULISM TO PRESS FOR CONVERSION OF THE LAND FROM US GOVERNMENT PROPERTY TO THEIR HANDS BY STIRRING UP PROTESTS AMONG PUERTO RICO'S LEFTISTS/NATIONALISTS...) an errant bomb killed a civilian guard on the island of Vieques in 1999. That incident sparked several years of protests, eventually prompting the Navy to abandon bombing exercises there in 2003. ---- "Sen. Clinton cancels visit to Puerto Rico," by STEVENSON JACOBS, AP, Seattle P-I ^ | September 29, 2005 | Posted on 09/29/2005 3:05:02 PM PDT by LurkedLongEnough [* The protests were stirred up by real estate speculators who wanted to develop the highly desirable location which was at the time still being used for gunner practice by the US government ]

13 posted on 01/14/2009 11:05:03 PM PST by piasa
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To: Libloather; Cindy
This incident :

OCTOBER 22, 1981 : (NY : REPORT : ROBBERY OF BRINKS TRUCK INVOLVES THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, THE BLACK LIBERATION ARMY, AND FALN...--see WUO AYERS, DOHRN) Authorities investigating a bloody Brink's robbery yesterday [Oct 22, 1981] revealed new links between radical groups. Col. Clinton L. Pagano, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said that evidence found during a search of an East Orange, N.J., apartment linked to the robbery "indicated that the persons who occupied the apartment were involved with the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground .
He said evidence found in the apartment, combined with "intelligence information," has led investigators to believe "that these two groups have merged into a single group." (snip)
Pagano said evidence found in the New Jersey apartment "is not only being analyzed for connection with the Brink's robbery and murders, but also to establish a tie to the escape of Joanne Chesimard."
Chesimard, a leader of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted of killing New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973, escaped from Clinton Reformatory, where she was serving a life sentence, on Nov. 2, 1979.
Pagano said that police searching the apartment confiscated automatic weapons, written materials, a large quantity of ammunition, numerous documents, bomb-making materials, and disguises and false identification materials. (excerpt)---------N.J. APARTMENT REVEALS LINKS AMONG RADICALS Boston Globe - October 23, 1981 Author: Associated Press 4 posted on Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:47:58 PM by Protect the Bill of Rights | To 2

1981 : (NYACK, NY?: BRINKS ARMORED CAR HOLDUP BY BLACK MILITANTS [TERRORISTS] MURDERS TWO COPS & A SECURITY GUARD; ITALIAN DIPLOMAT'S DAUGHTER, SILVIA BARALDINI {see FALN}, IS INVOLVED ) -- New York Post 9/8/99 Editorial via ALAMO-GIRL'S DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON ; SECTION: BREACH OF TRUST; SUBSECTION: TERROR; Revised 1/8/01

AUGUST 1999 late : (ITALIAN DIPLOMAT'S DAUGHTER, SILVIA BARALDINI, IS SENT TO SERVE HER REMAINING SENTENCE IN ITALY - WAS THE CLINTON ADMIN TRYING TO PLACATE THE ITALIAN LEFTWING GOVERNMENT? - see FALN) "...Maybe the White House is telling the truth, after all. Maybe President Clinton's clemency offer to 16 FALN terrorists really wasn't motivated by his wife's Senate campaign. The evidence: The Clinton administration is acting as though it believes that violent terrorists just don't belong in U.S. prisons. Two weeks ago, to scant public notice, the Justice Department opened the prison gates to violent radical Silvia Baraldini. An Italian diplomat's daughter, she was sentenced to 40 years in prison in connection with several robberies carried out by black militants - including the 1981 Brink's armored-care holdup in Nyack, in which two cops and a security guard were murdered. Baraldini also has been linked to the jail break in which Joanne Chesimard - now living in Cuba - fled a New Jersey prison. And she was sentenced to an additional three years in a separate case for criminal contempt after she refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the FALN. Over the past decade, the Justice Department - citing the violent nature of her crimes - had rejected five requests by the Italian government to let Baraldini serve the remainder of her sentence in a Rome prison. This year, however, the request was granted. Why? Because the Clinton administration felt it needed to make a conciliatory gesture in order to placate Italy's left-wing government, which was angered by the bizarre acquittal last spring of U.S. Marine pilot Richard Ashby, whose low-flying plane sliced a gondola cable in the Alps, killing 20 people...." -- New York Post 9/8/99 Editorial via ALAMO-GIRL'S DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON ; SECTION: BREACH OF TRUST; SUBSECTION: TERROR; Revised 1/8/01

* NOTE tha this is the same month Clinton pardoned her FALN cohorts:


14 posted on 01/14/2009 11:18:48 PM PST by piasa
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To: RaceBannon
The Hartford Courant 12/12/99 Edmund Mahony :

"…. The Puerto Rican activist who lobbied the White House for years before winning the release in August of 14 members of violent Puerto Rican independence groups is himself a leader of the terrorist group, the FALN, according to a congressional report distributed Saturday. The report shows that the activist, Luis Nieves Falcon, a lawyer and university professor in Puerto Rico, corresponded and met with senior White House officials about the release as the coordinator of the Puerto Rican Committee for Human Rights. U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Indiana, who chairs the House Committee on Government Reform, said in the report that his staff has been informed by law enforcement sources that Nieves Falcon ``is a member and a leader'' of the FALN, the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation. Burton said his law enforcement sources asked that their identities not be divulged. Burton also released heavily edited law enforcement reports that suggest FALN members and related individuals still pose serious threats of violence. …."

15 posted on 01/14/2009 11:22:04 PM PST by piasa
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To: Libloather

Tha link doesn’t go to the article anymore. It goes to a replacement soft-as-a-gentle breeze article “Holder to admit mistakes” article.


16 posted on 01/15/2009 5:46:55 AM PST by Jack Black
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To: piasa; All
Clinton's sympathy for Marxist terrorists [FALN]
By J.R. Nyquist
September 27, 1999

"Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the 'oppressed people of Puerto Rico,' the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist revolutionaries. Both groups were organized by Fidel Castro's secret police. The ultimate goal of the FALN and the Macheteros is the creation of an independent Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the island of Puerto Rico.

While Timothy McVeigh awaits execution and has no chance of receiving a pardon for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton has seen fit to pardon 11 FALN terrorists and five Macheteros who have been serving prison sentences in the United States. Some people are wondering why Clinton did this. It was not a popular move. What pressing political reason did Clinton have for releasing 16 Communist terrorists and revolutionaries from jail? "

Clinton's sympathy for Marxist terrorists [FALN], September 27, 1999:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760

17 posted on 01/15/2009 6:32:57 AM PST by ETL (Smoking gun evidence on ALL the ObamaRat-commie connections at my newly revised FR Home/About page)
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To: Libloather

The hearing has started BUMP!


18 posted on 01/15/2009 6:40:28 AM PST by tiredoflaundry (Sometimes, I guess there's just not enough bags of popcorn.)
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To: piasa; All
From the website of UCC (United Church of Christ)
('Reverend' Wright's Black Liberation 'church')

March 17, 2008:
"Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit."
http://www.ucc.org/news/responding-to-wright.html
__________________________________________________

From UCCTuths.com:
"No issue has bothered me more than the UCC's relationship with convicted [FALN] Puerto Rican terrorists that are responsible for over 150 bombings in the U.S. during the 70's and 80's. There is no moral or theological reason for defending members of this group who have killed and injured dozens of people. What is further shocking and completely contradictory to any of our beliefs is that there is no record (in the nearly 30 years that the UCC has been advocating for these terrorists) that our denomination ever reached out to the victims of FALN violence."
http://www.ucctruths.com/terrorist.html
__________________________________________________

From the American Spectator:
"Does the name Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional -- Armed Forces of National Liberation -- ring a bell? You may remember this charming group by its initials, FALN. A so-called revolutionary group determined to bring about Puerto Rican independence through violence. As reminded in a detailed February 12, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal by Debra Burlingame, it was FALN that was responsible for a New Year's Eve, 1982 bombing at One Police Plaza in New York. The explosion ripped the lower leg off of Police Officer Rocco Pascarella. ...

April 1998: [Janet] Reno's deputy attorney general Eric Holder meets with Paul Sherry, who is advocating clemency for FALN members. One wonders whether any responsibility for the loss of Officer Rocco Pascarella's leg, the blinding of Detective Senft's one eye, the shattering of his facial bones and the fracturing of his hip, as well as the complete blinding of Detective Pastorella and the loss of all the fingers of his right hand, was discussed. ...

Paul Sherry is actually the Reverend Paul Sherry, who, at the time he was meeting with the Deputy Attorney General of the United States to request clemency for the perpetrators of such horrific acts, was, I am sorry to say, the president of the United Church of Christ -- the denomination that Senator Obama and I share.

Reverend Sherry's request -- and he certainly was not alone -- was granted. As Ms. Burlingame and many others, notably the website UCC Truths, have noted, on August 11, 1999 clemency was indeed offered by President Clinton to the FALN terrorists. Twelve accepted in less than a month, and over the objections of then-Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, the terrorists were granted their freedom."
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12909
__________________________________________________

"Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the 'oppressed people of Puerto Rico,' the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist revolutionaries. Both groups were organized by Fidel Castro's secret police. The ultimate goal of the FALN and the Macheteros is the creation of an independent Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the island of Puerto Rico."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760
__________________________________________________

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

["(Jose) Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
__________________________________________________

Excerpt from The American Thinker
Article:
Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx
May 28, 2008

Just one nugget from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation': "...it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads."
- (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)

Understanding that black liberation theology is Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity helps explain why there is no conflict between Cone's "Christianity" and Farrakhan's "Nation of Islam." They are two prophets in the same philosophical (Marxist) pod, merely using different religions as backdrops for their black-power aims.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/obama_black_liberation_theolog.html
__________________________________________________

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
__________________________________________________

Catholics for Marx
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD
__________________________________________________

From "45 Communist Goals":
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
__________________________________________________

From the New York Times, April 28, 2008
Reverend Wright at the National Press Club
"In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone's powerful books burst onto the scene, the term 'black liberation theology' began to be used. I do not in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable contributions that he has made and that he continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, incidentally, is a personal friend of mine."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/politics/28text-wright.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=sloginL
__________________________________________________

From Jeff Head's website...
One notable quote from [James] Cone describing his Black Liberation Theology is as follows:

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love." - "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, by William R Jones, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
http://www.jeffhead.com/blacklibtheology.htm

African American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Paperback)
by Cornel West (Editor), Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/African-American-Religious-Thought-Anthology/dp/0664224598
__________________________________________________

HANNITY: But Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not backing down and has not for years and in his strong stance on the teaching of black liberation theology is nothing new. He had the same things to say last spring when he appeared on "Hannity & Colmes:"

WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the '60s, systematized black liberation theology that started with Jim Cone in 1968 and the writings of Cone and the writings of Dwight Hopkins and the writings of womynist theologians and Asian theologians and Hispanic theologians, then you can't talk about the black value system.

HANNITY: But I'm a — reverend

WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
__________________________________________________

"Their founding document [the Weather Underground's] called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[1] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."..."-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_Underground#cite_ref-Berger_0-0

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Paperback) by Dan Berger
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-America-Underground-Politics-Solidarity/dp/1904859410
__________________________________________________

From the New York Times, August 24, 2003

"they [the Weather Underground] employed revolutionary jargon, advocated armed struggle and black liberation and began bombing buildings, taking responsibility for at least 20 attacks. Estimates of their number ranged at times from several dozen to several hundred."

Article: Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DE1539F937A1575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
__________________________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
"FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808

19 posted on 01/15/2009 6:42:41 AM PST by ETL (Smoking gun evidence on ALL the ObamaRat-commie connections at my newly revised FR Home/About page)
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bttt


20 posted on 09/02/2012 6:29:50 PM PDT by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge)
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