Obama's Foul Weather Friends

American Thinker ^ | September 16, 2008 | Scott Swett and Roger Canfield

[neverdem]

The lack of media interest in the role of former domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn in Democratic nominee Barack Obama's political ascent in Chicago is one of the most remarkable aspects of the 2008 presidential campaign.  When the question is raised at all, reporters are quick to repeat Sen. Obama's claim that his relationship with the two former bomb-makers was fleeting and casual.  Some cite Chicago mayor Richard Daley's defense of Ayers as a "distinguished professor of education" and "a valued member of the Chicago community."  Why then should there be cause for concern?    

Weatherman: bombs, rage and revolution

Weatherman was a revolutionary communist sect that split from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969.  Weatherman's founding document called for a "white fighting force" that would be "akin to the Red Guard in China" to work with the Black Liberation Movement and other "anti-colonial" movements to bring about a communist revolution and destroy "US imperialism."  Weatherman committed at least 40 bombings between 1969 and 1975.  Targets included the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Capitol, other government buildings, military bases, police offices and corporations.  Two of the group's primary leaders were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. 

Defenders argue that Weatherman was not a terrorist group, since it frequently tipped off police about the devices.  Bill Ayers recently called the bombings "a dramatic form of armed propaganda" and claimed "no one was ever hurt."  In reality, the relatively low death toll from the bombing campaign was mostly due to technical incompetence.

On March 6, 1970, three members of Weatherman were killed when a powerful bomb they were constructing exploded prematurely.  The device had been made from dynamite, wrapped with roofing nails to maximize casualties.  Its intended target was a dance for noncommissioned officers and their dates scheduled for that evening at Fort Dix.  The bomb that killed three in a Greenwich Village townhouse would have killed far more on a crowded dance floor. 

Larry Grathwohl, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated Weatherman, later testified that Ayers had identified Bernadine Dohrn as the person who bombed a San Francisco police station in February 1970, killing one officer and injuring two others.  The agent also said that Ayers had constructed a bomb made from 13 sticks of dynamite that the group placed in a Detroit police officers' association building.  The agent contacted the police, who cleared the area, but the bomb failed to explode.  Ayers' murderous intent was clear enough, however.  According to the FBI agent, "Bill said that we should plan our bombing to coincide with the time when there would be the most people in those buildings."

Ayers and Dohrn were never prosecuted for the bombings because of government misconduct in collecting evidence.  In 2001, Ayers told the New York Times, "I don't regret setting bombs.  I feel we didn't do enough."

Befriending America's foreign enemies

Even before Weatherman began its notorious bombing campaign, the group's future leaders had formed relationships with others who shared their hatred for "Amerikkka."

Bernadine Dohrn made numerous contacts with Fidel Castro's Cuban Mission at the UN in 1968 and 1969, during which time she arranged for SDS groups to visit Havana. 

After returning from Cuba, Dohrn and others met with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong representatives in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss antiwar strategy on US campuses.  Speaking a few days later at an assembly of revolutionary student movements at Columbia University, Dohrn reported that the Vietnamese communists she met in Budapest were working with US GIs in Saigon, attempting to obtain military information.

As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam. Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with Vietnamese communists in Toronto.  He later recalled being so moved by the gesture that he "left the room to cry."  He said, "I realized...America was an evil... and that I was... living inside the belly of the beast...." 

In January 1969, at the request of the Cubans and the Vietnamese, Dohrn assembled another SDS delegation to travel to Havana to plan what the Chicago Sun-Times called an "antiwar campaign during an eight-day seminar with representatives of Hanoi and the Viet Cong." 

Dohrn became a key planner in the founding of the Venceremos Brigades.  Ostensibly a "solidarity" program for US leftists to visit and support Castro's Cuba, the group was actually organized by Cuban intelligence as a covert attack on US security.  Cuban secret police offered the "brigadistas" money, advice and logistical support.  Some Americans were also given guerrilla warfare training and instructed in the use of weapons and explosives.  While they were in Cuba, Huynh Van Ba, a representative of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) advised his American allies to "look for the person who fights hardest against the cops."  Dohrn stayed in telephone contact with Ba after returning home.

In his autobiography, Fugitive Days, Bill Ayers recalled the "Days of Rage" protests he helped to lead in the streets of Chicago in October 1969:

"...A small determined group suited up for battle...wearing...motorcycle or army-surplus helmets...goggles and gas masks, heavy boots and gloves...Most of us carried an arsenal of...steel pipes and sling shots, chains, clubs, mace, and rolls of pennies to add weight to the punch... our bonfire was full up, feeding on...splintered park benches.... The crowd roared...HO, HO, HO CHI MINH...Bernardine (Dohrn)...shouted, ‘BRING THE WAR HOME'." 

Speaking before an SDS "National Action" conference in Cleveland, Ayers called "Days of Rage" "a strategy...that's going to help the NLF [National Liberation Front] concretely."

Ayers also led a group of rioters in an attack on the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington.  The mob broke windows, smashed cars, and threw rocks, sticks, firecrackers and bottles at the Embassy.  At one point, a counter-demonstrator grabbed a Viet Cong flag from the group and set it on fire.  Ayers proudly recalled that he had "burned my left hand and broke my ring finger rescuing" the flag.  In contrast, Ayers was later photographed for a New York Times profile standing on a crumpled US flag.

Working within the system

Ayers and Dohrn were fugitives from justice for several years, living "underground" with assistance from sympathetic fellow radicals.  When they emerged, both were welcomed into the ranks of academia, where they quickly rose to positions of influence.  Ayers is now a professor of education and a Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  He was recently elected vice-president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association, the largest US association of education professors and researchers.  Dohrn, who is now married to Ayers, is an Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University, where she also directs the Children and Family Justice Center.  She has participated in several key American Bar Association committees and boards and was a founding co-chair of the ABA's Children's Law Committee.  

Ayers now uses his academic position and political connections to promote his theories of "progressive" education, a topic on which he has authored several books.  In 1995, Ayers co-founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a radical education reform project created to award grants to Chicago schools and "education networks."  The grant-making non-profit handed out well over $100 million between 1995 and 2001, but failed to measurably improve the Chicago school system.  Where all the money went may never be determined, but some of it was used to fund projects run by Ayers' radical friends.

For example, $175,000 went to former SDSer Mike Klonsky, who until recently was also a blogger at Obama's official campaign website.  Before reinventing himself as an educator, Klonsky founded an American Maoist communist sect that worked with the Chinese communists.  Among the organizations receiving funding from CAC were the community action group ACORN, the Arab American Action Network, Bernadine Dohrn's Children and Family Justice Center, and Trinity United Church, home base of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 

The man Ayers and his friends chose as CAC's first board chairman was a little-known 33-year old associate at a small Chicago law firm, Barack Obama.  Ayers himself co-chaired CAC's other operational arm, the "Collaborative."  Ayers and Obama held their respective positions for more than four years, working closely together during that time.  They also served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago for three years.

Their association extended beyond working hours.  In 1995, Obama launched his first political campaign, for the Illinois State Senate, at Ayers and Dohrn's home in Hyde Park.  In 1997, Obama endorsed Ayers' book on juvenile justice, and Michelle Obama hosted a panel discussion of the book in which Ayers and Barack Obama participated.

However, when asked to describe their relationship during the Philadelphia primary debate last April, Barack Obama recalled Ayers merely as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

Suppressing the evidence

Obama has been less than forthcoming with information that might shed light on these close associations in his past.   Until quite recently, researchers have been blocked from accessing the document archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, now held at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  This delay has provided ample time to review and quite possibly sanitize the contents.  When Klonsky was identified online earlier this year, all his posts at Obama's website were instantly deleted.  Documentation concerning many aspects of Obama's life remains unavailable, including papers from his time in college and law school, medical records, law firm clients, and files as an Illinois State Senator.      

Obama's campaign attorney has tried to suppress a TV ad that calls attention to his connection with Ayers, threatening the broadcast licenses of TV station managers and calling for the Justice Department to prosecute those who produced and financed the ad.

Throughout his life, Barack Obama has selected his mentors from the ranks of those who despise the United States.  This common thread connects Hawaiian Communist Party organizer Frank Marshall Davis, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright ("God bless America?  No, no... God DAMN America!") and the former Weatherman leaders, Ayers and Dohrn.  

Did Ayers, Dohrn and their fellow domestic terrorists ever give up their revolutionary goal of destroying the "imperialist" America they hate?  Or have they simply substituted new tools for the bombs and violence that were once the measure of their commitment?

Scott Swett is the primary author of a new book on the 2004 presidential campaign, To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry. He is also webmaster for SwiftVets.com and WinterSoldier.com.

Roger Canfield is the author of a forthcoming series of books on the antiwar movement:

Comrades in Arms: How the Ameri-Cong Won the Vietnam War Against the Common Enemy-America. 

[neverdem]

The lame stream media is digging it's own grave by ignoring this story and trying to come up with dirt on Gov. Palin.

Siena New York Poll: With 50 Days Left, New York Is Far From True Blue

[VigilantAmerican]

This is one of the best articles I’ve seen on the activities of The Weathermen, and the relationship between Hussein and Ayers/Dohrn.

[browardchad]

It's a good summary, but it omits Dohrn's connection to the 1981 Brinks robbery (and earlier related robberies), for which she served seven months in a NYC federal jail in 1982, for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury.

Investigations in the case revealed that many of the Weathermen (or, as they cutely named themselves, the Weather Underground) lived in the Columbia University area -- as did Barack Obama during that same period.

Obama left for Chicago in 1985, and Ayers and Dohrn followed in 1987-88, after Ayers completed his Ed.D. at Columbia U. Teachers College. Although Dohrn was never admitted to the bar, she worked in NYC, and later in Chicago, for the same law firm that hired Michelle Obama, and later Barack Obama as a summer intern during his Harvard Law years.

[VigilantAmerican]

Thanks for your reply, and for reminding me about the coexistence of Hussein and Ayers/Dorhn at Columbia—I’d forgotten about that.

We’ll never see the MSM follow-up on any of it, how they all wound up in cahoots together in Chicago afterward, etc...there are so many pieces to the puzzle that fit perfectly together, but of course it’s all presented to the public mainly as just an incidental happenstance acquaintance by proximity, etc.

Impossible, really, to capture all the juicy stuff in a brief article that can be digested readily...

I wish the MSM would promulgate Bernadine Dorhn’s quote from when she learned of the Manson Family’s committing the Tate/LaBianca murders: “Dig it! They killed the pigs, they stuck a fork in one of them(paraphrasing)...out of sight!”

If there’s any sense at all left in this country, Hussein will be soundly defeated.

[PGalt]

Great article from Swet and Canfield. Thanks for posting. Music to read this thread by...

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xIulyVsG8

Thanks to all posters/linkers/researchers/educators.

[Enduring Freedom]

Interesting background (from Wiki):

“Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization, was an American radical left organization founded in 1969 by leaders and members who split from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The group organized a riot in Chicago in 1969 and bombed buildings in the 1970s.

They took their name from the lyric “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues.

The Weathermen were initially part of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) within the SDS, splitting from the RYM’s Maoists by claiming there was no time to build a vanguard party and that revolutionary war against the United States government and the capitalist system should begin immediately. Their founding document called for the establishment of a “white fighting force” to be allied with the “Black Liberation Movement” and other “anti-colonial” movements to achieve “the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism.”

The group’s first public demonstration was the “Days of Rage,” an October 8, 1969 riot in Chicago that was coordinated with the trial of the Chicago Eight. In 1970 the group issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United States government, under the name “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO), and members adopted fake identities and pursued covert activities.

They carried out a campaign consisting of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots. Their attacks were mostly bombings of government buildings, along with several banks, police department headquarters and precincts, state and federal courthouses, and state prison administrative offices.”

[Interesting Times]

Obama’s radical roots ping.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[MinuteGal]

This summary should be required reading for every freeper.

Front man, Obama, is the D.C. foot-in-the-door for an eventual bloodless, radical marxist take-over of our country.

Show me an American institution where the marxists and their socialist/liberal/leftist counterparts are not now in control, or strategically positioned.

Being ignorant of information provided here is dangerous.

Leni

[MeekOneGOP]

bump! bump! bump!

[ETL]

From Investor's Business Daily (IBD), August 27, 2008:

"Ayers, now a tenured distinguished professor of education at UIC, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

One of Ayer's descriptions for a course called 'Improving Learning Environments' says prospective K-12 teachers need to 'be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and ... be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.

The Annenberg papers are quite extensive — 132 boxes containing 947 file folders with 70 linear feet of material. They undoubtedly contain more surprises regarding Obama's relationship with Ayers, one of many relationships Obama has sought to hide.'..."

Article: Annenberg Papers: Putting On Ayers?
http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=304729375940845

________________________________________________________

[Obama] is named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Bill Ayers
(article typo has Ayers instead of Obama)

In late 1993, Bill Ayers, now an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, organized a team to put together a grant proposal to secure nearly $50 million from the Annenberg Challenge. The money was to be used by Ayers and co. to bolster the radical Local School Councils reform project that Ayers and Obama had championed back in 1988 through the ABCs.

The grant application was successful and in early 1995 Barack Obama was named chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers was named co-chair of the Challenge’s operative and strategic body, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. Ayers and Obama work together for the next five years on raising an additional $60 million in matching money from local foundations and corporations and using the money to intervene in the governance of the Chicago public schools.

The Challenge through a multi-million dollar Leadership Development Initiative intervened in the School Council elections in the middle of what was known as the Chicago School Wars. At the same time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was pushing, successfully, to gut the power of the Councils.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/12/the-obama-ayers-top-ten-highlights-of-the-20-year-obama-ayers-connection/

________________________________________________________

"The Small Schools Workshop was founded in 1991 at the University of Illinois at Chicago to provide support for teachers who were trying to create new smaller learning environments. Its director is Michael Klonsky, a former professor of education at UIC."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Schools_Workshop

________________________________________________________

Some background on Bill Ayers' SDS comrade, Michael Klonsky
(Chicago Annenberg Challenge-related)

"One of Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s comrades in the late 60s Students for a Democratic Society was Mike Klonsky. When Dohrn and Ayers moved in one direction toward the violent tactics of the Weather Underground, Klonsky, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, dropped the pro-Russian communist politics of his parents and became a committed Maoist. As leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977 [not to be confused with Communist Party USA. CPML no longer exists, CPUSA formed decades earlier and is still around-ETL], he travelled to Beijing and was toasted by the senior Beijing leadership.

When the crazy left of the 70s died in the 80s, Klonsky went to graduate school in education in Florida and then moved to Chicago.

While driving a cab there he [Michael Klonsky] was recruited by his old friend Bill Ayers to head up a new project called the Small Schools Workshop in 1991. It’s offices were in the Department of Education building at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus where Ayers taught.

In 1995 the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge headed by Ayers and Obama gave the Workshop a grant of $175,000.

The Annenberg Challenge also had its office space in the same building as Ayers Department and the Workshop, rent free courtesy of the University.

In 2008 Klonsky ran a blog on the official Obama campaign website on education policy and “social justice” teaching. When discussion of the Klonsky blog emerged in the blogosphere, it was promptly shut down by the campaign and all of the posts made by Klonsky were removed from the site."

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/12/the-obama-ayers-top-ten-highlights-of-the-20-year-obama-ayers-connection/

________________________________________________________

In 1977, the October League was reorganized as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [again, not Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -ETL] and former SDS activist Michael Klonsky became party chairman. Also in 1977, Klonsky traveled to China and the CPML was recognized by the Chinese Communist Party as its official sister party in America.

(snip)

In January 1981, Michael Klonsky resigned as party chairman, and the CPML disbanded that same year.

The previous Red Encyclopedia description of the CPML was incorrectly combined with that of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).

http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html

________________________________________________________

"This is a guy [Bill Ayers] who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

Source: ABC News - Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate, April 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/Story?id=4670271&page=2

________________________________________________________

Bill Ayers TODAY (April 6, 2008), from his own red communist star-headed website, begging to debate communism vs capitalism with Sean Hannity and STILL calling for revolution!

"Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good —must win.

We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: a better world is both possible and necessary.

Source: Bill Ayers' own website:
http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/page/2/

________________________________________________________

"a better world is both possible and necessary"?

Looks to me like Bill Ayers stole (or borrowed) this phrase from Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Both the Weather Underground and RCP have roots in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organization.

________________________________________________________

"The following is an excerpt from an historic talk by Chairman Bob Avakian, soon to be available on video and DVD from Three Q Productions-REVOLUTION: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About. This talk, delivered in 2003, followed by questions and answers, is a wide- ranging revolutionary journey, covering many topics."
http://rwor.org/a/1238/introbaspeech.htm

________________________________________________________

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA [Maoist]
Revolution #63, October 1, 2006

Interview with Bill Ayers:
"On Progressive Education, Critical Thinking and the Cowardice of Some in Dangerous Times"
http://rwor.org/a/063/ayers-en.html

________________________________________________________

Much more on the ObamaRat-commie connections at my FR Profile/Home page. Everything there is linked directly to its source. I've now added within-page links and a 'clickable' table of contents which makes it easy to hop around to the various sections:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl

[mtntop3]

There is plenty of time for this to come out and gone through.

A good summary -

[The Shrew]

Please hit your ping lists with this outstanding article.

Regards,

TS

[MinuteGal]

Done!

Leni

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Syncro]

Great article.

The Daley Political Machine is alive and well and Obama bin Biden are owned by them.

Who looks good in cement shoes?

[Interesting Times]

Good stuff. Thanks for linking it in.

[Interesting Times]

Thanks for the assist.

[VigilantAmerican]

Sad but true; communists have succeeded in taking over America, for almost all practical purposes, by steady, termite-like proliferation over the decades.

Government agencies, public schools and even private colleges and universities, the old media, corporate “diversity” agendas...political correctness has made it all but impossible to stop the full-on attack on our country by foreign interests, Islamic jihad/caliphatists, Reconquistadores, Bolsheviks, the list is too long and depressing to belabor any further than to say that Palin may be our best hope now.

Just yesterday at work, I was asked to complete a form that claimed no form of discrimination whatsoever in hiring/promotion/employment decisions is to be tolerated based on race, gender, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, etc., etc. It asks employees to indicate their race, ethinicity, gender, and so on. As a white male, I know full well that the very purpose of such data is to discriminate against me.

Sarah Palin qouted Reagan to a considerable extent at the rally I attended with my wife and 6-month old son in Fairfax, VA last week. In the crowd of 23-30K, we were surrounded by families with babies and small children, teenagers, toddlers; veterans, immigrants, feminists, professional and homemaking women, seniors and boomers, and Americans of every stripe.

I have seen the future of America. The Communist Manifesto explicitly calls for the destruction of marriage and the family, so that the state can replace them entirely.

In Genesis 3:15, God curses the serpent Satan, and says that enmity between the “seed of the woman” and the seed of the serpent will be in effect for the generations to follow; that it will bruise the serpent’s head, and bruise her heel.

Sarah Palin represents the future of America. Hussein represents an alternate future. Let her seed and her heel come down hard, and grind Hussein’s head into the dust.

[aculeus]

bttt