Posted on 01/19/2009 3:11:35 PM PST by fiodora
An American education professor, one of the founders of a radical 1960s group known as the Weather Underground, which was responsible for a number of bombings in the United States in the early 1970s, was turned back at the Canadian border last night.
Dr. William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a leader in educational reform, was scheduled to speak at the Centre for Urban Schooling at University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. But that appearance has now been temporarily cancelled.
"I don't know why I was turned back," Ayers said in an interview this morning from Chicago. "I got off the plane like everyone else and I was asked to come over to the other side. The border guards reviewed some stuff and said I wasn't going to be allowed into Canada. To me it seems quite bureaucratic and not at all interesting ... If it were me I would have let me in. I couldn't possibly be a threat to Canada."
Ayers made headlines this summer after Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin suggested that then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama hung around with domestic terrorists like Ayers. The professor had hosted a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama in 1995, during his run for the state Senate. They also worked together on Chicago school reform and served on a charity board together.
Ayers first rose to notoriety in the early 1970s with the Weather Underground. The group claimed responsibility for bombings at the U.S. Capitol, a Pentagon restroom and New York City police headquarters. In 1970, a townhouse in New York the group was using to build a bomb blew up.
Nowadays, Ayers is known more for his work in educational reform. He has written or edited more than a dozen books including his 2001 memoir Fugitive Days and travels around the world giving lectures on education.
Jeffrey Kugler, executive director of the Centre for Urban Schooling, is deeply disappointed in the turn of events. For him it's a question of academic freedom. "It's kind of ironic the day before Barack Obama is going to become president this is what the Canadian border security has done," said Kugler. "It seems ridiculous that one university can't have a professor from another university to come and give a lecture on an important educational topic."
Kugler waited for five hours at the Toronto Island airport for Ayers. He was with a lawyer, but the border guard refused to allow Ayers to see the lawyer.
"The entire four or five hours he was not allowed to have representation at all. To me this is an issue of academic freedom. He could not be a threat to anyone ever. Anyone who knows anything about this man he's a distinguished scholar at the University of Illinois and he has been involved in education reform over the past 15 years. To imagine in any way he was a threat to Canada is really absurd."
Ya. Beauty, eh?
Better they, uh, like, uh, made like hockey players and knocked the puck out of him, eh? :)
so he can’t get into Canada but can and probably will go to the white house
Just how much messed up is this?
I am really scared for the future, things like our classified secrets being sneaked out.
If the FBI has an undercover in the nation of islam I certainly think that the Nation of islam will be tipped off.
I just hope the agencies do not tell the phony all our secrets.
Ayers will be soon looking at the report of him
better if they’d let him in then not let him back to the US
Odinga is next.
Uh, because you are murdering terrorist spawn of hell, Bill?
well there ya’ go...
Canada did the right thing and I hope it goes down in history
Probably because you’re a fricken terrorist you idiot. Since that’s the worst you have to deal (as opposed to a noose) consider yourself lucky.
This is how democrats threaten to get their way in a liberal times — lawyers. This is how terrorists will be dealt with and wars will be conducted — lawyers. Almost every body in the democrat administration from Obama downwards is a lawyer. The threat of litigation in liberal courts is the new modus operandi.
I don’t know what the legalities are but the ETHICS of the situation are that this terrorist POS should never enjoy another day in his worthless life that is any better than what all the victims and families of the Weatherfreaks have endured through the years — the dead and the living have suffered badly from this freak, and he ought to spend the rest of his days in a jail cell.
Certainly he should never be able to cross a border...... except maybe to go live in Cuba, his idea of paradise.
>>”My exact thoughts. Maybe Canada figured it had enough terrorists up there.”
Maybe they would have let him in, too, but he failed to whisper the secret password...
**”MOOSE-...branch?...twig?”** (something like that.)
DG
>>”And yet this guy lives free in the USA all these years and has brain washed heaven only knows how many tender young minds in his radical socialist views.”
In fact, I think he is (arguably) the most dangerous of terrorists. While any fool might import a nuke, and kill a million or so of us, Ayers influence in education has already damaged the souls of untold millions of children, and will continue to do so.
DG
“This is not the Bill Ayers that I knew.”
Barry Soetoro.
Once a terrorist, always a terrorist!
I wish we could deport him, too!
bttt
Canada knows you can put lipstick on a pig and it is still a pig.
pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
I wish they would have sent to Iran..
Yep, that is almost certainly what will happen. I would be surprised if that were not the case; unfortunately.
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