Weathermen: Home-grown US radicals

[American Patriot]

Weathermen: Home-grown US radicals
BBC ^ | 5 October 2008 | Joe Boyle

Sarah Palin has accused presidential candidate Barack Obama of "palling around" with terrorists - referring to his acquaintance with a former member of the Weather Underground. So who were the Weather Underground?

Embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, with many of the grievances of the civil-rights movement still unanswered, the US government was facing widespread protests in the late 1960s.

Often those who rebelled were rich in idealism but unable or unwilling to take concrete action.

On 8 October 1969, all that changed. A newly-formed group of left-wing extremists, dubbed the Weathermen, went on the rampage in a well-planned protest in Chicago - the so-called Days of Rage riots.

A police station in the city was bombed, and protesters engaged police in combat on the streets. More than 250 of the rioters were arrested, and the FBI began to follow the movements of the Weathermen very closely.

They were a splinter-group from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) - a product of the student radicalism endemic in college campuses in the late 1960s.

The group had recently published an article in the society's newspaper rejecting peaceful protest in favour of communist revolution. The article signed off with the Bob Dylan lyric: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

According to the FBI, several of their members had travelled to Cuba and North Vietnam during 1969.

'Freaks are revolutionaries'

After the Chicago riots, with many of their members in jail, the group regrouped and rethought its tactics.

The group's communiques still betrayed obvious links to the counter-culture of the 1960s.

In May 1970 they issued a statements entitled A Declaration of a State of War, which stated: "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...

[American Patriot]

From wikipedia:

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. They also used this lyric as the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969, as part of a special edition of New Left Notes. 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^[2] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism."^[3]

[American Patriot]

Initially formed as a splinter group which believed that peaceful protests were ineffective, the Weathermen were widely criticized for their use of violence as a means of social and political change. Some accused the group of terrorism, while others accused it of giving all activists, both militant and more mainstream, a bad name. But for the Weathermen, violent action was nothing short of necessary in a time of crisis, a last-ditch effort to grab the country’s attention. And grab attention they did—in March 1970, just days after Bernardine Dohrn publicly announced a “declaration of war.” When an accidentally detonated bomb killed three Weathermen in the basement of a Manhattan townhouse, the group suddenly became the target of an FBI manhunt, and members were forced to go into hiding. The bomb had been intended to be set off at a dance at a local Army base. How did the Weathermen arrive at this point? Some of the group’s former members, interviewed in THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, cite the murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a December 1969 Chicago police raid as a turning point. What many believed to be a government-sanctioned killing in an effort to wipe out militant groups such as the Panthers was, for the Weathermen, the final straw. In 1960, nearly 50 percent of America’s population was under 18 years of age. This surplus of youth set the stage for a widespread revolt against the status quo: against previously upheld structures of racism, sexism and classism, against the violence of the Vietnam War and America’s interventions abroad. At college campuses throughout the country, anger against “the Establishment’s” practices turned to protest, both peaceful and violent. As the decade continued, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an organization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr. in order to promote nonviolent protest, grew increasingly militant—as did the mostly white, middle-class “New Left,” which took cues from the civil rights movement, protested policies both home and abroad, and sparked factions like the Weathermen. By the late 1960s, activist movements had also mobilized among Asian Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, as well as a second wave of activism among women, gay and lesbians and the disabled.		1962: Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, holds its first convention in Port Huron, MI, calling for progressive alliances among activist groups. 1964: The Civil Rights Act passes, while America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam escalates. 1965: Berkeley Free Speech Movement spurs massive student protests against the Vietnam War. The first SDS anti-war march in Washington attracts 15,000 people. 1966: Huey Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated. Anti-war demonstrations turn violent at the Chicago Democratic Convention and shut down Columbia University. 1969: Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark die in a Chicago police raid. The Weathermen form. 1970: March: Three Weathermen are killed when bomb manufacturing goes awry. The organization becomes the Weather Underground as key players including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Kathy Boudin go into hiding. Bernardine Dohrn gives a tour of her underground hideout on the San Francisco Bay View Video June: New York City police headquarters are bombed and the Weathermen take credit, issuing a communiqué from underground. July: Thirteen Weathermen are indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to engage in acts of terrorism. A New York bank is bombed in retaliation. September: Timothy Leary issues a statement from the underground after escaping from prison with the help of the Weathermen. 1971: 50,000 anti-war protesters march on Washington, D.C. 1973: Cease-fire accord in Vietnam. 1977: Weathermen Mark Rudd and Cathy Wilkerson emerge from years of hiding and surrender to the police, receiving two years of probation and three years in prison, respectively. 1980: Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers resurface from the underground, pleading guilty to bail-jumping charges from a 1969 anti-war protest. Dohrn is fined $1,500 and given three years’ probation. 1981: The unofficial end of the Weather Underground occurs when Kathy Boudin resurfaces to participate in an armed robbery in Nanuet, New York, which results in the shooting deaths of three men. Boudin is sentenced to 22 years in prison, and is released in 2003.
Meet the former Weathermen interviewed in the film >> Read an exclusive Q&A with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers >>

[American Patriot]

Let's play "connect the Dots":



Revolutionary Youth Movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) was the section of Students for a Democratic Society that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party. Most of the national leadership of SDS joined the RYM in order to oppose PLP's party line and what they alleged to be its attempted takeover of the SDS leadership structure, particularly at the 1969 SDS convention in Chicago.

But most of all, the RYM opposed what it considered to be PL's unfounded attacks on the Black Panther Party.


Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



For the contemporary organization by the same name, see Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization).


Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was, historically, a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.



Though various organizations have been formed in subsequent years as proposed national networks for left-wing student organizing, none has approached the scale of SDS, and most have lasted a few years at best.



Black Panther Party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxist/Maoist African-American organization established to promote Black Power and self-defense. It was active in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1970s.


Founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale on October 15, 1966, the organization initially set forth a doctrine calling for the protection of African American neighborhoods from police brutality, in the interest of African-American justice.^[1] Its objectives and philosophy changed radically during the party's existence. While the organization's leaders passionately espoused socialist doctrine, the Party's black nationalist reputation attracted an ideologically diverse membership.^[2]

Ideological consensus within the party was difficult to achieve. Some members openly disagreed with the views of the leaders.



The Black Panthers ultimately condemned black nationalism as "black racism". They became more focused on socialism without racial exclusivity.



Finally... this:



Saturday, October 04, 2008

Dead Cops, Dead Marines... and Their Killers


These are police officers Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O'Grady of Nyack, New York.

They, along with Brinks drivers Peter Paige, were shot and killed by members of the Weathermen terrorist organization in 1981, leaving five children without fathers.

At least four top leaders of the Weathermen terrorist organization have signed on as members of a "grassroots effort" to support the election of Barack Obama (this photo is one of the former terror leaders -- Jeff Jones -- with the wife of New York Governor and prominent Democrat David Paterson).

Progressives for Obama signatories include Weathermen Howard Machtinger, Jeff Jones, Steve Tappis and Mark Rudd. Machtinger helped author the the mission statement of the Weathermen that called for revolutionaries within the United States to wage a 'people's war' and attack from within. The government would fall and 'world communism' eventually would be instituted.

The four, along with Bill Ayers, were among the leaders of the Weathermen terrorist group. In addition to the New York police officers killed, a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco set by the group killed another police officer and critically wounded another.

Another 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village townhouse killed three Weathermen terrorists; they had been in the process of building nail bombs to detonate at a Fort Dix military dance.

In his memoir, Ayers declines to specify the bombings he participated in, writing that “some details cannot be told.”

Ayers, to this day, is unapologetic about his terrorism, his revolutionary goals and still supports the overthrow of the U.S. government on his blog.

When given the opportunity to serve on boards and appear at press conferences with Ayers, an up-and-coming politician named Barack Obama jumped at the chance.

Recently released records from the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois, Chicago show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and press conferences from 1995 to 2001 as directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

In fact, during his failed run for Congress Obama claimed this experience as his central qualification for office.

Obama and Ayers also served together on the board of the Woods Fund. Both organizations provided financing and support for radical groups like Acorn, which has had numerous run-ins with authorities over repeated vote fraud, illegal voter registrations, payments for votes, and even trading crack cocaine for votes.

* * *
In 1983 truck bombings in Beirut Lebanon killed 241 American service members in their barracks and another 63 Americans in the U.S. embassy.

The terrorist group Hezbollah -- funded, trained, and led by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps -- was behind the attacks.

When Barack Obama had a chance in 2007 to vote on an amendment designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps a foreign terrorist organization, he missed the vote and said he would have opposed it anyhow.

The amendment passed the Senate 76-22 with bipartisan support (including Hillary Clinton). Even former secretary of state Madeleine Albright said the vote was "necessary for sanctions and diplomacy."

* * *
Earlier this year Obama gave a speech to a large crowd in Berlin. He addressed them as "a fellow citizen of the world" and then apologized for the United States: "I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions."

This outrageous statement overlooked the unbelievable sacrifice of Americans who defeated the Nazis and their Berlin-based leadership. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died liberating Europe from the clutches of Hitler and to prevent the spread of tyranny and despotism throughout the world.

And Obama has the nerve to apologize for America in Berlin?

* * *
Barack Obama is a radical leftist whose career was launched at the home of radical leftists and who has affiliated himself with terrorists, radicals and unapologetic haters of America.

Vote accordingly in 2008.

Please forward this to any families of police officers, soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine personnel. If they want to support Obama for president, so be it. But I will not and cannot vote for someone whose supporters, friends and apologists have the blood of police officers and our armed forces personnel on their hands.

Update: Stanley Kurtz at the National Review:

As others have noted, today’s New York Times carries a story on the relationship between Barack Obama and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers. The piece serves as a platform for the Obama campaign and Obama’s friends and allies. Obama’s spokesman and supporters’ names are named and their versions of events are presented in detail, with quotes. Yet the article makes no serious attempt to present the views of Obama critics who have worked to uncover the true nature of the relationship. That makes this piece irresponsible journalism, and an obvious effort by the former paper of record to protect Obama from the coming McCain onslaught.

References:: New York Times, Canada Free Press, Investors Business Daily, New York Times, Aaron Klein, Wikipedia, AIP and Council on Foreign Relations.
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