5 posts tagged “terrorist”
Over at the American Thinker, Joseph Meyers wrote an article that demonstrates our self defeat and schizophrenia called the Strategic Collapse in the War. He makes no bones about the government's dualistic role in our diplomacy with Islam. One hand prosecutes aggression against them while the other invites them to participate in our defense structure. We cannot win this struggle until the enemy is identified and a coherent strategy is in place to overcome their stated intentions to rule the world by violence and terror. I have little hope that the next president will do any better. It seems that nobody in Washington is yet taking the threat of global jihadism seriously beyond pointing the military at factions and ignoring, completely the rest of their actions to undermine our culture. Half of our citizenry not only don't recognize the threat, but are actively blaming our government for Muslim militaristic aggression. Most of the rest are ill informed of the threat's depth and breadth. Courts are over stepping their authority and are undermining our legislative efforts, few though they are, (wire taps from overseas to overseas calls) to protect us from national security threats, news media are actively undermining our strategic policy by publishing military secrets and so few military (abu Graib) embarrassments, one major political party is selling us out for their own political gain by calling the war unnecessary (John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi) and accusing our military of great (John Murtha) evils, and still, Islam marches on into our schools, our courts, our legislature, and even our lands (Dearborn Michigan) with no go areas popping up in our own cities. How far from pathetic does this threat have to get before we wake up and begin to act with any seriousness?
I am going to a meeting tomorrow night to participate in monitoring and reporting Muslim activism in my neighborhood. I hope you will join or start one in your neighborhood and begin to report Islamist works in your schools, in your courts, and in your city councils and state legislatures. This threat will not be met with responsibility by those in Washington until those on Main Street meet it with responsibility of their own. When abuse reports begin to mount to the heavens, and when the people recognize losses in rights that are occurring today and have been for years, when we begin to answer ridiculous charges with factual cases in local areas, then the anti-war crowd will be shut down, then the milk toast voter who doesn't have time to investigate what the politicians aim for, will begin to make time and make a difference. Please go to ACT For America and register. If there isn't already a group to join, make one for your local area. While we're at it, we should be reporting Communist activities in these same bodies. California has it within its laws that it is illegal to inculcate school children with Communist ideologies. They should be reported and prosecuted and the teachers who promote it should be fired and barred from working with children for life.
We are funding both sides of this war through our oil addiction. We have to change the legislative body's addiction to oil revenues which from one company last year amounted to 2/3 the income tax revenue. One oil company's tax paid to the government last year was equivalent to 2/3 of the total income tax revenue. Is it any wonder that the government has either actively hampered technology that can free us from oil addiction or has failed to protect new technology that would free us from oil addiction? It is time to take back our government from politicians who cannot deal with the greater danger of petro-dollars funding the war against us on military, litigious, education, religious exercise, and legislative grounds. Vote for a veteran this election. Vote John Murtha and his ilk out of office.
http://www.iraqvetsforcongress.com/
Kieran Michael Lalor - New York's 19th District United States Marine Corps Veteran
Nate Bech -
Massachusetts' 1st District
David Bellavia - New York's 26th District United States Army Veteran
Will Breazeale – North Carolina’s 7th
District
Mike Coffman - Colorado's 6th District United States Marine Corps Veteran
Wayne E. Harmon
– Indiana’s 7th District
Duncan Hunter - California's 52nd District
Vince Micco - New
Jersey's 9th District
United States Army Veteran
Bentley Rayburn - Colorado's 5th District
United States Army Veteran
William Russell – Pennsylvania’s 22nd District
Steve Stivers - Ohio's 15th District
Charlie Summers – Maine’s 1st District
Steve Ward -
Colorado's 6th District
Allen West –
Florida’s 22nd District
Lee Zeldin - New York's 1st District United States Army Veteran
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© 2008. All Rights Reserved
The greatest sin of the second Bush administration is poor communication with the people of the United States. I understand why they have done such a poor job of it, but it is the greatest failing of George Bush's presidency. The Main Stream press have continually worked to discredit him and have joined the Democratic party in undermining his credibility and have thought nothing of the damage to national security or the morale of our military in a war time effort. In publishing military and national secrets during war, in seeking only the worst stories for the front page and spinning every event to make the US look as bad as possible in an international light, by burying positive news deep in the mid to back pages of the papers they are complicit in harming the reputation of the US and encouraging the enemies of freedom and Democracy. David Horowitz is a great communicator and should be the Republican Party's spokesman on the war against Radical Islam. He was giving a speech introducing his new book, "Party of Defeat" when he spoke these words:
The opposition party has full access to our secrets and our intelligence. They conducted a campaign beginning in July 2003 to attack the United States and its commander in chief. That is the position of the Democratic party. That is a national disgrace. We went into Iraq in March 2003, we liberated Baghdad in April 2003 with 139 casualties. It was July (that's three months or so) after we liberated Baghdad. We were winning the war. But when the resistance was starting from the al Quaeda terrorists and the Baathist Fascists in Iraq and our young men and women were in harm's way that the Democratic party ran a national TV ad. And the TV ad said "Read his lips, President Bush deceives the American people." President Bush is a war criminal, that's what that was saying. What change was there in American policy between April and July? There was none. The Democratic party, you'll remember, had a presidential primary at this time. I can't think of anything lower than selling your country out. Selling your young men and women who are on the battlefield out. Selling the security of 300 million Americans out, because you wanted to win the Democratic presidential primary. Now, let's look at a couple of these lies that the Democratic party has based their campaign against America, against the American people, against the Iraqi people, and against the war on terror. The first is that Iraq is no threat, or was no threat. Was Afghanistan a threat? Afghanistan is a much poorer nation than Iraq. Afghanistan has no oil. Its got half the population. Its virtually all tribal. Baghdad was a pretty modern city. Of course, that's the whole point of the Bush doctrine and of the war that we are fighting in Iraq. That 9/11 told us that a weak and fragile and unstable nation, a very poor nation, if it supports terrorists, can strike the American mainland. Something the Nazis never did, the Germans could not do. Something the Japanese could never do. Something no enemy in the last 150 years could do. And that's why Saddam Hussein was a threat. Because Saddam Hussein had put... after the Gulf war had put Alahu Ackbar into the flag as a calculated effort to join the forces of the Islamo-fascist crusade because they shared a common enemy. America, the great Satan. He had tried to assassinate the president of the United States, he had held international conferences for terrorists, he had hosted abu Habbas and abu Nedal, and Musab al Zachari, and Ansar al Islam. All of this Saddam Hussein had done. And so, if you look out at the world, with any modicum of responsibility on 9/11, you would see that Iraq was the next big threat to the United States. I tried to lay out here, why Iraq should have been considered a threat, but you don't have to take my word for it. You can go to Al Gore. On February 2, 2002, Al Gore gave a speech. Now this speech followed a speech... the state of the union that year by George Bush. And that was the axis of evil speech. And many Democrats were in a rage over the use of the term evil to describe Iraq even though the regime had murdered 300,000 Iraqis and put them in mass graves, even though it had dropped poison gas, a wmd, on an ethnic population (the Kurds) even though it had invaded two countries within recent memory, even though Saddam Hussein was in violation of the terms of the Gulf war truce, Al Gore gave a statesmen like speech and he defended Bush's use of the term evil because it was an accurate description of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. And this is what he said about whether Iraq posed a threat. Instead of saying it posed no threat and would cause us to be judged harshly by history, what he said was, and this is an exact quote, "Iraq is a virulent threat in a class by itself." "a virulent threat in a class by itself, and the United States would be justified in going to the limit to take Saddam Hussein down." That's what Al Gore said. So this book I've written, "The Party of Defeat" is about a party that betrayed its own war. that betrayed its own country, and that betrayed its men and women in the field. Don't let anybody tell you that you can support the troops but not the war. If you support the troops, you support their mission, because when you do what John Kerry did, and say, "Its the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" you send a demoralizing message to our troops and an encouraging message to our enemies. On the WMD's, Saddam Hussein lost the Gulf war. When he invaded Kuwait, the first George Bush organized an international coalition to stop him. But actually, that coalition was a little too multi-lateral, because it included the Arabs and the Arabs said you cannot remove Saddam Hussein. What ended the Gulf war was a truce. It said Saddam Hussein can stay in power but these are the conditions. And the conditions were UN resolution 687, and UN resolution 689. The Gulf war truce UN resolution 687 and 689 said "You will not build, you will not plan to build, you will not have programs to build weapons of mass destruction. and you will allow UN inspectors onto Iraqi territory and freedom to go anywhere they want so they can determine that you're not doing it, because nobody in his right mind can trust you." Those two UN resolutions which were followed by fourteen others, were there to keep Saddam from doing what he wanted to do, and what we know he wanted to do, which was to build weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein systematically violated these resolutions until a day came in 1998 when he actually threw the UN inspectors out. Iraq was always on the U.S. government's mind. Hillary Clinton in one of her statements said that she... not only did she vote for the war when she was defending her support for the war, not only did she support the war because of the intelligence that Bush gave her, but the intelligence she got from the Clinton administration. Saddam Hussein was a threat. Now, this is what George Bush did, he gave a speech identifying Iraq as a national threat, part of an axis of evil. And then George Bush in September went to the United Nations and spoke to the general assembly and said, "There are 16 outstanding resolutions which are arms control agreements which are part of the UN truce with Saddam Hussein that kept him in power. Either you will enforce your word, or you will be seen to be irrelevant." Which the UN is. "And we will do it for you." That's what George Bush said. And then he went to Congress and he got the authorization for the use of force. So the very opposite of what the Democrats claim is the truth. George Bush did not violate international law, he tried to enforce it and the Democrats didn't support him. The Bush administration made a diplomatic mistake, which was to go back to the UN. Once they had the resolution, they should have acted on it. And Tony Blair begged the Bush administration to go to the UN again and get another resolution. And unfortunately, the Bush administration listened to Colin Powell and did so. And Colin Powell got what he deserved for this. Because, what he did, go to the UN to sell the war. And the way he sold it was to imply that Saddam had more weapons capability than he had. And that's why people say its about WMD's. No it isn't!! It wasn't at all about the weapons of mass destruction. It was about his potential to build those weapons and his programs to do so, and his intentions to do so.
Now, if there is any doubt left that the Bush administration lied to the American public, to the Congress or to the UN or that we were justified in invading Iraq, or that we could afford to allow that tyrant to continue in his plans to help work destruction on the innocent people of America, please, tell me what it is. More, if there is any doubt that the actions of the Democratic leadership is not traitorous in their actions against our national security and against our men and women in the field at war, please, inform me. If there is any doubt that these actions expose the complicity of the American main stream press, please, tell me what doubts you can dredge up. This is not patriotism to act this way, careless of the effects on our security or that of the troops, or their morale. If the Democrats win this election with this for credibility, I am without hope for our nation and its future. John McCain is a moderate. He has worked across the aisle enough times to anger most Republicans and only got the nomination because the more conservative Republicans were split between the two more conservative candidates. Barack Obama is a radical leftist and his voting record proves it. He is unvetted and has zero accomplishments to point to, much less working with the opposition, so how can he fulfill his promises to be the agent of change and hope? Hillary Clinton is running on her husband's experience. She voted for the war before she promised to abandon the war. This isn't flip flop, this is pandering to the base merely for the seat of power. The Democrats are proven traitors and deserve nothing less than a trial for treasonous act against national security in a time of war. We cannot afford to put into office any member of the party of defeat, and of enmity with the nation that grants that power voluntarily. We have to have a Chief that isn't moved by every wisp of breeze of political winds. We have to have a leader with the vision and the steadfast resolve to meet every challenge with the grace and assurance of having practiced what's right and good. No promise of benefits is greater than the value of assured security to continue in our existence as a nation of freedom and democracy. The only issue on the ticket this election has to be the security and continuance of our great culture. Everything else pales in comparison. Without that security, there are no human rights protection, no freedom of speech, no opportunity to succeed in business, no opportunity to live in peace and security, no opportunity to participate or not participate in the religion of your choice. Do not reward the party of defeat this election year. Don't even encourage them to speak until they get this one issue right. National security is tantamount in politics. Everything else is secondary.
Message to Bill Ayers:
Bob (JudgeBob) Says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
April 25, 2008 at
1:29 am
I am currently studying your biography and am astonished at your entire history of hatred for free society. I cannot express strongly enough my disdain of your life work. You choose to believe the worst about the best the world has ever known. On the principals of Biblical precedence this country has fought evil within its own ranks as well as around the world. This country has been the greatest influence for personal freedom and the accountability of government leaders in the history of governments. I have nothing but contempt for your work. I believe you are the biggest reason our schools and our society is suffering communist indoctrination. A method of governance that has proven to be the bane of society everywhere it has ever been applied. There is simply no capacity within the nature of man to create utopia. Stop trying, it only makes a way for tyrants to commit the worst human rights violations imaginable. All your heroes are these same tyrants. (Mao, Guevara, Castro, Lenin, Marx, Chavez, etc.,)
ps. this research began on the oft repeated charge against patriots of ‘jingoist.’ Thank you for drawing my attention to your hatred of me and like minded people. Now I know my enemy. Now I know the root of the evil influence on our children.
Movie Trailer of the documentary "The Weather Underground"
http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/screenplay/vi2432434457/
William C. ("Bill") Ayers (born 1944) is a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has worked on school reform in Chicago. He was a 1960's era radical and a founder of the Weatherman group which later became the Weather Underground. (My addition) He is honored as one of the most influential speakers on educational reform and therefore is called upon to speak at educational institutions around the world.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_%28organization%29
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization, was a violent U.S. radical left group formed in 1969 by leaders and members who split from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They took their name from a lyric in the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues","You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," which they used as the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18th, 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 and the capitalist system should begin immediately.
Their founding document, signed by 11 people, including Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Bill Ayers, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Karen Ashley, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, and Steve Tappis, 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 goal of "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world Communism."[2] The statement noted, "A revolution is a war; when the movement in this country can defend itself militarily against total repression it will be a part of the revolutionary war."[2] The group's first public demonstration was the "Days of Rage," an October 8, 1969 rally in Chicago that was coordinated with the trial of the Chicago Eight.[3]
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 violent covert activities. They carried out a domestic terror campaign in the United States, consisting of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots. Their attacks were mostly bombings of government buildings between 1969 and 1975, including the United States Capitol (two bombs on March 1, 1970), The Pentagon (May 19, 1972), and the Harry S Truman Building housing the United States Department of State (on January 29, 1975), along with several banks, police department headquarters and precincts, state and federal courthouses, and state prison administrative offices.[4][5] They were also notable for the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion that claimed the lives of three of their own members in 1970. The Weathermen largely disintegrated shortly after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 and the conquest of South Vietnam by the communist North in 1975, which saw the general decline of the New Left. Members of the group participated in the Brinks robbery of 1981, in which two police officers and a security guard were killed.
The group emerged from the campus-based opposition to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movements of the late 1960s. During this time, United States military action in Southeast Asia, especially in Vietnam, escalated. In the U.S., the anti-war sentiment was particularly pronounced during the 1968 U.S. presidential election.
The origins of the Weathermen can be traced to the collapse and fragmentation of the Students for a Democratic Society. The split between the mainstream leadership of SDS, or "National Office," and the Progressive Labor Party pushed SDS as a whole further to the left. National Office leaders such as Bernardine Dohrn and Mike Klonsky began announcing their emerging perspectives, and Klonksy published a document entitled "Toward a Revolutionary Youth Movement" (RYM). RYM promoted the philosophy that young workers possessed the potential to be a revolutionary force to overthrow capitalism, if not by themselves then by transmitting radical ideas to the working class. Klonsky's document reflected the growing leftist philosophy of the National Office and was eventually adopted as official SDS doctrine. During the Summer of 1969, the National Office began to split. A group led by Klonsky became known as RYM II, and the other side, RYM I, was led by Dohrn and endorsed more aggressive tactics.
[edit] SDS Convention, 1969
At an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18th, 1969, the National Office attempted to convince unaffiliated delegates not to endorse Progressive Labor ideals. At the beginning of the convention, two position papers were passed out by the National Office leadership, one a revised statement of Klonksy's RYM manifesto, the other called "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows." The latter document outlined the position of the group that would become the Weathermen. It had been signed by 11 people, including Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Bill Ayers, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Karen Ashley, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, and Steve Tappis.
After the summer of 1969 fragmentation of Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman's adherents explicitly claimed themselves the real leaders of SDS and retained control of the SDS National Office. Thereafter, any leaflet, label, or logo bearing the name "Students for a Democratic Society" or "SDS" was in fact the views and politics of Weatherman, and not of SDS as a whole. Weatherman contained the vast majority of former SDS National Committee members, including Mark Rudd, David Gilbert and Bernadine Dohrn. For this reason, the group, while small, was able to easily commandeer the mantle of SDS and all of its membership lists. For a brief time, affiliations with regional SDS cadre were maintained from the National Office, but with Weatherman in charge the relationships did not last long, and local chapters soon disbanded. By February 1970, the group had decided to close the SDS National Office, concluding the major campus-based organization of the 1960s.
[edit] Views
The name Weatherman was derived from the Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, which featured the lyrics “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” The lyrics had been quoted at the bottom of an influential essay in the SDS newspaper, New Left Notes. Using this title the Weathermen meant, partially, to appeal to the segment of American youth inspired to action for social justice by Dylan’s songs. It appears also that the “Weatherman” moniker used by the group may have been meant as a rebuke against the Progressive Labor Party, whose Worker Student Alliance SDS faction had succeeded in recruiting many former SDSers to its ranks, and had allegedly co-opted the 1969 convention.
The Weatherman group had long held that militancy was becoming more important than nonviolent forms of anti-war action, and that university-campus-based demonstrations needed to be punctuated with more dramatic actions, which had the potential to interfere with the U.S. military and internal security apparatus. The belief was that these types of urban guerrilla actions would act as a catalyst for the coming revolution. Many international events indeed seemed to support the Weathermen’s overall assertion that worldwide revolution was imminent, such as the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China; the 1968 student revolts in France, Mexico City and elsewhere; the Prague Spring; the emergence of the Tupamaros organization in Uruguay; the emergence of the Guinea-Bissauan Revolution and similar Marxist-led independence movements throughout Africa; and within the United States, the prominence of the Black Panther Party together with a series of “ghetto rebellions” throughout poor black neighborhoods across the country.[6]
The Weathermen were outspoken advocates of the analytical concepts that later came to be known as “white privilege” and identity politics[citation needed]. As the unrest in poor black neighborhoods intensified in the early 1970s, Bernardine Dohrn said, “White youth must choose sides now. They must either fight on the side of the oppressed, or be on the side of the oppressor.”
"Days of Rage"
Haymarket Square police memorial (1889 photo)
One of the first things the Weathermen did upon splitting from SDS was to announce that they would hold the "Days of Rage" that fall. The event was advertised with the slogan "Bring the war home!" Hoping to cause chaos on a level able to "wake" the American public out of what the group saw as the public's complacency toward the "slaughter" of the Vietnamese people, the Weathermen wanted the event to be the largest-scale protest the decade had seen. The Weathermen believed the ‘Days of Rage’ riot was a measurement of commitment towards the New Left. They were with the Weathermen in the struggle or not.[7] Although the October 8, 1969 rally in Chicago had failed to draw as many participants as they had anticipated (originally expecting 10,000), the estimated two to three hundred who did attend shocked police by leading a riot through the Gold Coast neighborhood, smashing windows of a bank and then those of many cars. The Weathermen wanted to bring their fight to the 'rich enemies'.[8] They also blew up a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. That night, six people were shot and seventy were arrested.[9]
[edit] Declaration of a State of War
In 1970, following the police raid that resulted in the death of Black Panther Fred Hampton, the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, using for the first time its new name, the "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO), adopting fake identities, and pursuing covert activities only. These initially included preparations for a bombing of a U.S. military non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey in what Brian Flanagan said had been intended to be "the most horrific hit the United States government had ever suffered on its territory".
[edit] Greenwich Village explosion
-
Main article: Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
On March 6, 1970, during preparations for the Fort Dix bombing, there was an explosion in a Greenwich Village safe house. WUO members Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins died in the explosion. Cathy Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin escaped unharmed, Wilkerson running naked from the apartment. It was an accident of history that the site of the Village explosion was the former residence of Merrill Lynch brokerage firm founder Charles Merrill and his son, the poet James Merrill. The younger Merrill subsequently recorded the event in his poem 18 West 11th Street, the title being the address of the house. An FBI report later stated that the group had possessed sufficient amounts of explosive to "level ... both sides of the street".[10]
There was talk of infiltration by COINTELPRO that later turned out to be both imagined and real. The vast majority of other Radical Left groups that had not explicitly distanced themselves from the group at the beginning largely did so at the point of the Village explosion accident. Despite their marginalization, the Weather Underground pushed on, releasing a number of manifestos and declarations while carrying on a series of bombings, which from then on were committed free of human casualties. The bombing actions attacked the U.S. Capitol, The Pentagon, police and prison buildings, and later the rebuilt Haymarket statue, among other targets. To avoid any loss of life as a result of these bombings, a WU member would issue warnings to evacuate the building ahead of time via phone.
[edit] Submersion
After the Greenwich Village incident, the Weathermen officially went underground. WUO shrank considerably, becoming even fewer than they had been when first formed. In late April, 1970, members of the Weathermen met in California to discuss what happened in New York and the future of the organization. The group decided against kidnapping and assassinations. They wanted to convince the American public that the United States was truly responsible for the calamity in Vietnam.[11] The group struck at night, bombing empty offices, with warnings issued in advance. After the Greenwich Village explosion, no one was killed by WUO bombs.[12] On 21 May, 1970, a communiqué from the Weather Underground was issued promising to attack a symbol of an American institution within two weeks.[13] The communiqué included taunts towards the FBI, daring them to try and find the group, whose members were spread throughout the United States.[14] Many leftist organizations showed curiosity in the communiqué, and waited to see if the act would in fact occur. However, two weeks would pass without any occurrence.[15] Then on 9 June, 1970, their first publicly acknowledged bombing occurred at a New York City police station.[16] The FBI placed the Weather Underground organization on the ten most-wanted list by the end of 1970.[17] On 19 May, 1972, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, The Weather Underground placed a bomb in the women’s bathroom in the air force wing of The Pentagon. The damage caused flooding that devastated vital classified information on computer tapes. Leftist groups worldwide applauded the bombing, illustrated by German youth protesting American military systems in Frankfurt.[18]
[edit] Change in direction, "Prairie Fire"
The Weather Underground’s ideology changed direction in the early 1970’s. With help from ex-Progressive Labor member, Clayton Van Lydegraf, The Weather Underground sought a more Marxist-Leninist approach. The leading members of the Weather Underground collaborated ideas and published their manifesto: "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism."[19] By the summer of 1974, five thousand copies had surfaced in coffee houses and bookstores across America. Leftist newspapers praised the manifesto.[20] Abbie Hoffman publicly praised Prairie Fire and believed every American should be given a copy.[21] The manifesto’s influence initiated the formation of the 'Prairie Fire Organizing Committee' in several American cities. Hundreds of above-ground activists helped further the new political vision of the Weather Underground.[22]
[edit] FBI Office Break-In
In April 1971, The "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI" broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania.[23] The group stole files with several hundred pages, ninety-eight percent of the files targeted left wing individuals and groups. By the end of April, the FBI offices were to terminate all files dealing with leftist groups.[24] The files were a part of an FBI program called COINTELPRO.[25] However, after COINTELPRO was dissolved in 1971 by J. Edgar Hoover,[26] the FBI continued their counterintelligence on groups like the Weather Underground. In 1973, the FBI established the ‘Special Target Information Development’ program, where agents were sent undercover to penetrate the Weather Underground. Due to the illegal tactics of FBI agents involved with the program, government attorneys requested all weapons and bomb related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground was no longer a fugitive organization and could turn themselves in with minimal charges against them.[27]
[edit] Timothy Leary prison break
The group also took a $25,000 payment from a psychedelics distribution organization called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love to break LSD advocate Timothy Leary out of prison, transporting him to Algeria. Leary joined Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria; his initial press release contains revolutionary rhetoric sympathetic to the Weather Underground's cause. When Leary was eventually captured by the FBI, it is alleged he offered to serve as an informant to capture the Weather Underground members to reduce his prison sentence. Others, such as Robert Anton Wilson, claim he was just feeding false information to the authorities in an attempt to reduce his sentence. Ultimately no one was charged, and Leary served a few more years in prison.[citation needed]
[edit] Dissolution and aftermath
Despite the change in their status the Weather Underground remained underground. However, by 1976 the organization was disintegrating. The Weather Underground held a conference in Chicago called Hard Times. The idea was to create an umbrella organization for all radical groups. However, the event turned sour when Hispanic and Black groups accused the Weather Underground and the Prairie Fire Committee of limiting their roles in racial issues.[28] The conference enhanced a division within the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground faced accusations of abandonment of the revolution by reversing their original ideology.
East coast members favored a commitment to violence and challenged commitments of old leaders, Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones. By the end of 1976, the Weather Underground would collapse.[29] Within two years, many members turned themselves in after taking advantage of President Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for draft dodgers.[30]
Mark Rudd turned himself in to authorities on Jan. 20, 1978. Rudd was fined $4,000 and received two years probation.[31] Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers turned themselves in on Dec. 3, 1980, in New York, with substantial media coverage. Charges were dropped for Ayers. Dohrn received three years probation and a $15,000 fine.[32]
Certain members remained underground and joined other radical groups. David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin joined the "Black Liberation Army." On Oct. 20, 1981, in Nyack New York, the group attempted to rob a Brinks armored truck containing more than $1 million. The robbery turned violent, resulting in the murder of two police officers.[33] David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy terms in prison, considered the “last gasps” of the Weather Underground.[34]
After the group began dissolving in 1977, many members moved on to other radical groups and were subsequently arrested and held for long periods. Very few served prison sentences for their time in the Weather Underground; the infiltration tactics used against them by COINTELPRO made much of the evidence gathered against them deemed illegally obtained and inadmissible in court.
Widely-known members of the Weather Underground include Kathy Boudin, Mark Rudd, Terry Robbins, Ted Gold, Naomi Jaffe, Cathy Wilkerson, Jeff Jones, David Gilbert, Susan Stern, Bob Tomashevsky, Sam Karp, Russell Neufeld, Joe Kelly, Laura Whitehorn and the still-married couple Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Most former Weathermen have successfully re-integrated into mainstream society, without necessarily repudiating their original intent. For example, Bill Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in an interview coincidentally published on September 11, 2001 that he does not "regret setting bombs. I believe we didn't do enough."[35] Dohrn and Boudin also still hold to their original beliefs.[citation needed] Members like Brian Flanagan have expressed regret. Still others, such as Mark Rudd, believe the group's original motivation, particularly its position regarding supporting communism, was justified, but its resultant actions were clearly wrong.
[edit] Weathermen documentaries
The WU insisted that Emile de Antonio shoot the documentary Underground in 1976. However, a much more extensive, widespread, and critically-acclaimed documentary emerged in 2002 with the Oscar-nominated The Weather Underground by filmmakers Bill Siegel and Sam Green. A little seen film called Ice had several WU members in a somewhat fictionalized revolutionary setting.
A non-violent faction of the Weather Underground continues today. The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee is committed to the opposition of classism and imperialism, and demands the right to liberation and justice worldwide.[36]
[edit] Chronology of events
- 18-22 June, 1969 – SDS National Convention held in Chicago, Illinois. Publication of "Weatherman" founding statement. Members seize control of SDS National Office.
- July, 1969 – Members Bernardine Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton travel to Cuba and meet representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments.
- August 1969 – Weatherman member Linda Sue Evans travels to North Vietnam. Weatherman activists meet in Cleveland, Ohio, in preparation for "Days of Rage" protests scheduled for October, 1969 in Chicago.
- 4 September 1969 – Female members converge on South Hills High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they run through the school shouting anti-war slogans and distributing literature promoting the “National Action.” The term "Pittsburgh 26" refers to the 26 women arrested in connection with this incident.
- 24 September 1969 – A group of members confront Chicago Police during a demonstration supporting the "National Action," and protesting the commencement of the Chicago Eight trial stemming from the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
- 7 October 1969 – The Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago is bombed; The Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, Prairie Fire.
- 8 October-11, 1969 – The "Days of Rage" riots occur in Chicago, damaging a large amount of property. 287 Weatherman members are arrested, and some become fugitives when they fail to appear for trial in connection with their arrests.
- November-December, 1969 – A small number of Weatherman members join the first contingent of the Venceremos Brigade (VB) that departs for Cuba to harvest sugar cane.
- 6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO claims responsibility in Prairie Fire, stating it is a protest of the fatal police shooting of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on 4 December 1969.
- 27 December-31, 1969 – The Weathermen hold a "War Council" in Flint, Michigan, where they finalize their plans to change into an underground organization that will commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called the "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO).
- February, 1970 – The WUO closes the SDS National Office in Chicago, concluding the major campus-based organization of the 1960s. The first contingent of the VB returns from Cuba and the second contingent departs. By mid-February the bulk of the leading WUO members go underground.
- 13 February 1970 - Several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department are bombed in the police parking lot; 16 February 1970: A bomb is detonated at the Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, killing one officer and injuring a number of other policemen. No organization claims credit for either bombing.
- March, 1970 – Warrants are issued for several WUO members, who become federal fugitives when they fail to appear for trial in Chicago.
- 6 March 1970 – 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered in the 13th Police District of Detroit, Michigan. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.[citation needed]
- 6 March 1970 – WUO members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins are killed in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, when a nailbomb they were constructing detonates. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
- 30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO "bomb factory" on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO "weapons cache" in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.
- April, 1970 – The FBI arrests WUO members Linda Sue Evans and Dianne Donghi are arrested in New York.
- 2 April 1970 – A federal grand jury in Chicago returns a number of indictments charging WUO members with violation of federal anti-riot laws. Also, a number of additional federal warrants charging "unlawful flight to avoid prosecution" are returned in Chicago based on the failure of WUO members to appear for trial in local cases. (The Anti-riot Law charges were later dropped in January, 1974.)
- 10 May 1970 – The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C. is bombed.[citation needed]
- 21 May 1970 – The WUO releases its "Declaration of a State of War" communique under Bernardine Dohrn's name.
- 6 June 1970 – In a letter, the WUO claims credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice, although no explosion has occurred. Months later, workmen locate an unexploded bomb.[citation needed]
- 9 June 1970 - The New York City Police headquarters is bombed by Jane Alpert and accomplices. The Weathermen state this is in response to "police repression."[citation needed]
- 23 July 1970 – A federal grand jury in Detroit, Michigan, returns indictments against a number of underground WUO members and former WUO members charging violations of various explosives and firearms laws. (These indictments were later dropped in October, 1973.)
- 27 July 1970 - The United States Army base at The Presidio in San Francisco is bombed on the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. [NYT, 7/27/70]
- 12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary escape from the California Men's Colony prison.
- 8 October 1970 - Bombing of Marin County courthouse. WUO states this is in retaliation for the killings of Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain. [NYT, 8/10/70]
- 10 October 1970 - A Queens traffic-court building is bombed. WUO claims this is to express support for the New York prison riots. [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]
- 14 October 1970 - The Harvard Center for International Affairs is bombed. WUO claims this is to protest the war in Vietnam. [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]
- December, 1970 – Fugitive WUO member Caroline Tanker, who fled the country for Cuba, is arrested by the FBI in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fugitive WUO member Judith Alice Clark is arrested by the FBI in New York.
- 1 March 1971 - The United States Capitol is bombed. WUO states this is to protest the invasion of Laos. President Richard M. Nixon denounces the bombing as a "shocking act of violence that will outrage all Americans." [NYT, 3/2/71]
- April, 1971 – FBI agents discover an aba