Thursday, October 30, 2008
Nikolas Sarkozy weighs in on Obama
Harsh words for Obama from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. An Israeli government source told the newspaper Haaretz that Sarkozy was unhappy with his discussions with Obama in Paris last summer, calling the candidate's position on Iran "utterly immature." Sarkozy has reportedly expressed his fear that Obama will act "arrogantly" by meeting with the Iranians with no preconditions. Haaretz quotes Sarkozy as calling Obama's stance on Iraq predicated on "formulations empty of all content."
A view from across the pond....
The sacrifice of truth to power
Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2550646/the-sacrifice-of-truth-to
-power.thtml
SUNDAY, 26TH OCTOBER 2008
What's happening in this terrifying, Orwellian US presidential race is the flip side of the madness that's been on display since 9/11 itself, when swathes of the UK population decided that 'America had it coming to it' because it supported Israel, and that George W Bush was the most dangerous man on the planet. After the Iraq war started, this irrationality swelled into pathological proportions on both sides of the Atlantic, when the 'Bush lied, people died' narrative fueled a hatred of Bush and 'the neocons' exceeded in its hallucinatory and murderous venom only by the truly deranged way in which the media and intelligentsia systematically either ignored evidence that did not fit this narrative or, even more astoundingly, reported it in such a way that it delivered the opposite of what was actually happening or being said.
In this way not only has history been rewritten, not only have Britain and America been to a greater or lesser extent turned against themselves and demoralised by the propaganda of their mortal enemies recycled as truth by our fifth-column Big Media, but they have been incited to an ugly and dangerous level of irrationality, hatred and hysteria which history tells us presages the twilight of freedom. It is that media class which, in refusing to tell the public what it needs to know about Barack Obama, may now finally install in the White House the man who personifies the repudiation of the American power and western values that the media and left-wing intelligentsia (of which the media is the mouthpiece) have themselves spared no effort to destroy these past seven years.
As ABC columnist Michael Malone protests:
What I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography....
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by. So much indeed. That's why, as Mark Steyn observes, the media has had a feeding frenzy over Sarah Palin's clothes allowance while all but ignoring the evidence of criminal fundraising for the Obama campaign being facilitated by the Obama campaign :
The gentleman who started the ball rolling made four donations under the names 'John Galt', 'Saddam Hussein', 'Osama bin Laden', and 'William Ayers', all using the same credit card number. He wrote this morning to say that all four donations have been charged to his card and the money has now left his account. Again, it's worth pointing out: in order to enable the most basic
card fraud of all - multiple names using a single credit card number - the Obama campaign had to manually disable all the default security checks provided by their merchant processor.
Now look at this. Back in April, the LA Times ran this story reporting on the going-away party for Rashid Khalidi, Obama's close friend, who justifies Palestinian violence against Israel and who was leaving for a job in New York. Khalidi is a deeply troubling individual, a former PLO operative and close friend of unrepentant former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers. As I have reported before, in 2000 Khalidi and his wife Mona held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, an Arab group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago when Obama was on the fund's board of directors. Obama has said that his many talks with the Khalidis "had been consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table, but around this entire world."
The LA Times reported:
During the dinner a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace.' One speaker likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology.'
The paper reported that not only had Obama been present at the party but had praised Khalidi – and it actually had obtained a videotape of the whole event. Yet it has refused to make this video public – even though it would be of great interest, to put it mildly, to see who else was there. Indeed, as the now defunct New York Sun reported:
In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.
As Gateway Pundit comments:
It's hard to imagine that the LA Times would hold onto a video of Sarah Palin praising an antisemitic radical and former PLO operative...But, that is today's mainstream media. But now look at what happens when the media does begin to do its job properly. As the Orlando Sentinel reported: WFTV-Channel 9's Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama's comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn't being a Marxist with the 'spreading the wealth' comment. 'Are you joking?' said Biden, who is Obama's running mate. 'No,' West said. West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America's days as
the world's leading power were over. 'I don't know who's writing your questions,' Biden shot back. Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.
In that interview, Biden also flatly denied that the Obama campaign was funding corrupt Acorn to deliver voter registration. But as the Investor's Business Daily has reported, it did – and then tried to hide it:
Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for 'advance work.' ) At NRO Mark Levin identifies a terrifying historical echo when he shudders that, such is the tide of irrationality running in this campaign, the American public appears to be falling under the cult-like spell of an authoritarian demagogue. He is surely correct. For all Obama's laid-back, attractive appearance this election is being fought in an atmosphere of menace. Menace in the way ACORN is intimidating voters into multiple registrations. Menace in the way criminal donations to the Obama campaign have been institutionalized. Menace in the serial lies being told by Obama, Biden and the campaign rebuttal team. Menace in the way the few remaining
proper journalists such as Stanley Kurtz are finding sources of information shut down and themselves shut out when they attempt to probe Obama's deeply dubious associations. Menace in the smears and hysterical abuse directed at anyone who questions The One. Menace in the threat of violence if Obama doesn't win. Menace in the pre-emptive smear that the only thing that could
bring about an Obama defeat is the inherent racism of the American voters – a smear that potentially identifies all those who vote against him as public enemies.
[B]Over the past seven years, the media has created the Big Lie that America is the biggest rogue state in the world, with Israel its proxy. Now it is ensuring that a man who will act on that very premise to crush America and destroy Israel will be placed in the White House to do so.[/B] It is not just that the west's Big Media can no longer be trusted. It has become the most important weapon in the arsenal of the enemies of the free world.
Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2550646/the-sacrifice-of-truth-to
-power.thtml
SUNDAY, 26TH OCTOBER 2008
What's happening in this terrifying, Orwellian US presidential race is the flip side of the madness that's been on display since 9/11 itself, when swathes of the UK population decided that 'America had it coming to it' because it supported Israel, and that George W Bush was the most dangerous man on the planet. After the Iraq war started, this irrationality swelled into pathological proportions on both sides of the Atlantic, when the 'Bush lied, people died' narrative fueled a hatred of Bush and 'the neocons' exceeded in its hallucinatory and murderous venom only by the truly deranged way in which the media and intelligentsia systematically either ignored evidence that did not fit this narrative or, even more astoundingly, reported it in such a way that it delivered the opposite of what was actually happening or being said.
In this way not only has history been rewritten, not only have Britain and America been to a greater or lesser extent turned against themselves and demoralised by the propaganda of their mortal enemies recycled as truth by our fifth-column Big Media, but they have been incited to an ugly and dangerous level of irrationality, hatred and hysteria which history tells us presages the twilight of freedom. It is that media class which, in refusing to tell the public what it needs to know about Barack Obama, may now finally install in the White House the man who personifies the repudiation of the American power and western values that the media and left-wing intelligentsia (of which the media is the mouthpiece) have themselves spared no effort to destroy these past seven years.
As ABC columnist Michael Malone protests:
What I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography....
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by. So much indeed. That's why, as Mark Steyn observes, the media has had a feeding frenzy over Sarah Palin's clothes allowance while all but ignoring the evidence of criminal fundraising for the Obama campaign being facilitated by the Obama campaign :
The gentleman who started the ball rolling made four donations under the names 'John Galt', 'Saddam Hussein', 'Osama bin Laden', and 'William Ayers', all using the same credit card number. He wrote this morning to say that all four donations have been charged to his card and the money has now left his account. Again, it's worth pointing out: in order to enable the most basic
card fraud of all - multiple names using a single credit card number - the Obama campaign had to manually disable all the default security checks provided by their merchant processor.
Now look at this. Back in April, the LA Times ran this story reporting on the going-away party for Rashid Khalidi, Obama's close friend, who justifies Palestinian violence against Israel and who was leaving for a job in New York. Khalidi is a deeply troubling individual, a former PLO operative and close friend of unrepentant former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers. As I have reported before, in 2000 Khalidi and his wife Mona held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, an Arab group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago when Obama was on the fund's board of directors. Obama has said that his many talks with the Khalidis "had been consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table, but around this entire world."
The LA Times reported:
During the dinner a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, 'then you will never see a day of peace.' One speaker likened 'Zionist settlers on the West Bank' to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been 'blinded by ideology.'
The paper reported that not only had Obama been present at the party but had praised Khalidi – and it actually had obtained a videotape of the whole event. Yet it has refused to make this video public – even though it would be of great interest, to put it mildly, to see who else was there. Indeed, as the now defunct New York Sun reported:
In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.
As Gateway Pundit comments:
It's hard to imagine that the LA Times would hold onto a video of Sarah Palin praising an antisemitic radical and former PLO operative...But, that is today's mainstream media. But now look at what happens when the media does begin to do its job properly. As the Orlando Sentinel reported: WFTV-Channel 9's Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama's comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn't being a Marxist with the 'spreading the wealth' comment. 'Are you joking?' said Biden, who is Obama's running mate. 'No,' West said. West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America's days as
the world's leading power were over. 'I don't know who's writing your questions,' Biden shot back. Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.
In that interview, Biden also flatly denied that the Obama campaign was funding corrupt Acorn to deliver voter registration. But as the Investor's Business Daily has reported, it did – and then tried to hide it:
Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for 'advance work.' ) At NRO Mark Levin identifies a terrifying historical echo when he shudders that, such is the tide of irrationality running in this campaign, the American public appears to be falling under the cult-like spell of an authoritarian demagogue. He is surely correct. For all Obama's laid-back, attractive appearance this election is being fought in an atmosphere of menace. Menace in the way ACORN is intimidating voters into multiple registrations. Menace in the way criminal donations to the Obama campaign have been institutionalized. Menace in the serial lies being told by Obama, Biden and the campaign rebuttal team. Menace in the way the few remaining
proper journalists such as Stanley Kurtz are finding sources of information shut down and themselves shut out when they attempt to probe Obama's deeply dubious associations. Menace in the smears and hysterical abuse directed at anyone who questions The One. Menace in the threat of violence if Obama doesn't win. Menace in the pre-emptive smear that the only thing that could
bring about an Obama defeat is the inherent racism of the American voters – a smear that potentially identifies all those who vote against him as public enemies.
[B]Over the past seven years, the media has created the Big Lie that America is the biggest rogue state in the world, with Israel its proxy. Now it is ensuring that a man who will act on that very premise to crush America and destroy Israel will be placed in the White House to do so.[/B] It is not just that the west's Big Media can no longer be trusted. It has become the most important weapon in the arsenal of the enemies of the free world.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
It's about time....
This story finally received some press. The underlying story was reported in the NY Times. The story of Obama, Khalidi, and Ayers sharing the dais at a send off dinner, sponsored by the Arab Action Network in 2003 for Khalidi as he left the U. of Chicago for Columbia.
Interesting that Khalidi is close friends with Obama (as he has descrobed, they used to baby sit each others kids) and Khalidi is best friends with Ayers, but Barack just doesn't know Ayers.
More importanly, of course, are the goals of the Arab Action Network, and what was being said at this meeting.
As I have been describing for months, the key issue with Obama's friends and advisers, is not whether he is a terrorist. It is that ALL of his associates reflect a basic belief. That America is a force for evil, and that ALL the world's conflicts would be over if only the so called Palestinians were allowed to finish the job Hitler started.
Btw, for those that don't know, Khalidi's life work has been to try and prove the existence of a Palestinian peoplehood out of thin air. (And even he does not claim anything before the 20th century).
Perhaps more importantly, and this story below misses this point, Khalidi was at one time the Press Representative for the PLO, and Said, another of Obama's Columbia friends was a member of the PLO Revolutionary Council.
Anyway, the speeches at this meeting were dutifully violently anti American, and certainly anti Israeli, calling for the destruction of Israel.
But here's the rub. Apparently, the LA Times obtained a video of this event. They reported on it, but refuse to release the video.
Gee, is there media bias here?
I have read at least two dozen reports about this. The best on "The Gateway Pundit" and "Little Green Footballs". The latter is the blog that broke the stories about Reuters doctoring photos that led to several resignations at that news agency.
Here is the story from National Review about the cover up:
The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama's Khalidi Bash Tape
Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said's successor, but thep ress doesn't think it's quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin's wardrobe.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Let's try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an
American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.
Now let's say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance any chance the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the op-ed commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we're pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media
(y'know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let's leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi, former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University's Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.
The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi's allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat's press agency.
Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?
Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.
Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers's wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were "best friends." (And small world! it
turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)
Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as a social service group.)
Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.
Wallsten's story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):
It was a celebration of Palestinian culture a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."...
[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than his opponents for the White House....
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn't know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers's views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers the "education reform" allies who barely know each other except to the extent they together doled out tens
of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he 'did not know' whether Ayers was there.)
Why won't the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground's 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.
The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed
aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!
END AID TO ISRAEL!
Barack Obama wouldn't possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports would he? I guess to answer that question, we'd have to know what was on the tape.
But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn't Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin's sartorial splendor?
National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defenseof Democracies's Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008 ).
National Review Online -
Interesting that Khalidi is close friends with Obama (as he has descrobed, they used to baby sit each others kids) and Khalidi is best friends with Ayers, but Barack just doesn't know Ayers.
More importanly, of course, are the goals of the Arab Action Network, and what was being said at this meeting.
As I have been describing for months, the key issue with Obama's friends and advisers, is not whether he is a terrorist. It is that ALL of his associates reflect a basic belief. That America is a force for evil, and that ALL the world's conflicts would be over if only the so called Palestinians were allowed to finish the job Hitler started.
Btw, for those that don't know, Khalidi's life work has been to try and prove the existence of a Palestinian peoplehood out of thin air. (And even he does not claim anything before the 20th century).
Perhaps more importantly, and this story below misses this point, Khalidi was at one time the Press Representative for the PLO, and Said, another of Obama's Columbia friends was a member of the PLO Revolutionary Council.
Anyway, the speeches at this meeting were dutifully violently anti American, and certainly anti Israeli, calling for the destruction of Israel.
But here's the rub. Apparently, the LA Times obtained a video of this event. They reported on it, but refuse to release the video.
Gee, is there media bias here?
I have read at least two dozen reports about this. The best on "The Gateway Pundit" and "Little Green Footballs". The latter is the blog that broke the stories about Reuters doctoring photos that led to several resignations at that news agency.
Here is the story from National Review about the cover up:
The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama's Khalidi Bash Tape
Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said's successor, but thep ress doesn't think it's quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin's wardrobe.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Let's try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an
American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.
Now let's say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance any chance the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the op-ed commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we're pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media
(y'know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let's leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi, former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University's Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.
The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi's allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat's press agency.
Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?
Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.
Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers's wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were "best friends." (And small world! it
turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)
Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as a social service group.)
Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.
Wallsten's story is worth excerpting at length (italics are mine):
It was a celebration of Palestinian culture a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."...
[T]he warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.
At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."
One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."
Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than his opponents for the White House....
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago's large Arab American community was important for winning local elections.
So why is the Times sitting on the videotape of the Khalidi festivities? Given Obama's (preposterous) claims that he didn't know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers's views, why didn't the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers the "education reform" allies who barely know each other except to the extent they together doled out tens
of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher? (Despite having watched the videotape, Wallsten told Gateway Pundit he 'did not know' whether Ayers was there.)
Why won't the Times tell us what was said in the various Khalidi testimonials? On that score, Ayers and Dohrn have always had characteristically noxious views on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. And, true to form, they have always been quite open about them. There is no reason to believe those views have ever changed. Here, for example, is what they had to say in Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground's 1974 Communist manifesto (emphasis in original):
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated by the U.S. The U.S.-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the Mideast is an attempt to preserve U.S. imperialist control of oil, using zionist power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be suppressed.
The U.S. people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement The Disinherited by Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing U.S. aid to Israel. Our silence or acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with U.S.-backed
aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST!
END AID TO ISRAEL!
Barack Obama wouldn't possibly let something like that pass without a spirited defense of the Israel he tells us he so staunchly supports would he? I guess to answer that question, we'd have to know what was on the tape.
But who has time for such trifles? After all, isn't Diana Vreeland about to critique Sarah Palin's sartorial splendor?
National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the Foundation for the Defenseof Democracies's Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008 ).
National Review Online -
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Joe fall down... go "OOOPS"
So, it had to happen. The master of malapropism's that is Joe Biden, who tends to speak with his brain before his political filter sets in, admitted what those of us who have fear of Obama have been saying for a long time.
It's not surprising though, because only a few months ago Biden was calling Obama inexperienced, wrong, etc.
So what did he say? Well, he told an audience at a rally that due to Obama's inexperience in foreign policy, he is sure that the world will "test" him (note to Joe: testing Obama means putting us all in danger).
But that wasn't enough. He then told the Democratic audience that it was vital that they continue to back Obama after he makes the inevitable mistake in that test, due to his lack of experience (and might I add, notoriously bad judgment).
The funny thing is that Obama has likened his campaign to John F. Kennedy. Perhaps the worst foreign policy President of modern times.
It's an interesting comparison.
Kennedy also campaigned with the idea of meeting "without preconditions" with foreign leaders. As such, he set a meeting in 1961 with Nikita Khrushchev about Berlin.
As Kennedy himself said to Scotty Reston of the NY Times upon returning to the States the meetings were "the toughest of my life". He described himself as having been steamrolled by Khrushchev.
More tellingly, Khrushchev, as revealed in papers now declassified in Russia, said to his top aides that he simply could not believe that the American People had elected such a "pathetic" person as President.
He described the meeting as a bear facing a chipmunk.
Kennedy was taken aback by Khrushchev indifference to Kennedy's concerns about nuclear war and the possibility of 70 million deaths. Apparently he forgot that the Soviet leader had just come from a Russian revolution and war that left upwards of 50 million dead.
Hmm, does this sound like another apparatchik, blow hard leader in the world today?
This meeting led directly to erecting of the Berlin Wall, and worse, to the Cuban missile crisis.
What most Americans simply don't understand is the humiliation suffered by Kennedy and the US as a result of the crisis.
Kennedy fell hook line and sinker for Khrushchev's bluff and removed American missiles from Turkey AND guaranteed no interference in the Cuban Revolution.
Worse, as Kennedy discussed with his advisers, he needed a "shooting war" to demonstrate his strength and the only shooting war was in Southeast Asia. This was the impetus for his beginning the military buildup in Vietnam.
So, for those of you that don't think experience is important, well Joltin' Joe just told you why it is.
It's not surprising though, because only a few months ago Biden was calling Obama inexperienced, wrong, etc.
So what did he say? Well, he told an audience at a rally that due to Obama's inexperience in foreign policy, he is sure that the world will "test" him (note to Joe: testing Obama means putting us all in danger).
But that wasn't enough. He then told the Democratic audience that it was vital that they continue to back Obama after he makes the inevitable mistake in that test, due to his lack of experience (and might I add, notoriously bad judgment).
The funny thing is that Obama has likened his campaign to John F. Kennedy. Perhaps the worst foreign policy President of modern times.
It's an interesting comparison.
Kennedy also campaigned with the idea of meeting "without preconditions" with foreign leaders. As such, he set a meeting in 1961 with Nikita Khrushchev about Berlin.
As Kennedy himself said to Scotty Reston of the NY Times upon returning to the States the meetings were "the toughest of my life". He described himself as having been steamrolled by Khrushchev.
More tellingly, Khrushchev, as revealed in papers now declassified in Russia, said to his top aides that he simply could not believe that the American People had elected such a "pathetic" person as President.
He described the meeting as a bear facing a chipmunk.
Kennedy was taken aback by Khrushchev indifference to Kennedy's concerns about nuclear war and the possibility of 70 million deaths. Apparently he forgot that the Soviet leader had just come from a Russian revolution and war that left upwards of 50 million dead.
Hmm, does this sound like another apparatchik, blow hard leader in the world today?
This meeting led directly to erecting of the Berlin Wall, and worse, to the Cuban missile crisis.
What most Americans simply don't understand is the humiliation suffered by Kennedy and the US as a result of the crisis.
Kennedy fell hook line and sinker for Khrushchev's bluff and removed American missiles from Turkey AND guaranteed no interference in the Cuban Revolution.
Worse, as Kennedy discussed with his advisers, he needed a "shooting war" to demonstrate his strength and the only shooting war was in Southeast Asia. This was the impetus for his beginning the military buildup in Vietnam.
So, for those of you that don't think experience is important, well Joltin' Joe just told you why it is.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
"Just a guy in my neighborhood" Part I
In 1997, seven years before Obama's election to the Senate, William Ayers published a book entitled "AKind and Just Parent".
Guess who he chooses to highlite as one of his "neighbors" in Chicago's toney Hyde Park neighborhood?
Funny, he describes him as "author". At the time this book was published, Obama's fictional autobigoraphy had sold so poorly that it was out of print (sales estimated at 2000 copies at that time).
So Barack - he was just "some guy" in your neighborhood, but you found your way into his book?
Guess who he chooses to highlite as one of his "neighbors" in Chicago's toney Hyde Park neighborhood?
Funny, he describes him as "author". At the time this book was published, Obama's fictional autobigoraphy had sold so poorly that it was out of print (sales estimated at 2000 copies at that time).
So Barack - he was just "some guy" in your neighborhood, but you found your way into his book?
"Just a guy in my neighborhood" Part II
Hmm, and speaking of that, how is it that you wrote a book jacket blurb for that guy you didn't even know?
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Isn't ANYONE creeped out by this? Or at least a little suspicious?
I lay in bed sick today with the flu. Generally, when that happens, I turn on my "channels". History, National Geographic, Discovery, The Learning Channel, and Science Channel, etc. Not exactly high viewership numbers.
At each and every commercial break - yes, I counted, every one - I was bombarded by an Obama ad. I did not see a single McCain commercial.
But that's not really the issue.
His campaign announced this week that they claim that their contributions for the month of September total MORE THAN $100,000,000. That's more than one hundred million dollars.
That brings the total for the campaign for Obama to roughly $560 MILLION DOLLARS (through the end of September. We don't even know what October will claim)!!!
Does anyone REALLY believe this is from $10 internet contributions?
That is roughly $2 for every man woman and child in this country. Voters, non voters, democrats, republicans, infants, toddlers, children, seniors in homes, etc.
But here is the really creepy part.
Next week Obama has bought time on all four major networks. Not for a one or two minute commercial. But a prime time show.
Worse, THE OPENING PITCH OF THE WORLD SERIES IS BEING DELAYED TO AIR IT. A commercial. For an election. Not a state of the union address. Not a national emergency. A commercial.
Jeez, doesn't this creep any of you out? Let's just hold the coronation and cancel all future elections.
At each and every commercial break - yes, I counted, every one - I was bombarded by an Obama ad. I did not see a single McCain commercial.
But that's not really the issue.
His campaign announced this week that they claim that their contributions for the month of September total MORE THAN $100,000,000. That's more than one hundred million dollars.
That brings the total for the campaign for Obama to roughly $560 MILLION DOLLARS (through the end of September. We don't even know what October will claim)!!!
Does anyone REALLY believe this is from $10 internet contributions?
That is roughly $2 for every man woman and child in this country. Voters, non voters, democrats, republicans, infants, toddlers, children, seniors in homes, etc.
But here is the really creepy part.
Next week Obama has bought time on all four major networks. Not for a one or two minute commercial. But a prime time show.
Worse, THE OPENING PITCH OF THE WORLD SERIES IS BEING DELAYED TO AIR IT. A commercial. For an election. Not a state of the union address. Not a national emergency. A commercial.
Jeez, doesn't this creep any of you out? Let's just hold the coronation and cancel all future elections.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The view from France, and Jesse....
Note the similar theme about those dastardly Jews controlling American policy as outlined in my previous posts...
THE O JESSE KNOWS
JACKSON ON OBAMA'S AMERICA
By AMIR TAHERI
EVIAN, FRANCE
PREPARE for a new America: That's the message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed to participants in the first World Policy Forum, held at this French lakeside resort last week. He promised "fundamental changes" in US foreign policy - saying America must "heal wounds" it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the "arrogance of the Bush administration." The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end. Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House. "Obama is about change," Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. "And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it." Jackson warns that he isn't an Obama confidant or adviser, "just a supporter." But he adds that Obama has been "a neighbor or, better still, a member of the family." Jackson's son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson's daughter went to school with Obama's wife Michelle. "We helped him start his career," says Jackson. "And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged." Will Obama's election close the chapter of black grievances linked to memories of slavery? The reverend takes a deep breath and waits a long time before responding. "No, that chapter won't be closed," he says. "However, Obama's victory will be a huge step in the direction we have wanted America to take for decades." Jackson rejects any suggestion that Obama was influenced by Marxist ideas in his youth. "I see no evidence of that," he says. "Obama's thirst for justice and equality is rooted in his black culture." But is Obama - who's not a descendant of slaves - truly a typical American black? Jackson emphatically answers yes: "You don't need to be a descendant of slaves to experience the oppression, the suffocating injustice and the ugly racism that exists in our society," he says. "Obama experienced the same environment as all American blacks did. It was nonsense to suggest that he was somehow not black enough to feel the pain." Is Jackson worried about the "Bradley effect" - that people may be telling pollsters they favor the black candidate, but won't end up voting for him? "I don't think this is how things will turn out," he says. "We have a collapsing economy and a war that we have lost in Iraq. In Afghanistan, we face a resurgent Taliban. New threats are looming in Pakistan. Our liberties have been trampled under feet . . . Today, most Americans want change, and know that only Barack can deliver what they want. Young Americans are especially determined to make sure that Obama wins." e sees a broad public loss of confidence in the nation's institutions: "We have lost confidence in our president, our Congress, our banking system, our Wall Street and our legal system to protect our individual freedoms. . . I don't see how we could regain confidence in all those institutions without a radical change of direction." Jackson declines to be more concrete about possible policy changes. After all, he insists, he isn't part of Obama's policy team. Yet he clearly hopes that his views, reflecting the position of many Democrats, would be reflected in the policies of an Obama administration. On the economic front, he hopes for "major changes in our trading policy." "We cannot continue with the open-door policy," he says. "We need to protect our manufacturing industry against unfair competition that destroys American jobs and creates ill-paid jobs abroad." Would that mean an abrogation of the NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico? Jackson dismisses the question as "premature": "We could do a great deal without such dramatic action." His most surprising position concerns Iraq. He passionately denounces the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "an illegal and unjust act." But he's now sure that the United States "will have to remain in Iraq for a very long time." What of Obama's promise to withdraw by 2010? Jackson believes that position will have to evolve, reflecting "realities on the ground." "We should work with our allies in Iraq to consolidate democratic institutions there," he says. "We must help the people of Iraq decide and shape their future in accordance with their own culture and faith." On Iran, he strongly supports Obama's idea of opening a direct dialogue with the leadership in Tehran. "We've got to talk to tell them what we want and hear what they want," Jackson says. "Nothing is gained by not talking to others." Would that mean ignoring the four UN Security Council resolutions that demand an end to Iran's uranium-enrichment program? Jackson says direct talks wouldn't start without preparations. "Barack wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy," he says. "He also wants adequate preparatory work. We must enter the talks after the ground has been prepared," he says. Jackson is especially critical of President Bush's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss," Jackson says. "Barack will change that," because, as long as the Palestinians haven't seen justice, the Middle East will "remain a source of danger to us all." "Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims," Jackson says. "Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith."
Amir Taheri's next book, "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution," is due out next month.
THE O JESSE KNOWS
JACKSON ON OBAMA'S AMERICA
By AMIR TAHERI
EVIAN, FRANCE
PREPARE for a new America: That's the message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed to participants in the first World Policy Forum, held at this French lakeside resort last week. He promised "fundamental changes" in US foreign policy - saying America must "heal wounds" it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the "arrogance of the Bush administration." The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end. Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House. "Obama is about change," Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. "And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it." Jackson warns that he isn't an Obama confidant or adviser, "just a supporter." But he adds that Obama has been "a neighbor or, better still, a member of the family." Jackson's son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson's daughter went to school with Obama's wife Michelle. "We helped him start his career," says Jackson. "And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged." Will Obama's election close the chapter of black grievances linked to memories of slavery? The reverend takes a deep breath and waits a long time before responding. "No, that chapter won't be closed," he says. "However, Obama's victory will be a huge step in the direction we have wanted America to take for decades." Jackson rejects any suggestion that Obama was influenced by Marxist ideas in his youth. "I see no evidence of that," he says. "Obama's thirst for justice and equality is rooted in his black culture." But is Obama - who's not a descendant of slaves - truly a typical American black? Jackson emphatically answers yes: "You don't need to be a descendant of slaves to experience the oppression, the suffocating injustice and the ugly racism that exists in our society," he says. "Obama experienced the same environment as all American blacks did. It was nonsense to suggest that he was somehow not black enough to feel the pain." Is Jackson worried about the "Bradley effect" - that people may be telling pollsters they favor the black candidate, but won't end up voting for him? "I don't think this is how things will turn out," he says. "We have a collapsing economy and a war that we have lost in Iraq. In Afghanistan, we face a resurgent Taliban. New threats are looming in Pakistan. Our liberties have been trampled under feet . . . Today, most Americans want change, and know that only Barack can deliver what they want. Young Americans are especially determined to make sure that Obama wins." e sees a broad public loss of confidence in the nation's institutions: "We have lost confidence in our president, our Congress, our banking system, our Wall Street and our legal system to protect our individual freedoms. . . I don't see how we could regain confidence in all those institutions without a radical change of direction." Jackson declines to be more concrete about possible policy changes. After all, he insists, he isn't part of Obama's policy team. Yet he clearly hopes that his views, reflecting the position of many Democrats, would be reflected in the policies of an Obama administration. On the economic front, he hopes for "major changes in our trading policy." "We cannot continue with the open-door policy," he says. "We need to protect our manufacturing industry against unfair competition that destroys American jobs and creates ill-paid jobs abroad." Would that mean an abrogation of the NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico? Jackson dismisses the question as "premature": "We could do a great deal without such dramatic action." His most surprising position concerns Iraq. He passionately denounces the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "an illegal and unjust act." But he's now sure that the United States "will have to remain in Iraq for a very long time." What of Obama's promise to withdraw by 2010? Jackson believes that position will have to evolve, reflecting "realities on the ground." "We should work with our allies in Iraq to consolidate democratic institutions there," he says. "We must help the people of Iraq decide and shape their future in accordance with their own culture and faith." On Iran, he strongly supports Obama's idea of opening a direct dialogue with the leadership in Tehran. "We've got to talk to tell them what we want and hear what they want," Jackson says. "Nothing is gained by not talking to others." Would that mean ignoring the four UN Security Council resolutions that demand an end to Iran's uranium-enrichment program? Jackson says direct talks wouldn't start without preparations. "Barack wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy," he says. "He also wants adequate preparatory work. We must enter the talks after the ground has been prepared," he says. Jackson is especially critical of President Bush's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss," Jackson says. "Barack will change that," because, as long as the Palestinians haven't seen justice, the Middle East will "remain a source of danger to us all." "Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims," Jackson says. "Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith."
Amir Taheri's next book, "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution," is due out next month.
What's the real issue?
What has gotten lost in the ridiculous debate about William Ayers, and his terrorist past, is that it is not those acts and Obama's lies about his relationship with Ayers that are ultimately the most important thing to consider. Although, btw, we might update Obama that the events were not when he was 8, as they mostly took place in the early seventies. I was 10 at the time and Obama is 2 years older than I. Funny, but I knew of the weatherman, even at that age as they were on the news constantly.
Ayers is simply a representation of 2 other issues. The first and less "global" issue, is Obama's continued lies about his relationship with him, how much time he spent with him, what that board did, and where it sent the money, etc. etc.
Why is THAT important? Because it is the same thing he has done with all the controversial figures in his past. From Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, the mysterious "Fred" from his autobiography that turned out to be the Chairman of the American Communist party; to Rashid Khalidi, the press representative of the PLO; to Edward Said, member of the PLO Revolutionary Council; to Robert Malley and his secret meetings with Hamas; to Samantha Powell and her calling Hillary a monster and than advocating sending American troops to fight Israel; to his secret conversations with Canadian officials telling them "don't worry, I'm lying about my stance on NAFTA; and on and on....
What is it that he does? He immediately declares them not important, once they've been caught, creates the fiction that he is not close to them, and then finds someone "more mainstream" that is simply more subtle in representing those views.
Of course, when his campaign co chair Tony McPeak said that American Politics were controlled by "certain voters in NY and Miami", no one batted an eye because that type of anti semitism is still winked at.
For example, Tony Lake, Susan Rice, and my favorite Columbia Professor (yes, another guy that Obama "didn't" meet there, wink wink. Amazing how all these Columbia people we both knew of keep turning up in his life but he really doesn't know them)Zbigniew Brzezinski, have all ascribed to Jimmy Carter's The Jews control the world theory presented in his most recent book. Specifically defending that piece of trash that caused virtually his entire staff at the Carter Center to quit in disgust.
But what is the BIG picture here? Simply this. The one absolute common strain that all of these people hold is that America (and it's tool, Israel) is to blame for all the worlds ills. They view America as an imperialist, hegemonic monstrosity, reigning terror and totalitarianism on the world.
This is where the Democratic party has been wrong since Hubert Humphrey. Even JFK, who bungled every foreign policy issue he had, got this one right. As did Johnson. But somewhere, in the guilt over the social issues of the '60's and '70's the Democrats just decided that we must be a force for evil. That's why the bad guys hate us. Not jealousy, or just that the bad guys are bad. It has to be our inherent villianry.
Equally, they also, as evidenced by their belief in the modern retelling of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" written by the fully Arab funded ex President, believe that it is Israel that is the cause of all of our problems. That the single answer to ending Islamic terrorism is to end the conflict between Israel and the so called Palestinians. Never mind Chechnya, Sudan, Chad, The Asian subcontinent, Turkey, etc. etc..
If you ascribe to that theory, than you are a natural supporter. I just hope you can live with the thinly veiled anti-semitism that goes with it.
Ayers is simply a representation of 2 other issues. The first and less "global" issue, is Obama's continued lies about his relationship with him, how much time he spent with him, what that board did, and where it sent the money, etc. etc.
Why is THAT important? Because it is the same thing he has done with all the controversial figures in his past. From Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, the mysterious "Fred" from his autobiography that turned out to be the Chairman of the American Communist party; to Rashid Khalidi, the press representative of the PLO; to Edward Said, member of the PLO Revolutionary Council; to Robert Malley and his secret meetings with Hamas; to Samantha Powell and her calling Hillary a monster and than advocating sending American troops to fight Israel; to his secret conversations with Canadian officials telling them "don't worry, I'm lying about my stance on NAFTA; and on and on....
What is it that he does? He immediately declares them not important, once they've been caught, creates the fiction that he is not close to them, and then finds someone "more mainstream" that is simply more subtle in representing those views.
Of course, when his campaign co chair Tony McPeak said that American Politics were controlled by "certain voters in NY and Miami", no one batted an eye because that type of anti semitism is still winked at.
For example, Tony Lake, Susan Rice, and my favorite Columbia Professor (yes, another guy that Obama "didn't" meet there, wink wink. Amazing how all these Columbia people we both knew of keep turning up in his life but he really doesn't know them)Zbigniew Brzezinski, have all ascribed to Jimmy Carter's The Jews control the world theory presented in his most recent book. Specifically defending that piece of trash that caused virtually his entire staff at the Carter Center to quit in disgust.
But what is the BIG picture here? Simply this. The one absolute common strain that all of these people hold is that America (and it's tool, Israel) is to blame for all the worlds ills. They view America as an imperialist, hegemonic monstrosity, reigning terror and totalitarianism on the world.
This is where the Democratic party has been wrong since Hubert Humphrey. Even JFK, who bungled every foreign policy issue he had, got this one right. As did Johnson. But somewhere, in the guilt over the social issues of the '60's and '70's the Democrats just decided that we must be a force for evil. That's why the bad guys hate us. Not jealousy, or just that the bad guys are bad. It has to be our inherent villianry.
Equally, they also, as evidenced by their belief in the modern retelling of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" written by the fully Arab funded ex President, believe that it is Israel that is the cause of all of our problems. That the single answer to ending Islamic terrorism is to end the conflict between Israel and the so called Palestinians. Never mind Chechnya, Sudan, Chad, The Asian subcontinent, Turkey, etc. etc..
If you ascribe to that theory, than you are a natural supporter. I just hope you can live with the thinly veiled anti-semitism that goes with it.
Monday, October 13, 2008
In the interest of truth...
I make no assertions that Barack Obama ever actively condoned what Bill Ayers and his fellow weatherman did in the 1960's and '70's. However, I do believe he is fundamentally lying about his relationship with him. As I have indicated in other posts, Ayers was a well known figure on the Columbia Campus when both Barack and I attended in the early 1980's, so even if he didn't meet him then (which I also doubt as they were both friends of, and students of Edward Said, at this time) he certainly would have been aware of him. That fact alone, by the way, should have made him reticent to serve on the Annenberg board, but that is neither here nor there for this post.
However, even if that were not true, when they met years later in Chicago, it is unlikely, given the small Columbia community (Columbia is the smallest school in the Ivy League.) there would not have been the natural mutual alumni "Hey, you went to Columbia too?" So, to describe him as "some guy in my neighborhood" strains all credibility. Oh, and not to mention their frequent appearances at events together at the U of Chicago for their other friend Rashid Khalid, but again, I digress.
That is not the topic of this post.
Bill Ayers and what he said, is. I have seen the Barackophiles running to tell us all that Ayers never really said those things in the NY Times. That's not what he meant.
Well, it's simple. Go back and read the entire article published shockingly, on 9/11. Better yet, here it is for you. Unedited.
No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: September 11, 2001
''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.
Now he has written a book, ''Fugitive Days'' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it.
''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''
But why would someone want to read a memoir parts of which are admittedly not true? Mr. Ayers was asked.
''Obviously, the point is it's a reflection on memory,'' he answered. ''It's true as I remember it.''
Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted.
Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''
He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two other people were killed when bombs they were making exploded in a Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J. Edgar Hoover called her ''the most dangerous woman in America'' and ''la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left.'' Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.
In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a ''whirlpool of violence.''
''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ''Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon -- we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.'' He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.
Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.
Today, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, 59, who is director of the Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University, seem like typical baby boomers, caring for aging parents, suffering the empty-nest syndrome. Their son, Malik, 21, is at the University of California, San Diego; Zayd, 24, teaches at Boston University. They have also brought up Chesa Boudin, 21, the son of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who are serving prison terms for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, N.Y., that left four people dead. Last month, Ms. Boudin's application for parole was rejected.
So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ''I don't want to discount the possibility,'' he said.
''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.''
Mr. Ayers has always been known as a ''rich kid radical.'' His father, Thomas, now 86, was chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, chairman of Northwestern University and of the Chicago Symphony. When someone mentions his father's prominence, Mr. Ayers is quick to say that his father did not become wealthy until the son was a teenager. He says that he got some of his interest in social activism from his father. He notes that his father promoted racial equality in Chicago and was acceptable as a mediator to Mayor Richard Daley and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 when King marched in Cicero, Ill., to protest housing segregation.
All in all, Mr. Ayers had ''a golden childhood,'' he said, though he did have a love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, ''my brothers and I loved everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions.''
The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds ''a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,'' he writes.
He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.
In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''
In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: ''It was a joke. We were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.''
Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight -- antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.
During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century.
He also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to ''smash monogamy.'' The Weathermen were ''an army of lovers,'' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.
''Fugitive Days'' does have moments of self-mockery, for instance when Mr. Ayers describes watching ''Underground,'' Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary about the Weathermen. He was ''embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,'' he writes. ''The rigidity and the narcissism.''
In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms. Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were purged from the group.
Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already been dropped.
Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal guardians.
A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms. Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it. Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said, because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. ''I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive,'' she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough.
Once again, Chesa was without a mother. ''It was one of the hardest things I did,'' said Ms. Dohrn of going to jail.
In the interview, Mr. Ayers called Chesa ''a very damaged kid.'' ''He had real serious emotional problems,'' he said. But after extensive therapy, ''became a brilliant and wonderful human being.'' .
After the couple surfaced, Ms. Dohrn tried to practice law, taking the bar exam in New York. But she was turned down by the Bar Association's character committee because of her political activities.
Ms. Dohrn said she was aware of the contradictions between her radical past and the comforts of her present existence. ''This is where we raised our kids and are taking care of our aging parents,'' she said. ''We could live much more simply, and well we might.''
And as for settling into marriage after efforts to smash monogamy, Ms. Dohrn said, ''You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom.''
''Happily for me, Billy keeps me laughing, he keeps me growing,'' she said.
Mr. Ayers said he had some of the same conflicts about marriage. ''We have to learn how to be committed,'' he said, ''and hold out the possibility of endless reinventions.''
As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr. Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.
And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in the Weathermen bombings?
By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from ''The Cure at Troy,'' Seamus Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes: " " 'Human beings suffer,/ They torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' ''
He continued to recite:
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, ''I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed.''
However, even if that were not true, when they met years later in Chicago, it is unlikely, given the small Columbia community (Columbia is the smallest school in the Ivy League.) there would not have been the natural mutual alumni "Hey, you went to Columbia too?" So, to describe him as "some guy in my neighborhood" strains all credibility. Oh, and not to mention their frequent appearances at events together at the U of Chicago for their other friend Rashid Khalid, but again, I digress.
That is not the topic of this post.
Bill Ayers and what he said, is. I have seen the Barackophiles running to tell us all that Ayers never really said those things in the NY Times. That's not what he meant.
Well, it's simple. Go back and read the entire article published shockingly, on 9/11. Better yet, here it is for you. Unedited.
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: September 11, 2001
''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.
Now he has written a book, ''Fugitive Days'' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it.
''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''
But why would someone want to read a memoir parts of which are admittedly not true? Mr. Ayers was asked.
''Obviously, the point is it's a reflection on memory,'' he answered. ''It's true as I remember it.''
Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted.
Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''
He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two other people were killed when bombs they were making exploded in a Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J. Edgar Hoover called her ''the most dangerous woman in America'' and ''la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left.'' Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.
In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a ''whirlpool of violence.''
''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ''Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon -- we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.'' He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.
Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.
Today, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, 59, who is director of the Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University, seem like typical baby boomers, caring for aging parents, suffering the empty-nest syndrome. Their son, Malik, 21, is at the University of California, San Diego; Zayd, 24, teaches at Boston University. They have also brought up Chesa Boudin, 21, the son of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who are serving prison terms for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, N.Y., that left four people dead. Last month, Ms. Boudin's application for parole was rejected.
So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ''I don't want to discount the possibility,'' he said.
''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.''
Mr. Ayers has always been known as a ''rich kid radical.'' His father, Thomas, now 86, was chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, chairman of Northwestern University and of the Chicago Symphony. When someone mentions his father's prominence, Mr. Ayers is quick to say that his father did not become wealthy until the son was a teenager. He says that he got some of his interest in social activism from his father. He notes that his father promoted racial equality in Chicago and was acceptable as a mediator to Mayor Richard Daley and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 when King marched in Cicero, Ill., to protest housing segregation.
All in all, Mr. Ayers had ''a golden childhood,'' he said, though he did have a love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, ''my brothers and I loved everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions.''
The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds ''a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,'' he writes.
He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.
In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''
In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: ''It was a joke. We were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.''
Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight -- antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.
During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century.
He also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to ''smash monogamy.'' The Weathermen were ''an army of lovers,'' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.
''Fugitive Days'' does have moments of self-mockery, for instance when Mr. Ayers describes watching ''Underground,'' Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary about the Weathermen. He was ''embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,'' he writes. ''The rigidity and the narcissism.''
In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms. Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were purged from the group.
Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already been dropped.
Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal guardians.
A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms. Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it. Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said, because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. ''I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive,'' she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough.
Once again, Chesa was without a mother. ''It was one of the hardest things I did,'' said Ms. Dohrn of going to jail.
In the interview, Mr. Ayers called Chesa ''a very damaged kid.'' ''He had real serious emotional problems,'' he said. But after extensive therapy, ''became a brilliant and wonderful human being.'' .
After the couple surfaced, Ms. Dohrn tried to practice law, taking the bar exam in New York. But she was turned down by the Bar Association's character committee because of her political activities.
Ms. Dohrn said she was aware of the contradictions between her radical past and the comforts of her present existence. ''This is where we raised our kids and are taking care of our aging parents,'' she said. ''We could live much more simply, and well we might.''
And as for settling into marriage after efforts to smash monogamy, Ms. Dohrn said, ''You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom.''
''Happily for me, Billy keeps me laughing, he keeps me growing,'' she said.
Mr. Ayers said he had some of the same conflicts about marriage. ''We have to learn how to be committed,'' he said, ''and hold out the possibility of endless reinventions.''
As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr. Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.
And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in the Weathermen bombings?
By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from ''The Cure at Troy,'' Seamus Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes: " " 'Human beings suffer,/ They torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' ''
He continued to recite:
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, ''I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed.''
Friday, October 10, 2008
Weekly Jihad Report
Sept 27- Oct 3
43
Dead Bodies:
171
Critically Injured:
481
Latest Offerings from the Religion of Peace
"He who fights that Islam should be superior fights in Allah's cause"
Muhammad, Prophet of Islam
10/9/2008 (Islamabad, Pakistan) - Four schoolgirls are among ten people killed in a Mujahideen bombing.
10/8/2008 (Baquba, Iraq) - A female Fedayeen murders ten Iraqis outside a courthouse.
10/8/2008 (Mosul, Iraq) - Two more Christians are murdered by Muslim extremists in separate attacks.
10/8/2008 (Ain al-Helweh, Lebanon) - Suspected fundamentalists gun down a Fatah activist.
10/7/2008 (Mosul, Iraq) - A Christian man and his elderly father are shot to death at their workplace by Religion of Peace radicals.
10/7/2008 (Mosul, Iraq) - Islamic extremists enter a Christian pharmacy and kill the owner.
Why don't people get it?
One of the most fascinating discussions going on, on the campaign trail is this idea of Obama's that if "we have actionable intelligence, we should attack in Pakistan".
Now, McCain is correct that this is wrong. However, for some bizarre reason he has not discussed exactly HOW wrong, and WHY it is so wrong.
Well, why not a cross border incursion?
How can people not see this? An "incursion" is a fancy name for an INVASION!!!!!!!
An invasion is a declaration of war.
We would be invading, and declaring war on, an unstable nuclear ally whose population hates us!!!
(Of course, this doesn't even begin to mention the influences being exerted on Obama by his "friends" to right an infidel Muslim country, punish them for their alliance with the "great Satan" the US.)
DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Come on people. WAKE UP!!!! This guy is DANGEROUS!!!!
Now, McCain is correct that this is wrong. However, for some bizarre reason he has not discussed exactly HOW wrong, and WHY it is so wrong.
- Pakistan is an ally.
- Pakistan is a nuclear power.
- Pakistan is an unstable government at best - remember, Musharaff became President as a result of a MILITARY coup. A frequent occurrence there.
- Pakistans' population is highly radicalized Muslim's who have grave antipathy toward the United States.
- We have had "actionable intelligence" dozens of times over the years on terrorists and their locations. Did we attack Frankfurt when we found Ramzi Youssef (the '93 bomber and mastermind of 9/11) there?
Well, why not a cross border incursion?
How can people not see this? An "incursion" is a fancy name for an INVASION!!!!!!!
An invasion is a declaration of war.
We would be invading, and declaring war on, an unstable nuclear ally whose population hates us!!!
(Of course, this doesn't even begin to mention the influences being exerted on Obama by his "friends" to right an infidel Muslim country, punish them for their alliance with the "great Satan" the US.)
DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Come on people. WAKE UP!!!! This guy is DANGEROUS!!!!
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Joys of the Negative Campaign
I am chuckling to myself every minute these days as I hear the Democrats predicting how the Republicans will be turning "negative" soon.
Now, negative campaigning is as old, as, well, campaigning. And for those who don't have a sense of history (a note of history for you Placebo!! lol) it is as old as Julius Ceasar writing his own war reports to promote his candidacy for Pro Consul.
But what is fascinating to me is that, despite my disdain for most of the positions of Sarah Palin, I don't think I have seen the type of petty personal attacks since, well, since... um, Hillary.
Criticisms of her outfits, her hair, that she is "too good looking"? Really ladies? I can name several hundred thousand of you right here on this site that put her to shame, but more's the point.
Yes, it was Republican Lee Atwater who gave birth to the new generation of attack politics, but not really.
What's wonderful is that as the Democrats imply that McCain is about to die, and that the Governor with the highest approval rating in the country is an unabashed idiot (which I simply don't know, but don't deny) they can stake claim to not going negative because they keep telling us the Republicans are doing it.
Ironic coming from a campaign, or really a candidate that has done more to cover up the most nefarious, total, and inconceivable and unprecedented associations with anti American, anti semitic, corrupt and criminal group of friends, associates, advisers and campaign staff we have ever seen.
If I WERE the McCain Campaign, hell, I'd be running the clips of Hillary and McCain sitting in Iraq together with Tim Russert joking about the two of them running together.
And no, this was not 4 years ago, but LAST year.
Or maybe I'd be running Biden's appearance on the same show when he said he'd be "honored" to be on the ticket with McCain. Again, not 4 years ago.
Maybe I'd be replaying the speeches given by Biden that were lifted in total from British Pol's? Or better yet, running his comments on how naive and unprepared Barack is from the Democratic Debates. You know, only a few months ago?
Hmmm, those things haven't happened.
So, who is negative?
I'd be ripping Obama, as I will soon. How did he get into Columbia? How did he get into Harvard? How did he get his first and only law job? How did he get his position as a lecturer? How did he get elected to the State Legislature, the US Senate? Well, when you answer those questions honestly, you'll see just who is running a negative campaign.
Now, negative campaigning is as old, as, well, campaigning. And for those who don't have a sense of history (a note of history for you Placebo!! lol) it is as old as Julius Ceasar writing his own war reports to promote his candidacy for Pro Consul.
But what is fascinating to me is that, despite my disdain for most of the positions of Sarah Palin, I don't think I have seen the type of petty personal attacks since, well, since... um, Hillary.
Criticisms of her outfits, her hair, that she is "too good looking"? Really ladies? I can name several hundred thousand of you right here on this site that put her to shame, but more's the point.
Yes, it was Republican Lee Atwater who gave birth to the new generation of attack politics, but not really.
What's wonderful is that as the Democrats imply that McCain is about to die, and that the Governor with the highest approval rating in the country is an unabashed idiot (which I simply don't know, but don't deny) they can stake claim to not going negative because they keep telling us the Republicans are doing it.
Ironic coming from a campaign, or really a candidate that has done more to cover up the most nefarious, total, and inconceivable and unprecedented associations with anti American, anti semitic, corrupt and criminal group of friends, associates, advisers and campaign staff we have ever seen.
If I WERE the McCain Campaign, hell, I'd be running the clips of Hillary and McCain sitting in Iraq together with Tim Russert joking about the two of them running together.
And no, this was not 4 years ago, but LAST year.
Or maybe I'd be running Biden's appearance on the same show when he said he'd be "honored" to be on the ticket with McCain. Again, not 4 years ago.
Maybe I'd be replaying the speeches given by Biden that were lifted in total from British Pol's? Or better yet, running his comments on how naive and unprepared Barack is from the Democratic Debates. You know, only a few months ago?
Hmmm, those things haven't happened.
So, who is negative?
I'd be ripping Obama, as I will soon. How did he get into Columbia? How did he get into Harvard? How did he get his first and only law job? How did he get his position as a lecturer? How did he get elected to the State Legislature, the US Senate? Well, when you answer those questions honestly, you'll see just who is running a negative campaign.
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