The American Apologist

Take a look at this photo and see if you recognize anyone in it.

Now, go over to Linda’s place and read her post today about the 8 killed in Yeshiva terrorist attack by another terrorist swine.

The back-story to this post comes from this Linda SOG post and from DiscoverTheNetwork.org. It is a story about 2 young terrorists, a man and a woman, who trained in the USA and who carried out bombings against the Pentagon, the US Capitol building, and the headquarters of the NYPD. They also caused widespread riots in downtown Chicago and were noted for one of the most notable prison breakouts in the 20th Century. These 2 terrorists, Bill Ayers and his girlfriend Bernardine Dohrn, were the leaders of a radical group called the Weatherman (later called the Weather Underground Organization, or WUO). They were young white college students in the late 1960’s when the began their radical leftist revolution against The Establishment. Three Weathermen were killed in 1970 when the bomb they were building in New York City exploded. The intended target of that bomb was a large social dance at Fort Dix, a US Army base in New Jersey. In short, The Weathermen was an organization which carried out one of the first organized domestic terror programs in the United States.

Interestingly, these revolutionaries — hell-bent on destroying “white Amerikkka” (they spell America with “kkk” because they felt the country was fundamentally racist) — were never held accountable for their actions. What do you suppose happened to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn? They are alive and well and living in Chicago. Not only are they roaming the streets of the Windy City as free citizens, they are also actively shaping the society of tomorrow! Dohrn is a law professor at Northwestern University, a member and committee member of the American Bar Association, and a member of the Board of the ACLU. Her partner, Bill Ayers, is a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Below is the quoted text from DiscoverTheNetworks.org. Of course, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of these claims. Bill Ayers web site contends that Dohrn’s comments about Charles Manson were taken out of context. His web site is one long diatribe about how misunderstood, misquoted and maligned he has been by society in general and the media in specific.

In a different time and place, Bill and Bernardine would not enjoy the fruits of their radical labor. In a different time and place, the ivory-covered walls of learning would not have provided Bill and Bernardine with the veil of tenure and stature of academia. In a just society, terrorists such as Bill and Bernardine would not be rewarded for holding a dagger to the throat of society…

Weatherman (known colloquially as The Weathermen) was a political faction elected in 1968 to lead the radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The organization took its name from a line in the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues (“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”). Emerging in 1969 as the most militant wing of the SDS’s Revolutionary Youth Movement, the fledgling Weatherman issued a “manifesto” eschewing nonviolence and calling instead for armed opposition to U.S. policies; advocating the overthrow of capitalism; exhorting white radicals to trigger a worldwide revolution by fighting in the streets of the “mother country”; and proclaiming that the time had come to launch a race war against the “white” United States on behalf of the non-white Third World.

Grounded in identity politics, Weatherman ideology and rhetoric rebelled against what later came to be known as America’s “white skin privilege.” Weatherman opposed the strategy of a rival SDS faction, Progressive Labor, which rejected the sexual and chemical excesses of the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s in favor of a purer, Marxist-Leninist popular front movement aimed at developing student-labor alliances.

FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare.

At a 1969 “War Council” in Flint, Michigan, Weatherman leader Bernardine Dohrn (currently a law professor at Northwestern University and a Board member of the ACLU) praised the serial murderer Charles Manson and his accomplices: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild.” She then proclaimed that the time had come to launch a war against “Amerikkka” (Weatherman always spelled “America” this way, to convey the group’s belief that the nation was ineradicably racist to its core). Toward this end, Dohrn advocated the formation of an even more radical “Weather Underground” cult to carry out covert terrorist activities rather than public acts of protest. By early 1970, her wish would be realized.

Weatherman’s first public demonstration was its October 1969 “Days of Rage” protest in Chicago, timed to coincide with the trials of the Chicago Seven (a group of radical leftists led by Tom Hayden), who had fomented a riot at the Democratic Party nominating convention in that city the previous year. Advertised with the slogan “Bring the war home,” “Days of Rage” sought to create enough chaos to shock the American public out of its alleged complacency vis a vis the Vietnam War.

The opening “Days of Rage” salvo, designed to glorify the anarchist movement, was the October 8 demolition of a statue dedicated to the memory of eight policemen who had been killed in the Haymarket Labor Riot of 1886. Thereafter, some 300 people — both members and supporters of the Weatherman agenda — ravaged Chicago’s business district, smashing windows and destroying automobiles. Six people were shot and seventy were arrested. The violence continued, though on a smaller scale, for each of the next two nights. As Sixties historian Todd Gitlin observed, however, no popular uprising was sparked by these events, much to the group’s dismay. Notable “Days of Rage” leaders included Bill Ayers, now a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, and Mark William Rudd, currently a mathematics professor at a New Mexico community college.

Weatherman was further radicalized by the December 1969 shooting death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by Chicago police. Hampton was a street thug who, in his much-heralded “morning education” programs, taught black youths that violent opposition to the U.S. government was a worthy goal. He was quoted in a 1969 Chicago Sun-Times article as saying, “I am at war with the pigs,” and forecasting an armed struggle between blacks and whites. He routinely carried weapons and instructed his subordinates to do the same. For Weatherman, Hampton’s death provided one more excuse to pursue a revolutionary agenda. In March 1970 the organization issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United States government, using for the first time its new name, the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO), adopting fake identities, and pledging to pursue covert activities only.

Shortly after that Declaration, three members of the Weather Underground accidentally killed themselves in a Manhattan townhouse while attempting to build a powerful bomb they had intended to plant at a social dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey — an event that was to be attended by U.S. Army soldiers. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plot been successfully executed.

The Weather Underground went on to claim credit for some 25 bombings over the next several years, detonating explosives at the rebuilt Haymarket statue, a bathroom at the Pentagon, the Capitol barber shop, the New York City police headquarters, and a variety of other targets.

The Weather Underground also (for a fee of $25,000) helped psychedelic drug guru Timothy Leary break out of a California prison and arranged for his transport to Algiers. When Leary was re-arrested in 1974, he cooperated in the FBI investigation of WUO in exchange for a lighter sentence.

By the time the U.S. withdrew its military forces from Vietnam in 1975, the Weather Underground was clearly losing vitality as an organization, having failed to invigorate a new radical movement in the U.S. or to inspire an all-out war against the government. In the wake of President Jimmy Carter’s amnesty for draft dodgers, members of the group began to emerge from hiding. Many were never prosecuted; others had their convictions overturned. Some, like Rudd, Dohrn, and Ayers, claimed places for themselves in academia, while others attempted to return to the mainstream.

On October 20, 1981 — long after the Weather Underground had ceased to exist — former Underground member Kathy Boudin and her soon-to-be husband, David Gilbert, were accomplices in the robbery of a Brinks armored car in Nyack, New York. In the course of that heist, one Brinks guard and two Nyack police officers were murdered. Also involved in the robbery was Judith Clark, who had served a prison term for her participation in the “Days of Rage.” Boudin hired attorney Leonard Weinglass, a law partner of her father, to defend her in the case. Weinglass arranged for a plea bargain whereby Boudin pled guilty to one count of felony murder and robbery, in exchange for a prison sentence of twenty years to life. She was paroled in 2003, however, over strong opposition from New York State police. Gilbert remains in New York’s Attica State Prison, having refused to bargain.

In 1985, former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg (who also was implicated in the Nyack robbery) and Linda Evans were apprehended while transporting 740 pounds of explosives which they both acknowledged were slated for use in additional bombings. Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in prison, Evans 40; President Bill Clinton pardoned both women in January 2001.

Here is Bill Ayers Mugshot.
Here is Bill Ayers more recently.
Here is Bernardine Dohrn’s Mugshot.
Here is Bernardine Dohrn more recently.

Been very busy lately… why don’t you go check out some of my favorite bloggers:

Trouble inhabits an island — he calls it Trouble’s Island and, in his latest post, he’s being painfully honest about his name.

Christopher and Christine are a couple living in California. Together, they are the Battle of the Sexes at Chris vs Chris. Just note that the top “post” is actually a “classic” — that is, one of their previous posts revisited.

c.a.Marks is Miss Improper at Alabama Improper, although as of late [since The Gent came into her life], she’s been very proper.

For a dose of reality, humor, and feisty Colorado fun, go check out Still Stacy [and, yes, it is yet another theme she's using...]

RightGril is Wendy. Wendy is also as Girl on the Right Ok, it’s all too confusing… just read her.

You can also say “Hi” to Beth and the gang at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

You might also visit my friend, Jane, at See Jane Mom — you too can be a Janiac…

E. M. Zanotti is the American Princess — enough said…

Amy Proctor gives you the Bottom Line Up Front. She tells it like it is!

So, go give my fellow blogger a try and let me know what you think…