forgive me while i repost some threads about bill ayers

[mopinko]

this whole trashing of bill ayers is just making me crazy. i want to keep some of these great threads handy for the idiots who are trying to make hay out of this. so i am posting this thread here, so that i can post it to my journal. it would be great if anyone here has other good stuff to ad. i got a feeling this pile of shit is going to stink for quite a while.
please ad your own links, du and otherwise.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5562154

Here is BILL AYERS in his own words. Lets see the man for who he IS!!!

First of all this is not a piece to justify the Weather Underground or their poor attempts at bombings (the only people who died were their own members, as they always called in an advance warning). This is an attempt to dig below the media concoction that is Ayers to try and find out who the real person is.

This is a man who according to Hillary and co is Jack the Ripper, Bin Laden and the 'O' Bomber combined. The man with a cold heart who is attributed to have said in response to 9/11 that "I don't regret setting off bombs. I only regret we didn't do enough".

Well, that is a load of CRAP

But lets here it from him in this post on his own blog: http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/episodic-noto... /

Day in and day out I go about my business, I hang out with my kids and my grandchildren, take care of the elders, I go to work, I teach and I write, I organize and I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful movement for peace and social justice; now and then (and unpredictably) I appear in the newspapers or on TV with a reference to my book Fugitive Days, a memoir of the revolutionary action and militant resistance to the Viet Nam War—the years of miracle and wonder—and some fantastic assertions about what I did, what I said, and what I believe. The other night, for example, I heard Sean Hannity tell Senator John McCain that I was an unrepentant terrorist who had written an article on September 11, 2001 extolling bombings against the U.S., and even advocating more terrorist bombs. Senator McCain couldn’t believe it, and neither could I.


Here are his words on regret:

Regrets. I’m often quoted saying that I have “no regrets.” This is not true. For anyone paying attention—and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me all/ways—life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say “no, I don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.” Sometimes I add, “I don’t think I did enough.” This is then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings.

The illegal, murderous, imperial war against Viet Nam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese, a disaster for Americans, and a world tragedy. Many of us understood this, and many tried to stop the war. Those of us who tried recognize that our efforts were inadequate: the war dragged on for a decade, thousands were slaughtered every week, and we couldn’t stop it. In the end the U.S. military was defeated and the war ended, but we surely didn’t do enough.


So he never mentioned the regrets comment in reference to 9/11. More can be read over here (thanks marmar from highlighting this in your post): http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/041708a.html

In the April 16 debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Clinton lit up when her husband’s former adviser, George Stephanopoulos, finally asked one of her campaign’s long-plotted attack lines – raising a tenuous association between Obama and an aging Vietnam-era radical William Ayers.

Stephanopoulos, acting as an ABC News debate moderator, and Clinton also injected a false suggestion that Ayers had either hailed the 9/11 attacks or had used the occasion as a grotesque opportunity to call for more bombings.

(In reality, an earlier interview about his memoir was coincidently published by the New York Times in its Sept. 11, 2001, edition, which went to press on Sept. 10, before the attacks. But Stephanopoulos and Clinton left the impression with the public that Ayers's comments represented a ghoulish reaction to the 9/11 attacks.)


Here are his words on terrorism:

Terror. Terrorism—according to both official U.S. policy and the U.N.—is the use or threat of random violence to intimidate, frighten, or coerce a population toward some political end. This means, of course, that terrorism is not the exclusive province of a cult, a religious sect, or a group of fanatics. It can be any of these, but it can also be—and often is—executed by governments and states. A bombing in a café in Israel is terrorism, and an Israeli assault on a neighborhood in Gaza is terrorism; the September 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, and the U.S. bombings in Viet Nam for a decade were acts of terrorism. Terrorism is never justifiable, even in a just cause—the Union fight in the 1860’s was just, for example, but Shernan’s March to the Sea was indefensible terror. I’ve never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely and defends the use of it in its own cause consistently.


So the point to note is that Ayers belongs to the Vietnam era of anti-establishment, anti-authority movement and he did do things that he regrets. There is also some truth in what he says regarding the interpretation of acts of terror. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Violent forms of protest are abhorrent and should be rejected in every form and manner, but let us at least reject the right person rather than a media created caricature. Let us also place his acts in a historical perspective and understand that people evolve. If we hold a person trapped in the prism of historical actions, even after he has paid the price for them, then we are refusing to let go of those same actions.

Barack Obama is able to understand this, why are many of us not?



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5552812


Daley releases statement on Ayers.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04...

Daley accused Hillary Clinton and other critics of Obama's association with Ayers of "re-fighting 40 year old battles." And the mayor noted that he, too "know(s) Bill Ayers" and has "worked with" Ayers on city education reforms.

The mayor released the following statement:

There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics. And one more example is the way Senator Obama’s opponents are playing guilt-by-association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers.

I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally-renowned school reform program. He is a nationally-recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois/Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.

I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40 year old battles.





Hillary Clinton Campaign Launches Sleaze Attack on Barack Obama and Two Dedicated Child Advocates

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

February 24, 2008


People who have written BuzzFlash to rip into me for being critical of negative and slimy Clinton campaign tactics rarely deal with the substance of what I have detailed. Instead, I am told that, basically, that if you attack Senator Clinton on her record or strategy, you are in the league of the misogynist Chris Matthews.

The problem this line of thinking holds for many women over 40 who identify with Hillary’s gender and moxie is that Senator Clinton’s record on women, children and war doesn’t always match her rhetoric for the most part. How many of the Clinton “cannot be criticized” readers (or ex-readers) who have written us would vote in favor of allowing the military to use cluster bombs in civilian areas? Very few, but Hillary Clinton did; Barack Obama voted against it.

How many of our readers would support a welfare bill that would cut women and their needy children off of government support money if they didn’t find work in an economy that is increasingly bereft of decent paying jobs? Few of our readers would, but Hillary did.

How many of our readers would have voted for the Iraq War authorization, when we all knew it was the enabling legislation Bush needed to go to War with Iraq? We would have voted against it; but Hillary Clinton voted for it, and then claims that she was, essentially, “duped.” Okay, we weren’t duped; you weren’t duped. But the person who touts her “experience” claims she was.

There’s a point when a support of a political candidate because the candidate is a symbol – in this case of a woman triumphing to become president – compromises so much to reach that goal that the victory would be hollow. Is it advancing feminist principles of peace, care for women and children, and decent jobs for women when the candidate one supports has severely compromised herself on all these issues? We’ll let you answer that.

Some of our readers respond not in support of Hillary Clinton’s record, which is highly checkered on basic feminist principles. (The former female leader of the Catholic pro-choice movement details how Senator Clinton has repeatedly compromised on the pro-choice issue in subtle but important ways.)

But what got me riled up again about Senator Clinton’s most recent campaign tactics was not so much the over-the-top and sadly ironic news conference regarding two mailers by the Obama campaign in Ohio. (Clinton’s campaign had sent out a mailer in New Hampshire that said that Obama couldn’t be trusted on Choice, when he had a 100% Planned Parenthood rating during his senate years in Illinois, and is continuing that voting record in the U.S. Senate.)

No, what got us in a lather were little noticed e-mails by a Clinton staffer goading the press to follow-up on an allegation that Obama had ties to “radical groups.”

The Clinton spokesperson, Phil Singer, was in gutter mode when he pushed a story -- which was either placed in the New York Sun and Politico by the Clinton or McCain campaigns – that tried to connect Obama to the radical “Weather Underground” that was in its heyday when Obama wasn’t even a teenager.

What was the connection? Well, Obama, many years ago, had an Illinois Senate fundraiser and accepted a small donation from William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Were they both in the violent “Weather Underground” when Obama was in elementary school? Yes. But trying to connect a ten-year-old Obama, living in Indonesia and Hawaii, with a radical, long-ago defunct movement is inexcusable.

It is another sleazy attack that Senator Clinton supporters will have to compromise their souls to support.

Why? Because William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in their adult lives have devoted themselves to improving the lives and prospects for children. Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and Dohrn – who became a lawyer – heads a highly regarded program at Northwestern University that is dedicated to the rights and welfare of children. Obama served on the Board of Directors of a prestigious foundation in Chicago with Ayers -- and they all live in the Hyde Park (University of Chicago) neighborhood.

So, here are two people, now virtually senior citizens, who have devoted their adult lives to children (they have two of their own and raised another), and the Clinton campaign, which claims that their candidate is a champion of youth, trashes both Ayers/Dohrn and Obama by bringing up a radical movement from the ‘60s.

This is not only hypocritical beyond belief, it is ludicrous. Moreover, it lacks the most fundamental decency.

If these are the values that the self-described feminists who write us support, then by all means go ahead and continue dwelling in a world of hypocrisy.

Read about the program at Northwestern University School of Law that Dohrn has put her adult life into creating and overseeing:


“Bernardine Dohrn, Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Director and founder of the Children and Family Justice Center, is a child advocate who teaches, lectures and writes about children’s law, juvenile justice, the needs and rights of youth, and international human rights. The Center is a holistic children's law center and a national policy center for the comprehensive needs of adolescents and their families, providing critical analysis and knowledge about youth law and practice, matters associated with the administration of justice, and the preparation of professionals who advocate for children. The CFJC is a clinical center of the Bluhm Legal Clinic, preparing law and social work students by representing adolescents in three strategic areas of children’s law: juvenile and criminal justice; school discipline and education law; and immigration and asylum law involving children and women."
If you can support dragging down Bernardine Dohrn and Wiliam Ayers, through the gutter just so Senator Clinton’s staff can try to drag down Obama with slurs, then we invite you not to read BuzzFlash again. We don’t want you in our community.

It is not about whether or not Obama is a “saint”; it is about Clinton taking responsibility for her campaign and her proclaimed key issues.

No one is under any illusion that a President Obama will not disappoint us at times; but Hillary Clinton has betrayed the most fundamental core values that she espouses by allowing her staff and her husband to first “play the race card” and now to feebly play “the radical card.”


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5553144


This is beyond shameful; it is a betrayal.


BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG


http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/053

[mopinko]

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5566394