posted October 03, 2008 05:15 PM            

The names of four former top leaders of the Weathermen terrorist organization are listed as signatories on an online petition calling for an "independent grassroots effort" to help strengthen Sen. Barack Obama's campaign.

The petition was initiated by Progressives for Obama, an independent organization acting to ensure the Illinois senator's election.

Progressives includes among its ranks many former members of the 1960s radical organization Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, from which the Weathermen splintered, as well as current and former members of other radical organizations, such as the Communist Party USA and the Black Radical Congress.

"We agree that Barack Obama is our best option for president in 2008, and that an independent grassroots effort can help strengthen his campaign," states the online petition. "It can also strengthen the mandate for his programs for stopping war, promoting global justice and securing our rights, liberties, and economic well-being."

Among the names signed onto the petition are former Weathermen leaders Howard Machtinger, Jeff Jones, Steve Tappis and Mark Rudd.

Machtinger was a Weathermen founder and was co-author of the terror group's original mission statement, which called for "revolutionaries within the United States to wage a 'people's war' and attack from within. The government would fall and 'world communism' eventually would be instituted."

Jones, according to his own website, was "elected, along with (Weathermen terrorist) Bill Ayers and Mark Rudd, to the SDS national office. Then, in the spring of 1970, he disappeared. As a leader of the Weather Underground, Jeff evaded an intense FBI manhunt for more than a decade. In 1981, they finally got him. Twenty special agents battered down the door of the Bronx apartment where he was living with his wife and four-year-old son."

Jones' site says he traveled to Cambodia in 1966 to meet with high-level leaders of the anti-American National Liberation Front. In 1967 and 1968 he served as an SDS regional organizer for New York City.

Contacted by WND, Jones said he is not involved in any Obama advocacy.

Tappis was one of 11 people who signed the original Weathermen statement, which was infamously titled, "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows."

Rudd, a petition supporter as well as a main signatory to the Progressives for Obama group, was one of the main founders of the Weathermen terrorist organization. A biography published on his website explains Rudd worked to form the Weathermen as a radical alternative to the SDS and for white Americans to eject their "white skin privilege" and begin "armed struggle" against the U.S. government.

Rudd went underground in 1970, when a bomb exploded in a townhouse in Greenwich Village in New York City, killing three of his comrades. He lived for seven and a half years in hiding as a fugitive, finally surrendering in 1977, facing only low-level state charges after federal charges against Weathermen leaders had been dropped. He resurfaced as a teacher in New Mexico.

As late as 2005, Rudd wrote an editorial in the Los Angeles Times lamenting the state of the antiwar movement in the U.S.

"What's hard to understand – given the revelations about the rush to war, the use of torture and the loss of more than 2,000 soldiers – is why the antiwar movement isn't further along than it is," he wrote. "Given that President Bush is now talking about Iraq as only one skirmish in an unlimited struggle against a global Islamic enemy, a struggle comparable to the titanic, 40-year Cold War against communism, shouldn't a massive critique of the global war on terrorism already be underway?"

In the piece, Rudd condemned the Weathermen's decision to embark on an "armed-struggle," calling it "stupid" since the violent acts led to the group's demise. But he didn't condemn the terrorism itself, only its contribution to the downfall of the Weathermen.

Rudd declined to speak on the record to WND, explaining an interview may spark more Weathermen controversy for Obama.

All former Weathermen leaders who signed the pro-Obama petition worked closely for years with Weathermen terrorist William Ayers, whose association with Obama has generated controversy for the presidential candidate.

The Weathermen took responsibility for bombing U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s.

Trevor Louden of the New Zeal blog commented, "Clearly Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are not the only former Weathermen backing Obama. Add their old comrades Jeff Jones, Howie Machtinger, Mark Rudd and even Steve Tappis to the mix and you are starting to get beyond coincidence. That former terrorists are working with Marxist groups to elect Barack Obama is beyond doubt."

Progressives for Obama, which initiated the online petition, first published its creed in March in the Nation magazine, explaining the organization descended from the "proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country."

Progressives for Obama stated it can help the Illinois senator's ascent to highest office by contributing funds, using the Internet to reach "millions of swing voters;" defending Obama against negative attacks and making its agenda known at the Democratic National Convention.

"Progressives can make a difference in close primary races like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon and Puerto Rico, and in the November general election," the founders state.

The founders stress it is crucial to form a grassroots leftist movement to ensure Obama does not stray too far to the center, claiming other grassroots liberal movements have successfully pressured U.S. presidents into creating new policy:

It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws.

And it will be the Obama movement that will make it necessary and possible to end the war in Iraq, renew our economy with a populist emphasis, and confront the challenge of global warming. We should not only keep the pressure on [Obama] but also connect the issues that Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision.
The group was founded by four individuals with ties to extremist groups:

Tom Hayden, a former state senator who was a founder and principal organizer of the SDS. Discover the Networks notes Hayden, previously married to actress Jane Fonda, traveled many times to North Vietnam, Czechoslovakia and Paris to strategize with communist North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders on how to defeat America's anti-communist efforts.

Bill Fletcher, a former Maoist and current leader of Democratic Socialists of America or DSA. The New Zeal blog notes Fletcher was also a founder of the Black Radical Congress, closely linked to the Communist Party USA, which advocated for "progressive social justice, racial equality and economic justice goals within the U.S.

Barbara Ehenreich, an honorary chairman of DSA who was formerly active in antiwar movements in which some notorious radicals took part.

Actor Danny Glover, a member of the Black Students Union, who has visited Venezuela, making guest appearances on President Hugo Chavez's television and radio talk show. He reportedly has accepted loans of about $20 million from the Venezuelan government to make a movie about a Haitian revolutionary leader.

The Progressives for Obama webmaster is Carl Davidson, a former vice president of the Students for a Democratic Society, who has traveled to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro.

The signatories and endorsers of the Obama activist group, listed on the Progressives website, include scores of well known communist, socialist and anarchist activists and former SDS members.

posted October 03, 2008 05:40 PM            

I simply wondered how long it would take them to put it out there.

This is a kick in his campaign ey

juni

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted October 03, 2008 06:23 PM            

If only they were smart enough to realize that they'd do Obama much better if they kept silent. lol

I, for one, fully support their right to endorse Obama. Obama's camp has been denying and evading the Senator's relationship with Ayers and it's just so difficult to prove that there's no likeness between their ideals whatsoever when you have such an endorsement as this one.

Speak your little terrorist hearts out, weathermen!!!

posted October 03, 2008 08:08 PM              

If only they were smart enough to realize that they'd do Obama much better if they kept silent. lol

They don't want to help him.

posted October 04, 2008 08:34 AM            

In Obama`s attempt to disassociate from Ayers and the Weather Underground, they draw the connecting dots back to their terrorist selves and Obama`s relationship with them...
by supporting him. How rich is that

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~
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted October 05, 2008 04:06 PM            

It seems unlikely to me that these folks are trying to deliberately sabotage Obama. These are, after all, former Weathermen and the Weatherman Organization itself has virtually disappeared. Now, especially in regards to Ayers, these people regard themselves with a contorted sense of heroism. In any case, whatever purposes they would have for giving the election to McCain would need to be substantiated by an existing organization. Unless, of course, they mean to revive the conditions for such an organization to emerge to their advantage. I think that's a very slim chance, but who knows?

As for Obama's "little" siesta with these flea-ridden mutts...I'm just not inclined to dismissing this as easily as other people have. I'm no one to begin questioning the integrity of other people unless that integrity has clearly become questionable by certain facts that my own judgment has deemed as irrefutable evidence. As a human being, it would be hypocritical of me to deny other people the benefits of our ability to grow, change, and evolve from our experiences and our mistakes. As far as I'm concerned, however, Ayers and other Weathermen are immersed in an incredible folly. These proponents of an organization that ordained itself righteous enough to utilize violence and believe themselves to be acting "heroically" are out of their minds. I'll admit, it maddens me that Ayers is a professor in a university, that he holds influential positions in his community, that he is looked upon with respect and honor by certain convoluted minds, and that he is not in jail for the crimes he committed. What can I say? Heaven is a righteous place and I'm but a tiny lens of limited perspective. With regard to certain things on a grander scale, I must have faith that these celestial events on our earthly plane will, at the very least, endow us with the possibility of learning from them.

Ayers and others of that clan are damn lucky to get through their past involvements virtually unscathed. But to what purpose? It seems that some would say that Ayers has redeemed himself and has "turned a new leaf". Needless to say, I personally don't find that to be the case. What do I think is missing? Well, for starters, Ayers doesn't acknowledge whatsoever that the system that he so abhors and is fighting ardently against is the very system that he has utilized with a substantial margin of "effectiveness". His strategy, albeit unconventional, went against the grain of cumulative thinking and owes a great deal to the better part of his karma. Therein lies my objection to his philosophy. He now seems to have learned that the use of violence and terrorism isn't the beacon of communication that he believed it to be and, yet, he adamantly denies the very implements of our Country that have allowed him his blessings. It just appears a bit ungrateful to me.

Obama is clearly guilty by participation in regards to his involvement with Ayers. At the very least, it is impossible to say that he was not at all influenced by the radically flawed philosophy of anti-U.S. government, anti-capitalism, and essentially anti-American sentiment. His "Change" platform is troubling to me. In light of this relationship it feels very improportionate.

God help us.

posted October 08, 2008 02:18 PM            

At an education forum in Venezuela, Bill Ayers showed the real issue is not his terrorist past. It's the socialist revolutionary agenda that he and Barack Obama want to impose on the nation's schools.

Still more evidence of how the media are in the tank for Obama was evident in Tom Brokaw's description of Ayers on Sunday's "Meet The Press."

"School reformer" is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s.

Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal's Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.

An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America's schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.

With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for "the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."

Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion." It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.

Ayers, now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

As Stern points out, "Ayers and his education school comrades are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive."

If Ayers was just another nutty professor, we'd be lucky. But he wields great influence in academic circles and has had Obama's ear. He's the author or editor of 15 books. Chicago's current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for Chicago's public schools and consulted him on the city's education-reform plans.

Just last month, Ayers was elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association. AERA is the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers.

In a recent interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Obama upgraded Ayers' status from "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."

Actually, Obama knew him quite well, having worked together on a school "reform" project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Annenberg Challenge, securing a $50 million grant to reform the Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg.

Obama was given the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office. He ran the fiscal arm that distributed grants to schools and raised matching funds.

Ayers participated in a second entity known as the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, the operational arm that worked with grant recipients.

During Obama's tenure as Annenberg board chairman, Ayers' own education projects received substantial funding.

One of Ayers' descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."

John McCain needs to repeatedly point out the stealth socialism of Ayers' education agenda and Obama's complicity in it. Otherwise, we may one day see Ayers as Obama's secretary of education.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=308271974461547