William Ayers | Fausta's Blog

January 18, 2009 By Fausta

Eeet steeenks….

Remember how in 2006 Chavez said at the UN that Pres. Bush smelled of sulfur?

Well, now Chavez says Obama has “stench” of Bush:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday Barack Obama had the “stench” of his predecessor as U.S. president and was at risk of being killed if he tries to change the American “empire.”
…
“I hope I am wrong, but I believe Obama brings the same stench, to not say another word,” Chavez said at a political rally on a historic Venezuelan battlefield

There were those who thought electing Obama would make the whole world love us, really love us,

But Chavez said frayed ties with Washington were unlikely to improve

Can’t say I expected otherwise, even with all that Bill Ayers-Chavista looove.

h/t Instapundit & LGF.

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December 11, 2008 By Fausta

“His crazy means were dictating even crazier ends.”

“His crazy means were dictating even crazier ends,” writes Charles Lane about The Unreal Bill Ayers and Ayer’s claims that he’s the victim of a “profoundly dishonest drama” where he was called an “unrepentant terrorist”: Long-time readers of this blog know that Ayers was a terrorist, and came up with the line, “Guilty as sin, free as a bird”. To review, here’s Andy McCarthey blowing the lid off the “We Were Just Trying To Do Property Damage” Lie, and my friend Paul’s video, Dig It,

Like any good Communist, Ayers loves to parse the meaning of his actions,

His refutation of the “terrorist” charge relies, ironically, on the U.S. government’s definition: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” “We did not do that,” Ayers insisted.

To some, the U.S. Capitol, a Weather Underground target, might qualify as “non-combatant.” But Ayers said it was fair game: The U.S. invasion of Laos and Cambodia made it “a symbol of empire.”

Ayers has been singing this tune for years. In a 1976 tract, he called for “revolutionary violence,” as long as it was “humane.” By then the war was over, and his goal was “to build communist organization toward the stage where armed struggle becomes a mass phenomenon led by a Marxist-Leninist party: a revolutionary stage.” His crazy means were dictating even crazier ends.

And like any good capitalist, he’s got a book to sell… in addition to “a mispent youth to rationalize.”

American Power is right on the money:

The rehabilitation of William Ayers, the ’60s terrorist who wishes he’d done more, reflects one of the most fundamental shifts in American culture toward relativism and the rejection of moral truth.

If you want to buy Ayer’s book, fine by me – it’s a free country and you can buy what you best please – but I won’t be linking to it.

UPDATE, Friday 12 December
Ayersing:

to ayers; v., to expose someone as a self-aggrandizing obfuscatory euphemist in matters pertaining to that person’s own past.

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December 6, 2008 By Fausta

Unrepentant terrorist Ayers gets forum in the NYT

Two friends sent this article, The Real Bill Ayers
By WILLIAM AYERS

He says he wasn’t a terrorist:

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

Bullshit. Ask John Murtagh.

And yes, Ayers is a terrorist:

There is no doubt, however, that at least under current law, he would be considered a terrorist. Here is a definition of terrorism in U.S. law (22 USC 2656f(d)f(2)) (there are others as well but similar)”

the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents

The Weather Underground was a subnational group; exploding bombs is an act of violence; government offices are non-combatant targets (the Weather Underground also bombed banks); and the use of violence had the political goal of ending the Vietnam War. “Screaming response” or no, this was terrorism.

Under current law, Ayers was a terrorist. This definition is not idiosyncratic; similar definitions can be found in the laws of foreign countries and in international treaties. Ayers seems to think he ought to be excused for violence because his motives were good, but that is the excuse that terrorists always offer—that their political goals justify their use of violence—and naturally the legal definition could not permit such a defense without subverting itself, or turning every terrorism trial into a debate about whether the political ends of the defendants are “good” or “bad” from a moral or political perspective.

Ayers: unrepentant, lying, terrorist.

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November 13, 2008 By Fausta

Fugitive Days – time for Ayers to cash in

As a good capitalist, William Ayers is re-relasing his book and going on book signings.

Ron Radosh writes about The Chutzpah of Bill Ayers (emphasis added):

I have already on this site linked to my review of Ayers memoir. But anyone who actually reads it knows immediately that what he is defending is not opposition to the Vietnam War, but his own and his comrade’s record of terrorism. There were thousands of patriotic Americans who opposed that war — a miniscule minority supported or endorsed the actions of the Weatherman faction of SDS and the bombing campaign they undertook when they went underground. Indeed, most of the mainstream cadre of the organization viewed Ayers and his group as a force that undermined their own credibility and helped to isolate what they hoped was a genuine peace movement.

Ayers new apologia is, as one reads it, completely amazing in his disingenuous argument. He was active, he writes, at “a time when the world was in flames, revolution was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted our utopian dreams.” Let us look at the last claim. Was he eluding to Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of those black leaders? If so, all one has to do is recall that Ayers and company, who supported “black power” and not non-violent resistance to segregation, considered King an Uncle Tom, and regularly blasted him as a sell-out. As for the assassination of blacks, one of the offshoots of his own group killed a black policeman in the Brinks robbery, and another killed a black school superintendent in Oakland, California. And of course, the Weather Underground saw Huey Newton’s gang of thugs, The Black Panther Party, as the vanguard of the revolution, and declared their own support for their activities. Newton killed plenty of blacks who opposed him, as well as others in gang wars over drugs.

Now, as a would-be good plain democrat, he has the chutzpah to complain of how the media has unfairly tried to paint him as “un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist….”
You get the idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the photo he posed for tramping an American flag underfoot, his open espousal of the glories of bombing in his memoir, and his espousing revolutionary socialism as his goal in his two year old interview.

Radosh doesn’t have to go back two years. Just a year ago Ayers was in Caracas pitching his revolutionary socialism and saying that he made a mistake in leaving political violence.

Radosh asks,

Will he [Ayers] condemn Chavez for silencing journalists and closing down opposition TV stations?

Not at all. As you can see, he ends his 2006 speech at an event where he was Chavez’s guest of honor, with “Viva presidente Chavez!”

UPDATE
Via The Big Feed, it turns out Ayers and Obama were family friends after all:

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

Well, now he tell us.

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November 11, 2008 By Fausta

Postcards from the edge: Sandalistas {heart} Hugo

William Ayers is not the only one receiving that Chavista seal of approval (click on link for his statements at the Centro Internacional Miranda); today Simon Romero explains how
Venezuela Positions Itself as a Salon for the Left.

Petrodollar hungry whisky-sipping(*) Communist sandalistas from all over the world have made Caracas their VIP lounge: Like Ayers, they want the end of capitalism:

“We must help the current capitalist model collapse, for on its own this will not happen,” José Déniz Espinós, an economist from Madrid, told attendees. “I do not know of one system that has collapsed on its own. For this reason, we must not succumb to euphoria.”

Of course, they stay at the Alba, the former Caracas Hilton, about which I posted in September 2007. You can tell the effects of the Bolivarian revolution on room service that Romero describes it as

this country’s equivalent to the Hotel Habana Libre in Cuba: a drab complex once associated with American power that serves as a symbol of revolutionary change.

While at the Alba you can buy $147 souvenirs of Chávez, so your friends at home can build a little altar to him.

The Mecca of the sandalista pilgrimage is the Centro Internacional Miranda (Miranda International Center) where Ayers did the interview (which, by the way, was translated by his step son who lives at the Miraflores Palace). Of course sandalistas approve of the Miranda center since it flows with largesse:

Venezuela’s government also earns high marks from some foreign scholars for its creation of the Miranda International Center, a policy research outfit in a high-rise across the street from the Alba, and for prizes like the Liberator Prize for Critical Thinking. Franz J. Hinkelammert, a German-born theologian living in Costa Rica, was the first winner of the $150,000 prize in 2006.

After which they all go home singing the praises of their benefactor, who, aside from ruining his country,

“has taken on the mantle of crystallizing forces in opposition to the empire.”

Marty Peretz of The New Republic (who coudln’t bother to look up the meaning of guayabera) calls Venezuala, Haven for Humanity’s Defenders.

I would like to ask Marty where were these “Humanity’s Defenders” when this

goes on in Chavenezuela?

(* Correction: The article states the sandalistas were sipping whiskey. My apologies to the Scots.)

UPDATE
Just in time for the holidays, Jammie tells us the narcissist-Lenninist has a new CD out.

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November 9, 2008 By Fausta

The latest smear on Palin: “Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama”

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama
Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign., says the Telegraph:

The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin’s credentials as a future presidential candidate.

The Other McCain bothered to check out what Newsweek actually said

“I’m worried,” Gregory Craig said to a NEWSWEEK reporter in mid-October. He was concerned that the frenzied atmosphere at the Palin rallies would encourage someone to do something violent toward Obama. He was not the only one in the Obama campaign thinking the unthinkable. The campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and very disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October. Michelle was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” she asked Valerie Jarrett.

Gregory Craig, by the way, was the attorney who represented Elian Gonzalez’s father during the Clinton administration’s disgraceful handling of the case.

But back to the Telegraph story: The Other McCain goes on,

Except for the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, there is no reason to connect (a) Sarah Palin with (b) assassination threats against Obama. You’ve got Democratic operative Craig (whom we remember from the Clinton impeachment) who’s worried about the “atmosphere” at Palin rallies. Then you’ve got a post-Labor Day increase in threats against Obama. And . . . that’s it?

That all death threats are made by subnormal mouth-breathers, I take as a given. (If you really want to assassinate somebody, you don’t make threats. Sirhan Sirhan — to whom Bill Ayers dedicated a book — didn’t make threats.) The only threat against Obama that actually led to arrests was made by a couple 0f teenage losers in Memphis, Tenn., a place where Sarah Palin never campaigned. There was nothing Sarah Palin said or did that was responsible for threats against Obama. If the threats spiked up after Labor Day, it was only because subnormal mouth-breathers don’t pay attention to elections until after Labor Day.

Newsweek clearly is trying to peddle a disgusting smear by the Obama camp, and in the process take out a potential future rival. Tim Shipman merely makes explicit what Newsweek implied, but it’s like Oakland — there’s no “there” there. The Secret Service did not — repeat, did not — blame Sarah Palin for threats against Obama, and Shipman’s story is thus a lie.

As a true conservative who knocked Obama off the headlines the day after the descended from the Invesco Field Olympus, Sarah Palin is a huge threat to many, and they’re set on destroying her chances at a political carreer.

Expect a lot more of these attacks for the time being.

UPDATE
Via The Corner, Jonathan Martin‘s post names those who worked with Palin and who support her; additionally, Martin says,

That she remains a player and may be the party’s nominee in four years would make it smart politics for Republican staffers to praise her in print. But those who went on the record suggest that they were doing so out of genuine affection for Palin and a sense that the image of her coming out of the election — that of a self-absorbed conniver — was not indicative of the person they knew.

I do find it ironic that the media who for years supported two of the most self-absorbed connivers – Bill and Hillary Clinton – are now finding fault with Palin.

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November 1, 2008 By Fausta

Osawatomie: the Weather Underground newspaper

There are serious antiracist organizers building a revolutionary base in working class communities — in neighborhoods, shops, mills, mines, social institutions. There are those who are working among women, GI’s, vets, prisoners, among youth, students and the unemployed in every part of the country. There are some who have been at it for years and some who have just begun. Thousands more are needed; and each particular piece of work will have to be linked up into a whole. We need to out-organize the sophisticated and well-financed forces of George Meany, Louise Day Hicks, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and Albert Shanker. Organizers need to crush this reactionary leadership with a revolutionized torrent of people.

Read it all.

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October 29, 2008 By Fausta

Erik explains Ayers to Jixie Juny while waiting for the LATimes to release the Khalidi tape

Erik has a new video, but before we get to that, the McCain campaign has finally insisted that the LA Times release a video where Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat – at a dinner sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) in 2003.

Notice who unearthed this story, which the LA Times is holding back:

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.

No videotape, no full transcript have been released of what was said at this event as of the writing of this post. Andy McCarthy asks,

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?

But hey, Khalidi, like Ayers, lived down the street from Obama, too:

Khalidi later lived near Obama while teaching at the University of Chicago.

Well, yes, but according to the LA Times,

Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University
The Kalidis and the Obamas “became friends and dinner companions”
In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid
In 2001 a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund’s board of directors.
Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis’ daughter.

I list the above to make the point that Khalidi is not a simple casual acquaintance.

And then there’s the videotaped party which tape the LAT refuses to release:

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 LA Time’s excuse for not releasing the tape?

“The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it,” said the newspaper’s editor, Russ Stanton. “The Times keeps its promises to sources.”

I can see why the LAT won’t reveal the name of its source, but why not release the tape? Is it perhaps that the source fears for their safety? The LAT has had no compunction in revealing a classified counterterrorism program, so why demur now?

How damming can it be?

Let’s find out: