The Australian: The seemingly inevitable ascent of Barack Obama to become US president has hit a hurdle, as he is forced to confront accusations, supported by a hard-hitting television ad campaign, that he had a long-time association with two of America's leading terrorists from the 1960s, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, one-time leaders of the Weathermen (also known as the Weather Underground).
It is not in dispute that Obama began his political career in 1995 at the home of Ayers and Dohrn, when his sponsor (herself on the far left of the Democratic Party and a champion of the Soviet Union as late as 1986) arranged for him to meet some influential leftists and potential campaign supporters and contributors who could launch his career. ...The answer requires a brief review of the turbulent time of the 1960s when Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Weathermen and signatories of the ultra-radical manifesto You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows, released at the national convention of the revolutionary Students for a Democratic Society in June 1969. This 20,000-word manifesto called for a communist revolution in the US; the victory of communist North Vietnam in the Vietnam War; and the creation of "two, three, many Vietnams" designed to consume all of America's military resources. It denounced all police as "pigs" and detailed strategies to defeat them; and advocated a vanguard role for black people, supported by university students and young people, in the revolutionary overthrow of American society. The Weathermen advocated urban guerilla warfare and terrorism and undertook an intense campaign of bombings, violent demonstrations, riots and jail breaks from 1969 into the early '70s, beginning with the Days of Rage, held in October 1969, to correspond to the trial of the Chicago Eight. In 1970, the group issued their Declaration of a State of War against the government of what they dismissed as AmeriKKKa. Ayers participated in 30 bombings in this period, including attacks on the New York Police Department... - more: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24485226-7583,00.html --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
