Guilt by association in FAR-right-wing politics
Mixed content: research refs., current forum conversation(s), general info.
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"retrograde political amnesia"
The Iran–Contra affair - Role of Reagan
Washington D.C., November 24, 2006 - On November 25, 1986, the biggest political and constitutional scandal since Watergate exploded in Washington when President Ronald Reagan told a packed White House news conference that funds derived from covert arms deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran had been diverted to buy weapons for the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua.....http://goo.gl/0biOy
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Oliver North (R) convicted of accepting an illegal gratuity, obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and destruction of documents, but the ruling was overturned since he had been granted immunity.
North came into the public spotlight as a result of his participation in the Iran-Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s, in which he claimed partial responsibility for the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was reportedly responsible for the establishment of a covert network, which aided the Contras.
You can find him today on Foxnews: War Stories - http://goo.gl/XG7ad
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The U.S. and Iran - Monday, Nov. 17, 1986
The tale sounded really too bizarre to be believed. The U.S. conniving at arms shipments to Iran? Sending a secret mission to palaver with the mullahs? Trying to keep the whole thing from Congress and most of the U.S......http://goo.gl/LiRHl
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During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.
http://goo.gl/S6mS3
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Forgotten Coverage of Afghan 'Freedom Fighters' - The villains of today's news were heroes in the '80s....http://goo.gl/L81we
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Guilt by association ?
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Republicans Can’t Say Obama ‘Pals Around With Terrorists’ Now
Thread: http://goo.gl/XI1q8
Ayers is an reformed troubled youth, respectable professor and mentor to many. To not recognize this transformation is pure ignorance. While what he was associated with in his youth was criminal-shameful, he corrected his path in life and from that point forward been an great contributer to education, troubled youth reform and too many great achievements to list. The important thing here or my point, when we are young we do stupid shit...if we learn from our mistakes early on and make an effort to change for the better.....we should not be blacklisted for those few years of wrongs, especially well into adulthood and nearly a lifetime of positive behavior. If he had been in and out of trouble up to this point....went further with his brief past political movement I might have an different opinion on the matter.
Current work: education reform, curriculum, and instruction.
He is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar
His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues
He has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and has appeared on many panels and symposia.
Worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in shaping the city's school reform program
co-author of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform.
1997 Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his works
Since 1999 he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941.
Elected Vice President for Curriculum Studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008
William C. Ibershof, formerly the lead federal prosecutor in the Weather Underground case, wrote in 2008: "Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen." -- http://goo.gl/CW28a
Bill Ayers Biography - http://goo.gl/3mtIw http://goo.gl/1wnNs
"....anybody who was lectured by Ayers would be considered "paling around" with terrorists..."
If the opportunity presents itself again, I'd enjoy sitting in on a few more classes/lectures.
"This is not a question of being misunderstood or 'taken out of context', but of deliberate distortion." -- Ayers
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MR. AYERS’S NEIGHBORHOOD
"One night, Ayers recalled, he and Dohrn were watching Bill O’Reilly, who was going on about “discovering” Ayers’s 1974 manifesto, “Prairie Fire.” “I had to laugh,” Ayers said. “No one read it when it was first issued!” He said that he laughed, too, when he listened to Sarah Palin’s descriptions of Obama “palling around with terrorists.” In fact, Ayers said that he knew Obama only slightly: “I think my relationship with Obama was probably like that of thousands of others in Chicago and, like millions and millions of others, I wished I knew him better.
"Ayers said that he had never meant to imply, in an interview with the Times, published coincidentally on 9/11, that he somehow wished he and the Weathermen had committed further acts of violence in the old days. Instead, he said, “I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.” Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which “thousands of people were being killed every week.”
“While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property,” he said. “We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.” And yet he was not without regrets. He mocked one of his earlier books, co-written with Dohrn, saying that, while it still is reflective of his radical and activist politics today, he was guilty of “rhetoric that’s juvenile and inflated—it is what it is.”
Continued: http://goo.gl/vdaT
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Clarifying the Facts— a letter to the New York Times, 9-15-2001
September 15, 2001
" To The Editors—
In July of this year Dinitia Smith asked my publisher if she might interview me for the New York Times on my forthcoming book, Fugitive Days. From the start she questioned me sharply about bombings, and each time I referred her to my memoir where I discussed the culture of violence we all live with in America, my growing anger in the 1960’s about the structures of racism and the escalating war, and the complex, sometimes extreme and despairing choices I made in those terrible times.
Smith’s angle is captured in the Times headline: “No regrets for a love of explosives” (September 11, 2001). She and I spoke a lot about regrets, about loss, about attempts to account for one’s life. I never said I had any love for explosives, and anyone who knows me found that headline sensationalistic nonsense. I said I had a thousand regrets, but no regrets for opposing the war with every ounce of my strength. I told her that in light of the indiscriminate murder of millions of Vietnamese, we showed remarkable restraint, and that while we tried to sound a piercing alarm in those years, in fact we didn’t do enough to stop the war.
Smith writes of me: “Even today, he ‘finds a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,’ he writes.” This fragment seems to support her “love affair with bombs” thesis, but it is the opposite of what I wrote:
We’ll bomb them into the Stone Age, an unhinged American politician had intoned, echoing a gung-ho, shoot-from-the-hip general… each describing an American policy rarely spoken so plainly. Boom. Boom. Boom. Poor Viet Nam. Almost four times the destructive power Florida… How could we understand it? How could we take it in? Most important, what should we do about it? Bombs away. There is a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance. The rhythm of B-52s dropping bombs over Viet Nam, a deceptive calm at 40,000 feet as the doors ease open and millennial eggs are delivered on the green canopy below, the relentless thud of indiscriminate destruction and death without pause on the ground. Nothing subtle or syncopated. Not a happy rhythm. Three million Vietnamese lives were extinguished. Dig up Florida and throw it into the ocean. Annihilate Chicago or London or Bonn. Three million—each with a mother and a father, a distinct name, a mind and a body and a spirit, someone who knew him well or cared for her or counted on her for something or was annoyed or burdened or irritated by him; each knew something of joy or sadness or beauty or pain. Each was ripped out of this world, a little red dampness staining the earth, drying up, fading, and gone. Bodies torn apart, blown away, smudged out, lost forever.
I wrote about Vietnamese lives as a personal American responsibility, then, and the hypocrisy of claiming an American innocence as we constructed and stoked an intricate and hideous chamber of death in Asia. Clearly I wrote and spoke about the export of violence and the government’s love affair with bombs. Just as clearly Dinitia Smith was interested in her journalistic angle and not the truth. This is not a question of being misunderstood or “taken out of context,” but of deliberate distortion.
Some readers apparently responded to her piece, published on the same day as the vicious terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, by associating my book with them. This is absurd. My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy. It begins literally in the shadow of Hiroshima and comes of age in the killing fields of Southeast Asia. My book criticizes the American obsession with a clean and distanced violence, and the culture of thoughtlessness and carelessness that results from it. We are now witnessing crimes against humanity in our own land on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we might soon see innocent people in other parts of the world as well as in the U.S. dying and suffering in response.
All that we witnessed September 11—the awful carnage and pain, the heroism of ordinary people—may drive us mad with grief and anger, or it may open us to hope in new ways. Perhaps precisely because we have suffered we can embrace the suffering of others and gather the necessary wisdom to resist the impulse to lash out randomly. The lessons of the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s may be more urgent now than ever. " -- Bill Ayers Chicago, IL -- http://goo.gl/Ud5Jd
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( Re-Post )
Palins' un-American activities - AIP terrorist ties
First her complete disregard of her at the time unborn special needs child health and safety and now her relationship with the AIP and founder Joe Vogler [domestic terrorist]
Sarah Palin and the Alaska Independence Party. Palin addresses AIP convention (official video)
http://goo.gl/lSVwn
Palin's secession flirtation
http://goo.gl/CLt1Z
Palin's ties with separatist AIP founder Joe Vogler, terrorist ties?
http://goo.gl/IQ4na
Members of 'Fringe' Alaskan Independence Party Incorrectly Say Palin Was a Member in 90s; McCain Camp and Alaska Division of Elections Deny Charge*
http://goo.gl/8pS8o
The Alaska Independence Party
http://goo.gl/Ehwxv
"Government is not the giver of rights; only God confers these to the people. People create government, giving it certain and limited powers. Only eternal vigilance by the people will confine government to its proper role." -- Joe Vogler - http://goo.gl/0GuZj
"My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand." -- Joe Vogler
"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." -- Joe Vogler
"....Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, "When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we're ready to die.".....http://goo.gl/5JAAg
Alaskan Independence Party
http://goo.gl/kuTrR
A Palin Joined Alaskan Third Party, Just Not Sarah Palin
http://goo.gl/unUuh
The Alaskan Independence Party is a political party in the U.S. state of Alaska that advocates an in-state referendum which includes the option of Alaska becoming an independent country. The party also advocates positions similar to those of the Constitution Party and Libertarian Party, supporting gun rights, privatization, home schooling, and limited government.....http://goo.gl/64Jts
Bob Bird is an Alaskan Independence Party candidate in the 2008 congressional elections for the Senate in Alaska. He is seeking the AIP nomination to challenge incumbent Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).
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ALASKA FIRST! http://goo.gl/bNfk4
Until we as Alaskans attain our Ultimate Goal, the AIP will continue to strive to make Alaska a better place to live with less government interference in our everyday lives.
The Alaskan Independence Party's goal is the vote we were entitled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alternatives:
1) Remain a Territory.
2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.
3) Accept Commonwealth status.
4) Become a State.
The call for this vote is in furtherance of the dream of the Alaskan Independence Party's founding father, Joe Vogler, which was for Alaskans to achieve independence under a minimal government, fully responsive to the people, promoting a peaceful and lawful means of resolving differences.
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Founder Of Group Palin Courted Professed "Hatred For The American Government"; Cursed "Damn Flag"
By Greg Sargent - September 2, 2008, 6:10PM - http://goo.gl/qkTV8
The founder of the Alaska Independence Party -- a group that has been courted over the years by Sarah Palin, and one her husband was a member of for roughly seven years -- once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed the American flag as a "damn flag."
The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that's now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
"The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government," Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.
"And I won't be buried under their damn flag," Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. "I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."
At another point, Volger advocated renouncing allegiance to the United States. In the course of denouncing Federal regulation over land, he said:
"And then you get mad. And you say, the hell with them. And you renounce allegiance, and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life to Alaska."
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A review of history will give a portrait of America's role in Alaska's becoming a member of the Union.
Some proponents of Nation Status for Alaska go back to the questionable sale of Alaska, by Russia in 1867. By what principles were they in a position to sell? The right of discovery overlooks the indigenous native population. Besides, explorers from other countries actually "discovered" more of Alaska than the Russians. Right of conquest? It is safe to say that 99% of Alaska's aboriginal Indians and Eskimos never saw a Russian let alone somehow lost their birthright to one. Russia's strongest legal claim to Alaska was based on the ownership of several five acre parcels ceded to the Russian Orthodox Church for missions by local tribes along the coast in Southeastern Alaska. Some of these outposts became the towns of Sitka, Kodiak, and Wrangell.....http://goo.gl/sz0Qn
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@ aadyss
"..OMG! Palin must be blowin' up government buildings..." -- aadyss - http://goo.gl/XI1q8
Actually a good point, guilt by association is wrong !
and thankfully: "....Joe Vogler (a terrorist, who died making a bomb that was to be set off among innocent people) who was funded by Iran and sough the violent overthrow of US government authority in Alaska, so that they could join OPEC?..."
