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William Ayers on NPR

gdnp said:
Point taken. Graffiti containing threats is terrorism: spraypainting swastikas in a synagogue, for instance. And firecrackers placed as pranks are, as you say, vandalism. If, however, you right an inflammatory letter to the editor of the local paper and someone places a cherry bomb in your mailbox, it is terrorism: using violence to threaten a critic into silence.
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Yeah, the fine points become embroiled in semantics. I think the word "terrorist" should be reserved for heinous activities, i.e. attacking and attempting to kill non-combatants. If it becomes a cherry-bomb in a mailbox, it stops being a thing that deserves international outrage.

gdnp said:
Well, the property was not destroyed in a way likely to cause injury. However, an argument could be made that the Tea Party was a terrorist activity. Not the most heinous, but it has been argued that the Sons of Liberty were a terrorist organization.

One man's freedom fighter...
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Yes indeed. That is why Ayers has a point when he argues that the US government was engaging in terrorist activities in Vietnam. To the Vietnamese, they were certainly terrorists. It fits my definition too. If you are the sort that believes that no act during a war can be terrorism, then you probably won't agree. That leaves the terrorists free to declare "it is a war" making their acts non-terrorist. And since Vietnam and Korea were never declared wars, but "police actions", it further muddies the waters. That's why I think the definition of "attacks on non-combatants" definition fits the best for all situations. I might modify my definition to say "attempts to kill, without regard for whether targets were non-combatants or not."
 
By the way he was described leading up to the election, I expected a muscle-bound radical with a scar running down his face to his chest tattooed with the collected writings of Bin Laden.

Turns out he is actually someone who looks like they remember the glory days of smoking weed out of a tin-foil pipe.
 
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Tricky said:
It is certainly your decision whether or not to investigate his life. He is hardly an iconic presence in American history. His only real relevance today is that he was used as a tool to try to smear Barak Obama.

He is a college professor and an author. He is involved in charitable work. His words, while you may disagree with them, are easy to parse and understand.

He probably doen't try to sum up complex personalities with three words.

He is not an idiot.
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He is an very well spoken, educated idiot.
 
tomwaits said:
First off, I haven't investigated his life. I hadn't heard of him until the "connection" with Obama. I never thought much of it, and it certainly didn't influence my vote. I only heard one of his post-election interviews because they were playing it on the Roe Conn show, a humorous radio talk show that I like to listen to on my way home from work.
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First time I heard about Bill Ayers was one week before September 11, 2001. By a strange (and very unfortunate, for him) coincidence, Ayers and Dorhn made a public speech in which they proudly described their 1970's activities as terrorism, said their only regrets are that they did not do more of them, and that US is an oppressive state which deserves to be attacked.

Needless to say, one week later Ayers and Dorhn started receiving death threats. They did their best to stay out of the limelight for a few years, then started their new "moral equivalence" tune. Ayers is not an idiot (although he may have been one once), he is an unprincipled opportunistic con man. Just like Ward Churchill and Leonard Jeffries, for that matter.
 
Ayers is a pathetic human and is indeed a domestic terrorist, even if a mediocre one. He should do well on the liberal college lecture circuit now that it's safe to crawl out from under his rock :(
 
Tricky said:
Yeah, the fine points become embroiled in semantics. I think the word "terrorist" should be reserved for heinous activities, i.e. attacking and attempting to kill non-combatants. If it becomes a cherry-bomb in a mailbox, it stops being a thing that deserves international outrage.
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The PIRA and its offshoots would sometimes give warnings prior to their bombings (also here). It can be argued that the warning shows that it was not their intention to hurt people and those injured were due to the PIRA's recklessness.

I think everybody would still classify them as terrorist attacks.
 
Tricky said:
If he is locally relevant to you, then you might not want to dismiss him so quickly.
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A good point.

So you knew a professor whose intelligence you didn't respect. How does that make Ayers an idiot?
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It doesn't. You were the one who brought up the fact that he was a professor and an author to support your point. I was just pointing out that that means little.

Most people who can express themselves clearly are not idiots
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Oh? That sounds pretty naive.


You read a selected quote and you figure that's all he said?
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I don't have the entire transcript...you apparently have to purchase it from ABC. However, the Tribune gives some further information:

He also disputed whether the actions of the Weather Underground could be considered terrorism: "In trying to end [the war], we did cross lines of propriety, of legality, maybe even of common sense. But we never committed terror."

Ayers also remained unapologetic for his actions during that time.

"I've been quoted again and again as saying, 'I don't regret it,' and saying, 'I don't think we did enough.' And I don't think we did enough," Ayers said. "Just as today I don't think we've done enough to stop these wars and I think we must all recognize the injustice of it and do more."
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-bill-ayers-good-morning-america,0,6403435.story

It's my impression that most of the interview touched on his supposed relationship with Obama that didn't really exist.

It sounds to me that you are basing your judgment on his "idiocy" on the fact that he did something long ago that you find reprehensible. If that is truly "all you need to know", good for you. Don't expect it to win you many points with skeptics. They usually request a little more evidence.
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Yes, I find terrorism reprehensible. He doesn't seem at all regretful of being associated with such a group.
 
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tomwaits said:
It doesn't. You were the one who brought up the fact that he was a professor and an author to support your point. I was just pointing out that that means little.
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Statisticaly not many professors are idiots (remeber Barrett was a lecturer not a professor). There doesn't appear to have been any complaints over his performance as a professor so he would appear to at least be reasonably competant. You may strongly disagree with his idiology but that does not make him an idiot.
 
The bomb that killed his g/f was intended to go off at a dance in Ft. Dix NJ. It was packed with nails, and was powerful enough to blow a townhouse and his g/f to smithereens.

The only reason that bomb didn't kill any innocent people was because it blew up the WU asshats who were making it instead.
 
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I found an old UPI article from 1970 about Ayer's g/f Diana Oughton, who died when the bomb she was making blew up in her face. I don't know where Part 1 is, but here is Parts 2-5:

http://100years.upi.com/sta_1970-09-16-p2.html

http://100years.upi.com/sta_1970-09-16-p3.html

http://100years.upi.com/sta_1970-09-18-p4.html

http://100years.upi.com/sta_1970-09-18-p5.html

Note the WU was described as a terrorist group back then, it wasn't something invented by the McCain campaign last summer.

The story also mentions Ayers, such as this bit where Ayers tried to extort $20,000 from a peace group in return for not causing violence at a rally, it's from Part 5:
The night before the demonstration Diana's boyfriend, Bill Ayers, went to the moratorium headquarters and tried to shake down the group for $20,000 to help cover legal expenses incurred by the Days of Rage. In return for his token "Fraternal Solidarity," Ayers said, the Weathermen would not provoke a violent battle with police.

Ayers was asked what the Weathermen program was.

"Kill all the rich people," Ayers answered. "Break up their cars and apartments."

"But aren't your parents rich?" he was asked.

"Yeah," Ayers said. "Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

The moratorium said it didn't have $20,000 to spare and the following day Ayers and Diana, their faces decorated with war paint, joined in a march on the Department of Justice after the main rally. The brief collision was more a revolutionary theatrical than a serious street action, marked by shouting and scuffles with police and clouds of tear gas.

It was the last time the Weathermen found a kind of fun in politics, their last action before turning to a politics of terror which had no place for the humor that called for war paint.
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And make no mistake about it, Ayers was no peace activist. He was trying to foment a violent revolutionary communist takeover of the US. He wasn't against the war in Vietnam, he was against the US side in it and for the N. Vietnamese.

While he was on the run he wrote a book called Prairie Fire, here's one extract from it:
Bill Ayers said:
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. We are deeply affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside.

...The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war. Revolution is the most powerful resource of the people. To wait, to not prepare people for the fight, is to seriously mislead about what kind of fierce struggle lies ahead.

Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle.
Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.
Without armed struggle there can be no victory.
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He's clearly trying to gain support for a violent revolution, there wasn't anything peaceful about his intentions.

Oh yeah, one of the people Paririe Fire was dedicated to was Sirhan Sirhan.

And then there's this snippet from a 80's-era documentary on the Weather Underground, where a former informant talks about a WU "war council" in Flint, MI:


At that same war council Bernadine Dohrn, now Ayers' wife, turned off many of the participants by praising the Manson family murders of the pregnant Sharon Tate and others by saying: "Dig it!" she told the 400 people gathered in the meeting hall. "First they killed those pigs, then the ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"

There was nothing nice about the WU and Ayers, they're dispicable people for whom I have nothing but contempt. YMMV.
 
Given what the WU did and said and given Ayers lack of remorse and what sounds like a call for more terrorism:

"I've been quoted again and again as saying, 'I don't regret it,' and saying, 'I don't think we did enough.' And I don't think we did enough," Ayers said. "Just as today I don't think we've done enough to stop these wars and I think we must all recognize the injustice of it and do more."
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I have to ask WTF was Obama thinking?
 
I believe gtc's suggestion has merit; the election is over, and this is about the aftermath - and it's certainly a valid discussion. I'm moving it to Politics where it will (hopefully) get a wider audience.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jmercer
 
WildCat said:
The bomb that killed his g/f was intended to go off at a dance in Ft. Dix NJ. It was packed with nails, and was powerful enough to blow a townhouse and his g/f to smithereens.

The only reason that bomb didn't kill any innocent people was because it blew up the WU asshats who were making it instead.
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Nevertheless, you cannot simply extrapolate your beliefs into a definite future occurrance. That might have been a plan. That plan might have changed. There is simply no way to tell for sure. Best do go on what actuall DID happen, and what DID happen was nothing, as far as killing non-combatants goes.

You wouldn't call a man a murderer because he ows a gun, would you? Sure, it COULD be used to murder, but to extrapolate would be an error.
 
Tricky said:
Nevertheless, you cannot simply extrapolate your beliefs into a definite future occurrance. That might have been a plan. That plan might have changed. There is simply no way to tell for sure. Best do go on what actuall DID happen, and what DID happen was nothing, as far as killing non-combatants goes.
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"The plan might have changed"? And what evidence is there of that? This wasn't a bomb that anyone would use merely to cause property damage. It was packed with nails, and designed to kill as many people as possible. Certainly not even the type of thing you'd construct to go 'boom' in an empty field on the 4th of July. If the "plan had changed" why on earth were they building it?

You wouldn't call a man a murderer because he ows a gun, would you? Sure, it COULD be used to murder, but to extrapolate would be an error.
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So you think an anti-personnel bomb (which is exactly what that device was) has any use other than indiscriminately killing as many people as possible? You think it was to be used as home defense?

Not even Ayers goes so far to excuse this particular act Tricky. You know what Ayers has said about this? He speculated that Oughton blew herself and the 2 others up on purpose, because she didn't want to go through with the plan to detonate it at the Ft. Dix dance. He even says this in the NPR interview! And yet, here you are so desperate to excuse the WU for this that you find an excuse Ayers hadn't even used.

Unbelievable.
 
WildCat said:
"The plan might have changed"? And what evidence is there of that? This wasn't a bomb that anyone would use merely to cause property damage. It was packed with nails, and designed to kill as many people as possible. Certainly not even the type of thing you'd construct to go 'boom' in an empty field on the 4th of July. If the "plan had changed" why on earth were they building it?


So you think an anti-personnel bomb (which is exactly what that device was) has any use other than indiscriminately killing as many people as possible? You think it was to be used as home defense?

Not even Ayers goes so far to excuse this particular act Tricky. You know what Ayers has said about this? He speculated that Oughton blew herself and the 2 others up on purpose, because she didn't want to go through with the plan to detonate it at the Ft. Dix dance. He even says this in the NPR interview! And yet, here you are so desperate to excuse the WU for this that you find an excuse Ayers hadn't even used.

Unbelievable.
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I am not excusing them. I am saying no terrorist act was committed with this bomb. Yes, they were wrong to build it and should have been tried and punished (the ones left alive) for owning illegal weapons, but in order to be a terrorist, you have to commit a terrorist act, which in my mind means attacking non-combatants.

Why is that so hard for you to believe?
 
Tricky said:
I am not excusing them. I am saying no terrorist act was committed with this bomb. Yes, they were wrong to build it and should have been tried and punished (the ones left alive) for owning illegal weapons, but in order to be a terrorist, you have to commit a terrorist act, which in my mind means attacking non-combatants.
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I see. So you don't think Ahmed Ressam is a terrorist, correct? After all, his scheme, like the WU dance bombing scheme, was thwarted before it actually happened.

I guess your definition works, in Bizarro World...
 
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