[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

Agree, there's a lot that you don't seem to get.


Also, it's worth noting that his actions weren't motivated by a hatred for America...Spence, these people were motivated not only by the Vietnam War but also by their love and admiration of Communism, Marx and Lenin etc. which is very consistent in their rhetoric and writings, they allied with Cuba, North Vietnam, China and dreamt of and took action to presumably overthrow our system of government/Constitution and institute a communist/marxist form of government that they found preferrable(sounds a little too familiar)...which part of America did they not hate?..probably just the part where their rich parents were able to fund their radicalism and the freedom that America offered to express themselves I guess[/COLOR]

As usual Jim, you've gotten pretty much every aspect of your post wrong...worse...that you casually throw out the T word without any real regard for context or meaning speaks volumes.

-spence

The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), commonly known as the Weather Underground, was an American radical left organization founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally called Weatherman, the group became known colloquially as the Weathermen. Weatherman first organized in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)[2] composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters.

Their goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the overthrow of the US government.[3]

With revolutionary positions characterized by Black liberation rhetoric,[2] the group conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970s, including aiding the jailbreak and escape of Timothy Leary. The "Days of Rage", their first public demonstration on October 8, 1969, was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, under the name "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO).[4]

At an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969, the National Office attempted to persuade unaffiliated delegates not to endorse a takeover of SDS by Progressive Labor who had packed the convention with their supporters.[8] At the beginning of the convention, two position papers were passed out by the National Office leadership, one a revised statement of Klonksy's RYM manifesto, the other called "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows". The latter document outlined the position of the group that would become the Weathermen. It had been signed by Karen Ashley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd, and Steve Tappis. The document called for creating a clandestine revolutionary party.

"The most important task for us toward making the revolution, and the work our collectives should engage in, is the creation of a mass revolutionary movement, without which a clandestine revolutionary party will be impossible. A revolutionary mass movement is different from the traditional revisionist mass base of "sympathizers". Rather it is akin to the Red Guard in China, based on the full participation and involvement of masses of people in the practice of making revolution; a movement with a full willingness to participate in the violent and illegal struggle."[9]

"Weatherman would shove the war down their dumb, fascist throats and show them, while we were at it, how much better we were than them, both tactically and strategically, as a people. In an all-out civil war over Vietnam and other fascist U.S. imperialism, we were going to bring the war home. 'Turn the imperialists' war into a civil war', in Lenin's words. And we were going to kick ass".

In July 1969, 30 members of Weatherman leadership traveled to Cuba and met with North Vietnamese representatives to gain from their revolutionary experience. The North Vietnamese requested armed political action in order to stop the U.S. Government's war in Vietnam. Subsequently, they accepted funding, training, recommendations on tactics and slogans from Cuba, and perhaps explosives as well.

The "Flint War Council," was a series of meetings of the Weather Underground Organization and associates in Flint, Michigan, that took place from 27–31 December 1969.[60] During these meetings, the decisions were made for the Weather Underground Organization to go underground [22] and to "engage in guerilla warfare against the U.S. government."[61] This decision was made in response to increased pressure from law enforcement,[62] and a belief that underground guerilla warfare was the best way to combat the U.S. government.[61]

On February 16, 1970 a nail bomb placed on a window ledge of the Park Police substation in the Upper Haight neighborhood of San Francisco exploded at 10:45 p.m. The blast killed police Sergeant Brian McDonnell. Law enforcement suspected the Weather Underground but was unable to prove conclusively that the organization was involved.[64] A second officer, Robert Fogarty, was partially blinded by the bomb’s shrapnel. Secret federal grand juries were convened in 2001 and again in 2009 to re-open the Park Precinct cold case in an attempt to again tie WUO members Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Howie Machtinger and others to the deadly bombing.[65] Ultimately, it was concluded that members of the Black Liberation Army, whom WUO members affiliated with while underground, were responsible for not only this action but also the bombing of another police precinct in San Francisco as well as bombing the Catholic Church funeral services of the police officer killed in the Park Precinct bombing in the early summer of 1970.

probably not coincidentally, three members were killed the next month when a nail bomb that they were construction exploded in their safe house apartment

On March 6, 1970, during preparations for the bombing of a Non-Commissioned Officers’ (NCO) dance at the Fort Dix U.S. Army base and for Butler Library at Columbia University,[2] there was an explosion in a Greenwich Village safe house when the nail bomb being constructed prematurely detonated for unknown reasons. WUO members Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins died in the explosion.

An FBI report later stated that the group had possessed enough explosive to "level ... both sides of the street".

The bomb preparations have been pointed out by critics of the claim that the Weatherman group did not try to take lives with its bombings. Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon professor of politics and history at Emory University in Atlanta, said in 2003, "The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence. I don't know what sort of defense that is."