From This Morning's Tribune:
U of I at Chicago readies to release records
By DEANNA BELLANDI | Associated Press Writer
5:30 PM CDT, August 25, 2008
CHICAGO - The University of Illinois at Chicago prepared for Tuesday's release of 140 boxes of documents from a nonprofit organization Barack Obama served on that is linked to former 1960s radical William Ayers.
The university on Monday posted a detailed index of the records from the school reform group, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, that Ayers was instrumental in starting and Obama chaired in the 1990s.
Ayers, who teaches at the university, has a controversial past that some supporters of Republican John McCain want to highlight because of his past work with Obama. Ayers helped found the Weather Underground organization that took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.
Obama's campaign has started airing a television commercial to try to counter an ad by an outside group that focuses on the Democratic presidential candidate's ties to Ayers.
Click to read the rest. Here is what John Murtagh, a survivor of a radical bombing linked to Billy Ayers and his Weathermen - 'youthful high-jinks' to insulated children of privilege:
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car. My mother, a schoolteacher, had plainclothes detectives waiting in the faculty lounge all day. My brother saved a few bucks because he didn’t have to rent a limo for the senior prom: the NYPD did the driving. We all made the best of the odd new life that had been thrust upon us, but for years, the sound of a fire truck’s siren made my stomach knot and my heart race. In many ways, the enormity of the attempt to kill my entire family didn’t fully hit me until years later, when, a father myself, I was tucking my own nine-year-old John Murtagh into bed.
Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.
As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”
Though never a supporter of Obama, I admired him for a time for his ability to engage our imaginations, and especially for his ability to inspire the young once again to embrace the political system. Yet his myopia in the last few months has cast a new light on his “politics of change.” Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates, and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. It is fair, too, to ask what those choices say about Obama’s own beliefs, his philosophy, and the direction he would take our nation.
At the conclusion of his 2001 Times interview, Ayers said of his upbringing and subsequent radicalization: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”
Funny thing, Bill: one night, so did I.
John M. Murtagh is a practicing attorney, an adjunct professor of public policy at the Fordham University College of Liberal Studies, and a member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, where he resides with his wife and two sons.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Billy Ayers and the Double Secret Files Open Today - Should Be a Radical Peek at Hypocrites!
Posted by pathickey at 4:24 AM 0 comments
Labels: Annenbergs, Bernardine Dohrn, Billy Ayers, Rock Solid Hypocrisy
Friday, June 20, 2008
McCain: Obama Myth Rooted in Ayers/Annenberg Gangster Gore! Schools, Blood, Booze, and Ink!
The Anneneberg Challenge not only allowed an unrepentant domestic terrorist to launder his crimes and ooze his way into Progressive respectablility, but also provided Billy Ayers the cap and fuse to blow up American Education - one school at a time. The Annenberg Challenge is dynamite! Dynamite paid for by two old timey Jewish tough guys: Moses and Max Annenberg.
But, first some context! Progressives whine for context! Here's context. Law Professor Steve Diamond is on to Billy Ayers and his odious Old Lady Bernadine. Prof. Diamond is also raising questions about Senator Obama's debts and obligations to Ayers - Obama's Chinaman - or Rabbi - or Mentor.
As my readers are aware I have pointed to the joint participation of Senator Obama and Professor Bill Ayers in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform project, as evidence of an older and deeper relationship between Ayers and Obama than the Senator has acknowledged. Because the political views, as well as the past criminal behavior, of Professor Ayers represent, in my view, an authoritarian approach to education and society as a whole, I believe that it is important for the public to have as complete an understanding of the Ayers-Obama relationship as possibleLaw Prof. Diamond UCSJ - Click Post Title for Full Article.
This Professor of Law at University of California at San Jose is well up on Billy Ayers and the radical leftist academics who work very closely with him. Ayers has addressed Hugo Chavez's Revolutionary Educators in Caracas on a number of occasions - most recently 2006.Ayers states that education is the key to revolution.
Most troubling is the long and covert association between Senator Barack Obama and this dangerous louse Ayers. Ayers is a bomber and publicly stated enemy of America, but lives snuggly in the protection of its laws and morals. Senator Obama and the Chicago media brush off Ayers as 'a guy from my (Obama's) neighborhood.'
Click my post title for Professor Diamond's warning to all American voters concerning the Ayers Agenda that Senator Obama wants to pass off as support for schools and children.
Obama was hired by Billy Ayers when The Bomber directed the Annenberg Challenge in the 1990's. Billy Ayers Daddy, Thomas Ayers, CEO of ComEd and Pan-Philanthropy Big Shot, had bleached his terrorist lad's resume. Not only that, Billy Ayers plucked the plum from Annenberg's loot - Ayers was Chairman and Director.
Annenberg Challenge rose out of the Annenberg Foundation amassed by Walter Annenberg's genius at taking magazines away from other people - TV Guide, Seventeen & etc. - and building a monstrous fortune. Walter learned from his Pop - Moses ( AKA -Moe) Annenberg and his uncle Max. Moe and Max were tough Jews who hung with the Harps - most notably Dean O'Banion who became the pioneering bootleg hoodlum of the Prohibition Era. The Irish/Jewish coalition of Annenberg/O'Bannion beat, shot, stabbed and bombed newsboys, newstand operators, reporters, and circulation managers for and against the Hearst News Group and The Chicago Tribune's Bertie McCormick - who hired Moe and Max away from William Randolph Hearst.
Moe and Max are respectable thugs. They worked hard to squeeze nickles out of the pools of blood from their victims. Unlike, Ayers and his odious wife Bernadine Dorhn, Max and Moe were capitalists and patriots. Ayers and his old lady set bombs and robberies in order to turn their country over to Communism.
Walter Annenberg was no cupcake, but a little more polished than Dad and Uncle Max. Here is Brendan McGarvey account of the founder of Bill Ayers's C-4 for American Schools: The Chicago Annenberg Challenge. This is the root of Barack Obama's myth.
Walter Annenberg is dead. Long live Walter Annenberg’s billions. One of the richest men in the United States, Walter Annenberg was a generous philanthropist who gave millions to universities, art museums, charities and PBS. He was a friend to kings and presidents. Annenberg was the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, London, for Richard Nixon. A media magnate who once owned local institutions like the Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, the Daily News and Channel 6, Annenberg split his time between his estate in Wynnewood and a second one in Palm Springs, Calif.
And, oh yeah, Walter Annenberg was indicted in one of the largest tax evasion cases in the history of the United States. Annenberg was indicted with his father, Moses Annenberg, and two other business associates in 1939.
They were charged with evading more than $2 million in taxes and another $3 million in penalties and interest.
On Aug. 18, 1939, Walter Annenberg, his father and two other business associates surrendered to the U.S. Marshal. They posted bond, and were released to await trial.
Later that same month, Moses Annenberg, Philadelphia nightclub owner Jack Lynch and two others were indicted for conspiring to bribe a Philadelphia detective. Lynch allegedly wanted to influence the detective if and when he was called before a grand jury investigating four corporations owned by Moses Annenberg.
In April 1940, Moses Annenberg agreed to plead guilty to one count -- "willfully" evading $1,217,296 -- and to pay almost $9 million in fines and penalties. In exchange for his plea the government agreed to drop all charges against his son, Walter Annenberg.
Moses was sentenced to three years in prison. He was sent to Lewisburg federal pen, but released early because of poor health, and he died a month later.
Walter parlayed the family fortune into billions and spent the rest of his life making people forget how Moses Annenberg had acquired this great American fortune in the first place.
The story of Walter Annenberg's father is a tale of a hardworking immigrant and financial genius who got his start working alongside violent Chicago gangsters while employed by newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst at the turn of the last century. It was a time when "circulation wars" literally meant gunmen and sluggers beating and killing rival news dealers to gain a monopoly for their newspaper.
Both Moses and his older brother, Max Annenberg, were involved in the brutal Chicago newspaper wars in the first decade of the 20th century in which 14 news dealers were murdered.
Max and Moses Annenberg were hired by William Randolph Hearst as circulation managers for his newspapers. Their job was to hire and dispatch gangs of plug-uglies to intimidate anyone selling The Chicago Tribune.
One member of the Annenberg crew was the exceptionally notorious and bloodthirsty Dion O'Banion. O'Banion captained his own gang of neighborhood toughs. A decade after working for the Annenbergs, O'Banion headed his own mob, but was rubbed out by gangland rival Al Capone in 1925.*
Bleeding -- literally -- people and money, the owner of the Tribune, Bertie McCormick, decided to hire Moses Annenberg away from Hearst. For a while, the Annenberg brothers were sending out thugs to battle each other. Fifteen years later, Max Annenberg was alleged to be an associate and friend of Chicago crime boss Al Capone.
In 1938, the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, traveled from Washington D.C. to give a speech in Philadelphia condemning Moses Annenberg, who, at that time, was backing the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania.
Ickes charged it was Annenberg's violent tactics during the Chicago newspaper wars that inspired gangsters like Al Capone. Ickes said that "the hiring of Moses Annenberg by Hearst was the beginning of the subsequent flood of lawlessness that almost engulfed law enforcement in the United States."
But Moses Annenberg didn't just rely on gangsters to improve newspaper circulation. He also came up with the idea of giving away free silver teaspoons to each new subscriber and made so much money he branched out on his own, buying newspapers in Milwaukee and New York.
But it was Moses Annenberg's involvement in the shady world of illegal gambling that put him in touch, and in business, with mobsters all across the nation.
In 1924, Annenberg got involved with a racing news service in Chicago and Milwaukee. The service provided horse race information to gambling parlors -- also known in those days as "pool rooms." With that information, bookies could set odds and collect from gamblers or pay out winnings. It was called the General News Bureau and it was owned by Chicago's largest gambler/bookie, Mont Tennes. Tennes agreed to sell out to Annenberg after his house was firebombed.
Annenberg took on a partner named Jack Lynch. But Lynch sued Moses, alleging that more than a million dollars had vanished from their business.
Annenberg's lawyers argued that "the General News Bureau is aiding and abetting an illegal enterprise," and the Illinois Supreme Court agreed, ruling that it was an illegal business; therefore, the dispute between Lynch and Annenberg was outside the scope of the law.
Lynch turned to Al Capone's number-one guy, Frank Nitti, to back him against Annenberg. Moses reputedly enlisted the trigger-happy organizer for the Chicago Motion Picture Operators' Union, Ralph O'Hara, to watch his back. But when O'Hara's boss was murdered gangland-style, the Chicago mafia took control of the union.
Before the disagreement between Lynch and Annenberg was settled, George Downs, an Annenberg lieutenant operating in Miami, Fla., was found shot to death, execution-style, in the Everglades. At the time Downs was killed, Moses Annenberg was running newspapers in Florida, the Midwest, New York and Philadelphia.
Critics charged Annenberg was using his newspapers to back local politicians who would close down rival bookmaking services and allow his illegal racing wire to operate without competition. Within a few years Annenberg had a nationwide monopoly. Annenberg's Nationwide News Service and subsidiaries were servicing bookies in 223 cities, 39 states and three Canadian provinces.
Gamblers, bookies and underworld syndicates were Annenberg's customers.
Ironically, there were reports that those who didn't take the Annenberg race wire service were themselves the victims of beatings, fire bombings and, on occasion, murder. The crime syndicates had come to be dependent on Moses Annenberg. Without his service they couldn't operate their illegal gambling rackets.
Moses Annenberg made millions and millions of dollars until the federal government indicted him for not paying taxes on his illegal businesses. This underworld money was the source of the great Annenberg fortune and helped to finance Walter Annenberg's own generous philanthropy.
The more one asks, the more one gets to learn. The Chicago Media ain't asking. Obama's Myth and Ayers cocooned life is safe with the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times: Max and Moe would be proud!
* Historical note, Johnny Torio gave the order to 'rub-out' O'Banion, as Capone was merely a Lieutenant in Torrio's Booze Empire. According to Rose Keefe, O'Bannion had cheated Torrio and caused his arrest as a two-time loser to the Volstead Act.
See:http://www.rosekeefe.com/
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/p0b06.pdf
Posted by pathickey at 5:41 AM 0 comments
Labels: Annenbergs, Bernardine Dohrn, Billy Ayers, Chicago Public Schools, John McCain, Senator Barack Obama