The Great Ballyhoo
The Weather Underground
December 19, 2004
Lessons We Thought We Learned
Apathy of Americans, by Americans, for Americans
False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news.
----- Adrienne Rich
In the 1960's, a radical leftist group in America formed after the name and movement of the SDS (Students for A Democratic Society). They called themselves the Weatherman. They were a small faction that bombed amongst its many, singular bombings, the Pentagon and the Capitol. They lasted for over a decade and were never captured by any law enforcement agency, including the FBI.
HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
----- Ambrose Pierce
They took their name from the Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind." They organized mass, violent protests they called "Days of Rage" on the north side of Chicago. What they didn't have in numbers, they made up for with enthusiasm. Their slogan was "Bring the War Home." They were referring to the war in Vietnam.
Vietnam War, conflict in Southeast Asia, primarily fought in South Vietnam between government forces aided by the United States and guerrilla forces aided by North Vietnam. The war began soon after the Geneva Conference provisionally divided (1954) Vietnam at 17° N lat. into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). It escalated from a Vietnamese civil war into a limited international conflict in which the United States was deeply involved, and did not end, despite peace agreements in 1973, until North Vietnam's successful offensive in 1975 resulted in South Vietnam's collapse and the unification of Vietnam by the North.
http://www.gurunet.com/t1-method-4-cid-1724961516-curtab-1711_1
They were investigated deeply by the FBI, using unscrupulous means to break into their apartments and gather intelligence. So much so that after the last of the members turned themselves in the government was unable to prosecute any but two of them due to the illegal methods they used to investigate the group. They were shunned by the Black Panthers and their own, original group SDS. They were marginalized by the most marginal of the left groups.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
----- George Bernard Shaw
The FBI had a task force, Squad 47, commonly known as the "Weatherman Squad."
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
----- George Santayana
Nobody really understood their fanaticism except for themselves. They hid for 11 years trying to help the people "realize" that apathy is murder. "Bring the War Home" was a way of life for them. It wasn't religious zeal that drove them to rant and gnash their teeth in smoke filled rooms late into the dark parts of morning.
What we do about history matters. The often repeated saying that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them has a lot of truth in it. But what are 'the lessons of history'? The very attempt at definition furnishes ground for new conflicts. History is not a recipe book; past events are never replicated in the present in quite the same way. Historical events are infinitely variable and their interpretations are a constantly shifting process. There are no certainties to be found in the past.
----- Gerda Lerner
One of their members, Fred Hampton, was killed by a local police raid. The police claimed self defense and a gun battle erupted. The evidence showed that he was killed in a hail of gunfire while on his mattress within his bedroom. For days afterwards, the Black Panthers cordoned off the apartment and were allowing tours through the room with the blood soaked mattress and the entire room riddled with bullet holes. That same month, the Hells Angels, acting as security for a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway, killed a man close the stage as Mick Jagger and folks stared on in horror. Other events that month were the Time-Life pictography of the Mei Lei massacre where 156 men, women and children were gunned down. Another was the trial of the Mansen Family.
Patriotism ruins history.
----- Goethe
A lot of the group afterwards felt that they fed off the hysteria of the bombing of North Vietnam. It fueled them. It filled them with a feeling of horror, loss and disbelief that no one was doing anything about this unjust and elitest war. They believed the country deserved a taste of what they were dishing out across the pond. America didn't feel this distant war enough.
People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.
----- Jane Haddam
On May 19, 2004, US Jets launched missiles at what it believed was a safe-house for terrorist 10 miles from the border of Syria. It killed 42 labeled as enemies.
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
----- Kurt Vonnegut
The people of the village of Mogr el-Deeb claim it was a wedding going on. There were many witnesses who came forth verifying the attack on the wedding. Their is a video tape showing the people having a wedding and a video aftermath of the attack showing similar and matching clothing to what was see in the pre-attack video. This was a story of the week and forgotten.
History is Philosophy teaching by examples.
----- Thucydides
Timothy Leary was serving a ten year prison sentence for possessing a few joints. The Weather Underground was paid, by a drug group which had Timothy Leary as their figurehead, $20,000.00 to break Leary free from the California prison. They camped out for six weeks, plotting. When they sprung their operation, it went smoothly and Leary was absconded to Algeria, Africa. He then went into exile in Switzerland and then into Afganistan, where he was captured again and brought back to California where he served three more years and was released.
Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.
----- Walt Whitman
In March of 1970, a group, naming itself the Citizens Commision to Investigvate the FBI, broke into an FBI office and stole boxes of documents. These documents contained information on a program of the FBI called Cointelpro. Cointelpro was designed for infiltrating, deceiving, harrassment and intimidation of various leftist groups. These groups included the Black Panthers, anti-war movements, student movements, feminist groups and Martin Luther King.
The forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal security are not always easy to identify. Communists have been trained in deceit and secretly work toward the day when they hope to replace our American way of life with a Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to achieve their sinister purposes. While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the Communist party line is clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to learn to know the enemies of the American way of life.
----- J. Edgar Hoover
We live in times where we are confused, horrified, steadfast and polarized much as the country was in the middle of the 60's. The peace movement of the 60's began out of idealism, drugs and free love. It was ruined by the Vietnam war that came later and overshadowed the early ideas of peace on earth and goodwill towards man. Today we have the war first but you can't go far to see resentment in those who lost in the election of 2004 and the gloating of the other 51% of the people. The elections ending further polarized the other side and there doesn't really seem to be a quickening in the gap between the sides. On the contrary, the gap is widening. Movements such as The Weather Underground weren't the correct answer to what was needed, but know, as a fact, they were answers. They were answers from confused, angry people who felt a wrong injustice was being done in their names as Americans by Americans who equally felt as justified in their own world and the decisions America made.
The Iraq war is no more a further Vietnam than there can be a true victory on the war on terror. The Iraq war is what it is, a movement that is escalating, a movement that is muddled in confusion, anger and apathy, a war that has two sides fighting for different causes but have the exact same end goal. The end goal can't be mutually gained since neither trusts the other more than helicopter pilots can skim off the rooftops of downtown Baghdad. The good people of Iraq, the ones we, in our hearts, hope we are trying to help, are terrified of both sides. Which side will they turn to in what they believe as their final hopes?
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
----- Winston Churchill
A major difference between then and now is the lack of any movement of the people. We can't go any further out of our way because we don't have time, no money, don't want trouble, et al. Mainly, we are lazy. We live in the greatest generation, the easiest generation, the hardest working generation (The average US worker now has the least amount of time off than any time in history or compared against any industrialized nation) and we are reaping the benefits of that. We can't get off of our couch or tear our eyes away from American Idol long enough to see or care as to what we do to a country a long ways from ours. The early documents and investigations into our practices of war are suspect and being challenged and won in our highest courts of law. The war is viewed through the eye of the skepticism of the world now, regardless of whether or not that is justified, and their scrutiny has only knocked our validity in the war and done nothing to further champion it. The escalation of troops for the January 2005 elections signals a warning bell that we need to examine what this war is truly about and get behind it. Otherwise, we will continue as we are now. The political world is just now starting to turn against our current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. This is another warning signal. The insurgency moves at will within the borders of Iraq. This is a klanging bell.
