What Is the True Story of McCain’s Wartime Experience?

[See URL for embedded links.]

What Is the True Story of McCain's Wartime Experience?

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/102808.html

by Mary Hershberger
October 28, 2008

Journalists have had years to vet John McCain's account of wartime
heroism in Vietnam. But no real critique of its veracity has emerged
from leading media outlets. Reporters and commentators remain
remarkably disinclined to investigate a major underpinning of
McCain's argument that he is qualified to be commander-in-chief.
Here, historian Mary Hershberger questions why.
--

As we approach the end of an astonishing campaign season, one thing
grows clear: John McCain's campaign has suffered a string of
disastrous decisions. These mistakes have overwhelmed even the
campaign's trump card­its image of John McCain as war hero. And not
just an ordinary war hero but one who was captured by enemies,
imprisoned near death, and "resurrected" to return home with visible
wounds that marked his sacrifice.

Aside from the patriotic fervor and powerful religious themes this
tale evokes in American Christians who believe that redemptive
violence lies at the core of their faith, McCain's campaign correctly
counted on the media treating the image of war hero as if it stood
outside history, beyond journalistic scrutiny. The "swift boating" of
John Kerry four years ago left the media reluctant to engage in
legitimate examination of John McCain's claims.

As a historian who has studied Vietnam War documents, I read McCain's
Faith of My Fathers with growing concern over the troubling
inconsistencies and internal contradictions that I found there. When
I sought out official reports, news accounts, film footage and other
reliable sources to help resolve these contradictions, I consistently
found questionable assertions in McCain's claims. All memoirs are
constrained by the limitations of our memory, but McCain's accounts
are unusually problematic, with many stories grossly exaggerated or
simply made up.

Given the media scrutiny heaped upon Cindy McCain's life during this
campaign, one might expect the candidate himself would face equal
investigation. That has not been true. When I wrote a piece
documenting McCain's less-than-heroic actions following the
disastrous fire on the USS Forrestal, mainstream print newspapers and
magazines turned it down, including those that printed investigative
pieces on his wife and relentlessly dredged up every scrap of
information to expose her vulnerabilities. Ask yourself­have you seen
investigative reports of McCain's claims about his military record
that match the level of scrutiny given his wife?

McCain's war record is a legitimate topic of investigation precisely
because he cites it as evidence that he should be president, as proof
that he is tested and ready to lead from day one. As such, it ought
to be more thoroughly examined than anything else. The few
investigations that have been carried out are not reassuring.

On the single issue of his plane crashes, for example, the Los
Angeles Times has concluded that "though standards were looser and
crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain's record stands out." A
pilot whose performance included two plane crashes and a collision
with power lines usually underwent official review to determine his
fitness to fly. McCain refuses to allow his military records to be
released so that the voting public can see whether his record matches
his claims.

Much of the mainstream media frequently repeat without question
McCain's assertions about his war record, including his recent claim
that he was on track to be promoted to admiral when he left the Navy.
It is due to the diligence of writers on the Internet that claims
like this have been investigated.

A recent column by John Dean at Findlaw.com, which includes a Q & A
with me, looks at other areas in which McCain has made claims at
stark odds with official documents or news reports. Dean concludes
that the dwindling importance of the mainstream media is related to
its reluctance to "sort fact from fiction" in the wake of the Swift
Boaters. The result is that the media gives McCain a pass "rather
than risk irritating him by digging out the truth of his military background."

The irony of McCain's free pass is that newspapers like the New York
Times need look no further than their own pages to check his claims.
For example, McCain says that when he was shot down on October 26,
1967, the Vietnamese beat him over and over and refused to provide
medical treatment for days until, in desperation, he told them that
his father was an important military officer. In contrast, the New
York Times, on October 28, 1967, quoted Hanoi radio reporting the day
before that, "the son of the commander of the United States Naval
Forces in Europe was captured in North Vietnam." At the time, the
New York Times reported that the Vietnamese knew about McCain's
family connections as soon as he was captured, not days later. Which
story is true?

Likewise, as a Rolling Stone piece recently pointed out, the New York
Times reported on November 11, 1967, less than two weeks after McCain
was captured, that he had said that Vietnam appeared to be winning
the war and the United States appeared isolated. There is a
significant conflict between this and McCain's memoirs, one that has
gone unexamined in the Times.

I have found enough compelling discrepancies between McCain's claims
of his treatment in Hanoi and other sources, including his fellow
POWs, to cast serious doubt on his overall account of mistreatment
and torture there. McCain's account of his meeting with French
journalist Francois Chalais four days after he was captured asserts
that he was combative with guards in the room and refused to talk
about the care he was receiving. His account is significantly
undercut by recently released filmed footage of that meeting and by
Chalais' printed report at the time.

Many newspapers that recently endorsed Barack Obama also paid homage
to McCain's record as a war hero and former prisoner of war and have
lamented that, as the St. Petersburg Times put it, "his campaign in
recent months has been unworthy of his record." If the media had
examined his war record as it should have, rather than taking his
self-serving memoir at face value, it would be less surprised today
that McCain the candidate has been prone to poor judgment, erratic
behavior under pressure, and risky decision-making. The similarities
between John McCain's campaign record and his war record outweigh
their differences.

.

Documentary Examines Lennon and McCartney Partnership

DVD Documentary Examines Lennon and McCartney Partnership

http://www.antimusic.com/news/08/oct/22DVD_Documentary_Examines_Lennon_and_McCartney_Partnership.shtml

10/22/2008

MVD has announced a Nov 25th release for Composing the Beatles
Songbook: Lennon and McCartney 1966 / 1970. The DVD is an independent
documentary film that reviews the partnership, music and impact of
Lennon and McCartney as composers during this hugely creative period.

From the first bars of Eleanor Rigby to the closing Abbey Road
song-cycle, this film shows how they barely put a step wrong in
making the most joyous music the world had ever witnessed. Drawing on
rare footage, classic performances and penetrating revelations from
friends of the pair, Beatles academics and musicologists, we here
discover the true story of how those classic songs were written.

With contributions from; friends Barry Miles, Klaus Voorman and
Maureen Cleaves; musicians Alan Moore and Chris Ingham; journalists
Robert Christgau [Village Voice] and Anthony De Curtis [Rolling
Stone]; authors Johnny Rogan, Pete Doggett, Steve Turner, and Nigel
Williamson and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini.

This project is an independent review requiring independent editorial
control. The program is not licensed or authorized by Paul McCartney
or the estate of John Lennon, nor by any company associated with the
ownership of their music.

.

Barter Faire showcases 'gems' of American culture

Barter Faire showcases 'gems' of American culture

http://media.www.whitworthian.com/media/storage/paper1220/news/2008/10/21/Scene/Barter.Faire.Showcases.gems.Of.American.Culture-3506299.shtml

Tyson Motsenbocker, Staff Writer
Issue date: 10/21/08

http://www.okanoganfamilyfaire.net/

All the signs in front of the hotels between Colville and Republic in
Washington state read something along the lines of "Welcome Hunters,
No Vacancy." While the deer season opens in some of the wildest land
in Washington, over 10,000 people are migrating through to find their
way to the 34th annual Okanogan Family Faire. In Republic, a group of
individuals wearing orange vests and camoflauged ballcaps sit to
cheer on the hordes of unique vehicles making their way to the valley
in the Okanogan highlands that the Faire calls home.

In 1973, a group of like-minded individuals created the Faire in
order to gather together during the fall and trade tools, foodstuffs
and other items for the winter. At the time, the Faire was a simple
way for many of the nomadic and stationary people of the Hippie
generation to gather and trade unneeded items for needed ones – it
was a simple act of nesessity.

The Faire quickly gathered cultural traditions and values, such as
antiestablishmentarianism, world peace and brotherly love. In its
origin, the Faire was an event created out of nessesity. Today, the
ideals upon which the Faire was based stand, but the nessesity has long gone.

Marking the way up the steep, dusty road to the flat where the Faire
is held are a series of multicolored signs. The signs read "Peace,"
"Take care of one another" and "Welcome, you're family now."

The vehicles climbing up the hill next to them are no less colorful.
Many look to be from another generation entirely. A multicolored
school bus with a drum kit nailed to the roof for instance.

Soon after follows a small army of Volkswagen buses, an ancient,
unrecognizable station wagon riddled with political bumper stickers
and a 1970s double decker tourbus converted to a café. License plates
on the slow moving vehicles range from the Alaska's Yukon to
California, Virginia to Mexico.

Farther up the road is the burned out carcass of an old car. A group
of young people surround it, singing Bob Dylan songs and smoking
cigarettes. At the entrance is a man with a white beard and a kilt
selling tickets for ten dollars a piece.

From the hill overlooking the Faire the plain circular plan of the
booths is visible. The layout resembles a target with a circular
clearing in the center, working it's way out into the campsites at
the fringes.

In the day-parking lot a mass of people lounge around their
respective cars, gathering barter goods or putting the finishing
touches on the wares they hope to trade. During the day these
campless traders will walk from booth to booth to trade goods.

Any number of goods for any size price or barter can be found lining
the narrow walkways. Alumnus and Barter Faire veteran AJ Hanenburg
has visited the Okanogan Faire three times.

"I've seen everything up for sale there. Lots of organic perishables,
bicycles, tools, antiques, garbage," Hanenburg said. "I've seen
people walking around with fish tanks full of buds of [marijuana] for
barter. You can find just about anything."

Indeed, as Hanenburg points out, the drug culture is quite prevalent.
It would be unusual to go over an hour without being propositioned to
buy or sell drugs. It would be even more unusual to go an entire day
at the Faire without someone putting a burning joint in your face, he said.

Just because the Okanogan Family Faire has the word "family" in its
title doesn't mean it's rated G. Despite the clear rules and
regulations barring drug use and encouraging a family atomosphere,
the free love and mental expansion movement of the late '60s
continues to play a big role in the culture of the Faire. Considering
the virtual nonexistance of any form of security, one has to wonder
if these rules are more like suggestions.

Once the sun goes down, the Faire changes form. Instead of the
peaceful, albiet slightly smoky farmers market it represents during
the day, it becomes a wild celebration. Marking the various
intersections of the Faire stand small "hospitality fires." These
fires offer refuge to the roaming nightlife of the Faire.

Often there will be a large pot of community stew or soup which the
caretakers of the fire provide to the wandering public. Other
hospitality fires will host live music or storytelling.

The wilder side of the Faire can be found in the center of the
circle. A large pile of wood which is gathered during the day,
becomes a flaming inferno of a fire upon sundown. Surrounding the
fire is a layer of dancers, a layer of drummers and a large group of
onlookers. The drumming and dancing is known to continue through the night.

The Okanogan Family Faire, although notably rough around the edges,
is a one-of-a-kind event. Because the Faire is located on private
land and run by a private organization, many unique things happen
there. The hippie movement has long been rendered dead by most. Even
many of those who sympathized with the movement in its prime have now
grown apart from the revolutionary ideals that made it historic.

The Okanogan Faire and others like it stand as signposts to a bygone
era. Upon a little searching, it is possible to stumble upon some
true gems of American culture, and rarely are such dramatic examples
of alternative culture availible in such near proximity to Spokane as
the Okanogan Family Faire is.
--

Contact Tyson Motsenbocker at tyson.motsenbocker@whitworthian.com.

.

Sympathy for the devil? [London Film Festival]

[2 articles]

Sympathy for the devil?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/sympathy-for-the-devil-971259.html

The Baader-Meinhof gang, IRA hunger-strikers, ETA and Che Guevara:
terrorists or freedom fighters? At the London Film Festival, you
decide. Nick Hasted reports

Friday, 24 October 2008

When the Twin Towers fell seven years ago, the expectation was that
cinema screens would soon be swamped by yet more of the jabbering
Arab madmen Hollywood already favoured as villains. Instead, the
theme of this year's London Film Festival springs from a series of
films which show sympathy for the terrorist, humanising those who
commit inhuman acts.

It is the first great wave of 1970s terrorism that is mostly being
examined. Downfall writer-producer Bernd Eichinger turns his
attention from the Nazis to the violent backlash among their children
in The Baader-Meinhof Complex. United Red Army takes us to Japan, and
the titular, armed anti-US movement which tortured and killed
"backsliders" and trained for rebellion in remote mountains, where
the army besieged and killed them in 1972. Bullet in the Head takes a
coolly objective look at the 2007 killing of two Spanish Civil
Guards, allegedly by the ETA.

Finally, Steve McQueen's Hunger takes us inside the excrement-smeared
cells of Bobby Sands and his fellow, fatal IRA hunger strikers.
Hunger's failure to provoke the usual outrage in the UK press at IRA
films shows the safely historical nature of most of these tales. But
their relevance to our post-September 11 world is implicit.

"Pictures are suddenly being made about this period's terrorism now
because we needed time to reflect," Eichinger believes. "I did The
Baader-Meinhof Complex not because the time is right, but because the
time is right in me. It took that long to realise what really
happened. It's like Hollywood making Vietnam films in the 1980s. I
met Oliver Stone in 1978, and he had already written Platoon. Later I
told him it was a blessing it had taken 10 years."

After the appalled shock at the September 11 carnage, and the outrage
in mainland Britain as one splintering of limbs by IRA bombs followed
another barely a decade ago, what feels new about these films is the
unflinching stare into the human faces who commit such acts. There
have been sympathetic IRA members in British cinema before. But no
film has spent quite so long in their world as Hunger. After 90
minutes inside the cold grey violence of the Maze prison, watching
Michael Fassbender's Sands explain the political rationale for
willing his body agonisingly to waste away, you find yourself understanding.

"That's what cinema does," says Hunger's co-writer, the playwright
Enda Walsh. "We're allowed the time to bond with people we initially
think are absolute monsters. With terrorism we only see the terrible
violence being wrought. I want people to feel the extraordinary
dysfunction of that period. And hear a man who was incredibly
articulate and funny, and was alive. He was a human being, and he had
warmth and attitude and dreams, and a belief. But his belief was a
political belief, and his life began to circle around that one tiny
belief, and he became willing to die for that, and kill for that.
Giving someone a voice is an important thing. Then we can respond to
such men, and who they killed themselves."

The Baader-Meinhof Complex shares Walsh and McQueen's devotion to
research, and adds a panoramic sense of the historical moment from
which Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof launched their decade-long
onslaught against the West German state, ending in hunger strike and
suicide in 1977. These terrorists begin as hippie free-lovers
fighting what they saw as a fascist German regime. Like United Red
Army, and Marco Bellochi's extraordinary 2003 requiem for Aldo Moro
and his Red Army murderers, Good Morning, Night (an Italian trauma
revisited in another LFF highlight, Il Divo), there is nostalgia for
a lost world of left-wing ideals. We have been drawn into this
titillating company when the first dead banker is tossed like garbage
from a car.

"You can be very human and a very big monster at the same time,"
Eichinger says. "Ulrike Meinhof was a very respected journalist, she
had a husband and two kids and was 35. She had very bourgeois taste.
And Baader was not without charm. That's what I wanted to show. These
people were not demons. They were middle-class with an education.
They're human, and then they did inhuman things. People who say they
are driven by idealism are sometimes the cruellest around. They think
they are entitled to kill, as long as it serves the purpose. They
acted like their Nazi parents."

It is the careful fairness of these films that gives awful weight to
the moments when ideals are put into bloody action. During Sands's
almost saintly martyrdom, Hunger shows an IRA gunman walk into the
old people's home where a warder is visiting his feeble mother and
blow his brains out. Can Walsh find sympathy even for this murderer?

"You see that, and think: what an extraordinarily cold act," he says.
"What's his history? What's making him do that? Those men are aware
of and feel all the history, the hardships of Irish people, it's in
the DNA. But some people would think they're bloody animals ­
terrorists. As soon you put something on screen, you feel you could
be glorifying these men. That's why Hunger withholds emotion. You
don't want to make pornography out of a historical disaster."

You can tease a narrative from this year's LFF, starting with Steven
Soderbergh's Che, in which Benicio Del Toro's charismatic freedom
fighter Che Guevara outwits a superior, US-backed oppressive army and
helps liberate Cuba. The Baader-Meinhof Complex sees Che invoked and
deadly force used in the context of central Europe, petering out in a
1977 hunger strike, the year Bobby Sands entered the Maze. The
missing next chapter is a film daring to humanise an al-Qa'ida member
while doing justice to their monstrous acts.

Eichinger knows his film has contemporary relevance. "There was a
certain chord, a tune already coming up when the Baader-Meinhof
people explained why they were making terrorist acts. They said it
was because of the domination of capitalism and especially the United
States. And it's the same feeling we now face in the Islamic
fundamentalist terrorist scene. Pandora's box has been opened."

"That is why all these films are coming up," agrees Walsh. "Maybe we
have to have a conversation with ourselves about what our notion of
terrorism is. What we initially thought about al-Qa'ida after
September 11 is probably very different, more complicated and more
real now. We have to look at the people's backgrounds. But I'm
sitting here talking in a Soho coffee shop. I'm not in Israel, so
it's obnoxious and glib of me to say that. All we're doing is making
cinema. But we're doing it for hopeful reasons. There's nothing so
strange as feeling empathy in a cinema for someone you initially
thought you couldn't connect with, and understanding, a tiny bit, how
they got to such a point. Then they become human. That's the only way
out of this impasse we're in."
--

London Film Festival screenings: 'Bullet in the Head', tonight at
6.30pm and tomorrow at 4.30pm, Brixton Ritzy; 'The Baader Meinhof
Complex', 26 October and 28 October, Odeon West End. 'Hunger' opens
on limited release on 31 October, and 'The Baader Meinhof Complex' on
25 November

--------

This is no time for heroes with bad causes

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5026343.ece

We must resist being seduced by the revolutionary glamour of Che
Guevara, Bobby Sands and Ulrika Meinhof

David Aaronovitch
October 28, 2008

At the end of part one of Stephen Soderbergh's immense movie
biography, Che, the audience at its London opening yesterday
applauded, and some whooped.

I don't think Soderbergh, the occasionally demanding auteur, was the
whoopee, but rather the long-dead revolutionary himself. For
Soderbergh's Che Guevara is heroic, determined, paternalistic,
idealistic, humorous, outspoken - a father-doctor-lover-warrior
combination to excite all but the feeblest pulse. If he has a problem
it is his obstinacy in smoking cigars despite being an asthmatic.
True, in the movie he executes a couple of criminal wretches when he
is in the Cuban forests, but it is wartime and their crime was rape,
and in movies rape can only be punishable by death. It was
interesting that while the audience laughed at the condemned rapist
wanting more rum, they went very quiet when the unreconstructed Che
used the word maricón (faggot) as a term of abuse. Death yes, homophobia no.

Che, however, used to execute non-rapists too. In January 1957, up in
the hills, for example, he shot Eutimio Guerra in the head with a
.32-calibre pistol for being suspected of passing on information, and
a campesino by the name of Aristidio, for cowardice. This was
confided in his diaries. One not unsympathetic biographer remarked
that Che liked to see whether condemned men met their deaths with
courage, or like a maricón.

Once the revolution in Cuba was won - 50 years ago in January - Che
took command of the military court convened at La Cabaña fortress in
Havana, and processed the death sentences of dozens - possibly
hundreds - of prisoners after the most cursory of trials. A left-wing
Basque priest officiated for the condemned. "I pleaded many times
with Che on behalf of prisoners," he said later. "I remember
especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge."

These semi-judicial murders were only one part of Che's
implacability. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Che
was prepared to countenance a first nuclear strike by Soviet missiles
against the United States. One can imagine that it was with some
relief that Fidel Castro saw him depart for Bolivia and oblivion.

The point is that being heroic is not, in itself, a cause for
celebration. It can be quite the opposite. This was suggested to me
again by a review of the new film Hunger, which opens this week.
Hunger deals with the republican hunger strikes in the Maze prison in
Northern Ireland in 1981, in which ten IRA and INLA prisoners fasted
to death. The reviewer writing in The Guardian was Ronan Bennett, a
former republican prisoner, now a much esteemed novelist and playwright.

The film's main character is the IRA man and Sinn Fein MP, Bobby
Sands, and the film-makers have captured "Sands' unsentimental
idealism, resilience and determination", "allowing him to emerge
undiminished in body or spirit", in the "simple recognition of his
full, complex humanity".

But what would any of this avail us if Sands's cause was a bad one?
Heroism is not confined to the virtuous - ask former members of the
Waffen SS. Here Bennett lauds the moviemen for permitting "what is
implicit in each scene to emerge unforced and unstressed...[and
throwing] us as viewers in at the deep end, trusting that what we see
will eventually make us understand", but admits somewhat
contradictorily that "the emphasis is on the State as the perpetrator
of violence and on republicans as the victims, something the 100,000
people who lined Sands's funeral route would have had no trouble in
recognising".

Sands died on May 5, 1981. The second hunger striker, IRA man Francis
Hughes, died exactly a week later. I am sure he would also have
possessed a complex humanity. Hughes's problem - unexplored by Hunger
or Bennett - was his habit of depriving other people of theirs. To
take one example, on February 8, 1978, William Gordon, part-time
soldier and school welfare officer, was, as on every weekday morning,
driving his son and daughter to their primary school. Presumably this
pattern was known to the IRA team led by Hughes, which planted a bomb
under Gordon's car. The seven-year-old boy was blown clear, but badly
injured. His father was killed instantly, his ten-year-old sister decapitated.

This one example will do. Between 1969 and 1999 thousands of British
citizens were killed, the large majority by republicans. And this is
Bennett's political judgment on the importance of Sands (and,
presumably, Hughes) that he "probably did more to turn the tide of
the republican struggle than any other individual. His death garnered
worldwide attention and sympathy, and it marked the beginning of the
long run of electoral successes that eventually propelled Sinn Fein
into government".

In other words the IRA changed strategies, winning its goals through
an increasing use of political rather than violent means. So, in a
way, it was all - though horrible - worth it. A new book, Gunsmoke
and Mirrors: How the IRA Dressed up Defeat as Victory, by the
Observer journalist Henry McDonald, explicitly challenges this
self-exculpatory mythology.

Sands's death came 12 years into the Troubles and 13 years before the
first ceasefire. His funeral orations and those for his fellow hunger
strikers helped to recruit a new generation of benighted bombers and
shooters. What eventually forced the change of strategy on the IRA
was not the success of the ballot box, but the defeat of the
Armalite. McDonald argues that the key year was not 1981, but rather
1987 when one unit of the IRA was rubbed out by the SAS in Loughgall,
and when an IRA bomb on Remembrance Sunday in Enniskillen caused
international outrage. It was in this year, points out McDonald, that
Gerry Adams made approaches to Charlie Haughey, the Irish Prime
Minister, about charting a new course.

In the end Adams and Martin McGuinness - brave though they have been
- achieved for themselves no more and no less than a peaceful civil
rights movement would have achieved ten years earlier and with 3,000
fewer deaths. It is this that republicans cannot bring themselves to
admit, and that the mythologists want to obscure.

Also showing this week at the London Film Festival is a new German
film about those other armed rebels, the Baader Meinhof gang. I think
Ulrika Meinhof probably possessed qualities of idealism, resilience
and determination. Just like Sands, just like Che. It should remind
us that, with nothing certain and a world recession on the way, this
is a bad time to be lauding bad heroes.

.

IRA lost its war chest in Wall Street disaster

Irish eyes aren't smilin':
IRA lost its war chest in Wall Street disaster

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2008/10/21/irish-eyes-arent-smilin-ira-lost-its-war-chest-in-wall-street/

Bruce Watson
Oct 21st 2008

Over the past few weeks, as the stock market has had bigger mood
swings than Judy Garland popping pills on Christmas day while riding
a roller coaster during an earthquake, the news has almost entirely
focused either on the travails of average Americans or on the morally
repugnant machinations of Wall Street geniuses. This narrow
perspective, however, ignores the larger impact of the real estate
bubble and the subprime meltdown. As trillions of dollars have
seemingly evaporated from the world, it's worth considering who
actually owned the money that has disappeared.

One group that lost big was the Irish Republican Army. After the IRA
signed a ceasefire in 1997, it followed the advice of its financial
advisors, investing its war chest into the U.S. property market. It
subsequently moved its funds into high-dividend deposit accounts in
the U.S. According to some reports, the recent Wall Street meltdown
may have cost the former terrorist group as much as $274 million.

Like many American investors, the IRA is currently "in a state of
panic" over the loss of its investments. On the other hand, unlike
most Americans, the IRA also has a history of armed revolt and a
demonstrated willingness to handle its grudges at gunpoint. Right
now, I'm really glad that I don't work for AIG!
--

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around
cheapskate. Right now, he's wondering if Peru's "Shining Path" or
Germany's "Baader Meinhof" was heavily invested in the market.

.

'60s leftist William Ayers: Time for GOP to get over it

[4 articles]

'60s leftist William Ayers: Time for GOP to get over it

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/10/26/2008-10-26_60s_leftist_william_ayers_time_for_gop_t.html

BY RICHARD VANDERFORD
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Sunday, October 26th 2008

The man the GOP loves to hate tiptoed out of hiding Sunday - if only
to blast Fox News and the rest of the media for his predicament.

William Ayers, the '60s radical who is one of John McCain's talking
points in his criticism of Barack Obama, told a Manhattan panel
discussion audience he was tired of being used as cannon fodder in
America's political wars.

"[Fox host] Bill O'Reilly comes on his show and first thing he says
is, 'Why won't this Ayers story die?'" Ayers told well-wishers. "And
then he spends 10 minutes talking about it."

Ayers, a University of Illinois education professor in Chicago, has
mostly kept a low profile since McCain started using him as a poster
boy for Obama's supposed left-wing leanings.

He kept quiet as Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin
accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," a dig at the fact
that Ayers and Obama once served on a charity board together.

The press was barred from the discussion yesterday at the Stella
Adler Studio of Acting near Gramercy Park, but a Daily News reporter
managed to get inside.

The former member of the Weather Underground beamed at the attention
paid by the audience of about 60 people, many of whom were decked out
in Obama gear.

The crowd gave Ayers a warm welcome, guffawed at jokes about
"redistributing the wealth" and nodded at his complaints about the
"Republican revolution."

After the talk was over, event organizers attempted to sneak Ayers
out a back door to avoid the media.

Waiting reporters gave chase, but Ayers sputtered, "No comment," and
darted into a cab.

--------

'Washed-up Terrorist' Ayers Stays Mum on Ties to Obama

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Vote2008/story?id=6120141&page=1

Works Hard to Duck Reporters, Says Radicals Being "Demonized" by Fox News

By BRIAN ROSS and MOLLY DEAN
October 27, 2008

His relationship with Sen. Barack Obama has become a major theme of
the McCain campaign.

His background with a 1960's domestic terror group, the Weather
Underground, has been recounted in hundreds of news articles.

His words could add to the evidence that debunks the claims Obama was
"palling around with terrorists."

But Bill Ayers is staying mum, and working hard to duck reporters and
the campaign spotlight in the final week before the election.

He told a journalism student attending a education justice symposium
in New York Sunday he and other former radicals were being
"demonized" by Fox News. "We're nice guys, right?"

Asked by the student, if he repudiated the actions of the Weather
Underground, which carried out a series of 1960's robberies and
bombings that killed at least six people, Ayers walked away without answering.

Ayers declined requests for an interview from ABC News, and after the
appearance in New York, he used a garbage-littered freight elevator
in an unsuccessful attempt to duck ABC News cameras waiting outside.

(Click here to watch Brian Ross' encounter with Bill Ayers.)

"I have nothing to say," he told ABC News as he left the building,
accompanied by several burly men in dark suits.

Asked about Sen. John McCain's description of him as a "washed up
terrorist," Ayers said nothing as he raced to find a taxi.

Ayers appeared as an "artist" at a forum devoted to dealing with
issues including educational injustice.

Organizers of the event attempted to stop media coverage by falsely
claiming Ayers' appearance had been canceled.

Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, made
no mention of his radical past or Sen. Obama during an hour and a
half presentation to a group of about 50 people attending the Harold
Clurman Festival of the Arts.

Obama served on the board of an education reform group with Ayers in
Chicago, where both men were prominent figures.

When Obama first ran for public office, in 1995, Ayers held a
fundraiser for him at his house, according to a February 2008 article
on Politico.com.

In an interview with ABC News, Obama told Charlie Gibson, "This is a
guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight
years old."

Obama said he had talked with Ayers about school reform issues, but
said, "the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign,
that he is an adviser of mine, that I've palled around a terrorist,
all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points."

Charges against Ayers were dropped in the 1970's after revelations of
illegal FBI wiretapping.
--

Molly Dean is a 2008 intern at the Brian Ross Investigative Unit at
ABC News. She is a graduate student in journalism at New York University.

--------

'The Factor' Confronts Williams Ayers

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444227,00.html

Monday, October 27, 2008
By Bill O'Reilly

As I said before, the radical Chicago teacher Bill Ayers is Barack
Obama's worst nightmare. Here's a guy who simply won't go away, a man
most Americans detest, but a legitimate issue when evaluating a
potential president's associations.

One caveat here: "The Factor" believes the economy and national
security are the two most important issues in this campaign by far.
We don't believe William Ayers rises anywhere near those things.

However, Ayers is interesting. Here's a guy who calls himself an
anarchist, has admitted committing terrorist acts, even participated
in bombing a police station here in New York City. And Barack Obama
gave him a blurb for his book in the Chicago Tribune? That, ladies
and gentlemen is no small thing.

Ayers has been hiding out. We watched him for a number of days before
"Factor" producer Jesse Watters finally caught up with him.

Click here to watch "Talking Points."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSE WATTERS, "FACTOR" PRODUCER: How do you feel being the
centerpiece in this presidential election?

BILL AYERS: All right.

WATTERS: What's your relationship with Barack Obama, Mr. Ayers? Did
he write a blurb for your book and sit on a panel with you?

AYERS: This is my property. Would you please leave?

WATTERS: Mr. Ayers, do you want to take this opportunity to apologize
for your terrorist acts? Mr. Ayers, don't you think it's time for
some repentance? Do you still consider yourself an anarchist?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Did you notice the red star on his shirt there?

Now here's the irony. After Jesse's brief chat with Mr. Ayers, the
guy calls the police, the same police he tried to kill back in the
'60s. That is called irony.

Well, the police came and escorted Ayers back to his car. Don't you
just love this? When a terrorist guy needs some help, who does he
call? The cops, like everybody else.

Now some misguided souls feel sorry for Bill Ayers. I don't. He's had
plenty of time to apologize for trying to hurt fellow Americans. He
has never said he's sorry, most likely because he's not sorry.

I actually think Barack Obama should apologize for hanging with the
guy. He should throw him under the bus just like he did Reverend
Wright. Look, senator, everybody makes mistakes. You made one. This
is a bad guy. Just say you made a mistake in judgment. Then it goes all away.

But Obama has not done that, so poor Jesse had to track Ayers down.
That should be the end of the story but, of course, it won't be.

And that's "The Memo."

--------

William Ayers: No comment, thank you

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/10/william_ayers_no_comment_thank.html

Posted October 27, 2008
by Mark Silva

Willliam Ayers, the Chicago education professor and former leader of
the 1960s Weather Underground, has been villified in the presidential
campaign underway as a "washed up terrorist'' - with Democrat Barack
Obama, who has served on civic boards with the educator, accused by
John McCain's campaign of "palling around with terrorists.''

But Ayers, for his part, has nothing public to say about it all, as
an encounter with journalism students and ABC News over the weekend
underscored.

Ayers told a journalism student attending an education justice
symposium in New York on Sunday that he and other former radicals
were being "demonized" by Fox News, ABC reports. "We're nice guys, right?"

Asked by the student if he repudiated the work of the Weather
Underground, which carried out a series of 1960's robberies and
bombings, ABC reports, Ayers walked away without answering. Ayers
declined requests for an interview from ABC News, and after the
appearance in New York, he used a garbage-littered freight elevator
in an unsuccessful attempt to duck ABC News cameras waiting outside.

"I have nothing to say," he told ABC News. Asked about Republican
Sen. John McCain's description of him as a "washed up terrorist,"
Ayers said nothing "as he raced to find a taxi,'' according to the
account by ABC's Brian Ross and intern Molly Dean, a graduate student
in journalism at New York University..

Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, made
no mention of his radical past or Obama during an hour and a half
presentation to a group of 50 at the Harold Clurman Festival of the
Arts. Obama, however, who served on civic boards with Ayers and
attended a reception at his home during his first campaign for the
state Senate, has told ABC's Charlie Gibson, "This is a guy who
engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old."

The two have spoken in recent years about school reform, he added,
but "the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign,
that he is an adviser of mine, that I've palled around a terrorist,
all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points."

.

The Left Tries to Find John McCain's Bill Ayers

The Left Tries to Find John McCain's Bill Ayers

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/the_left_tries_to_find_john_mc.html

October 27, 2008
by Humberto Fontova

Senator Biden's asinine comment about the forthcoming president's
"test" provoked John McCain's quick rejoinder: "I've already been
tested." Then that French video of the wounded John McCain in a Hanoi
prison came along as stark proof.

While recently endorsing Barack Obama (for the second time), Fidel
Castro made a point to insult the brave and grievously wounded man
featured in that video as, "a tool of the Miami Mafia." (i.e.
Americans of Cuban heritage who refused to serve as Castro's tools,
and today overwhelmingly refuse to serve as the Democratic party's
"Hispanic outreach" tools.)

Yet Fidel Castro knows full well that John McCain, along with his
naval-pilot Band of Brothers -- even under a form of "persuasion"
that few of us can even imagine -- serve as tools for nobody, except
for the nation they swore to defend.

Fidel Castro knows this better than most. No doubt he heard it
point-blank from the "interrogation specialists" he sent to North
Vietnam in 1967-68. When John McCain addressed a crowd of Bay of Pigs
veterans and former Cuban political prisoners last year he learned
that he and his fellow POW's in North Vietnam had shared torturers
with the Cuban-American freedom fighters then hosting and applauding
him, which included the longest-suffering political prisoners in
modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and
torture chambers for a period three times as long in the Castro/Che
Gulag as Alexander Solzhenytzin suffered in Stalin's Gulag.

"Anything that I and my friends might have experienced is nothing -
nothing -- compared with what some of the men in this room went
through," a gracious John McCain said as many of his hosts misted up.

"I'm introducing a man who suffered the prisons, as I did," said
Roberto Martin-Perez, who introduced McCain on the podium.``This
honor that's been conferred upon me is not only mine but the
thousands of victims who have suffered because of this terrible
doctrine' (Communism.)" Senor Martin-Perez suffered 28 years in
Castro's Gulag, repeatedly spitting in the face of the Communist
torturers who demanded his "confession." Thus The Huffington Post,
Daily Kos, and Democratic Underground all recently denounced Senor
Martin-Perez (who also narrates a McCain campaign ad) as a
"terrorist," and McCain's association with him as the Republicans'
own Ayers scandal.

Fine. Let Democrats equate an anti-communist U.S. citizen who
honorably stood up to 28 years of torture by sadists serving a
Stalinist regime that denounced the U.S. as "a vulture preying on
humanity!" and came closest to nuking us, to Bill Ayers. And let that
Stalinist regime's dictator endorse their candidate. No Republican
campaign ad could make the ramifications of this election any clearer.

In 1967 Castro sent several of his regime's most promising sadists to
North Vietnamese prison camps to instruct the Vietnamese reds in
finer points of their profession. Testimony during Congressional
hearings titled, "The Cuban Torture Program; Torture of American
Prisoners by Cuban Agents" held on November 1999 provide some of the
harrowing details.

The communists titled their torture program "the Cuba Project," and
it took place during 67-68 primarily at the Cu Loc POW camp (also
known as "The Zoo") on the southwestern edge of Hanoi. In brief, this
"Cuba Project" was a Joseph Mengelese experiment run by Castroite
Cubans to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human
can endure before cracking. The North Vietnamese never asked the
Castroites for advice on combat. They knew better. Unlike director
Steven Soderbergh, they probably saw through the whole "Che as
Guerrilla" hoopla for what it was and is: a Castroite hoax to
camoflauge the Inspector Clousseau-like bumblings of an incurable
military idiot -- and more specifically, Castro's own hand in the
idiot's offing. The North Vietnamese sought Castroite tutelage only
on torture of the defenseless, well aware of their expertise in the matter.

For their experiment the Castroites chose twenty American POWs-mostly
Navy flyers. One died: Lieutenant Colonel Earl Cobeil, an Air Force*
F-105 pilot. His death came slowly, in agonizing stages, under
torture. Upon learning his Castroite Cuban affiliation, the American
POWs nicknamed Cobeil's torturer, "Fidel." POW Captain Ray Vohden testified:

"The difference between the Vietnamese and "Fidel' was that, more or
less, once the Vietnamese got what they wanted they let up, at least
for a while...Not so with Fidel,...'I'll show him,' Fidel said to me.
'I'll make him (Colonel Earl Cobeil) so happy to bow down when I
finish with him, he'll come crying to me on his knees begging me to
let him surrender!......When I saw 'Fidel' with the fan belt I was
surprised because up to that time I had never heard of anyone getting
hit like that. Slaps, punches, straps, manacles, ropes, yes.

"But 'Fidel' was going to show the Vietnamese a new trick... Earl
Cobeil, had resisted 'Fidel' to the maximum. Now I could hear the
thud of the belt falling on Cobeil's body again and again, as Fidel
screamed "you son of a beech! You f**ker . I will show you! I will
show you!' I could hear the thud of the belt falling on Earl Cobeil's
body again and again. I almost threw up each time I heard the belt
hit Earl's body. I didn't think any human could endure such a thing.
The guards all stood around laughing and yelling in Vietnamese. It
had been far easier for me to endure the straps myself then to have
to go through this.

"They (the North Vietnamese) tortured to obtain military information
or a political statement, they punished us for breaking their
rules....but rarely tortured indefinitely just for the sake of
torture. Eventually they always let up....However, the Cubans
unmercifully beat a mentally defenseless, sick man to death."

"Earl Cobeil was a complete physical disaster when we saw him,"
testified another fellow POW, Col. Jack Bomar. "He had been tortured
for days and days and days. "His (Cobeil's) hands were almost severed
from the manacles. He had bamboo in his shins. All kinds of welts up
and down all over; his face was bloody. He was a complete mess. They
brought him into the room and as far as we could tell, Captain Cobeil
was totally mentally out of it. He did not know where he was. Then
'Fidel' began to beat him with a fan belt......When he ('Fidel') lost
his temper, he was a complete madman. He would get red in the face;
he just exploded with rage, especially if you refused to bow to him
like Cobeil refused to do."

"Fidel's" month long beatings of another U.S. POW named Jim Kasler
were "among the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in
Hanoi," according to the book Honor Bound. "Fidel" flogged Kasler
"until his buttocks, lower back and legs hung in shreds, and at the
end he was in a semi-coma."

These hearings, by the way, identified this "Fidel" with great
probability as Fernando Vecino Alegret, who served until quite
recently as Cuba's "Minister of Education," and thus hosted many of
those visiting delegations of smiling U.S. scholars and educators who
return enchanted with the marvels of Cuban literacy and health-care.
The Congressional hearing concluded:

"The ruthless nature of the (Cuban) interrogators and the severity of
their actions led prisoners such as Captain Raymond Vohden and
Colonel Jack Bomar to question how human beings could so batter
another human being. They (the American POWs) stood firm in the face
of unrestrained brutality, intimidation, and humiliation."

Think about it: the very declarations people like Michael Moore, Sean
Penn, Danny Glover, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright and
so many other Obama-backers broadcast for free publicity, Fidel
Castro and Ho Chi Minh's prisoners refused to sign to save their
lives, or to end years of daily torture. Also note that John McCain
enjoys overwhelming support from these men.

Could the ramifications of this election be any clearer?

I'd say John Mc Cain passed his test with flying colors--the glorious
colors of the flag he swore to defend.
--

*hat tip to Steve Lohr for pointing out he was from the USAF not the
Navy. AT has some sharp readers. The Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel,
Associated Press all have Earl Cobeil as a Naval pilot. But Lohr
is exactly right, as my Air Force veteran cousin also pointed out to
me this morning. HF
--

Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the
Real Che Guevara. visit hfontova.com

.

The Baader-Meinhof gang

[3 articles]

The Baader-Meinhof gang

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45715,features,briefing-the-baader-meinhof-gang

OCTOBER 27, 2008

A controversial German film, shortly to open in Britain, has
rekindled memories of the gang that terrorised 1970s Germany

What kind of gang was it?

A violent, leftist collective consisting of some 60 people with roots
in the revolutionary student movement that swept Europe and the US in
1967-8. Its legacy of self-styled "armed resistance" -
assassinations, kidnaps and bombings of the German establishment -
has been argued over ever since. The Red Army Faction (RAF), as it
formally called itself, was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, his
girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin (pictured) and Ulrike Meinhof, a left-wing
journalist. It started by burning down department stores, then moved
on to full-scale terrorism. In ever more brutal attacks, the group
killed a total of 34 people, mainly bankers, government officials,
their chauffeurs and bodyguards. Thirteen gang members also died.
Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin, were arrested in 1972 and prosecuted in
1975. Meinhof killed herself during the gang's three-year, chaotic trial.

And did that put an end to the violence?

No. With the leaders locked in a specially-built prison wing, a
second wave of RAF militants launched a campaign of violence to force
their release. For a few months in 1977, in what is known as the
'German Autumn', the gang posed the most serious internal threat to
Germany since WWII. They murdered the chief federal prosecutor,
kidnapped the country's leading industrialist, Hanns-Martin Schleyer,
and, with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, hijacked
a Lufthansa airliner, flying the plane to Somalia and demanding the
release of their comrades. When news broke that German commandos had
stormed the jet, killing three hijackers and freeing the hostages,
Baader, Ensslin and another gang member committed suicide. The next
day, Schleyer was shot in a forest on the Dutch border - his body was
found in the boot of a car in Mulhouse - and a letter was sent to the
French paper, Liberation: "After 43 days we have ended Hanns-Martin
Schleyer's pitiful and corrupt existence... His death is meaningless
to our pain and our rage."

And what were they so enraged about?

Like Italy's Red Brigades and other 'revolutionary' groups of the
late 1960s, Baader-Meinhof railed against what it saw as capitalist
authoritarianism, best exemplified by the US government and its
invasion of Vietnam. In Germany, that rage was mainly directed
against the country's failure to exorcise its Nazi past: in 1966, for
instance, Kurt Kiesinger, an ex-Nazi Party member, became West German
chancellor. By contrast, left-wing radicalism was suppressed and the
Communist Party banned. The RAF's founding myth was the shooting of
Benno Ohnesorg, a bystander killed by police in 1967 at a mass
student protest against the Shah of Iran, who was visiting Berlin.
"They'll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we're up against.
This is the Auschwitz generation," said Ensslin. "We must arm
ourselves!" In 1970, several members of the group went to the Middle
East to be trained by the PFLP.

What does the film aim to do?

Like two previous German films, The Lives of Others and Downfall, The
Baader Meinhof Complex, which opens in the UK on 14 November, is an
attempt to demystify a traumatic period in
German history. "We tried in this film to show what the RAF really
were," says Stefan Aust, former editor of Der Spiegel, on whose
bestselling book the film is based. "They felt themselves being
revolutionary [but] in the end it was a group of people killing
others and in the end themselves."

Then why is it so controversial?

Many have condemned it for its exciting, Bonnie-and-Clyde depiction
of the gang members. The widow of Jurgen Ponto, a banker killed by
the group, has returned the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany's highest
civilian honour, in protest. Bettina Rohl, the daughter of Ulrike
Meinhof, has slated it for its "hero worship". This movie, says the
film critic for Berliner Zeitung, has given Andreas Baader the cult
status he always craved: "Posthumously he has become the hero of a
real action film."

But what could be considered chic about these killers?

Baader was the handsome, dissolute son of a history professor;
Ensslin the daughter of a respected vicar; and Meinhof a pacifist
gone AWOL: a shy journalist who forsook her children for terrorism.
The gang drove Mercedes and BMWs, dubbed 'Baader-Meinhof Wagons'. At
their most fashionable, the group had a broad network of
sympathisers: radical, usually bourgeois, Germans who saw them as
leather-jacketed rebels enacting their own frustrations. One in four
West Germans under thirty felt "a certain sympathy" with them. Later,
the suicides of Baader and Ennslin made them martyrs to hard-core
leftists, some of whom still insist they were murdered. Even now,
their mystique endures: you can buy RAF T-shirts with the group's
machine-gun logo; a few years ago a fashion designer adopted the
slogan "Prada-Meinhof". In 2002, the ICA had a month of shows and
talks called 'Red Army Friction'. They belong, albeit awkwardly,
wrote the journalist and historian Neal Ascherson, to an historic
German "tradition of doomed struggle, fighting to the end in order to
leave a message for the future".

What effect did the RAF have on German politics?

Most historians agree that all it achieved was to make West Germany a
more paranoid, repressive place than before. In the security
clampdown, the BKA (the German equivalent of the FBI) became a hugely
powerful institution and hasty laws banned all so-called 'radicals'
from public service. Peaceful leftwing groups that had been inspired
to join mainstream politics were weakened by the group's example. And
if the Baader-Meinhof gang wanted to provoke a violent response from
the state that would encourage more 'revolutionaries' to take up
arms, that failed, too. Most Germans welcomed the strong response of
the state and the end of the violence. "It was really a threat to the
stability of this country," says Aust. "And actually it was the only
threat after the War that this country ever had from the inside."

Where are they now?

Although the RAF did not formally disband until 1998, it was hugely
discredited after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the group was
shown to have been supported by the East German Stasi. Its last
attack was the bombing of a prison in 1993, in which no one was
seriously injured. Some of its members remain in jail; others have
attempted to lead quiet, post-terrorist lives. Astrid Proll, for
instance, who drove a getaway car for the gang and insists she left
the RAF "before it got really cruel", worked in London as a park
attendant and mechanic before being discovered in 1999 working as a
picture editor at The Independent. Ulrich Scholze, who stole cars for
the RAF, is reported to be working as a teacher of textile and design
in north Germany, while Irmgard Moller, who killed three people at a
US Army base and tried to stab herself to death, is living in
anonymity in Hamburg. Horst Mahler, a radical lawyer who defended
Baader and Ensslin in court and later joined the gang, organising
training trips to the Middle East, is now an ideologue for the German
neo-Nazi movement.

--------

German director says did not glorify Baader Meinhof

http://in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINTRE49N6UC20081024

Sat Oct 25, 2008
By Silvia Aloisi

ROME (Reuters Life!) - German director Uli Edel said on Friday he
tried to portray both the fascination and horror sparked by the Red
Army Faction, the left-wing guerrilla movement at the center of his
latest film.

"The Baader Meinhof Complex," screening at the Rome film festival,
tells the story of the founding members of the faction and the trail
of blood they left behind them in a decade-long campaign of bombings,
killings and kidnappings.

The film, shot in a documentary-style and based on a bestselling book
by Stefan Aust, has been picked as Germany's entry for best foreign
language film at the 2009 Academy Awards.

At home, where it premiered last month, it has rekindled a
long-running debate on a bloody chapter of post-Nazi Germany that
still haunts the country.

It has also drawn mixed reviews as some critics felt the film
glamorized the militants, played by some of Germany's most famous
actors, and focused too little on the suffering of the victims and
their families.

"My aim was to bring people to face the reality of those years and
also show that some of the characters could seem very cool and
attractive and then become terrifying," Edel told reporters after a
press screening.

"My country has not yet reconciled itself with that period and I hope
the film helps the debate," he said.

Aust, whose book is considered a reference work on the guerrilla,
added: "This is history but people are still affected by it, as if it
happened yesterday or the day before.

The Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang"
after founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, grew out of the
student protest and anti-Vietnam war movements in the West Germany of
the late 1960s.

The group is suspected of killing 34 people between 1970 and 1991 as
a "second generation" of militants took over from Meinhof and Baader,
who committed suicide in prison in 1976 and 1977 respectively. The
movement disbanded in 1998.

Edel, best known abroad for his 1981 film "Christiane F." about a
teenage heroin addict in Berlin, said he too as a university student
had at first sympathized with the RAF, like many young Germans at the time.

"I told the story the way we lived through it. I was fascinated by
them and that continued up to a certain point. The film shows clearly
at what stage the fascination turned into horror and you could no
longer identify with them," he said.

The film, billed as the most expensive in German history, mixes
original newsreel with graphic reconstructions of the attacks carried
out by the militants -- which Edel said were accurate down to the
number of bullets used in each murder.

While some of the victims' relatives felt the film was too soft on
the Red Army Faction and its motivations, others have praised it as
thorough and balanced.

"It shows the whole unrestrained brutality of the RAF without
damaging the memory of the victims," said Joerg Schleyer, son of
employer federation head Hanns Martin Schleyer who was kidnapped and
murdered by the RAF, to German media.

--------

Bestselling authors: Financial crisis may lead to comeback of the
German terror scene

http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=m2008-10-21-4819&pc=s01

(2008-10-21)

A dangerous comeback of German terrorism may be under way - that is
what the authors and publishers Marita Vollborn and Vlad Georgescu
are predicting in their book "Brennpunkt Deutschland". According to
the book, which appeared a year ago, state guards have been observing
a burgeoning of militant activities and even signs of extremely
violent extremism for years. The reduction of social services and the
emergence of the NPD were visible at the same level as the return of
the armed Left - and appear to be a possible scenario for the future.
"The current financial crisis could initiate the rising of the
extremistic scene, because, seen from their perspective, government
support measures for fianancial institutions are a provocation
considering unemployment and Hartz IV", Georgescu fears.

The entire Federal Republic may be in danger, as the book authors
write: "Apart from the rise of the extreme right state officials also
witnessed the powerful comeback of the militant Left since the
beginning of the new millennium. The question of whether violence
should be a legitimate means of eliminating the existing system is
being solved: The militant groups opted for it after more than ten
years of discussion - and continue to enforce their targets back to
the armed struggle. "

After the end of the Red Army Faction (RAF) by the media as well as
no longer perceived new generation of left Autonomous scene acting in
comparison to their predecessors as a loose network - a logistical
finesse, which in this country long before the idea of network Al
Qaeda has been implemented . "The operating units of the militant
Left usually consist of two groups; in this way can be annoying
Section 129a of the Penal Code in the case of an arrest. Under the
Act, there is a terrorist organization is build up from at least
three offenders, "explained Vollborn and Georgescu.

Marita Vollborn, Vlad Georgescu
Brennpunkt Deutschland. Warum unser Land vor einer Zeit der Revolten
steht. (Why our country is facing a time of revolts).
Gustav Lübbe Verlag Gustav Luebbe Verlag
ISBN: 3-7857-2282-6 ISBN: 3-7857-2282-6
Hardcover/Festeinband Hardcover / Fixed Binding
Preis: 18,00 EUR (D) 18,50 EUR (A) 31,90 SFR Price: 18,00 EUR (D)
18.50 EUR (A) 31.90 SFR

.

Former Panther speaks to Univ. [Elaine Brown]

Former Panther speaks to Univ.

http://media.www.redandblack.com/media/storage/paper871/news/2008/10/22/News/Former.Panther.Speaks.To.Univ-3498245.shtml

ERIKA WELLS
Issue date: 10/22/08

A former leading member of the Black Panther Party called on black
students Tuesday to continue to address issues of racism at the University.

Author and lecturer Elaine Brown spoke as part of an annual lecture
series sponsored by the Institute for African American Studies
Student Association, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and the Institute for
Women's Studies.

Brown, who was a chairperson of the Black Panther Party from 1974
until 1977, said she wants blacks to consider what they want
accomplished socially and to recognize problems such as poverty and
injustice in the Black community.

"I'm speaking about the ongoing oppression of black people. Some of
us have lost sight, so we need to return to addressing these issues,"
Brown said. "The University is racist."

Kevin Character, a black student from Macon, disagreed with her opinion.

"I don't think that the University is racist," said Character, who
was not present at the lecture. "I just think that it's the way we've
been cultured. I think we've come a long way, but we have a long way
to go. We have separation because I think that's what makes people
comfortable."

Sean Spade, a white student from Hiawassee, joined about 80 others to
hear Brown speak.

"I wanted to hear what it's like for someone from a different
perspective, from a side of the story that is untold," he said.

Brown speaks at colleges and universities across the nation about
"New Age Racism," gender oppression and class disparity toward an
"inclusive and egalitarian" world society.

"I've been to many campuses and wouldn't categorize black students at
the University as more or less conscious than blacks students at
Spelman or Georgia State," Brown said. "But some blacks forget that
their education was paid for by the blood and sweat of their ancestors."

Character said it's important for black students to remember their
roots "but also move forward."

"Anyone getting an education can definitely appreciate how they got
here," he said. "That goes for anyone - black or white."

.

Prison movie is premiered [Mumia Abu-Jamal]

Prison movie is premiered

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Prison-movie-is-premiered.4631773.jp

Published Date: 27 October 2008

A HARD-hitting new documentary on the case of US death row prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal will premiere in Edinburgh today.

The feature-length In Prison My Whole Life examines the controversial
case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther Party activist who
has been in prison for murder in the United States since 1981, much
of that time facing execution, and is showing at the Cameo cinema,
with support from Amnesty International.

Mumia Abu-Jamal's original trial was unfair and in violation of
international standards.

Supporting the event, Amnesty International Scottish Programme
Director John Watson said:

"We've repeatedly drawn attention to Mumia Abu-Jamal's plight and we
strongly welcome this film as a fresh opportunity to focus attention
on his current situation."

An Election on the Pine Ridge Reservation

An Election on the Pine Ridge Reservation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-giago/an-election-on-the-pine-r_b_136344.html

Tim Giago
Posted October 20, 2008

It is said prior to every election that this is one of the most
important elections of our time. And then the voters go out and
re-elect the same old politicians. Change?

On November 4, 2008 the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
Dakota are looking at new choices. Neither of the top two candidates
has ever served as president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Russell
Means, commonly known as an Indian activist, and Theresa "Huck" Two
Bulls, the current South Dakota State Senator, former Vice President
of the Tribe and four-time elected Tribal Secretary are facing off
for the office of President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Russell Means, a convicted felon, was pardoned by former South Dakota
Governor Bill Janklow thus setting him free to run for public office.
He is best known by tribal members for his often outlandish actions
in promoting the American Indian Movement. If elected president there
are those who fear that he will take the Tribe in a direction that
would jeopardize federal funding for the many tribal programs by his
non-conformist approach to solving problems. But then again, maybe
that is exactly what the OST needs at this stage in their history.

For example: The gaming compacts issued by the State of South Dakota
to Indian tribes limits the number of gaming devices in their casinos
to 250 regardless of the size of the tribe. Most Lakota find this to
be an infringement upon their sovereign rights. Means is not afraid
to challenge ignorant, and yes racist, laws such as this. In fact,
there are many things that need to be shaken up on the Pine Ridge
Reservation and it will take a person of extreme courage and
confidence to get it done. Means has never been at a loss for courage.

"Huck" Two Bulls is the most experienced lawmaker of the two. She was
working alongside of OST Attorney Mario Gonzalez on the Black Hills
Claims Settlement 28 years ago. She knows Indian law and Indian
politics. Above all she is honest beyond doubt and dedicated to
serving the people of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Two Bulls has never
backed down from a fight and is more likely than not to follow the
letter of the law when making decisions that have a direct impact
upon the future of the tribe. Serving as Secretary of the Tribe for 4
terms has allowed her to sit in at most Tribal Council meetings and
to take the notes of the meetings, but more than that it has allowed
her to get one of the best educations on tribal politics and history
than any candidate in the past.

The first woman ever elected to serve as President of the Oglala
Sioux Tribe, Cecelia Fire Thunder, was impeached by the Tribal
Council. Some fear that this action could cost votes for Two Bulls.
Gender discrimination is not out of the question in this election.

Perhaps the pundits are right and this is one of the most important
elections in the history of the Tribe. Means has spent most of the
last 20 years making movies in Hollywood and some were very good
movies, while Two Bulls has been working long and diligent hours at
home on the reservation trying to improve the lives of the people of
the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Theresa "Huck" Two Bulls will make every effort to keep the waters
calm, while her opponent, Russell Means, may generate a tsunami. The
differences between the two candidates are definitive and quite
clear. Once again the future of the Pine Ridge Reservation is in the
hands of the people.

Among the young Means is very popular because of his movie career. He
has also made headlines with strong comments intended to shake up the
white race. The turnout for the Primary Election was unusually weak
for the Pine Ridge Reservation and a large turnout in the General
Election should favor Two Bulls. However, no one can read the minds
of the voters and we will know what the people were thinking on the
morning of February 5, 2008.

I wish both candidates the best of luck.
--

(Tim Giago, Oglala Lakota, is from the Pine Ridge Reservation. He is
the recipient of the H.L, Mencken Award for Journalism, The Golden
Quill Award for Outstanding Editorial Writing from the International
Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors and the Honor Award for
Distinguished Services to Journalism by the University of Missouri
School of Journalism)

.

Beneath the Yippies, Lenny Bruce Lives

Beneath the Yippies, Lenny Bruce Lives

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/beneath-the-yippies-lenny-bruce-lives/

By Corey Kilgannon
October 27, 2008

Lenny Bruce may be gone but his irreverent brand of comedy lives on
every Wednesday and Thursday night in the basement of the Yippie
Museum at 9 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

In July, a group of left-wing comics started the Lenny Bruce Comedy
Club, which has all the run-down charm and outrageous repertoire of
an old beatnik joint. You walk down off the sidewalk down the iron
staircase and immediately onto the stage area where some hyped up
comedian is invariably launching into some profanity-laced diatribe
about some abuse of power, or how the college kids have taken over
the Village. Behind them is an unpainted brick wall latticed with
pipes and electric meters.

Last week, a comedian named Laura D. complained about her former pot
dealers. One had the nerve to get sick and go into the hospital, and
the other "ruined my high" by going on and on about the show he was
pitching to Channel 13.

Then, Randy Credico ­ who was in the news last July when he got
arrested after warning pot smokers about the police in front of his
home on Gay Street in the Village.

Mr. Credico hosts these evenings, along with the comedian Danny
Vitale, formerly of "Saturday Night Live." Mr. Credico did
impersonations of a slew of politicians. He did Rudolph Giuliani
("It's a great city, it's a wonderful city.") and lampooned his lisp
and former comb-over hairdo.

Then the Newsday columnist Ellis Henican took the microphone and
discussed being the token liberal on various conservative television
news commentary programs, where his job is to "get into personal and
angry fights with a whole tribe of angry blonde women in miniskirts
who look at me and see their ex-husbands."

The longtime Greenwich Village folk singer known as R.T., who has
long curly hair and a long gray beard, said after performing that the
comedy nights try to keep alive the counterculture spirit of Lenny
Bruce, and for some comers, to emulate his drug use.

Mr. Credico played down the drug use but played up the alcohol use:
"You have to be an alcoholic or a recovering alcoholic to get in,"
Mr. Credico said.

There is no cost or cover or minimum. In fact, alcohol is not served,
but you are welcome to bring your own. Soft drinks and coffee is for sale.

"There is a corkage fee, but I'm not sure what it is," Mr. Credico
said. "OK, it's more like a voluntary corkage fee. Actually, we don't
really charge anyone anything. Even the comedians don't get paid.
It's like sitting in the park, only you don't get arrested. Actually,
we'll probably be a homeless comedy shelter before long."

.

Woodstock at the state's top court

Woodstock at the state's top court

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=731554&category=REGION

By CAROL DeMARE, Staff writer
First published in print: Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Woodstock ­ a cultural phenomenon of the '60s ­ is on the Thursday
calendar at the Court of Appeals. The high court's newest lecture ­
and last one of the year ­ is "Woodstock: The Music of the First Amendment."

Three speakers will bring the audience back to those incredible three
days on the 600-acre Bethel dairy farm of Max Yasgur in August 1969.

Yasgur's son, Sam Yasgur of Monticello, now the Sullivan County
attorney, played a vital but little-known part in convincing his
father to allow the Woodstock Music & Art Festival to be held on the
family's land.

Michael Lang, of Woodstock, a concert promoter, producer and artists'
manager, was co-creator of Woodstock and later co-producer of
Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99.

Phil Gitlen of the Albany firm of Whiteman Osterman & Hanna was a
counsel for Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99 festivals.

Chief Judge Judith Kaye is looking forward to this lecture. It will
be her last as chief judge ­ she retires at the end of the year ­ and
she "wanted this to be a powerhouse."

Kaye grew up in Monticello and her family knew the Yasgurs. Mimi
Yasgur, the wife of Max, shopped at Kaye's parents' store. Kaye is
thrilled with the speakers who will relive the festival as the 40th
anniversary approaches.

"In retrospect it was a gigantic peaceful festival, a half million
came," Kaye said. It was "an example of freedom of expression."

Gary Spencer, court spokesman, called Woodstock, "one of the major
events of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Among the performers were Joan Baez, Blood, Sweat and Tears,
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Country Joe McDonald & The Fish,
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, Grateful
Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane.

Lectures began in 2006 with three, and another three were held last
year. This is the third this year. The idea was "to bring the public
into the courthouse," Kaye said. "This is a public building. We don't
just want lawyers arguing cases here. We want the public to see this
beautiful building and expose them to the work of the court."

Space is limited. To reserve a seat at the Eagle Street building,
call 455-7741. The event is co-sponsored by the Historical Society of
the Courts of the State of New York.

...

.

How Tom and Dick got 'Smothered'

[3 articles]

For CBS, it was the brothers' third strike

http://www.sacbee.com/172/story/1336423.html

Controversial Season 3 was the Smothers Brothers' finest - and their last

By Hector Saldana
San Antonio Express-News
Published: Friday, Oct. 24, 2008

For the Smothers Brothers, there would be no season more
controversial or entertaining – it was the stuff of legend.

By 1968, the comedy team's admittedly rather conventional CBS variety
show had become a lightning rod for its views on politics, censorship
and the Vietnam War. On Sundays, their comedy platform – open to
George Burns and Jack Benny as well as David Steinberg and George
Carlin – was the hippest thing going.

The Beatles came to them to premiere "Hey Jude" and "Revolution." The
Who's Keith Moon nearly blew up the set in the finale to "My
Generation." They gave the world Pat Paulsen running for president.

Those scenes, along with the bickering brothers' trademark red sports
coats, are found on the new four-DVD set "The Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour: The Best of Season 3" ($49.98) from Time-Life.

Eleven uncensored episodes, as well as a never before seen appearance
by Robert F. Kennedy, additional footage and bonus material complete
the set. Tom and Dick Smothers like to say it was all an accident,
that they were a product of the times. Perhaps, but they came to
define the times, too.

While that third season played out, LBJ announced he would not seek
re-election. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were
assassinated. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago became a bloodbath.

Two years earlier, CBS had given the Smothers Brothers artistic
control to make a "socially relevant" show. But by the second
episode, Dick Smothers recalled, CBS was telling them "you can't say
that." The third season, arguably their best, would also be their last.

"Hee-Haw" aired in the time slot the next year.

Tommy Smothers was the uncredited producer, "the heart and soul,"
according to his brother, hiring and firing writers. By the third
season, he had recruited Rob Reiner and Steve Martin. Most of their
writers were younger than 30. (Tommy recently received an honorary
Emmy for writing on the '68 shows.) The show, which was performed in
front of a live audience, was "edited with a razor blade," Dick Smothers said.

He says they're not bitter about the experience.

"Maybe them firing us made us live longer in the minds of our fans,"
he said. "They killed us but we're not dead."

In an interview in connection with the DVD release, he discussed the
series and its repercussions on the brothers and the country.

Q. How did such a straight folk-comedy act become the epitome of hip?

A. It would be great to say we planned it out. The third season,
socially, politically, geopolitically, was a whole different country.
It's hard to believe what happened in this country (from 1966 to
1968). We call it the scene of the accident. When they hired us . . .
the country was not in that sort of turmoil. Vietnam wasn't on every
front page. The civil rights was starting to get national concern.
But nothing had happened yet.

Q. Did you feel like lightning rods immediately?

A. No, we weren't. But from the very start in San Francisco, hippies
and people in North Beach would come see our show at the Purple
Onion, saying, "We got your message." We had no idea of the message they got.

Q. Are the old episodes still relevant?

A. It's the same thing all over again. Except the times today are on
steroids. That was the first time young people didn't leave it up to
their parents and grandparents to make the choices. We thought young
people could make an impact, and they did.

Q. Is there a danger of being too political on TV?

A. Tommy came close to it. He went to a party with (Tom) Hayden and
(Jane) Fonda and all these people. He came back and said, "I found
out what's wrong with me. I saw Jane Fonda, and I found out. I lost
my sense of humor. She doesn't have a sense of humor." And that's
deadly for a comedian.

--------

TV review: How Tom and Dick got 'Smothered'

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/21/DDGQ13L1F3.DTL

David Wiegand, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Smothered: The Censorship Battles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour: Written, produced and directed by Maureen Muldaur. 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 30 on KQED.

At the beginning, the CBS moguls didn't know what they were getting
into. At the end, they didn't know what hit them.

In the late '60s, the Tiffany Network was looking for a new "kamikaze
show" to follow the other nine attempts to beat NBC's "Bonanza" in
the Sunday night ratings. There wasn't time to get a scripted show
ready, so the network took a chance on a pair of clean-cut comics on
the folk music circuit. And "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" had
its premiere in February 1967.

Maureen Muldaur's 2002 film, "Smothered: The Censorship Battles of
the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," could have been made at any point
after CBS fired the brothers in 1969 - certainly, it might have
helped the boys during the long, lean period after their show was killed.

But the fact that it was made recently, at a time when even the
tamest TV shows thrive on references to contemporary politics and
social mores, makes it all the more valuable. Why? Because it reminds
us that there will come an inevitable time when we'll look back at
issues like Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and marvel that a
supposedly civilized culture can have its priorities so screwed up as
to care about such silliness.

Muldaur's film, which will be broadcast Oct. 30 on KQED with Tom and
Dick Smothers present in the studio to talk about their fabled comedy
show, is probably too long, but it's the perfect companion to the
newly released DVD set of the "Comedy Hour" final season (see review at left).

The film, first made for Bravo, begins with a bit from the show
itself, where a handful of network censors (one played by staff
writer Steve Martin), take turns looking at and discarding pages of
the script until only a single sheet is left. The last censor eyes it
up and down, pronounces that it contains nothing funny at all and
approves it for broadcast.

At first, the Smothers' show seemed pretty typical fare for the day,
with guest stars such as George Burns and Jack Benny. But, as writer
Mason Williams says, around the 10th show, Tommy (who was always the
mastermind of both the show and the brothers' act) began to inject
topical bits into the writing. There was comic and eventual
presidential candidate Pat Paulsen speaking in an "editorial" against
gun control, for example: "If you're old enough to get arrested,
you're old enough to carry a gun," he says.

The censors cut bits they could understand, but, hysterically, didn't
cut former San Francisco performer Leigh French's routine as a
zoned-out hippie chick, advising women on lifestyle issues.

"I'd like to greet you ladies as I always do," she says, pausing
before adding a spacey: "Hi-i-i-i."

She then goes on to tell viewers how to get rid of roaches in their homes.

The CBS censors thought she was talking about the insects.

And if they didn't cut whole segments, the censors had them chopped
up beyond recognition. Joan Baez introduced a song to her
then-husband, David Harris, a few months before he was set to go to
federal prison for draft evasion. The song itself is left intact, but
Baez's intro, in which she discusses why Harris is going to jail, is
cut so badly, there's no vocal or visual continuity between frames.

Former writers such as Williams, Rob Reiner and Carl Gottlieb (the
latter two recruited by Tommy Smothers from San Francisco's the
Committee) and comic-turned-director David Steinberg join the late
writer David Halberstam; former CBS executive Michael Dann, who first
put the show on the air; the show's producer, George Sunga; and
former censor Perry Lafferty in talking about the battles that went
on during the show's aborted run. To their credit, Lafferty and Dann
seem to know better than to defend CBS' decision to yank the show.

The film is pretty compelling on its own, but it works better in
tandem with the "Comedy Hour" final season DVD. Together, they remind
us of how far we've come as a culture, and, sadly, how far we still have to go.
--

E-mail David Wiegand at dwiegand@sfchronicle.com.

--------

DVD REVIEW:

They're Finally Here ­
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: The Best of Season 3!

http://eclipsemagazine.com/dvd/7043/

October 22nd, 2008
by: Sheldon A. Wiebe

I remember, with great fondness, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Tom and Dick Smothers started out as a comedy/folk duo, playing clubs
like the legendary Purple Onion. When CBS offered them their own TV
show, they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. The
Brothers Smothers started fairly innocuously, but as the series
progressed it became a bastion of political satire that caused one
U.S. president, LBJ [who clearly had a sense of humor], to send the
duo a letter of praise ­ and another [Johnson's successor, in fact]
to ask CBS to take them off the air [making them the second top
ten-rated series to be removed from a network's schedule because a
sitting president didn't like it ­ the first being The Wild Wild West].

My favorite moment of the series came as the teaser for one episode
that found Tom and Dick noting that CBS had been getting a lot flack
because of the show, and that henceforth the audience wouldn't hear
"anything you wouldn't hear in your own home…" followed by the sound
of a toilet flushing. The Best of Season 3 has moments that match
that hilarious moment [the opening song of the season premiere, We're
Still Here, for example notes that they've survived, among other
things, the network's censors]. And presented some of the most
memorable musical performances of sixties television ­ as when Jim
Morrison of The Doors blanked on the words for Touch Me, or when
Donovan turned the show into a love-in/sing-along for Happiness Runs.
And where else would you find George Harrison stopping by just for a
couple minutes to urge the brothers to keep on keeping on?

Most of the eleven episodes included here are edited ­ partly for
content [not all the moments on the show were gems, and not all of
the show's musical guests were all that memorable], and partly
because the pacing of variety shows [and television in general]
wasn't anywhere near what today's audiences are used to. What
remains, though, is the wit and charm of the Smothers Brothers and
their show's writers ­ along with some hot button issues that
contributed to their show's demise ­ including a medley that was
excised from the season premiere because of controversial content
[activist Harry Belafonte performing a carefully structured medley of
calypso songs before a screen on which played scenes from the
Democratic Convention of 1968]; a comedy sermonette by David
Steinberg [part of the episode that CBS removed from the schedule
when they fired the brothers, and other odd bits [like the take-off
on Bonanza that dared question why the series featured only men as
regulars...]. Also included is the CBS Special, Pat Paulsen For
President, possibly the funniest campaign film of all-time [and,
given the manner in which Paulsen spoke about the issues, another
nail in the Comedy Hour's coffin].

Along with the eleven episodes [which include that unaired ep], The
Best of Season 3 also comes with a mitt full of bonus features. Two
such are especially noteworthy: when you click on certain episodes in
the Episode Selection menu, before it plays, you will hear Tom
Smothers comment on the notable circumstances of that episode, and,
again, when you use the Episode Selections menu, you can choose to
screen each ep with an Introduction and Close by the Smothers Brothers.

Other Features: Disc One: Interviews With Harry Belafonte, Bob
Newhart, Third Season Producer Allan Blye, Doors' Drummer John
Densmore, Filmmaker Chuck Braverman, and Writer Rob Reiner;
Featurette: A Fable For Our Time [Tom smothers reflects on the series
the duo's battles with the network]; Rehearsal Footage Shot By 60
Minutes [aired January 7, 1969]; 1969 Emmy Awards Clip; Photo
Gallery, and CBS Documents: Network memos and other documents
regarding some of the show's controversial elements.

Disc Two: Interviews: Just Collins, Bob Einstein [Writer/Occasional
Performer]; Mom Always Liked You Best ­ Tom, Dick and Mrs. Smothers;
Dr. Benjamin Spock Interview [censored from season three premiere];
Photo Gallery, and CBS Documents.

Disc Three: Interviews: Joan Baez, Jackie Mason, David Steinberg;
Excerpts from Tom and dick's Post-Cancellation Press Conference;
Jackie Mason Dress Rehearsal; Joan Baez Dress Rehearsal and Alternate
Performance; Episode Promos; Smothers Brothers 2000 Reunion at the
U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado; LBJ Letters; David
Rumsfeld's "Department of Peace" Letter; CBS Documents; Photo
Gallery, and Tom's Final Reflections.

Disc Four: Robert F. Kennedy With Pat Paulsen and Tom Smothers ­
never before seen outtakes from the Pat Paulsen For President
special; Interview Outtakes From special: Woody Allen, David Frye,
Eddie Fisher, Paul Hornung, Nancy Ames, and Jerry Stiller and Anne
Meara; Pat Paulsen at the White House; Pat Paulsen at the 1968
Democratic National Convention; Pat Paulsen Comedy Club Act at the
Pierce Street Annex, Anchorage, Alaska [March 31, 1992]; E! Intro
segment to Pat Paulsen For President; Photo Gallery; Pat Paulsen's
Malignant Humor ­ Pat's personal notes from his fight with cancer, At
Paulsen's Memorial humor.

Grade: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Best of Season 3 ­ A

Grade: Features ­ A+

.

Old Hippie Becomes New Radical

Old Hippie Becomes New Radical

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-moulden/old-hippie-becomes-new-ra_b_136793.html

Julia Moulden
Posted October 25, 2008

Don Stannard-Friel didn't have to go far to create a New Radical role
for himself. Don is a professor of sociology and anthropology at
Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, a leafy suburb of San
Francisco. Today, many of his classes are conducted in the inner city
-- the infamous Tenderloin district.

After we were introduced, I realized that Don would be the only "old
radical" in my book: his life parallels the major events of a
generation. A kid from New Jersey, he moved to San Francisco "at the
end of the beatnik period and the beginning of the free speech era."
In 1966, he got married, became a father, and moved to
Haight-Ashbury. He was studying at San Francisco State College when
"all hell broke loose." As his political consciousness was awakening
-- and while going to antiwar demonstrations with his baby on his
back -- he began to study sociology. "My professors were using the
cultural revolution taking place all around us as their material, and
they were doing ethnographic studies -- going into the field with
us." While working toward his Ph.D., Don worked in a psychiatric
hospital, and he became part of the mental patients civil rights
movement. Over the next decade, he completed his degrees, got
divorced, and remarried. "We had a hippie wedding in Golden Gate Park
and lived communally for a number of years. They were wonderful times."

After several decades of teaching, Don was feeling the need to clear
his mind and refresh his spirit. He took a break and headed for the
Tenderloin district where he'd lived as a poor student. He wanted to
really get to know the community and write about his experience. When
he was ready to return to teaching, he realized that this time it
would be different. It would call on every part of him -- the young
activist, the curious student, the experienced professor, and the man
who knew and loved this difficult part of a world-famous city. Don
designed a series of courses that would take his students into the
community, interacting with local people so that they could learn
from them and help them at the same time. It's the ideal intersection
of what he had to offer and what his young charges wanted. "It's
perfect or this new generation. They're not interested in political
action like we were. These kids were raised on community service --
it was part of their curriculum from when they were quite small. They
want to do things, to make a difference. It's quite a shift from my
generation."

His students love what is affectionately known as "Tenderloin U." and
all that it has to offer, such as a street retreat, where they spend
up to a week with a homeless person. Even kids who don't show much
enthusiasm for traditional studies who up for Don's classes. "It's
hard for suburban students to get into San Francisco and find where
we're working each day. But they do it without fail." As you might
expect, the idea initially wasn't popular in all quarters; there was
considerable resistance from Mom and Dad. "I had parents calling me
and saying 'I'm spending $35,000 to send my kid to university, and
you're taking her to the Tenderloin?'" But now that it's working so
well and students are so enthusiastic, there's widespread support.

Like other New Radicals, Don discovered that relationships paved the
way for his new work, giving him street credibility. He lived here as
a young man, some 40 years ago and, more recently, spent time getting
to know people in the area. "Someone will look at me and say, 'Who's
this white guy with his white beard?' and I'll mention someone I
think they might know. Either they relax immediately, or they check
me out and figure out that we're here to help."

Don has also developed a good working relationship with the local
police, something this former hippie never imagined himself doing.
For instance, the police are part of the Tenderloin Hallowe'en party:
they bring food for 400 or so children each year. "When I was young,
it was all about 'we've got to change the world through revolution!'"
Today, he's more open to other people's points of view, and he talks
to his students about what he now believes is true: that it's all
about making a difference in a single person's life. "I tell them,
when you change a person's life, they change others, and the people
they touch do the same. it becomes a geometric progression. it
doesn't take long before you're changing thousands of lives, all
because of that one person."
--

Please share your thoughts by commenting below, or by emailing me at
julia@wearethenewradicals.com.

.