The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #101088   Message #2461716
Posted By: Sawzaw
09-Oct-08 - 11:32 PM
Thread Name: BS: Popular Views on Obama
Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views on Obama
JERUSALEM – The official campaign website of Sen. Barack Obama has completely scrubbed a series of user-generated blog postings on the candidate's site by a former top communist activist who is an associate of former Weathermen terrorist leader William Ayers.

The move has raised questions regarding Obama's relationship with the deleted blogger, Mike Klonsky, who runs an education organization that was founded by Ayers and that received a substantial grant from a group directed by Obama. Klonsky served with Ayers and Ayer's wife, former Weathermen terrorist Bernadine Dohrn, in the Students for a Democratic Society group, a major leftist student organization in the 1960s that later splintered, with Ayers and Dohrn leading a more activist approach with the Weathermen. Klonsky reportedly favored less aggressive tactics, promoting the philosophy that young workers possessed the potential to be a revolutionary force to overthrow capitalism.

In the 1970s, Klonsky became a top communist activist and leader of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.

He reportedly identified as a Maoist, and traveled in 1977 to Beijing, where he held friendly meetings with the Chinese leadership.

In a book, "Revolution in the Air," author Max Elbaum, himself a former Maoist activist, recounts that in Beijing, Klonsky toasted the Chinese Stalinist leadership who, in turn, hailed the formation of his Communist Party group as "reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people," effectively recognizing Klonsky's organization as the all-but-official U.S. Maoist party.

In a brief conversation with WND yesterday, Klonsky would not state whether he is still a communist. He did not deny his associations with Ayers or his communist activism in the 1970s.

Klonsky's blog postings were removed from Obama site during a period the presidential candidate has been repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Ayers, who is currently a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a member of the Weathermen group, which sought to overthrow the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.

Ayers has admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s.

Ayers told the New York Times in an interview released Sept. 11, 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." He posed for a photograph accompanying the piece stepping on an American flag.