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Chicago's resident "unrepentant terrorist"/education reform scholar William Ayers was on his way to give a speech at the Centre for Urban Schooling at University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, when Canadian border guards refused his entrance.
"I don't know why I was turned back," Ayers said in an interview this morning from Chicago. "I got off the plane like everyone else and I was asked to come over to the other side. The border guards reviewed some stuff and said I wasn't going to be allowed into Canada. To me it seems quite bureaucratic and not at all interesting ... If it were me I would have let me in. I couldn't possibly be a threat to Canada."
There is no comment from Canadian officials on why he was turned away, but the University of Toronto is obviously disappointed and an official from the school is saying it's an issue of academic freedom. Ayers was not permitted to see a lawyer during the five hours he sat at the Toronto Island airport.
In other anti-Ayers news, Ill. state senator Larry Bomke (R-Springfield) wants to ban "admitted terrorists" from teaching at Illinois colleges because he is outraged that Illinois taxpayers are paying his salary.
"If we had a known pedophile, an admitted pedophile who had not been convicted, but an admitted pedophile, any school would be outraged to have that individual teaching kindergarten," Bomke said. "So why would we want an admitted terrorist, an unrepentant terrorist, teaching kids at a university?"
In case you missed it, Ayers penned an Op-Ed for the NY Times in December discussing his invisible role in the 2008 election, his relationship to Barack Obama and his history with the Weather Underground.
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Sen. Bromke must have many lawyer friends, because the legal fees generated from tossing that piece of shit law out are going to be seizable.
Ayers on 848 back in November after the election. The "admitted terrorist" sounds more reasonable and intelligent than any of the mad-eyed politicos using him as meat to frenzy the idiot masses.
What a silly man. As far as I know the terrorists they fear (Islamic terrorists or possibly eco-terrorists) do not target schools. Pedophiles, however, target children, which is why laws against their teaching the likely targets make some sense.
Hopefully the time has passed where slapping the "turrurist" label on something you want to supress will not pass for political decision making.
Probably has something to do with our new cooperation with computerized criminal records sharing with the Canadian border guards.
Canada has a long time visitor status that anyone arrested or convicted of a crime is not allowed into the country from the US. However for the longest time they were unable to actually look this information up on their systems.
That all changed after 9/11 of course. Now any American wishing to enter the Great White North better not have an arrest or conviction record or else you'll be turned away at the border.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/23/NEVIUS.TMP
"As far as I know the terrorists they fear (Islamic terrorists or possibly eco-terrorists) do not target schools."
Really? You sure you want to go there?
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-19-voa42.cfm
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, lefty.
I didn't know that the Taliban had a branch office at UIC.
Touchy cause we're not swearing in President McFail tomorrow afternoon there sweetie?
On the contrary, we are swearing him in.
Bwahaha! Oh, you're cute. You're trying so hard not to just call him a racial slur, stamp your feet and talk about how Sarah Palin was beaten up by that news-savage Katie Couric aren't you?
Awww. It thinks it's people.
Wow. Even Barack would laugh over that one.
Nice try.
"As far as I know the terrorists they fear (Islamic terrorists or possibly eco-terrorists) do not target schools."
The FACT is they do. You can take the fact or leave it, I guess. Most reasonable, intelligent people know the truth. It seems the Canadians do, too. What amazes me is how tolerant you seem to be over schools being bombed by terrorists, especially a school for girls. Sweetie.
Here are your facts.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/4291359/Taliban-bombs-five-schools-in-Pakistan.html
*Sigh* I know this is pissing in the wind, but let's try to bring a whore to culture and try to make him think.
William Ayers is not the same as the Taliban. Did Ayers do and say things that were quite dreadful, yes. Is what he did the same as the Taliban blowing up schools? No. Attempts to make this connection only helped John McFail lose the election. So keep it up, the mid-terms are coming :)
Don't believe me? Of course not. How about the man who prosecuted Ayers and the other Weatherman? The man who wrote, back in October:
Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/l10ayers.html
But he's just a terrorist sympathizer right? Another member of the left-wing crazies who want to tear down amer-
Oh whatever, 8 years was enough of this hateful drivel from the right. You lost, handily. Take your bile and go home
...so which is more relevant to his qualifications for his position as a professor: His "terrorist" past or his "educator" experience?
Also, can pedophiles be professors? I'm not sure that would disqualify them. Remember, we're talking about him teaching his fellow adults, not showing kindergarteners how to make a pipe bomb.
Something tells me CJhames has little problem with the long U.S. history of funding terrorists and murderous dictators in the middle east and in South America. People that actually killed people. Anyway, we're all being trolled by some Texas mouth-breather who must be trolling the web for Ayers stuff ala those citizenship guys not to long ago..
Ayers blew up a statue when he was young, The Bush admin killed hundreds of thousands yesterday, today, now...
In the midst of the 60's and 70's Bill Ayers and the Weathermen (Underground) firmly believed that they could overthrow the government through violent protest. They were proponents of the bombing and killing of people, that was until three of their members accidentally blew themselves up in NYC while making a bomb. They changed their opinion of killing people at that time. They took extra precaution to make sure that there were no human causalities.
That is from his own omission, his own words.
I don't think we should paint the guy as a terrorist on par with Bin Laden, however, downplaying his crimes, making him out to be a disgruntled teenager who put a cherry bomb in a mailbox is no better.
I'm not from Texas, I'm not a card carrying republican and I agree Sarah Palin should not have been the VP.
Here's the thing, the only reason Ayers is anything more than a footnote is because the right wing smear merchants (Hannity, Limbaugh and the like) screamed bloody murder for months about the guy because he shared some space with Obama years ago. Ignoring the fact they barely knew each other, or the fact that Ayers showed more class than the whole lot of them by staying out of the fray, or the fact that when Ayers was involved with the weathermen Obama was 4.
As fo the Weathermen themselves, there's a profound disconnect that people have developed about that time. The president was starting an illegal war in cambodia, thousands of young americans were being drafted into a losing conflict for "peace with honor" and the White House was filled with petty thugs and break-in artists. The great voices of peace and hope were gunned down, students were being shot by soldiers and riots wiped whole neighborhoods off the map. The Weathermen were wrong to take to violence, Ayers has said that himself, but they were a product of a very specific, very tremulous time in American history. Their convictions were tossed because of the gross violations of due process, including entrapment and illegal wire-tapping, by the feds in the case. Bit of irony there.
To sit 40 years hence and call him a terrorist, a word that has become synonymous with 9/11 as Palin and McCain knew full well, is just bunk.
The guy has devoted the past few decades to promoting peaceful education reform and working to better the lot of urban education. Better that he should have sat in a cell soaking up tax payer dollars for some acts of violent vandalism 40 years ago? Nonsense.
Sorry to have a poke a hole in the notion that Bill Ayers has helped education in the past 40 years, but here goes.
Ayers' philosophy of the "have-nots vs. the haves" and his ongoing preaching of class anger is the last thing that low-income kids and neighborhoods need to hear.
Furthermore, the tens of millions of dollars that his "urban education" groups have wasted over the decades have shown little, if any results. He has drained foundations and government agencies of money that he facilitated in throwing down the drain.
So much for his "...working to better the lot of urban education..." that is mentioned above.
Ayers' philosophy of the "have-nots vs. the haves" and his ongoing preaching of class anger is the last thing that low-income kids and neighborhoods need to hear.
Because it's true?
Compare the facilities in say Austin to those in Lincoln Park. Ayers has been arguing that the current system of property tax based education funding is broken at it's core. But his philosopy and his education work aren't interchangeable.
His biggest accomplishment, which he shared with two other grant-writers, was the Annenberg Challenge Grant, which wasn't about "redistributing wealth", as it's funds came from a private source.
As for it's effectiveness, do you have any evidence to back up your claims that money was "thrown down the drain"? Because I would point to the Chicago Public Education Fund, an outgrowth of the Annenberg funds, which has funded everything from Golden Apple to Teach for America, as an example of successes.
Is the whole system a mess? No argument there, from me, or I doubt from Ayers. But to say the guy is just pissing money away is simply inaccurate.
When it comes to patriotism:
Bill Ayers > Ward, Streets & CJHames.
http://apps.wbez.org/blog/?p=763
I mentioned this upthread, but here's Ayers on 848 back in November.
Worth watching/listening to.