Kunstler Appealed To Hillary Clinton For Peltier's Freedom

When 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Rodham-Clinton was living in the White House during the 1990s with her husband, former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, she apparently wasn’t very eager to end human rights violations by the U.S. government in the United States. As the now-deceased William Kunstler noted in My Life As A Radical Lawyer, his 1994 autobiography:

“Leonard Peltier most recently appealed in Nov. 1992 with Ramsey Clark as his main attorney…

“In May 1993, I wrote to Hillary Rodham-Clinton in response to a rather terse letter she had sent to one of Leonard’s new lawyers, Eric Seitz, who had requested a presidential review of the case. She wrote to Seitz that her husband had no power to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. In my letter to Mrs. Clinton, I criticized her for her cold response to Seitz’s reasonable letter and informed her that she was quite incorrect about limits on presidential interference in criminal cases. She should have recalled former President Bush’s pardon of the indicted Caspar Weinberger…

“I only hope that I live long enough to see Leonard free…”

U.S. political prisoner Peltier was still imprisoned by the Rodham-Clinton Administration on the day Kunstler died; and, in 2007, Leonard Peltier, remains imprisoned by the U.S. Establishment’s government.

(Downtown 9/20/95)

Next: Upton Sinclair protest folk song lyrics

University of Minnesota's DARPA War Research

The University of Minnesota’s Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics Department’s Aerosystems Laboratory has apparently been doing war research for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] in the 21st-century. According to its site,(www.aem.umn.edu/research/balas_darpa.shtml), “one of the key projects supported from this lab" was "Professor Balas’ DARPA Program (managed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory), `An Integrated, Multi-Layer Approach to Software-Enabled Control (SEC): Mission Planning to Vehicle” which will “enable the use of multi-unmanned combat air vehicles in strategic situations.”

The same Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics Department site also notes that “The University of Minnesota has teamed with UC-Berkeley and Caltech” on this war research project and “the University of Minnesota team" worked "closely with Honeywell Laboratories and Boeing on the DARPA SEC project.”

Since 1989, a University of Minnesota professor of Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics, Graham Candler, has also apparently been working as a consultant for the U.S. war machine’s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank.

Next: Kunstler Appealed To Hillary Clinton For Peltier’s Freedom

SDS History vs. Clinton Dynasty History

Even when he attended Oxford University in the late 1960s, 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Rodham-Clinton’s husband, Bill, apparently did not impress most U.S. radical activists as being that ethical a guy. According to a former classmate of Bill Clinton, “a `long-haired hippie type’ who had been active in Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] used to reproach Clinton for paying only lip service to the antiwar movement” and “Clinton…was perceived as a `hypocrite, a faker, and a phony, because he wouldn’t stand up for his convictions.’” (On The Make by Meredith Oakley)

During his 1982 campaign for Arkansas governor, some observers also apparently accused the campaign of Hillary’s husband of “buying” African-American votes to secure Bill’s margin of victory. According to On The Make:

“An analysis of [1982] election returns and voting patterns revealed that black voters had given Clinton the winning edge. They had turned out in record numbers…only voting for governor. The conventional wisdom was that `street money’ distributed to local black leaders had produced the turnout…It was…taken for granted that in some communities, particularly in the Delta, black voters were for sale and had been bought. Certainly, Democratic supporters chauffeured many poor and elderly voters, blacks and whites, to the polls…”

In the same book, Oakley also stated that “During the many years I covered his political activities in Arkansas…I documented the numerous falsehoods, broken promises, and ruses, some of which never saw their way into print” and “Clinton fans are difficult to find in Arkansas.”

(Downtown 11/23/94)

Next: University of Minnesota’s DARPA War Research

IDA's 21st-Century Weapons Research Work

In the 21st-century ‘era of permanent war” and blogging, the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] continues to do weapons research work for the U.S. war machine. On its web site at www.ida.org, IDA revealed, for instance, that after the Pentagon “lost about 100 helicopters from fall 2001 to spring 2005” in Afghanistan and Iraq, it “asked IDA to examine available data and records to identify why the helicopters were lost and to develop options for reducing future losses.”

IDA researchers found that “about one-third” of Pentagon helicopter losses in Afghanistan and Iraq “were due to engagements by enemy forces, which primarily used shoulder-fired missiles, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and small arms.” IDA’s weapons research study then “identified several options” for the Pentagon “to improve rotorcraft survivability” in still-occupied Iraq, “including: enhancing the onboard countermeasures suite to counter shoulder-fired missiles; modifying tactics and procedures to minimize exposure to RPGs and small arms;” and “developing a lightweight sensor package integrated with software-based terrain avoidance to improve aircrew performance in degraded environments.”

University of South Carolina President Emeritus John Palms, University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs Professor Edwin Dorn, MIT Institute Professor Sheila Widnall, MIT and Harvard University Broad Institute Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Programs Director Jill Mesirov and Harvard University JFK School of Government Lecturer in Public Policy John White all currently sit on the IDA board of trustees.

Next: SDS History vs. Clinton Dynasty History

"Waitin' For The People"

Oh, I’m waitin’ for the people to strike at my foes
And I’m hopin’ that the students will change the world well
So in our parks we’ll dance
And on our streets we’ll kiss.

And I’m down on professors who try to put me down
And I think it’s so stupid to always strut around
Just give me some peace to play
And someone to love today.

Their careers are wastelands, they live selfishly
I’m working to make ideals realities
As long as one baby is murdered
To bull-shit in class is wrong.

And down with all artists who have no concern
For people who are starved by Amerika
I ain’t no poet or singer
I’m just a rebel bored worker.


To listen to "Waitin' For The People" folk song, you can click on following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Protest+Folk+Songs/Waiting+for+the+People

This protest folk song was written in a Bronx slum apartment between October 1970 and July 1971.

Next: IDA’s 21st-Century Weapons Research Work

Kunstler And The '60s

In My Life As A Radical Lawyer, the now-deceased William Kunstler summarized some lessons of the 1960s:

“Looking back, I realize that the individuals and groups that protested and dissented were all part of one enormous struggle against evil…

“During that decade, we made great strides in civil rights, checking the power of government, and all human rights. But we have to keep working not to lose ground and to continue gaining. If we don’t fight, evil will win…We certainly can’t trust the government to protect us. This is because the American judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down, and the rest of the system are not friends of the people…

“The struggle continues today, although more subtly than in the ‘60s…

“If the ‘60s taught me anything, from the South in the early years to Chicago in 1969 and after, it is that those with power will never quit, that the Establishment will not rest until it roots out and destroys all opposition.”

In concluding his 1994 autobiography, Kunstler observed that “I would like to be remembered as someone who did what I wanted to do with my life, who did it with some other end in view than the mere acquisition of tangible, material goods, who had some effect on the lives of people that I touched” and “who contributed…to the holding on to whatever rights and liberties are still available to Americans.”

(Downtown 9/20/95)

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MIT's War Research In 2007

Besides being represented on the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank board of trustees by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] professors, MIT also continues to do war research for the U.S. war machine in 2007. As Bryan Bender noted in a February 27, 2006 article on the Boston Globe’s http://www.boston.com/ site, which was headlined “Pentagon to invest $3 million in MIT bomb research,” the Pentagon is “staking a $3 million investment on a small team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students to help the military.”

The MIT war research project is being led by MIT chemistry professor Keith A. Nelson and funded by the Pentagon’s Office of Naval Research. The goal of MIT Professor Nelson’s research project is “to pinpoint how the so-called improvised explosive devices—known as IEDs—work and find techniques to detonate or short-circuit them” by “studying the molecular composition of explosive materials,” according to the Boston Globe article.

In his February 27, 2006 article, Bryan Bender also reported that the Pentagon “believes the highly controlled experiments underway at MIT and two research partners—Washington State University and Michigan Tech—have significant promise to bear results” and that “the funding is part of a military program, called the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative.” IEDs, according to the Globe, “pose one of the most nettlesome problems” for the Pentagon troops that have still not been withdrawn from occupied Iraq by the U.S. Establishment’s Bush Administration.

Since the Bush Administration began its military occupation of Iraq in 2003, the value of MIT’s Pentagon war research contracts has jumped from $300 million to over $500 million.

Next: Kunstler And The ‘60s