Two Views of Paris

The Leftoid fantasy Socialist view of Paris:

Real Paris:

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ

Will the Real Marion Delgado Please Stand Up?

"Marion Delgado" was a name the quaint folk in the Weathermen (Weatherwomen, Weatherpeople, Weather Underground) used to invoke every now and again.  For example, terrorist Jeff Jones invoked the name to kick off the Days of Rage riots in Chicago, 1969:

"Bringing the War Home" 2004

Here is another version:

"The War Within" 2005

Here too:

"The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage" By Todd Gitlin

They put Delgado in the Students for a Democratic Society newspaper, New Left Notes vol. 4, Number 29 August 29, 1969:

Without attribution or even a hint of the story's origins.

The caption reads: With a defiant smile, 5-year-old Marion Delgado shows how he placed a 25-pound concrete slab on the tracks and wrecked a passenger train.

The International Socialist, No. 14 December 1969, covered it like this on page four:

i.s. #14, December 1969

Possibly I am not the only person who had doubts of the authenticity of this Weather Saint, or maybe I am one of the few who paid attention, and had the time to waste in running it down.  So, here be the origin of Marion Delgado, 'Revolutionary:'

LIFE Jun 2, 1947, p, 40

BOY WRECKS TRAIN

Express is upset and five people are injured by a childish prank

     Five-year-old Marion Delgado lives close to the Western Pacific’s railroad tracks in Decoto, Calif. On May 20 Marion was trying to smash a concrete slab.  But it would not break.  The slab weighed 25 pounds.  Marion lugged it over to the tracks and bounced it on the rails, but it still would not break.  Then Marion had an idea. 

     At 11:10 a.m. the Feather River Express boomed into Decoto at 50 mph.  There was a crash.  The engine jumped the rails, tore up 300 feet of track, hit a switch and turned over.  The engineer and four other people were injured. 

     “Why did you do it, boy?”  said the police to Marion.  Marion shrugged, “I couldn't break that big rock by myself,” he said, “so I decided to let the train do it.”  Police, unable to punish 5-year-old Marion, could only hope that parents of equally ingenious children would keep them under control.

I have no idea what happened to Marion in later years.  He is about five years older than terrorist Jeff Jones, as Jones was born the same year as this prank derailment.

Update 4/12/2015:

Billy Ayers in Fugitive Days, his novel cloaked as a memoir, could not be outdone on this one.  Young Marion was transported in space and time to Italy and the late 1960s in a "hot off the AP wire" story.  Also, he erased the injured engineer and passengers from the scene (p.149):

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ

Billy Ayers Continues His Tour Of Lies In 2013

Haven't seen anybody else writing about this, so if it is not "news" to you, my apologies for not uncovering prior work earlier.

Billy Ayers was at it again at the Miami Book Fair, November 24, 2013, talking about his experience trying to speak at the University of Wyoming in 2010.  He stated repeatedly that "the tea party" tried to stop him from speaking and that they threatened to blow up the building where he would appear.  Perhaps he was going for irony there.  There was plenty of true wrong to go around with the administration of UW, like claiming there were threats of violence in connection to Ayers' scheduled appearance, but not bothering to contact the local police about them.

Of course, Professor Ayers never settles for the truth when he can make up a lie to go with it.  For example, he speaks of a woman named "Meg" who, according to Ayers, didn't know anything about him.  BTW, I will stick with Meg for the woman, since that is the only name Meghan Michelena, aka Meghan Lanker, aka Meghan Lanker-Simons has used consistently since she was charged with threatening her ex-boss with a gun in 2005.

Here she is in her own words in April, 2010:

Bringing Ayers 

Last September, Lanker heard from a graduate student friend that UW's Social Justice Research Center, a 2-year-old anonymously endowed institution, was planning to bring Ayers to campus in the spring to discuss education theory. 

Having read Ayers' memoirs in high school, Lanker was excited at the news.
"I'm honestly interested what the man has to say about education," she said. "He's the pre-eminent expert in the field, well respected, and it's an issue that I'm very interested in. Because I think that educational reform is a key piece of keeping people out of the criminal justice system." 

But many others weren't as thrilled by the news. When media reports came out about Ayers' visit, the SJRC and university administrators were bombarded with hundreds of phone calls and e-mails expressing outrage that UW would invite someone with Ayers' past to speak. Some of the calls threatened violence or cutting off funding to the university. 

On March 31, SJRC director Francisco Rios withdrew the invitation for Ayers to speak, citing safety concerns. 

When Lanker heard the news, she was -- in her words -- "pissed." 

She contacted Ayers, who readily agreed to come to UW later in the month and even offered to cover his travel expenses himself. 

For his speaking fee, Lanker hit the phones. She raised nearly $2,000 in 48 hours, all from individual Wyoming residents. 

"The reason that I decided to do something about it was because I didn't know if anybody else was, and this is something that I felt passionate about," she said. "I just felt like it was completely egregious the way that (UW administrators) were handling it." 

"I almost felt," she said, "like they were daring someone to do something about it." 

But when she told UW Provost Myron Allen of her plans, she soon received a phone call from Susan Weidel, the school's attorney, notifying her Ayers was banned from speaking on campus. UW still hasn't given a reason for its decision. 

She and Ayers sued a couple of days later.

Also, there is no mention of "tea party," "teaparty," "tea" or "party" in the article.  Other articles of the time are missing any tea party references too, including Professor Ayers own article in one of original Yippie Paul Krassner's favorite haunts, The Rag Blog.

I'm not sure if the tea party was mentioned before November 2013, and frankly I won't waste time looking for it.  Here is Ayers in his own words about the issue:

(I watched the whole stupid thing so you don't have to,

but you can if you like at this link)

If Meg, aka Meghan Michelena, aka Meghan Lanker, aka Meghan Lanker-Simons is not familiar to you, she made news earlier in 2013 by threatening herself with rape and plead no contest over one month prior to Ayers appearance at the book festival.

So, it seems the only people involved in this event who got their names in the papers, who have a history of terrorizing others with firearms and/or explosives are Billy and Meg.

With her own proven, convicted history of fabricating threats, it seems odd that a man of letters like Professor Ayers would continue pretending those threats came from a group that has no history of such actions.  Group used quite loosely here, since unlike the Weather Underground, one is in the tea party by their own assertions rather than approval by a Weather Bureau.

Then again, Ayers has his own proven history of fabrications.  Birds of a feather.

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ