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Ward Churchill's statement regarding Roosting Chickens
January 31, 2005
The following is a statement from Ward Churchill:
In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.
The following is a statement from Ward Churchill:
In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.
* The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences.
* I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."
* This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government."
* In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths.
* Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.
* It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.
* It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name.
* The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else.
* These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country.
Ward Churchill
Boulder, Colorado
January 31, 2005
* I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."
* This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government."
* In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths.
* Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.
* It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.
* It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name.
* The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else.
* These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country.
Ward Churchill
Boulder, Colorado
January 31, 2005
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Professor is no stranger to controversy
Churchill finds support from his students at CU
By Elizabeth Mattern Clark, Camera Staff Writer
February 2, 2005
Ward Churchill finishes his cigarette, walks into his classroom and sits casually on a wooden table in the front, his graying hair pulled behind his ears. In jeans and boots, his long legs swing back and forth.
It's his first day back in front of his University of Colorado students since a national furor erupted over his essay.
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The tall, radical, charismatic Vietnam veteran puts off his planned discussion about FBI actions on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s. Instead, he opens up the hourlong lecture for questions about Sept. 11, 2001 — and what he wrote that day.
Churchill's treatise on why the World Trade Center attacks were inevitable prompted protests in New York last week in advance of a planned speech by him there. Gov. Bill Owens and others have since called for his resignation, and the CU Board of Regents will meet Thursday in an emergency session to discuss his employment.
But Tuesday, Churchill is preaching to the choir in his American Indian studies class. His students don't seem concerned about what he wrote. They want to know how they can help him keep his job and get back his reputation.
A late-arriving student walks in with a poster that reads: "WITCH HUNT."
Another student asks Churchill what he's learned in the past several days.
"What have I learned? It's a feeding frenzy," Churchill said, referring to media reports.
In the essay, he wrote that victims of the World Trade Center attacks were not "innocent" and that they worked for "the mighty engine of profit" that drove foreign policy and retaliation.
It's not the first time Churchill, 57, has met controversy.
An activist for American Indian rights, the 26-year CU professor has been arrested — and cleared — after demonstrating in several Columbus Day parades in Denver, including last fall's.
His "Indianness" has come under scrutiny. Some American Indians claimed in the 1990s that Churchill, who has said he is Creek-Cherokee, was one of several white men trying to take over their movement.
But Churchill is invited to give talks nationwide, and is considered one of the most outspoken of American Indian activists and scholars in North America, and an expert on indigenous issues.
He has been co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and a national spokesman for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, working to free an indigenous-rights activist who has been imprisoned since 1976 on charges he killed two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge reservation.
Churchill has won the Gustavus Myers Award for outstanding books on human rights three times — including once for the 2003 book that contained a version of his controversial essay. He has won at least six CU awards.
When he was young, Churchill lived on a farm in Illinois before he was drafted into the military. He went to paratrooper school and then to Vietnam for a 10-month tour. His politics changed there, he told The Denver Post in 1987.
"I thought the war was wrong, and I'd developed an absolute hatred of the military system," he said.
He became affiliated with activist groups upon his return to Illinois and began teaching the radical Weather Underground how to make bombs, the Post story said. He started working for the American Indian Movement in 1972.
Churchill received a master's degree in communications theory at the University of Illinois in Springfield in 1975 and an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York in 1992.
Dozens of students appeared at a news conference Tuesday to support Churchill and his academic freedom as a tenured professor to make controversial statements.
"He's a great professor; he's very well-spoken," said senior Milagro Lobato. "He's a passionate human being devoted to human rights."
Churchill finds support from his students at CU
By Elizabeth Mattern Clark, Camera Staff Writer
February 2, 2005
Ward Churchill finishes his cigarette, walks into his classroom and sits casually on a wooden table in the front, his graying hair pulled behind his ears. In jeans and boots, his long legs swing back and forth.
It's his first day back in front of his University of Colorado students since a national furor erupted over his essay.
Advertisement
The tall, radical, charismatic Vietnam veteran puts off his planned discussion about FBI actions on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s. Instead, he opens up the hourlong lecture for questions about Sept. 11, 2001 — and what he wrote that day.
Churchill's treatise on why the World Trade Center attacks were inevitable prompted protests in New York last week in advance of a planned speech by him there. Gov. Bill Owens and others have since called for his resignation, and the CU Board of Regents will meet Thursday in an emergency session to discuss his employment.
But Tuesday, Churchill is preaching to the choir in his American Indian studies class. His students don't seem concerned about what he wrote. They want to know how they can help him keep his job and get back his reputation.
A late-arriving student walks in with a poster that reads: "WITCH HUNT."
Another student asks Churchill what he's learned in the past several days.
"What have I learned? It's a feeding frenzy," Churchill said, referring to media reports.
In the essay, he wrote that victims of the World Trade Center attacks were not "innocent" and that they worked for "the mighty engine of profit" that drove foreign policy and retaliation.
It's not the first time Churchill, 57, has met controversy.
An activist for American Indian rights, the 26-year CU professor has been arrested — and cleared — after demonstrating in several Columbus Day parades in Denver, including last fall's.
His "Indianness" has come under scrutiny. Some American Indians claimed in the 1990s that Churchill, who has said he is Creek-Cherokee, was one of several white men trying to take over their movement.
But Churchill is invited to give talks nationwide, and is considered one of the most outspoken of American Indian activists and scholars in North America, and an expert on indigenous issues.
He has been co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and a national spokesman for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, working to free an indigenous-rights activist who has been imprisoned since 1976 on charges he killed two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge reservation.
Churchill has won the Gustavus Myers Award for outstanding books on human rights three times — including once for the 2003 book that contained a version of his controversial essay. He has won at least six CU awards.
When he was young, Churchill lived on a farm in Illinois before he was drafted into the military. He went to paratrooper school and then to Vietnam for a 10-month tour. His politics changed there, he told The Denver Post in 1987.
"I thought the war was wrong, and I'd developed an absolute hatred of the military system," he said.
He became affiliated with activist groups upon his return to Illinois and began teaching the radical Weather Underground how to make bombs, the Post story said. He started working for the American Indian Movement in 1972.
Churchill received a master's degree in communications theory at the University of Illinois in Springfield in 1975 and an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York in 1992.
Dozens of students appeared at a news conference Tuesday to support Churchill and his academic freedom as a tenured professor to make controversial statements.
"He's a great professor; he's very well-spoken," said senior Milagro Lobato. "He's a passionate human being devoted to human rights."
Ward is an exemplary of the intellectuals who believe in our American freedoms and have exercised their civil rights to participate in and initiate public debate about political issues. Has the public acceptance for such activities passed? Nationally, it is the attempt by those in power to indoctrinate the public into believing that the 9/11 tragedies had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. What's really going on with the Colorado governor and his Republican camp is larger than one liberal professor. These conservatives made clear their plans to legislate conservative perspectives throughout the Colorado university system, particularly the Boulder campus. This is not the first attack on liberal faculty and I assume it's not the last from these folks. In reality, it's a cleansing of liberal perspectives, one professor, one department at a time. How can the public stand by and permit the destruction of institutions such as the Ethnic Studies Department and its faculty, all of which are products of the civil rights movement?
Has anyone seen http://www.infowars.com among other sites? These sites show the illusion the media has sold the American people and the lies about 9/11. Thank you Ward Churchill for standing up and representing free speech in America. Oddly enough, when the real truth starts to come forward about 9/11 (see http://www.infowars.com) your comments under attack today will seem like pre-school stuff.
Don't forget the 90k / per year this guy earns
That comment reminds me of my christian-scientist grandmother who was fairly abusive, and had been kicked out by her mother at age 13 when her father died falling drunk down the stairs and they didn't have enough money.
She would always be saying "you need to be taken down a notch".
It's like, if you see a yuppie in a nice car, they are off limits for criticism just based on who they are or their accomplishments because that would be envy, however, if one of your own group is doing really well, even if it is through hard work, instantly a crowd starts to gather to anchor them down like crabs in a bucket. Why is it so disgusting to you that he is very successful and able to write lots of long books that come out every year. Should all those slots at companies and professor positions be reserved for people from the upper-middle class who aren't going to do anything with it- like they'll just report on french history, and since they're from the top group, it wouldn't be considered hypocritical for them to make a good salary.. at least they'll just spend it on granite countertops for their kitchen.
She would always be saying "you need to be taken down a notch".
It's like, if you see a yuppie in a nice car, they are off limits for criticism just based on who they are or their accomplishments because that would be envy, however, if one of your own group is doing really well, even if it is through hard work, instantly a crowd starts to gather to anchor them down like crabs in a bucket. Why is it so disgusting to you that he is very successful and able to write lots of long books that come out every year. Should all those slots at companies and professor positions be reserved for people from the upper-middle class who aren't going to do anything with it- like they'll just report on french history, and since they're from the top group, it wouldn't be considered hypocritical for them to make a good salary.. at least they'll just spend it on granite countertops for their kitchen.
As an expert on genocide, Professor Chruchill seems to be doing his job and is entitled to his 90K and more.
The media's selective use of the "little Eichmanns" quote makes discussion of the issue more complex given that in his essay Prof. Churchill was quoting John Zarzen from an essay in 1998. We ignore Churchill, Zarzen and others at our own peril. In 1986, Johnathan Kwitny in his book Endless Enemies anticipated negative consequences for U.S. citizens as a result of the foreign policy carried out in our name.
I recommend reading "Ghosts of 9-1-1" for Churchill's presentation of philosopher Karl Jasper's Schematic of Culpability. It explains why the hearings for Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales were ineffectual.
The essay is harsh but honest and convincing in its proposal for "improving the level of level of security enjoyed by all Americans--mainly by drastically reducing the need for it...."
The media's selective use of the "little Eichmanns" quote makes discussion of the issue more complex given that in his essay Prof. Churchill was quoting John Zarzen from an essay in 1998. We ignore Churchill, Zarzen and others at our own peril. In 1986, Johnathan Kwitny in his book Endless Enemies anticipated negative consequences for U.S. citizens as a result of the foreign policy carried out in our name.
I recommend reading "Ghosts of 9-1-1" for Churchill's presentation of philosopher Karl Jasper's Schematic of Culpability. It explains why the hearings for Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales were ineffectual.
The essay is harsh but honest and convincing in its proposal for "improving the level of level of security enjoyed by all Americans--mainly by drastically reducing the need for it...."
Big and Heavy
1/13/2005
by Henry Burt Steves
The might fortress
sends forth it's army-
at home the
last faggot burns
Private property,
the concept now
universal, destroying
all indigenous people
The radiant Christ
shines to darkest corners
of the earth, nowhere
but are there believers
Corporate structure
applauds it's democracy-
where none speak against
the charter, the creed
The world in vigil
having done it's share
awaits the sign
and the red hefier
Hiding, afraid
the last unoticed
free man cowers
in his mountain cave.
1/13/2005
by Henry Burt Steves
The might fortress
sends forth it's army-
at home the
last faggot burns
Private property,
the concept now
universal, destroying
all indigenous people
The radiant Christ
shines to darkest corners
of the earth, nowhere
but are there believers
Corporate structure
applauds it's democracy-
where none speak against
the charter, the creed
The world in vigil
having done it's share
awaits the sign
and the red hefier
Hiding, afraid
the last unoticed
free man cowers
in his mountain cave.
Remember Sami al-Arian?
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
By KURT NIMMO
In the midst of errands today, I made the mistake of turning on the car radio twice. Both times somebody was ranting about Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor about to lose his job for telling the truth.
First, it was Sean Hannity on the radio. Hannity mentioned several violent incidents, most notably the Florida couple accused of torturing and starving five of their seven children, and then felt compelled to throw Ward Churchill in there, calling him an "idiot," and then asked "what the heck is going in this country?"
I cursed, snapped off the radio.
Second, later in the afternoon, it was a caller to Bill O'Reilly's radio program. Close down all the ethnic studies programs, the caller snarled, and study programs about women, labor, and the environment because they're all infested with hate America types like Ward Churchill.
Once again, I punched the radio off.
As I moved through traffic, surrounded by cars, SUVS, and big fat pickup trucks with "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons attached, I thought about what happened to the last "hate America" prof who had the misfortune of talking with Bill O'Reilly -- Sami al-Arian of the University of South Florida.
Sami now wastes away in solitary confinement for the crime of defending the Palestinians, a mortal sin punishable by life imprisonment in America. He's not allowed phone calls, is allowed out of his cell but for one hour a day, endures repeated strip searches, cannot talk with his attorney in private, his case files have been seized, it is even forbidden for him to hug his wife and kids when they visit the prison. Sami al-Arian, thanks mostly to a hateful and self-aggrandizing TV and radio host who likes to make dirty phone calls to conservative female co-workers, is treated like a serial rapist or murderer, even though he has yet to be convicted of a crime, let alone have his day in court.
It was much like this, I thought, when the Nazis purged the universities in Germany.
As an American, I have this lame propensity to connect things to movies I have seen. For instance, when I think of Sami and Ward, I am reminded of a scene in Fred Zinnemann's Julia, a horrific scene where Nazi brownshirts invade a university, beat up professors, and cheerily throw them from high balconies, presumably to their deaths. Of course, we are a long way from that sort of behavior in America ... or are we?
Ward Churchill has received numerous death threats.
Millions of people wanted to do harm to John Walker Lindh, the pathetic and confused convert to Islam who made the mistake of going to Afghanistan. Lindh, an obviously emotionally under-developed lad from a broken home, was made-over, thanks to Fox News and the corporate media, into an evil follower of the Taliban and potential killer of kind-hearted American soldiers (who were at the time kind-heartedly invading a sovereign nation).
For writing an article critical of Pat Tillman, the "all-American" NFL football player who gave up his career to kill Afghans, and was subsequently killed by his fellow soldiers, I received an email from a person who expressed a strong desire to take a baseball bat to my head.
Of course, this sort of behavior is a long way from the organized brutality of Hitler's brownshirts, but the mentality is there, waiting to be groomed.
Four more years of Bush, and another war, this time in Iran, complete with the now standard round of Orwellian hate sessions via Fox News and "conservative" radio, complete with unrestrained xenophobia and Muslim-bashing, and who knows, a new brand of brownshirts may emerge.
It can be argued -- considering the odious and violent articles now appearing more and more frequently in neocon-infested venues such as the New Republic and Horowitz's FrontPage web site -- it really wouldn't take much for the "all-Americans" to hit the streets with shotguns and pikes and go after the "America haters" who, we are incessantly told, are in Osama's corner, salivating hungrily for the destruction of America.
Later in the afternoon, since I am an incurable news junkie and devoted blogger, I made the rounds on the web and found an article about Ward Churchill that actually attempted a degree of objectivity. "Churchill has been the subject of a firestorm of controversy since concerns were raised last week about an essay he wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, in which he compared 'technocrats' working in the World Trade Center to notorious Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann and said the United States invited the terrorist attacks through a long history of violent domination of other cultures," Charlie Brennan writes for the Rocky Mountain News.
Although I am certain to receive the customary round of hate email, maybe containing threats of bodily harm by way of Louisville slugger, I must say that I agree with Churchill: the financial and government institutions housed in the WTC, including the CIA, most certainly did employ "technocrats" comparable to Adolf Eichmann, although I believe Eichmann is an inappropriate comparison, mostly because the Nazi metaphor does not fit when we are talking about neoliberal globalists who are not necessarily racist or specifically genocidal, but rather money-grubbing rich bastards who don't care what happens to millions of people after water and hospitals are "privatized," that is to say stolen for personal gain, or nations invaded to corner the market on precious natural resources.
Eichmann and the Nazis are a somewhat better fit for the CIA and the Pentagon, even though they, as well, do not embrace a specifically racist ideology. More to the point, as General Smedley Butler once said, the Pentagon (and the CIA) are nothing more than hit men "for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers," in short, "racketeers for Capitalism."
The Joint Chiefs and the DCI don't want to shove Jews in ovens, but simply clear the way for the bottom line and stockholder profit, no matter the cost in human life or, for that matter, the price exacted from our shared biosphere. Or, as Robert Redford's character in Pieter Jan Brugge's The Clearing said to the unemployed character played by Willem Dafoe, unemployment and downsizing and its inevitable privation is nothing personal, it's just business (and there I go with the lame movie comparisons again).
Likewise, I'm sure, Osama bin Laden, if indeed Osama had anything to do with those planes smacking into the WTC and the Pentagon, would also say it was nothing personal, just a natural if knee-jerk reaction to decades of the United States propping up Saudi, Iranian, Egyptian, and Jordanian dictators and monarchs -- and let's not forget Reagan and Poppy Bush's friendly relationship with Saddam Hussein -- and supporting Zionist settlers, to the tune of billions of dollars over the years, who seem to actually like murdering Palestinian school children. Nothing personal, just a strike against the institutions and military-industrial-banking infrastructure that not only makes such possible, but profits plentifully from it as well.
For Roger Ailes and the Fox pundits, in fact for much of the corporate media, this sort of reasoning does not compute. It's heretical, evil, and demonstrates outright hatred for America. According to Bush and Fox, Osama came out of nowhere -- no mention he was essentially a creation of the CIA -- and is motivated entirely by an irrational hatred for America of the sort shared by Ward Churchill. For history began on September 12, 2001, and all that came after -- the invasions, the mass murder, the violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions, Bush's torture and rape gulag, the occupations and stage-managed elections -- all of it is a noble and moral response to Islamic evil.
History, as Henry Ford averred, is bunk.
It will go on like this until the machine breaks down and the American people are forced to squarely face reality -- for, as Ward Churchill tells us, the American empire is built on the corpses of incalculable victims over the span of several hundred years.
9/11, by way of comparison, is essentially an exercise in minor league murder and mayhem, the clumsy stuff of amateurs.
No doubt tomorrow will be another Ward Churchill day.
As I make my rounds, I will invariably, as a news junkie looking for his fix, hit that radio button once again. Since tomorrow is Saturday, the morning radio here in southern New Mexico will be filled with the malevolent shrieking Michael "Savage" Weiner, who will no doubt call for Ward Churchill to be roasted alive.
As all of us co-existing together in this nation travel down our collectively shared lunatic path, headed ultimately for disaster, it appears, in lieu of actual roasting, the Ward Churchills of academe will eventually share the fate of Sami al-Arian, as mandated by the Patriot Act.
Having accomplished that mission, dear reader, the incipient brownshirts may come for you.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at http://www.kurtnimmo.com/ .
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
By KURT NIMMO
In the midst of errands today, I made the mistake of turning on the car radio twice. Both times somebody was ranting about Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor about to lose his job for telling the truth.
First, it was Sean Hannity on the radio. Hannity mentioned several violent incidents, most notably the Florida couple accused of torturing and starving five of their seven children, and then felt compelled to throw Ward Churchill in there, calling him an "idiot," and then asked "what the heck is going in this country?"
I cursed, snapped off the radio.
Second, later in the afternoon, it was a caller to Bill O'Reilly's radio program. Close down all the ethnic studies programs, the caller snarled, and study programs about women, labor, and the environment because they're all infested with hate America types like Ward Churchill.
Once again, I punched the radio off.
As I moved through traffic, surrounded by cars, SUVS, and big fat pickup trucks with "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons attached, I thought about what happened to the last "hate America" prof who had the misfortune of talking with Bill O'Reilly -- Sami al-Arian of the University of South Florida.
Sami now wastes away in solitary confinement for the crime of defending the Palestinians, a mortal sin punishable by life imprisonment in America. He's not allowed phone calls, is allowed out of his cell but for one hour a day, endures repeated strip searches, cannot talk with his attorney in private, his case files have been seized, it is even forbidden for him to hug his wife and kids when they visit the prison. Sami al-Arian, thanks mostly to a hateful and self-aggrandizing TV and radio host who likes to make dirty phone calls to conservative female co-workers, is treated like a serial rapist or murderer, even though he has yet to be convicted of a crime, let alone have his day in court.
It was much like this, I thought, when the Nazis purged the universities in Germany.
As an American, I have this lame propensity to connect things to movies I have seen. For instance, when I think of Sami and Ward, I am reminded of a scene in Fred Zinnemann's Julia, a horrific scene where Nazi brownshirts invade a university, beat up professors, and cheerily throw them from high balconies, presumably to their deaths. Of course, we are a long way from that sort of behavior in America ... or are we?
Ward Churchill has received numerous death threats.
Millions of people wanted to do harm to John Walker Lindh, the pathetic and confused convert to Islam who made the mistake of going to Afghanistan. Lindh, an obviously emotionally under-developed lad from a broken home, was made-over, thanks to Fox News and the corporate media, into an evil follower of the Taliban and potential killer of kind-hearted American soldiers (who were at the time kind-heartedly invading a sovereign nation).
For writing an article critical of Pat Tillman, the "all-American" NFL football player who gave up his career to kill Afghans, and was subsequently killed by his fellow soldiers, I received an email from a person who expressed a strong desire to take a baseball bat to my head.
Of course, this sort of behavior is a long way from the organized brutality of Hitler's brownshirts, but the mentality is there, waiting to be groomed.
Four more years of Bush, and another war, this time in Iran, complete with the now standard round of Orwellian hate sessions via Fox News and "conservative" radio, complete with unrestrained xenophobia and Muslim-bashing, and who knows, a new brand of brownshirts may emerge.
It can be argued -- considering the odious and violent articles now appearing more and more frequently in neocon-infested venues such as the New Republic and Horowitz's FrontPage web site -- it really wouldn't take much for the "all-Americans" to hit the streets with shotguns and pikes and go after the "America haters" who, we are incessantly told, are in Osama's corner, salivating hungrily for the destruction of America.
Later in the afternoon, since I am an incurable news junkie and devoted blogger, I made the rounds on the web and found an article about Ward Churchill that actually attempted a degree of objectivity. "Churchill has been the subject of a firestorm of controversy since concerns were raised last week about an essay he wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, in which he compared 'technocrats' working in the World Trade Center to notorious Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann and said the United States invited the terrorist attacks through a long history of violent domination of other cultures," Charlie Brennan writes for the Rocky Mountain News.
Although I am certain to receive the customary round of hate email, maybe containing threats of bodily harm by way of Louisville slugger, I must say that I agree with Churchill: the financial and government institutions housed in the WTC, including the CIA, most certainly did employ "technocrats" comparable to Adolf Eichmann, although I believe Eichmann is an inappropriate comparison, mostly because the Nazi metaphor does not fit when we are talking about neoliberal globalists who are not necessarily racist or specifically genocidal, but rather money-grubbing rich bastards who don't care what happens to millions of people after water and hospitals are "privatized," that is to say stolen for personal gain, or nations invaded to corner the market on precious natural resources.
Eichmann and the Nazis are a somewhat better fit for the CIA and the Pentagon, even though they, as well, do not embrace a specifically racist ideology. More to the point, as General Smedley Butler once said, the Pentagon (and the CIA) are nothing more than hit men "for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers," in short, "racketeers for Capitalism."
The Joint Chiefs and the DCI don't want to shove Jews in ovens, but simply clear the way for the bottom line and stockholder profit, no matter the cost in human life or, for that matter, the price exacted from our shared biosphere. Or, as Robert Redford's character in Pieter Jan Brugge's The Clearing said to the unemployed character played by Willem Dafoe, unemployment and downsizing and its inevitable privation is nothing personal, it's just business (and there I go with the lame movie comparisons again).
Likewise, I'm sure, Osama bin Laden, if indeed Osama had anything to do with those planes smacking into the WTC and the Pentagon, would also say it was nothing personal, just a natural if knee-jerk reaction to decades of the United States propping up Saudi, Iranian, Egyptian, and Jordanian dictators and monarchs -- and let's not forget Reagan and Poppy Bush's friendly relationship with Saddam Hussein -- and supporting Zionist settlers, to the tune of billions of dollars over the years, who seem to actually like murdering Palestinian school children. Nothing personal, just a strike against the institutions and military-industrial-banking infrastructure that not only makes such possible, but profits plentifully from it as well.
For Roger Ailes and the Fox pundits, in fact for much of the corporate media, this sort of reasoning does not compute. It's heretical, evil, and demonstrates outright hatred for America. According to Bush and Fox, Osama came out of nowhere -- no mention he was essentially a creation of the CIA -- and is motivated entirely by an irrational hatred for America of the sort shared by Ward Churchill. For history began on September 12, 2001, and all that came after -- the invasions, the mass murder, the violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions, Bush's torture and rape gulag, the occupations and stage-managed elections -- all of it is a noble and moral response to Islamic evil.
History, as Henry Ford averred, is bunk.
It will go on like this until the machine breaks down and the American people are forced to squarely face reality -- for, as Ward Churchill tells us, the American empire is built on the corpses of incalculable victims over the span of several hundred years.
9/11, by way of comparison, is essentially an exercise in minor league murder and mayhem, the clumsy stuff of amateurs.
No doubt tomorrow will be another Ward Churchill day.
As I make my rounds, I will invariably, as a news junkie looking for his fix, hit that radio button once again. Since tomorrow is Saturday, the morning radio here in southern New Mexico will be filled with the malevolent shrieking Michael "Savage" Weiner, who will no doubt call for Ward Churchill to be roasted alive.
As all of us co-existing together in this nation travel down our collectively shared lunatic path, headed ultimately for disaster, it appears, in lieu of actual roasting, the Ward Churchills of academe will eventually share the fate of Sami al-Arian, as mandated by the Patriot Act.
Having accomplished that mission, dear reader, the incipient brownshirts may come for you.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at http://www.kurtnimmo.com/ .
Let the talk radio idiots say anything they want!
why? because it's entertainment?
If nobody from the left listened or called, I dont think micheal would
have as big of an audience to make fun of and hang up on.
So next time you here someone who makes you mad just change the
station.
why? because it's entertainment?
If nobody from the left listened or called, I dont think micheal would
have as big of an audience to make fun of and hang up on.
So next time you here someone who makes you mad just change the
station.
Well stated. I wish the American masses could open their minds and receive the clarity of this message. It's so simple. It's the Golden Rule actually..., "treat others as you would have them treat you (add to this... and your children, your family and etc.)."
It's amazing to me what people will do in the name of God and country. I guess some people must picture God as a parent that has preferences among his children, and is delighted when his preferred children kill and hurt their brothers and sisters that aren't his preferred children. Surely anybody who is a parent knows that that can't be right.
But of course, the real message is, how can we as a people allow this to go on? Perhaps just as important, how do we stop it? Is there a leader among us who will show the way? Without more violence?
It's amazing to me what people will do in the name of God and country. I guess some people must picture God as a parent that has preferences among his children, and is delighted when his preferred children kill and hurt their brothers and sisters that aren't his preferred children. Surely anybody who is a parent knows that that can't be right.
But of course, the real message is, how can we as a people allow this to go on? Perhaps just as important, how do we stop it? Is there a leader among us who will show the way? Without more violence?
For more information:
http://sorryeverybody.com/
What scares me so badly is that our government does not represent us...or that it does.
Well, Ward isn't all wrong. He's directly connected the 9/11 attacks to Iraq. Something we on the the left have tried and tried to deny and he will ultimately prove his point that outrageous acts will inevitably result in reciprocation.
His outrageous views will result in him making a career change, proving that what you put out into the world will blow back on you, just as he stated.
His outrageous views will result in him making a career change, proving that what you put out into the world will blow back on you, just as he stated.
Sigh. How depressing. How can Americans (and I include myself in this) be so gullible and believe what our media spoonfeeds us? Bush is killing civilians all around the world, not to mention our own soldiers dying, and for what? In the name of "freedom" and "liberty." Because in our great democracy, we let every have freedom...the freedom to have an opinion and speak their mind...to open the lines of communication . To engage in contraversial discussion, because, hey, that's what moves the world and makes progress. I'll bet those crazy radicals like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired contraversy in their time....I"m sure there were those that thought they should be silenced, fired, and charged. What a bunch of hypocrites we are. Hypocrites and stupid mindless sheep who believe whatever we're told. No reason to look further than our "objective media." No reason to have to go and read Ward's original article. I am so disgusted!
To Ward and his shameful supporters:
Ward Churchill is nothing more than a circus clown for whom people have shown up in droves to witness the spectacle that he is. He's like most liberals who love to vilify people in business or who own a business. As if there is something inherently evil about that. Anyone who takes a job in menial labor is absent of wrong-doing, according to him. That's essentially this numskull’s message. Never mind that people in business create an economy for which people can aspire to a better life. You would have us forget that entrepreneurs ease human suffering and help advance society. Do not the American military add value to many lives that would otherwise not take place?
He's a communist in search of a Utopian society in which there are no winners, just losers. He thinks he's better than the rest of us because he's a professor; an intellect of sorts.
He screams, rants and has a few good crowd-pleasing lines in his speech. I have a question for him. If your theory is substantive, then are YOU not contributing to the nurturing of "little Eichmans" ( that is, the students at the U of Colorado) by teaching them courses which will then lead to graduation which will lead to MBA's which then leads to employment in finance and banking which leads to mindless-robotic American Imperialism which leads to bombs which leads to dead children around the world? Are you not the very "cog in the wheel" that you disdain, loathe and vilify? Do you not take a salary in compensation for what you teach (apparently spew) in the same way an investment banker does? Do you not pay the tax man? In other words, is the color of your blood the same as those killed in the WTC or am I missing something?
You're a loser in every sense of the word. You're a blame-artist like all the rest of the "I'm a minority that got tread-on" fools that don't know how to pick up and move on. For God's sake man, can you not see that so many immigrants have come to this country to succeed (not speaking a word of English)-and have, while you think it's ok for your native American kin, who for generations wait for Uncle Sam to hand you a silver platter.
And what did you think when the Iraqi people went to vote for the first time in 50 years? Damn those Americans for creating an environment for liberty??!! How many dead Iraqis would there be had America not sent her military? Do you not know that under Saddam 1 million men lost their lives in the Iran-Iraq war? Are you aware that Saddam’s military raped Kuwait, it’s city and its women.
When the hell are you going to say something nice. Didn't your mother teach you a few proverbs to guide you in your thought process? Can you not see that millions of Afghans and Iraqis are living a better life, a life in which their destiny is now at their own hands rather than a tyrant or corrupt system? Is that not worth a few good words in your speech?
Like I said..you're a side show.
Ward Churchill is nothing more than a circus clown for whom people have shown up in droves to witness the spectacle that he is. He's like most liberals who love to vilify people in business or who own a business. As if there is something inherently evil about that. Anyone who takes a job in menial labor is absent of wrong-doing, according to him. That's essentially this numskull’s message. Never mind that people in business create an economy for which people can aspire to a better life. You would have us forget that entrepreneurs ease human suffering and help advance society. Do not the American military add value to many lives that would otherwise not take place?
He's a communist in search of a Utopian society in which there are no winners, just losers. He thinks he's better than the rest of us because he's a professor; an intellect of sorts.
He screams, rants and has a few good crowd-pleasing lines in his speech. I have a question for him. If your theory is substantive, then are YOU not contributing to the nurturing of "little Eichmans" ( that is, the students at the U of Colorado) by teaching them courses which will then lead to graduation which will lead to MBA's which then leads to employment in finance and banking which leads to mindless-robotic American Imperialism which leads to bombs which leads to dead children around the world? Are you not the very "cog in the wheel" that you disdain, loathe and vilify? Do you not take a salary in compensation for what you teach (apparently spew) in the same way an investment banker does? Do you not pay the tax man? In other words, is the color of your blood the same as those killed in the WTC or am I missing something?
You're a loser in every sense of the word. You're a blame-artist like all the rest of the "I'm a minority that got tread-on" fools that don't know how to pick up and move on. For God's sake man, can you not see that so many immigrants have come to this country to succeed (not speaking a word of English)-and have, while you think it's ok for your native American kin, who for generations wait for Uncle Sam to hand you a silver platter.
And what did you think when the Iraqi people went to vote for the first time in 50 years? Damn those Americans for creating an environment for liberty??!! How many dead Iraqis would there be had America not sent her military? Do you not know that under Saddam 1 million men lost their lives in the Iran-Iraq war? Are you aware that Saddam’s military raped Kuwait, it’s city and its women.
When the hell are you going to say something nice. Didn't your mother teach you a few proverbs to guide you in your thought process? Can you not see that millions of Afghans and Iraqis are living a better life, a life in which their destiny is now at their own hands rather than a tyrant or corrupt system? Is that not worth a few good words in your speech?
Like I said..you're a side show.
Hey dummy. Ward Churchill is not a communist. His first book "marxism and native americans" (or very similar title) is about how marxism is so BAD for indigenous groups around the world. He and his friend Russell Means supported the contras in Nicaragua for the reason that the communist sandinistas wanted the miskito indians to drop their ethnicity and claim to land and join the masses.
I'm sure you and your friend Ann Coulter would never even take the time to actually open that book or even read his latest essays to figure out that they are essentially a type of conservative who are very much into rule of law and property rights- which is the central theme of most of his books about law and about property.
I'm sure you and your friend Ann Coulter would never even take the time to actually open that book or even read his latest essays to figure out that they are essentially a type of conservative who are very much into rule of law and property rights- which is the central theme of most of his books about law and about property.
<<...communist sandinistas...>>
you mean the "communist sandinistas" who imposed IMF-austerity and subsidized absentee land-owners, cp?
i know--a minor point, but there's no reason to be sloppy.
in any case, thanks for reminding us that Churchill ain't *all that.*
you mean the "communist sandinistas" who imposed IMF-austerity and subsidized absentee land-owners, cp?
i know--a minor point, but there's no reason to be sloppy.
in any case, thanks for reminding us that Churchill ain't *all that.*
yes. I even though Churchill always criticizes the right wing, he was arguing with Richard of Labor's militant voice at AK Press who was saying Ward was alienating the working class, and he responded that Richard should try to get scottish people to support his ideas, with the criticism that some can be too single-mindedly economics focused and think that ethnicity, gender and local culture is insigificant. Russell means ran for governor or president as a libertarian but I think the party dumped him because they don't share his values. He was trying to reform the libertarians.
<<He was trying to reform the libertarians.>>
what, he wants Propertarian Party to support one penny for the poor instead of none?
what a clown.
what, he wants Propertarian Party to support one penny for the poor instead of none?
what a clown.
quote from -- Proud American
by Philip Sunday,
" You're a loser in every sense of the word. You're a blame-artist like all the rest of the "I'm a minority that got tread-on" fools that don't know how to pick up and move on. For God's sake man, can you not see that so many immigrants have come to this country to succeed (not speaking a word of English)-and have, while you think it's ok for your native American kin, who for generations wait for Uncle Sam to hand you a silver platter."
I dont really care about this Churchill fellow but I really dislike you buddy, So I'm gonna explain things for ya.
Lets see Native Americans arent waiting for "Uncle Sam" to hand us the Silver platter!!
We are waiting for FIRST PAYMENT for the CONTRACTS that UNCLE SAM signed agreeing to compensate the Native Americans for the Land WE let you BUY.
Nowadays if you dont pay the REPO company comes around and takes away all the stuff you couldnt pay for.
and Now you are getting mad at your creditors for trying to collect, well you should have paid your bill.
And where is all your statistics that Native Americans arent as sucessful as recent immigrants? Because I know alot of poeple who came from Africa, Iraq, Japan and China and they are in the exact same financial bracket as ME.
So Phillip quit your belly aching and I'll quit mine.
by Philip Sunday,
" You're a loser in every sense of the word. You're a blame-artist like all the rest of the "I'm a minority that got tread-on" fools that don't know how to pick up and move on. For God's sake man, can you not see that so many immigrants have come to this country to succeed (not speaking a word of English)-and have, while you think it's ok for your native American kin, who for generations wait for Uncle Sam to hand you a silver platter."
I dont really care about this Churchill fellow but I really dislike you buddy, So I'm gonna explain things for ya.
Lets see Native Americans arent waiting for "Uncle Sam" to hand us the Silver platter!!
We are waiting for FIRST PAYMENT for the CONTRACTS that UNCLE SAM signed agreeing to compensate the Native Americans for the Land WE let you BUY.
Nowadays if you dont pay the REPO company comes around and takes away all the stuff you couldnt pay for.
and Now you are getting mad at your creditors for trying to collect, well you should have paid your bill.
And where is all your statistics that Native Americans arent as sucessful as recent immigrants? Because I know alot of poeple who came from Africa, Iraq, Japan and China and they are in the exact same financial bracket as ME.
So Phillip quit your belly aching and I'll quit mine.
Ward Churchill and the Black Panthers
By Rocky Mountain News
Rocky Mountain News | February 23, 2005
It is safe to say no one in the Colorado news media has sought to defend the views of Ward Churchill. But several pundits have suggested that Churchill's most vociferous critics have played into his hands by turning an obscure academic into a national celebrity and thus granting him greater influence than he previously enjoyed.
There is some truth in this critique - the University of Colorado professor is undoubtedly better known today than he was a month ago - but also a crippling flaw: Churchill was not an obscure academic when the controversy over his praise for 9/11 erupted. As academics go, he was better known than most of his peers and probably more influential, too. Most academics do not fly off on a regular basis to paid speaking engagements at colleges across the land. Churchill did, precisely because his writings had already raised his profile.
As for intellectual influence, there is no doubt Churchill is a prominent voice in an echo chamber of far-left academics who have managed to define the popular attitude toward several issues. Churchill has written extensively on the Black Panthers, for example, pushing the common view that they were besieged and all but exterminated by a coordinated campaign emanating from the FBI.
That the FBI targeted, harassed and infiltrated the Black Panthers is not open to doubt. Then again, the agency would have been irresponsible not to be concerned about this group, whose celebrated public image of providing armed defense to the black community concealed vicious, systematic criminal activity - much of which its surviving leaders admitted in later years. In 1998, for example, Eldridge Cleaver told 60 Minutes, "If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the 1960s, there would have been a holocaust in this country." Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers, was a predator and drug addict who was eventually murdered in 1989 by a drug dealer.
Churchill is all but oblivious to the Panthers' criminal side. Instead, in an essay published in 2001 in an anthology titled Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party, he laments the "fallen warriors of the Black Panther Party" and urges others to take up their banner. The essay is a 40-page slog, but Churchill's casual commitment to truth is fully betrayed in a table on page 109 in which he lists "The Panther Dead: Police-Induced Fatalities, 1968-1971" - a description meant to convey the idea that 29 activists were murdered by police. In fact, the list includes numerous Panthers killed by relatives, colleagues and other armed militants, or who perished in clashes with police that they initiated. He includes the likes of Alex Rackley, tortured and murdered by fellow Panthers; George Jackson, killed in an attempted jailbreak from San Quentin; Frank Diggs, whose murder was never solved (as Churchill actually admits elsewhere in his text); and Bobby Hutton, shot trying to escape (witnesses agreed) after a 90-minute gun battle with police in Oakland.
As long ago as 1971, Edward Jay Epstein debunked claims of "a pattern of genocide" in a meticulous article in The New Yorker. Additional revelations since have rounded out our knowledge, including Cleaver's admission to journalist Kate Coleman in California Magazine in 1980 that he and other Panthers provoked the battle resulting in Hutton's death by ambushing a patrol car.
To be sure, some cases are ambiguous or subject to conflicting testimony and may well have involved official lies or misconduct (the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago certainly did), but Churchill is not interested in drawing such distinctions. He is first to last a propagandist masquerading as an academic. Which is why even if CU decides to leave him where he is, Coloradans deserve to know what kind of man haunts their flagship university's ethnic studies department.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Rocky Mountain News
Rocky Mountain News | February 23, 2005
It is safe to say no one in the Colorado news media has sought to defend the views of Ward Churchill. But several pundits have suggested that Churchill's most vociferous critics have played into his hands by turning an obscure academic into a national celebrity and thus granting him greater influence than he previously enjoyed.
There is some truth in this critique - the University of Colorado professor is undoubtedly better known today than he was a month ago - but also a crippling flaw: Churchill was not an obscure academic when the controversy over his praise for 9/11 erupted. As academics go, he was better known than most of his peers and probably more influential, too. Most academics do not fly off on a regular basis to paid speaking engagements at colleges across the land. Churchill did, precisely because his writings had already raised his profile.
As for intellectual influence, there is no doubt Churchill is a prominent voice in an echo chamber of far-left academics who have managed to define the popular attitude toward several issues. Churchill has written extensively on the Black Panthers, for example, pushing the common view that they were besieged and all but exterminated by a coordinated campaign emanating from the FBI.
That the FBI targeted, harassed and infiltrated the Black Panthers is not open to doubt. Then again, the agency would have been irresponsible not to be concerned about this group, whose celebrated public image of providing armed defense to the black community concealed vicious, systematic criminal activity - much of which its surviving leaders admitted in later years. In 1998, for example, Eldridge Cleaver told 60 Minutes, "If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the 1960s, there would have been a holocaust in this country." Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers, was a predator and drug addict who was eventually murdered in 1989 by a drug dealer.
Churchill is all but oblivious to the Panthers' criminal side. Instead, in an essay published in 2001 in an anthology titled Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party, he laments the "fallen warriors of the Black Panther Party" and urges others to take up their banner. The essay is a 40-page slog, but Churchill's casual commitment to truth is fully betrayed in a table on page 109 in which he lists "The Panther Dead: Police-Induced Fatalities, 1968-1971" - a description meant to convey the idea that 29 activists were murdered by police. In fact, the list includes numerous Panthers killed by relatives, colleagues and other armed militants, or who perished in clashes with police that they initiated. He includes the likes of Alex Rackley, tortured and murdered by fellow Panthers; George Jackson, killed in an attempted jailbreak from San Quentin; Frank Diggs, whose murder was never solved (as Churchill actually admits elsewhere in his text); and Bobby Hutton, shot trying to escape (witnesses agreed) after a 90-minute gun battle with police in Oakland.
As long ago as 1971, Edward Jay Epstein debunked claims of "a pattern of genocide" in a meticulous article in The New Yorker. Additional revelations since have rounded out our knowledge, including Cleaver's admission to journalist Kate Coleman in California Magazine in 1980 that he and other Panthers provoked the battle resulting in Hutton's death by ambushing a patrol car.
To be sure, some cases are ambiguous or subject to conflicting testimony and may well have involved official lies or misconduct (the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago certainly did), but Churchill is not interested in drawing such distinctions. He is first to last a propagandist masquerading as an academic. Which is why even if CU decides to leave him where he is, Coloradans deserve to know what kind of man haunts their flagship university's ethnic studies department.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . is ludicrous
[That the FBI targeted, harassed and infiltrated the Black Panthers is not open to doubt. Then again, the agency would have been irresponsible not to be concerned about this group, whose celebrated public image of providing armed defense to the black community concealed vicious, systematic criminal activity - much of which its surviving leaders admitted in later years. In 1998, for example, Eldridge Cleaver told 60 Minutes, "If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the 1960s, there would have been a holocaust in this country." Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers, was a predator and drug addict who was eventually murdered in 1989 by a drug dealer.
Churchill is all but oblivious to the Panthers' criminal side. Instead, in an essay published in 2001 in an anthology titled Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party, he laments the "fallen warriors of the Black Panther Party" and urges others to take up their banner. The essay is a 40-page slog, but Churchill's casual commitment to truth is fully betrayed in a table on page 109 in which he lists "The Panther Dead: Police-Induced Fatalities, 1968-1971" - a description meant to convey the idea that 29 activists were murdered by police. In fact, the list includes numerous Panthers killed by relatives, colleagues and other armed militants, or who perished in clashes with police that they initiated. He includes the likes of Alex Rackley, tortured and murdered by fellow Panthers; George Jackson, killed in an attempted jailbreak from San Quentin; Frank Diggs, whose murder was never solved (as Churchill actually admits elsewhere in his text); and Bobby Hutton, shot trying to escape (witnesses agreed) after a 90-minute gun battle with police in Oakland.]
one needs only to look at the FBI's lassitude in dealing with organized crime during the entire Hoover era, including this period
(Hoover frequently denied the existence of it)
and, of course, then there's the COINTELPRO operation itself
thus, the FBI had no concern with the street level crime in which the Panthers increasingly involved themselves
furthermore, the FBI was most active in regard to the Panthers during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when they were least involved in local criminal enterprises, such as drug dealing and prostitution
later, as the Panthers got more involved in these endeavors, the FBI took less and less interest in them, and even the chronology and exposition of these activites by Kate Coleman in her famous expose in New Times Magazine in 1978 is consistent with this fact
instead, the FBI had a great deal of interest in the political content of the Panthers' political agenda in mobilizing African Americans, just as they were very interested, and alarmed, at the emergence of any African Americans with strong leadership potential that were independent of white control, such as, in obvious instances, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
also, if one reads some of the recent works by Panthers, such as the books by David Hilliard and Elaine Brown, it is possible that the descent of some into criminal activity was partially caused by FBI surveillance and infiltration, as the FBI instigated paranoia amongst Panthers
in response, Panthers like Huey Newton became increasingly secretive and violent, and, although this was probably signficantly associated with his drug use as well, it appears evident, in retrospect, that such a transformation conformed to the pre-existing stereotypes about African Americans held by both the FBI and the Oakland Police Department, and thus, it was much more acceptable to them than the earlier political role performed by the Panthers
finally, as an aside, I find the criticism of Churchill about attributing deaths of Panthers to the police based upon incidents that the Panthers purportedly initiated humorous
while the criticism may well be true in this instance, does it not tend to suggest that the Iraqi resistance is not culpable for the deaths of any Americans or American supported contractors, because, after all, the US initiated this conflict by launching an armed, violent invasion of a country that presented no threat to it?
--Richard
[That the FBI targeted, harassed and infiltrated the Black Panthers is not open to doubt. Then again, the agency would have been irresponsible not to be concerned about this group, whose celebrated public image of providing armed defense to the black community concealed vicious, systematic criminal activity - much of which its surviving leaders admitted in later years. In 1998, for example, Eldridge Cleaver told 60 Minutes, "If people had listened to Huey Newton and me in the 1960s, there would have been a holocaust in this country." Newton, a founder of the Black Panthers, was a predator and drug addict who was eventually murdered in 1989 by a drug dealer.
Churchill is all but oblivious to the Panthers' criminal side. Instead, in an essay published in 2001 in an anthology titled Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party, he laments the "fallen warriors of the Black Panther Party" and urges others to take up their banner. The essay is a 40-page slog, but Churchill's casual commitment to truth is fully betrayed in a table on page 109 in which he lists "The Panther Dead: Police-Induced Fatalities, 1968-1971" - a description meant to convey the idea that 29 activists were murdered by police. In fact, the list includes numerous Panthers killed by relatives, colleagues and other armed militants, or who perished in clashes with police that they initiated. He includes the likes of Alex Rackley, tortured and murdered by fellow Panthers; George Jackson, killed in an attempted jailbreak from San Quentin; Frank Diggs, whose murder was never solved (as Churchill actually admits elsewhere in his text); and Bobby Hutton, shot trying to escape (witnesses agreed) after a 90-minute gun battle with police in Oakland.]
one needs only to look at the FBI's lassitude in dealing with organized crime during the entire Hoover era, including this period
(Hoover frequently denied the existence of it)
and, of course, then there's the COINTELPRO operation itself
thus, the FBI had no concern with the street level crime in which the Panthers increasingly involved themselves
furthermore, the FBI was most active in regard to the Panthers during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when they were least involved in local criminal enterprises, such as drug dealing and prostitution
later, as the Panthers got more involved in these endeavors, the FBI took less and less interest in them, and even the chronology and exposition of these activites by Kate Coleman in her famous expose in New Times Magazine in 1978 is consistent with this fact
instead, the FBI had a great deal of interest in the political content of the Panthers' political agenda in mobilizing African Americans, just as they were very interested, and alarmed, at the emergence of any African Americans with strong leadership potential that were independent of white control, such as, in obvious instances, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
also, if one reads some of the recent works by Panthers, such as the books by David Hilliard and Elaine Brown, it is possible that the descent of some into criminal activity was partially caused by FBI surveillance and infiltration, as the FBI instigated paranoia amongst Panthers
in response, Panthers like Huey Newton became increasingly secretive and violent, and, although this was probably signficantly associated with his drug use as well, it appears evident, in retrospect, that such a transformation conformed to the pre-existing stereotypes about African Americans held by both the FBI and the Oakland Police Department, and thus, it was much more acceptable to them than the earlier political role performed by the Panthers
finally, as an aside, I find the criticism of Churchill about attributing deaths of Panthers to the police based upon incidents that the Panthers purportedly initiated humorous
while the criticism may well be true in this instance, does it not tend to suggest that the Iraqi resistance is not culpable for the deaths of any Americans or American supported contractors, because, after all, the US initiated this conflict by launching an armed, violent invasion of a country that presented no threat to it?
--Richard
When I first read Chruchill's paper, I ascertained two things. First there was a number of cause and effect assertions, that, frankly, I would have to agree with to some extent.
Secondly, there was the overall tone of the message, which, to me, seemed to be imbued with extreme loathing for Americans. The way he writes the names of the yuppies children in double quotes ("Ashley", etc.) gives me the impression he wished those kids also got killed as well.
I think he could have pointed out that Americans consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources without resorting to the style of writing he used. Instead, he chose to write in a provocative style that, in my opinion, had no hope of convincing anyone except people who
already are in such a rabid state. I see this kind of writing from the far right as well. It's all the same to me -- just hate speach.
Secondly, there was the overall tone of the message, which, to me, seemed to be imbued with extreme loathing for Americans. The way he writes the names of the yuppies children in double quotes ("Ashley", etc.) gives me the impression he wished those kids also got killed as well.
I think he could have pointed out that Americans consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources without resorting to the style of writing he used. Instead, he chose to write in a provocative style that, in my opinion, had no hope of convincing anyone except people who
already are in such a rabid state. I see this kind of writing from the far right as well. It's all the same to me -- just hate speach.
For more information:
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/ch...
You know, sometimes you have to incite some anger and arouse emotions to get apathetic people to get involved. We're either too lazy or too caught up in daily life to get concerned about these "theoretical" issues. But I am finding it really scary that in a society that touts "democracy" and "freedom" so regularly with everything going on, that this guy is facing being fired for speaking his mind. Whether you love him or hate him, doesn't he have the right to express his view? Why can't I make up my own mind about whether I think his points are credible or not?
His people were the original inhabitants in "America". If he hates anybody, it's the people who organized themselves into the United States,and genocided most of the natives, leaving only a remant left. I'd hate the people who did that to my people or who benefit from what happened. If he doesn't hate "Americans", he should be put up for sainthood.
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