Ward Churchill isn't a "liberal" or a "progressive" or a "lefty" he's scum

This clown shouldn't be defended as if he's "one of us" or as if the garbage he spews about 9/11 is anything but classic NAZI slop.

We already know his philosophy of the WTC victims is an exact carbon copy of Hitler's views about Jews and other groups he hated. Looks like that's not all Churchill ripped off:

http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_055200531.html

happens to spout his nonsense from the direction of the political left.

no wonder this country's people are so misled.

yeah, and they attacked us for our freedom, belch :crazy:

Thank GORE he 'invented' the INTERNETs so we can actually hold open non-censored debates on the issues that are censored daily by the M$MW, even though many, even in the Dem camp, would rather bury their 'innocent' collective heads in the sand.

psst... pass the word :evilgrin:

peace

Sorry, but just because I don't agree with the man or his stances doesn't mean he can't have a right to hold such beliefs.

:shrug:

who mentions arresting him in any way. Walt said he doesn't believe in suppressing free speech. There are things besides arrests that suppress free speech.

I disagree 100% with some of his statements on 9-11. I do not admire how he has handled the situation. I think his belief system is far closer to Marxism than Traditional Indian thought.

But I want people like him, be they on the left or right, conservative or liberal, to be teaching, so long as they do not grade students according to political beliefs. It is a good thing to expose young adults to radicals and extremists that challenge them to think.

What Ward Churchill said was that according to the United States' military's own rules of military engagement, if the World Trade Center were in an enemy nation that the United States was attacking it would be a legitimate target. This is recent. Last week. Not that he personally felt the death of the people at the World Trade Center, which housed offices of the CIA, FBI, etc. was warranted, but that he does not feel that the death of similar people, with similar relationships to targets selected in Iraq by the United States military is warranted either. Therefore, it is his contention that the United States military cannot have it both ways and that an Iraqi human life is equal to an American human life in his opinion.

Your post makes no sense to me. I cannot recall anyone saying Hitler can't believe whatever he wants to believe. Nor does anyone think Churchill can't believe whatever the hell he wants to believe.

A university can have standards against hatespewing, advocating violence, acting in a non-scholarly way, etc. But no one says Churchill isn't entitled tohold his beliefs.

If you can only hold a job based upon the mainstream nature of your beliefs, there is n freedom of speech or thought.

You are entitltled to freedom of speech, but you are not entitled to the microphone.

freedom of speech so long as your not actually dumb enough to
say anything.

to write the article. Hence your point lacks merit.

Obediently positioning yourself in a place dutifully restricted to a narrow part of the political spectrum?

were to post anything out of line here in DU, Skinner or the other mods would zap us immediately. Where then is our free speech? We are free to say something here once.

By the same token, you can write all of the LTTE that your heart desires. No one will read them unless the owners of the newspaper decides that your letter (speech) desrves (by their standards) to be printed. Nothing in your constitutional right to freedom of speech requires them to print your LTTE.

Try advancing the idea that the Holocaust was a fiction at one of our universities. That would be considered hate speech and you would be expelled.

to the cannon at our universities.

He fully recognizes the Nazi Holocaust and points out
that the genocide who's mass graves are under the
land where you live is denied to this day.

Try not denying the truth of the USA's genocidal
history and see how quick they want to grab your mic
here in the land of the free and home of the brave.

That the areas now governed by the political entities USA and Canada were once occupied by many differing tribes (nations to be PC) of Amerindians and that European invaders took control of these lands by means of military force. The same could be said of Australia, though the displaced were aboriginal peoples were different.

If you read history, you will also see that the aboriginal peoples of the British isles were displaced/.exterminated by the Celtic invaders. The Celts were then driven out of the England portion of Great Britain by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who also established political domination over the remaining Celtic-populated areas. For some good reads, try Farley Mowat's "The Farfarers" and "Peter Bersford Ellis "Celt and Saxon".

You could also argue semantically that the massive population decline and the dispossesion of Amerindians from their lands does not fall under the umbrella of a "geneocide" per se.

You can certainly say all of these things that to your heart's content and no one will take away your microphone.

Churchill has a right to his belief, and we have a right to say we find his views repugnant.

There seems to be an idea afoot that people can say the most outrageous, hateful things (which, for the most part they can) but objecting to those hateful things somehow constitutes censorship. I'm not in favor of firing him, but I am in favor of lots of people yelling, "That's a bunch of crap!" That's protected speech, too.

And yes, I feel exactly the same way about the President of Harvard and his sexist views.

this is a point many miss, that an individual has a legal right to say whatever, but the community also has a right to say what it thinks in response.

Free speech is about allowing people to regulate themselves.

If an individual says something the community deems to be offensive, the individual is going to have to deal with the social backlash.

I found some of what he said offensive, and think it is good to confront stupidity, no matter if it comes from the left or right.

My only problem is firing the man.

He's got a whacked out viewpoint, no doubt about it, but he's entitled to be as whacked out in his viewpoint as he wants. I don;t have to like him and I certainly would not socialize with him, but he published a opinion and now folks want his head on a stick, or at least his job.

You have a right to say you find his views repugnant. Not a single person on any of the churchill threads I have read has ever said you cant say that. that is a strawman, so please wipe the idea from your head.

Firing people for speaking is not protected speech, what kind of backwards idea is that? It is very obviously stifiling speach.

Just because our economy features fellow citizens in positions of control over my employment, doesnt give them the right to punish me for speaking. That is such a blatently obvious violation of free speech it astounds me that so few people see it.

Citizens cannot punish other citizens for speaking. They can, as you pointed out, critisize them freely. Arguing that employers can fire dissident voices is just an end run around the constitution. Using the privitized economy as a way to bypass the law, the exact same way corporations use the privitized economy as an excuse to exploit people's liberty for profit.

We just think he's a scumbag for having them.

that isnt the issue. the issue is whether you allow a right wing witchunt because it is easy to not defend someone you dont like.

And to the point, he didnt say what you think he said.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

.

See ya' :hi:

I am LOVIN' the thread disappearing option.

I understand that freedom of speech may help him save a lacklaster career in academia. Now if they fire him for his performance they will be attacked for caving in. It is one way to get tenure I guess.

This guy needs to be fired and thoroughly humiliated.

My wife does paintings of photographic images and postcards all the time. Plenty of people do it.

This is really getting pathetic.

You must get permission, and that usually means licenses/royalties.

clueless.

otherwise the law says it's fair use. hell, you can even take a photo of someone else's photo and call it art. there's a guy in the whitney who's done that

Fire him now. We must save our freedoms.

:crazy:

quick! send a tip to drudge!

i can't believe that you people are falling for this shit. this is exactly what they want-an excuse to chip away at tewnure and make universities into yet another bastion of play-it-safe thinking.

if churchill is fired, the flood gates are opened for every leftist to be attacked by rw pressure groups. horowitz has already drawn up a so-called "academic bill of rights" for just this purpose

If it's for her own use, it's fair use.

If she makes a 100 copies and sells them at $100 each (and this was 24 years ago) ... copyright violation.

This has become one of those issues where people have this need, like it's mandated by god himself, to say "Ooooh! Ward Churchill!! What he said was disgusting!"... Well, if you read everything that he said in that speech, you'll understand that all he is really talking about is that we must incoroporate the United States into the equation when we analyze how and why the Middle East got violent. But he said that one little stupid "Eichman" soundbite, and wham! -- the Republican soundbite supa-sniping machine pickes it up and uses it to spin it into yet another story about how Liberals hate America. I don't know why he chose the bad phrase, maybe it was his clumsy attempt at sounding passionate and controversial, but my point is who fucking cares? He's a damn professor with no political power whatsoever and all he did was utter a stupid 5-second soundbyte that they can use to further discredit the idea that the US may not be the perfect saint in this affair and equate it to hatred for America. And to discredit liberals in general. And here we are, jumping into their stupid soundbyte game, obliged to parrot "Oooh! Ward Churchil!!! Oh my!", you know? Fuck that game.

:thumbsup:

it's my pet peave

even really bad ideas, especially in of all places academia. The whole concept of rational thought is that divergent views are put forward and pondered with the hope that the better idea wins the day. This clown (if that is what he is, I don't know) should be defended as much as anyone who is punished for holding an unpopular position.

if that helps you to understand what this is all about.

If it doesn't: People in a democracy have a responsibility for things done in their name, to benefit them. That includes the repression and poverty of millions of people living under feudal oligarchies kept in power so that we can have cheap fuel.

Americans congenitally refuse to understand this responsibility and always have. In that context a strident metaphor is not only acceptable in my book, but probably necessary. I see the anger at Churchill as emotionally defiant refusal to look at what he is trying to get across. It's just so much easier to wallow in misrepresented anger that 'he thinks busboys are Nazis and deserved to die in the WTC' than it is to address what we don't even want to think about.

I guarantee you that Ward Churchill cares more about the people incurring the blowback from American imperialism than anybody in America except those who've suffered personal losses. Especially more than the ones who have used the trauma of 9/11 to further their own personal agendas.

Or maybe he thinks that the busboys were wearing swastica armbands. Yes, that's what he thinks. He's evil. There, now I feel better. Just like a winger feels better with his shallow, deamagogic me-first-last-and-always view of the world.

What I have found is that people who have not read the complete piece are the ones up in arms. Sometimes people should read it 2-3 times, until they are sure they fully comprehend what he is saying. A dictionary is also helpful, he uses words in unique ways.

Ward Churchill said,

Quote: " 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, they 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. Unquote:

I went and read Churchill's, " Κ"Some People Push Back"
On the Justice of Roosting ChickensΚ", and found nothing offensive.

http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html

His reference with regard to, " Little Eichmanns " was perhaps a hasty description - but nonetheless synonymous with his perceptions of loyal workers of capitalism naively contributing to the suffering and deaths of 500,000 children under 12 years old, and unknown thousands of - Iraqi civilians.

Eichmann was responsible for the planning, organisation, and efficiency of concentration camps -- which led to the deaths of some 6 or so million people.
Churchill merely describes those workers at the WTCs as being an integral part of a much larger machine that was indirectly responsible for exacting genocide on a nation of innocent people based on nothing more than selfishness and greed.

Nowhere has Churchill made reference to Nazism - this was done conveniently by others with the sole intention of discrediting him .... for attempting to open up closed minds.
In some cases it seems he failed miserably.

Those who think he is "scum" (as the original poster so eloquently put it) or think that he is happy that people died on 9/11 are wrong and have bought into the RW story. Go read his stuff, listen to him speak (I saw him on C-Span, very impressive, I must say), and you will actually be able to determine what he is expressing.

Churchill is saying that many people who died on 9/11 contributed to the system which, in part, caused their deaths.

Well said, omulcol.

Manic Expression ! :toast:

That Churchill didn't call the WTC victims Nazis, but only people whose job is to effeciently plan and carry out a genocide?

These pople didn't plan concentration camps. They didn't give orders to round anyone up. They didn't give the command to kill. They didn't dedicate land and trains and manpower to the task.

They traded commodities. They bought and sold CORN. They bought and sold shares of the very companies Ward uses every day without any apparent feelings of guilt.

Churchill dehumanizes them by turning them into nothing more than cogs in a capitalist machine, which apparently has no purpose than committing crimes. He actually ADOPTS the concept of collateral damage for those busboys and janitors who gets killed with them. He turns us all into war criminals who deserve death or the people who are going to be killed in the process. There are no civilians, no innocents, nobody behind the front lines, nobody whose death is to be regretted. No war criminal could justify himself better than Churchill justified Osama.

Churchill eloquently describes why he believes the WTCs were destroyed - and satisfied you fail to understand his interpretation.

He doesn't mention Nazism, and admits his reference to " Little Eichmanns " did NOT refer to those people involved in non-administrative jobs within the WTCs.
He doesn't mention concentration camps, or insinuate anyone planned genocide. You include these words to highlight your failure to comprehend the most basic comparisons.

We know what the workers were, and still are, involved in .... and Churchill does not exempt himself from society either.

For me his definition is adequate , comparable and acceptable.

There is no difference between Iraqi, Palestinian, Israeli , World Trade Centre, or Afghanistani civilian deaths. All are victims - and all guilty of indirect terrorism. Why ? Not because they have guns - but because no-one tries to stop it !

We cannot justifiably call murdered Iraqi's, " Collateral Damage", and our own, " Innocent Victims of Terrorism". They are one of the same. Fallujah was Iraq's WTC don't you see that ?

If we in the Western World care more about the cost of a DVD than the deaths of 500,000 children then expect someone , somewhere, to do something to shake you back to reality.
This is evident in your post. Not a single mention of suffering anywhere other than the WTCs .... and that my friend is EXACTLY what Ward Churchill is trying to impress upon our shallow minds.

Why has no-one managed to achieve a total cessation of civilian deaths ANYWHERE on this planet ?
Why has no-one refused to work for, or supply materials to, ALL companies involved and interconnected with - the worldwide manufacture of weapons ?

Who in this world has done a single thing to actually STOP this madness of unnecessary conflicts ?

The answer is evident - and we are ALL guilty of the same crime, all over the world - because we just let murder continue unabated every day of our lives - watching the misery unfold very, very briefly from the comfort of our warm cosy homes - with surround sound Tvs bought cheaply via a credit card ... from the internet. How quickly sports news and weather updates replace that brief encounter of reality ! "Supper's ready sweetheart " !
" Ok Honey - just getting the football results "
What just happened to those kids in Iraq burned to death from napalm ? They were replaced by something more important .... Sports News .

If anything Ward Churchill needs commending. His article written three years ago is still very, very fresh and significant , whilst we as thinking humans continue to regress into a comatose brainwashed greedy selfish society consenting by inertia and complacency the horrors of death ,destruction and genocide of innocent , starving, deprived people around the globe.

Stopping the madmen using our sons - stopping the decisions made against our wishes - stopping the flow of taxes entering the war machine ...... is a start !
But, " Suppers ready Sweetheart " !

from Iraqi civilians to American civilians. If they are one in the same, then how did the WTC victims become little Eichmanns "receiving a penalty befitting their participation?" I guess I don't understand why I should be bringing up Afghanis and Iraqis here--I do it in other threads constantly, but nobody in this is saying that THOSE civilian deaths are deserved penalities.

I do state that Churchill's opinions are the same as war criminals everywhere. To all war criminals, there are no civilians, as such. All are potential assets, and all legitimate targets if eliminating them hobbles the enemy.

The "we are all guilty" runs a little thin when one of us announces that some got a deserved penalty of an awful death while he goes off on a lecture tour.

I have determined that Churchills' appeal is the hope that he has thrown off a parochial Americanism for a more moral view where all lives are equal. But instead, he only as a parochial AntiAmerican view, where American deaths are justified as the enemy. It is a surprise only in the switch from heritage, as when the Englishman converted to radicatl Islam and became a shoe bomber. Other than that, Osama says it.

You are believing the conservative strawman. He was writing in response to those people who responded to 9/11 as if the US was an entirely innocent victim. That is why it is so harsh, but in the end, his point is not that they deserved it, but simply that the US has no moral superiority, and if we want to know why our security has been so disturbed we should be looking at our past actions as a nation.

He said the "little Eichmanns" got a penalty befitting THEIR PARTICIPATION.

He put the guilt right on them, and justified their deaths.

I don't believe anyone or anthing is "entirely innocent". But I don't go around assessing which nation is more deserving and throwing out death penalties for civilians for their "indirect" part in it. Osama kills American civilians. The US gov kills Iraqi civilians. I take the Civilian's side. Churchill takes Osama against American civilians, which is only interesting in that he is evil against type.

I have read the piece in question, I have read interviews he has done. At no point in those did he ever say that he supported the terrorists or thought that 9/11 was morally right. That is a complete fabrication and I think you should step back and evaluate why you so easily fell for the lies.

"True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire – the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly....... If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it."

Civilians "of a sort". And the WTC attack is "visiting some penalty befitting their participation"--and he can't think of a better one, or in fact, any other way to vistit some penalty befitting their participation.

Of course, if Ward simply misspoke and said things that made him sound like a war criminal supporting the deaths of the little Eichmanns at the WTC, I am sure you can find a quote saying something like, oh, "it was wrong". Good luck. Because I think he meant exactly what he said.

He was looking at it from the terrorists point of view. That is part of a larger argument basically showing that the terrorists acted no more unethically than our own pentagon.

He is saying that the terrorists chose to attack in the way that they did because the targets reflected the people that they saw as hurting them, that hitting the white house, pentagon, and world trade center wasnt just a randomly chosen list. They hit a symbol of our economy because they see those people as guilty.

Not every idea discussed in someones work is held by them personally.

Nothing says he was only telling us what the TERRORISTS thought. Ward is justifying a terrorist act of murder, not relating somebody else's warped thought processes.

I really admire your dedication to truth.



Besides the crayon, Viva_La_Revolution made a very good suggestion in post 200. You might want to link to a dictionary just in case the problem is too many big words used in too precise of a way ;)

if you really want to be so silly as to say Churchill was only voicing someone else's opinion.

Amazing how quickly you folk dropped the courage of that conviction to pretend he was talking about that OTHER guy's opinion. LOL!

Liberals? Democrats? Progressives?

No one's trying to shut you up- just pointing out how foolish you sound and that your argument is meritless. In more common words, you don't have a leg to stand on.

What leads you to think Churchill is only speaking of someone else's completely amoral position, rather than voicing his own opinino?

Maybe some of the guff you spread around is just someone else's opinion and not yours. Who knows, with all the dodging and weaving over the issue of Ward's statments that the WTC attacks were justified.

I have better fish to fry- the nation I love is in distress so please forgive me for not wasting time going round and round the obtuse merry-go-round ;)

The dug up an article three years old and now some painting to discredit a professor with views that are Truth to Power. That is great for the RW because they have been trying to nueter universities for years. How many professors will be speaking against the Bush Junta now?

I hope CU does fire Churchill, because only when he sues--and it won't be easy, given their army of lawyers--will the matter of academic freedom be addressed. At least Churchill has attained national reputation and might be able to retain decent representation. Without that, he'd be screwed. I know that university and I'm not blind as to what is really going on in this case.

CHURCHILL IS A POLITICAL TARGET, period. There's been a lot of wrangling in Colorado between right wing politics and higher education; this is only the latest dramatic installment.

Ward Churchill never claimed to be an Indian. And he whipped off an essay in about four hours that he never should have put online. But this piling on is really ridiculous; it is happening by people who have not read his essay, who know nothing of his background, and who have never heard him speak.

So those of you who want to kill academic freedom and chill classrooms across this country: go ahead, keep bashing a man you know little or nothing about. Be my guest! But know that it is you who will contribute toward ignorance in the classroom just as much as any David Horowitz or College Republican on any campus across the U S of A.

Are you saying that in the sense that he never said that he was a full-blooded Indian? In that case of course your right, but he has always claimed Indian heritage and that was a part of his application to the Head of the Ethnic Studies Department.


edited becawz my spelchek waz brokn.

that's where this is all leading, you know

did I say anything about opposing academic freedom for Ward Churchill or anyone else? I simply expressing my view in that I agree with the premise of the opening post that he's a slug; a lying, cheating, self-aggrandizing, publicity mongering little punk who doesn't deserve a defense of his cruel and uncaring remarks. I just don't see this as having anything to do with academic freedom. None of the controversy is about what he teaches in his classes, it's about controversial, no doubt intentionally controversial, opinions he's expressed publicly, and I don't even think that he should be forced out of the U of Colorado over that. I do, however, think that they would be entirely justified in firing him for misrepresenting his heritage and the newly revealed plagiarism of artwork. Those, in my opinion, would be grounds for termination of an academic in any event and those are cans of worms that only got opened because he chose to say such hurtful and polemic remarks publicly.

So, is what you're saying that Ward Churchill had a right to hold and express his opinions but I don't an equal right to mine?

I can't believe that bastard Churchill wrote this! "Interventionism is the problem. America's huge footprint on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia led straight to 9/11. The terrorists were over here because we were over there. Terrorism is the price of empire. If you do not wish to pay the price, you must give up the empire." ("Where the Right Went Wrong"; page 34) What is truly upsetting is that quote comes from Patrick Buchanan. However, it serves our national purposes more to identify one boogeyman such as Ward. I blame him for the high price of gas, and the quality of movies coming out of Hollywood, too.

The right wing says jump and too many say "how high".

Just like that scene in "Lords of Discipline" where they run that kid out of school for borrowing his friend's car...

500,000 dead Iraqi children? Yeah but we think the price is worth it. :sarcasm:

LMAO. "Classic Nazi slop indeed"; "carbon copy of Hitler's views about Jews and other groups he hated" indeed.

Churchill spent a lifetime educating people about THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT genocide of the modern age- the genocide of AN ENTIRE PEOPLE, MILLIONS OF NATIVE AMERICANS that inhabited this land before being slaughtered so that Europeans Conquistadors could appropriate YET ANOTHER COUNTRY, AN ENTIRE CONTINENT FROM THE VERY NORTH TO THE VERY SOUTH, AS THEIR LEBENSRAUM and :puke: some would try to brand HIM as a Nazi. It is no wonder the meaning of little Eichmanns just doesn't sink in when there's an entire genocide to ignore and revise so that Amurkins can happily celebrate Columbus Day. The stench of the hypocrisy from a total unwillingness to examine things and face up to our moral failings is nauseating.

Ward Churchill may not be one of you but he's definitely one of me. Maybe it's because neither Churchill nor I have been proud to be Amurkins for a long assed time. Bush is just the final nail in the coffin and the MAIN reason so many so-called Democrats these days hate Bush is because he's the rawest form of what America has always been about and won't even bother to hide it to protect the delicate sensibilities of those who just want to reap the profits of the empire while imagining their hands are lily-white. Churchill got it right.

America owes a debt it can NEVER EVER repay to the American Indians from whom this country was stolen and to the Black Americans who provided over 300 years of free labor.

That Ward Churchill is so annoying for not playing ball and pointing out the TOTAL incongruity of that lame-assed "They hate us for our freedom".

Yep.

"When some says jump, i say down who's troat?"

:thumbsup:

I am absolutely sickened and disgusted at how quickly and gleefully some DUers jump on the "Ward Churchill BAD" bandwagon -- just sucking up the "conventional wisdom" without a thought.

Here's a well-stated defense of Churchill from a columnist writing in Indian Country Today: http://indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410377

<excerpt>

Published no later than Sept. 12, 2001, Churchill's essay made the simple argument that, as he later summarized, ''If U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.'' His point of departure was the 500,000 Iraqi children who died as a result of our 1991 bombing of water and sewage facilities. Churchill quoted former Secretary of State Madeline Albright shamefully remarking on ''Meet the Press'' that the death of those children was ''worth the cost'' of achieving U.S. interests.

<snip>

The essay most certainly contradicts the official party line on 9/11 (''You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists''), but most people on the planet find that orthodoxy repellent. I think that's the real reason people are now howling for Churchill's head: he committed the cardinal sin of asking Americans to consider the facts and think for themselves, when what we are supposed to be doing is worship at the altar of American exceptionalism. Well, that and the fact that few have ever read the essay. That's unfortunate.

Remember that question everyone was asking after the 9/11 attacks: ''Why do they hate us?'' That was such an important question, but it was buried as quickly as it emerged. Churchill's essay was one of the few public attempts to answer it. He tried to start a national discussion about anti-Americanism; and while his tone might be abrasive, the answers he offered were (as always with his work) well-supported and reasonable: Americans are hated not because of some vague notion of their ''freedom,'' but for the specific reason that the United States is engaged in truly despicable practices abroad. Alongside those already mentioned, we can now add the return of such medieval practices as detainment without charge, ''trial'' without attorneys, and worst of all, torture.

Ultimately, Churchill's point was to wake Americans up to the impending Israelification of this country: the making of an absolute security state defined by perpetual cycles of militarism, attack and response. Do you want to live in a country like that? It doesn't have to be that way, but the United States is hurting the planet and its peoples.

This piece also addresses the issue of Churchill's "Indian-ness" in an even-handed and logic-based manner. I hope some of the people on this thread will take the time to read this.

Furthermore, I've known about Ward Churchill for many years, from the very important work he did on exposing CONITELPRO. I haven't seen ANYONE bring that up -- either here or in the blogosphere.

Well, take a look kids: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0896083594/ref=ase_jordansdillA/002-7457215-5168811?v=glance&s=books and then think about how "coincidental" it is that in this day in age of the PATRIOT ACT, Homeland Security and Choicepoint, one of the main revelators of the FBI's domestic covert actions in the 60's and 70's has been singled out for attack over an article that was written over 3 years ago.

Think about it...

sw

Because Ward thinks that the proper punishment for Americans is death. Ward says that the WTC victims deserved what they got.

I don't mind pointing out what America does, or the debt America owes its fellow Americans. But to cheer on the deaths of individuals as the perfect retribution for their individual cupability is simply amoral.

He hasn't killed himself, has he?

This is so fucking ridiculous. Now we're all fucking experts on Ward Churchill's ideology. Where does he say that? On O'Reilly?

Apparently, he, unlike all the other Americans, isn't culpable.

My guess is that unlike Americans who work in the economy and thereby support the evil society, he, as professor of anthropology living off tax dollars, is a net negative to American power.

But someone trading commodities or stocks--a fiery death is what they deserve.

...who support that evil society in the way that he defined?

Churchill, despite his attempt to hide behind academia, shows only the sloppiest of thinking combined with inflammatory rhetoric.

Does he think he himself deserves to die? or his Family? Or friends? Who the fuck knows or cares? Does it make him a better man that he would make exceptions for them, that he only wants his concept of justice to be visited on strangers? Or does it make him a ridiculous hypocrite as well?

You tell me.

without one sliver of a reference or quote.

Cut the bold talk or come up with valid references.

How would appreciate someone making such accusations about you are blanketly accusing this man of, which is essentially telling his truth.

Churchill on how the WTC deaths were not only a fitting penalty, but the best one he could imagine. Thought everyone had seen it.

"Well, really. Let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. ...... If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it."


http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0204-32.htm

So, this writer to whom you've linked has taken one paragraph out of context, and proceeds to condemn it. IN context, Churchill's piece refers to the logic of warfare as practiced by the U.S., and proceeds to apply that same logic to the attack on 9/11 -- that is, what makes for a legitimate military target, even though there may be collateral damage.

So here's some more excerpts from Churchill's essay to provide context:



And here's Churchill's recent response to the current attacks on him:



And, finally, an excellent piece from a longtime activist writer:



I will echo Tinoire's excellent declaration: "Ward Churchill may not be one of you, but he's one of me!"

sw

lol... Your post wasn't here yet when I posted my third one below and I was still typing when you posted. Thank you for all this additional information. You. just. rock!

I'm proud and honored to be on the same page as you, fighting the good fight! :loveya:

sw

He isn't criticizing the logic of the war criminal. He adopts it.

His entire spiel is justification of civilian deaths in the WTC with the most attenuated strings of connection to acts of somebody else. He actually accepts the Pentagon's use of collateral damage, when it involves a strike on his preferred enemy. Nothing new about that, either. Every war crime has its apologists.

And his praise of the manly deaths of the terrorists is a soldier's creed. After all, what's important isn't the cause, but the brave fight. So a suicide attack on civilians is praised as having the courage of convictions. Whether the cause justified the act is secondary to the courage of the fighter. Couldn't have praised the defenders of Imperial Japan, the CSA or Nazi Germany any better.

Ward's trick is to pretend like he is somehow above the everyday hatred by spewing it against his fellow countrymen. It's unusual only in that sense. Osama too cites the Crusades as justification.

But apparently he has convinced people that he is above a parochial view of an American by taking the parochial view of the Anti American. There are evil people on every side, and he is just one more with a surprise heritage, like the English convert to Islam that becomes a shoe bomber.

he said by the US militarist standards the WTC was a command and control
structure and by these same standards the innocents killed would be
classified as collateral damage.

He never endorses the attack only pointed out it was the predictable
result of actions taken.

He never endorsed the tactic of terror only pointed out the
homicide bombing by B52 and cruise missile don't change the
morality of killing.

It is wrong and he said so.

on the little Eichmanns in the towers.
That's saying it is wrong? "Befitting penalty?" Is he speaking English? Did he call them little Eichmanns because Eichmann didn't derserve punishment?

You give me the quote where he says the attack of the WTC was wrong. You can't find one.

I can't even argue with it being a predictiable result of US policy, mainly because terrorism is as predictable a result as anything. But Ward doesn't stop at predictable. He doesn't say it was wrong. He says that the dead deserved it as a penalty.

he said nothing of the sort.

He never endorsed terrorism.

You however endorse this orchestrated slander in mind and deed.

He wrote that essay on Sept 11 right after watching the catastrophe.

There's not a damn lie in his essay and yes... little Eichmanns. Every single person supporting, enabling and even tolerating this regime is a little Eichmann. Do you even understand what a little Eichmann is? A little Eichmann is someone who doesn't flinch when Madeleine Albright, in the interests of the empire, says that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children under Democratic sanctions is "worth it". A little Eichmann doesn't say a word when the National Endowment for Democracy is involved in coups against governments that want to share a little with the poor. A little Eichmann sees nothing, hears nothing, especially if his party is in the White House, and just keeps dutifully paying his taxes while joyfully reaping the rewards of empire, ignoring tortured the cries of its victims, and pretending the entire time that his/her hands are lily-white because he/she didn't physically kill anyone.

This is the EXACT same point Malcolm X brought up long ago- piss enough people off, arm terrorists to do dirty work for you in the dark but don't be surprised when the retribution happens or that dog turns against you.

The chickens once again came home to roost on 9-11 or do you prefer to support the ridiculous proposal that they hate us for our "freedom"?

Did you even read his essay? Or did you just read the one single quote that appears on every right-wing site out there?

And as far your quote goes...

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it."

it's deliberately taken out of context. Churchill wrote that essay within hours of 9-11 happening and was explaining how the "terrorists" viewed it and what they were trying to do- get people's attention- the same exact thing both Democratic and Republican warmongers said everytime they committed atrocious war crimes such as bombing hospitals. He wasn't excusing it- he was explaining it. Was there a more effective way for a very angry group to get people's attention or not? I'd really be interested in hearing it too. Maybe another tired protest in front of the UN?

===

(snip)

BW: So the essay started as a "from-the-gut" response. What were your thoughts going into it?

WC: This was absurd what was being said. No one's calling (the reporters) on it for describing it as senseless. You've got a little contradiction in packaging here going on between the official news sources who are proclaiming it senseless and then the more official officials - the official officials - who are proclaiming it things like, "They did it because they hate our freedom," and other really profound and insightful things of that sort. It can't both be senseless and for a reason at the same time.

I don't think I was the only one with a different response from the mainstream. It just happens to be the way I framed it. Where that begins is borrowing from Malcolm X's thing about the chickens coming home to roost.

The essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" was written on Sept. 11 and then posted to the Internet that night. Churchill started with Malcolm X's famous quote, likened the roosting chickens to returning ghosts and asked who those ghosts might be.

Well, I see a half-million dead Iraqi children for starters, children that Madeline Albright confirmed she was aware of. This was UN data (on the impact of U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq) in 1996 when she went on 60 Minutes and said, "Yeah, we're aware of it, and we've determined that it's worth the price."

It's worth the price of somebody else's children to compel their government to do what George Bush had issued as the marching orders to the planet in 1991, which is: "The world has to understand that what we say goes."

What we say goes - that's freedom. Do what you're told. And if you don't, basically the way this works out is we'll starve your children to death.

A communiquι from al-Qaeda, in which the relatively unknown group claimed responsibility for the attacks, would later confirm that the plight of Iraqi children was primary on the terrorists' list of grievances against the United States.

(In the essay,) I went from mentioning Iraqi children to Iraqis over all - the children being a half million, there being another half-million dead adults in a population of about 20 million in a short period of time and not during the war... I mentioned the Palestinians, particularly the children in the Intifada, as a direct consequence of U.S. priorities and U.S. support to those who are doing it to them. I think I made a little mention of a bunch of Panamanians who ended up in a trench who were reported as not having died until the trench was opened up and there they were lying under the quick lime. I think I talked about something on the order of 200,000 uplands Mayan Indians in Guatemala. I think I talked about a whole bunch of dead people in El Salvador and Nicaragua, killed under false premises... I think I talked about people who had been burned alive at Dresden. The nuclear bombings (of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), since we're on the subject of weapons of mass destruction... Back to the Filipinos, back to the turn of the century. I think we're talking about at a minimum 500,000 to 600,000 people and maybe well over a million in the name of liberating them from their colonial masters and turning them into a U.S. colony... Which takes us into the Indian wars and Wounded Knee and that whole series, all the way back to the Wappingers, the guys who supposedly sold the Dutch the island (of Manhattan) for beads and trinkets, which they didn't. They gave them permission to use the tip of the island as a port facility for trade, which was to the advantage of both. The Dutch falsely proclaimed it to be a sale, and when the Indians objected, they sent out a military expedition and resolved the problem by basically butchering all of them...

All of those chickens came home to roost (on 9/11), because there had never really been a response in-kind in all that entire grisly history. It was sort of manifested in the symbol of those twin towers at the foot of something called Wall Street. And Wall Street takes its name from the enclosure of the slave compound for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So now there's a bunch of those ghosts, too. All the symbolism is confluent (at Ground Zero)...

(I) Churchill then discussed the concept of collective responsibility and the notion that some of those who worked in the World Trade Center were not only aware of, but participants in actions that caused harm and suffering abroad. Such events could not occur without broad support from the American public, he said.(/I)

Since Madeline Albright said that on 60 Minutes, (the suffering in Iraq) could hardly be mysterious to the people in the buildings that would be hit. They just flat considered it irrelevant. Or they embraced it. These aren't exactly centers of organizing opposition to U.S. policy.

I don't say they had detailed information. They were not concerned enough to gather it. They simply embraced it. They applauded it. They voted for it. But they're not innocent of it at the same time.

How do you end up participating in this process and being proud and triumphalist about this process and making your vocation the participation in and proper functioning of that system and be innocent at the same time? And that takes me to the Eichmann comment.

BW: Your Eichmann comparison seems to be the thing that has upset people the most.

WC: Oh, yes... I said specifically the comparison to Eichmann devolved upon the technicians of empire. Is there some definition you can give me where a food-service worker or a child or a janitor pushing a broom is a technician of empire? I wasn't talking about that, clearly. That's the only point that's been raised. "How can you say that an 18-month-old baby girl on a plane was comparable to Eichmann?"

Well, the fact of the matter is, I never said that. To use Pentagon-speak, that would be the collateral damage... I don't know that they had any specific intent to kill everyone that was there. In order to get at the target, the dead bystanders were "worth the price," to quote directly from Madeline Albright. (The terrorists) used the exact same logic used by Pentagon planners and U.S. diplomats - "This is an unavoidable consequence of getting at the target."

If there's somebody to blame, following the logic that's used now, it would be the people who put a CIA office in the World Trade Center or put command and control infrastructure of other sorts in there. It's always "their" fault. It's always Saddam's fault. He situated an intelligence office in a hospital... That was the justification for bombing the hospital. Well, if you're going to apply that rule, it's going to come back to you. By enunciated Pentagon rules, (the World Trade Center) was a legitimate target.

I don't accept the legitimacy. I'm feeding it back to (the American public, and saying), "How does this feel?" I contest the legitimacy straight down the line. But if you're going to do it to other people on these pretexts and pretend it's OK, then you can't complain when it comes back to you in the same form. That's the point.

(snip)

http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill_interview_pw.html

Before doing so consider the shower curtain my family grew up with which was a flat plastic map of the world. Smack dab in the center was an enormous and colorful USA. China was tiny, off in the corner. So where and who was the center of the world and therefore universe?
Much of "The Left's" position on Churchill is focused on his "Indianness' and early artistic egoisms. Pretty sad.

Well let's look at the skeletons shall we? I think you'll appreciate this:
Look in the Mirror

Ward Churchill and White America

By RAFAEL RENTERIA

"It is not enough for us to merely dumbly intone that Churchill has a right to write what he does. No. We must do more. We must insist that Churchill is right, and no one, not some rabid talk show parrot, nor a political whore like Governor Bill Owens, has a right to demand what is wrong Churchill is right. From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal."
<snip>
It's the frontline of a war. Those of us who have not seen our colleagues or mentors purged from the academy can grasp neither the pain of it nor the stakes. Those who are purged are those who dream, for all of us, of a more natural condition, those who have not partaken in the great forgetting of their humanity that characterizes pre-fascist America.

But those of us who have seen it firsthand know the venal face of what America is becoming. I have often joked that those who have never been to jail have no education, no true sense of the meaning of the violence that permeates this culture, like blood seeps through the bandage covering the wound of an Iraqi child.

I am no one in particular, no one famous whose name you would recognize. But I have been on the frontline of the culture wars, and this is my dispatch.

I want to speak to you in your isolation, I want you to be in touch with your despair as I speak. I want you to remember what you already know -- the Earth is dying; oil is running out; Iraq is only the first in what will be a series of resource wars, as the impacts of global warming and peak oil cause the infrastructure we call globalization to collapse.
<snip>
And if you are a white American, I want to remind you that you have no real idea why a Black poet like Michael Datcher would write a poem after 9-1-1 entitled "I blow myself up on you." You have no education. No, you cannot imagine it. But as I stood in the convenience store, exhausted from a sleepless night, I heard voices chattering and clamoring on a radio that normally played only bad pop music. They were clamoring in outrage about an airplane striking a building in New York. I laughed. Although it had not yet been written, I understood the poem.
<snip>
This is the shadow in the mirror. This is the ghost of missiles screaming in the darkened sky of Baghdad. This is your inner demon. Look at it. In the mirror. The events of 9-1-1 are America's mirror. This is what it means to be bombed, in the Sudan, in Bethlehem and Belgrade. Horror.

One shows an implacable face to the enemy. This is the way of war. They never had any regrets and we, the Mexicans, we, the Palestinians, we, the Afghanis, Iraqis and Iranians, we the Black, we the Red, are the enemy.

Read Stannard's American Holocaust. Hitler was a piker, a Johnny-Come-Lately, a zero. Spain and Britain slaughtered 120 million of my ancestors before Hitler ever hit the scene. He learned from them, from you. Lebensraum was a new way of saying Manifest Destiny, Concentration Camp was a new way of saying Reservation, the Final Solution was only a new way of saying the only good Indian.
<snip>
And it's that "nothing more" that is killing the Earth, that allows the US, which is not yet a fascist state, to have the highest incarceration rate in the world ­ America incarcerates its enemies, Red and Black, just as Hitler incarcerated his enemies, the Jews. It persecutes its writers who speak with the voice of the subjugated peoples ­ the enemies ­ within.

http://www.counterpunch.org/renteria02262005.html

I read it in your earlier post and really liked it.

It's really TOO much when you consider the magnitude of our crimes. It saddens me to so many people are either deliberately not getting the point or pretending not to. This entire witch hunt, with David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes and the GOP in lead, reeks.

Churchill rocks. It's no wonder his students, fellow professors, and the Left wing are sticking him for him.

And that's how you make the incredible mistake. You read Churchill as you would wish, not as how he stated it.

What the fuck do you think "penalty befitting their participation" means? Not only was their deaths a befitting penalty, but the very best one he could IMAGINE.

Then he says that the hundreds of busboys, janitors and secretaries were acceptable collateral damage--under the pentagon's definition. He doesn't say that "collateral damage" is an unacceptable form of justification--he just declares it a tit for tat, or, that he wouldn't be any worse than the Pentagon in this regard.

And then its "when YOU do this to another person, YOU can't complain". And that just goes back to his original amoral stand--that the people who worked in the WTC "did it". Well, they didn't "do it". They may not have approved of it, or known about it, or voted republican, and yet Ward approves of the ultimate penalty. Like any war criminal, he doesn't see civilians. He sees dehumanized cogs in a machine that is to be destroyed, potential assets like a tank or a railway that need to be taken out.

Ward's trick is that he pretends to be above American parochialism. But in fact, he has only adopted an Anti-American parochialism, where the enemy is justified and we are all guilty. Its the opposite side of the same coin, only worth noting because the surprise going against heritage, like the Englishman who converted to radical Islam and becomes a shoe bomber. Ward is only changing the names of the guilty and the righteous from any other amoral character populating the world and cheering death.

Your explanation of what he has said is exactly wrong.

maybe darn near powerless to change "the machine" but we still support it. I posted on this before but until i get my star, won't be able to find it. By living our Amerikan lives we support a corporate structure which does horrendous harm to the people and the environment of this world. We can NOT make amends until we change that system, until then we all are still "living in the sin" and very guilty..

Is primarily anger. Anger of a denial and a refusal of the media, many in Washington, and many Americans to honestly examine the facts, the history and the issues that contributed to 9/11. It's not about agreeing or disagreeing with Churchill. I believe its about getting to the truth, whatever that may be. You may not agree with him, and that's fine. I think what we should be more concerned about, is realizing how it is vital for us as a nation and our future as a country to know the truth, no matter what it is.

What stops us from moving forward and facing the truth is the fueled divisiveness and pitting political parties against one another by the media and others, in order to avoid whatever truths that need to be confronted.

I believe it stands to irreversibly wreck our country and nation as a Democracy, and our life as we know it, if we choose to ignore the glaring questions surrounding this event. It has absolutely nothing to do with political parties at this point, although many in power would like to perpetuate such an illusion.

It has to do with the proverbial rubber meeting the road. Are we what we claim to be as a country, or are we all talk and no substance? Are we a bunch of flag wavers who turn our heads on the truth when it is calling for recognition and to be heard? Churchill doesnt have a copyright on the truth, nor does anyone else.

Everyone who died of course is not to blame. However, what others have said here and elsewhere is undeniably true. That our policies, and politics have created an consistent undercurrent of hatred, resentment and oppression for years. Go back to the 1930's and read War is a Racket, by Smedley Butler and get an idea of how long this has been occuring. Im sure it was occuring before then as well. Many Americans choose to not look at these issues. That will greatly harm us all, including those who turned their backs on all the warnings that kept recurring in Dolby sound.

I believe if all of us as Americans were able to detach and look at the situation and the history with less of a personalized, politicized viewpoint, we would have a less narrow, defensive view of this. We must look at it at some point. If we don't we as a country will pay the price. How many times has history repeated itself and we are no different. That's the vital flaw, when citizens feel it won't affect them. No doubt the truth can be painful, but it never lies to us. I don't have all the answers, but I do have a lot of questions, as do so many other Americans and citizens worldwide.

If we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, then lets prove it, to ourselves and to others in the world who have been supportive and indeed, patient with us.

Well-stated! Kudos! :yourock:

sw

:thumbsup:

n/t

That's why Churchill is the flip side of the same coin as the terrorists.

Where Churchill goes horribly, criminally wrong is not in assigning error to America's actions. Nor is it in claiming that creating hatred for America by misguided and/or evil policies will lead to the deaths of American civilians. Because there are plenty of people in the world, like Ward Churchill, who don't believe that there are civilians. They believe that being in America is enough to put the death sentence on you. It's the difference between predicting a reaction and declaring it justifiable homicide. I can predict that our occupation of Iraq will increase terror attacks on American soil. I can predict it will increase terror attacks against Iraqi civilians. But that's different from saying that civilians deserve to die.

Ward adopts the morality of the war criminal in pronouncing death of civilians as deserved. The war criminal too doesn't see civilians, only people whose very existence does or may support the efforts of the enemy state, and whose snuffing is both deserved and the means to victory. The only difference is that Ward is silly enough to pronounce the judgment on his own country as if somehow his precise academic mind can somehow separate his own person from the those deserving death.

I can't see cheering Churchill and then denouncing the rightwingers. He dehumanized the WTC victims as mere cogs in the machine, and the rightwingers find the same solace in arab deaths as adherents of terrorism. You either stand up for civilians or justifiy their deaths as legitimate targets of war. I can't believe that people can accept the WTC deaths as legitimate just because they are Americans. But it must be the case, since nobody called for, for example, wholesale extermination of Japanese or Germans. Heck, we even gave their soldiers Geneva Convention protections.

Ward isn't honestly examining policy. Indeed, he accepts the deaths of the little people in the WTC as "collateral damage" because the pentagon calls Iraqi civilians collateral damage--showing that he too can accept the banality of evil when needed. Instead of taking a moral stand, he descends into the pit. He is spreading blame with such promiscuity and cheering death with such amorality as to be the equivalent of the soldier who burns a village.

Sadly - I think that most Americans - esp. the B**h voters - haven't left grade school as far as getting beyond what is presented as the ideal United States of America and what is reality.

Ward Churchill challenges all of those grade school type fairy tale notions and a lot of people would like to plug their ears instead of listen.

Thanks for a great post.

Uh, just where did you get that? And where did you get he was "cheering" anything?

It's a karmic law that what goes around, comes around. Churchill harldy wrote that law, nor is he cheering it. He's just pointing out what went around. Tough if complicit, enabling, apologizing Americans and their criminal allies don't like it.

I got it from his essay, and then I get it from you.

Now its "karmic law", which sounds so much better than Osama saying its God's will or Falwell saying its God's punishment. So what did they do to deserve a gruesome, horrific death? What is it that made Osama the instrument by which Allah or Jesus or the karmic wheel turn against the people in the tower?

You don't say.

You say that it's tough if complicit, enabling, apologizing Americans and their criminal allies don't like it. Well, I'm not one of those, and I don't much care for it or any other murder. It happens, not because its right or just, but because evil men are able to constructing big, intellectual and moral systems that dehumanize their victims and makes civilians legitimate targets of war. Churchill does it, Osama does it, the Pentagon does it, and nobody is giving Churchill points for going against type and cheering the deaths of civilians that are his own countrymen. Even an Islamic terrorist will justify killing their own from time to time.

it all just whooshes past you.

My apologies for not wanting to waste my time on a merry-go-round. If you want to support Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz in their witch hunt to shut up the treasonous voices speaking out against the ludicrous swill that "they hate us for our freedom", go for it- just don't waste my time trying to pretend it's anything but that.

Keep shooting the messengers. I'll be out defending them and spreading their message because it's more important to do that than to waste time in these silly arguments that seem more calculated to distract than anything else.

:after you: just don't expect me to follow.

I guess that Ward is the enemy of your enemies is good enough for you to back him unequivocally. Not me. I don't back killing civilians just because that sort of talk pisses off the Bushites. But hey, thanks for giving them a legitimate reason to treat all opponents as apologists for terrorists and war criminals.

Certainty for truth, historical grievances, civilians are appropriate targets, their deaths justified by their "participation" in society, dehumanizing them as cogs in the machine--you could be any terrorist or war criminal on earth. You all have your causes, your beliefs, and your easy way with justifying death.

You and the Bushites are peas in a pod. Change the targets from Iraqis to Americans and there isn't a dime's worth of difference between you.

I'm a proud member of the

" I hate Republicans & everything they stand for" movement.



;)

Look who you ended up with. Osama, Ward, and hatred as your allies, deaths of civilians as your justice.

Try being for humanity.

BUSH and his goose-stepping scum.



Inland, come back when you have a valid point to make ok?

But here. Such a deal I have for you and it's on sale for $11.16



On the Justice of Roosting Chickens : Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality

Product Description:

The United States has long been considered a deadly foe by the inhabitants of its ever-expanding "spheres of influence." In Reflections on the Justice of Roosting Chickens, Churchill examines the toll U.S. policies have taken on civilians around the world and the role activists are (or aren't) playing to stop the carnage. The Western world was stunned to wake up on 9-11 to find that the Third World had "pushed back." By ignoring the suffering and loss of life of their victims while grieving over our own, Amercans have made themselves complicit in their government's global slaughter. In a heartwrenching recount, Churchill reminds us of the untold millions who have perished as a result of U.S. military intervention (in either a physical, diplomatic or economic sense) in Iraq, Cambodia, Palestine, East Timor, the Americas . . . and the list goes on.

To further illustrate his point, included are annotated chronologies of U.S. military actions from 1776 to the present and a compilation of International Laws either broken or ignored by the United States. Comprehensive, yet remaining concise, this book cannot be overlooked by those still asking: "Why do they hate us?"


"Ward Churchill has carved out a special place for himself in defending the rights of oppressed people, and exposing the dark side of past and current history, often marginalized or suppressed. These are achievements of inestimable value." Noam Chomsky

===
(snip)

Even if you are conservative, you should be aware of this listing of international policy incidents so that you can at least converse on the same level as the rest of the world.

===
(snip)

Anyone interested or concerned about the world around them MUST read this book. It will surely anger some people but that will just show their inability to think about the world without hiding behind the mask of being an "American". Anyone who is interested in freedom must also read this book. It'll prove that America is, indeed, not the land of the free or the peaceful and friendly country that many try to pretend it is.

===

(snip)

It is an uncomprimising book, and will no doubt instill feelings of shock, outrage and shame in anyone who reads it. And this is a *good* thing: Churchill has performed a great service to any US citizen willing to honestly look at themselves and their nation's history; at its core, this book is an attempt to cure the "dementia" of American nationalism, leading to a safer world for *all* of us.


Tootaloo! :hi:

ssia

Rock solid on Tinoire***

He's definitely one of me as well.

I'm with anyone who is willing to shine light on the much twisted and tortured truth these days.

I wonder if this flag would be appreciated by Mr. Churchhill.

He just spoke at Univ. of Hawai'i. I received a (mass email) message from Not In Our Name basically informing me that if I did not support Churchill 100%, I was therefore a member of the right wing. Hogwash.

excuse me, but it wasn't mr churchill who decided to dig up a three year old essay and make an issue of it now. that would be a certain mr bil o'loofah

and his views on the WTC victims have been hooribly mischaracterized. you're comparing him to hitler?!? have you even read his piece in context? it doesn't say anything of the sortt you're implying. it's no different from anyone who believes interventionism caused 9-11 and not a "hatred for freedom" by the terrorists.

or do you believe bill o'reilly and joe dead intern's interpretation of everything?

1) He has written several books and essays. I've read the essay in question and had no major problems with it. He has a valid point that the world has tunnel vision about the Holoaust and the founding of the Jewish State. We've given Jews a free pass for decades due to this. The local population, now called Palestinians, have been removed from their land and put into substandard living conditions. There is an obvious history of human rights violations -- on both sides. Neither is clean, but many innocent civilians, men, women, and children have died due to it.

Meanwhile, there have been many atrocities that are virtually ignored, from Sudan to Native Americans right here in this country. Until we atone for what we as immigrants have done to the Native Americans and deal with them in good faith through all of the treaties that have been signed, we have a karmic debt. Until it is paid, we are all guilty of "war crimes."

Churchill has every right to assume the mantle of anger -- anger at the incredible power and wealth of a nation that may never have happened if the "Indians" had been somewhat more populous or technologically modern or less trusting of oaths given. It was also built on a tradition of slavery and indentured servants. Let's face it, we are and have been a nation of oath-breakers whenever it suited our purposes.

2) The second issue has to deal with Churchill's integrity. He's never proven that he has any Native American blood in his heritage, and in fact, research conducted by Native Americans claim that he has none. Beyond that, he spent years attempting to earn his living as a native and if copying others' works is any indication -- he lacks integrity.

The original was a pen and ink sketch by a Native American artist -- NOT a photograph that was converted to a pen and ink drawing by Churchill. He didn't even re-render it in his own style. It appears to be an out and out copy, but presented as a mirror image. This is flat out wrong, both from copyright law and from artistic integrity.

THIS is the critical issue. If he were RW, we'd be all over his case like flies on shit -- or like lefties on Gannon. He should not get a free ride.

I, like most, think Ward is a pitiful person and ought to be fired for a number of reasons - none of which is due to freedom of speech. Additionally, if Colorado U had any sense they would fire whoever was responsible for giving a moron like this tenure. Churchill is hurting the little remaining integrity of Colorado U.

Good point - if he was RW we would be salivating. Hopefully his 15 minutes is up soon.....

You mean Israelis, don't you?

There are Jews in America, Spain, Ethiopia and many other places. I'm not sure how 'Jews' have gotten a free pass, but Israel certainly had. Not to be forgotten: There is a difference. One is a religion, the other is a government-run state.

We must avoid generalizing and be specific. Jew's don't do anything. Specific Jewish and non-Jewish people have acted unethically. That they are Jewish or non-Jewish is incidental to the problem.

in the new state of Israel -- and yes, this is partially what I meant; however, whenever anyone comments anything negatively about the Jewish Holocaust and its subsequent creation of Israel, one is immediately branded as an "anti-Semite." Jews in America have provided enormous financial and political support for Israel, based on their race/religion. So, it's all intertwined.

Frankly, we were fed a whole lot of propaganda for years about the Palestinians and they have suffered grievously through the worst of conditions. It's taken nearly 50 years -- that's 2+ generations -- for many to begin to see that "maybe they do have an issue." If I were a Palestinian, I KNOW that I'd be hate-filled.

No one in the Middle East should get a free pass on the human brutality that the past 50 years has brought. If oil had not been discovered, who knows what type of state-building would have happened after the fall of the Turkish Empire at the end of WWI?

Two pieces that is, and they are rip-offs. All those left handed indians cracked me up. It's like fake but accurate.
We need to distance ourselves from this flim flam man.

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

who said these words?

is that King said that in his 1967 speech "A Time To Break Silence," and he was attacked by the press & pundits even more harshly than Ward is being attacked today ...... at least that is what I assume the person's point is.

And perhaps it was that speech that sealed his fate.
Churchill is not in the same league as MLK or Malcolm X, but we must remember when we bemoan the lack of leaders today, how some of their words were received in their times.
I don't think Churchill is a "leader" in that sense at all, but the point of the quote was to show MLK was not 'safe' or comfortable either.

Destroy the message. That's what's going on, plus the RW is on a mission to destroy any opposition to their agenda.

What is the RW agenda?

we will have a very hard time ever having ideological leaders. The problem isnt that Ward Churchill is a leader, it is that a certain set of ideas are considered off limits for Americans. If Ward Churchill is speaking nonsense, let him talk. We need never be afraid of ideas, ideas never caused trouble, the choice of bad ideas over good ideas has.

Of course not. King was a great moral leader, with a vision of a just society. Churchill is an amoral stunt cheering death. To put them both in the same category because they both said things that upset the average American is an insult to King, as it makes merely being inflammatory into a virtue.

Nobody's putting anybody in the same "category". That's the fucking problem with all this propaganda: it's all about "categories" -- who's a traitor, who's a "great moral leader"(TM), who is "an amoral stunt cheering death" (TM), who's with us, who's against us, all that. What the poster said was that the sentiment behind MLK's statement and the sentiment behind Churchill's are comparable. Now, we can discuss whether that's true or not, but let's do it with out this faux outrage and this bullshit labeling.

How is Churchill "cheering death"?

And also, so what if he is "cheering death"??? (which he's not, but that's another issue) Why the fuck are we discussing what some professor said?

Because the Reich Wing has injected yet another brilliant "issue" to make sure we all know the desired and permitted manner of speaking.

I like that.

I guess it's easier to interact with DEAD, HISTORICAL GMLs. /irony

As I recall the good doctor got banged upside the head pretty good and tossed in jail for his morality on several occasions. Maybe Churchill should be happy he's getting only assasination by media.

MendacityCentral Rule of Engagement #19: If white, whisper color: If color, whisper white. God, they're so OBVIOUS.

that made King a great leader and Ward a headline grabbing amoral shit, I have news for you: sometimes labels come because the fit.

The only reason why Churchill is a right wing issue is because some lefties have been driven crazy by the refusal to face the reality of Bush's policies, and think that any person who criticizes America's policies must be some sort of hero, in the thinking that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that they run to defend Churchill's "ideas" even when indefensible. So once again, its the left that leads with its chin trying to defend what isn't worth defending, and the right that beats the crap out of us, again, and again, and again. Why the left lionizes a muddleheaded thinker that shouldn't have an ounce of press is beyond me.

That's not faux outrage. It's real outrage. It's looking at another instance where a good position is lost because it gets associated with a bad one. It's watching DUers bend over backwards to either explain how the WTC victims really did deserve their deaths or pretend that Churchill never said those things. And King, the man who wanted peace, is dragged out to bolster the rep of the man who justifies a war on civilians, just to make sure that there isn't anything good about liberalism that doesn't get tarnished by association. Disgusting.

He wrote the piece years ago. The right decided to make it news, not Ward Churchill. Churchill was just speaking his mind.

"Little Eichmanns."

and not rely on the marshmallow version CNN and Fox the corporate media has been churnig out. King was gunned down because he was pointing to the same things Churchill is pointing to. King was begging imperial America to STOP the exploitation and the wars but did Amerika listen? Nooooooo, Amerika gunned him down just as he was really getting started on the evils of imperialism, war and the dire consequences. And not only did Amerika GUN him down to shut him up, but now the very people King spoke against are trying to hide behind their marshmallow-version of him and twist things. King wasn't talking to you. He was talking to a bunch of very pissed off, very tired Black people who were going to go with either a violent revolution or a peaceful one and he kept the movement non-violent. Despite his desire to take Blacks to progress in a non-violent manner, his analysis of the anger would have been the same as Churchill's.

King was gunned down just as he was beginning to talk about "wealth disparities and policies that perpetuated those inequities while the Military -Industrial Complex was growing richer every day and the attention he focused on AmeriKKKa's immoral war in Southeast Asia is what prompted the powers that be to order his assassination. But let us project what we know about King and imagine he was still alive with us now, what would he say and do? I believe he would oppose
Bush administration's fascist agenda. I believe he would be calling for rallies, marches, boycotts and massive civil disobedience to call attention to AmeriKKKa's wickedness and galvanize the grass roots to action. I believe Martin Luther King Jr would denounce the masses' induced passivity and acquiescence in the face of fascism and warmongering.

http://boydgraves.com/letters/010803.html

==

I have news for you Inland. King wouldn't be sitting back condemning Ward Churchill for having pointed out what Churchill said. He'd be in TOTAL agreement and that is why your precious flag wavers gunned him down.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

(snip)

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

(snip)

...they languish under our bombs and consider us (snip) the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower (snip). So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

(snip)

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

(snip)

During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

(snip)

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

(snip)

Please put links to this speech on your respective web sites and if possible, place the text itself there. This is the least well known of Dr. King's speeches among the masses, and it needs to be read by all

http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~sw/mlk/brkslnc.htm



===============================================================


"the development of a humanitarian means of dealing with some of the social problems of the world--and the correlative revolution in American values that this will entail--is a much better way of protecting ourselves against the threat of violence than the military means we have chosen.”

“When Rome began to disintegrate from within, it turned to a strengthening of the military establishment, rather than to a correction of the corruption within the society. We are doing the same thing in this country and the result will probably be the same--unless can provide a new soul force for all Americans, a new expression of the American dream that need not be realized at the expense of other people around the world, but a dream of opportunity and life that can be shared with the rest of the world.”

“In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence? Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God’s military agent on earth? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order?’”

==

the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a colony of the British Empire. Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there, and he never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance comes. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.

So don’t go out this morning with any illusions. Don’t go back into your homes and around Montgomery thinking that the Montgomery City Commission and that all of the forces in the leadership of the South will eventually work out this thing for Negroes, it’s going to work out; it’s going to roll in on the wheels of inevitability. If we wait for it to work itself out, it will never be worked out. Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil. The bus protest is just the beginning. Buses are integrated in Montgomery, but that is just the beginning. And don’t sit down and do nothing now because the buses are integrated, because, if you stop now, we will be in the dungeons of segregation and discrimination for another hundred years, and our children and our children’s children will suffer all of the bondage that we have lived under for years. It never comes voluntarily. We’ve got to keep on keeping on in order to gain freedom. It never comes like that. It would be fortunate if the people in power had sense enough to go on and give up, but they don’t do it like that. It is not done voluntarily, but it is done through the pressure that comes about from people who are oppressed.

Birth of a New Nation

I cannot thank you enough for taking the time and effort to post this. And for having the persistance and grit to keep on keeping on for the TRUTH.

Bless you always,
sw
:loveya:

p.s. -- in case you're interested, here's the thread I posted about Ward Churchill's work in exposing COINTELPRO: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3184609&mesg_id=3184609

It's no wonder the man needs to be shut up!

King asked for a just society. He didn't point a finger and call for the death. What, do you think there weren't people like Ward back then, people declaring that everyone who worked in the system was culpable for oppression? Don't even dare to say that a practioner of nonviolence wouldn't have been horrified and disgusted by the WTC attacks.

You can't tell the difference between a person pointing out injustice, like King and thousands of good will, and a person declaring death as the appropriate penalty for those whose connection to the injustice is, at best, attenuated. King wouldn't have have declared death as the penalty befitting their participation in US society. But Ward did. King wouldn't have seen Osama and his suicide attackers as brave soldiers standing up for their convictions. But Ward did.

Its pretty tiresome when you constantly avoid the central question: did the WTC victims deserve their deaths? No, stop dodging by saying that other people have done worse. They have, and that's not the issue. Ward said they deserved to die as a penalty for their participation. Do you accept that or not? If yes, then why aren't you dead yet?

What Ward Churchill was REALLY saying in his essay -- NOT your distortion and mischaracterization -- has been explained to you over and over again in this thread. You have chosen to dismiss and ignore it, and just wanna keep flogging your poor lameass dead horse.

Why should anyone waste any more time responding to you? Your mind is closed, you don't wanna hear it.

sw

The fact is, Ward justified the terrorism of the WTC as a "penalty befitting their participation", for the bigwigs, and as collateral damage, for the little people.

Apparently you think that anyone who points out the injustices of American policy can't be that profoundly amoral. The enemy of the Bushites is your friend, you think. But it's there in black and white, and pretending it isn't doesn't change a thing.

of consequence vs just penalty.

Oh me, oh my :wrings hands:, why do they hate us? :cry: :cry: :cry:

He confuses casuality with justice.

He didn't merely say that the deaths were predictable. he said the deaths were justified, that they were a befitting penalty for the participation by those little Eichmanns in the tower. No, don't tell me he didn't say that. Look at the quote. Read.

And that's the essential, amoral dimension to the war criminal and terrorist. Any dope can predict that, for example, the Iraq invasion would lead to more terrorist attacks, as I did. I can also predict that walking in a bad neighborhood at night will get you robbed, maybe killed. I can predict those things because there are evil people who use events to their own purposes. I can predict those things because in things like war and crime, shit happens. But it doesn't make it right. It doesn't justify it.

Ward takes the extra step of saying that the WTC victims deserved it. That their attenuated connection with the injustices of their government made death appropriate. But in reality, what did they DO to deserve death? Ward gives us a clue about his concepts of guilt and innocence when he says they were "civilians of a sort", meaning they were soldiers of a sort. Like any war criminal or terrorist, Ward sees civilians as targets. Not surprisingly, he also says that the little people at the WTC would be collateral damage under the Pentagons definition, thereby adopting the same standard.

The result in saying the WTC victims deserved it is a profoundly amoral stand that allows any type of crime against anyone, and in fact it is. You sound like every war criminal or terroist out there.

oppression in Third World countries. He spoke eloquently of the connections between the the U.S. military/security state and the injustices it fosters both here and around the planet.

While Churchill employed an unfortunate choice of words, he wasn't saying anything much more radical than "what goes around, comes around". I think Dr. King would have understood that concept, too.

sw

I don't argue against what goes around, comes around. Violence begets violence.

But King thought that meant, don't commit violence even when wronged. Churchill says that killing is a perfect retribution for the individual "participating" in a society that committed evil acts. He is profoundly amoral.

violence."

See, by the logic of "what goes around, comes around", we ALL have retribution coming for that which OUR government has done around the world. It's called karma.

By the logic of "violence begets violence", we cannot cry "victim" when some small part of the death and destruction that our government has dealt out around globe comes back to us. It's called blowback.

The capitialists who profit from all this death and destruction ARE complicit to varying degrees. ALL of us who pay the taxes that fund the machinery of war are complicit. All of us enjoying one of the highest standards of living on the planet are complicit -- we are 25% of the world's population consuming 40% of the earth's resources.

Our lifestyles are built on the oppression and impoverishment of millions. Our country was built on genocide and slavery. We DO deserve some payback, it's inevitable.

I disagree with Churchill's wording, but I don't disagree with the general sentiment he was expressing.

sw

So where does the part come when I get to announce that a fiery death or leaping from the seventieth floor is deserved?

That's not just his general sentiment, or his wording. That was him expressly saying that those people deserved precisely that death as punishment. They traded commodities. They bought and sold fucking corn. They sold shares of companies that Ward uses every day. They deserved capital punishment of a way we would kill a Jeff Dahmer. And that doesn't count the collateral damage of the busboys and firemen, but that's okay, because Ward doesn't count them for much, either.

So its not about being complicit to a degree, or payback. Unless you think being complicity to a degree is punishable by death. You must not, because you are still walking around. Ward said he did, but then again, he too is still walking around in this country built on genocide and slavery, when he isn't flying to Hawaii.

Regarding payback; as a citizen of this country I fully expect to reap the consequences of our imperialism one way or another, just as I currently enjoy its benefits -- to a very modest degree, I must add.

I'd prefer not to die, of course. So, I presume, would have all those people who found themselves considered "collateral damage" in U.S. "shock and awe".

I do not, however, have any power to effect the U.S. capitalist monster that drives the military-industrial complex beyond my denunciations and attempts at consciousness raising. I am as fringe a participant as possible; I do not own a credit card, I live simply, I participate in the dominant consumer culture as little as possible.

Still, I am white, I am privileged, therefore I do not consider myself innocent of the blood that has been shed in my name.

sw

Claiming that everyone bears some guilt for what is done by America, and for indirect responsibility that death is the appropriate penalty: but that guilt is assuaged because you aren't a direct participant.

And the question isn't whether you would prefer not to die. The question is whether you deserve it, and why.

And the question isn't whether the victims caught in the fire, the collateral damage of busboys and Iraq victims, would have preferred to live. It's whether their deaths are justified as incidental to the greater accomplishment.

So the out is, that you don't participate in the capitalist monster so much. I guess that's Ward's too, since as a bad professor of anthropology, he is a net drain on society. I'm not sure that washes. You pay taxes. You work. You buy things that support the economy. And if you don't, like Ward, you accept the money that is made from people who do. I don't make money like the rich, but I know that their taxes built my roads, my schools--I can't slam them for indirect particpation in everything bad that has happened without crediting them and their efforts for indirectly creating the very world I live in.

Ward says the people in the WTC deserved to die for participating in the economy. The people who didn't participate a lot--by which he would mean make a lot of money--were acceptable collateral damage. No war criminal would say anything differently. To them, there are no targets that are off limits. Smashing the office towers and the factories are going to kill the people who work in them out of necessity, and Ward can't think of any better result. Osama as the hand of God working divine justice. Sounds familiar.

Your arguments are intellectually dishonest. You repeatedly distort and mischaracterize what was actually written.

I'm done with you.

sw

I say they were not in the same league and Churchill was not a "leader".

Should I say it one more time?

MLK and Churchill are NOT in the same league, though they both pointed out how the US exports violence as no other country, a message that will get you killed if you don't watch it.
If Churchill was anywhere near the shining example and leader that MLK was, he probably wouldn't have lasted this long.

What Churchill said that parts company with simple decency, it seems to me, was: "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

That is, he endorsed the attack on the WTC as just and justified. Justifiable homicide. That is more than "what goes around, comes around." For all his stinging criticism of American power, I can't imagine MLK praising this act of mass murder.

Nevertheless, a free society has no business silencing him just because what he said is odious. The Bush Administration and its helpers have said things that are far worse abuses of freedom of speech.

King saw killing of civilians as always wrong. Churchill sees it as justified penalty. Yet you saw enough similarity. That's an insult to King.

King stood above the parochial views of an American. Churchill pretends to, but in reality only accepts the parochial view of the Anti-American. He is no better or different than Osama, and except for the surprise of going against heritage, wouldn't be worth notice.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I sure don't count you on MY side.

Thanks for helping the VWRC. Does it make you "Proud"?

sw

Dare I ask?

I've been familiar with this man for a number of years. 'Tis the nature of the beast and yeah, he is Indian alright too.

:kick:

I genuinely hope that he keeps his job so that Bill Owens looks like a fool.

referring to be a Professor of Ethic Studies, emphasis on Native American Studies. There are few professors that have this ability and insight and YES he is an Indian.

:kick:

Ward speaks visciously about 9/11 victims ("Nazis, little Eichmanns") ),& Rev Fred Phelps speaks visciously about homosexuals("God Hates Fags"), & Lt. Gen. James Mattis ("Its fun to shoot and kill some people") Are they free to say what they want? Yes. Do I think they are all scum? Yes. Would I support any of them? No. Someone asked me the other day if I thought Ward was a "plant", someone to make the "left" look bad. Like FBI agents who use to infiltrate anti war marches in the 60's & start trouble. I have no idea. Who knows why any of these men come out with such hateful remarks, but they do. I just wish people were more sensitive about other people's feelings, but they aren't and that's the way it goes. They are free to say what they want & people are free to dislike them for it too.

Ward Churchill is the Right's latest bogeyman, but IMO he isn't worthy of being a bogeyman. He's a bit player.

My point is that, as odious as Churchill's opinions are, he would just be a guy with an odious opinion if the Right hadn't blown him up into their latest bogeyman.

responsible for the actions of the leaders they choose to represent them? And, if some citizen espouses his views on said citizenry and actions taken by said government at a time in history where truth is conveniently obfuscated, he what? Should be silenced? I follow his logic pretty clearly...is it the phraseology? Doesn't every action have a reaction? Is it erroneous for me to try to make sense of the world in which I live, and upon finding facts that provide clarity for me, to write them here and dare share with others? Don't we all share in the responsiblity of what our government does? With our tax=money...what we consume...choices we make...ignorance....denial?

and as a former teacher, I consider stealing the work of others for personal financial gain to be a pretty crappy thing to do.

And no, I did not hear about this on Fox or from Bill O'Reilly. One can have a poor opinion of someone like Ward Churchill without requiring the tender administrations of the Lockstep Police.

I think his use of the name Eichmann was a stupid thing to do, a pustule in an otherwise solid piece of work. I'm not going to get talked down from that. I think that if he stole the work of another artist, called it his own, and then sold it, he should be ashamed.

Sorry, locksteppers.

...why is that even an issue? Why do you even know about it?

Because of the Eichmann thing.

Which, incidentally, is totally unrelated to whatever plagiarism he may have comitted.

is the chicken-or-egg aspect of why I heard about it. I heard about it, and now this. I heard about the Eichmann thing the day it happened, and I winced. I read the essay and winced again.

Weirdly enough, and this may just be a personal quirk, but I don't consider the Eichmann thing to be a strike against his character. He either took a wrong step verbally, or underestimated the power of Nazi imagery in rhetoric. Either way, for me it doesn't zap my understanding of the value of his work or his career as a teacher.

I'm actually a lot more cheesed off about the fact that he stole someone else's work. I had it happen to me once, and it's an ugly thing.

and I'd be the last person to defend plagiarism. I don't think anybody is defending plagiarism. And, more importantly, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not defending Ward Churchill either -- I don't know Ward Churchill, and he could be a royal asshole for all I know. And if we're talking about Churchill as a person, an individual, that's where this conversation ends; plagiarism is shit. I agree.

But I think the question of "how you know about this" is more than simply a chicken-or-egg issue. How did Ward Churchill enter the wide public consciousness? Of course, by the virtue of the Eichmann comment, which triggered the witch-hunt machine of the right-wing soundbyte culture, looking for more to chew on after they were done digesting "I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it". In a familiar manner, they are now using this out-of-context soundbyte to further whip public speech into submission: this is something that you are clearly not allowed to say. And the fact that he said this makes him an automatic suspect, and character investigations are an integral part of every trial.

I refuse to take part in that trial. The trial was not initiated on valid grounds; this trial is "illegal". Yeah, he may be a plagiarist prick, and there are thousands more plagiarist pricks out there, nameless; and yes, we all know that plagiarism is wrong.

The desired perceived equation here is this: "9/11 victims deserved to die" equals "America's actions are intrinsic to the present state of the Middle East" equals "character flaw". The character flaw may be there, but that flaw is not related to the reason he has become infamous, which is his political ideology misrepresented through a 5-second soundbyte.

Truly excellent. Thank you.

My feeling on this issue is that for the most part we are so, so far off the mark not only on Churchill's right to say what he said but in our willingness to deeply face the brutal realities which he points to not only in this essay but in his large body of academic work. The entire mode of discussion could not have been orchestrated more perfectly by the Right. Instead of using this controversy to deal with past and present horrors that we all are partly responsible for we are looking at foibles of an individual. When will we ever learn? I hope you will read this article.




Look in the Mirror

Ward Churchill and White America

By RAFAEL RENTERIA


It's the frontline of a war. Those of us who have not seen our colleagues or mentors purged from the academy can grasp neither the pain of it nor the stakes. Those who are purged are those who dream, for all of us, of a more natural condition, those who have not partaken in the great forgetting of their humanity that characterizes pre-fascist America.

But those of us who have seen it firsthand know the venal face of what America is becoming. I have often joked that those who have never been to jail have no education, no true sense of the meaning of the violence that permeates this culture, like blood seeps through the bandage covering the wound of an Iraqi child.
<snip>
I am no one in particular, no one famous whose name you would recognize. But I have been on the frontline of the culture wars, and this is my dispatch.
<snip>
I want to speak to you in your isolation, I want you to be in touch with your despair as I speak. I want you to remember what you already know -- the Earth is dying; oil is running out; Iraq is only the first in what will be a series of resource wars, as the impacts of global warming and peak oil cause the infrastructure we call globalization to collapse.
And if you are a white American, I want to remind you that you have no real idea why a Black poet like Michael Datcher would write a poem after 9-1-1 entitled "I blow myself up on you." You have no education. No, you cannot imagine it. But as I stood in the convenience store, exhausted from a sleepless night, I heard voices chattering and clamoring on a radio that normally played only bad pop music. They were clamoring in outrage about an airplane striking a building in New York. I laughed. Although it had not yet been written, I understood the poem.
<snip>
This is the shadow in the mirror. This is the ghost of missiles screaming in the darkened sky of Baghdad. This is your inner demon. Look at it. In the mirror. The events of 9-1-1 are America's mirror. This is what it means to be bombed, in the Sudan, in Bethlehem and Belgrade. Horror.
<snip>
One shows an implacable face to the enemy. This is the way of war. They never had any regrets and we, the Mexicans, we, the Palestinians, we, the Afghanis, Iraqis and Iranians, we the Black, we the Red, are the enemy.
<snip>
Read Stannard's American Holocaust. Hitler was a piker, a Johnny-Come-Lately, a zero. Spain and Britain slaughtered 120 million of my ancestors before Hitler ever hit the scene. He learned from them, from you. Lebensraum was a new way of saying Manifest Destiny, Concentration Camp was a new way of saying Reservation, the Final Solution was only a new way of saying the only good Indian.
<snip>
And it's that "nothing more" that is killing the Earth, that allows the US, which is not yet a fascist state, to have the highest incarceration rate in the world ­ America incarcerates its enemies, Red and Black, just as Hitler incarcerated his enemies, the Jews. It persecutes its writers who speak with the voice of the subjugated peoples ­ the enemies ­ within.

http://www.counterpunch.org/renteria02262005.html

Thanks for posting that. Have just been re-reading Malcolm X this week and it's utterly disheartening to see that decades later, America still doesn't get it. Doesn't want to get it. And every messenger will be stoned in the delusion that their assassinations, real, political or character, will make the truth go away.

Very sorry America but the truth isn't going away this time.
Too many people are trying to understand why they hate us and aren't interested in either lies or patriot acts.

Anyway Chlamor, I hadn't read that piece before. Thanks

How few people get it...

sw

And why aren't the people saying THAT having to worry about losing their jobs?

If there was any justice - that would be the case.

the lordlings of the status quo, the true face of the dominant culture. They have nothing to worry about, THEY make the rules.

sw

You are being used by the right because they control the information you recieve, and you apparently dont care about that. Fine, register your indigance, but dont forget the big picture. There are more important things than ward churchill going on here.

Text and visual imagery do not function the same way in carrying meaning, so the issue of proprietariness and creativity are not necessarily the same.

What on earth are you talking about?

Who cares if ward churchill copied some art. Who cares if his word choice isnt perfect, those are non-issues. Or, more accurately, issues of importance to those who read his work and a certain artists estate respecively.

The real issue here is that the national media spread around misinformation about him to fuel a right win attempt at his job. Duh plagerism is bad, duh the eichman comparison, when spread around the country, was bound to cause confusion and hurt his case.

So what? He's a radical professor. He isnt running for the presidency. Frankly I dont care if his word choice is misleading at best, or even offensive. I also dont care if he plagerized a work. I do care that he is under national scrutiny and fighting for his job because he dissents, regardless of how badly he does it. I do care that many liberal professors in this country have said things that could be easily spun into being offensive if taken out of context and that the next professor may not be someone as easy to write off as Ward Churchill.

It's pretty clear to me that Prof. Churchill was attacking a symbol of what the WTC meant to him. You can take that for what it means in your own mind, but none of that is offensive to me. And if neoliberalism doesn't offend you, it is only because you aren't facing the business end of its policies against indigenous people that Ward is so eloquently defending.

Pres. Ronald Reagan said a lot more disgusting things in his essentially useless life-span, and they even named an airport after this bozo. When they start to name federal buildings after Ward Churchill in his honor, I know we're finally making up for lost ground.

I've had it, I've really, really had it with comfortable white "liberals" who don't have a fucking clue.

sw

:bounce: :toast:

Pardon my presumptuousness, but I wonder how many of those who are lining up and taking numbers for their chance to be the next person to trash Ward Churchill know a single damn thing about his work, what he's said over the course of his career, or what, in fact, he's actually up to?

It's ironic, really. Churchill wrote a book awhile back that a lot of DUers reference without realizing it. It's called _A Little Matter of Genocide_. I, as a long-time student of this aspect of American history who has studied the very same issues in some detail, have numerous problems with this book: its source material, the conclusions, even the words used in many instances. He wrote things in this book that would infuriate many groups of people in this country if they bothered to look and let themselves be offended, yes things worse than his recent comments. He's rather blunt with his use of rhetoric and doesn't dance around what he means. I know, from reading a great deal of his work, how he uses language. I also know that, on the whole, he gets a lot of it just about right.

And so now Churchill has treaded onto the ground of the sacred subject, and for that we must declare him evil. (I'm ignoring the plagiarism charge, which is a different issue and one for which, if true, I won't defend him in the slightest. But, it *is* a different issue.) That's how all this got started. He has attacked what we are all about as a nation and insulted us down to our very marrow.

Well, hello and good morning. Ward Churchill has been referring to Americans, particularly white Americans, and mass murdering thugs for as long as he's had a public voice. He's been saying, more directly than he did with his WTC comment, that those Americans who die at the hands of those who America as a nation has raped deserve no pity. His rhetoric has been fairly well dismissed by those outside a certain circle as pertaining to anything other than some ancient history. That is, he wasn't attacking "us." No. We're different. We're the good guys. No, says Churchill, the trail of blood is long and continuous.

Agree with that or not. I quite frankly don't in many respects, but in others I can clearly see the chain of logic and find it sensible. But at least be consistent. As I implied originally. A lot of DUers, some in this very thread, agree with pretty much everything the man says and thinks, yet they trash him (now) because he thought and said a thing that hit too close to their own front door.

to agree with anything, much less everything, that Ward says in order to be concerned with the hysteria that the right-wing is generating by focusing on one sentence of an essay he authored three years ago. More, it would be wrong to expect people can not agree with much of what Ward says, but still disagree -- even strongly -- with some of his opinions. That surely would fly in the face of any Native American tradition. As I've said before, any time two people think just alike, it means only one of them is thinking. If anyone agrees with everything Ward has said, they haven't been listening to him closely enough.

What concerns me more than the right-wing hate machine, whose response has been predictable, is the left wing hate machine getting its gears in motion as well. The neocons have been systematically trying to tear down each and every true voice of dissent in this country for some time. They've kicked it into high gear recently, going after more public figures such as Churchill and Moyers. They've apparently done their job quite well since we now see those on the left, those who should look past the smoke and mirrors and *not* accept what this right wing drones are saying at face value, not just helping them but turning up the rhetoric even higher.

It sickens me.

Put face to face with Churchill, I'd probably never run out of things about which we could argue intensely. But, I'd leave those arguments feeling more enlightened than when I started. I'd say the same thing about people like Malcom-X and various other voices who the right wing attempted to silence not so much with a direct assault as efforts to turn their ideological allies against them.

have read any of his books? This just smacks of McCarthyism...

You can take your "election fraud" bullshit and shove it. You can take your "evil DLC" bullshit and shove it. I read this thread and now have a better understanding of how bush* won. I winced ;-) after reading this thread because I now have a better understanding of the McCarthy era.

Take careful notice class...see how easy it is to create hate? Even "liberals" and "progressives" can be sucked in quite easily.

This has nothing to do with Churchill or "little Eichman's". If you'd take 10 minutes to look at who is behind these Ward Attacks and why they are doing it .....ahh...nevermind. Just go ahead DUers and fall in lockstep ;-) with the Right Wing pukes.

CU's Arts & Sciences Council passed a resolution Feb. 10 protesting the investigation, and said administrators should know that faculty members are serious about their opposition to what some consider a witch hunt.

Margaret LeCompte, an education professor, said, "It is going to be extremely difficult, if academic freedom is on the block, for us to hire and keep good faculty members."

LeCompte and the other teachers who signed the ad paid $1,600 to have it published.

"We're all thinking twice about what we're saying," LeCompte said, recalling the climate in the McCarthy era when professors were fired for alleged communist ties.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3579112,00.html

for a little objectivity. We (humans) are not all that much evolved from the rest of the animal kingdom. Especially when old, tired Nazi tactics are being played by second rate characters in the RW and Corporate media ... and the masses lap it up. Again, I fear for my country.

It's such a simple formula, and reading this thread would indicate that it can be effective on anyone regardless of their political ideology.

Step One: Use an isolated event and pound it home over and over again to destroy the integrity/character of the individual. "I voted for the ......"

Step Two: Do and say what ever you want. Lie. Fabricate. Doesn't matter during Step Two if you tell the truth because you have effectively created the "character impression" you sought during Step One.

Step Three: Rinse and Repeat.

Sad.
:-(

who have written or said things that taken out of context could be spun out of control like this.

You dont get to choose the battlefields when you fight for freedom. Our tolerance for free speach is being tested and it is saddening to see how few people pass the test.

Churchill is NOT the target. CU is the target. Boulder is the target. A blue county in a red state is the target. Democrats are the target. Liberal professors are the target.

Churchill is just the beginning. Once the RW has framed their message so that liberals and conservatives fall in line.. from there they can move on to the next step. By the time the liberals figure out what the RW is doing....it's too late.

Free Speech is the target. Where's that "study" that shows that High School students think it's peachy-keen for the government to censor the media?

The RW is spinning Churchill as a "case study" that not all free speech is okay.

to not even realize that the freedom of speech is being violated, as long as it is done by the organized right and not the government.

but it is indeed depressing.

Liberals have been conditioned to see boogeymen in thier own ranks. Conservative straw men have become so pervasive in our culture that even liberals think they exist.

The viciousness and complete lack of humanity so many are willing to show a charecter in a news story they judge from a distance is amazing.

I know liberals are angry, but reactionism is NOT the way.

Liberals let the RW control them. Of course, no one would ever admit it.

If he had done the same to a truly famous image that a person would recognize immediately like the MOna Lisa that would have been different because the eye would have picked up the fact that it was a famous icon that had been altered, making it an homage or critical piece. Like Andy Warhol.However, the one he chose was too obscure for that. And he did not alter it enough---say by added tiny marching Eichmans to the landscape--to personalize it. So he is definitely a rip off artist.

But he isnt "scum".

:spank:

you're falling for exactly what those on the right want you to fall for

they look for every single little flaw in any attempt to discredit the guy and you fell for it like a sucker

Link:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0216-28.htm

(snip)
At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, you claim that my beautiful brother Chris, a "technocrat" in your words, received his "befitting penalty." While Chris rarely used a cell phone in his work (much less self-importantly brayed into one), he did make one call that fateful day. At about 8:30 that morning, Chris bantered back and forth with his 4-year-old daughter to get her to say that she loved him — she was the last of his family to talk with him.

Mr. Churchill, what I want you to see is the human face behind the rhetoric. Human beings are not symbols, and your essay's dehumanization of the victims of 9/11 reduces them to mere symbols — drones in a capitalist machine. In this way, you are guilty of what you claim to condemn, that is the dehumanization of individuals. It is the inability to see the human face of "the other" that allows the horrible violence in this world to continue.

From what I understand after reading your essay, you wish to give the American people a view of the suffering of the Iraqi and the Palestinian peoples, and provide insight into why the attacks of 9/11 may have occurred. This is noble and legitimate. We do need to see and understand the consequences of the actions of our government and the exportation of our culture, and also do what we can to right the wrongs that have been committed. But to make this point is it necessary to forget the individual humanity of those who died in the attacks and reduce them to mere stereotypes?
(snip)
(snip)
Mr. Churchill, we have the right to ask you, in fact, we are obligated to ask you publicly. And you, sir, we feel, are obligated to answer us publicly and unequivocally. In your view, was my brother's death justified? Yes or no? Did it right any wrongs that have been committed in this world?
(snip)

:hangover:

How does that make me sympathize with Palestinians or Iraqis? To know that death is visited for tenuous connections to to the actions of the government? That someone's entire life is reduced to the role as a cog in a machine, and submitted to judgemnt and execution by a self appointed mahdi to the cheers of an academic?

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If this author cared more about the facts than registering his outrage he could have found all the answers in his questions of churchill in churchills work and interviews and found out that it is he, not churchill who made the mistake. Churchill was refering specifically to the people in the towers who profit off of American Empire and thus through thier actions feul it.

He didnt say he thought they should die, simply that you cant look at them as innocents and from the prospective of the attackers they were guilty.