"Some Professors Push Back" -- Jury awards professor fired for 9/11-Nazi essay
"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of
the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
hundred threescore and six."
--REVELATION 13:18
*****************************************
That's six-six-six to you, ....
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
hundred threescore and six."
--REVELATION 13:18
*****************************************
That's six-six-six to you, ....
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
Zionist censorship costs one dollar -- Freedom of Speech is priceless.
Jury awards $1 to professor fired for 9/11-Nazi essay
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/02/colorado.professor.jury/index.html
DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- A jury Thursday found that former college
professor Ward Churchill, who referred to victims of the September 11,
2001, attacks as "little Eichmanns" in an essay, was wrongfully
terminated by the University of Colorado, according to a court
official.
Ward Churchill was dismissed as a professor at the University of
Colorado at Boulder in 2007.
But the jury, which deliberated for a day and a half after a trial
that began March 9, awarded Churchill only $1, the minimum they could
award while still finding in Churchill's favor, according to Robert
McCallum, public information officer for Colorado's 2nd Judicial
District Court.
While an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at
Boulder, Churchill came under national scrutiny for a 2002 essay
entitled, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting
Chickens," which criticized U.S. foreign policy.
In a reference to Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who
was one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, Churchill referred
to victims of the World Trade Center attacks "little Eichmanns."
Churchill argued the victims were "a technocratic corps at the very
heart of America's global financial empire."
Churchill's essay drew little notice until an 1,800-student college in
upstate New York invited him to take part in a 2005 forum on prisons
and Native American rights.
The invitation was rescinded after criticism from then-New York Gov.
George Pataki, then-Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and hundreds of relatives
of those killed in the attacks created a media firestorm. Churchill
was fired in 2007.
Churchill argued during the trial that he was fired from his tenured
position for expressing politically unpopular, but constitutionally
protected, views.
The university argued in the trial that he was not fired for his
political views but rather for sloppy academic work. During the trial,
the university presented several examples of what university officials
claimed were cases of plagiarism in his research.
District Court Chief Judge Larry J. Naves has given both sides 30 days
to present motions before he rules on whether Churchill will get his
job back or will receive back pay.
University of Colorado at Boulder Interim Chancellor Philip P.
DiStefano released this statement on the university's Web site,
saying: "While I am disappointed by the jury's decision, I am still
confident that the process we used to review allegations of research
misconduct was appropriately applied in this case. The university
attorneys will evaluate the next steps in the legal process. It is too
early to comment on how the judge's final decision might impact the
campus, as that decision has not yet been rendered."
Calls to the office and cell phone of Churchill's attorney were not
immediately returned.
=========================================
"Some People Push Back"
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens
By Ward Churchill
When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of
John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously - and quite
charitably, all things considered - replied that it was merely a case
of "chickens coming home to roost."
On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens - along
with some half-million dead Iraqi children - came home to roost in a
very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.
Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon
as well.
The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable - in
fact, widely predicted - result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing of
their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well as
other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population
depends for its very survival.
If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough - and it
should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class
I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of
international law, as well as every conceivable standard of
"civilized" behavior - the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up
by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while
by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo
has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients,
medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even
their toddlers.
All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids
lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of
their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered - are still
suffering - a combination of physical debilitation and psychological
trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In
effect, an entire generation has been obliterated.
The reason for this holocaust was/is rather simple, and stated quite
straightforwardly by President George Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving"
father of the freedom-lover currently filling the Oval Office, George
the 43rd: "The world must learn that what we say, goes," intoned
George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause of freedom-loving
Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his message was
certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall the
24-hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available
TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to
gain a sense of how much they knew.
In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to
remember the wave of elation that swept America at reports of what was
happening along the so-called Highway of Death: perhaps 100,000
"towel-heads" and "camel jockeys" - or was it "sand niggers" that
week? - in full retreat, routed and effectively defenseless, many of
them conscripted civilian laborers, slaughtered in a single day by
jets firing the most hyper-lethal types of ordnance. It was a
performance worthy of the nazis during the early months of their drive
into Russia. And it should be borne in mind that Good Germans
gleefully cheered that butchery, too. Indeed, support for Hitler
suffered no serious erosion among Germany's "innocent civilians" until
the defeat at Stalingrad.
There may be a real utility to reflecting further, this time upon
the fact that it was pious Americans who led the way in assigning the
onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for
things they as individuals had done, but for what they had allowed -
nay, empowered - their leaders and their soldiers to do in their name.
If the principle was valid then, it remains so now, as applicable to
Good Americans as it was the Good Germans. And the price exacted from
the Germans for the faultiness of their moral fiber was truly ghastly.
Returning now to the children, and to the effects of the post-Gulf War
embargo - continued bull force by Bush the Elder's successors in the
Clinton administration as a gesture of its "resolve" to finalize what
George himself had dubbed the "New World Order" of American
military/economic domination - it should be noted that not one but two
high United Nations officials attempting to coordinate delivery of
humanitarian aid to Iraq resigned in succession as protests against US
policy.
One of them, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halladay,
repeatedly denounced what was happening as "a systematic program . . .
of deliberate genocide." His statements appeared in the New York Times
and other papers during the fall of 1998, so it can hardly be
contended that the American public was "unaware" of them. Shortly
thereafter, Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly confirmed
Halladay's assessment. Asked during the widely-viewed TV program Meet
the Press to respond to his "allegations," she calmly announced that
she'd decided it was "worth the price" to see that U.S. objectives
were achieved.
The Politics of a Perpetrator Population
 As a whole, the American public greeted these revelations with
yawns.. There were, after all, far more pressing things than the
unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be
concerned with. Getting "Jeremy" and "Ellington" to their weekly
soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little "Tiffany" and
"Ashley" had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their new
cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against ashtrays
- for "our kids," no less - as an all-absorbing point of political
focus.
In fairness, it must be admitted that there was an infinitesimally
small segment of the body politic who expressed opposition to what
was/is being done to the children of Iraq. It must also be conceded,
however, that those involved by-and-large contented themselves with
signing petitions and conducting candle-lit prayer vigils, bearing
"moral witness" as vast legions of brown-skinned five-year-olds sat
shivering in the dark, wide-eyed in horror, whimpering as they expired
in the most agonizing ways imaginable.
Be it said as well, and this is really the crux of it, that the
"resistance" expended the bulk of its time and energy harnessed to the
systemically-useful task of trying to ensure, as "a principle of moral
virtue" that nobody went further than waving signs as a means of
"challenging" the patently exterminatory pursuit of Pax Americana. So
pure of principle were these "dissidents," in fact, that they began
literally to supplant the police in protecting corporations profiting
by the carnage against suffering such retaliatory "violence" as having
their windows broken by persons less "enlightened" - or perhaps more
outraged - than the self-anointed "peacekeepers."
Property before people, it seems - or at least the equation of
property to people - is a value by no means restricted to America's
boardrooms. And the sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are
enunciated turns out to be nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by
the CEO of Standard Oil or any of the swarm of comfort zone
"pacifists" queuing up to condemn the black block after it ever so
slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in Seattle.
Small wonder, all-in-all, that people elsewhere in the world - the
Mideast, for instance - began to wonder where, exactly, aside from the
streets of the US itself, one was to find the peace America's
purportedly oppositional peacekeepers claimed they were keeping.
The answer, surely, was plain enough to anyone unblinded by the kind
of delusions engendered by sheer vanity and self-absorption. So, too,
were the implications in terms of anything changing, out there, in
America's free-fire zones.
Tellingly, it was at precisely this point - with the genocide in Iraq
officially admitted and a public response demonstrating beyond a
shadow of a doubt that there were virtually no Americans, including
most of those professing otherwise, doing anything tangible to stop it
- that the combat teams which eventually commandeered the aircraft
used on September 11 began to infiltrate the United States.
Â
Meet the "Terrorists"
 Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said in
the face of the unending torrent of disinformational drivel unleashed
by George Junior and the corporate "news" media immediately following
their successful operation on September 11.
They did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the US, much less
commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."
A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants
has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" - now
proudly emblematized by the United States - against the "Islamic East"
since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More
recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first
lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement of
Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered
"Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in between. Any
way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did to the WTC and
the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war - and they can - then
the same is true of every US "overflight' of Iraqi territory since day
one. The first acts of war during the current millennium thus occurred
on its very first day, and were carried out by U.S. aviators acting
under orders from their then-commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. The
most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is
that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has
dispensed to their people as a matter of course.
That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action
at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and
restraint.
They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."
There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel
killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside
comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World
Trade Center . . .
Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? 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. Recourse to "ignorance" - a derivative, after
all, of the word "ignore" - counts as less than an excuse among this
relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were
unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were
involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their
absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too
busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell
phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which
translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance,
into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. 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.
The men who flew the missions against the WTC and Pentagon were not
"cowards." That distinction properly belongs to the "firm-jawed lads"
who delighted in flying stealth aircraft through the undefended
airspace of Baghdad, dropping payload after payload of bombs on anyone
unfortunate enough to be below - including tens of thousands of
genuinely innocent civilians - while themselves incurring all the risk
one might expect during a visit to the local video arcade. Still more,
the word describes all those "fighting men and women" who sat at
computer consoles aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, enjoying
air-conditioned comfort while launching cruise missiles into
neighborhoods filled with random human beings. Whatever else can be
said of them, the men who struck on September 11 manifested the
courage of their convictions, willingly expending their own lives in
attaining their objectives.
Nor were they "fanatics" devoted to "Islamic fundamentalism."
One might rightly describe their actions as "desperate." Feelings of
desperation, however, are a perfectly reasonable - one is tempted to
say "normal" - emotional response among persons confronted by the mass
murder of their children, particularly when it appears that nobody
else really gives a damn (ask a Jewish survivor about this one, or,
even more poignantly, for all the attention paid them, a Gypsy).
That desperate circumstances generate desperate responses is no
mysterious or irrational principle, of the sort motivating fanatics.
Less is it one peculiar to Islam. Indeed, even the FBI's investigative
reports on the combat teams' activities during the months leading up
to September 11 make it clear that the members were not fundamentalist
Muslims. Rather, it's pretty obvious at this point that they were
secular activists - soldiers, really - who, while undoubtedly enjoying
cordial relations with the clerics of their countries, were motivated
far more by the grisly realities of the U.S. war against them than by
a set of religious beliefs.
And still less were they/their acts "insane."
Insanity is a condition readily associable with the very American
idea that one - or one's country - holds what amounts to a "divine
right" to commit genocide, and thus to forever do so with impunity.
The term might also be reasonably applied to anyone suffering genocide
without attempting in some material way to bring the process to a
halt. Sanity itself, in this frame of reference, might be defined by a
willingness to try and destroy the perpetrators and/or the sources of
their ability to commit their crimes. (Shall we now discuss the US
"strategic bombing campaign" against Germany during World War II, and
the mental health of those involved in it?)
Which takes us to official characterizations of the combat teams as
an embodiment of "evil."
Evil - for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept -
was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as Madeline
Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt, blandly
spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death sentence upon
the unoffending youth of Iraq. Evil was to be heard in that great
American hero "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkopf's utterly dehumanizing
dismissal of their systematic torture and annihilation as mere
"collateral damage." Evil, moreover, is a term appropriate to
describing the mentality of a public that finds such perspectives and
the policies attending them acceptable, or even momentarily tolerable.
Had it not been for these evils, the counterattacks of September 11
would never have occurred. And unless "the world is rid of such evil,"
to lift a line from George Junior, September 11 may well end up
looking like a lark.
There is no reason, after all, to believe that the teams deployed in
the assaults on the WTC and the Pentagon were the only such, that the
others are composed of "Arabic-looking individuals" - America's
indiscriminately lethal arrogance and psychotic sense of
self-entitlement have long since given the great majority of the
world's peoples ample cause to be at war with it - or that they are in
any way dependent upon the seizure of civilian airliners to complete
their missions.
To the contrary, there is every reason to expect that there are many
other teams in place, tasked to employ altogether different tactics in
executing operational plans at least as well-crafted as those evident
on September 11, and very well equipped for their jobs. This is to say
that, since the assaults on the WTC and Pentagon were act of war - not
"terrorist incidents" - they must be understood as components in a
much broader strategy designed to achieve specific results. From this,
it can only be adduced that there are plenty of other components ready
to go, and that they will be used, should this become necessary in the
eyes of the strategists. It also seems a safe bet that each component
is calibrated to inflict damage at a level incrementally higher than
the one before (during the 1960s, the Johnson administration employed
a similar policy against Vietnam, referred to as "escalation").
Since implementation of the overall plan began with the WTC/Pentagon
assaults, it takes no rocket scientist to decipher what is likely to
happen next, should the U.S. attempt a response of the inexcusable
variety to which it has long entitled itself.
Â
About Those Boys (and Girls) in the Bureau
 There's another matter begging for comment at this point. The idea
that the FBI's "counterterrorism task forces" can do a thing to
prevent what will happen is yet another dimension of America's
delusional pathology.. The fact is that, for all its publicly-financed
"image-building" exercises, the Bureau has never shown the least
aptitude for anything of the sort.
Oh, yeah, FBI counterintelligence personnel have proven quite adept
at framing anarchists, communists and Black Panthers, sometimes
murdering them in their beds or the electric chair. The Bureau's SWAT
units have displayed their ability to combat child abuse in Waco by
burning babies alive, and its vaunted Crime Lab has been shown to pad
its "crime-fighting' statistics by fabricating evidence against many
an alleged car thief. But actual "heavy-duty bad guys" of the sort at
issue now? This isn't a Bruce Willis/Chuck Norris/Sly Stallone movie,
after all.. And J. Edgar Hoover doesn't get to approve either the
script or the casting.
The number of spies, saboteurs and bona fide terrorists apprehended,
or even detected by the FBI in the course of its long and slimy
history could be counted on one's fingers and toes. On occasion, its
agents have even turned out to be the spies, and, in many instances,
the terrorists as well.
To be fair once again, if the Bureau functions as at best a carnival
of clowns where its "domestic security responsibilities" are
concerned, this is because - regardless of official hype - it has
none. It is now, as it's always been, the national political police
force, an instrument created and perfected to ensure that all
Americans, not just the consenting mass, are "free" to do exactly as
they're told.
The FBI and "cooperating agencies" can be thus relied upon to set
about "protecting freedom" by destroying whatever rights and liberties
were left to U.S. citizens before September 11 (in fact, they've
already received authorization to begin). Sheeplike, the great
majority of Americans can also be counted upon to bleat their
approval, at least in the short run, believing as they always do that
the nasty implications of what they're doing will pertain only to
others.
Oh Yeah, and "The Company," Too
A possibly even sicker joke is the notion, suddenly in vogue, that
the CIA will be able to pinpoint "terrorist threats," "rooting out
their infrastructure" where it exists and/or "terminating" it before
it can materialize, if only it's allowed to beef up its "human
intelligence gathering capacity" in an unrestrained manner (including
full-bore operations inside the US, of course).
Yeah. Right.
Since America has a collective attention-span of about 15 minutes, a
little refresher seems in order: "The Company" had something like a
quarter-million people serving as "intelligence assets" by feeding it
information in Vietnam in 1968, and it couldn't even predict the Tet
Offensive. God knows how many spies it was fielding against the USSR
at the height of Ronald Reagan's version of the Cold War, and it was
still caught flatfooted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As to
destroying "terrorist infrastructures," one would do well to remember
Operation Phoenix, another product of its open season in Vietnam. In
that one, the CIA enlisted elite US units like the Navy Seals and Army
Special Forces, as well as those of friendly countries - the south
Vietnamese Rangers, for example, and Australian SAS - to run around
"neutralizing" folks targeted by The Company's legion of snitches as
"guerrillas" (as those now known as "terrorists" were then called).
Sound familiar?
Upwards of 40,000 people - mostly bystanders, as it turns out - were
murdered by Phoenix hit teams before the guerrillas, stronger than
ever, ran the US and its collaborators out of their country
altogether. And these are the guys who are gonna save the day, if
unleashed to do their thing in North America?
The net impact of all this "counterterrorism" activity upon the
combat teams' ability to do what they came to do, of course, will be
nil.
Instead, it's likely to make it easier for them to operate (it's
worked that way in places like Northern Ireland). And, since denying
Americans the luxury of reaping the benefits of genocide in comfort
was self-evidently a key objective of the WTC/Pentagon assaults, it
can be stated unequivocally that a more overt display of the police
state mentality already pervading this country simply confirms the
magnitude of their victory.
Â
On Matters of Proportion and Intent
 As things stand, including the 1993 detonation at the WTC, "Arab
terrorists" have responded to the massive and sustained American
terror bombing of Iraq with a total of four assaults by explosives
inside the US. That's about 1% of the 50,000 bombs the Pentagon
announced were rained on Baghdad alone during the Gulf War (add in
Oklahoma City and you'll get something nearer an actual 1%).
They've managed in the process to kill about 5,000 Americans, or
roughly 1% of the dead Iraqi children (the percentage is far smaller
if you factor in the killing of adult Iraqi civilians, not to mention
troops butchered as/after they'd surrendered and/or after the
"war-ending" ceasefire had been announced).
In terms undoubtedly more meaningful to the property/profit-minded
American mainstream, they've knocked down a half-dozen buildings -
albeit some very well-chosen ones - as opposed to the "strategic
devastation" visited upon the whole of Iraq, and punched a $100
billion hole in the earnings outlook of major corporate shareholders,
as opposed to the U.S. obliteration of Iraq's entire economy.
With that, they've given Americans a tiny dose of their own
medicine.. This might be seen as merely a matter of "vengeance" or
"retribution," and, unquestionably, America has earned it, even if it
were to add up only to something so ultimately petty.
The problem is that vengeance is usually framed in terms of "getting
even," a concept which is plainly inapplicable in this instance. As
the above data indicate, it would require another 49,996 detonations
killing 495,000 more Americans, for the "terrorists" to "break even"
for the bombing of Baghdad/extermination of Iraqi children alone. And
that's to achieve "real number" parity. To attain an actual
proportional parity of damage - the US is about 15 times as large as
Iraq in terms of population, even more in terms of territory - they
would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and
kill something on the order of 7.5 million people.
Were this the intent of those who've entered the US to wage war
against it, it would remain no less true that America and Americans
were only receiving the bill for what they'd already done. Payback, as
they say, can be a real motherfucker (ask the Germans). There is,
however, no reason to believe that retributive parity is necessarily
an item on the agenda of those who planned the WTC/Pentagon operation.
If it were, given the virtual certainty that they possessed the
capacity to have inflicted far more damage than they did, there would
be a lot more American bodies lying about right now.
Hence, it can be concluded that ravings carried by the "news" media
since September 11 have contained at least one grain of truth: The
peoples of the Mideast "aren't like" Americans, not least because they
don't "value life' in the same way. By this, it should be understood
that Middle-Easterners, unlike Americans, have no history of
exterminating others purely for profit, or on the basis of racial
animus. Thus, we can appreciate the fact that they value life - all
lives, not just their own - far more highly than do their U.S.
counterparts.
Â
The Makings of a Humanitarian Strategy
 In sum one can discern a certain optimism - it might even be call
humanitarianism - imbedded in the thinking of those who presided over
the very limited actions conducted on September 11.
Their logic seems to have devolved upon the notion that the American
people have condoned what has been/is being done in their name -
indeed, are to a significant extent actively complicit in it - mainly
because they have no idea what it feels like to be on the receiving
end.
Now they do.
That was the "medicinal" aspect of the attacks.
To all appearances, the idea is now to give the tonic a little time
to take effect, jolting Americans into the realization that the sort
of pain they're now experiencing first-hand is no different from - or
the least bit more excruciating than - that which they've been so
cavalier in causing others, and thus to respond appropriately.
More bluntly, the hope was - and maybe still is - that Americans,
stripped of their presumed immunity from incurring any real
consequences for their behavior, would comprehend and act upon a
formulation as uncomplicated as "stop killing our kids, if you want
your own to be safe."
Either way, it's a kind of "reality therapy" approach, designed to
afford the American people a chance to finally "do the right thing" on
their own, without further coaxing.
Were the opportunity acted upon in some reasonably good faith fashion
- a sufficiently large number of Americans rising up and doing
whatever is necessary to force an immediate lifting of the sanctions
on Iraq, for instance, or maybe hanging a few of America's abundant
supply of major war criminals (Henry Kissinger comes quickly to mind,
as do Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and George the
Elder) - there is every reason to expect that military operations
against the US on its domestic front would be immediately suspended.
Whether they would remain so would of course be contingent upon
follow-up. By that, it may be assumed that American acceptance of
onsite inspections by international observers to verify destruction of
its weapons of mass destruction (as well as dismantlement of all
facilities in which more might be manufactured), Nuremberg-style
trials in which a few thousand US military/corporate personnel could
be properly adjudicated and punished for their Crimes Against
humanity, and payment of reparations to the array of nations/peoples
whose assets the US has plundered over the years, would suffice.
Since they've shown no sign of being unreasonable or vindictive, it
may even be anticipated that, after a suitable period of adjustment
and reeducation (mainly to allow them to acquire the skills necessary
to living within their means), those restored to control over their
own destinies by the gallant sacrifices of the combat teams the WTC
and Pentagon will eventually (re)admit Americans to the global circle
of civilized societies. Stranger things have happened.
Â
In the Alternative
 Unfortunately, noble as they may have been, such humanitarian
aspirations were always doomed to remain unfulfilled. For it to have
been otherwise, a far higher quality of character and intellect would
have to prevail among average Americans than is actually the case.
Perhaps the strategists underestimated the impact a couple of
generations-worth of media indoctrination can produce in terms of
demolishing the capacity of human beings to form coherent thoughts.
Maybe they forgot to factor in the mind-numbing effects of the
indoctrination passed off as education in the US. Then, again, it's
entirely possible they were aware that a decisive majority of American
adults have been reduced by this point to a level much closer to the
kind of immediate self-gratification entailed in Pavlovian
stimulus/response patterns than anything accessible by appeals to
higher logic, and still felt morally obliged to offer the dolts an
option to quit while they were ahead.
What the hell? It was worth a try.
But it's becoming increasingly apparent that the dosage of medicine
administered was entirely insufficient to accomplish its purpose.
Although there are undoubtedly exceptions, Americans for the most
part still don't get it.
Already, they've desecrated the temporary tomb of those killed in the
WTC, staging a veritable pep rally atop the mangled remains of those
they profess to honor, treating the whole affair as if it were some
bizarre breed of contact sport. And, of course, there are the
inevitable pom-poms shaped like American flags, the school colors worn
as little red-white-and-blue ribbons affixed to labels, sportscasters
in the form of "counterterrorism experts" drooling mindless color
commentary during the pregame warm-up.
Refusing the realization that the world has suddenly shifted its
axis, and that they are therefore no longer "in charge," they have
by-and-large reverted instantly to type, working themselves into their
usual bloodlust on the now obsolete premise that the bloodletting will
"naturally" occur elsewhere and to someone else.
"Patriotism," a wise man once observed, "is the last refuge of
scoundrels."
And the braided, he might of added.
Braided Scoundrel-in-Chief, George Junior, lacking even the sense to
be careful what he wished for, has teamed up with a gaggle of
fundamentalist Christian clerics like Billy Graham to proclaim a "New
Crusade" called "Infinite Justice" aimed at "ridding the world of
evil."
One could easily make light of such rhetoric, remarking upon how
unseemly it is for a son to threaten his father in such fashion - or a
president to so publicly contemplate the murder/suicide of himself and
his cabinet - but the matter is deadly serious.
They are preparing once again to sally forth for the purpose of
roasting brown-skinned children by the scores of thousands. Already,
the B-1 bombers and the aircraft carriers and the missile frigates are
en route, the airborne divisions are gearing up to go.
To where? Afghanistan?
The Sudan?
The Lebanon... repeatedly for decades.
Iraq, again (or still)?
How about Grenada (that was fun)?
Any of them or all. It doesn't matter.
The desire to pummel the helpless runs rabid as ever.
Only, this time it's different.
The time the helpless aren't, or at least are not so helpless as they
were.
This time, somewhere, perhaps in an Afghani mountain cave, possibly
in a Brooklyn basement, maybe another local altogether - but
somewhere, all the same - there's a grim-visaged (wo)man wearing a
Clint Eastwood smile.
"Go ahead, punks," s/he's saying, "Make my day."
And when they do, when they launch these airstrikes abroad - or may a
little later; it will be at a time conforming to the "terrorists"' own
schedule, and at a place of their choosing - the next more intensive
dose of medicine administered here "at home."
Of what will it consist this time? Anthrax? Mustard gas? Sarin? A
tactical nuclear device?
That, too, is their choice to make.
Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why
Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves, to
accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an actor,
Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club.
"You've got to learn, " the line went, "that when you push people
around, some people push back."
As they should.
As they must.
And as they undoubtedly will.
There is justice in such symmetry.
Â
ADDENDUM
 The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a
stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11
counterattack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily
admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong
about a number of things.
For instance, it may not have been (only) the ghosts of Iraqi
children who made their appearance that day. It could as easily have
been some or all of their butchered Palestinian cousins.
Or maybe it was some or all of the at least 3.2 million Indochinese
who perished as a result of America's sustained and genocidal assault
on Southeast Asia (1959-1975), not to mention the millions more who've
died because of the sanctions imposed thereafter.
Perhaps there were a few of the Korean civilians massacred by US
troops at places like No Gun Ri during the early '50s, or the hundreds
of thousands of Japanese civilians ruthlessly incinerated in the
ghastly fire raids of World War II (only at Dresden did America bomb
Germany in a similar manner).
And, of course, it could have been those vaporized in the militarily
pointless nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There are others, as well, a vast and silent queue of faceless
victims, stretching from the million-odd Filipinos slaughtered during
America's "Indian War" in their islands at the beginning of the
twentieth century, through the real Indians, America's own, massacred
wholesale at places like Horseshoe Bend and the Bad Axe, Sand Creek
and Wounded Knee, the Washita, Bear River, and the Marias.
Was it those who expired along the Cherokee Trial of Tears of the
Long Walk of the Navajo?
Those murdered by smallpox at Fort Clark in 1836?
Starved to death in the concentration camp at Bosque Redondo during
the 1860s?
Maybe those native people claimed for scalp bounty in all 48 of the
continental US states? Or the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked
for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at
the very site where the WTC once stood?
One hears, too, the whispers of those lost on the Middle Passage, and
of those whose very flesh was sold in the slave market outside the
human kennel from whence Wall Street takes its name. And of coolie
laborers, imported by the gross-dozen to lay the tracks of empire
across scorching desert sands, none of them allotted "a Chinaman's
chance" of surviving.
The list is too long, too awful to go on.
No matter what its eventual fate, America will have gotten off very,
very cheap.
The full measure of its guilt can never be fully balanced or atoned
for.
 Ward Churchill (Keetoowah Band Cherokee) is one of the most
outspoken of Native American activists. In his lectures and numerous
published works, he explores the themes of genocide in the Americas,
historical and legal (re)interpretation of conquest and colonization,
literary and cinematic criticism, and indigenist alternatives to the
status quo. Churchill is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator
of American Indian Studies. He is also a past national spokesperson
for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. His books include Agents of
Repression, Fantasies of the Master Race, From a Native Son and A
Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust
In March 2009 Ward Churchill has been in court, suing the University
of Colorado for firing him, a move the university made in 200_ as
retaliation for this essay. Reports from the trial here are courtesy
of the Ward Churchill Trial Blog maintained by the Ward Churchill
Solidarity Network:
Still not getting too optimistic
Max and me
Sour grapes
Courthouse closing at noon
It gets better
More Documents of Interest from early 2005
* Review of "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" , by Faith
Attaguile (LiP Magazine Summer 2004)
* Review of "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" , by Jeb Brandt
(The Indypendent Jan. 9 2005)
* Johnson: Churchill Not Alone in Pointing Finger , from Rocky
Mountain News (Feb. 2 2005)
* U. of Colorado Faculty Rallies Around Professor , from Associate
Press (Feb. 2 2005)
* Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center Statement in Support of
Ward Churchill (Feb. 2 2005)
* American Association of University Professors on Professor Ward
Churchill Controversy (Feb. 3 2005)
* Beat the Devil: Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs of the Right ,
by Alexander Cockburn (The Nation, Feb. 3 2005)
* Colorado Regents Will Investigate Professor Who Compared
September 11 Victims to Nazis , by Scott Smallwood (Chronicle of
Higher Education, Friday, February 4, 2005)
* Students, Faculty at Hamilton College Back Controversial
Discussion , by Marshand-Boone (Utica Observer Dispatch, February 4,
2005)
* The Distortions of Acumen: Liberals Trash Ward Churchill , by
Joshua Frank (Press Action, February 4 2005)
* Churchill Rant Has Some Truth , by Reggie Rivers (Denver Post,
February 4th 2005)
* Professor Under Fire for 9/11 Comments , by T..R. Reid
(Washington Post, February 5, 2005)
* Raise Your Voice But Keep Your Head Down by Michael Albert (ZNet
February 5th 2005)
* The Distortions of Acumen Continued , by Joshua Frank (Press
Action, February 7th 2005)
* Thousands Attend Churchill Speech , by Erin Gartner (Associated
Press, February 8th 2005)
* The Anti-AIM Tide Is Rising (Leonard Peltier Defense Committee,
February 9th 2005)
* Churchill: "I Do Not Work For Bill Owens" (News4Colorado,
February 9th 2005)
* Prof: Never Back Down by Howard Pankratz and George Merritt
(Denver Post, February 9th 2005)
* What Ward Churchill didn't say; It's the singer, not the song...
by Mickey Z. (Februaryt 9th 2005)
* Killing the Messenger: Ward Churchill's Sins Against the Empire
by Steven Best (Press Action, February 10th 2005)
* N.Y. Professor Loses Post Over Churchill Controversy (Associated
Press, February 11th 2005)
* Ward Churchill is Neocon Test Case for Academic Purges by Emma
Perez, Ethnic Studies Chair at UC (February 15th 2005)
* An Open Letter to Ward Churchill: My Brother, the "Eichmann" by
Michael Faughnan (Boulder Daily Camera, Feb. 16th 2005)
* The Termination and Removal of Ward Churchill by Scott Lyons
(Indian Country, February 17th 2005)
* Churchill Gets Support at Forum by Brittany Anas (Boulder Daily
Camera February 18th 2005)
* The Witch Hunt Against Ward Churchill (Revolutionary Worker,
February 20th 2005)
* Churchill Clarifies 9/11 Stand in Hawaii (Associated Press,
February 23rd 2005)
* Ward Churchill and 911 by Robert Jensen (The Progressive Trail,
February 23rd 2005)
* So how come? by Dani Newsum (February 26th 2005)
* CU weighs buyout for firebrand prof by Dave Kurtin and Arthur
Kane (Denver Post, Februrary 26th 2005)
Also check out Letters of Support for Ward Churchill from the UCB
Academic Community .
Some institutions of "higher" learning are now enforcing a Colorado
law that says that full time professors have to signa loyalty oath:
click here for more details
Also on the aforementioned site is an indepth article that was written
years before the current controversy that refutes many of the
allegations and attacks on Churchill that have just recently been
"revealed" by the mainstream media:
http://www.coloradoaim.org/why.html
Almost one hundred different articles by Ward Churchill are available
on ZNet, click here for a list:
http://www.zmag.org/search/search_results.cfm?keyWords=Ward+Churchill&collection=allZnet&searchType=simple
You can purchase books and spoken word CDs by Ward Churchill at
leftwingbooks.NET
While many people have contacted me upset at my posting this essay to
my site, the following is certainly the best email i have received on
this subject so far:
Thank you for posting the illuminating essay by Professor
Churchill. Although the essay is 99% accurate, there is a fatal flaw
in this line...
Evil - for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a
concept - was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as
Madeline Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt,
blandly spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death
sentence upon the unoffending youth of Iraq.
...Having received the Star Wars trilogy on DVD for Christmas, I would
like to point out that Jabba the Hut (two b's, one t) did not squat in
a studio chair, he reclined on a raised dais overlooking the floor
where he received important guests. By comparing Jabba's seating style
to that of Albright, Dr. Churchill demeans not only Jabba, but legions
of loyal Star Wars fans the world over. If, like me, you are offended
by Professor Churchill's misrepresentation of one of George Lucas'
most compelling and memorable characters, please join me in
petitioning the CU Board of Regents in favor of Dr. Churchill's
dismissal. Please forward this to any other Star Wars fans you know,
unless they are fans of Jar Jar Binks, a latter-day Joseph Goebbels
who willingly served as a propagandist for the genocidal, imperialist
monarchy of Queen Amidala, and later served in the Galactic Senate as
an apologist for the Gungan use of biological weapaons in the dispute
with the Trade Federation...
