The man in the maelstrom. Ward Churchill speaks out.

[CrispyQ]

From the current issue of the Boulder Weekly. Good interview.

http://www.boulderweekly.com/coverstory.html

snip...

BW: So you're not saying the people who died on 9/11 deserved to die?

WC: I'm not a judge. I want the whole goddamned process to stop, you know? That extends to these collateral damages... I certainly don't embrace that. I didn't judge Eichmann. I didn't impose the death penalty. You can adduce that if Eichmann is worthy of death, because of what he had done in arranging train schedules and such, then these other Eichmanns are worthy of death.

But I didn't pronounce the sentence. I merely made the comparison. I've pointed this out when I've actually gone on with these attack dogs: You show me where I said it was justified. You're drawing conclusions about what I said. I wanted you to think about it. I wanted you to critically engage. I wanted you to draw conclusions, but I didn't say that. I made the comparison based on an analysis that I believe to be true. You draw your own conclusions from it.

Churchill then lamented that one central point of this issue continues to be overlooked by the U.S. media and the public.

We have yet to have anybody address the issue of the Iraqi children. It always comes back to the same, "But what about these families?"

I want to say this: I have an abiding sorrow for the collateral damage on 9/11, and I never compared them to Eichmann. They were collateral damage—based on a set of rules imposed by the United States, to which I object with every fiber of my being. And I am mightily sorry about the janitors and the food-service workers and the kids. I mourn the kids in particular. They never had a chance to do anything. But I don't mourn them proportionately more than I do the half-million Iraqi children. And the idea of diverting all of this back to those 3,000 Americans, as if the rest were of no more consequence or value than toilet paper, is exactly the problem I was trying to define. They're illustrating it perfectly.

I even mourn the Eichmanns in a certain sense. I mourn the fact that they were dehumanized without even knowing it, active participants in their own dehumanization to the point where they lost their souls and their humanity altogether; that the calculus of profit outweighed the value of the lives of children who lived in misery and died young as a result, and they considered it the way it ought to be. That is a sorrowful situation. And I'm trying to penetrate that veil and rearrange the consciousness so that there can be a different outcome.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. I would mortgage my house to see him debate this sorry excuse of

a resident we now have. He would eat him alive.

[Prodemsouth]

3. No he would not- as someone who despises Bush please don't let him

make our side look like fools more than he already has.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Ok.... I would break my piggy bank instead. eom.

[G_j]

6. question

have you read other things that Churchill has written or heard him speak, or do you base your conclusions on this recent controversy?

[Prodemsouth]

11. No, I base it on the article I read. You want to endear George W Bush

to the majority of Americans. Put this guy on stage next to him in a debate, as the earlier poster suggested. Rove could not ask for anything better. If he is trying to communicate his ideas to people, as he claims, he is doing a very poor job.

[G_j]

15. thanks

just curious

[K-W]

17. The reason his ideas seem crazy is because nobody hears them.

I think the right has MORE than proven that fringe ideas given enough air time will become quickly palatable to America. And thier crazy ideas are wrong.

The reason a rational humanistic perspective on things seems so strange is that people are kept from hearing it.

[Prodemsouth]

2. "I even mourn the Eichmanns in a certain sense" Only digging a

deeper hole.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Just like anyone else... just following orders sir... just following

orders.... for the homeland... for the homeland.



A Simulation Study of the
Psychology of Imprisonment
Conducted at Stanford University

Welcome to the Stanford Prison Experiment web site, which features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the recent abuse of Iraqi prisoners. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.

How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please join me on a slide tour describing this experiment and uncovering what it tells us about the nature of Human Nature.

--Philip G. Zimbardo

Slide show....
http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-1.htm

[WildEyedLiberal]

7. These kinds of "liberals" write Rush's show for him

God damn it. Why is everyone so quick to defend this guy? I agree he shouldn't get censured or fired by CU. His views, obnoxious though they are, are his, and he has a right to them without worrying about his job security. But for chrissakes, we hardly need to make an unapologetic extremist the poster boy for the anti-war movement, especially when there are plenty of liberals who make the case quite well without resorting to insulting the 9/11 victims.

[Itsthetruth]

8. What Chruchill Said On CNN Yesterday

CNN Transcript
February 9, 2005

WARD CHURCHILL: The people who perform the technical functions that results in the impoverishment, immiseration and ultimately the deaths of millions in order to maximize profit. and I don't believe that there is any reasonable definition by which food service workers, firemen, janitors, children, random passerby fit that definition. And it is clearly articulated. You just read it.


PAULA ZAHN: Well, let me just say this. Tonight, I think you're more clearly laying out what you in your judgment constitute victims on 9/11. Do you think you owe an apology to the families who read the same essay...

PAULA ZAHN: ... I read who thought that you were referring to their loved ones, the waiters in restaurants, the janitors in the building, as somehow being responsible for kind of fueling the military industrial complex?

WARD CHURCHILL: I don't believe I owe them an apology, because I don't believe I included their families, the people you're talking about, in. I think some other people have very conscientiously attempted to put those words in my mouth. And I think it may be that quite a number of people who have been impugning things to me that I didn't actually say could well and truly owe an apology. Media sources that have me calling for the deaths of millions of Americans. Nowhere in there do I do that.

My object is to figure out if we're going to solve this problem, how to go about it. And first thing is to understand the nature of the response. And my thesis basically was that any people subjected to the kind of degradation, devaluation and dehumanization, say the Iraqis, or say the Palestinians, will either respond in kind, or people will respond in their name in kind. And it doesn't matter whether they're Arabs or they're Americans.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0502/09/pzn.01.html

[WildEyedLiberal]

12. Oh don't get me wrong, the fact that the whores are leaping all over this

While Gannon et al go unchallenged is repulsive. There is nothing more loathsome than the media whores. And that transcript you posted is a lot less inflammatory that the statement he made in the one in the OP. And again, this is a stupid RW fueled "scandal" designed to detract attention away from serious shit, like Gannon.

However, I still think comparing them to Adolf Eichmann is overblown and self-righteous rhetoric that gets us nowhere. I don't give a rat's ass about offending Limbaugh, but it's very plausible that people less extreme than Rush will hear these comments and get the impression that liberals think the 9/11 victims deserve no pity. And that's not the impression I want to give, personally.

[G_j]

13. in a

sort of bizarre coincidence documents just surfaced that showed the CIA brought a number of Eichmann's aids to the US to work for them.

[WildEyedLiberal]

14. Wow, what bizarre timing

Go figure.

[G_j]

22. story:

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/10834240.htm

Posted on Sun, Feb. 06, 2005

CIA to Release More Nazi War Criminal Data

MALIA RULON

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - The CIA has agreed to release more information about Nazi war criminals it hired during the Cold War, ending a standoff between the intelligence agency and the group seeking the documents, Sen. Mike DeWine said Sunday.

DeWine, R-Ohio, was lead Senator author of a 1998 law that required all U.S. government documents related to Nazi war crimes to be declassified, but the Central Intelligence Agency had resisted giving up details about the work performed by agents with Nazi ties.

<snip>
Some documents obtained by the working group, for example, show that the CIA recruited and hired five assistants to Adolph Eichmann, the man known as the architect of the plan for exterminating the Jews during World War II.

The CIA provided a general description of the operational tasks performed by war criminals that it hired, but a governmental working group created to declassify the documents wanted to know more about what these people did for the agency. The working group also sought documents on all former SS officers who worked for the CIA after WWII.

..more..

[Swamp Rat]

28. thanks for the link n/t

[HysteryDiagnosis]

26. Cuz they felt bad for them..... huh... eom.

[K-W]

18. So now Rush dictates what the left is allowed to say? Great plan!

STOP TURNING ON YOUR OWN ALLIES

This is a right wing trick, they find leftists that say something liberals find uncomfortable for its tactlessness and then attack it knowing that liberals will just reinforce them by getting angry at the person for arousing such a response with something that 'goes too far".

[WildEyedLiberal]

24. So I'm NOT supposed to be offended by his tactlessness?

Sorry, I don't think that people who died on 9/11 were "little Eichmanns," and I don't want to associate myself without someone who does. I'm not going to defend Churchill because he's my "ally." He's not my ally - anyone who makes liberals look extreme and says ridiculous, beyond the pale shit like that isn't my ally. I don't have to lockstep agree with everyone who hates Bush. And yeah, shit like this is like Christmas for right wingers. Sorry if I don't like it when our own side is too stupid to avoid giving them free fodder for the "liberals hate America" meme.

[K-W]

30. You are the one who makes liberals look bad.

Rather than being tolerant and open you jump on right wing bate and condemn someone on the left when clearly you still dont understand what he is saying.

[WildEyedLiberal]

32. Oh, okay

Thanks. I make liberals look bad by refusing to lockstep support someone who is a self-described leftist. Gotcha. :eyes:

[Az]

27. Could you clarify how he is wrong?

I am failing to see error in his appraisal of the situation. I understand the reaction to the terms and ideas he is putting forward. But in the end I cannot find fault with them. Please if you could, clarify how he is so terribly wrong and in particular obnoxious.

[CrispyQ]

31. I agree with you.

Personally I think that all American adults are complicit in what happened on 9/11 by not paying attention to what our government does in our name, by not calling them out on it, by going to the polls uneducated about what our congressmen/women are voting on, by not holding them accountable for those votes. I'm guilty too.

snip...

Well, I see a half-million dead Iraqi children for starters, children that Madeline Albright confirmed she was aware of. This was UN data 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.
============

How many Americans are aware of even 1/2 the atrocities listed below that the US has committed in all our names? Hell, even I wasn't!

more...

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 , 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 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 , 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 ...
============

I'll bet if I hit the streets of Denver/Boulder & asked 100 people 'who are your congresspersons & senators?' a vast majority of them wouldn't be able to name them all, if any. That's the kind of complicity I believe he's talking about. We elect our representatives & then we don't follow up or hold them accountable. We are as guilty as our government.

[WildEyedLiberal]

33. Sometimes I think people on DU can't see the forest for the trees

You DO realize that 99% of America- hell, the 99% of Democrats who don't post on DU - finds his comparison of office workers to the architect of the Final Solution to be outrageous, inflammatory, and insensitive, don't you? DU does NOT represent mainstream opinion, by a long stretch. Personally, I think Churchill's just engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric designed to put him in the spotlight. But the vast majority of Americans - or liberals - do NOT support his "blame the victims" view of 9/11. And I don't support anyone who fuels the "liberals hate America" fires. If you want to support him out of some ivory tower academic anaylsis of the situation, go for it. But I care about how things are perceived in the real world, and comments like his reflect horribly on liberals as a whole, and therefore are counterproductive at best.

[tsuki]

9. Isn't it strange? We have journalists defending Gannon and denouncing

Churchill in the same breath.

[bloom]

10. I like it

that he isn't mamby-pamby. Polite isn't working anyway.

"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...
<snip>

The self-exemption from the requirements of the fundamental laws of human rights and the laws of war is the Nazi signature. That is Nazi diplomacy in essence.

BW: Other people have made many of the same arguments you have made. What's more controversial about your words?

WC: I go for the gut. That's my speaking strategy. I go for the gut to provoke a response. And interestingly, if it hadn't been for the right-wingers making this a big issue, I would have failed spectacularly. But I can't deal with miserable, starving children in some nice detached, objective way. To me that's the essence of the Nazi zeitgeist—being able to do that to other people. I cannot do it. I will not do it, and fuck them if they think they're going to force me to do it."

[K-W]

19. It amazes me that everyone here calls for agressive no-nonsense approaches

then they cant handle it when someone is agressive with thier views because they dont match the tone of thier views, even if they are essentially the same.

Someone with views that would fit in on DU has his words broadcast around the world by the right wing, we dont use the opportunity to argue the case for our views, no we use it to marginalize ourselves.

A left wing voice beholden to no one giving a humanistic, internationalistic analysis of US foriegn policy and terrorism is spread around the world and 'liberals' line up to join the firing line.

[Dunedain]

16. He is just saying JOB 4:8 n/t

[K-W]

21. Humanism isnt in style.

Unfortunate for Ward Churchill and judeo-christian ethical traditions.

[Dunedain]

23. They will destroy him

And us in the process

[Hippo_Tron]

20. Well all I know that Bill Owens needs to go fuck himself

And stop making it so brutally obvious that he's running for President in four years.

[Disturbed]

25. I agreee with his over all premise.

Of course most Amerikans won't or refuse to understand what he is talking about. The way he expressed himself is what has caused the controversy. If he had not used the "little Eichmans" he would not have made the RW pundits go nuts. I believe he did so for that very purpose. He wanted to make the Corp. News and he did so. His premise has actually been stated by others who did not cause an uproar.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

29. Wounded Knees

The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas (American Encounters/Global Interactions)
by Lesley Gill
The U.S. Army maintains a center at Fort Benning, Ga., formerly known as the School of the Americas. It has reportedly trained 60,000 South and Central American military elites since the end of WWII and reportedly counts among its graduates former dictators Manuel Noriega of Panama and Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina. Curricular materials involving torture techniques were found at the school in the early '90s, resulting in a small scandal that apparently led to a name change (to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) and a fight over the school's existence that continues. Though she doesn't catch anyone learning about the various uses of nudity and black hoods, American University anthropologist Gill (Precarious Dependencies) was able to examine the school's folkways and rhetoric, thanks to glasnost-like levels of administrative cooperation. Lessons in thinking in terms of how to "kill and maim" opposition and to "dehumanize" those who persist. Gill then traces the paths of various graduates of the school and links their activities directly to the torture and death of "Latin American peasants, workers, students human rights activists"—i.e., "opposition."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471265179/qid=1108119777/sr=8-2/ref=pd_csp_2/002-5210550-2022406?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1576753018.01._PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_PE40_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
by John Perkins "It began innocently enough..." (more)
John Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. "Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674075900/qid=1108119777/sr=8-6/ref=pd_ka_4/002-5210550-2022406?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0674075900.01._PIdp-schmoo2,TopRight,7,-26_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
by Stephen C. Schlesinger, Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer
Product Description:
Bitter Fruit recounts in telling detail the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. The 1982 book has become a classic, a textbook case study of Cold War meddling that succeeded only to condemn Guatemala to decades of military dictatorship. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government publications and documents, as well as interviews with former CIA and other officials. The Harvard edition includes a powerful new introduction by historian John Coatsworth, Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; an insightful prologue by Richard Nuccio, former State Department official who revealed recent evidence of CIA misconduct in Guatemala to Congress; and a compelling afterword by coauthor Stephen Kinzer, now Istanbul bureau chief for the New York Times, summarizing developments that led from the 1954 coup to the peace accords that ended Guatemala's civil strife forty years later.


Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial
by Robert Jay Lifton, Greg Mitchell
This book will change how you've viewed the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. We've been lulled into the belief that it ended the war and "saved lives." But have our history books been truly honest in that simplistic regard to the act? This book urges you to look deeper into the issue, if you are serious about TRULY understanding the decision to use the bombs.

Lifton gives an incredibly thorough profile of the events and characters involved in the decision to start nuclear war. From political to psychological reasons, the characters are dealt with on a human level. It's a frightening tale, much more complex than the propoganda that was issued prior and following the nuke's use. Many will not like what is documented, because it reaches beyond the simplistic explanations, but sometimes truth is painful, especiallly when it may challenge what we believed are our true values.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743245369/qid=1108119777/sr=8-14/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i5_xgl14/002-5210550-2022406?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
A Spy For All Seasons : My Life in the CIA
by Duane R. Clarridge, Digby Diehl "After all this time, you can still hear my hometown in my voice..." (more)
Clarridge, a New Hampshire-born dentist's son, joined the CIA in 1955 to fight Soviet and Chinese communism. His 33-year career-including stints as chief of the Latin American and European divisions, and head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, which he set up in 1986-ended with his forced retirement after the FBI and congressional committees investigated his role in what he dismissively calls "the Iran-contra nonsense." Indicted in 1991 on federal charges of lying to Congress and the Tower Commission, Clarridge received a presidential pardon from Bush a year later. In a brisk, businesslike memoir studded with disclosures about CIA covert actions and espionage around the world, Clarridge denies charges that he secretly anointed Oliver North as U.S. coordinator for contra funding and weapons supply. He also denies that he knew in advance a shipment of missiles to Iran was, in fact, weaponry rather than oil-drilling equipment, as North allegedly tricked him into believing. Clarridge reveals details of an almost-successful agency attempt to nab Palestinian terrorist Abul Abbas, who hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, killing a wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger. The CIA veteran staunchly defends Reagan's contra war against Nicaragua's "totalitarian" Sandinistas, an operation he created and supervised. And he reports that, after Abu Nidal terrorists killed 19 people in the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985, CIA operatives penetrated the Libya- and Lebanon-based group, sowing paranoid distrust that led Nidal to murder 330 of his own hard-core disciples. Coauthor Diehl is a frequent contributor to Playboy and has collaborated on six book.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618221395/qid=1108120229/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-5210550-2022406?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0618221395.01._PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_PE32_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala
by Daniel Wilkinson "ALL I KNEW when I began was that a house had burned down..." (more)
Product Description:
Silence on the Mountain is a virtuoso work of reporting and a masterfully plotted narrative tracing the history of Guatemala's thirty-six-year internal war, a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, the vast majority of whom died (or were "disappeared") at the hands of the U.S.-backed military goverment.
In 1993 Daniel Wilkinson, a young human rights worker, begins to investigate the arson of a coffee plantation's manor house by a band of guerrillas. The questions surrounding this incident soon broaden into a complex mystery that compels Wilkinson to seek out an impressive cross-section of the country's citizens, from coffee workers to former guerrillas to small-town mayors to members of the ruling elite. From these sources he is able to piece together the largely unwritten history of the long civil war, following its roots back to a land reform movement derailed by a U.S.-sponsored military coup in 1954 and, further back, to the origins of Guatemala's plantation system, which put Mayan Indians to work picking coffee beans for the American and European markets.
Silence on the Mountain reveals a buried history that has never been told before, focusing on those who were most affected by Guatemala's half-century of violence, the displaced native people and peasants who slaved on the coffee plantations. These were the people who had most to gain from the aborted land reform movement of the early 1950s, who filled the growing ranks of the guerrilla movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and who suffered most when the military government retaliated with violence.
Decades of terror-inspired fear have led Guatemalans to adopt a survival strategy of silence so complete it verges on collective amnesia. Wilkinson's great triumph is that he finds a way for people to tell their stories, and it is through these stories -- dramatic, intimate, heartbreaking -- that we come to see the anatomy of a thwarted revolution that is relevant not only to Guatemala but to any country where terror has been used as a political tool.

[Wind Dancer]

34. Churchill's writings are similar to many scholars.

Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Roy Arundhati and others have been vocal about America's foreign policy. The major difference is how they deliver the message. Churchill's use of "little Eichmann" is disturbing. I understand the point he is trying to make but the framing is wrong and has offended many people.

I believe the article was written on 9/12/2001, why is it getting all of this attention now when we have a country in dire straits? This is a distraction and David Horowitz has been all over the corporate owned media attacking "liberal" professors, colleges and the like. It's a DISTRACTION!

This has Rove's hands all over it. Churchill made excellent points but his wording destroyed the message. I heard him on CSPAN and respect his right to free speech - he has now become a target for the RW radicals even though Ann Coulter, Rush and the like are ignored.

We have entered the McCarthy era again, Gawd I hate this.