When I was assembling my dorm room kit for college, I wanted an army blanket as a bed cover. For reasons I must have understood better then, the heavy duty olive drab wool, emblazoned with a U.S. monogram, was inarguably cool. Its generic quality was iconic, thus it had a caché more authentic than a stack of Izods. I considered my Army blanket to be the No. 2 Pencil of bed linens. I forgot about that blanket until the Ward Churchill trial in Denver, when the contention arose whether the US army spread small pox to North Dakota Indians by means of infected blankets. Native American oral tradition has been retelling this tale, but the White Man's narrative is pushing back. The ignoble suggestion remains a penciled notation in American History texts, except by scholars such as Churchill, because anti-revisionists want to see more proof. Deniers seem to willfully overlook that perpetrators might have cloaked their trail, sooner than document their scurrilous coup. Where are the blankets, or invoices for the blankets? With only songs about the blankets, how is anyone to confirm their provenance? It's hearsay, the defenders say, bitter, vindictive slander to implicate the US Army for the 1837 small pox epidemic, just because the Red Man's comprehension could not attribute another cause. Although the Indian accounts aren't so pointed. They tell of an Indian chief who stole the blankets from the white soldiers, unwittingly bringing the outbreak back to his camp. Now I'll not assert that US Army blankets have always had a "U.S." stenciled on them, nor even that they were army-colored, as khaki wasn't on the uniform palette until the turn of the century. But governments have always needed to distinguish government property, to discourage their agents from divesting of their standard issue for personal gain. I will contend that it is only from the perspective of our contemporary culture of abundance, that we presume a blanket is nondescript without a trademark. In our overloaded consumer economy, it is not unreasonable to believe that an item without its receipt cannot be assumed to have come from a particular store. Indeed we need designer logos to differentiate products when we cannot assess the quality for ourselves. Today, even thread-counters are at pains to tell an Eddie Bauer from a CJ Crew by touch. But not so in the Wild West. The carpet-bagger mercantile purveyors of the West may have ushered in mass-produced dry goods, but I hardly think varieties were indistinguishable. Wanna bet there was quite a difference between blankets woven by Indians, blankets bartered from trading posts, and standard army issue?
Tag: Churchill Trial
August 2008 at the Denver Courthouse
Spending so much time at the courthouse for the Ward Churchill v CU case, I was prompted to review these yet-unseen photos from last August's DNC, featuring... the Denver Courthouse! Monday morning, August 25, 2008 Peacefully assembled demonstrators are protesting the arrest and brutalization of an R-68 organizer and a Code Pink activist. Chants of "LET THEM GO, LET THEM GO" prompt this response from the police. Monday afternoon, August 25, 2008 same place Unconventional Action marchers are attempting to leave Civic Center Park, northward on Bannock. Police move in to block their way.
Petty bureaucrat resents being called… The Holocaust denials of Larry DeWitt
In the face of Ward Churchill's vindication in a Colorado court, and now hearing support for him by fellow academics, Wingnut Holocaust Deniers are rallying behind whichever colleague will grab their dunce baton. The latest denier is academic aspirant, Social Security Administration archivist Larry DeWitt, who's been nursing a masters from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus. His master's thesis was about little known SSA efforts to mitigate The Wartime Internments & Other "Restrictive Governmental Actions." Example: his caption under a photograph of quarters at the Manzanar relocation camp reads: "Figure 43: While these internees do indeed have a bare lightbulb overhead, their living conditions are not as primitive as the rhetoric of some historians may imply." DeWitt has been an Agency Historian for the SSA since 1995, in which capacity he cobbled a history of the department, with a view it appears, to lay a groundwork for its privatization. You can read more about DeWitt at larrydewitt.net, a website "created as part of coursework in the graduate program of the History Department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC)." But he calls it: A Miscellany of History, Philosophy and Public Policy: A portal to four websites containing the work of historian and public policy scholar Larry DeWitt. Most recently, DeWitt assumes to be an authority on scholarship, opining on the History News Network website: Ward Churchill: He’s Baaack! Here's his opening line: "Well, that embarrassment for the liberal academy—Ward Churchill—is back in the news again." A recent article for Coloquio: Revista Cultural was about Iraq: "Doing the right thing the wrong way." Are DeWitt's writing unremarkable? Yes, but for a federal agency that has proven to be vulnerable to partisan attack, I think DeWitt's positions are ominously charged. Here are some more articles: "Howard Zinn: The Historian as Don Quixote," HNN, 01/26/09 "The Future Social Security Debate," Independent Voice , April/May 2008 "How Historians Can Help Frame the Next Social Security Debate," HNN, 10/22/07 "It is Time to Impose Peace on the Middle East," August 2006 "Should Historians Try to Rank President Bush's Presidency?" HNN, 5/22/06 "A Progressive Argument for Overturning Roe," October 2005 "It's Not the Cows Who are Mad," January 2004
Still open season on Witch Churchill
DENVER- Ward Churchill's saga is bigger than the persecution of a scholar who defies the master narrative, bigger than Native American contentions over how their victor writes its history, bigger than America's First Amendment Freedom of Speech, it's WHAT HE SAID. We can fantasize that the American psyche is sophisticated enough to care about what is written of its history. I'm not sure Americans care what's in their rear view mirror as long as the Drive Thru is still open. But put a swastika on our Red White and Blue... The story today is a professor exonerated, accusers rebuked, and American civil liberties protected. It's even fashionable to say you agree with what Churchill wrote in his 9/11 essay, like it was history. You can say you agree, but try to say it.
Ward Churchill prevails over Western Civ
DENVER- The jury ruled for Ward Churchill today, that he was wrongfully terminated, on the basis of his 9/11 essay, and that CU had no other justification to fire him. It remains for the judge to order the university to reinstate the professor, with back pay, and pay Attorney David Lane's legal fees. In other words, the accusations made against Churchill have been repudiated, and the regents showed themselves to be perjurers. It was my impression the ex-Rocky Mountain News columnists left the courtroom with their tongues between their wobbly knees. This is court room 6, where the trial stretched for three and a half weeks. We're looking over the plaintiff's desk, to the right is the podium. That's Ward Churchill's coat draped on his chair. I would expect that Churchill is owed an apology from the several publications which perpetuated the untruths about his scholarship. Beside the RMN, there's Westword, the Denver Post, the Boulder Daily Camera, etc, etc, basically everyone who's peddled the plagiarism falsehoods, thinking them substantiated by the CU committee. Now the falsehoods are disproved are adjudicated. Now it will be libel, to repeat those untruths about Churchill.
Informal Denver bloggers convention
DENVER- Blog wonks filled the courtroom today to witness the closing arguments of Freedom of Speech on trial. The twin Rocky Mountain News fiends were on hand, as were plenty of their blogosphere stringers. Can you help us put names to some of these faces? Confidential emails to editor@notmytribe will serve just fine. We have a most benevolent motive to shed light on nocturnal anti-socials. Isn't it awkward, that those in support of Ward Churchill, to draw the battle lines in terms of this trial, have no qualms being represented publically, but those opposed, even as they think themselves to represent the mainstream, are fiercely protective of their anonymity? How weirdly weak of them. PART DEUX Alright, it didn't begin innocently. During the first courtroom break today, I was aiming my camera at the video media grotto, because my earlier photo had been taken with a cellphone, but also so that I might have a pretense to shoot wide and grab an image or two of some heretofore faceless note-takers, when a woman in the vicinity strode over to ask that I not take her picture. I noted that I was sure her back had been turned, if even she was in the frame, but it mattered not, and she insisted that I show her the picture and then delete it in her presence. I acquiesced reluctantly, only because I had better things to do than argue with a "lawyer" about what right she had to ask me to do anything. But it didn't end there. When I moved to intercept a friend with whom I urgently needed to speak before the break was over, the woman followed me, insisting that I prove that I hadn't other exposures in which she was featured. She wouldn't stop interrupting until I had found others, and deleted them, after which she walked away, her head turned back, facing me with a mock smile and wave, as if to verify that I wasn't trying to take another picture of her back. I thought the strange episode was over, until I reentered the courtroom to see the woman point me out to a companion, both of them seated in the front row reserved for the press, from which they alternated giving me cold stares and taking snapshots with a cellphone. WTF? At the finish of that session, the woman approached me again, wanting to apologize for the rude tact she's taken. I accepted, but it seemed she also wanted to explain. I had pressing contacts to pursue, but she followed me again, and grew vocally agitated anew, this time that I would not stop to hear her story. By the time we exited the courtroom, her harangue had grown embarrassing. I no longer had her image on my camera, she knew that, what claim did she have to detain me a moment further and impede what little courtroom social time remained? When I finally turned, I had my camera in hand and began to take flash pictures as I asked her
Mimi Wesson has um big penis envy
DENVER- And it's a strange lot of penises she covets: there's Bob Guccione, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and... Ward Churchill. In a private email in the midst of the CU firestorm over Churchill's 9/11 essay, Wesson compared the "thoroughly unpleasant" Churchill to a pornographer, wife-batterer-killer, pedophile and cheat --as attorney David Lane reminded us in his closing arguments today. But it wasn't the email that tipped me off, nor her fiction-writer persona promotional photo on the motorcycle. It was something which Marianne "My friends call me Mimi" did on her first day of testimony, early in the trial. When she left the witness stand, Wesson did not return to her seat, nor to the chairs located by the defense table for CU-aligned witnesses. During her break, Churchill-slayer Mimi Wesson chose the chair directly behind Ward Churchill. Did anyone else remark on this? Even though Wesson stubbornly tried to project an adult impartiality about the case, as would befit the chairperson of a committee deciding another faculty member's fate, off the stand Wesson couldn't resist the urge which it appears drove her to solicit the committee chair position in the first place: to face "male celebrity wrongdoers" and take them down. In the courtroom Wesson denied agreeing to the committee appointment only with the proviso that she be in charge, but her earlier videotaped deposition recorded otherwise. By her own account, Wesson had asked to be chairperson of the board selected to investigate Churchill. When Wesson blamed a possible stenographer's error for the inconsistency, Attorney Lane pointed out that the courtroom had just heard her deposition with its own ears. As a pup fiction writer, and a frequent law commentator on mainstream news programs, it's clear Wesson welcomes the public eye. During the "All Churchill, all the time" mayhem, maybe she saw an opportunity to pretend to have incited the Churchill lynch mob. I hope Wesson will be remembered for her testimony in this trial, in which the law professor demonstrated she was crafty enough to avoid admitting her prejudice, but couldn't distance herself from the incriminating grandstanding she'd already done. The "Wesson Committee" was shown in this trial to have been a hatchet team of academic hacks. Whose foray into Native America Ethnic Studies, purportedly to debunk Ward Churchill's scolarship, resembled a visit of Ugly Americans to an Indian reservation. With Mimi the Emasculator wanting both to drive and ride shotgun.
Churchill v Churchill
Closing arguments will be heard this morning in the Ward Churchill trial and then the case goes to the (very young and earnest) jury. Winston Churchill said "history is written by the victors" which has been a central thesis in much of Ward Churchill's work. It's scrumptiously ironic that when Ward Churchill wins his case against CU, he'll become a contributor to the "Master Narrative" he so despises. I'm guessing his chapter will be full of tales of brave Indiginists and murdering technocrats, white male regents and the soulless women who love them. Academia will be recast as the valiant protector of the ruling elite and the mighty slayer of free thought and open debate. The jury of young, multiracial unsophisticates will be consecrated as puissant defenders of justice. A few vindictive ex-wives and some illicit boys' room puffing may be tossed in to add color. When Ward Churchill prevails against the esteemed institution that called into question his academic integrity, his reputation as a scholar and a brilliant polemicist will be restored. More importantly, the master narrative will no longer be inscrutable. The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is. -- W. Churchill
Churchill v CU Trial wraps up today
DENVER- Can it be any easier to be a witness to history? Come to the Denver Courthouse this morning before 9 AM. It's the large columned building opposite the state capitol. Ascend the imposing steps which rise directly from Civic Center Park. Passing the shortest security line, compared to the four ground floor entrances, take a right and go all the way down the hall. Court Room 6 is where Ward Churchill's case against the University of Colorado will be put in the jury's hands today. Info about the where and how to attend the trial has been sparse, tailored to an audience familiar with Denver court battles perhaps, but do not be deterred. From the address advertised, "1437 Bannock Street," you could envision any old judicial facility, but this is THE judicial facility, at Denver's center, and for the last three weeks, the TV News vans give it away. There is no court employee to answer questions outside. Go in any entrance and from there get to the second floor, and proceed to the NW end. There you'll see media reporters huddled into a vending machine cranny converted for this occasion into a video feed center. Around the corner is room six. If court is already in session, there will be nary a peep outside, but don't hesitate to quietly open the door and circumnavigate the pews. If you still have a hat on, an officer seated directly right of the door will grab you as you enter and let you know to take it off. The first row is reserved for the media, who spill over into the second row to have access to the power strip. More sit in folding chairs in the rear corners of the room, for the same reason. Laptops abound, and there's a constant murmur of keyboards clicking. You won't notice a lull until statements reveal something significant and the keyboardists resume in unison. Breaks are at 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM or so, with an hour and a half for lunch at noon. Leave a coat to mark your seat, or lose it to whoever returns first. The audience seated in the westward pews have a better view of the witness stand, as from elsewhere you are impeded by the lawyers or their laptops on the podium. The audience is a largely friendly collection. Most everyone looks like a Churchill supporter, except for the CU representatives who stick to the last SW pew, and the occasional note-taker in the middle and SE rear. The owners of Left Hand Books in Boulder have been there almost everyday, as have Professor Churchill's family and a number of friends. You can't miss it. Colfax and Civic Center Park.
Lynne Stewart visits Churchill Trial
DENVER- For local media wonks who may have lost sight of the national significance of the Churchill v CU trial, the Denver courtroom was visited last week by radical luminary Lynne Stewart, who traveled from New York in a show of solidarity with Churchill's fight against a systemic quashing of dissent now reaching into US academia. Lynne and her husband Ralph Poynter scheduled their Denver visit to coincide with Professor Churchill's testimony and the anticipated end of the 3-week trial. But arriving Wednesday and leaving Friday, they missed both. We met the couple on Thursday, the day's session which was cut short by the closings due to severe weather. As the lawyer to accused terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Stewart was convicted in 2005 of conspiracy and giving material aid to a terrorist. She was sentenced to 28 months in prison, but is free on bail while awaiting the outcome of an appeal. Denver reporters missed Stewart's visit in their seemingly predisposition to ignore the trial's greater ramifications, except for the lip service they pay to the Right Winged media's national obsession with Ward Churchill and their idea of blasphemy. No matter how inflammatory Professor Churchill's essay, the actions taken by CU to appease Colorado politicians, represent nothing less than the gagging of dissent. And in a university, where you'd hope all the voices would be dissenting. What good are fascist professors outside of PE and Machine shop? Is school any place for a humanities faculty member who is bigoted or conservative? Personally, I resent idiocy over the airwaves, but in the schools it is just unforgivable. The case has generated headlines across the country and spurred fiery debates about academic freedom versus academic integrity. This is how the Boulder Daily Camera summarizes the Churchill case. While they admit to the trial's notoriety, they frame the argument just as Churchill's censors would approve. A false choice between freedom and integrity. It's not freedom versus integrity. It's freedom and integrity versus the subjugation of both. While Professor Churchill and allies stand for freedom of speech, and integrity of character, the college is being shown, in league with the media, to represent neither.
Ex RMN columnists stuck to their guns
DENVER- Considering the villainous role the Rocky Mountain News played in the vilification of Ward Churchill, their insinuations having been thoroughly discredited in this trial, you'd think the RMN columnists now writing for the Denver Post would be self-conscious about taking the same mocking stance. But they are not. Attorney David Lane chats with them most amicably, but still they file the typical anti-academic hit pieces. Columnist Vincent Carroll summarized Churchill's recent testimony as: Ward's world of brazen claims. In an earlier piece, Carroll recaps Churchill's alleged misconduct, but where an objective reporter would say "alleged," Carroll writes "gross." Don't think the RMN vets aren't well aware that a vindication for Churchill means a repudiation of their libel. Mike Littwin is no better. For him, yawns in the audience are not a sign of defense attorney Patrick O'Rourke's pedestrian presentation, but of the discussion's irrelevance. Of Native American history in dispute, of genocide still denied by CU in this example, Littwin concludes: the World has moved beyond Churchill.
Churchill and his curiously vile detractors
DENVER- There's an interesting sideshow at the Churchill v CU case having to do with a cadre of unsavory Ward Churchill online critics. What they are writing is hardly interesting but their unceasing doggedness, repeating only ad hominem attacks, leads one to wonder who they are and what horse do they have, in not only this race, but in Churchill's ongoing activism. These are the same voices which heckled the DNC organizers, AIM, and the contra-Columbus actions. It's a little circle of shit-knitters, who cross-link or repost each other's comments from Blogspot blogs Drunkablog, Slapstick Politics, People's Press Collective, and riding point on the Churchill Trial, Pirate Ballerina. These are Little Green Football variety ditto-heads, and I hardly mean to draw attention to them, but their relentless character assassination seems to wag the local media dogs, and one might as well look into that. Meaning, more in a bit. Churchill amused the courtroom audience by illustrating his sarcastic use of quotation marks, as one might refer to the Rocky Mountain News as a "newspaper." It's not enough to conclude Professor Churchill has enemies. There are Native American casino owners who might be threatened by Churchill's revisiting of the past, there are rivals for Churchill's influence in the American Indian Movement. Obviously there are historians eager to retread what they've invested in the Master Narrative. Curiously, there are Zionists who are vehemently opposed to the discussion Churchill wants to provoke. And I suppose there are stupid white males who will stand for no diminishment of God Blessed America. These bloggers are the latter "Right Wing" variety obviously, and bring nothing to the table but personal attacks. But what sustains them, tasked as they appear to be, to hound Ward Churchill on a daily basis, year after year? There are players both on the national scene, and locally, who I consider complete bastards who merit every rebuke possible, but that doesn't mean I dedicate my every utterance when they so much as visit the bathroom.
Churchill lends trial his sonorous levity
DENVER- Court Room 6 is packed once again as Ward Churchill takes the stand to detail his wrongful dismissal by CU. His testimony began yesterday afternoon, and Attorney David Lane is outlining the basis for damages. Churchill isn't asking for money. Says he, "I want my job." Churchill testified that his publishing output is 5% of his usual, only two or three articles in journals, and four books under contract but still awaiting delivery. But Churchill is quick to reassure the room that the works are forthcoming, and he is upbeat, despite CU committee members having testified, sadly but triumphantly, of having reduced Churchill's reputation, thirty years and twenty books, to a pitcher of warm spit. Lane asked Churchill: "How does this make you feel?" "Angry" is Churchill's reply. "But anger is no new feeling for me." Cross-examination has begun, Attorney Patrick O'Rourke is inadvertently treating the jury to the very character assassination upon which Churchill has been making his case. O'Rourke's first question pretended to inform the jury that he and Churchill had become familiar over the course of these many legal actions, and thus direct questions would not be improper or disrespectful. But he loaded his question thus: "I'm going to ask direct questions, will you be willing to give me direct answers?" O'Rourke used a second question purportedly to frame his his line of questions. "Professor Churchill, is it fair to say that you've been accused of many things, of not being a real Indian, for example, and after your 911 essay, of a half million things it seems like, would that be fair to say?" "Uh, yes. Although probably not a half million..." "Well, I'm not going to ask you about any of those things, I'm going to stick to just the allegations made by the committee." Later O'Rourke questioned why a previous witness, Russel Means, had referred to his colleague as Doctor Churchill. "You don't have a PhD, do you?" He asked Churchill. "You only have a Masters, isn't that correct?" Churchill explained that he had been given an honorary doctorate, to which O'Rourke replied, "So it's just an honorary doctorate?" Asked Churchill: "Do you mean to dishonor it?"
Driving Miss McIntosh
DENVER- At first the testimony from a CU committee member who voted to dismiss Ward Churchill seemed utterly damning. Dr. Marjorie McIntosh, retired Distinguished Professor of history, gave her testimony by video because she would be lecturing in England at the time of the Churchill v CU trial. She came across like a wise elder, her scolding kind and maternal. She had me convinced that Ward should be sent to his room, but for an indelible pallor that began to infect her testimony as the retired professor grew tired under scrutiny. And like the history of 14th Century England which was her specialization, it became inescapably evident that Marjorie McIntosh was very, very white. At face value, Dr. McIntosh's quiet authoritative demeanor seemed beyond reproach, expressing as she did her support for Ward Churchill’s right to speak. McIntosh described how her father was a dean at U of M who reputedly stood up to Senator McCarthy. She explained her initial reluctance to be party to a Right Wing attempt to “get” Professor Churchill. At first Ms. McIntosh seemed as earnest as your own grandmother, if your grandmother was also a well spoken distinguished academic. But the cracks in Ms. McIntosh’s maternal concern showed themselves even before the plaintiff’s cross-examination. When Professor McIntosh described herself as “fair and impartial,” it was in contrast, she offered, to Professor Churchill for example, who she understands may not be impartial or neutral. Partiality Under cross-examination McIntosh went further. To paraphrase: “Professor Curchill is not a trained historian, he has an MA, he is a scholar who writes on historical subjects. He presents himself as a specialist, but he does not have that training.” By contrast we are meant to infer, McIntosh is a Distinguished Professor, rewarded for having had a “national impact” on scholarship, and having produced work which has “directed” consequential research. Questioned about the significance of tenure, McIntosh described the rigorous qualifications which she met. But with a smile she would not vouch for a uniformity of high standards at CU, since, obviously… She held her tongue as if too polite to say it: Ward Churchill was a glaring example of the opposite. A second indication of Dr. McIntosh’s personal bias might be suggested by how she characterized committee chairwoman Mimi Wesson’s perceived personal agenda: Did she detect any bias on the committee, in particular with Wesson? McIntosh saw no evidence of bias, and she thought Wesson treated Professor Churchill with great respect, both in his presence and after. McIntosh was impressed by Wesson’s professionalism. Another of McIntosh's responses hints at a further insincerity. She and her SCRUM colleagues were tasked with investigating one allegation each made against Churchill. McIntosh was “foot soldier” for the Madan Indian Ft Clark episode. Discrepancies in Churchill's account had been brought to the university's attention by Arizona professor Lavall, a rival of Churchill's in the American Indian Movement. McIntosh was asked whether she knew that Lavall's allegations had been raised six years before being addressed by her committee. Perhaps to dodge the accusation
Media coverage of Denver Churchill Trial
DENVER- NMT to the rescue. So far we've noticed a strange media dyslexia about the Churchill vs CU trial. When we've attended, the proceedings look like a rout for truth and the historical record. When we haven't made it to Denver and are left to rely on the news coverage, by all accounts Churchill is in trouble. Are the reporters freakin' blind? While I've been content to revel in the excitement of clackering laptop keyboards all about me in the courtroom, I hadn't snooped over anyone's shoulder, until this week. On Monday, the Boulder Daily Camera front row regular, after he'd posted his story before the first morning break, busied himself with emails, then watched a video with the Denver Post correspondent perched over his shoulder. Later another media log lump monopolized the last power outlet to play solitaire. I'm guessing the DU law student project Race to the Bottom blogger is taking the most notes, competing with a would-be law student, not just for proficiency, but also in who takes the most drearily technical view of the proceedings. I've yet been able to assess the coverage by the weekly visitor from the Silver and Gold Record, CU's faculty publication. Check out the Wednesday account, and three previous: March 16, 14, 12. Ward Churchill is expected to take the stand today, so I've come up to lend insight to the academic goings on. I'm somewhat alarmed at the angle the media is taking. Ward Churchill is not only the leading authority on Native American history, he's among only a few outspoken academic voices. More spirited than Zinn, or Chomsky, and as result, perhaps more controversial. But I challenge anyone to name many contemporaries who match more luminary. Next I will provide color commentary for the lesser luminaries who are dogging Churchill and his desecration of idealized Americana.
America on trial, past if not present
DENVER- The Ward Churchill vs. CU trial continues today, featuring the much anticipated testimony of SCRUM hatchet chairwoman Mimi Wesson. But not before two dramatic points had already been made. First, that eugenics did play a part in the disenfranchisement of Native Americans, and second, that a witness brought from California by the plaintiff to talk about The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) would not be allowed to testify. The defense attorney objected that a Psychology School Dean was insufficiently "expert" on ACTA, and the judge concurred. You're going to have to look it up, and the Denver jury is not even going to hear about it. The audience is more sparse for this sixth day, as the trial enters its second of an expected three weeks. Although the subject matter is getting meatier. Last week's testimonies, cross examination, and one too many overruled objections prompted Churchill's attorney David Lane to call for a mistrial. Today's witnesses, the third one a hostile witness, will address the allegations made against Ward Churchill by CU. While arguments about plagiarism will entail discussing the methods of scholarship, accusations about fabrication of history will mean debunking Ward, or questioning the Master Narrative. The General Allotment Act of 1887 and "Eugenics" ALLEGATION A made against Ward Churchill by CU is that he characterized a 1887 legislative act as being "for the first time a formal Eugenics Code." CU maintains that this is a misrepresentation, mostly because the word is not mentioned anywhere in the act. Lucky for us, eugenics historian Dr. Lombardo is on hand to label that accusation "silly." Allegations A. Misrepresentation General Allotment Act of 1887, calling it a "Eugenics Code" B. Misre Indian Arts and Crafts Act, requires blood percentage C. John Smith 1614, started small pox epidemic D. Small pox epidemic in Ft Clark ND, from St Louis E. Plagiarism, work from pamphlet DAMN THE DAMS F. Plagiarism from Rebecca Robbins G. Plagiarism, Fay Cohen alegation, she never A-D from Prof Lavell E came from RMN F-G came from Prof Lavell. SCRUM chairperson Mimi Wesson, who did not recuse herself, even after it was revealed in an email: "I confess to being somewhat mystified by the variety of people this unpleasant (to say the least) individual has been able to enlist to defend him. I know people say it's the principle, but we aren't all out there defending Bob Guccioni's first amendment rights, although God knows he has them." and "The rallying around Churchill reminds me unhappily of the rallying around OJ Simpson and Bill Clinton and now Michael Jackson and other charismatic male celebrity wrongdoers." (well okay, I don't really know that jackson is an... more in a bit!
CU lawyer thinks it was Ward Churchill who may have violated 1st Amendment
DENVER- CHURCHILL TRIAL, DAY TWO. University of Colorado defense attorney Patrick O'Rourke wanted the jury to understand that Freedom of Speech was a complicated matter. He asked Dean of CU's law school, David Getches, to confirm "Is First Amendment Law hard?" "Yes it is." "Are you an expert on First Amendment law?" "No, I am not." O'Rourke also got former Governor Bill Owens to admit the First Amendment concept was "tricky." But no one could have conveyed it better than O'Rourke himself. He described how CU scoured Professor Ward Churchill's work "to look for First Amendment violations." Pretending to detail the school's concern for protecting Churchill's academic freedom, O'Rourke explained that when it was concluded that Churchill's 9/11 Little Eichmann essay was protected speech, CU set about to find other instances where "what he said might violate the First Amendment."
State courthouse hosts free speech trial
DENVER- I chose this militant stance. Next time I want to circulate between the four queues waiting to enter the courthouse, dressed in a toga and carrying a Coleman lantern, as a Diogenes might ask: "Is there one American among us who is NOT a Little Eichmann?"
Westword dumb-alecks are rooting for the separation of Churchill and state
DENVER- This week's cover of WESTWORD portends the upcoming Ward Churchill trial. The cover features Churchill and colleagues as unsavory caricatures of what looks like a circus of creeps. It points not to a cover story, but to a cartoon gatefold of equally squalid details, viewable online. What you can't see online is the editorial slant stuck into the contents page pointer. Two clever puns perhaps, betraying Westword's miserable intent to disinform. Ward without end: academic freedom is a long bore. Separation of Churchill and state: apropos to nothing, maybe closer to the opposite, actually. The separation of education from the people. The Westword jokes ride on a single unquestioned assumption, that Churchill is guilty of plagiarism. I think that's an odd argument to pretend has already been proved. The University's case is trumped up, and many academics have jumped to Churchill's aid. Now that the charge faces a Denver courtroom, and not a stacked board of trustees, the baldfaced accusation will easily be refuted. My bigger question is, from whom could Churchill have borrowed?! Ward Churchill's critics are wildly opposed to the findings of his scholarship. They're angry that he points to genocide perpetrated against Native Americans, angry that he rails against the racism which undergirds American imperialism, and terrified that he completely exposed the government's programs aimed at silencing dissent, COINTELPRO's workings still lying unsprung on college campuses. Ward's opponents deny every of his conclusions, but they want to pretend he's not alone? This is going to be like the naked emperor, accusing the little brave truth-teller of simply having mimicked his friends. Even true, the emperor is still naked. Here's another example of Westword's humor. While every detail about Churchill seems framed to be a put-down, it looks like they also mean that to include the ethnicity of his wife. I haven't been paying attention to Denver's alternative weekly. When did Westword become such douchebags?