Yes, Doug, I agree. This week I have occasionally peeked in on the Senate
Committee hearings on military, CIA uses of torture - a second or third
Official Report on same. It's explicit that the command structure in
Rumsfeld's Defense Department lied through their teeth during the first
Congressional hearings - that the torture was top down, etc. None of these
figures have been cited for contempt of Congress, nor suspended or arrested
for criminal violations of the Geneva accords against the use of torture.
Has any of the Congress or Justice or the Press (right or left) gone after
them in any manner similar to these folks now hounding Churchill? And drove
them out of Office and into the arms of the Law? (Churchill has not broken
any laws, yelled fire in a crowded theater or tortured anybody as far as I
know).
As other people have suggesedt - instead of being ignored as a loony, a
suicidal lefty - Ward Churchill will be the means the right uses to silent
(or self-censor) dissent from within the academy. Ironically, the Right
within the Pentagon and other agencies, uses silence to essentially hood the
truth of its own apparently criminal practice of torture, transfer of
prisoners to other countries, etc.
Stephen V
> When I read the Ward Churchill piece, I had to agree, especially about
> the question period, that the man came across as a bit of a rhetorical
> tyrant himself. And he didn't offer any apology for the Eichmann
> comparison, nor a real explanation. Off-putting, indeed. But also in
> comparison with the Bush gang, why is he so awful? They lie & lie & the
> American people, on the whole, go along with it all. I note that
> Condoleesa Rice has just sent a letter to the UN rejecting the UN
> protocol on appeal rights, the latest in a long list of refusals there.
> So I agree with Alison & Ann that there's trouble right here in....
>
> And the real danger is not a silly hothead like him but the ever more
> massed power of a right wing media launched against not only him but
> anyone who dares to think outside the very small box they have erected
> of 'patriotism' etc. Just look at who's been nominated to run Homeland
> Security, the Patriot Act, etc. Sitting just a little North, weith an
> administration pissed off at our refusal to get in line & do what they
> want, is not very comfortable (you can imagine how many 'thinkers' are
> telling us & our government that we should kiss ass if we want the
> 'good relationship' of trade etc to continue, & that, sadly, is a
> powerful argument...
>
> Ward Churchills don't help.
>
> But of course, under the ideals on which the US was founded (do any of
> these people remember those?) he should be allowed to speak.
>
> Doug
>
> Doug
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Speech
> is a mouth.
>
> Robert Creeley
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