Shadows of doubt (Ward Churchill)

[rayofreason]

"University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill fabricated historical facts, published the work of others as his own and repeatedly made false claims about two federal Indian laws, a Rocky Mountain News investigation has found.

The two-month News investigation, carried out at the same time Churchill and his work are being carefully examined by the university, also unearthed fresh genealogical information that casts new doubts on the professor's long-held assertion that he is of American Indian ancestry."

Rocky Mountain News story at:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3830149,00.html

[bpilgrim]

1. more persecution of ANYONE speaking TRUTH 2 POWER

"Speaking out: Ward Churchill talks with the media recently. The professor, under investigation by a CU panel for possible research misconduct, has portrayed himself as a victim of a witch hunt. "It's happened about 20 times over the last decade to people who challenge orthodoxy," he told the News last week."

it never ends.

peace

[Total Disaster]

3. Maybe you should read the piece. n/t

[Chicago Democrat]

28. I did and it reminds me of how the Nazis kicked out all the Jewish or

Liberal professors out of the all the Universities in Germany in the 1930's. They all were very handy for our Manhattan project.


Where will Ward Churchill go? And who will he help?


This article is very depressing. Since when is claim of ancestry mattered for a professor? I thought it was pretty well known that the Army gave the Indians small pox infected blankets. This 'trial' is crap.

[Internut]

30. When the ancestry he claimed got him hired

at the University, that's when claims of ancestry matter. Wouldn't you agree?

[Beel2112]

31. Definitely...

and what's even more interesting is this little snippet:

"Tenure: Appointed associate professor in 1991 in the communications department. Received tenure in 1991 in same department after sociology and political science departments rejected him. Memo to communications faculty said that by adding Churchill, the department would be "making our contribution to increasing the cultural diversity on campus (Ward is native American)." CU skipped the traditional six-year period of writing, teaching and reviews by outside scholars at three and six years. Former Dean of Arts and Sciences Charles Middleton pushed for tenure, fearing Churchill would accept offer at California State University at Northridge. But no offer was made by Northridge because he lacked a doctorate and his writings contained more advocacy than scholarship, said George Wayne, a former Northridge official."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3830149,00.html

[EFerrari]

82. Exceptions are made all the time in academia.

They made one for me by admitting me into a graduate program after I completed my undergrad degree. So, what you're pointing to just isn't all that uncommon.

[Chicago Democrat]

42. Maybe..Still would this trial be even taking place if Churchill hadn't

said that the hijackers had some justification for their attack on the US? Of course it wouldn't. So it is punishing him exclusively because of his political views and not because of any actual problems. If his past and work is under such rigorous review, why aren't all professors so reviewed?

Their are far more wacko professors teaching total lies for the wacko right wing. Put them on trial and I can take this Churchill matter seriously.

[formernaderite]

115. I like what Ward writes, but faking Indian heritage is a little twisted...

it particularly hurts him out west. There have been plenty of hucksters in the past who have played "fake Indian" for monetary gains. Unfortunately there are white people who fake their heritage to get jobs and university placements reserved for true minorities.

[Igel]

4. But the implicature is that the 20 times mentioned

are the only, or nearly the only, times it's happened. It's not a terribly strong implicature, it's easily negated, but it's the easiest one to get.

I'm also unaware of it's happening that many times, but it's not like I keep up on faculty reviews of plagiarism and misrepresentation charges. However, since it's his word that's being questioned, I'm less likely to take the claim at face value.

It's an interesting case. It'll be interesting to see what the truth, as opposed to the Truth, turns out to be. RMN isn't exactly neutral wrt Churchill.

[daleo]

5. I recall Rocky Mountain News being a significant player in this before.

It was a while back, relating to the Dalhousie professor who was supposed to have been threatened by him. But, nobody was willing to go on record, as far as I recall. No doubt our memories will soon be refreshed about every claim and counter-claim.

[Tansy_Gold]

38. I believe the word you want is

"implication."

eom

[Total Disaster]

40. It's a strange-sounding and perhaps cumbersome way of saying it, but...

....it is a real word.

"The aspect of meaning that a speaker conveys, implies, or suggests without directly expressing. Although the utterance “Can you pass the salt?” is literally a request for information about one's ability to pass salt, the understood implicature is a request for salt.
The process by which such a meaning is conveyed, implied, or suggested. In saying “Some dogs are mammals,” the speaker conveys by implicature that not all dogs are mammals."

[Igel]

63. I live either in "babyland" or "linguistics world", it seems.

With the occasional foray into scifi/fantasy. I have to remember to not let the linguistics terms bleed into my non-linguist conversation any more than I let Lukyanenko's "Others" into my reality. Sigh.

"Implication" is a better term here. I usually think of it as a term from logic, with "implicature" being a similar term from discourse pragmatics. It's a useful distinction in arguments, so I'll say what it is. Ponder the following, obviously fictional, exchange:

My wife: "You've been playing that Internet game since I left for work 8 hours ago, haven't you?"
Me: I've played it for 20 minutes. The baby needed my attention.

What's her response: "Have you been playing for 8 hours or not?", or "Don't lie to me."

Logic says she shouldn't take my response as a denial, because I haven't denied anything. Logically, if I've played it for 8 hours, I'm still truthful--I did play it for 20 minutes. There's no real implication, and no logical denial, and no lying. Formal logic founders--the meaning of the sentences gets the logician nowhere--classroom logic doesn't deal with intonation.

The rules of implicature constrain how listeners construe meaning: in English, I'm assumed to be telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing that's irrelevant to the exchange. One implicature is that I've _only_ played the game for 20 minutes, since I'm assumed to say the maximum amount of information requested (8 hours of game-play or not); the other implicature is that most of the other time I fussed with the munchkin, since it must be relevant. If the baby only needed attention once, for 10 minutes, and I've been playing it more than 20 minutes, then I'm lying--without ever stating a falsehood.

But outside of "linguistics world", you're right. "Implication" covers a lot of ground. "Implicature" should be left only for when argumentation turns nasty, and the technical meaning of "implication" is sucked into the fray.

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

11. THIS IS ABOUT COINTELPRO. 'Deep Throat' ran it. Churchill exposed it.

(This is worth its own thread. Anyone want to start it? I can't.)

This is all about using black propaganda against a leading activist to both keep another anti-war movement from forming and prevent revealing Deep Throat's role in the terrorism against the anti-war movement carried out by the FBI back in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

http://www.alternativeradio.org/programs/CHUW001.shtml
Ward Churchill is one of the leading activists and whistle-blowers against US government abuse of its own citizens by the FBI called COINTELPRO, at its worst during the Vietnam War.

http://agitprop.org.au/stopnato/20000318mediaoverb.php
The CIA control of the media, called Operation Mockingbird, is being used at the Rocky Mountain News to DEFLECT ATTENTION away from FBI/CIA TERRORISM AGAINST THE AMERICAN LEFT in the 60s and 70s called COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) which Churchill was a victim of AND WROTE ABOUT.

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/Media%20Readings/Berstein%20-%20CIA%20and%20the%20Media.htm
(Here's some of Carl Bernstein's 1977 article on Operation Mockingbird picking up where the 1975 Church Committee hearings on CIA abuses left off. Interestingly, Bernstein steers attention away from his own Washington Post where he and Bob Woodward wrote about Watergate. This is long before Murdoch and Faux News.)

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm
91 year-old Mark Felt, the Watergate mystery source called Deep Throat revealed this week, was the #2 FBI guy under J. Edger Hoover when they were MURDERING and terrorizing the anti-Vietnam War activists and leaders like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and dozens of Black Panthers. They murdered 21 year-old Fred Hampton IN HIS SLEEP and many innocent Black Panthers are still in jail, 30 years later.

http://test.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/536364.html
The smear campaign against Churchill was renewed early in 2005 when the CIA was forced to release documents showing they collaborated with Nazi Adolph Eichmann's assistants after WWII. The internet knows that W's grandpa Prescott financed Hitler so hiding the Bush-Nazi link is harder than ever now.


So the CIA dug up a Ward Churchill essay on 9/11 with the key word 'Eichmann' in it and turned the dogs of Fox News loose on him as a pre-emptive distraction using all the emotional charge of 9/11 against 'leftists who hate America.'

This was also a propaganda preparation for this week's long-awaited announcement of Deep Throat's identity which was being arranged for several months by a SF lawyer's negotiations with Esquire Magazine and therefore known to the CIA. (They know everything including that I'm writing this and you are reading it. Thanks, Admiral Poindexter!)

http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr196-woodward.html
WP Editor Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is also an intelligence operative so he would have known that Deep Throat's involvement with COINTELPRO would surface soon, too.

(Read the bottom side-bar at that url about the problems of Woodward's account of how he would signal Deep Throat. Woodward's 6/2/05 article about how he met Deep Throat devotes lots of words to trying to explain exactly the inconsistencies outlined in this 1996 online article. Woodward knows his cover is thin. Both he and Felt are screwing Americans with lies and terror.)

It's very important to the US government to hide the fact that it controls the corporate media and kills political opponents, especially while trying to maintain a permanent oil-war 'against terrorism.'

THE SIXTIES MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN AGAIN DESPITE THE INTERNET.
So truth tellers must be neutralized with chilling smears or 'suicided' to prevent anti-war movements from coalescing into strong resistance by high school and college kids the Pentagon is desperate to get its hands on.
(Both Hunter Thompson and Gary Webb are gone? Damn.)

Churchill was prepared to be grilled like a marinated steak by the wolves of CIA propaganda to give the 'Mockingbird' press red meat to chew on, instead. Native American red meat, that is,.

So to prevent people from looking at American political terrorism, they are smearing one of the most outspoken activists and authors who wrote about US law-enforcement's home-cooked terrorism against their own citizens.

Here's just one of Churchill's books on COINTELPRO:

http://www.southendpress.org/books/Cointelpro2.shtml

>snip<

"The COINTELPRO Papers, Updated Edition
Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States
by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall

Readers anxious about the loss of civil liberties under George W. Bush will find ground for their fears-and suggestions for activism-in The COINTELPRO Papers. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall's exposé of America's political police force, the FBI, reveals the iron fist hiding beneath the velvet glove of "compassionate conservatism."

Reproducing many original FBI memos, the authors provide extensive analysis of the agency's treatment of the left, from the Communist Party in the 1950s to the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s. Ward Churchill's substantial new preface to this South End Press Classics edition updates the cases of several incarcerated Black Panthers and analyzes the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco, as well as the wars on drugs and terrorism. Churchill makes a compelling argument that U.S. law enforcement has become thoroughly militarized, with devastating consequences for all those who work for social justice."

[Dhalgren]

17. Welcome to DU!

And thanks for the research! Why any Duer would give credence to this smear job is beyond me. My response to anyone with doubts is - read his works - decide for yourself.

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

22. Thanks. Ward Churchill is a hero, no matter what's in his veins.

I think of him when I see that t-shirt picturing a group of Native American warriors with the caption:
'Homeland Security since 1492'

We know who the real terrorists are, don't we?

[nolabels]

24. I love your handle and thanks for the post

In stark contrast to what todays bought-and-sold congress one could only reminisce with all these words. An excerpt from one of the links above

(f) The internal inspection mechanisms of the CIA and the FBI did not keep -- and, in the case of the FBI, were not designed to keep -- the activities of those agencies within legal bounds. Their primary concern was efficiency, not legality or propriety.

(g) When senior administration officials with a duty to control domestic intelligence activities knew, or had a basis for suspecting, that questionable activities had occurred, they often responded with silence or approval. In certain cases, they were presented with a partial description of a program but did not ask for details, thereby abdicating their responsibility. In other cases, they were fully aware of the nature of the practice and implicitly or explicitly approved it.
(snip)
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIca.htm

The hunted now wants to be the hunter

[Dhalgren]

26. "We know who the real terrorists are, don't we?"

Indeed we do. Just ask Quanta Parker, Chief Joseph, or Black Kettle - or ask John Trudell, right now. Or better yet, ask Leonard Peltier.

[Total Disaster]

37. I have decided for myself.

I've followed this story closely and was absolutely in his corner in the beginning. Unfortunately, the more I hear, see, and read, it looks like the guy is a self-promoting fraud.

[Dhalgren]

56. Which of his works do you find fraudulent?

Or what part of which of his works contain fraud? Thanks in advance...

[Beel2112]

64. This is the most obvious...

http://hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/Churchill1.htm

"Situating Churchill’s rendition of the epidemic in a broader historiographical analysis, one must reluctantly conclude that Churchill fabricated the most crucial details of his genocide story. Churchill radically misrepresented the sources he cites in support of his genocide charges, sources which say essentially the opposite of what Churchill attributes to them.

It is a distressing conclusion. One wants to think the best of fellow scholars. The scholarly enterprise depends on mutual trust. When one scholar violates that trust, it damages the legitimacy of the entire academy. Churchill has fabricated a genocide that never happened. It is difficult to conceive of a social scientist committing a more egregious violation."

[Dhalgren]

69. Are you talking about his statement at his trial for disrupting

the "Columbus Day" parade? He cites Thornton's work for the numbers and the extent of the genocidal effect - not the culpability of the US Army. Thornton never says that the Army didn't do it, he simply cites several possibilities that does not include Army malice. But Churchill does not say that Thornton says the Army did it. The professor you site, from Lamar University in Texas, seemed a little "over the top" in his venom toward Churchill. But if this is the kind of "fraud" that causes you to vilify Churchill, no argument of mine will change your mind. We too often attack those who say things we don't like - it seems to be the "American" way...

[Beel2112]

84. His BS about the Army spreading the disease

...is what I'm talking about.

"He cites Thornton's work for the numbers and the extent of the genocidal effect - not the culpability of the US Army."

Of course if that were true, he has NO citations backing up his claim. Regardless, he didn't even get the numbers & extent right: "Thornton counts no more than 30,000 dead at most" while Churchill states, "the pandemic claimed at least 125,000 lives, and may have reached a toll several times that number". So if what you say is true, he still grossly misreprsented his sources and furthermore, his claims that the US Army carried out this genocide are without ANY basis.

From the essay:

"None of the sources that Churchill cites make any mention of “a military infirmary…quarantined for smallpox.” None of the sources Churchill cites make any mention of U.S. Army soldiers even being in the area of the pandemic, much less being involved with it in any way. Churchill’s sources—in particular a journal kept by the fur trader Francis Chardon—make it clear that Fort Clark was not an Army garrison. It was a remote trading outpost that was privately owned and built by the American Fur Company, and manned by a handful of white traders. It was not an Army fort, nor did it contain soldiers. Not being an Army fort, it did not contain a “post surgeon” who told Indians to “scatter” and spread the disease."

"The professor you site, from Lamar University in Texas, seemed a little "over the top" in his venom toward Churchill."

From the "update" at the beginning of the essay:

"I wrote the first draft for myself, in a state of outrage over what I had discovered. ... I think my argument will be more effective without the editorializing. I have stripped most of the outrage, and added some more historiographical context. I want to let the facts speak for themselves."

"We too often attack those who say things we don't like..."

We also attack things that are total BS...

"...no argument of mine will change your mind."

No, an argument contradicting the facts rather than attacking the motives of those who are showing Ward for the lying sack of **** that he is could change my mind...

[Dhalgren]

88. Your personal feelings toward Churchill have become the issue.

Do you show such venom to any and all academics who fall short of the mark? If a person is found to be less than sterling in their research and methodology, that doesn't warrant their vilification. Steven Ambrose has not been so vilified and his short comings were far worse than Churchill's. You hate Churchill for his politics - that much is obvious. But that you seem to need to hide your true motives behind some sort of faux "outrage" over academic short falls says more about you (and those you parrot) than it does about Churchill.

[Beel2112]

95. When logic, facts, and reason fail...

...make it personal.

"...fall short of the mark"

Fall short of the mark? Falling short of the mark is an honest mistake or oversight. Blatanly fabricating a genocide is fraud, not "falling short of the mark".

"...says more about you..."

And what does it say about his supporters, so desperate that they'll ignore the reality of the situation: that he's been caught--more than once--plagiarizing and lying?

PS Here's a real laugher:
http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_055200531.html

That's right, he tried to pass off a mirror image of another artist's work as his own "original" piece. Be sure to check out the video; it's hilarious.

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

54. Holy cow. Rocky Mountain News is doing a 5 day series on this smear.

They really do want to keep the COINTELPRO/FBI story down while Patriot II is going through committee eliminating the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

And still people are clueless about why he is being relentlessly lynched in the press. This ought to carry over until there is a Michael Jackson verdict to report relentlessly, probably while Kerry is bringing up the Downing Street Memo on the floor of the Senate.

A 5 day series on Churchill. Damn. They definately protest too much.

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

32. Congress quietly about to pass Patriot II- the new COINTELPRO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/01/opinion/01wed1.html?th&emc=th

This gives the FBI the 'legal' power to search any damn thing they want without a judicial warrant of substance AND hide that they did it.

THEY ARE MAKING EVERYTHING THAT'S ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL...'LEGAL.'

HITLER did the same damn thing.
Stop watching football and sitcoms, people. The house is on fire.

[durutti]

108. I've been entertaining that possibility since Day 1.

It could very well be.

[usregimechange]

29. I don't know he made some good points but didn't really connect

trade tower anyones with material support with a war machine. Than he would have to compare the nazis with America. I don't think that is either wise or accurate. But we have to always keep our eyes open because that is what the Nazis failed to do.

[pretzel4gore]

2. what about humpty dumpty?

didn't he have a great fall?
(the cia/kakaka/fbi are busybodies, but only in their own interest it appears)

[Ignoramus]

6. Witch hunts and issues are separate

Obviously, this piece is part of a witch hunt. There is no doubt that all of this is a result of attempting to find anything they can to punish Ward Churchill for breaking the taboo of raising questions about 9/11. The fact that the article says he is "framing himself as a victim" of a witch hunt, indicates that they are engaging in the same. There isn't a question. It's a fact.

Just because there is the witch hunt, doesn't mean that he should be immune from criticism. Any person who is closely scrutinized will probably be found to be flawed in some way.

But the issue is: first, people in positions of responsibility in government, academia and the press, are abusing their positions as part of a campaign to destroy someone.

Then, that said, since it was raised, as a secondary issue, there are these issues raised about Ward Churchill, baring in mind that these were raised as part of a witch hunt, and comparing their significance to the same in other people who are not the victims of a witch hunt.

[bemildred]

7. Bullshit. Or rather same old shit. nt

[daleo]

8. I read the full article, and still have mixed feelings.

It is a relatively long article, which is surprising in today's media environment. In an odd way that makes me suspicious that this publication is biased against him. I know that reasoning is pretty iffy, though.

I am inclined to think that the "Indian ancestry" accusation is pretty bogus. After all, everybody has family legends that they have been told, and which may or may not be true. Sometimes these relate to family ancestor. One should probably be careful about how they frame these claims, though, and he may be guilty of bad judgment in pushing the stories as fact more than lore.

As to the plagiarism claims, it would be interesting to hear the opinions of a middle aged tenured faculty member, of which we have a few on DU. They seem to have the flavor of footnoting squabbles that probably come up in the careers of plenty of academics. The allegations don't seem to be that much of a smoking gun to me, but I guess I wouldn't be the best judge.

I suppose what troubles me is the sense that this is a payback for criticizing the 911 dogma, which is definitely the breaking of a national taboo in the U.S. right now. The fact that many of the people slagging Ward Churchill tend to be low posters tends to reinforce that suspicion. Sorry if that sounds rude, I know we were all low posters once.

[bemildred]

9. I don't know what the "facts" are, but I am quite certain

that we would not even be aware of Ward Churchill and
whatever problems he may have but for his political
statements.

[Tansy_Gold]

44. The value of cliches and people who live in glass houses

What Ward Churchill may or may not have said (or done) vis a vis COINTELPRO or 9/11 has to be weighed against what he says (or does)in other contexts.

1. Most tenured academics earn their tenure through rigorous academic endeavor and peer review. They conduct research and write papers and books that are published by respected and respectable publishers. Other academics may not agree with their conclusions, but there is agreement on the ways in which to do research and present the findings.

Churchill did not do this. He blackmailed CU into granting him unearned tenure. He lied about the offer from Cal State Northridge (iirc) and that is simply dishonest.

Some of the publishing he did was similarly dishonest. In the academic world, respect is shown for one's peers and colleagues by recognizing them for their contributions to one's own work, such as through footnotes, endnotes, acknowledgements, etc. Churchhill did not show respect for his colleagues. I suppose it's easy for him to brush it off and say, "It was my ex-wife who did the real editing; it's her fault," but a truly honorable person would say, "I was ultimately responsible and it's my fault."

As a creative person myself and one who has been involved indirectly in several legal cases involving copyright infringement, Churchhill's copying of another artist's work with only minor alteration is a mark of absolute academic and artistic dishonesty. I personally would find it difficult to trust ANYTHING this man said or did without additional and independent corroboration.

2. After centuries of oppression, attempted extermination, bigotry, and other victimization, Native Americans obtained some redress through the law, and those who had experienced that first-hand prejudice or who were the victims of generations of social, educational, and financial oppression were able to claim such as a right to affirmative action. This affirmative action was put in place to help those who had been victimized, NOT to help those who sympathized with the victims.

Ward Churchhill, imho, took grossly unfair advantage of the generosity of the Native Americans who granted him "honorary" status, even though he had never been discriminated against because of his ethnic background. Many of the Native Americans themselves have disavowed him, and yet some DUers are saying that the Native Americans have no right to determine who is one of them and who is not? I call shame on that.

Once again, Mr. Churchhill is shown to be engaging in something less than honest behavior. If he would lie -- to use the word we so often wish applied to another person who engages in dishonesty -- about his job offer from Cal State Northridge, about the originality of his artwork, and about his ancestry, what else might he lie about in order to profit himself?

When a witness is shown to be untrustworthy on the stand, her/his testimony generally carries little weight with a jury. I suggest that, as the ultimate jury, we look a little more closely at what Mr. Churchhill says, and look for other corroboration before we take the word of this liar at face value.

[RoyGBiv]

51. This is almost humorous ...

I am admittedly sometimes too tempted myself to get bogged down in the minute details of the individual charges. I try to avoid that because I'm well aware that this is the point, sort of an answer to a discovery request that draws enough boxes of paper that the opposition is drowned in it. You lose sight of the point while looking through box 10, stack 6 and the thousands of small scribbled notes in it.

To make certain it remains clear, the overriding point here is that Churchill, regardless of the veracity of any of these charges, has acquired a position of some influence and has used it to embark on a furious campaign to educate the American public about the true consequences of its history and its actions. He hits so close to the truth that it threatens those in power. They have in turn used every means available to try to discredit him. Karl Rove himself would be proud at how well many of us have accepted the shadow on the wall.

That said, I will indulge in this just a bit.

Your characterization of the manner in which people are hired, receive tenure, etc. is noble but, well, wrong, particularly for universities on the academic level of CU. If you can somehow get past the secrecy and gain access to the full process for hiring or tenuring a professor, you will find a seething mass of politicking, half-truths, outright lies, and other unsavory elements. It's a cut-throat environment for which the weak of heart need not apply. The "publish or die" mentality leads hundreds if not thousands of what are or will one day be respected acdademics to do things that would make the worst of the back-room politicians in Washington proud of the example they've set.

Further, we're not fully aware of the circumstances that led CU to believe Churchill had been offered a position with Northridge. Perhaps he did lead the people at CU to believe that. Perhaps he believed it himself. And, perhaps the matter turns on the preposition "formal." Northridge states it never "formally" offered Churchill a position, which means an offer in writing that would indicate they had made their decision pending his acceptance. They did not say they were not considering him, even if they have since characterized that consideration as "tentative" or "not serious." What Churchill knew as one who was not part of the hiring process and more importantly what CU knew was that Northridge had had some communication with him. They wanted to keep Churchill and so made their decision. Beyond all this, the fact remains and is never mentioned that if CU wanted to know if Churchill had been formally offered a position, they could have picked up the phone. Any tenure committee with any sense would do this; they *do* do this, if their decision rests solely on a formal offer with another institution having been granted.

Regarding the charges of plargiarism, this is, again, noble, but it doesn't reflect the realities of the academic world. My post elsewhere in this thread discusses this in more detail.

And as for the Native Americans who have disavowed Churchill, check out their pedigree, the ones at the head of the "disavowal" at any rate. It's a sordid group of people.

[bobbieinok]

76. tenure committees can be a mess of politicking

I heard of one who didn't get tenure in a scientific department because his group leader lobbied against him because the candidate was not the same type of Christian the group leader was

[paulk]

62. is this the artwork you are referring to?

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


this says worlds about Mr. Churchill's character

[geek tragedy]

101. We wouldn't have been aware of him at all but for the rightwing attempting

to cast all progressives as thinking like Ward Churchill.

[EFerrari]

86. Textual analyst here. Smear.

Academics are paid to raise questions to forward a course of study. We aren't usually paid to do smear jobs, as this piece clearly is.

[politicat]

112. unfortunately, it's the rocky. Which must be taken with NaCl.

(Edited to fix typos.)

The Rocky used to be a better paper, but when it got bought by the Denver Post, the editorial slant changed to the right. It's been going down hill since. The Rocky and the DP are not the Washington Times, but they do appeal strongly to locals on the right. The moderates and left tend to the Boulder Camera or sticks with the internet.

Look, I live in the area, I read the article yesterday morning, and I've been following the story since it broke. While Prof. Churchill has been no angel, the fact is that the rest of his colleagues at CU are not angelic either. They're human, working in a uniquely human endeavor - academics. Mistakes happen, and I doubt that I could find a single prof who does not have some middling squabble with someone else somewhere else that could be blown out of proportion if the media took an interest.

The whole ancestry thing is crap - pure and simple. It's a lot like the old Emo Phillips' bit about the differences in religion. While I know there are a lot of genealogists on DU, the Rocky relied on written records rather than genetic data, and such written records were subject to various types of misrecording, either intentionally (so that no one would know that Mary Sue had a baby by her brother's valet) or unintentionally (because Mary Sue and the valet never told anyone that her pregnancy did not result from an encounter with Mary Sue's husband.)

An example: My family's written records do not record the fact that my great-great-great-great grandmother was from the Miami tribe (Algonquin language family). She changed her name when she was put in school, and her records basically show very little. The only reason we know that she was Miami (much intermarrying had happened with the Miami and the French pre-Indiana territory; she looked French or Italian, as did her children) was that she talked about it late in life, but never documented it. Oral history is all we have. (Or had; my great-grandmother wrote down her great-grandmother's stories in the 60s.) But without that frame of reference, no one would ever know that. I cannot claim official BIA ancestry. That does not mean that I am not descended from Native Americans. (I don't call myself NA, but that is my choice. I don't choose to identify with NA culture. Others in a similar situation might.)

I don't care what his ancestry is. It's not my business. If he calls himself a Native American, then so be it. My uncle is a Jew. He's a convert, but he is a Jew. It's not just blood - it's culture and ethical stance. We've got to get past this whole blood thing, anyhow. We have the knowledge of DNA and the knowledge of culture and anthropology. Blood is so 19th century... :sarcasm: And without being sarcastic, it's so racist. We do have 99.9999999% the same DNA after all.

[durutti]

10. Something to keep in mind...

The attacks on Churchill should be seen in the context of political battles within the Amerindian community. Churchill is associated w/ one split from AIM (AIM-IFAC), while others such as Harjo are associatd with AIM-GGC. They've been attacking each other viciously for years, and the latter has leveled these kinds of claims at Churchill as part of its attacks. It's also worth keeping mind mind that Churchill most certainly does have enemies in the federal government. So the folks making claims against him shouldn't necessarily be seen as disinterested.

It may turn out that all of the charges against Churchill are true. On the other hand, he may be absolved entirely. I'll wait and see.

[Total Disaster]

39. Monolithic thinking and actions amongst America's native population?

I don't think so. I'm always amused by the comments of those who would frame Native American history purely as a "them against the Europeans".

While there can be no doubt that the arrival of Europeans changed their lives for the worse, forever, they were hardly living as one big, happy family. The size of the country and their relatively low population numbers may have kept the battles to a minimum, but there was most definitely hatred between some tribes, battles for the best hunting/fishing grounds, and instances of enslavement of those who lost in warfare.

[RoyGBiv]

12. Thing to keep in mind ...

First, the ancestry issue is not an issue of any importance as far as I'm concerned. Maybe my opinion doesn't matter, but there it is. From my perspective, this is primarily a case of "full-bloods" calling out a "mixed blood" or a "non-blood claiming ancestry" and insisting he has no authority to speak. It has no bearing on the arguments themselves. In other words, this is a argument stating that who you are dictates whether your words should be heard.

Second, the claims about "fabricated historical facts" and "false claims" about certain laws are gross exaggerations and clear examples of playing off the public's basic ignorance of historical scholarship as a profession. The purpose is to try to discredit a person in such a way that all of his conclusions are shadowed in doubt. No matter where this goes, this has already worked, and no better example of that exists than the fact people on DU who are otherwise inclined to agree with much of what he says have bought into it completely.

More bears telling on this point, and to explain what I mean, I'll use an unrelated example.

Several years ago, a historian named Robert Krick found and published a personal letter from a Civil War general named LaFayette McLaws in which McLaws criticized his commander, James Longstreet, for, among other things, some of his actions at the battle if Gettysburg. Without getting into the fine details of this historical controversy, I'll note that the content of this letter is in no sense fabricated, but the manner in which Krick interpreted the letter could and should be considered "false." Those "in the know" were aware that Dr. Krick had made a comment in private indicating he believed the letter forever put to rest an argument about whether Longstreet "sulked" at that battle and whether this sulking affected his performance negatively. The article accompanying the letter did in fact carried a sub-text of describing Longstreet as "L'Enfant Terrible" (The Terrible Infant).

Looking deeper into the matter shows rather clearly that McLaws's criticisms were based in a specific context and that his own words in other letters published afterward completely discredited the notion that Longstreet sulked or even that McLaws had a valid basis for offering his criticism. (The letter was written shortly after the battle, and McLaws didn't understand some of the things Longstreet had done. The former was involved in a personal battle of "honor" with another general, and all of this came together in what amounted to a rant in a letter home.)

Now, having been one of those who went to great lengths to critique Krick's analysis and prove him wrong, I very well could have implied or even asserted plainly that Krick was lying or had "fabricated" evidence in much the same way Churchill has been accused of doing. But, it would have been wrong to do that. Krick happens to be an excellent, honored historian with a vast amount of knowledge and talent, but he has a hardened point of view on certain matters. The point of view clouded his judgment in this one area; he was also unaware of some other evidence that came to light after his publication. Interestingly, he's not backed off his conclusions, but then professional historians don't do that sort of thing easily. But he's not made as much a point of it since, and it is notable that the man's own son has published articles completely dismantling the elder Krick's thesis.

In summary, Krick fabricated nothing. He took the evidence available, interpreted it in a manner he believed to be correct, and he published. That's how scholarship tends to work, and the entire historical profession is based in part on reviewing the work of others, supporting it or finding flaws with it and offering alternative interpretations. This is normal.

Churchill has done the same thing. I happen to agree with many of Churchill's critics, particularly with regard to the accusations against the US Army of deliberately spreading smallpox. No direct evidence supports this, but some evidence suggests it. Churchill has interpreted this suggestive evidence in the context of things we are certain the US Army did do to try to eradicate Native Americans in a genocidal fashion. At worst, this makes him wrong and guilty of using evidence that could be interpreted in a number of ways to support a single line of that interpretation. It in no sense makes him a liar, which is what the accusations boil down to.

Every historian in existence, past or present, has been guilty of this to some degree at one time or another. In fact, most professions are guilty of similar things. Take economists for example. Now there's a profession that on any given day fully half could be called outright liars if we didn't consider that what many of them are doing is interpreting evidence in a way that fits their accepted model of economic theory. Little of this is blatantly right or wrong. Or meterologists. Hell, I wish I had a job in which I could be right barely half the time and still get paid. And these people deal with hard scientific data, not interpretation of the written word about which what we don't know far exceeds what we do.

The bit about plagiarism could have legs, but again, it's difficult to say with any authority of what variety the guilt is. Was it sloppy research, the work of an assistant, direct cut and paste? Several famous historians have been found guilty of various types of this kind of infraction, including Stephen Ambrose, whom the right-wingers for some reason dearly love, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Neither was subjected to this kind of treatment, and both went on with their careers, the former lovingly mentioned every time _Band of Brothers_ comes up in conversation.

Sorry for the length, but these are things we need to keep in mind was we wallow in yet another diversion. Churchill attacks the "establishment," and that makes him a target. Scrutinize ever last bit of the criticism and consider from what you're being distracted while doing so. What, in other words, got them so mad that they suddenly felt the need to demolish him personally?

[bpilgrim]

13. "bought into it completely" & "The bit about plagiarism"

buying this and other stories as well, completely, always makes me nervous :scared:


now the plagiarism get's even more difficult since these people are writing in the same areas and as a matter of FACT Churchill even wrote the forward to one of the alleged cases of plagiarism books.

unless i see NEW evidence, not the tired BS the right has been sweeping the airwaves with i'll look again till then this case is closed for me. 2 little time, 2 many crooks...

they are simply attacking another lefty for speaking TRUTH 2 POWER.

thanks for sharing that excellent post :toast:

peace

[RoyGBiv]

16. Exactly ...

I had gone on long enough and so didn't get into my thoughts on the plagiarism charge. It's one thing when an author stands up and says, "Hey, you lifted every last bit of that from my work without even consulting me," but quite another when "similarities" are found, even similarities with specific words and phrases found to be identical.

Some of what I've personally done could be criticized as plagiarism simply because many of the thoughts I express aren't original. I build on those thoughts with my own original interpretations and ideas, but some of the foundation is in essence "lifted" from others. This, again, is another thing that historians do. One should give credit when you know whom to give credit, but accidents can and do happen, especially in lengthy works with dozens of research assistants helping you. (That's sort of what happened to Goodwin.) The work does not exist in a vacuum, and when several people are working on the same subject, especially when they end up interacting, a lot of the same stuff, right down to the same wording, ends up being "copied."

There's another angle to this too that could lead off on a wide tangent. It involves copyright law and the current corporate efforts to copyright even common words and phrases. This is in turn an off-shoot of the copyright battles involving programming code for computers. Can you really copyright the two lines of code it takes to attach a specific function to a TAB key, much less the very idea of doing that?

It's all related and all a part of this vast effort to undermine every single voice that, as you say, speaks truth to power. It is infuriating.

[bpilgrim]

20. agreed. and as a programmer myself i understand well about standing on...

each-others shoulders in order to be productive and progress also how work can be reproduced without any knowledge of a previous edition though we all strive to avoid that be the lazy engineers we are :P

i am a HUGE supporter of open source software and i am simply AMAZED at the copious fruit it has born since it's start that PROVES the theory of SOCIALISM/COOPERATION to be the SUPERIOR model for society, imho.

though some would probably say Darwin proved that long ago, cept those ID weirdos ;->

:hi:

peace

[Dhalgren]

14. Thank you! Few here, it seems, understand the internal workings

and politics that are rampant in academe. Also the fact that anyone who researches and writes a great deal is "on the line", as it were, for all of their opinions - over their entire career.

The idea of "blood" as carrying some sort of validation within a group is a purely European concept - not Native American. I have had many conversations with many elders of various nations and they all agree that the idea of "blood" has worked against Native Americans in a generalized way.

Thanks again for your astute post.

[RoyGBiv]

23. Blood ...

Agreed. Some individual tribes, such as the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" did incorporate this concept of "blood" into their own, internal political struggles (the Cherokee in particular), but that's a very small sub-set of the Native American community as a whole. A lot of what those outside this community see they interpret in this European fashion, and they foist it on those communities through treaties, laws, etc., but as you say, it's not their own concept.

As for politics, one very serious reason I am not a professional academic is due to the politics. I just can't deal with it. I remember clearly realizing one day I had been modifing an opinion I had for no other reason than not to lock horns with a person whose recommendation I needed. My life took a turn that day, and I've not regretted it despite things not having gone the way I planned them to go in my early 20's.

I'll just keep my amateur status and do something else for a paycheck. :-)

[Dhalgren]

25. Your story sounds very similar to mine.

I decided against "going academic" and I haven't regretted it.

As for the "blood" thing. In the mid seventies I was visiting on a Chippewa reservation and this was during the extreme oppression of native peoples by the B.I.A. and the F.B.I. in reaction to AIM. Many of the young men of the nation were wearing signs on their shirts saying "F.B.I. - Full Blooded Indian". Several elders were very displeased with it. They said that they understood the joke, but thought that blood should not be joked about or used for politics. I remember one old man saying (paraphrase) "Blood is what we spill, blood is how we live, blood is what makes us all brothers." That really stuck with me.

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

15. "What got them so mad?" See my post #11...n/t

[RoyGBiv]

18. Precisely ...

Excellent post.

And Welcome to DU!!! :hi:

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

21. Thanks for your work, too. DU needs more of it. All we can!...n/t

[Mairead]

65. "this is primarily a case of "full-bloods" calling out a "mixed blood"

It's worse than that...to the everlasting shame of the European-origin USAians, there are hardly any 'full blood' First Nation people left except in a few closed communities like the Na-Dine. This is about 'enrolled' and 'federally recognised' people asserting the right to control who can claim First Nation ancestry.

The situation with the descendents of the First Nation people east of the Mississippi is like the situation of the Diaspora Jews: they've intermarried with the 'goyim' so completely that their genetic connection to their ethnic ancestors is more a matter of courtesy than of DNA. The Sachem of the Wampanoag Nation in Massachusetts could walk unnoticed along any street in Europe.

[bobbieinok]

75. an excellent, necessary corrective from within academia to 'personal

destruction' attacks on dissenters

many of these attacks work because they are directed to propagandize people unfamiliar about how academia works

[bin.dare]

19. crap, shit, shite, ...

... bullshite, horseshite, chickenshite,

oh, and did i mention how i feel abot this recent attack on Ward?

[Beel2112]

27. Groan...

...I'm afraid every second Democrats spend defending this slimeball the more votes they will lose in 2008. The guy's already been nailed for plagiarism in 1997 (1), long before any of this started, so it's clearly not part of this "witch hunt". Not to mention that he obviously made up his claim that the US Govt. spread small pox to the Mandan Indians. Don't take my word for though--just read or talk to his own sources, which utterly contradict his claims. (2) Lastly, I'm really curious why this guy with his degree in ethnic studies is an expert in geopolitics. If you want the opinion of a (relevant) expert on what brought about 9/11, might I suggest Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies?

The little Eichmann's statement, while protected by free speech was insensitive at best, and downright moronic (in reality). Eichmann was convicted of 15 counts ranging from crimes against humanity to war crimes. Name one worker in the world trade center that would be found guilty of even ONE. This moron brought this upon himself, and I'm afraid supporting him is only going to further isolate the moderates...

This guy seems like a consummate BS artist; the Republicans must lick their chops every time they see Dems defending him...

Oh, and someone wanted new claims against him? Here you go:
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3827452,00.html

" The discovery of an additional instance of possible plagiarism is significant, said Peter Hoffer, a plagiarism expert who helped write the American Historical Association's standards on the topic.

"If you find more examples, then you begin to believe this is someone who is systematically violating the canons of good scholarship," Hoffer said.

There were a number of problems with the Dam the Dams essay by the time Churchill claimed sole authorship in 1991. The grandiose water-diversion scheme - which Omni magazine once called one of the top 10 worst ideas in U.S. environmental history - was widely considered moot years before Churchill started writing about it. And Dam the Dams didn't give him permission to take credit for its work, the former members said. In fact, Dam the Dams was long gone by 1989, when Churchill said his research organization collaborated with Dam the Dams on the article. "

1. "In 1997 the Dalhousie University legal counsel rendered an opinion concluding that the chapter was plagiarized."
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/report.html#_ftn47

2. http://hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/Churchill1.htm (Dr. Thomas F. Brown, PhD in Ethnic studies from Johns Hopkins)

[hang a left]

41. You expose yourself

"If you want the opinion of a (relevant) expert on what brought about 9/11, might I suggest Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies?"

:eyes:

[Beel2112]

45. Huh?

Have you read the book? (Esp. Chapter 2)

[tishaLA]

67. How did Thomas Brown earn a Ph.D.

from a department at Johns Hopkins that doesn't exist, let alone confer doctorates? In fact, he received his Ph.D. in the Sociology Department as you can see here. Now, if I were a critic like Prof. Churchill has, I might contend that your error is outrageous and that printing something inaccurate like that speaks to your character. But instead, I will just say that people make mistakes, not that they are "slimeball(s)" for making them.

I'd also make another point I have had to contend with as a professional academic. Different disciplines have different ways of theorizing disciplinarity (indeed, these differences are frequently intradisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary), so it is very strange indeed to have a sociologist working so hard to examine the "misrepresentations" of Prof. Churchill's historical interpretation. I know that I, as a literary scholar, have invoked the ire of more than one historian who thought I misread/misrepresented historical facts. In fact, I was merely interpreting narrative, just as historians do. The problem is that we are often blind to the processes of narrativization within our disciplinary boundaries but we see the mechanisms all too well in other specialties.

[Beel2112]

73. ...

Yes, I got his degree wrong, it is in sociology, not Ethnic Studies.

"...so it is very strange indeed to have a sociologist working so hard to examine the "misrepresentations" of Prof. Churchill's historical interpretation."

Not at all; a look at his webpage shows he teaches two sociology classes that deal with ethnicity (SOCI3306 & SOCI4300, Race and Ethnic Relations & Racial Identities and Ethnic Boundaries). He also lists "Ethnic nationalism in the U.S." as the first item in his research interests.

http://hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/

[tishaLA]

81. Yes, but that's not my point

perhaps you have to be an academic to understand this; I don't know. But one is not trained in "Ethnic Studies" because it is an interdisciplinary program, not a self-contained discipline. The same is true, for example, of Women's Studies, African-American Studies, or, at my university, Chicano Studies. People who teach "ethnic studies," then, come from a variety of backgrounds, including sociology, psychology, law, literature, and history.

It is my understanding--perhaps incorrectly because I cannot find Prof. Churchill's CV online (or, rather, I am unwilling to wade through the RW bullshit to find it)--that Prof. Churchill's training is in history; his critic's training is in sociology. These are wildly different disciplines with wildly different disciplinary boundaries and modes of investigation. I am not sure that I trust a sociologist to make historical judgment or to judge historical interpretation any more than I am willing to let him or her make literary interpretations--simply because they lack the training and they have a different, and probably less sophisticated, way of approaching the discipline.

[Beel2112]

91. You've got to be kidding me..

"Prof. Churchill's training is in history"

His webpage lists
"B.A., M.A., Sangaman State University
Communication"

Interestingly, "University of Illinois officials said Tuesday they can't locate Ward Churchill's master's thesis and aren't sure if he was required to write one."
http://tim.2wgroup.com/blog/external/churchillSangamon.htm

And it's "Professor" Churchill, not "Dr. Churchill" for a reason:
Honorary doctorate: Alfred University, Alfred, N.Y., 1992
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3516107,00.html
(Under, "Meet Ward Churchill")

"I am not sure that I trust a sociologist to make historical judgment...a different, and probably less sophisticated, way of approaching the discipline."

You've got to be kidding me. Dr. Brown juxtaposed Churchill's claims with his own citations. Much of Churchill's claims are unsupported by said sources. Not only that, his own sources significantly contradict his story. There's no evidence presented to support Churchill's claims of genocide against the Mandan Indians; what evidence he did bring to bear actually contradicts that claim. There's no way to wiggle out of that as a matter of interpretation or "disciplinary boundaries".

[tishaLA]

94. I disagree with your conclusion

and I wonder about the ellipses in Prof. Brown's article; after all, I find you used them dishonestly when citing my own writing, much as you made false claims about Prof. Brown's Ph.D. in a previous post while criticizing an academic you insist plays fast and loose with the truth and call a "slimeball." I don't have Prof. Churchill's or Mr. Brown's sources here and I really don't care enough to look them up, but I wonder what one might find. I know, for example, that the way you used my words changed them substantively, which is precisely what I train my students not to do. Could Prof. Brown have done the same thing?

(I'm curious about why you say "And it's "Professor" Churchill, not "Dr. Churchill" for a reason," when I have never referred to him as "Dr. Churchill" as if being a full Professor without a Ph.D. is something that should be shameful. Of course I wouldn't refer to another academic who isn't an M.D as "Doctor," anyhow, because that'd just be silly.)

[Beel2112]

103. Um....yeah.

"I wonder about the ellipses in Prof. Brown's article"

Yikes--that's really your whole basis for ignoring the obvious? I'll borrow a line from--I believe--Al Franken in "Lies": the only way those ellipses would make much of a difference is if Brown used them to remove Churchill writing, "I'd have to be a complete idiot to say..."

"...you made false claims..."

Yes, getting his field wrong and immediately acknowleding it is certainly on par with fabricating a genocide, plagiarizing, and copyright infringement and denying all of it...

"...I wonder what one might find."

I imagine it'd look remarkably like what Dr. Brown found...

"I find you used them dishonestly when citing my own writing"

Please explain how taking this lengthy sentence: "I am not sure that I trust a sociologist to make historical judgment or to judge historical interpretation any more than I am willing to let him or her make literary interpretations--simply because they lack the training and they have a different, and probably less sophisticated, way of approaching the discipline."

and truncating it to:

"I am not sure that I trust a sociologist to make historical judgment...a different, and probably less sophisticated, way of approaching the discipline."

was "dishonest" and/or "substantively" changed its meaning. (I'll grant it was sloppy; it's not even a proper sentence as it stands. But then again, this is a webforum...)

"I'm curious about why you say..."

Because I'd always wondered why I never hear him referred to as "Dr. Churchill".

And, to go back a moment:
"...you insist {Churchill} plays fast and loose with the truth..."

See, herein lies the problem--it's not just me. It's his peers (Brown, Professor Fay G. Cohen and The Dalhousie University legal counsel, Professor LaVelle). It's even his own sources ("Thornton disagrees with the conclusions of genocide that Churchill attributes to him, telling the Los Angeles Times: “If Churchill has sources that say otherwise, I’d like to see them. But right now I’m his source for this, and it’s wrong.”"). It's an overwhelming mountain of evidence the man is a fraud, and has been for a long time.

[tishaLA]

110. It looks like Prof. Cohen and

The Dalhousie University legal counsel, Professor LaVelle have some commonalities, insofar as they are employed by the same university and Prof. Cohen has argued that Prof. Churchill plagiarized her work. Of course they would agree on that. But the plagiarism is not a settled matter. Not by a long shot. From what I have read, there are a variety of issues, including editing, involved here. It is certainly noble that Prof. Cohen's university, which, like Prof. Brown's, I have never heard of, supports her, but its conclusions mean less than nothing really.

As for Thornton (who?), I cannot respond without knowing what he is talking about. I will say, whiteout knowing what I'm talking about, that two people often look at the same text and arrive at radically different conclusions. That is why people still write about Hamlet, for example. But this goes back to my original point: I am not in a position to determine the "validity" of Prof. Churchill's interpretation of historical documents because, on the one hand, although I am an academic in the humanities, I am not a historian and I am not qualified to make judgments about how one does historiographical interpretation (any more than a sociologist is) and, on the other hand, I am not so sure that the task of interpretation of whatever kind is to arrive at "validity" as such.

Finally, you never hear anyone refer to him as "Dr. Churchill" because 1. It would be untrue and 2. Academics tend not to refer to each other as "Dr." Normally "Prof." suffices, except in the case of Dr. Rice.

[Beel2112]

113. Hmmm...

Professor Lavelle appears to work at the University of New Mexico, not Dalhousie. Further, yes, as I indicated, Dr. Cohen's charges of plagiarism were found to be correct by his university's legal counsel. I fail to see how any of this refutes their claims.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/report.html

"It is certainly noble that Prof. Cohen's university, which, like Prof. Brown's, I have never heard of..."

That's nice, but your ignorance of their employers does absolutely nothing to refute their charges.

"As for Thornton (who?)"

Again, your ignorance of Thornton and/or his work does nothing to refute his claim.

"...I cannot respond without knowing what he is talking about"

What's he talking about--which you would know if you had read Brown's essay in its entirety--was that Thornton is Churchill's source for his claim that the US Army committed genocide. Thornton says Churchill's wrong. When the author of the text you cited says you've got it wrong, that's a bit of a problem, don't you think?

"...Prof. Churchill's interpretation of historical documents..."

For the last time--this is not a matter of interpretation. Here's Churchill's source:

"Steamboats had been traveling the upper Missouri River for years before 1837, dispatched by Saint Louis fur companies for trade with the Mandan and other Indians. At 3:00 P.M. on June 19, 1837, the American Fur Company steamboat St. Peter’s arrived at the Mandan villages after stopping at Fort Clark just downstream. Some aboard the steamer had smallpox when the boat docked. It soon was spread to the Mandan, perhaps by deckhands who unloaded merchandise, perhaps by chiefs who went aboard a few days later, or perhaps by women and children who went aboard at the same time"

Here's what Churchill managed to conjure from that:
"At Fort Clark on the upper Missouri River…the U.S. Army distributed smallpox-laden blankets as gifts among the Mandan. The blankets had been gathered from a military infirmary in St. Louis where troops infected with the disease were quarantined. Although the medical practice of the day required the precise opposite procedure, army doctors ordered the Mandans to disperse once they exhibited symptoms of infection. The result was a pandemic among the Plains Indian nations which claimed at least 125,000 lives, and may have reached a toll several times that number."
and Churchill's revision:
"Only slightly more ambiguous was the U.S. Army’s dispensing of ‘trade blankets’ to Mandans and other Indians gathered at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota, beginning on June 20, 1837. Far from being trade goods, the blankets had been taken from a military infirmary in St. Louis quarantined for smallpox, and brought upriver aboard the steamboat St. Peter’s. When the first Indians showed symptoms of the disease on July 14, the post surgeon advised those camped near the post to scatter and seek ‘sanctuary’ in the villages of healthy relatives…there is no conclusive figure as to how many Indians died…but estimates run as high as 100,000."

Cribbing from Brown's essay, note the discrepencies:
1. The location of the infection is different.
2. There's no mention of the Army. (Quite possibly because Fort Clarke was a trading post built by the American Fur Company {as again, Churchill's own sources indicate}, not a military base.)
3. There's no mention of infected blankets.
4. There's no mention of an infirmary from where the blankets could have come from.
5. There's no mention of a post surgeon or his instructions intending to spread the disease. (See point #2)
6. Thornton counted "no more than 30,000 dead at most", less than 1/3 of Churchill's claim.
7. Thornton wrote that the disease arrived via infected passengers, clearly contradicting Churchill's claim that it was spread via infected blankets.

This is not a matter of interpretation, it's a matter of fabrication.

"Academics tend not to refer to each other as "Dr.""

Yes, having a professor for a father {and entering into a PhD program myself next fall}, I'm well aware of that. Just as how I'm sure you're well aware of the fact that 99% {yes, I made that number up; you may interpret it to mean "a majority, if not a vast majority"} of what you hear about Ward Churchill is from the media, not from his fellow academics...

PS Where's the explanation of how my use of ellipses was "dishonest" and "substantively" changed the meaning of your sentence? I seem to have missed it...

[tishaLA]

114. You're really talking in circles

and if you don't see how you substantively changed the meaning of my quotation, I'm not shocked. You enjoy academic witch hunts and I don't. But then again, you enjoy "wonder(ing)" why Prof. Churchill is never referred to as Dr., even though you later admit that you're "well aware" that it's not common. Or you pretend I say things I have not said, like when I wrote "It is certainly noble that Prof. Cohen's university, which, like Prof. Brown's, I have never heard of..." and you responded by saying, "That's nice, but your ignorance of their employers does absolutely nothing to refute their charges." Of course I made no claims about what the anonymity of their university indicated to me, but your "interpretation" of what I might have implied (and I'll admit I'm being generous here) has nothing to do with what I wrote. Such are the vicissitudes of "interpretation," I suppose.

Without reading all the source material--and this is what a professional academic does--I won't reach a conclusion about whether Prof. Churchill's writing has any "validity" or not. I would have to actually read Mr. Thornton and his source material, for example, and then read it free of Mr. Brown's edits and see whether Prof. Churchill might used the primary documents to reach a different conclusion than Mr. Thornton has. But I would say that by sparking a debate, Prof. Churchill has actually succeeded, even if it has cost him something at the hands of RW losers like David Horowitz.

I don't doubt that there are some academics out there eager to go to the media and take down Prof. Churchill. To me it makes little difference. There are opportunists in every field and, as the saying goes, the fights in academia are so bitter because the stakes are so small.

[Beel2112]

116. I hope you don't teach geometry...

If you'd stated my argument was ad nauseam, you might have had a better headline. But even that isn't really true as I've been getting more detailed to show how ludicrous your "it's all in the interpretation!" argument is. Dr. Brown (professional academic) investigated Churchill's sources and then some. His conclusions point to Churchill making up a genocide.

"...if you don't see how you substantively changed the meaning of my quotation..."

No, I don't--please, enlighten me. I'm really looking forward to your scholarly explanation of how I substantively changed the meaning of that sentence.

"...you're "well aware" that it's not common..."

Yes, it's not common in academia. Of course as I plainly stated, we're dealing with the media here. (Your harping on this is a pretty good example of Argument Ad Nauseam {repeating something until people begin to believe it}. You should be sure to tell your students to avoid doing that.)

"Of course I made no claims about what the anonymity of their university indicated to me..."

Gee, I wonder why you didn't mention why you brought it up? Since it clearly wasn't an attempt at discrediting them, perhaps you could explain why you felt it necessary to mention you hadn't heard of Thornton or the two universities in question?

"...and this is what a professional academic does..."

Oddly enough, reverting to primary sources is exactly what Dr. Brown did:
"One of Churchill’s sources—Stearn & Stearn (81)—relates a story of a Mandan chief stealing an infected blanket from the steamboat. In the Stearns rendition, the trader Chardon {whose diary Dr. Brown states is Churchill's only cited primary source} tried to retrieve the infected blanket by promising to exchange it for clean ones. However, the source cited by the Stearns—Zenas Leonard’s narrative—does not contain this story. In fact, Leonard’s narrative ends in 1835, two years prior to the Mandan outbreak, and does not mention either Chardon or smallpox. Nor do the Stearns themselves seem to give the story much credence. Even if true, the story still directly contradicts Churchill’s claim that the army distributed infected blankets obtained from a military infirmary."

"...Churchill might used {sic} the primary documents..."

That is of course assuming Churchill used the primary documents--which I think he would have cited if he had. As it is, he cited Thornton, and again I ask, "When the author of the text you cited says you've got it wrong, that's a bit of a problem, don't you think?"

By the way, what's your take on this:
http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_055200531.html

I guess you could interpret it as since it's a mirror image and not the exact same thing, he didn't rip off someone else's work. (Screw engineering; I should've become a lawyer!!! ;) )

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

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

[ElsewheresDaughter]

34. was this a drive by thread?

[tlcandie]

36. !!!!

:+ :spray:

[ckramer]

35. This is a witch hunt, pure and simple

You think all of these would happen if Ward Churchill wasn't an anti-war anti-boosh figure?

It's becoming a joke on "Freedom of speech".

[ljm2002]

43. Am I the only person...

...who believes he brought this on himself by his outrageous statement that those who died in the WTC on 9/11 were "little Eichmans"???

Sorry -- I have a hard time feeling sympathy for the man. He had to know that was an incendiary statement. And let's get real -- if they were "little Eichmans" by virtue of being part of the big corporate machine, then so is he. Universities these days are as much beholden to corporate capital and power structures as any other segment of society.

I'm not surprised it's having an effect on his career. IF he also lied about being Native American, and that fact comes out, then... time to pay the piper.

He has the right to make whatever statements he wants to -- Free Speech and all. He has no right to expect no consequences. Here's a though experiment: what if any of us were to stand around the water cooler, discussing 9/11 with our colleagues, and chose to refer to the 9/11 victims as "little Eichmans"? How do you suppose your colleagues would react? Would you expect your career to be enhanced by such a remark?

I sure wouldn't.

Finally -- before the flaming starts -- just to be clear: I do not believe the official 9/11 story. I'm pretty sure it was at least LIHOP and quite possibly MIHOP (>50% IMO). But that makes his remarks all the more galling, since those same "little Eichmans" would be innocent victims of their own government rather than the complicit toadies implied by the "Eichman" epithet.

You know, I'll never forget the sight of people jumping off those towers, people who had simply shown up that morning for a regular workday. And a lot of Americans feel the same way. We can disagree on what happened, and certainly on what was done as a result; but we should not lose sight of our common humanity. Insulting the victims of that horrific event is not a good way of doing that.

[RoyGBiv]

46. Question ...

Well, more than one.

1) Are you aware when the article was written in which the comparison to Eichmann (it has two "N's") supposedly appeared?

2) Have you read the article?

Your comments lead me to believe the answer to both is "no," but I'm ready to be enlightened.

If you have read the article and/or know when it was written, or if you choose do discover this information and witness the words for yourself now, I have a few other questions.

3) Why did so much time pass between the publication of the article and the current effort to discredit Churchill because of it.

4) How do you reconcile the context in which the comment was written with the connotations that have been used to criticize Churchill?

Yes, these questions are a bit presumptuous, intentionally so. The reason is that your criticisms are presumptions, showing quite clearly that you've swallowed every single ounce of propaganda spewed forth about this matter, the implication being that you haven't critically analyzed the situation for yourself. I suggest you do so. If, at that time, you still have the same or a similar opinion, so be it, but please do us the favor of not repeating the same half-truths that the right-wing is spoon feeding us about this matter.

Finally, whether Ward Churchill is a Native American or not is totally irrelevant to the arguments he makes. If you'll read the fine print on that false debate, you'll again find a bit more nuance than the mainstream is wanting you to see.

[othermeans]

47. Link to Churchill's essay

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

[Vladimir]

48. Hypocritical bullshit

Churchill is being held to a standard most RW academics wouldn't have a prayer of living with, and for quite obvious reasons. So I don't really care about the allegations, because on the substantial points Churchill is pretty much right...

[rooboy]

49. With all the shit going on in America and the world...

some editor decided that THIS was best story to make the subject of a 2 month long investigation?

I'm not interested in the subject so I didn't read the article. But I can bet you that if the allegation was about "Dr" James Dobson's dubious credentials, the investigation would have lasted about 2 minutes.

[cestpaspossible]

61. Well said.

[Vladimir]

50. In the interest of a little balance

y'all might want to read this. I dunno if its been posted already, if so I apologise.

http://www.coloradoaim.org/why.html

[RoyGBiv]

53. Thanks for that ...

I'd read this before, but I lost the link.

[geek tragedy]

52. He's scum in virtually every aspect of his professional life.

A fraud and a morally bankrupt pig. He never was relevant, except for rightwingers trying to pretend that he was representative of the progressives in this country--which he is certainly not.

[blindpig]

57. is it the message or the messenger that bothers you?

I suspect the former. His career and foibles(if any) would have gone unnoticed but for his raw and truthful analysis of our national behavior.

To deny our natioal history of genocide, exploitation, imperialism and gunboat diplomacy is to live a lie. From start to present, that's who we are. The majority don't see it, don't know it, just profit by it. Plausible deniability for the masses! Instead we believe that we are the goodest, most generous and wonderful nation in history. Why do they hate us?

[geek tragedy]

58. His message of hate and the fact that he's a creep both disgust me.

There's nothing redeeming about him--whether it's gloating over the deaths of murder victims or constructing a career out of fraud.

[blindpig]

59. you are in deep denial

You don't like the message of his "chickens" essay so you call it gloating whereas it was nothing of the sort. The fact is as tax paying citizens we are "little Eichmanns", myself included. You need to understand the nuance and context of that term and not simply assign meanings to assuage your cognitive dissidence. And there were business and government entities housed there which were part of our system of global hegemony. Those were the people that Churchill was referring to, as he has clarified.

You can't handle the truth.

News Flash: We are NOT the shining city on the hill. We are just another aggressive, imperialistic power. If you have studied no history other than what is offered K-12 you are excused as a victim of propaganda.

[bpilgrim]

98. Thoreau's Civil Disobedience deals with this issue as well but ABSOLUTIST

don't deal well with nuance, unfortunately.

this case illustrates how poor our education system is in America right now since most folks today deal only in BLACK&WHITE and are easily misled.

:hi:

peace

[geek tragedy]

104. Sorry, I don't share your profound moral confusion.

Comparing taxpayers to Adolf Eichmann is as obscene as it is idiotic.

[Beel2112]

109. Thank you!

A voice of reason! :hi:

[blindpig]

111. the comparison is apt

if you can get your head around the concept of the banality of evil. If all you can do is say "Not me! Not me!" like a child your view will never mature, which is just how our masters like it. Responsibility for serial greed and violence is an ugly thing to drop on anyone but until we do so we're not dealing with reality. To deny the responsibility of the citizenry in a democracy is to deny the democracy.

Maybe you've got something there after all.

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

60. He's EXPOSING governmen murder of people, not gloating. So they smear him.

Your missing the point that he is a WHISTLE-BLOWER against US government murder and so he is being lynched in the press. Don't look just at the hand the magician is showing you. Look at the hand he doesn't want you to watch.

The bill making up 'Patriot Act II' allowing the FBI to do what they want to any American is in the process of being snuck into law RIGHT NOW.

Churchill wrote extensively about the old FBI campaign to murder and harass lefties like us called COINTELPRO under Nixon and not called anything today. But it continues and is being made 'legal.'

So discrediting a leading critic of government abuse is a five part series in the Rocky Mountain News instead of stories about government abuse of YOU AND ME.

Does this make sense to you now?

[marshall]

68. Churchill has two audiences--the popular and the academic

I'm sure academia is full of hundreds of "little Churchills" (to coin his own phrase with proper citation so I'm not accused of plagiarism!)--these are people who inflate their resumes, copy the work work and ideas of others, claim personal traits about themselves that are false, etc. These "little Churchills" cruise along quite happily in their careers because no one studies them hard enough to bring up anything.
But Churchill crossed over into the popular arena and brought a huge spotlight on himself that he just wasn't equipped to deal with. Politicians and others who dwell in the public arena are used to this sort of scrutiny and eal with it appropriately (or die quick deaths).
I know it happens. In the research class I took in my doctoral program I traced all the references for a linguistics article that was distilled from the writer's dissertation. Well over half if not three fourths of the references were tainted--either plagiarized or used in contradiction to what the original author was actually saying.

[tishaLA]

71. You're sure of this, are you?

Perhaps you could offer something other than your certainty about how we in academia are a bunch of "little Churchills," like maybe that research you did. And then perhaps you can describe how you managed to extrapolate a thesis about the "hundreds of 'little Churchills'" who populate academia and work to get tenure by submitting articles to peer-reviewed journals and manuscripts to university presses.

FWIW, Prof. Churchill didn't seek the "huge spotlight," as you seem to believe. Instead, David Horowitz sought sacrificial lambs in academia and let his republicon spin and smear campaign go to work. And he's trying it again with another Professor, this time a Professor of Religion in NY. It is an ideological war Horowitz wants to bring to academia, but it is one he is bound to lose. Why? Because Horowitz always was and always will be a loser.

[marshall]

89. Peer reviewed articles by Churchill?

Actually I'm not able to locate any articles by Churchill in peer reviewed journals. Are you aware of any?

I was just trying to point out the conflict between the two audiences that Churchill has--the popular audience that is more interested in his message, and the academic audience that is more interested in his method. Certainly a right wing agenda that didn't like his message created interest that would not have been there otherwise.

[tishaLA]

92. My question was about the "hundreds of 'Little Churchills'"

you claim populate academia. Yes, we "little Churchills" submit articles to peer-reviewed journals and many of other things. Can you tell me how you extrapolated some certainty about the malfeasance you assert above? (For the record, I don't have any knowledge about which articles, if any, he has submitted for peer review, although I will say that it is doubtful he became a full professor without any. As I said in another post, it is almost impossible to find Prof. Churchill's CV because of all the RW bilge about him on the net.)

Also, as I pointed out above, Prof. Churchill was not trying for two audiences. His writing, which I believe is artless and not particularly well-reasoned, was not for a "popular" audience, but it found one because of losers like David Horowitz who are doing some academic head-hunting.

[marshall]

97. Academic life

I guess I was basing my observation on my own experience, which may differ from yours. And I will say that my observation was worded in the form of hyperbole that was meant to mirror Churchill's own use.

[6th Borough]

55. Mr. Churchill might have confused Dawes Act w/Wheeler-Howard Act.

As a disinterested party (in relation to Mr. Churchill) who, nonetheless holds an interest in history and law, I believe I might possibly have found the nature of confusion regarding the "blood quantum". Blood Quantum being the term Churchill used to denote a (United States) legalistic determination of one's Indian ancestery.

According to this article, Churchill believed that the General Allotment Act (also known as the Dawes Act) defined an Indian as someone of at least half Native American descent.

I couldn't find that stipulation in the Dawes Act; however, The Indian Reorganization Act, or Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934 (to be more precise, this is located in an amendment to Wheeler-Howard; passed in 1935...sec. 19) does contain this:

Sec. 19. The term "Indian" as used in this Act shall include all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under Federal jurisdiction, and all person who are descendants of such members who were, on June 1, 1934, residing within the present boundaries of any reservation, and shall further include all other persons of one-half or more Indian blood. For the purposes of this Act, Eskimos and other aboriginal peoples of Alaska shall be considered Indians. The term "tribe" wherever used in this Act shall be construed to refer to any Indian tribe, organized band, pueblo, or the Indians residing on one reservation. The words "adult Indians" wherever used in this Act shall be construed to refer to Indians who have attained the age of twenty-one years.

By my legalistic interperation, it doesn't seem to require one to be half-Native American to recieve any of the...ahem...benefits granted; rather it extends (quoting myelf here) the act of being Native American beyond those individuals not belonging to an established Indian Nation/tribal organization.

Well, that's my conjecture at least. It's easy to confuse your Indian Acts/Laws/"Treaties" etc., since there have been so damn many of them. I do believe he misinterpreted it to a degree in any case, as being of half Native American ancestory is not required, per se, by Wheeler to enable one to be a claimant.

[Just Me]

66. What is the motivation behind helping the establisment target this man?

:shrug:

Very, very weird.

[UdoKier]

70. The guy is a phony and a crackpot.

Amazes me that just because the guy is anti-Bush and anti-war, we have to like him. Remember the painting that he plagiarized? How he passed himself off as an Indian when he is not one? He has admitted that he is not of Indian descent, so, I don't see how there are any doubts on that now. He was obviously trying to fabricate what he thought was an attractive image for himself in keeping with his persona as a left-wing intellectual. It seems a clear case of a bright man with some good ideas that let his ego run away with him.

I don't think there's any reason to pillory him anymore over this, but there's no reason to lionize him either.

[tishaLA]

72. When has he

"admitted that he is not of Indian descent"? I am wholly unaware of this.

[H2O Man]

74. He hasn't.

That's simply not true.

[UdoKier]

79. Oh yeah?

http://starbulletin.com/2005/02/23/news/index2.html

I haven't heard him claiming to be of Indian ancestry since this report came out.

[H2O Man]

93. Pathetic.

You link a newspaper report that, among other things, quotes him as saying he is not Indian, but which includes a correction which admits they erred on that -- because he never said it!

You haven't "heard" him claim to be Indian since, eh? Big deal.

[UdoKier]

105. That report was widely publicized at the time.

I saw him on numerous talk shows and he never disputed it.

Why are you so adamant in insisting that he's Indian, when he apparently is not?

[H2O Man]

106. Sad. Really sad. n/t

[UdoKier]

77. Here.

http://starbulletin.com/2005/02/23/news/index2.html

Churchill did address the issue of his ethnicity, admitting that he is not Native American.

"Is he an Indian? Do we really care?" he said, quoting those he called his "white Republican" critics.

"Let's cut to the chase; I am not," he said.

His pedigree is "not important," Churchill said: "The issue is the substance of what is said."

He went on to explain that the issue of whether he is Native American has been blown up by sloppy reporting and reporters quoting other reporters.


There is a correction added later on that muddies the intent of his statement, but I don't believe he claims Indian ancestry anymore. He claimed to be a member of the Keetoowah tribe, who dispute his claim.

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3786590,00.html

Ward Churchill's claim of membership in the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians is fraudulent, according to a scathing statement released by the tribal office.

The statement, issued May 9 in the name of the tribal leader, Chief George Wickliffe, and posted on its Web site Tuesday, does not mince words:

"The United Keetoowah Band would like to make it clear that Mr. Churchill IS NOT a member of the Keetoowah Band and was only given an honorary 'associate membership' in the early 1990s because he could not prove any Cherokee ancestry."

[tishaLA]

83. Those two things make it more confusing than ever before

I've never seen a newspaper article that BEGINS with a disclaimer about mistakes in the article and then has ANOTHER disclaimer half way through it: But a review of video and audio tapes of the speech shows that Churchill actually said: "Is he an Indian?

"We really care. We're trying to protect the rights of Indians to divine for themselves, say this circle of flies in the form of white reporters circling a manure pile like it's of all consequential importance. "Cut to the chase on that."

Churchill went on to say that he is an associate member of the Keetoowah tribe and that associates are enrolled in the band after their genealogy has been vetted by the enrollment office. He said that he is less than one-quarter Indian, so he does not qualify to be a full member.

Looks like he never said that he wasn't native American and that the paper fucked up. It also looks like this is an issue of full vs. associate membership to a tribe. Besides this, I think the whole racialization of this debate is a strange canard concocted by David Horowitz et al.

[UdoKier]

85. But it is relevant that the tribe has disavowed him.

I agree that the right have made a lot of hay out of this, but the left has a lot better people than Ward Churchill on our side. He's no great loss. And I stand beside what I said about his ego and being a poseur. The plagiarized painting was the last straw for me. The guy should resign and get a job making beaded turqouise purses for Stuckey's or something. He has zero credibility left.

[tishaLA]

90. Well, I'll just have to agree to disagree

I don't think he's any great shakes as a scholar, but I think the tribal thing looks like intra-tribal fighting. I have made my position on the painting well known previously. I know what Art History scholarship has been for the past several decades and what Prof. Churchill did is perfectly consistent with postmodern appropriatve gestures.

[blindpig]

99. the point is they're trying to kill the message with the messenger

End of the day I don't give a flying fuck about Churchill's career, affiliations or business. This would all be moot if he hadn't spoken raw unvarnished truth.

I stand by the gist of his essay "When chickens come home to roost".
9-11 came as no surprise(though a shock) to me at all. My first thought after I watched the 2nd plane crash was "well, they finally did it."

The reason for the rabid hatred is the message, all else is superfluous. If not for that essay neither O'Really nor I would have ever heard of him.

[bobbieinok]

78. didn't a group of Native Americans support his claim of being

of Native ancestry????

I think there was a DU discussion with links of his Native American supporters

isn't this charge really an internal fight among different groups of Native Americans, perhaps each with a particular political agenda

[Mairead]

80. "He has admitted that he is not of Indian descent"

I believe what he admitted--in a sort of left-handed, roundabout, shamefaced way--is that he's not an enrolled member of the nation to which he claims blood ties. To be an enrolled member, one must supply descent records...something many First Nation people cannot do (and Donald Westlake wrapped a whole Dortmunder novel--Bad News--around that fact)

[H2O Man]

96. The person who makes

this claim links an article that quotes him as saying he isn't Indian -- but then has a correction that admits they erred, and that he never said what they attribute to him. It is pathetic that anyone would present that weak shit as supporting their stance.

[Beel2112]

87. The ethnicity argument isn't a big deal to me...

...but it certainly does seem to fall in line with his being a total fraud:

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410335

Much of this is anecdotal, but Churchill's contradicting claims mentioned here have been reported in other places...

" As Churchill has lurched through Indian identities, he has not found a single Native relative or ancestor. He is descended from a long line of Churchills that Hank Adams has traced back to the Revolutionary War and Europe. Adams, who is Assiniboine-Sioux and a member of the Frank's Landing Indian Community, has successfully researched and exposed other pseudo-Indians.

Adams traced Churchill's ancestors on both sides of his family, finding all white people, including documented slave owners and at least one spy, but zero Indians."

[Dhalgren]

100. "Much of this is anecdotal" no shit?

:eyes:

[bpilgrim]

102. "just because the guy is antiBush and antiwar, we have to like him" CANARD

no one is saying that and the alleged transgressions are BS RW talking points & spin, specially the 'ego' nonsense as usual.

please read the posts in this thread to learn the details on each of the talking points you raise.

"I don't think there's any reason to pillory him anymore over this"

but it is still going on...

"but there's no reason to lionize him either."

people are DEFENDING HIM from ATTACKS not lionizing him, huge difference.

peace

[Beel2112]

107. Churchill's Plagiarized Painting

LMAO!!! I hadn't heard about this until reading your post. I assume this is what you're talking about?

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

Be sure to check out Ward's reaction to the piece in the video underneath the pictures...

http://images.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_055200404/lg
(Original Artwork by Thomas E. Mails)

http://images.viacomlocalnetworks.com/images_sizedimage_055200441/lg
"Original" Artwork signed by Ward Churchill