Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Fraud mentioned

At Minding the Campus, Evan Coyne Maloney and John K. Wilson debate Maloney's documentary Indoctrinate U. Ward Churchill is mentioned.

Update: Twin sons of different mothers: In the Jewish Press, John-Paul Pagano (such a Jewish name) has "Knave's Gambit: The Totalitarian Stupidity of Bobby Fischer":

Recent history may offer no purer example of August Bebel’s socialism of fools than Bobby Fischer. Arguably the best chess player ever, Fischer, who was born to a Jewish mother in Chicago, was an anti-Semite and anti-American whose passion for these hatreds was surpassed only by the straightforwardness with which he frequently expressed them. . . .

Fischer embraced Nazi ideology for simple, personal reasons. Ultimately, utopian movements are not about the belief systems they promote. They are first and foremost a means for aggrandizing the demagogues who ride them to power. This in turn is sensed by acolytes like Fischer, who hope to attain a similar apotheosis.

Pagano quotes Fischer on the 9/11 attacks:

"I applaud the act.…The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them for years. Robbing them and slaughtering them. Nobody gave a [expletive]. Now it’s coming back to the U.S. [Expletive] the U.S. – I want to see the U.S. wiped out."

Fischer saw 9/11 as revenge on behalf of the Palestinians. Just before expressing that, he had this to say:

"You know I heard on the BBC a few months ago a very profound but simple statement … talking about some of the crimes of the U.S., you know of the horrible behavior that the U.S. is committing all over the world, and then the BBC guy just said it… "This just shows you that what goes around comes around, even for the United States." That is what has happened tonight. What goes around comes around, even for the United States."

And compares the statements to certain well-known arguments by another totalitarian jerk:

This echoes another celebration of "anti-imperialist" revenge, the notorious essay by University of Colorado Ethnic Studies professor Ward Churchill, called " ‘Some People Push Back’: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens."

"On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well."

Churchill’s disgusting relish exactly mirrors Fischer’s. And the gleeful, hateful bravado?

"True enough, [the World Trade Center dead] were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire . . . .

You know how it goes. Pagano notes:

There is no significant difference between Fischer’s and Churchill’s reactions to 9/11. "Chickens" began a slow but inexorable process leading to Churchill’s termination for academic dishonesty relating to other matters, but no one thought him insane.

Pagano concludes:
America, Israel and the Jews are today’s targets of revolutionary hatred. Fischer’s attacks on them were not symptoms of lunacy. They were the result of an emotional developmental disability. It’s one that should be studied more, especially with a view toward how it impacts the marketplace of ideas.
Calling it an "emotional developmental disability," while accurate, is still too easy. Nowhere in the piece is the word that most clearly applies used: "evil."

Update II: Defense asks for a delay in Aquash murder trial:

The defense lawyer for a Canadian man accused of killing a fellow American ndian Movement member after taking her from Denver 32 years ago wants to delay the trial three months.

John Graham pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder for the slaying of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash around Dec. 12, 1975, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

His federal trial is scheduled to start June 17 in Rapid City.

No comments: