Churchill not quoted

The Militant has an account of the five-day "rolling panel discussion" on “United States: A Possible Revolution” at the third Venezuela International Book Fair in Caracas last week. Ward was there, but apparently got lost in the revolutionary shuffle. No worries, there was plenty of idiocy from other particpants. Quote:

“I’m going to take issue with what every one of you has said,” stated Amiri Baraka, a poet from Newark, New Jersey, speaking from the audience. Baraka, a panelist on the closing day of the event, has been active in Black nationalist, Maoist, and Democratic Party politics since the 1960s. Attacking [Socialist Worker "labor editor" Lee] Sustar for not identifying himself as a “Trotskyite,” and falsely accusing fellow panelist George Katsiaficas of introducing himself as a former member of the Black Panthers, Baraka’s intervention was the first time in four days of sharp debate that the tone of civil discourse was breached.

The tension must have been palpable.

White guys hammered

The News:

The city of Denver is showing its employees a diversity training video that portrays a white man as a narrow-minded buffoon — triggering allegations of "institutional racism" against Anglos.

"Right now, their diversity program is racially motivated against white males," said Dennis Supple, a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning mechanic who has worked for the city 1 1/2
years. . . .

The character who breaks all the rules is Billy, a white, blue-collar worker who's a racist, sexist goofball.

In one scene Billy is told that another employee named Carlos can't do anything because he's waiting for supplies.

"What's his problem?" Billy asks. "He can't sell breakfast burritos without the supplies or he takes a siesta?"

The humor of the State is always humorous!

Supple said the video violates his civil rights and that he's considering taking the equity in his house to file a lawsuit to stop the city from showing it.

That seems a little extreme. Maybe David Lane could represent him free, gratis and for nothing.

"Diversity, to me, doesn't mean hammer the white guy," Supple said. "Diversity means you have respect for everyone, regardless of their race, their gender, their religion, their sexual orientation."

Sounds reasonable. But you won't believe this part:

The video, developed by the city's Diversity Advisory Committee in collaboration with Channel 8, the city's television channel, won second place in 2005 for Instruction/Training from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.

Well, yes you will.

Weird Bird Friday

God smiling?

--Drunkawife

PSA

Pirate Ballerina is finally up again! Go on over and welcome him back. (Sample welcome: "Howdy, hunchback! How'd you like a sock in the snot locker?")

Tuesday Night at the Radio!

A couple of wartime Thanksgiving shows (ain't I original?). The Great Gildersleeve: "Thanksgiving B Ration Book" (22 November 1942); and Jack Benny: "Jack Dreams He's A Turkey" (21 November 1943).

A Christmas Garland

RMN:

FORT COLLINS--City officials are bracing for a huge crowd at tonight's meeting about a controversial proposal to ban religious holiday decorations on government property. . . .

Traditionalists have been in an uproar ever since a city task force recommended that public property display a holiday theme with "a broad multicultural message" by sticking only to white lights and plain garlands.

White lights. Of course. And since "pretty" garlands are, like, totally a social construction, who's to say what a "plain" garland is? That's right: men.

The task force concluded that colored lights and greenery decorated with ornaments and ribbons could evoke an improper religious message.

An improper religious message, eh? And I believe the accepted term nowadays is "lights of color."

Only "secular winter symbols" such as snowflakes and icicles should be permitted, the task force said.

Task force. Think I'll go lie down.

The panel also recommended that the city museum develop a religious holiday display featuring an array of nine [!] or more [!] religions based on federal guidelines. Those would include such celebrations as Bhodi Day, a Buddhist winter holiday, and Oshogatsu, a Sinto [sic] New Year celebration. Christmas and Hanukkah would be included in the list.

How thoughtful.

The 15-member panel had representatives from three churches, five Jewish organizations, some civic and activist groups, the city's human relations commission and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

As if you couldn't have guessed.

That's harsh

The Post:

State delegations representing about 5,000 Democratic National Convention delegates were assigned hotel rooms in the Denver metro area on Tuesday, but Florida was not among them.

Delegations from 55 states and territories were assigned one of 27 hotels, "all within 20 minutes of the Pepsi Center," according to the Democratic National Convention Committee, which handles logistics in Denver. . . .

Florida moved its primary up to January in violation of Democratic National Committee rules, leading the party to strip the state of its delegates for the convention and prevent them from being assigned a hotel.

The eventual Democratic presidential nominee could ask that Florida's delegation being [sic] reinstated to the convention, a likelihood given the state's electoral importance. But it's unclear what that would mean for the 210-member delegation's accommodations in Denver.

A wag comments: "trash! garbage! who cares? their democRATS. put them out on the street or in dumpsters. That's where the baby murderers belong."

Keeping up with: Peter Kirstein!

Always fun to quote America's dumbest academic, the Ward Churchill-supporting tenured history professor Peter Kirstein, but he's really outdone himself lately.

On the death of "baby killer" Paul Tibbets:

The captain of the Enola Gay, a weapon that perpetrated a holocaust over a city is typical of America’s disregard for non-combatants and a racist fury that has not abated since this evil moment in world history on August 6, 1945.

At least he can write.

Mr Tibbets was a colonel at the time but of course was later promoted to Brigadier General for his racist, butchery of untold magnitude. . . .

Remember the genocide forever and the evil nation that introduced nuclear weapons into the world’s arsenal. America, you are a killer nation that is responsible for some of the worst examples of state terrorism in human history.

Kirstein lists nine reasons why dropping the bomb was unnecessary. All, of course, have been refuted, repeatedly and in detail.

On fired DePaul professor and holocaust-minimizing antisemite Norman Finkelstein (got this via Marathon Pundit):

The Norman G. Finkelstein case represents more than one individual’s tragedy and expulsion from the academy. It represents a closing of the American mind. It affirms that revisionist or dissenting scholarship on Israel, the Palestinians, the Holocaust and the influence of the Israel Lobby is fraught with peril that only the tenured few can survive. Graduate students and non-tenured faculty, I am afraid, will avoid legitimate inquiry into these seminal topics for fear that a Dershowitz or other organized entity might engage in a campaign of personal destruction and succeed in intimidating and eviscerating a university’s capacity to exercise impartial judgment and evaluate fairly non-tenured faculty during their probationary period. . . . “We are all Professor Finkelstein” emblazoned the shirts of the intrepid professor’s supporters at the DePaul University fall convocation and during the first day of classes. Indeed we are: now and forever.

Now and forever. Well, as long as I can still be Ward Churchill, too. (Don't forget, by the way, that Kirstein has spoken at two of David Irving's "Real History" conferences.)

Finally, Kirstein writes about Thanksgiving, in a post embarrassingly titled, "Talking Thanksgiving Day Blues" (is there no 60s cliche he won't stoop to?):

The shame of America is its unbridled selfish racism and refusal to spread its bounty to even its own citizens much less other oppressed peoples of the Earth.

Thanksgiving is a farce and a charade because we should not emphasise the nation’s bounty and wealth, but as a result of this monstrous nation’s actions, why so many have so few. The purpose is not to be thankful for what some have but determined to see a radical distribution of the nation’s resources in a manner whereby the ruling elites are brought to account for their policies of blind pursuit of wealth, imperial overstretch and lack of redistributive justice.

As he sometimes does, Kirstein includes a little art with the post:


Get it?
Update: For those who enjoy every little instance of Kirstein's genocide of the English language, he spells the word "scuttle," "skuttle" and the word for those things soldiers receive, "metals."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Every year little kids write picture essays about Thanksgiving and what it means to them. Here's one from the ironically named Jo Swift, who apparently is an adult (bold, sic):

Thanksgiving Day: What Are We Giving Thanks For? The Extermination of Native Americans?

I'm so angry about

the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day

We should replace the feasting with fasting

and create a National Day of Atonement

to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people

that is central to the creation of America

While the concept of genocide, which is defined

as the deliberate attempt “to destroy, in whole

or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,”

came into existence after World War II,

it accurately describes the program

that Europeans and their descendants pursued

to acquire the territory that would become the USA. . . .

Mercifully, the bold stops there, but Swift doesn't, moving on to deny, like a true Marxist, that humans have anything that might be called an inner life:

The argument that we can ignore the collective cultural definition of Thanksgiving and create our own meaning in private has always struck me as odd.

This commitment to Thanksgiving puts these left/radical critics in the position of internalizing one of the central messages promoted by the ideologues of capitalism --that individual behavior in private is more important than collective action in public.

The claim that through private action we can create our own reality is one of the key tenets of a predatory corporate capitalism that naturalizes unjust hierarchy, a part of the overall project of discouraging political struggle and encouraging us to retreat into a private realm where life is defined by consumption.

Cowtown no more!

You know how I knew the Denver Broncos were playing at home on Monday Night Football tonight? The Goodyear blimp cruised by my window.

Not enough? I could go to a poetry slam almost any night of the week, if I wanted to.

Update: By "cruised by my window," I certainly don't mean it was at window height or anything, just that I saw it putter by at whatever altitude blimps usually fly at.

Stupid is as . . . uh . . .

An opinionator in the Post (the Post is positively oozing with delights today, ain't it?) notes a certain community's increasing All Must Have Prizes mentality:

The latest example of that . . . mentality came last week, courtesy of the Boulder Valley School District. Worried about hurting the feelings of excellent students who weren't quite at the head of the class, a committee decided to dump the tradition of having just one valedictorian at each high school graduation.

Instead, they'll honor students in groups, as colleges do, with a summa, magna and cum laude honors, according to a story in the Boulder Daily Camera by Amy Bounds.

Earlier, the district stopped calculating each student's class rank. "Getting rid of class rank, district officials said, should reduce the unhealthy competition for a high rank," Bounds wrote. And without class rankings, the valedictorian system no longer made sense.

The D-blog has noted before how he graduated fourth in his class (from the bottom), so low that the kid immediately below him in rank was known to all as "Ug-Man," but honestly, my feelings weren't hurt in the least by having a valedictorian. The only way they might have been is if my nickname had been Ug-Man. (I, of course, was the "brilliant, handsome, troubled youth whose potential reaches the stars." You can read it in the school counselor's file. His nickname, I don't know why, was "Tigger.")

Security funding for Dem Convention held up in fight over Iraq

Denver fought to get this convention, and I am ever so grateful we did. The Post:

Denver will be forced to pay millions of dollars in upfront security costs for the 2008 Democratic National Convention if federal appropriations remain stalled in Congress, several officials said last week.

The concern is at such a level that Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, and Rep. Betty McCollum, DeGette's counterpart representing St. Paul, Minn., which is hosting the Republican National Convention, plan to send letters this week to the congressional leadership and to the leadership of the House Appropriations Committee urging action. . . .

The cities say that they aren't prepared to pay the costs of providing security for the national conventions in the post-9/11 environment and that they aren't prepared to wait for the federal bureaucracy to reimburse them long after the balloons and confetti have fallen.

The party's over, it's time to squeal like a pig . . .

Maybe just one to celebrate

The Post's Bill Husted:

In 2004, Men's Health magazine named Denver the drunkest city in America.

In the upcoming December issue of Men's Health, Denver is again named the No. 1 drunkest city — and to put a capper on it, we're the "most dangerously drunk city."

Colorado Springs comes in as the third drunkest city. Aurora is the 19th drunkest city. . . .

The magazine came up with the rankings by factoring in "annual death rates due to alcoholic liver disease, as well as who's headed there by regularly downing five or more drinks in a sitting. Next, we factored in drunk-driving arrests and the percentage of fatal accidents involving intoxicated motorists. Then, after tallying the MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) report card on state efforts to cut down on excessive drinking, we had our ranking and, for the state of Colorado, a [sic] invitation to AA."

In an interview at the Love To Drink Inn, Metro Denver Visitors Bureau spokesman Rich Grant countered:

"Whaddaya mean I'm cut off? Fug you! Fug everbody! You fuggin' fuggers! Fug you!"

It's bad around here.

Update: "Denver more dangerous than New York, San Francisco." Coinkidink? I think not.

Leftist disses white privilege, urges violence at Portland protests

Hard to believe, isn't it? An anonymous (of course) poster at Portland Indymedia analyzes peace groups' attempts to block military shipments there, and finds that the pacifist approach (even the nonpacifist pacifist approach Michelle Malkin and others have been noting) fails because of the racism, sexism and classism inherent in the movement:

When we look at how issues of sexism [for example] are handled within [the "Port Militarization Resistance"], it's important to look at who is missing from the group's constituency as a whole. PMR is primarily white, and the values of the group reflect this fact. Because of this, often times the deeper, structural roots of sexism and other kinds of oppression are ignored within PMR. Instead, "feel-good" actions that focus on personal "empowerment" but fail to threaten the dominant capitalist, white, patriarchal, heterosexual, able-bodied paradigm become the norm.

Pacifism, the poster quotes Peter Gelderloos in How Nonviolence Protects the State:

"is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. [B]esides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context; it ignores that violence is already here, that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy and that it is people of color worst affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, of whom people of color are a major part, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement's demands, or the pacifists achieve that legendary "critical mass". People of color in the internal colonies of the US cannot defend themselves against police brutality or expropriate the means of survival to free themselves from economic servitude. They must wait for middle class people of color and conscientious whites to gather enough people to hold hands and sing songs, than [sic] change will surely come.". . .

Well, if (incredibly) singing songs and holding hands doesn't work, what will? Guess:

Taking all of this into consideration, perhaps it would be wise for PMR to reconsider its Code of Nonviolence and adopt a new code such as: "We, the members of Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), believe that the ideology of nonviolence is an inherently privileged position that only acts to reinforce systems of domination and oppression and does absolutely nothing to undermine these said systems. We recognize the right of people to self-defense and community defense and encourage people to dismantle the real violence, that is structural violence, of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism by any means necessary.

Straight from the Ward Churchill playbook (though he rates only a cite at the end of the piece). Only violence is effective--or, more succinctly, "ya got a trigger finger, don't ya?"

More little Churchills

The internationalist itchbags of the Ward Churchill Solidarity Network note a speech by Hone Harawira, a Maori member of the New Zealand parliament, who "denounced recent attacks by the New Zealand 'security' forces on Indigenous activists, revealing the systemic nature of the silencing of dissent around the world" during debate on New Zealand's Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill.

What the speech actually reveals, of course, is the systemic nature of Churchillian bullshit around the world:

I don't understand terrorism as it is understood by those fuelled by the jingoistic, acid-drenched, hate-filled, anti-Islamic, death to anyone from the Middle East, vitriolic, poisonous claptrap that the United States is trying to foist upon the rest of the world. . . .

Mr Speaker, when a member of this House characterizes terrorism as the importation of deadly diseases, the murder of innocent civilians, and the wholesale theft of a people's lands and territories, is he referring to the terrorism of the colonial invasion of Aotearoa, because you'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see those very terrorist activities in our own
history . . . .

Some background from the New Zealand Herald.

Update: PB (who should be back online today) notes a fundraiser for Wart at Woodstock, NY on the 21st. The announcement of the event at the Colony Cafe says:

Churchill was recently fired by the University of Colorado for "engaging in research misconduct" in a 2001 essay in which he claimed that people killed in the World Trade Center attacks were involved in provoking the attack. . . . A video interview with Churchill from White Buffalo Media will be followed by music from Hugh Brodie, Wet Paint, Gayle Two Eagles, Ras T Asheber Posse, Paul McMahon, Lynda Sunshine.

Teach your children well.

Sunday Night at the Radio!

Jack Benny, naturally. Here's his first show for CBS after network head William Paley stole NBC's entire comedy lineup, as David Halberstam recounts in The Powers That Be (2 January 1949).

A Vic and Sade. "Robert and Slobert Are Scoundrels" (24 July 1944). Just gonna keep playing these until I'm dead and runny around the edges.

It's Hunker J. Sponger.

Churchill: On the MOVE

According to the Friends of Lenny blog, Ward will participate December 2 in a panel discussion to commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners (December 3, as if you didn't know) in Dorchester, MA. Among other amoral freaks scheduled to appear are the ubiquitous Pam Africa; Ashanti Alston, whose political prisonerness began when the "official court system convicted him of armed robbery" (his supporter-written wiki notes, however, that "Alston, like most anarchists, disputes the moral issues of property and terms his activity in the BLA 'bank expropriation'"); and Jihad Abdulmumit, who

will present The Shootout, a two-person theater performance and workshop. The Shootout is a two-man dramatization depicting the spiritual and psychological divisions that have historically ripped apart just about every semblance of unity amongst African Americans. . . . Among the root causes of violence in oppressed communities are economic exploitation, social underdevelopment and the colonial relationship between the community and those in power. . . .

Maybe there'll be a couple of good tunes.

The event is sponsored in part by the New England Committee to Defend Palestine. Here are the committee's "principles of unity" along with a clever map of "Palestine."

So they'll probably have cake, too.

Abstract of the week!

Courtesy of the fine Sage publication, Organization & Environment:

Global warming is the most serious environmental problem of our time and a major issue of environmental justice. Yet meager public response in the form of social movement activity, behavioral changes, or public pressure on governments is noteworthy in all Western nations. . . . Ethnographic and interview data from a rural Norwegian community indicate that nonresponse is at least partially a matter of socially organized denial. Because Norwegian economic prosperity is tied to oil production, collectively ignoring climate change maintains Norwegian economic interests. . . . This project examines wealthy citizens who perpetuate global warming as they turn a blind eye. Environmental justice implications of socially organized denial are discussed for global warming and beyond.

(via commenter "Abandon Ship" at Biased BBC)

Weird Bird Friday

Special This Week --- Weird Bird Friday Contest!

Correctly answer the Weird Bird Friday Contest question and win an all-expenses paid (by you) visit to your home town from Drunkablog & Drunkawife! (WBF fans from Australia and South America especially encouraged to enter.)

The question is: What is especially weird about this Friday's Weird Bird?


Macroglossum stellatarum

UPDATE: It appears from the millions of answers flooding in (well, okay--two) that the WBF contest was a bit too simple for my brainy readers. Apparently, I'm the only one who labored for months under the impression that this was a picture of some sort of weird hummingbird.

It is, indeed, a moth. The new contest question is: What kind of moth is it? The common name wins you the same prize listed above. The scientific name will get you a bonus prize--you get to take Drunkahusband and Drunkawife out to a fancy restaurant (your treat, of course) while we're in your exotic town visiting you!

--Drunkawife

Thursday Night at the Radio!

In honor of dying newspapers everywhere, a couple of newpaper reporter shows.

First, Night Beat, the adventures of star Chicago Star reporter Randy Stone (Frank Lovejoy). This one's called "Mentallo, The Mental Marvel" (1 May 1950).

And Box 13, with Alan Ladd as writer Dan Holiday, who every week ran an ad in the paper: "Adventure wanted -- will go anywhere, do anything." So he's not actually a newspaper reporter, sue me. This one's called "Diamond In The Sky" (21 November 1948).

Rocky revamps

Can't get the front page to load at the moment, but the Rocky Mountain News's website has undergone extensive cosmetic surgery (just click on any other section if the front page is still blank).

Looks nice, but they also went inside and liposuctioned out the equivalent of 20 pounds of unsightly lard: almost all the blogs are gone.

It's very sad. Only a year and a half ago Rocky editor John Temple was boasting about how blogs were "blossoming" at the paper. Every columnist and reporter seemed to have one.

Unfortunately, they all stank. Hardly anybody posted regularly, and what got posted was, often, simply redundant of columns or news pieces. Rocky blogs also (with occasional exceptions) got few comments.

And now they're all disappeared--sports blogs, lifestyle blogs, political blogs--everything, it seems, except their main effort, RockyTalk Live, and a new business blog. (Oddly, each section of the site has a heading for "Columns and blogs," but while they all indeed contain columns, no blogs are evident.)

Temple probably found euthanizing his own blog (not updated--other than two apologies last month for technical problems that delayed delivery of the paper--since May) a relief, if not a positive pleasure, just as I did the liquidation of Mike Littwin's hilarious (kidding!) "Fair and Unbalanced" blog (untouched since September 28).

They've added a few things too, I guess, including the capability for comments on every story. But other papers have created successful blogs. Why can't the Rocky?

American Indian Congress meets in Denver

Only the Rocky has mentioned it, which is odd because, as noted here, the Post has been running a series on Indian justice this week which discusses some of the very same iss-ee-uuuuus. The Durango Herald:

Hundreds of American Indians are gathering in Denver this week, hoping to flex their political power before next year's national elections.

The National Congress of American Indians [my link] was founded in Denver 64 years ago. Today, the congress maintains a full-time operation in Washington, D.C., to lobby for native causes - housing, health care, education and economic development, said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the group.

This year, the group is rolling out its Native Vote campaign, which will focus on getting more Indians to the polls in 13 states, including Colorado.

Hillary spoke to them via satellite, they got a taped message from Chimpy McGenocide--and Ward Churchill couldn't make it. Something about a conflict with an appearance at an anarchist bookstore.

Ira Levin

The sly-humored horror writer (Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives) who was way more fun to read than Normie and gave the world, or at least me, two enduring catchphrases--"Oh God, Frank, you're the master" (SW), and "Hair Satan" (RB)--died Tuesday.

Only Regent to vote against firing Churchill to run for state Senate

Face the State:

Cindy Carlisle, a University of Colorado Regent known best for being the lone dissenting vote against the firing of controversial professor Ward Churchill, has announced she will run for the Colorado state Senate. . . .

Carlisle’s July vote in support of Churchill garnered national media attention, including Fox News. She was outnumbered 8-1 by her fellow regents, who decided after a two-year investigation to fire Churchill, an ethnic studies professor who initially raised public ire in early 2005 after a an inflammatory essay he wrote became public.

More Wardness: According to the Friends of Lenny blog, Churchill will appear at the New College Theater in San Francisco on the 26th:

Ward Churchill will speak on the history of COINTELPRO and the State’s ongoing campaigns of repression targeting dissident groups. Richard Brown will speak on behalf of the SF8, eight former Black Panthers whose recent arrest on previously-dismissed charges demonstrates that COINTELPRO is alive and well.

Even Warder: PB linked to a post saying that Ward would be in Caracas, Venezuela this month to participate in a forum (or fora) asking the musical question: "The United States: Is Revolution Possible?" The guy who posted the link later took it down.

Update: By the way, there's a new Colorado website (new to me at least) called Face the State (linked above). They seem pretty serious, though I'd never heard a thing about them before. That's how I know they're serious. The site is like (though they probably wouldn't appreciate the comparison) a libertarian Colorado Confidential.

Wednesday Night at the Radio!

Information Please: Frequent guest and author of Mrs. Miniver, Jan Struther; ambassador to Moscow and showtrial-approving com-symp Joseph E. Davies (19 December 1941).

And Gunsmoke: "The Cast" (21 November 1953). Sponsored, you'll note, by "Post Toasties, the heap good cornflakes." Oy vey.

And Vic and Sade: "The Lunges Are Coming" (9 June 1944). Listen to this show much and you'll understand why Paul Rhymer, its sole writer for the 12 or 13 years of its run, was often compared to Mark Twain. Actually, he's funnier.

Media tour big building, predict boredom

Der Posten:

Political directors from major news organizations who toured Denver's Pepsi Center confirmed what many Democratic operatives have been saying for months: that Denver's choice as host city [for the Democratic National Convention] will mean media coverage from everything to [sic] slice-of-life stories to hard-news looks at the so-called Western Democrat.

Update: Coaxed the dog?

Update II: Now I know why we need Bassett rescue.

Another lunatic for Ward

Meet Ampro: "I am an author/artist/activist from Buffalo, NY. I tend to blog about activism, Unitarian Universalism, polyamory and performing."

Here's part of Ampro's latest post, snark-free for your enjoyment:

In Derrick Jensen's latest book, endgame: vol II, he credits Ward Churchill with having told him that the GNP (Gross National Product) is just a scorecard of how fast the nation converts life into death. Living trees into dead paper, living animals into fast food commodities, living plants into textiles and the like. Personally, I had never really thought about the GNP very much before, but I see where they're going with that. I think it's more than that though. I think that's one major component of it, and another major component is changing the earth's chemical equation (converting inorganic things into products (which also has catastrophic consequences (consequences, like turning the living into the dead I suppose (but that's a little too indirect for me)))). Anyway, the powers that are go around converting all kinds of non living things into products: water, rocks, gases, whatever else. Things like carbon and coal and oil and radioactive elements that are supposed to be buried under the ground are now out and just hanging around with us on the surface, changing our atmosphere, making us sick, doing whatever all else.

In book [sic] I'm presently writing, the Problem With Earthlings, I talk a lot about the battle I've been waging against the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for most of my adult life. . . .

These days I take my anti-consumerism to a ridiculous extreme according to many of my friends. According to me I'm just living my life. I am pretty zealotous about it though. Around this time every year I sit down and calculate how much money I did not give to Altria corporation by not smoking? And how much money I did not give to McDonald's by never ever going to McDonald's? How much money is Anheuser Busch lacking due to my not drinking? And it goes on and on and on. . . .

Gratitude.

be Peace,
-Alex

Update: Okay, couldn't help adding one tiny li'l linkie to Ampro's ignoration. It's kind of funny, though.

Government urged to waste more money

By reopening investigation of UFO sightings:

An international UFO group based in Colorado supports a call from pilots and former government officials to the U.S. government to reopen its investigation of UFO sightings to secure the skies.

"There's a big air safety issue," said James Carrion, international director of Mutual UFO Network based in his Bellview home north of Fort Collins. "It's a national security issue."

Remember all those midair plane/UFO collisions? You don't? Well, national security, then. Carrion's got a point there. Certainly his concern has nothing to do with standing to make even more money from heightened interest in UFOs, right?

An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials asked the U.S. government yesterday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation, according to a Reuters report.

The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 in what was known as Project Blue Book, the Reuters report said.

In 1969, the Air Force cited a $500,000 University of Colorado study called the Condon Report in deciding not to continue its investigation, Carrion said. CU researchers were very negative and said UFO reports did not merit further research, he said.

But thousands of UFO sightings reported by credible people including former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and numerous near misses between aircraft and UFOs counter that conclusion, he said.

Everybody knows Reagan and Carter did a lot of acid together. But more credible witnesses are cited as well:

Recently, Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a U.S. Congressman from Ohio, confirmed he saw a UFO 25 years ago. Author Shirley MacLaine claimed in her book "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing" [Kill! Kill! Kill!--ed.] that Kucinich reported to her that he saw gigantic triangular UFO hovering silently above him at her house for about 10 minutes before it sped away at a speed he could not comprehend.

Bet he says that about lots of stuff.

A spokesman for Kucinich, David Kelley, could not be reached for comment today.

Keep calling.

The nonprofit group MUFON [MUFON!--ed.], which now has 2,500 members from round the world, took over the task of investigating UFO sightings after the Air Force "publicly" ended it's study, Carrion said.

"'Publicly.'"

The group has certified [sic] 800 people including about 20 in Colorado to investigate UFO sightings, Carrion said. Colorado is one of the top states for UFO citings in the U.S., he said.

High country, clear skies, airheads galore.

About 75 percent are explained by natural phenomenon like asteroids or man-made objects like satellites, he said.

Carrion said he does not believe the government stopped investigating UFOs, but has done so secretly.

"The government is putting a lid on what is happening and we'd like to know why," he said. "What we want is for the government to declassify documents."

Right after they declassify all the documents on 9/11.

You can probably tell I'm skeptical of UFOs (of alien origin). Didn't really used to be, or rather, like every reasonable person I believed the universe had to hold intelligent life out the ying-yang (besides, if you're feeling generous, us puny humans), so why wouldn't they be checking us out? This, of course, despite that nagging little question of Fermi's.

But now I believe it is time to echo, even amplify, Fergie's, er, Fermi's question, posed so many years ago: Where. The fug. Are they?

Update: Drunkablog's corollary to Fergie's Paradox: If the bug-eyed little bastards are snubbing us, they can just fug off and die for all I care.

Which doesn't fit?

Categories of interesting facts and figures on the Post's "Data Center" page:

Colorado Sex Offenders
Denver Metro Home Prices
Colorado Crime Stats

Thanks for the MIMories

Let me just blurt it before my tears short out the keyboard:

Security Minister, and the whole Maoist Internationalist Movement website, have been purged.

Purged! Typically for Maoists, Security Minister was also forced to self-denounce:

Security update
November 10 2007

Earlier in the week, we received word that our website would be shutdown. On November 7, Alexa also changed our categorizations for page rankings to be removed from political websites and changed to writing. Since last year we have given up readership share steadily by virtue of the topics we have intentionally chosen to update. MIM has had this web page over a decade.

Sniffle.

As before, we inform readers to watch for "Security Minister, MIM," if a new website arises.

We will, Security Minister! We will!

MIM comrades are fine [thank God!]. Team Oppressed is doing well in the global struggle, glory to the Iraqi insurgents. Although Annapolis looks like a photo-op still, MIM is still pushing the two-state solution.

Glory to the Iraqi insurgents (what insurgents?), but a two-state solution. Unusual. As always, though, Security Minister has our safety in mind first and foremost:

Most readers will not want to get involved and they should consider their security, but if you believe our administrator is making an error in assessing the significance of this web page, you may complain to pauls@etext.org or offer to send money.

Offer made! No money forthcoming!

We are in the process of contacting a writer centrally affected by the dynamic of our time [update: I mean, he just died, didn't he? I'd call that being quite directly "affected by the dynamic of our time."]

There remains much work to be done on the web page just to organize what is already there. It requires index pages that we will be working on.

Security Minister, emotionless as always. So that's it. Goodbye, little MIM. What better epitaph can I offer but the famous tribute from one of your most fervent admirers: "T]he Maoist International Movement have used their weekly papers to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published."

Me want

And me want NOW:

Global Warming Mug with Chocolates

Fill the mug with a hot beverage and watch the world’s coastlines disappear. Unwrap a milk chocolate Earthball, pop it into your mouth, and it, too, will disappear. 12-oz. ceramic mug arrives with 6 oz. of creamy, delicious chocolates in colorful foil wrappers. The perfect stocking stuffer.

Earthballs. And of course the mugs (though not the chocolates) are completely organic, and no toxic chemicals or energy were used in their manufacture.

(via commenter Latino at Tim Blair's)

Update: $17.95? Seventeen dollars and ninety-five cents for a coffee mug? Me no want no more.

Update II: Not that anybody cares, but I originally said the price was $17.50.

Laws ridiculous

The Post is running a series on the jurisdictional nightmare of "Indian justice." The first article, "Promises, justice broken," bears the blurb, "A dysfunctional system lets serious reservation crimes go unpunished and puts Indians at risk." It has links to the other articles thus far, including one on the 1885 law that led to

the most complicated jurisdictional regime in the country. It's the only legal system under which the race of the victim and perpetrator determines the court of jurisdiction.

It's ludicrous:

Police working on or around Oklahoma's patchwork reservations have to carry GPS devices because the change by a few feet in the location of a crime can determine whether it's under state, tribal or federal authority.

Luckily, Native Americans have Ward Churchill to fight for them.

Flyover news

My sister Sabra sent the link to a small slideshow of the fire after an explosion at a local power plant (maybe THE local power plant):


Caption reads: "Smoke and haze drifts north from City Water, Light and Power after an explosion Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007. Max Bittle/The State Journal-Register."

Nice picture. Pure luck:

There were 11 workers at the plant at the time of the explosion. [Mayor Tim] Davlin said one man was 15 feet away and several others were seconds away from being seriously injured or killed.

“This is a magnitude that probably none of us are going to realize the real expense for quite some time. It’s unbelievable. On any other given day, had it been 7 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon, there probably could have been 20 people that would have been either injured or killed right where this happened,” he said.

But nobody was.

Update: Mayor says wrong thing:

“Tough.” That was Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin’s response Sunday when pressed about why it took officials two hours Saturday to release information to the public about the power plant explosions and possible dangers to the community.

I like the "tough," but you should probably get in front of talk-radio rumors that clouds of toxic gas are drifting over your city.

Sunday Night at the Radio!

Jack Benny: Jack returns from his command performance in London. Dinah Shore is the guest. Funny (of course) (19 November 1950).

Update: The Tallulah Bankhead reference explained in her wiki:

In 1950, in an effort to cut into the rating leads of The Jack Benny Program and The Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show which had jumped from NBC radio to CBS radio the previous season, NBC spent millions over the two seasons of The Big Show starring "the glamorous, unpredictable" Tallulah Bankhead as its host, in which she acted not only as mistress of ceremonies but also performed monologues and songs.[14] Despite Meredith Willson's Orchestra and Chorus and top guest stars from Broadway, Hollywood and radio--including Fred Allen, Fanny Brice, Groucho Marx, Ethel Merman, Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, Jimmy Durante, Martin & Lewis, George Jessel, Judy Garland, Ethel Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, José Ferrer and Judy Holliday, The Big Show, which earned rave reviews, failed to do more than dent Jack Benny's and Edgar Bergen's ratings.

Update II: Tallaluhwiki, ya'll.

And a Vic and Sade: "Rush's New School Clothes" (24 August 1942).

Quinners never wit

Interesting alleged facts and figures on smoking in Colorado just before the 30th anniversary of the dorkily named but well-meaning Great American Smokeout:

When the Smokeout started 30 years ago as a way for people to stop using tobacco - even for a single day - a lot more people lit up regularly, about one in three adults. By last year, the figure dropped to fewer than one in five. And Colorado now ranks ninth in the nation for lowest prevalence of adult smoking, with 17.9 percent of the population using tobacco. Officials attribute the decline to the 2004 tobacco tax increase that funds tobacco-education programs and to the 2006 state ban on indoor smoking.

Don't know why it comes to mind just now, but Rocky columnist David Harsanyi's book Nanny State arrived in the mail yesterday.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Know how I quit smoking? It was easy. I just quit drinking 15 to 20 beers and a half-pint (or more) of McCormick's vodka every day first. Try it. You won't believe what a Lark (heh) quitting smoking is compared to that. Hint: no clonic
seizures. :-)

Update: McCormick's, the only vodka to win the coveted EPA seal of approval, is now calling itself the "Earth Friendly Vodka."

Normie

Not a big fan of Norman Mailer or his work (though the first half of The Executioner's Song is great), but there is a tiny connection. His "literary executor and biographer," J. Michael Lennon, quoted announcing his death at the top of the AP's obituary, was years ago the publisher of the little (not "little," just little) magazine I worked for.

Even then Mike (his first name is John, hence the "J. Michael" business) was always jetting off to hang with "Norman," or planning projects around Norman, or writing about Norman, or, especially, talking about Norman. This naturally engendered a certain cynicism among the younger staff, both toward "Normie," as we invariably called him, and toward his (eye rolls implied it) li'l buddy, Mike.

But look at him now: literary executor and official biographer of one of the most famous writers of the 20th century.

And look at me. No, don't look at me!

But I have my doubts that Lennon (who's a good guy, by the way) can shake off decades of training himself around Norman's hellish personality and write something reasonably balanced.


Update: Comcast home page, linking to the same AP obit: "Beloved author dies at 84." Beloved. "Pugnacious prince," odious as the alliteration is, comes a lot closer. Even closer: pugnacious pr--never mind, I'll wait.

Free speech = fun!

In writing about other stuff, commenter Hilda links to this photo of Ward Churchill at the San Francisco (natives call it "Frisco") Anarchist Book Fair in 2005. Hadn't seen it before, and liked it immediately:


(foreground) Ward talking to radio guy; (background) Ward's key demographic.

Fun!

Update: Bad name for a band: Mendenhall. Good name for a band: The Zestrozeticol Sciautonics. Great name for a band: Whaxtrorhetical.

Update II: Ah, memories: Zombie panicked America with his/her/its photoessay on this very same book fair--or rather, with a single picture from it--the now iconic photo of Inflated Scrotum Guy. (Scroll down, you can't miss him. Yes, I know you've seen him before. Look at him again. I said LOOK! It's Noam Chomsky, isn't it?)

Update III: PB links to Thomas Brown's article "Ward Churchill's Twelve Excuses for Plagiarism," finally posted at Plagiary.

Life, 22 April1966

Been a while since I've fobbed one of these pathetic exercises off on purported readers.


Bonked Buddhist: they were rioting against the South Vietnamese government.

Ad for a giant brainsucker:


My first child, too, shall be named "General Electric."

And a camera:


A black and white picture in ten seconds!
But with every technological advance, a setback:



The note begins:

The Vietnam air packet that brought this week's cover picture and lead story also brought these two pictures of the LIFE men there--with and without gas masks.

Further down:

The Saigon scene reminds [one photographer] of the peace demonstrations at Berkeley which he covered in December. "It all looks about the same," he says. "The cops were bullheaded and not awfully tactful. The students were full of ideals and spunk, but they didn't have the slightest idea what they were driving at, or what they were getting into."

"Spunk." That's a funny word.

Choice quote from this week's LIFE (it's catching) editorial, on China policy:

Chinese Communism has been only a relative disaster to a people used to disasters and cruel governments. Their economic progress was in fact steady and palpable until the insane "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-60, which coincided with bad crops and set the economy back about 10 years.

Yup, that's what happened all right. Economy set back ten years. Uh-huh. I think only MIM and maybe the Revolutionary Communist Party (Our Chairman is Bob Avakian!) hold this view now.

Birth of the most hated color ever:



Va-va-va &tc. Behold the miniskirt:


Attractive: Stripes and plaid. Or is that paisley?


Check the one on the right out. She looks like my Uncle Stanley, right down to the pancake makeup and false eyelashes.

This is starting to seem like LIFE's "we love Commies" issue, because it also has a big piece on happenin' Siberia:


Fire good: note efficient Soviet-style pre-rotted teeth.



Siberian babes.


Makes you think. Of what, I don't want to know.

Finally, back to the good ol' United $nakes (h/t MIM):


The expansion Braves: unlike some teams I could name, they've won a World Series.


Spooky: Robert Goulet, who died on Halloween this year.
A story on how corroded Winston Churchill was:





Still, next to Roosevelt Churchill looks like a teenager in this 1944 photo. He was 70, Roosevelt not quite 63. Churchill had another 20 years; Roosevelt was dead in seven months.
Groovy artwork for a piece on Magritte:





It's raining men.
And a last ad:


No comment.

Oh, brother

Barf bags ready? Melon scoop for digging out those hard-to-remove eyeballs? Campus Press reporter Emily Sturges opinionates on a visit by Ward Churchill to her (apparently remedial) journalism class:

I like Ward Churchill.

When he walked into my journalism class on Wednesday I could smell fire from a mile away.

That was stale cigarettes and B.O., dear.

Churchill's crisp white shirt matched the white stripes in his hair, just as everything I knew about him up until meeting him was perfectly matched by his swagger. . . .

Christ, she's in love.

Enhanced by his mischievous smile and the witty banter to back it up, listening to Churchill talk was like taking part in a duel, except you forgot your arsenal. Every word from his clearly well equipped artillery is sharpened like a knife.

My mother would call him a smartass--a tall, highly publicized and irrefutable smartass. But isn't that why we love him? That's certainly part of it.

His irrefutability is definitely part of my love for him.

Ward Churchill is a man who, if nothing else, has seized our attention and caused us to think.

Critically.

"When the Pope died I made (the) front page of the Rocky Mountain News," Churchill said.

Churchill is decidedly skeptical of the media, and with good reason. The media depicts him as "the embattled professor," a term which not only makes him a target, but also a modified noun.

A big, fat, nicotine-stained, modified noun.

What is the root of Churchill's grapple with the media? It's the apparent loss of integrity within the industry.

Take me now, Jesus.

"When asked about (the concept of) American journalism, I say it would be a really good idea," Churchill said, paraphrasing Ghandi.

Churchill began his lecture with his usual provocative remarks, the equivalent of hitting a class with a bullet. The message was dead-on: the media, Churchill said, is all about sensationalism.

He began to quiz the class about its knowledge of current events, such as their knowledge of the current economic and human rights affairs in Cuba. Our lack of knowledge, which did not go unscrutinized, was then compared to the knowledge we have of Britney's parenting skills and Anna Nicole's personal hygiene.

Ward Churchill's views on Cuba or Anna Nicole's personal hygiene. Which would you rather know all about?

"I bet you could all tell me the color of a certain ex-Playmate's toenail polish before she died," Churchill said.

Witty banter.

As his argument progressed, so did the twinkle in eye--he was ready for the kill.

A progressive killer twinkle! Okay, somebody, grab Snapple:

He began to comment on the media coverage of JonBenet Ramsey.

"Let's get a grip [he always says that]. Shirley Temple was killed. Right down the road from her, a little black girl was killed, ostensibly by her mother," Churchill said. "You all heard about that, right? You remember the details, right?"

As the media conglomerates grow the appreciation for facts is going down the drain, and so is the sense of the concept of truth. Churchill made this reality clear.

"When's the last time you saw Noam Chomsky on CNN?" Churchill asked.

In respect to his own relationship with the media, Churchill candidly recounted an experience he had with former Rocky Mountain News reporter Charlie Brennan.

"Charlie was interested in understanding the truth, and that's why I was willing to work with him, " Churchill said.

Willing to work with him.

However, as the stories on Churchill were shaped and molded through the editorial process, Churchill said he terminated his relationship with the reporter.

Churchill and the Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, of course, also terminated Brennan's coverage of the case, his job with the Rocky Mountain News, and possibly his marriage.

He nearly laughed at the mention of the word "fairness" [ha-ha!]. This certainly seemed to harden Churchill's view of the media.

The result: journalism has been reduced to editorialization. And those of us who call ourselves journalists are simply sensationalists.

Update: Emily probably also turned this piece in for a grade in her journalism class. Wonder what she got.

Update II: Over at PB, Noj asks a good question: was Wart really on the front page of the Rocky "when the Pope died" (2 or even 3 April 2005, when the News' paper edition perhaps first had the story of the Pope's death)? Commenter Leah found three articles on Churchill in the paper on April 2, and says the Rocky's archives for April 3 are incomplete. Because it's Churchill, I bet it's a lie.

Update III: It's a lie. April 2, 2005 was a Saturday, and, as a G. Gordon Liddy-like "Armando" at the RMN told me after looking it up, there was nothing about Churchill on the front page that day. And, since the Rocky doesn't publish on Sundays, there couldn't have been a front-page story about him on Sunday, April 3, either.

Update IV: "Armando," even though he told me the Rocky "doesn't bother much with Churchill anymore," was kind enough to send me the PDF of the April 2, 2005 front page, and I gar-an-goddamn-tee there's nothin' about Wart there (I just don't know how to link to an e-mailed PDF).

Why is it important whether or not Wart was on the front page that day? Who said it was important? On the other hand, the diligent blogger should never pass up the opportunity to nail another one of his lies.

Nightmare

From "al's Dream Journal":

A lot of confusing things happen near a river [forgot most of this, but think it was next to some kind of orchard]. I find storage bins among the trees with my stuff in it ... that I forgot all about.

Then I walk into the nearby town. I run into a "Ward Churchill," and I recall the dream memory of babysitting his son years ago. I think it's a real life memory [after I awoke I realized it was just more dream memory].

I set up a desk near his shop, where he sells fans. I put one of the fans on the street next to my desk.

I've had the exact same dream--over and over and over again. (Check out al's illustration.)

Wednesday Night at the Radio!

Haven't played many of these: The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show--the adventures of Jack Benny's drunken bandleader, his movie-star wife and his even drunkener guitar player, Frankie Remley. Always a novelty song by Faye in the middle, but the comedy's worth it. This one's called "Remley Wants To Go To New York City" (2 May 1950).

Haven't played any of these: The Health and Happiness Show, starring, believe it or not, Hank Williams (October 1949).

Update: Figures. Alice Faye doesn't sing on this week's PH & AF show.

Update II: Damn, Hank kicks ass. Gotta have another one of those (October 1949).

(Somebody cut out the commercials on these shows, the cretins.)

Limey news

Andrew at Biased BBC posted this BBC--public service announcement, I guess you'd have to call it--from the 1970s:


The BBC still claims it uses detector vans, though the consensus at B-BBC is that this has always been a lie to keep the populace cowed. Nevertheless, more than 100,000 people are prosecuted every year for possessing a television without a license (which costs about 300 bucks a year), and an average of 20 a year are sent to jail--not for the crime, but for failing to pay the fine, which is "up to" $2100.

Not even liberals in this country would countenance such a regime (would they?). PBS'd have to use uparmored Humvees for detector vans.


More Limey News!

Oliver Kamm has three fine posts on Paul Tibbets and the dropping of the atomic bomb. Read the last one, where he notes "the identity - not merely the equivalence"of argument on the crazed right (as exemplified, for some reason, by the John Birch Society) and the anti-American left (The Progressive) in their reactions. (Did you know, by the way, that there's a left that isn't anti-American? Huh? Did you?)

Friends!*

An example of self-defeating thinking, from the Wikipedia entry for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy:

"Other significant people in my life, ABSOLUTELY MUST treat me kindly and fairly at all times, or else I can’t stand it, and they are bad, rotten, and evil persons who should be severely blamed, damned, and vindictively punished for their horrible treatment of me." This leads to feelings of anger, rage, fury, and vindictiveness and leads to actions like fights, feuds, wars, genocide, and ultimately, an atomic holocaust.

An atomic holocaust. So don't piss me off.

*If any.

(via my friend Caz)

Look out below

Newspaper circulation continued to slide over the last six months, and the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, being in a mountainous state, slid farther than anyone. Daily circulation for both papers was down over ten percent, and Sunday circulation was down more than 13 percent. Yeeeowch.

Update: One year ago.

Reaching

In an e-mail interview with John Hawkins, Ann Coulter describes Keith Olbermann as "The Ward Churchill of MSNBC." She also calls Algore "America's favorite gay Vulcan."

Just so you know.

Sunday Night at the Radio!

A Jack Benny double feature! "What Happens After the Show" (2 September 1947), and "Jack and Mary go to Ronald Colman's New Movie" (2 January 1948). The new movie is A Double Life, for which Colman won the Oscar for best actor (and which Jack later steals and loses in a long-running joke).

Blood MIMple

Yeah, pretty Coen-y title.

Hey, gang! Look! The Maoist Internationalist Movement's in trouble! We gotta help 'em! I know! Let's put on a show!

Maybe it's not that bad yet, but MIM seems to be floundering. First they dumped the paper edition of "MIM Notes," and now "Chair" is practically flagellating itself:

I have to make severe self-criticism, because I can see now that I have often appeared crass and deluded to people working with MIM this past year, like never before.

Crass and deluded? Well, MIM as a whole, maybe. A little. You mustn't blame yourself, Chair.

We said we were working with intellectuals, but many more have worked with us than I thought. This is an example of a right opportunist error, where by inaccurate perception of reality, I ended up taking a lower road than possible.

Speaking of inaccurate perceptions of reality:

I have said that opposition to us is 99.944%. Let's adjust that to 99.444%. That's a big difference. Taking MIM out of the picture would be noticed by many very famous people now.

Yeah, sure. So Chayr forgives itself, even boasts a little, but the next "Note" strikes a more ominous, er, note:

Monday November 5 is the deadline to devolve from the mothership ETEXT MIM cll. We have said for a long time that people must prepare for the day that comrades
would be on their own. . . .

We are sure some are contemplating life without the MIM cell's instruction or even opposing MIM. We contend that life goes better with our leadership. This thesis will be put to the test now. We will see who agrees with that and who does not.

So is MIM ceasing publication altogether or what? Sometimes my lack of cryptic communication skills is a real pain in the ass. But just in case: MIM! Come back, MIM! Mother wants you! MIM! Come back!

Update: Another good show.

Update II: "Life goes better with our leadership." Isn't that from an old advertising campaign for Coke®?

Update III: Don't know if they just added this or I just noticed it now, but at the top of MIM's "What's New" page is the warning:

Dear Readers: If you are connected to the Internet or near a telephone or cell-phone, U.$. spies can track you and maybe even see you visually. Keep that in mind as you read MIM and other anti-Amerikkkan websites.

Update IV: "See you visually"?

Update V: Damn, I added updates III and IV without checking comments, and now see that JWP beat me to it, and funnier.

Columbus Day parader: I am a racist

LTTE in the Rocky from a marcher in this year's Columbus Day parade:

I am a racist. It must be true since so many people, whom I’ve never met in my life, so informed me on Oct. 6 as I participated in the annual Columbus Day parade in downtown Denver.

The letter's a little disjointed, but well worth reading. I had no idea that AIM actually participated in the parade in 1991.

Update: Can't you just see Ward Churchill, Glenn Morris and Russell Means marching along waving little Italian and American flags? I bet Ward even wore a button that said "Kiss me, I'm Italian."

DU instructor in Al-Ahram: Denver Columbus Day protest good sign for Palestinians

The Egyptian government-controlled newspaper ran the piece, by Bassem Ahmed Hassan, last week:

For more than a decade now, thousands of people in Denver, Colorado, have been spending the first weekend of October in the streets both celebrating and protesting. This year was no exception. Crowds from different national and ethnic backgrounds came out to participate in the Four Directions March; a celebration organised by the Transform Columbus Day Alliance (TCDA), an umbrella group of grassroots organisations that envision a world freed of Columbus's legacy. Afterwards they took to the streets to protest and block the "Convoy of Conquest", the name they use to label the Columbus Day Parade, and demand a change of the name of this official holiday. As usual, scores of protesters were arrested for violating the legally sanctioned "right" of the parade organisers to "honour their hero".

Or for loitering. Something like that. The "legal sanction" they were violating, of course, was the First Amendment. Hassan goes on to make the Glenn Morris argument that Palestinians are the Indians of the Middle East. Read whole thing, for its mendacity (not to mention its non sequiturs and sheer bad writing) is breathtaking.

Update: Nothing on Hassan at DU except that he seems to have completed a dissertation there. He's not listed among staff and faculty.

Weird Bird Friday

Detail-oriented readers will have already concluded by the lack of exclamation point in the title that Drunkawife is back! I've been galavanting about the country on work-related and non-work-related adventures to such exotic locations as Lincoln, Nebraska. Drunkahusband did quite a fine job with WBF(!) in my absence, don't you think?

I don't know if these are weird birds or not, but they're certainly acting weirdly.


Somewhere in Argentina, near Tierra del Fuego

For once, I will spare readers the trouble (agony?) of another "which-one-is-Drunkawife-and-which-one-is-Drunkahusband?" contest. I'm not sure I would want to read your answers.

--Drunkawife

Thursday Night at the Radio!

Think I'll play one I haven't for a while: I Was A Communist for the FBIiiiii. This one's called "An Un-American Activity" (5 June 1953). It's a neat one, historically speaking. You'll see why. If you listen. To it.

Speaking of un-Americans, I took a gander at the old petition to reinstate Ward Churchill, which has skyrocketed in the last three or four months to around 680 signatures--less, of course, the one-third or so that actually mock Churchill. I was bummed to see that they took down Dan Rather's comment ("Ward Churchill's innocent! I have all the documents right here!"), but there was one new one that stood out because purportedly from Amiri Baraka (and wife):

It is disgusting that a foreign power, the state of Israel [who'd have guessed?--ed.], has such power and control here in the United States. Consider, not England or Germany nor France has such power. Even to render null & void the First Amendment.

Sounds like him, anyway.

And Gunsmoke! This one's called, promisingly, "Home Surgery" (13 September 1952).

No longer Infamous

Whoa. Between one look and another MSNBC did a stealth edit of the headline on their obituary of Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets. It originally read something like, "Pilot of infamous B-29 in Hiroshima bombing dies." Now it reads, "Pilot of plane that bombed Hiroshima dies."

Churchill clashes with Graham daughter, denounces Olympic development

The Canadian swing continues. The Straight:

A controversial American scholar was given a hostile reception by B.C.'s Native community on October 28. Speaking at an anti-Olympic event put on by the Anti-Poverty Committee at Vancouver's Ukrainian Hall, Ward Churchill was confronted immediately after taking the stage.

Chusia Graham, daughter of John Graham, an East Vancouver Native man who is facing extradition to the U.S. for the alleged murder of a woman in 1976, confronted Churchill over his lack of support for her father. Churchill, who claims he is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, took Graham's questions but was visibly frustrated by the delay.

"This isn't fair," one member of the audience shouted. But the crowd of about 100 seemed split on whether to intervene or allow the questions to continue. Churchill protested in jest, "Welcome to Vancouver," his arms held high.

Strangely, the piece never details Graham's questions or Ward's answers to them, but quickly moves on:

The confrontation underscored a broader divide within B.C.'s Native community over the 2010 Winter Olympics. Some B.C. Native leaders argue that the Games should be regarded as an opportunity to advance Native rights. However, others view the high-profile event as a threat to dwindling resources and the beginning of the end for their traditional way of life. . . .

Ward Churchill, speaking to the Straight in a UBC classroom the day after the APC event, conceded that certain members of the Native community would profit from the Olympics. But, he added, "The overall economic calculation that would have to be applied in having a rational assessment in the destruction of the land, the forfeiture of rights, and the collaboration, and all the rest of that…the net loss would exceed any kind of profit." . . .

Good old Ward, always with the people's interests at heart. Somehow though, his opinion isn't universally held:

But such concerns don't seem to be troubling some B.C. Native leaders. Bill Williams, hereditary chief of the Squamish Nation, is a member of the chief executive board of the Four Host First Nations Society, a group of chiefs and council members from the four First Nations groups on whose land Olympic events are scheduled to be held. He argued that there was no reason any Native Canadian, or even Native American, should be excluded from the opportunities provided by the 2010 Olympics.

Confluence

Fascinating post from Adam Holland about Oregon peace group Pacifica Forum and their plan to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht November 9:

Here's another story concerning what appears to be a trend: purported "peace activists" promoting Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. In this case, a University of Oregon peace organization called Pacifica Forum, which was founded and is led by a retired professor and a retired administrator from that university, is marking Kristallnacht with two days of speeches and conferences this weekend conducted by Mark Weber director of the Holocaust denial group Institute for Historical Review. Weber, the former editor of the National Vanguard, the main publication of the neo-Nazi National Alliance Party, has spent the past 30 years as a professional advocate of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. His opening lecture on Friday is entitled: "Free Speech vs. Zionist Power". Advertisements for the event feature the image of a snake in the shape of a Star of David with the legend "The Israel Lobby: How Powerful Is It?"

In 2006, the Pacifica Forum sponsored multiple talks by Valdas Anelauskas. Anelauskas, who was born in Lithuania, is an author and internet journalist who calls himself a "white separatist and racialist", and has affiliations on both the far left and far right. . . . In October, 2006, Anelauskas gave a lecture on "Zionism and Russia" in which he blamed Jews for the Bolshevik Revolution, calling them "the greatest killing machine in history" and stating that American Jews suppress dissemination of this information through their control of academia and the media. He dedicated this lecture to Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf. (Read here; more here and here). . . .

Standard stuff, of course. But Churchill watchers, take note:

Anelauskas is a friend and supporter of Ward Churchill, who assisted Aneluskas [sic] with his book Discovering America As It Is. He has endorsed in print Churchill's statement calling 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns", going so far as to use the same phrase with respect to the administration of the University of Oregon when they rescinded an invitation for Churchill to lecture there (read here). [By the way, America As It Is has been endorsed by Howard Zinn, David G. Gil, and Ward Churchill (read here).]

Kiss me, you fool.

(via LGF)

Update: Won't somebody kiss me, too?