Rocky Mountain low

The Post:

"Rocky Mountain High" has perhaps been Colorado's unofficial state song for years.

Yurch.

Capitol lawmakers made it official today, elevating one of John Denver's biggest hits to the status of co-state song. The ballad shares the spot with "Where the Columbines Grow," adopted in about 1915 . . . .

In the House, a few representatives tapped their feet and sang along during a live, guitar-led performance [of Rocky Mountain High, not Where the Columbines Grow--ed.] [Update: now how the hell would I know that? Answer: I wouldn't. I made an assumption. For all I know they tapped and sang to WtCG.]

Anyway, they got into it.

The resolution passed 50-11 after the failure of a Republican-offered amendment that would have clarified the song is about Colorado's elevation and "in no way reflects or encourages" drug use.

Sen. Bob Hagedorn, the Aurora Democrat [aha!--ed.] who sponsored the measure in the Senate, accused his dissenting colleagues of making too much of the lyrics, which include "friends around the campfire and everybody's high."

"They are just words," he said. "It's how people want to interpret them."

Hagedorn said the line about the campfire could refer to "a bunch of guys who spent the day hunting or fishing and are having a couple six-packs" or "kids pigging out on s'mores."

After getting high, of course.

Update: The Post's Ed Quillen suggests Giardia lamblia for State Parasite.

Update II: The story is so important, the Post moved it to its front page! (As of midnight, anyway.)

Update III: That's really a terrible title, isn't it? Even for me.

New allegations against Churchill

The Rocky Mountain News' Berny Morson reports:

Did University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill see secret Canadian government files about child abuse in Indian boarding schools?

Highly unlikely, says a Canadian researcher who reviewed the files and cited them in his 1999 book about the history of the infamous boarding schools.

So how did references to those documents end up in Churchill's 2004 book on the schools?

"Unless he got himself into one of those black suits that Tom Cruise used in that movie and snuck himself into the Department of Indian Affairs at midnight, he's not seen the documents," said John S. Milloy, a professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Tom Cruise and Ward Churchill, together at last!

This is not the first time Churchill has been accused of stealing facts from someone else's research . . . .

No!

Churchill did not return phone calls or an e-mail message about this latest allegation. His attorney, David Lane, declined to comment.

Churchill's book, Kill the Indian, Save the Man, and Milloy's book, A National Crime, deal with an ugly chapter in U.S. and Canadian history.

Beginning in the late 19th century, Indian children in both countries were taken from their parents and sent to boarding schools, where they were forced to adopt European culture.

Milloy, who published first, had access to files of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada because he was a researcher with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a massive government probe into mistreatment of Indians.

Milloy said he was the only person, apart from Department of Indian Affairs officials, with access to the Indian and Northern Affairs Canada files. Even his graduate assistants had to stay outside the room where he reviewed the materials, he said. . . .
Milloy was given copies of documents, but only under promises not to share them. He said all of the references in his book were to confidential documents.

Churchill, in three cases in his book, cites documents with the same file numbers as the ones Milloy quotes.

"If he's quoting INAC," Milloy said, "then he's taken it from me, plain and simple, no doubt."

No doubt. But wait! There's more!

The footnotes in both books are not the only similarities between Milloy's work and Churchill's work.

Nine of the 31 photographs in Churchill's book are the same as ones in Milloy's work, including six from Anglican Church of Canada archives.

Churchill credits the photos to the church, but a church archivist, Nancy Hurn, said if he had permission to use the pictures, it's not in her records.

Hurn said the photos, however, have been widely reproduced and are in the public domain.

"It's a concern, because we are pretty open with the use of our photographs, but we request people make the request directly from us before they reproduce them," Hurn said . . . .

Elaine Katzenberger, Churchill's editor at City Lights Books in San Francisco, said no one has complained to her about misuse of photos. She declined to comment on the references to confidential documents.

"I stand behind this book as it is until someone proves to me that Ward stole something," Katzenberger said. . . .

Churchill's book is heavy on footnotes. The 82 pages of text have 546 footnotes, including 78 that cite Milloy. However, five references to INAC documents do not credit Milloy.

Five hundred and forty-six footnotes in 82 pages! Estupendo! A new record! Milloy doesn't seem to think the five questionable references are important, anyhow:

"I'm not going to spend any time on it," Milloy said.

"I talked to my publisher and he said, 'That's interesting. What are we supposed to do and who cares?'"

(via Slapstick Politics)

Update: Sort of OT, but I wonder if Ben Whitmer has already been told his contract to teach at CU isn't going to be renewed. How else explain allowing the mentally unstable "Charley Arthur" to make yet another murderous threat on his blog? This one's against Churchill documentarian Grant Crowell:

Comes the moment of our forthcoming 1-on-1 in Chicago, Walking Eagle, we’re volunteering right here and now to administer unto you a desperately-needed hot lead enema.

Two or three in succession, if need be.

It’s not really clear that your condition hasn’t already become too advanced for even such radical intervention as that to be effective, but it’s the only thing we can imagine that stands a chance of purging you of the rapidly-increasing quantity of maggot-infested excrement clogging the bowels of what, in your hyper-constipated state of delusion, you imagine to be a mind.

Now that's "satire" even the chairpersyn of CU's ethnic studies department, Albert Ramirez, might not appreciate, whether it was written on a CU computer or not (scroll doon, as Groundskeeper Willie would say). Arrogant (and slow-witted!) as Ramirez is, he knows the department is--his cliche--"under a microscope."

Update II: The name "Walking Eagle," of course, has been applied to Churchill for years, usually by other (sorry, I mean real) Indians.

Update III: And everybody knows why Churchill is called Walking Eagle, right? If not, droop me a line, as Groundskeeper Willie would also say.

Hysteria countered

A public-spirited persyn has posted a complete version of British Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle (initially aired last Thursday) on Google. Seventy-six minutes of sweet, sweet debunkulation. Watch it! Before it's too late!

(via (whoa, the irony) Hot Air)

Update: How odd: some bounder leaked part of the International Panel on Climate Change's draft report to the AP. I question the timing:

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.

There's the claim Swindle mentioned, that malaria is a tropical disease.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

The draft document by the authoritative [!] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials.

That's definitely who I'd want editing a report written and reviewed by over a thousand scientists: "government officials."

But some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April in Brussels, the same city where European Union leaders agreed this past week to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Their plan will be presented to President Bush and other world leaders at a summit in June.

Probably be Chimpler X's last chance to get people to like him.

"Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent," the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 report by the same international group that said the effects of global warming were coming.

But that report only mentioned scattered regional effects.

"Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report.

So you were wrong then, but you're absolutely, definitely, positively right now?

The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many current problems - change in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs, and increases in allergy-inducing pollen - can be blamed on global warming.

For example [for example?], the report says North America "has already experienced substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes," such as hurricanes and wildfires.

But the present is nothing compared to the future.

It never is.

Global warming soon will "affect everyone's life ... it's the poor sectors that will be most affected," Romero Lankao said.

And co-author Terry Root of Stanford University said: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

These people are lunatics.

The report included these likely results of global warming:

Lun. a. tics.

_Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.

_Death rates for the world's poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow . . . .

_Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and "ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5 percent for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels," turning a small health risk into a substantial one.

Don't you love that "approximately"? And of course:

_Polar bears in the wild and other animals will be pushed to extinction.

Won't somebody please think of the polar bears?

This report - considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research - focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposed to the more science-focused report by the same group last month.

Huh?

"This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing. This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.

The whole play. Me, you, and the person next door. The science is one thing. Global warming: based on a true story. Read the whole thing for maximum brain smoothening.

NTTAWWT

But, ewwwww:

The only eBay bid so far for the purple massage table "where it all happened" between former gay male escort Mike Jones and fallen evangelical preacher Ted Haggard was $300.

Jones put the table up for auction on eBay Thursday night to benefit Project Angel Heart, a nonprofit group that provides meals for people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The description reads: "The Table is about 10 years old with a few tears but totally usable.". . .

The Table. There's a horror story in there.

Update: I wrote a horror story once called "The Leisure Suit." Yes, it ends in a disco inferno.

Update II: "a few tears"? Ewwwwwwwwww.

Update III: Not that there's anything wrong with that, I mean, except that Haggard is married and has about 40 kids.

Truthforce forced to tell truth

Ward Churchill frau Natsu "Truthforce" Saito apparently fiddled with her CV a bit to remove a couple of, um, exaggerations and inaccuracies (yeah, that's the ticket) in the document. These people lie when there's absolutely no reason to do so. Pirate Ballerina has the interesting facts and figures.

Update: PB seems to be down for some reason.

Weird Bird Friday

A couple of birdie water pitchers made a few gajillion years ago in what is now Mexico.

From the Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico

--Drunkawife

Gut course

Joe Sullivan of Dissident News e-mails to point out that the average grade CU ethnic studies instructor Ben Whitmer has given students in his ES courses is A-. It would have been an A, but one of his American Indians in Literature kids was found at the end of the course, dead and mummified at his desk. Whitmer gave him an incomplete.

Churchill not fired

Snapple points out that the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (of Denver), in announcing a teach-in for Ward Churchill, says he's already been fired from CU. In fact, at least half a dozen times on various threads recently I've seen people saying "Churchill was fired for. . ." blah blah blah. I know the anticipation is killing everyone, but: WARD HASN'T BEEN FIRED (yet).

Truthforce!

Boy did I pick the wrong day to quit snif--to step away from the computer. Natsu ("my checks say 'Mrs. Ward Churchill'") Saito has been exposed at Pirate Ballerina as a sock-puppeteer of the crudest sort, using the hemorrhage-inducingly ironic nickname "Truthforce" to praise herself and Ward at Amazon.com. PB's post is hilarious (and packed with other goodies!).

Update: Natsu Saito. Ward Churchill. Ben Whitmer. Three present or former or soon-to-be-former faculty members in CU's ethnic studies department, all three (lousy) sock puppeteers (Whitmer, like Saito, to praise his own work). Would a qualified scientist find this significant?

Different worlds

Yeah, I saw the new photos of Saturn:


(Photos courtesy NASA.)


(Well, they would have been courtesy NASA, if I'd asked. I bet.)

Yawnarama. But clicking through the rest of the pics I noticed some photos of Saturn's baig ol' moon Titan:


Ganesa Macula cryovolcano.

They reminded of some maps I have. A friend who was then a student at Colorado School of Mines saw these maps being thrown out behind the school library and, in one of history's great dumpster dives, retrieved a whole bunch of them:


Torre Del Greco, east of Naples, 1883 ("Edizione 1905"). Not taken from space.

They're so old they're actually printed on cloth.


Mount Etna, 1883 (1897 ed.).


Impact crater on Titan.



Isole Eolie, Sicily, 1880 (1899 ed.).



Island in a lake, Titan.

Titan again.


Naples and points west (from the map of Torre Del Greco, above).

By the way, if you can't see intelligent design in this next Cassini photo, you're just blind:

Saturn's rings with planetary shadow.

Chicago Bears logo.

Update: Speaking of intelligent design, anybody else notice the image of Ted Kaczynski in one of the craters depicted in the Naples map?


See him? It's a miracle! Somebody tell Kirkpatrick Sale and Glenn Morris!

Update: I spelled Kaczynski's name wrong the first time, but only by a letter.

Weird Bird Friday

This week there's a mysterious convergence between Weird Bird Friday and the Drunkablog's favorite subject: Ward Churchill.

In the early days of Weird Bird Friday I saved a picture to my weird bird directory [she has a weird bird directory!--ed.] that I found during a random search for weird bird images. Just now I pulled it up and showed it to Drunk-a-Husband as a possible weird bird for this week:

Anybody recognize it?

Unbelievably, it's from a talk by old Walking Eagle himself, Ward Churchill. Some of the audience wore chickens [not real chickens--ed.] on their heads to signify devout agreement with Churchill's "roosting chickens" argument. Honestly, before the DrunkaBum told me what it was, I thought this was a picture from a sporting event. You know, "Rah, rah, sis boom bah, Go Warrior Chickens!"

--Drunkawife

Update (from "Drunkabum"): Go Warrior Chickens?

Update II (from Drunkawife): What, you don't think chickens have a warrior spirit? Careful, there, D-a-H...you could be headed for re-neducation camp.

Wardo woundup

Er, roundup.

CU chancellor G.P. "Spud" Peterson, on a junket to the Junction yesterday, told the Grand Junction Sentinel that "the faculty committee reviewing [Ward] Churchill’s conduct is expected to make a recommendation to [CU president Hank] Brown in about two weeks," after which Brown will make his recommendation to the school’s Board of Regents.

“'I don’t think he’ll have to deliberate a terribly long time' over what he’ll recommend to the board, Peterson said of Brown." ("Please keep him!")

Seriously, there's a nudge that'll break your ribs and a wink that should've imploded Peterson's eye. But the part that caught my own personal eye (and dragged it 15 feet, as the great Emo says) was this:

During the scandal, Peterson said university officials briefly re-examined the need for and the value of the school’s ethnic studies department.

But voices in favor of the department and diversity at the school prevailed, he said.

Of course they did. But remember last summer when ethnic studies chairpersyn Albert Ramirez demanded the university proclaim its undying love for both the discipline and the department, and everybody leapt to smother him with postmodern-y hugs and kisses? Doesn't take a weatherman (even a fake one) to tell the wind's shifted. A little. Maybe.

Update: That's G.P. "Bud" Peterson. Sorry.

(via Pirate Ballerina)

"Left wing of parasitism with its pants down again"

Yes, MIM's Dzerzhinsky-like* Security Minister has posted another communiqué on the Churchill case. It's long, paranoid, vaguely menacing, and non sense-making. As if you didn't know. Interesting quote:

An investigation of events in 2005 and 2006 will show that undercover federal agents were creating weapons provocations and issuing death threats against University of Colorado faculty members and pinning them on Ward Churchill supporters. MIM is calling for a legal investigation of federal pressure on the University of Colorado firing process of Ward Churchill.

God knows what Security Minister is talking about, but why does the obscenely threatening "John Moredock" (that is, CU ethnic studies instructor Ben Whitmer before he was unmasked and emasculated) come to mind? Whitmer also, if you remember, ran a series on putting together a good "home defense" shotgun.

Anyway, Security Minister goes on and on about "allegorical violence" and MIM's connections with the "spy community" and how the feds have covertly posted "a raft of web pages . . . in an effort to create divisions in the Ward Churchill camp . . ." (wonder if the Drunkablog is on that raft). Worth reading the whole thing if you're the sort who'd have enjoyed a tour of Bedlam.

(via Snapple)

Three for a "roundup"

And since I don't have three Chutch brieflets I'll include an item (scroll down) from the Silver and Gold Record:

"Becoming an Ally: UCCS Students Creating Change," a student panel discussion, will be held from noon to 1:30 p.m. on March 13 as a lead-in to the CU-Colorado Springs White Privilege Conference. The panel discussion will be held in the Kraemer Family Library, on the third floor, and refreshments will be served. The annual conference serves as an opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression. This year's conference is scheduled for April 18-24.

See you there! Or else!

*Wait, did you think I was comparing Security Minister to Felix Dzerzhinsky, Stalin's infamous secret policeman? Nah, I meant Joe Dzerzhinsky, the guy who had to be winched out of his mom's basement last year.

(credit: bread and water still life from Duane Keiser, who is really good)

Update: I can't figure out why the "Dzerzhinsky-like" link makes you "open" something, but it's just the pic version I have in Adobe. It's perfectly safe™ to open it.

Update II: PB has a quote (via MarkedManner) about Ward Churchill from Julio "Assad" Pino, the "Jihadi Professor" at Kent State who contributed to a particularly vile Islamofascist website and was the subject of a couple of recent posts at LGF:

One masterful fencer, with the help of the courageous student body at the University of Colorado-Boulder, managed to out-maneuver the most powerful nation on Earth. Professor Ward Churchill faces losing tenure under the unusual charge of publishing something unpopular. The real reason the UC Board of Regents (a bunch of old, bored white men) is eager to fire him is his righteous obsession with European and American genocide and terrorism against peoples of color all over the world, from 1492 to 2001. Churchill, in appraising what happened on Sept. 11 that year, calling it a case of “some people push back,” merely reiterated what Malcolm X had to say on the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963: “chickens coming home to roost.” Incidentally, had JFK’s planned genocide against the Cuban people during the missile crisis of 1962 came to fruition, I wouldn’t be writing this letter; instead, my ashes would be buried in Havana. No doubt this would please a few professors on campus, but not my beloved Taliban (students) in History of Civilization and Modern Latin America.

Those who claim to be horrified by Churchill’s remarks should ponder that more than 500,000 Iraqi children were killed by President William Clinton and his Madame Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who boasted about it on national television.

In a moral universe and university, it would not be Ward Churchill being demonized, but the cocaine cowboy, George W. Bush, who has added an extra 100,000 corpses to the pile of brown colored corpses, collected like Indian heads in the Old West.In an America rapidly descending toward Christian fascism, we need more Ward Churchills.

Just another example of Blair's law in action.

Update III: "Masterful fencer"? Oy vey.

Smart guy

Uber techno-hippie Stewart Brand (the guy who created the Whole Earth Catalog, imagined "horizontal information networks" (read "the Internet") and arranged a demonstration of the computer mouse--in 1968) is profiled in the New York Times. The piece, "An early environmentalist, embracing new 'heresies'" (yes, they put "heresies" in quotes), will make Gaia-worshippers' eyes bleed:

Stewart Brand has become a heretic to environmentalism, a movement he helped found, but he doesn’t plan to be isolated for long. He expects that environmentalists will soon share his affection for nuclear power. They’ll lose their fear of population growth and start appreciating sprawling megacities. They’ll stop worrying about “frankenfoods” and embrace genetic engineering.

Greenpeaceniks (in Moe Szyslak voice): Whaaaaaa?!?

He sees genetic engineering as a tool for environmental protection: crops designed to grow on less land with less pesticide; new microbes that protect ecosystems against invasive species, produce new fuels and maybe sequester carbon.

He’s also looking for green nuclear engineers, and says he feels guilty that he and his fellow environmentalists created so much fear of nuclear power. . . .

“There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective,” he says. “Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don’t know where it is and you don’t know what it’s doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody’s atmosphere.”

Funny thing, the reporter, John Tierney, doesn't ask Brand where he stands on Leslie Gore-bal Warming, and my cursory look didn't turn up any "we're all gonna die" riffing from the guy. Clearly he believes it's a threat, but he also seems much, much calmer about it than your average eco-doomster. As the Times says, he's strangely calm about other issues that send eco-hysterics to the (non-latex, all natural) rubber room as well. For example,

he now looks at the rapidly growing megacities of the third world not as a crisis but as good news: as villagers move to town, they find new opportunities and leave behind farms that can revert to forests and nature preserves. Instead of worrying about population growth, he’s afraid birth rates are declining too quickly, leaving future societies with a shortage of young people.

Brand also mentions the famous Paul Ehrlich/Julian Simon bet, which this wretched bog has bloviated on more than once:

Brand is the first to admit his own futurism isn’t always prescient. In 1969, he was so worried by population growth that he organized the Hunger Show, a weeklong fast in a parking lot to dramatize the coming global famine predicted by Paul Ehrlich, one of his mentors at Stanford.

The famine never arrived, and Professor Ehrlich’s theories of the coming “age of scarcity” were subsequently challenged by the economist Julian Simon, who bet Mr. Ehrlich that the prices of natural resources would fall during the 1980s despite the growth in population. The prices fell, just as predicted by Professor Simon’s cornucopian theories.

Professor Ehrlich dismissed Professor Simon’s victory as a fluke, but Mr. Brand saw something his mentor didn’t. He considered the bet a useful lesson about the adaptability of humans — and the dangers of apocalyptic thinking.

“It is one of the great revelatory bets,” he now says. “Any time that people are forced to acknowledge publicly that they’re wrong [of course, Ehrlich did so only about a few specific predictions while continuing to claim his theories are valid--ed.], it’s really good for the commonweal. I love to be busted for apocalyptic proclamations that turned out to be 180 degrees wrong. In 1973 I thought the energy crisis was so intolerable that we’d have police on the streets by Christmas. The times I’ve been wrong is [sic] when I assume there’s a brittleness in a complex system that turns out to be way more resilient than I thought.”

For you Drunkablog-reading apocalyptic thinkers out there (and you know who you are!), let me repeat that: "The times I've been wrong is when I assume there's a brittleness in a complex system that turns out to be way more resilient than I thought." And this is Stewart Brand talking, you feelthy, reedeeculous, ahging heepies! Recreate '68! Recreate '68!

(via the scintillating Naomi and Ashley of the Judd "Brothers" blog)

Update: Maybe that the Drunkablog and Stewart Brand are like this (two fingers wrapped around each other) on so many issues will finally convince some of you cockchafers that, intellectually, the Drunkablog is more akin to these folks than to these. (Physically of course he still resembles the latter).

Update II: Anybody remember any other "great revelatory bets"? There are a couple, I think, but all that comes to mind is the time the one egghead threatened to crush the other egghead's skull with a poker. That had nothing at all to do with a bet, though, I'm pretty sure.

MIM loses its MIMd

And this time it ain't comin' back:

To the Ward Churchill legal team [legal team?]

CC: University of Colorado and senior intelligence officials [yeah, right]

We want to make clear that we stand behind you in revealing the federal government's intimidation of your supporters and its interference at the University of Colorado Law School in particular. On behalf of its agents that FBI feels have been exposed for eternity by Ward Churchill's books, FBI ran roughshod over the Bill of Rights, conducted red-baiting, threatened jobs and created a violent and embarrassing atmosphere for a member of the Law School while trying to pin most of it on MIM . . . .

Who and what in God's name is Security Minister (I recognize the straightforward, manly style) talking about? Does he mean Robert Clinton, the Arizona State University law prof who served on the committee that investigated Ward's scholarship, or maybe the guy he replaced, Robert Williams, who resigned from the committee after Pirate Ballerina exposed his too-close connections to Churchill? Or maybe somebody totally different?

Regarding your legal case to return Ward Churchill to teaching at the University of Colorado, MIM would like to make it clear that we agree with you that the Law chool in particular should not have been involved in your evaluation and we apologize for so slowly piecing together what has happened and why you made that request.

We encourage you to conduct a legal investigation wherever it may lead. We at MIM are not afraid of the intimidation--the whole pedophile, rape, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and spying rap.

And who doesn't know how annoying the old pedophile, rape, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and spying rap can be?

Whatever it takes to win, you should do. If MIM identities end up exposed, we are going to take down many others with us and provoke international repercussions.

International repercussions. Seriously, Security Minister is crazier than a KFC rat (future generations: that's a topical reference). He always acts like MIM's tentacles spread far and wide, even to the heart of the capitalist/fascist U.$. government, when you know he lives in his mom's basement.

To the feds trying to decapitate MIM leadership, realize that there is no one in MIM who is going to stand for not winning the Ward Churchill case. . . .The feds should have heeded MIM's earlier warnings, because MIM will not ask Ward Churchill to finesse the federal government's defeat the way MIM would. It would be unethical for MIM to ask Ward Churchill to arrange for other than piecemeal exposure of the federal government's role.

Ummmmm. Yes. Yes it would (frantically punches 911 on phone).

1. We call on the Law School to recognize that it made a mistake in partaking in Ward Churchill's case. We hope that it will begin to piece together the role of the FBI in influencing the evaluation of Ward Churchill's teaching credentials. . . .

It is inevitable that people in the Law School are going to figure this out, so we call on the federal government to bring this farce to an end, and quickly. Don't imagine that MIM is going to tolerate it in this case.

Oooooh, MIM's really pissed. Staggered and mind-boggled too:

2. MIM is still staggered and mind-boggled by what joint federal forces imagined they would get away with in the Ward Churchill case. MIM hopes to resolve this case with the least rocking of the boat possible, but we request that senior intelligence management quickly come to an understanding of what "joint work" just linked together and opened to Ward Churchill's discovery process in court. Let there be no doubt: MIM knows how to fight this battle and will assist in the discovery process.

I'll kill myself if Ward doesn't sue. Sec. Min.:

We encourage Ward Churchill to discover the federal role in his attempted firing:

1) To investigate blog authorship [uh-oh].

2) To investigate federal creation of forums, weapons provocations and death threats involving the University of Colorado Law School.

3) To investigate legal threats against MIM if it revealed the truth of who did what.

4) To investigate the attempt to involve Congress to pass legislation to shut up MIM.

5) To investigate the role of the President . . . .+

It'll have to wait, Security Minister; the real truth about September 11 needs to come out first.

MIM will start reading Ward Churchill web pages to look for indications of an agreement on parts or the entirety of his case. If we do not see an agreement with the Law School, the University of Colorado or federal agencies, we will assume this matter is unresolved and this web page and possibly future ones will remain up, rather undiplomatically. We expect to hear Ward Churchill restored to teaching on the basis of sanity [sic], that the issues in this case should not be brought to a civil trial. Some people better start thinking about "national security.". . .

Please sue, Ward.

(via the MIM-watching Snaps, who adds, "I can't really figure out what MIM is talking about [jeez, Snaps, can't you understand plain English?]. But I think it is a good sign that Churchill MAY have got the bad word on Friday. I think this latest is just a lot of desperate threats. I think MIM's imagined lawyers are just scarecrows.")

Update: The indefatigable Snapple unearthed a quote I'd forgotten about, from an October, 2005 interview of Ward in Dissident Voice in which he thanks the MIMiacs for their support:

I've received...unqualified support from hard-line Maoists. ...[T]he Maoist International Movement (MIM) have used their weekly papers to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published. MIM has been especially consistent in putting its cadres on the street to do political education concerning my case, gathering signatures on petitions supporting me, and the like. This has led to some interesting results, to say the least.

One of the high points of my spring was when, unbeknownst to me at the time, a bunch of MIMsters cornered Rocky Mountain News reporter Charlie Brennan on the sidewalk outside the Women's Building in San Francisco -- he was there because I was speaking inside -- and told him he wasn't taking another step until he signed their petition supporting me. Man, I'd love to have seen the look on his face!

They eventually cut him loose without signing, but let's just say he's stopped stalking me around the country -- he'd earlier shown up at a talk I gave at the University of Wisconsin's Whitewater campus, and a few other unlikely locations -- and I think the MIM people can take credit for his absence. Sooooo...

Thanks, comrades.

"Some of the best analysis of my case and its implications. . ." Now that's funny. And here we all thought Brennan was taken off the Churchill beat because of his, er, indiscreet e-mailing habits, when it was actually his fear of MIM's thuggish operatives.

Socialism forges ahead!

Yes, again. Workers World:

Cuba’s National Assembly of Popular Power [as opposed to its much-better-known National Assembly of Unpopular Power] has agreed to discuss making sex-reassignment surgery free of cost to all “transexuales” on the island who request it.

The entire public health care system in Cuba is free of charge.

The newsletter Diversidad ["Funny Looking People"] reported: “The measure would complement the present Identity Law that already acknowledges the right of citizens to change name and sexual identity. This places Cuba at the vanguard of the legislations that acknowledge the rights of transvestites, transsexuals and transgender in Latin America.”

It places Cuba at the vanguard of legislations in North America, as well. Sex-reassignment is priced out of reach for many transsexual men and women in the U.S. And health care in general is a pricey privilege denied tens of millions in the heartland of imperialism.

The publication reported that Cuba’s parliament will also discuss legislative recognition of same-sex unions.

Not overly vanguardy there, are they?

For an in-depth historical materialist look at the trajectory of the Cuban Revolution since 1959 on same-sex love and gender variance, read the Lavender & Red series at: www.workers.org. Look for the lavender and red logo.

Go ahead. What else you got to do on a beautiful Sunday morning but take an in-depth historical materialist look at the trajectory of the Cuban Revolution since 1959 on same-sex love and gender variance, hmmmm? It's only 91 chapters.

(credit: hospital pics from the indispensable site therealcuba.com)

Boulder not safe

The Rocky:

Amy Winchester and her partner, Marcy Mullet, recently celebrated the birthdays of their 1-year-old twins.

The couple couldn't help but feel somewhat uneasy that the city with a liberal and tolerant reputation isn't what it used to be, and they don't want their twins growing up in a community that they fear is increasingly becoming more homophobic and intolerant.

Boulder?

This week's beating of a 21-year-old lesbian student from Naropa University by at least one man did little to ease the couple's concerns.

Boulder police are trying to determine whether the attack was a hate crime that was triggered by the woman resisting the sexual advances of two men and telling them she was a lesbian. One of the men beat and kicked the woman in the head, police said.

They don't even know if it was a "hate crime" yet, but the mere possibility brought out several hundred protesters:

Winchester and Mullet and their children joined more than 300 people Friday in a march to denounce the attack - and show their support for the victim - outside Boulder's municipal building.

Boulder's turning fascist, all right.

The woman was beaten near the area of Canyon Boulevard and 13th Street, just a couple of blocks from where the rally was held.

"It was maybe like that 20 or 30 years ago," Winchester, 30, said of Boulder's liberal reputation, as she held her daughter, Sami. "This is really shocking, and this gives us an opportunity to show support for the victim and the community as a whole. I want to live where I feel safe and be accepted for who I am." . . .

"We need to let people know that it's not OK" to attack gays or lesbians, said Mullet, as she carried her son, Kai. "And we're just not going to sit down and take it."

Winchester & Mullet. I feel a TV pilot coming on.

The demonstrators, carrying signs and sporting rainbow ribbons representing the colors of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, began their march from the Boulder Pride community center in the 2100 block of 14th Street, near the Pearl Street Mall. They proceeded through Central Park and under the Broadway Bridge at Boulder Creek before gathering behind the municipal building.

No giant puppets on such short notice, of course, but:

A few demonstrators pounded out conga and bongo rhythms for the marchers, who responded with cheers . . .

. . . rather than with the forced bongoectomy most protest drummers deserve. It's okay sometimes, but man, some of those freaks don't know when to shut up.

Some carried signs reading, "Stop Pretending Boulder is Safe" [okay!--ed.], "Yes on Domestic Partnerships," "We're Here, We're Queer, We Care," "Hate is Socially Learned" and "We're All Children of God."

Hate is socially learned. I've always hated that.

"This is not acceptable," said Blake Weber, Boulder Pride's new executive director, to the demonstrators, who responded with shouts of approval. "This is not acceptable in Boulder. This is not acceptable in Colorado and this not acceptable in this country."

Boulder Mayor Mark Ruzzin said the turnout was going to mean a lot to the victim and for her recovery, and he called the assault a "shameful act."

Bo Svenson, 47, and her partner, Belinda Binette, 26, of Nederland, waved large flags of the world and colors of the rainbow. The flag of the world represents that "we're all in this together," Svenson said.

Don't remind me.

Update: We're here, we're queer, we're antidisestablishmentarianistic!

Update II: the Bo Svenson quoted in the story is NOT the Bo Svenson linked to. Wink, wink.

Okay, got that taken care of (dusts off hands, looks around gamely). What's next?

AP:

Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery . . . .

The resolution passed the House 96-0 and cleared the 40-member Senate on a unanimous voice vote. It does not require Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's approval.

Remember The Simpsons during at least one town meeting? Rev. Lovejoy: All in favor? Townsfolk: Aye! Rev. Lovejoy: Opposed? Single, tiny, ineffectual-sounding male voice: Nay. Probably wouldn't have gone over too well if a Virginia legislator had tried to be funny like that: Nay. So for humor this guy will just have to do:

Among those voting for the measure was Delegate Frank D. Hargrove, an 80-year-old Republican who infuriated black leaders last month by saying "black citizens should get over" slavery.

After enduring a barrage of criticism, Hargrove successfully co-sponsored a resolution calling on Virginia to celebrate "Juneteenth," a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

Wow, 80 years old and getting ready for a run at the presidency.

Oversoul

Billy Bob (r.) and his inner cartoon character (l.). Dahhhhhh, shucks.

Golden oldies

Been really uncomfortably sick all week with the flu (still am), but it's warmed up and the snow is almost gone, which means the two-month-old deposits of dog poop in the back yard--formerly encased in ice like tiny mastodon poops--have thawed (nay, liquified!). So I staggered out there today to gather, or as we like to say, "harvest" them. Nature's eternal cycle.

Anyway, snow had been on the ground so long it (the ground, ya eejits) was actually moldy:


Moldy flower bed: Hey, maybe I can sell the stuff. Maybe this will even start a mold craze like the Dutch Tulip Mania! Please, leave me my dreams.

Martyr with a wood rasp

There's a student article about CU ethnic studies instructor Ben Whitmer and his scuzzy Try-Works blog on CampusPress.com, "CU's only student voice." Not surprisingly, the piece treats the Try-Works controversy as if it were about academic freedom, and Whitmer's only too happy to go along, mouthing such meaningless moronities as:

"Academic freedom and the right to free speech never existed. They were fantasies. Yeah, you may not always be hauled off to jail for exercising them [no, not always--ed.], but the media will do everything they can to ruin you. They won't bother getting you for what it was you said, they'll just find some trumped-up charge to ruin you with," Whitmer said."Make no mistake, the only difference between it and McCarthyism is the manner of the smear."

Make no mistake, the only difference between Ben Whitmer and Dalton Trumbo is that Trumbo never wished a female newspaper editor had been "fucked with a wood rasp," as the womyn-hating Whitmer fantasized about Westword editor Patty Calhoun. (Hey, there's something he said that he might plausibly be "got" for, huh?) The educator continues:

"There is a duty to speak out about these issues," Whitmer said. "The first duty is to the students, and they deserve all sides of a story. They deserve to be treated with the respect of telling them the truth. They deserve professors who engage them, who challenge the status quo, who care more about making them think than about getting them to regurgitate the same crap they learned to regurgitate in high school."

Oddly, the piece contains no examples of Whitmer's version of the truth, or his peculiar way of telling it, though it does have a URL--no link--to a Pirate Ballerina post the paper says contains "excerpts" from Try-Works. It doesn't.

PB (where I saw the story) has his favorite quote, and so do I, this from the ostentatiously clueless Albert Ramirez, chairman of the ethnic studies department at CU:

When asked about Whitmer's blog, Ramirez said, "Why should it concern me? As I understand it, he didn't use any university resources to do so."

And that, of course, is all that matters.

Update: CU just had idiot Marxist journalism professor and Ward Churchill buttboy Robert Jensen to speak at its annual "diversity summit." PB again has the interesting facts and figures, so I'll just ask the obvious question: are these people 'tards, or what?

Update II: I'm wrong, there's another big difference between Trumbo and Whitmer: Trumbo had talent.