O'Reilly references 1/87 article: Ward Churchill taught bomb making?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

OK, first, O'Reilly doesn't provide an online link to back this up. Second, even if we had a URL, no way to know if this is an unsubstantiated claim. These kinds of accusations are either challenged or ignored in the hope that they will fade away. I don't know how, if at all, Churchill responded to this one in 1987.

I've said before that making Ward Churchill a First Amendment Poster Boy is not high on my list of priorities. IF he taught ANYONE how to make "bombs and fire weapons"...terrorist groups or not...fuck him for that alone. Seriously, FUCK him.

But it's America...innocent until proven guilty.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,147092,00.html

One more thing, Craig Silverman in Denver sent us a newspaper article dated January 18, 1987. In that article, The Denver Post says that Ward Churchill taught the Weathermen terrorist group how to make bombs and how to fire weapons, which those people did in the late 1960's.

If that's true, Churchill has even more problems and the FBI should step up its investigation. Hating your country is one thing. Training people to kill Americans is quite something else.

We're a tolerant society here, but some things cannot be tolerated.

And that's The Memo.

[stevedeshazer]

1. Loofah boy can lick my falafel

He can't back it up.

It's another smear by the Radical Right: If you can't refute the argument, smear the messenger.

[mike_c]

2. ahh yes, the essential repig ethos rears it's ugly head....

We're a tolerant society here, but some things cannot be tolerated.

Tolerance as a concept-- a word, and a cheap one at that-- but not in practice. Civil tolerance, like pregancy, is not something "we" can indulge in just a little bit.

[mr fry]

4. tollerance of all no exceptions then

guess you get to hug a neocon today then

[mike_c]

6. yes-- I struggle to get them out of power...

...but defend their right to have and express their ideas. When the consequences of someone's actions hurt society, we have a responsibility to take steps-- hopefully respectful steps-- to ameliorate the damage. But the right to express opposing points of view should be supported, defended, and in a truely democratic society, encouraged. That's tolerance. So yes, I proudly tolerate neocons-- I just don't want them to rule the country, both because I disagree with their policies AND because I'm not convinced they will extend the same tolerance to my perspective.

[benny05]

3. Churchill

Will be on C-SPAN American Perspectives this evening at 8ET.

I think he will be forced to resign, but not over bomb making. They'll probably look for plagarism and charge him over that.

[Spazito]

5. Wow, it seems the 'full court press' is on re Churchill over...

something written 3 years ago. I am sure it is just coincidence that all the right wing rags, cable shows, etc, are working their asses off on this, lol.

[dave123williams]

7. The Weathermen were bombing in to the 70's...

[Griffy]

8. Oh good.. now I know Ward didnt make bombs.. O'leily is reLIEable!

[JohnOneillsMemory]

9. COINTELPRO tactic: put the 'bad jacket' on the most affective activists.

Ward Churchill is part Native American. He worked in the American Indian Movement for a long time. The AIM was targeted by the FBI with infiltrators who accused leading AIM activists of 'working for the man.'

That's what any old smearing dredged up against Churchill represents.

Colleges are being chilled by attacking 'liberal' faculty and students because the neocons fear an anti-war movement growing there again as they did in the 1960s.

Journalist Seymour Hersh exposed Operation CHAOS which was an infiltration of student groups by the FBI to stifle dissent.

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/surveil/chaos.html

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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

[mike_c]

11. in some ways this simply illustrates the adage...

...that if you've got something to hide, it's a bad idea to attract attention to yourself.

on edit: on the other hand, who doesn't have SOMETHING to hide?

[Tinoire]

12. Oh boy. And yet, as reported by the real news

What's a "real Indian" according to Hannity? Is that like being a "real" Jew or a "real" African American?

You have a choice. You can bow to Campus Watch's propaganda or you can look for and stand up for the truth. Ward Churchill isn't going anywhere and if he does, it will be a sad day for the demise of the US constitution.

What is DOUBLY interesting is that during the 2000 census, when ethnic heritage questions were such a hot topic, it was pointed out that Churchill -- whose mom was American -- was 1/16 Iroquois Indian.

But you have to love how the Right wing does it.

Suzan Shown Harjo, a columnist for ICT who has tracked Churchill's career, said that aside from the in-laws of his late Indian wife, he has not been able to produce any relatives from any Indian tribe.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/

So now if you don't rush out to "produce any relatives" at the right-wing's demand, that's proof you have no native blood?

STRAIGHT FROM THE WEBSITE OF THE


Councils

Elders' Council

Tink Tinker (Osage) (Coordinator) • Russell Means (Oglala Lakota) • Yank Bad Hand (Oglala Lakota) • Lillian Fobb (Seminole) • Margaret Tyon (Oglala Lakota) • Ida Bear (Ho-Chunk) • Logan Bear (Omaha) • Norma Williams (Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne) • Thomas Allen (Sac and Fox) • Mary Ann Allen (Northern Arapaho) • Virgina Allrunner (Southern Cheyenne)

Leadership Council

Tink Tinker (Osage) • TroyLynn Yellow Wood (Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne) • Ted Roy (Meskwaki/Anishinabe) • Mona Roy (Meskwaki/Anishinabe) • Robert Chanate (Kiowa) • Glenn Morris (Shawnee) • Reid Zephier (Oglala Lakota) • Vicci Anderson (Diné)
• Ward Churchill (Ketoowah Cherokee) • Jennifer Williams (Sicangu Lakota) • Carol Barry (Chickasaw) • Josh Dillabaugh (Cheyenne River Lakota) • Michelle Wolf (Cheyenne River) • Brenda Jenkins (Omaha)

http://www.coloradoaim.org/councils.htm

Ward Churchill received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Sangamon State University, now the University of Illinois at Springfield. He has been active in Colorado AIM since at least 1984. In 1993, he and other AIM leaders including Russell Means, Glen Morris, Bob Robideau and David Hill broke with the national AIM Grand Governing Council (GGC) leadership, especially Clyde and Vernon Bellencourt, claiming that all AIM chapters are autonomous. This schism continues, with the GGC claiming that the autonomous AIM leaders are tools of the government being used against Indians.

Notice that name in bold is one of the main players accusing Ward of not being native and is part of the AIM power struggle.

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=84027#C7



Two security members from the American Indian Movement stand guard behind professor Ward Churchill as he addresses University of Colorado students. (Photo: AP)


Ward Churchill (Keetoowah Band Cherokee) is one of the most outspoken of Native American activists and scholars in North America. He is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Churchill serves as Associate Director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America at the institution. He is also co-director of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement and vice chair of the American Indian Anti-Defamation Council. His many books include Marxism and Native Americans, Fantasies of the Master Race, Struggle for the Land, From A Native Son, The COINTELPRO Papers, Indians R Us?, and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas.

http://www.g7welcomingcommittee.com/bands/churchill.html

====
Churchill was tarred and feathered as demands for termination of his tenured position grew to a roar. The attack shifted from the words of his essay to the body of his writings and even to scrutiny of his professed Indian heritage. It immediately became clear that the Right was hunting far larger game than just a radical critic of US imperialism named Ward Churchill. They were exploiting the controversy in an effort to advance their ongoing Culture Wars whereby they seek to demolish free speech rights, liberal and left values, and the academic tenure system which in their view protects an army of crazed radicals corrupting the minds of youth.

(snip)

The critique from the Right went far beyond addressing the substance of Churchill’s essay, however, to launch vicious ad hominem attacks on his character and ethnic background, to distort his intention and meaning, and to demand that he be fired from a tenured position designed to protect academics from ideological persecution. Conservative politicians and media pundits demonized Churchill as a “madman” and “cheerleader for terrorists” who spews vile “hate speech” tantamount to treason. Gleefully pouncing on their favorite target—the alleged hegemony of the “academic Left” (an absurd myth as any vulnerable and marginalized progressive professor can attest to)—right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Joe Scarborough exhorted their benighted media flocks to flood Hamilton College, the University of Colorado, and Colorado politicians with vociferous letters of complaint demanding that Churchill be fired.

(snip)

(snip) College Republicans denounced Churchill and organized a petition drive for his dismissal, student supporters denounced the furor as a McCarthyesque witch hunt engineered to silence a progressive member of their community. Showing logical fidelity to their philosophy of freedom, some College Republicans chastised their right-wing peers and formed the organization Republicans for Churchill in support of his First Amendment rights. As the mob’s furor grew, the American Union of University Professors and the American Civil Liberties Union came out strongly in favor of controversial speech and Churchill’s First Amendment rights.

(snip)

Free Speech—Except for You

(snip)

The methodology of Churchill’s persecutors is to seize on the inflammatory sound bite about little Eichmanns, pump it up into alleged “hate speech” against America, and scrub it from its context where he analyzes some of the root causes of terrorist attacks against the US. (snip)

(snip)

Churchill’s critics self-destruct in their own contradictions. It is a blatant inconsistency for someone to say that they support the First Amendment, but then want to punish someone for exercising First Amendment rights for ideas that they do not like. Whereas Churchill has said nothing that amounts to hate speech, his vituperators routinely spew hate speech against him in the national media. Being a critical and independent thinker rather than a Pavlovian jingoist, Churchill exemplifies what it is to be an American, whereas those trying to silence him and trample on his constitutional rights shame themselves as the real anti-Americans traitors.

(snip)

Right-Wing Nation

(snip) As a part of their ongoing culture wars, the right has vociferously attacked Churchill in order to advance large agendas that include their hostility to radical ideas, the “academic Left,” liberal values, and free speech. (snip) the demise of the Constitution will take a bit longer and will depend on how citizens respond to cases such as this.

http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/best02102005

If we don't protect the first admendment, there's no point in anyone dying for freedom, is there?

[WarNoMore]

13. Bookmarked.

Thank you so much for this post. I've wondered so much through the years about the AIM movement and some of the leaders, etc.

[Tinoire]

14. WarNoMore! Where have you been?

What do you make of this entire... controversy?

And please share why you wondered about AIM before. I wondered about them once before during the Primaries and I think that's where we first met... in another Indian-related thread (if you were called study_war_no_more?)... I'm curious to hear what you have to say...

Walking the red road...

[Tinoire]

15. Lol... It gets more rabid... He (gasp) met Ghaddafi

Watch how peridious this article is. Pretty soon we'll hear that he threw babies out of incubators.

====

Churchill met with Gadhafi
Controversial prof set to make speech at Wisconsin school

By Charlie Brennan And Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
February 11, 2005

This is not the first time Ward Churchill has disagreed with the U.S. government's idea of who is, and is not, a terrorist.

In April 1983, Churchill went to Libya to meet with Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

(snip)


The U.S. government had banned travel to Libya two years earlier, saying Gadhafi supported terrorism. Churchill traveled to Tripoli and Benghazi as a representative of the International Indian Treaty Council and the American Indian Movement. He went with Dace Means, brother of AIM leader Russell Means.

They were seeking recognition from Gadhafi of the U.S. government's breaking of Indian treaties.

(snip)

The meeting took place five years before a bomb exploded on an American passenger jet above the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.

Intelligence sources have long believed Gadhafi ordered the bombing.


(snip)

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3540067,00.html