i swear, why cant vigilanties be protected under the law, this guy is a nutcase

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/02/01/speaker.protest.ap/index.html

College cancels speaker who compared 9/11 victims to Nazis

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 Posted: 2:27 PM EST (1927 GMT)

SYRACUSE, New York (AP) -- Citing death threats, an upstate New York college on Tuesday canceled a panel discussion featuring a professor who compared the World Trade Center victims to Nazis.

Hamilton College spokesman Michael DeBraggio said multiple death threats were made against both college officials and guest speaker Ward Churchill, who resigned Monday as chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado.

In an essay written in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Churchill said the World Trade Center victims were "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews. Churchill also spoke of the "gallant sacrifices" of the "combat teams" that struck America.

The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited to speak Thursday at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, New York. Hundreds of relatives of September 11 victims have protested the appearance.

Administrators at first moved the scheduled appearance to a building that can seat 2,000, instead of the originally planned 300.

Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart had said the college was committed to free speech, "however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill's remarks."

On Tuesday, however, Stewart sent an e-mail to students, faculty and staff saying the college had a "higher responsibility ... and that is the safety and security" of the campus community. She said the threats were "credible" and had been turned over to police.

Despite resigning as department chair, Churchill will retain his teaching job.

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens called on Churchill to resign his faculty position too, saying taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize his "outrageous and insupportable" views.

"If anyone could possibly be compared to the evildoers of Nazi Germany, it is the terrorists of the 21st century who have an equally repugnant disregard for human life," Owens said in a letter to the university's College Republicans released Tuesday.

Churchill did not immediately return telephone messages and e-mails from The Associated Press.

In an interview Monday with Denver station KCNC-TV, Churchill said he is not an advocate of violence, but that the attacks were a response to the way the United States treats people abroad.

"The overriding question that was being posed at the time was 'why did this happen, why did they hate us so much,' and my premise was when you do this to other people's families and children, that is going to be a natural response," he said.

Wow, this guy went way to far. No matter what your beliefs are, there is such a thing as respect for the dead and their relatives. This guy has trampled all over that.

"Little Eichmanns"?

Jesus.

I also hate the "free speech" argument as a reason for people to use the Universities as a means to promote such hate-filled drivel. Rent out a freaking convention center, don't use tax dollars to promote that crap.

Here is the part of the article and Churchill's 'justification' for it. I understand what he is getting at, but it is still a pretty damn stupid and ignorant statement/comparison to make.


A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" – now proudly emblematized by the United States – against the "Islamic East" since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement of Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered "Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in between. Any way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war – and they can – then the same is true of every US "overflight' of Iraqi territory since day one. The first acts of war during the current millennium thus occurred on its very first day, and were carried out by U.S. aviators acting under orders from their then-commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. The most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.

That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and restraint.

They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

* Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies.

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

Bill O'Reilly has been all over this one--it's his case du jour this week.

Interestingly enough, O'Reilly said that he shouldn't be fired, as long as he isn't saying this hateful rhetoric while he is teaching. And I'd agree with that.

But I sure as hell wouldn't invite him as a speaker. Glad that got canned.

That's fine for me. But this guy is the one against Israel; who's the Nazi now?

If I were haXoR I'd ruin his website with swasticas.

Despite this guys intentions, even if the point of his essay wasn't as awful as it seemed, in the future he needs to choose his words carefully. Wbat did he think was going to happen when he compared thousands of innocent victims to one of the leaders of the Nazi regime?!?!?!

haha, i was wondering when this would show up here...I go to Hamilton College and it's been kinda crazy around here. Personally I think that this guy was completely misrepresented by the press. I would encourage anyone who is interested to read the following statement he made:
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/educa ... 84,00.html

very interesting some of these people that are high up on the educational ladder...you'd think that they'd be aware of the ramifications of their speeches and writings...there are always some that slip between the cracks

Wow, the guy sounds like a real douchebag. When you start making claims like that you just being controversial for the sake of getting attention and nothing else.

Has anybody read Einstein in Berlin?

read his statement....definitely needs to be read and both sides should be seen

Definitely read the statement. Frankly, the guy has some really interesting things to say. I mean, I think that a certain amount of sensitivity needs to be applied when discussing these issues.
I was planning on going to the panel, it would have been interesting to hear his thoughts.

Okay, I see what he's getting at. Its pretty confrontational stuff, I prefer Zinn's angle to the situation instead.

What most people in this country fail to realize, is that history is the only true judge. You sit around waving American flags and eating Grandma's delicious American homemade apple pie and pray to God all you want, but in the end, our existence means very little in the long haul. America is just one more nation, an "empire" so to speak, in a long, long vicious line of empires that dominate the rest of the globe. Our government throws us the "democracy, freedom, and liberty" bones all the time and people chew them up. Quite frankly its somewhat ignorant. America is a liberal country, a liberal nation at heart, and we want to continue to progress and press for human dignity, human rights. And you simply don't set a good example by bombing other countries or people who we don't agree with to shit. Or by infecting their cultures with wealthy industrialism.

And for the record, in times like this, it is VERY important to look and consider at all points of view.

it's sad to see ideas presented by the "other side" and a different view for americans to see themselves torn apart by the media....

This is so funny to me because of the creator of this thread alone.

Otherwise this guy should STFU before he deservingly gets bitch slapped.

You see though, this isn't the other side. His statements are making a lot of the very far left cringe. It is kind of like me having the opinion that say, "All Moslems should die, all Jews should die, because they have different opinions from my own." Then backing it up with a lot of not even half truths. This is not the otherside, this is Hitler, and Mao, and a lot of other ass holes from history. We can respect someones opinion to speek, but really when someone says something as completly idiotic, and dumb as this dip shit, there really is no side to it. His comments were not left wing propaganda, they were just retarded. It would be like everyone respecting on this board the fact that my Mr. Clean doll talks to me, says that blacks should be hung, and people just accepting it as an opinion from the otherside. Sometimes people can say things so stupid that they do not diserve any respect.

it would be much funnier had you made the thread, but theres really not much anti-govt thats popular in this article

I read his statement, and the guy's an ass. He doesn't even deny his statements, he simply clarifies them. He also spews massive amounts of bullshit in order to seem more knowledgable and credible than could ever be deemed necessary by any thinking person. My particular favorites? When he quotes Martin Luther King, who by his own admission was quoting Robert Kennedy. I guess he just wanted to get King's name in there for added effect. Also, when he discusses how many Iraqi children died because of sanctions. Well, let's all think for just one minute - those children died because of Saddam's refusal to comply with the world's decision to impose sanctions. This jackass speaks of the U.S.'s violations of world law and then blames the U.S. for the outcome of someone else's refusal to do the same.

He's an ass.

Interesting? Hmmmm. Yes, interesting how someone can equate poor foreign policy and overly aggressive business practices with the deliberate etermination of a race of people.

The problem is that everyone is taking a couple sentences from his book and completely blowing them up and judging him just upon that. While I'm not saying that what he said was right, I'm just saying that he has an interesting viewpoint on the causes of the World Trade Center tragedies.

Secondly, as a student at Hamilton, I'm completely appalled at the amount of media coverage this has received. This man has spoken at countless colleges and universities without any controversy. Because of all the media coverage, our president and several of our faculty have received death threats (which was why it was cancelled). I think that it's a little hypocrital for those who judge him for saying what he did about 9/11 and then turn around and threaten members of our college.