Job Discussion Forums

[Paulie2003]

Well...another outspoken genius manipulates the media BIGTIME and rakes in the $$$!

He seems to think the Good Ole' USA deserved what we got in the 9-11 attacks - and who am I to disagree?

Maybe he'll get enough hate mail to sink him into a serious bout of depression...

Hey, I lost my job because I refused to teach to a couple of kids who obviously loved Jesus WAY too much...they loved doing things like swearing, yelling and disrupting, and just generally idiotic behaviour that you'd expect from pets...

Jesus will have the last word tho...

Strange situation in Latin America...sometimes its more punishment to remove the teacher from class and let the idiots have their way...I feel SO sorry for the students that were truly diligent tho...they deserve better...but who am I to argue...

WHO AM I...anyway

Ready to move on...eventually...

God's LOVE to you all...

[moonraven]

XXX

Sorry--too Luddite to remove an entire post.

[moonraven]

Ward Churchill, a Native American, was forced to resign his position as Chair of Ethnic Studies (he is still a tenured professor, for the moment) at that university in Colorado because he made the case that 9/11 should not have been unexpected given the US's history of genocide and interventionism. I said the same thing on the very day, 9/11, on Mexican television. It happened that my employer agreed with me--but it wouldn't have mattered to me anyway.

He's getting plenty of hate mail--and plenty of hassles in a racist state like Colorado, but I doubt seriously that he will doubt his convictions, or sink into a profound depression. Depression is repressed anger--which instead of being directed outward, is directed inward. If anything, by speaking his mind very directly, he probably vaccinated himself against depression.

I'm very sorry that you lost your job, Paulie--but if you were as arrogant and unconscious in regard to the messages you received in that school as you were to those that you have been given on this forum, then I would have to take a page from Ward Churchill's book and say that your dismissal should not have been all that unexpected.

In any case, good luck in your next caper!

[refazenda]

It's interesting how people get upset sometimes at reality. The reality is that there are a lot of people who do not like the US. Not necessarily the people (though we have all heard of and possibly seen the "Ugly American" out there), but certainly the US government. That's just a fact. And the US, knowing that some people hate it so much, should not have been surprised that someone blew up a major landmark and killed a lot of poeple. It is not the first time, and furthermore, if anyone remembers Oklahoma City they will realize that some American "patriots" also killed innocent children. So there should be no surprise factor.

At the same time, those people did not deserve to die. But I will say this: if Mr. Churchill is a Native American, I am sure he knows the history of the US in relation to his ancestors, and in knowing that history might simply think of this as the chickens coming home to roost.

Putting it another way (and shifting to another part of the world), some Israeli government officials who were once "freedom fighters" were also considered terrorists. Now they must deal with terrorism against them. This was more recent (events of the 20th Century), but nonetheless shows a shift in their position. The same argument can be made by some in looking at the history of the US. Tea, anyone?

Just my $.02 - analysis without any

[ls650]

The 'essay' in question:
http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=news&c=recent&view=9&long=1

It's not much of an essay - and I find it hard to have any sympathy for the man. Calling those victims who worked in the WTC (whether a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald, a receptionist, a maintenance worker, or a dishwasher at "Windows on the World") "little Eichmanns" is truly stupid.

[moonraven]

ls650:

Perhaps you only skimmed the Churchill piece--or didn't make it to this part?

"The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counterattack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong about a number of things."

And perhaps you are not familiar with the defense of Eichmann--that he was a "good German who only followed orders"? Although I was too young to grasp the significance of the Nuremberg Trials when they were held, I do remember the Eichmann trial--and I suspect a lot of other folks do, too. To say that Churchill is "stupid" because he saw the parallel between the German people in the 30s and the folks in the US much more recently seems a bit lacking in argumentation--and implies that other folks who have written about that similarity are also "stupid"--when it seems clear that folks who do not see the connection are the ones whose cerebral matter suffers from underuse.

And perhaps you are not aware that Churchill basically said the same thing that Susan Sontag (RIP, recently) also said--and received a blast of beep for at the time--only his "stream of consciousness" technique lacked the elegance of her French-style essay?

I have personally been struggling for several months now with the painful process of writing a theater piece about one of the US's more shameful chapters of genocide in regard to Native Americans--the Nez Perce War of 1877--and I find myself very much connected to and, as a Native American, reflected in what Churchill has been saying in his articles and books for a number of years now. The piece he wrote the same day as the 9/11 incidents occurred was the springboard for a book: "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens : Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality".

[ls650]

[moonraven]

You might have chosen a different word than "stupid". Stupidity and poor taste are not the same thing.

To complain about that kind of name calling (little Eichmanns) and then to do it yourself by calling him stupid (which sounds like sandbox talk) undercut your credibility dramatically with this poster. Not that it matters, I suppose.....

[ls650]

<shrug>