The Try-Works

Ward Churchill will be teaching a class at the University of Colorado, organized by his students and outside the purview of the institution itself.  Meaning, it might be possible to actually learn something.  The course will be called, “ReVisioning American History:  Colonization, Genocide, and Formation of the U.S. Settler State.”

From the WCSN site, Professor Churchill describes it thusly:

This course is an entirely voluntary exercise for all parties involved.  It carries no credit, fulfills no institutional requirements, involves payment of no tuition, entails no paycheck to its instructor . . .  The sole purpose of the course is to provide those desiring it a critical and comprehensive alternative to the triumphal narrative upon which the eurosupremacist orthodoxy of scholarship has been constructed, refined, and is currently being (re)imposed with increasing rigidity on campuses across the United States . . .

It’s controlled enrollment.  Media, institutional goons, and anti-Churchill bloggers need not apply.  The rest of you, I’ll see Tuesday, October 6, 6:30 to 9:15 in Humanities 1B80 on the CU Boulder campus.  Map, here.

Following some quotes from Harry Crews, some of which I’ve probably already posted somewhere, sometime. I’m getting interested in Mr. Crews. I’ve finished the first two of the books checked out last week, This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven and Karate is a Thing of the Spirit, and have a couple of posts coming, for those four of you who care about the books portion of this blog. One about the literary fascination with physical competition, and the other about Harry Crews’s extreme humanism.

I’ve started Car, which is the great American gearhead novel. More coming on that, probably, but I also finally saw Quentin Tarantino’s gearhead flick, Death Proof, last weekend, which seems to run a similar motif. It’s been nagging at me all week, and I finally figured out why this evening: it was the adaptation of JG Ballard’s Crash which the purported adaptation wasn’t. Y’know, “the keys to a new sexuality born from a perverse technology,” to crib from Amazon. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as disappointed in a flick as I was in Crash, and it was because it captured none of the vigor, violence, and psychosis of JG Ballard’s work. Death Proof did. To a lesser degree, but it did. I’d have had Kurt Russell win out in the end, but, hell, that’s me.

Anyway, Harry Crews in his own words, culled from around the Internet. I’ll post a link to a full audio interview later.

So, the dumbasses out there that are watching television until they are rotting in their souls, watching Walter Cronkite and Happy Days, who cannot read my fiction, and say that it’s gratuitous, I say they have no eyes, no ears, no heart, no mouth, no sympathy, no charity for the human predicament. And they think that the human predicament and situation is living over in suburbia with a high wall around yourself and worrying about your annuities and your tax-sheltered income.

. . .

You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That’s what I’ve discovered about writing. The world doesn’t want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read–if you wait for the time, you’ll never do it. Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.

. . .

I never wanted to be well-rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.

. . .

For many and complicated reasons, circumstances had collaborated to make me ashamed that I was a tenant farmer’s son. As weak and warped as it is, and as difficult as it is even now to admit it, I was so humiliated by the fact that I was from the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in the worst hookworm and rickets part of Georgia I could not bear to think of it, and worse to believe it. Everything I had written had been out of a fear and loathing for what I was and who I was. It was all out of an effort to pretend otherwise. I believe to this day, and will always believe, that in that moment I literally saved my life, because the next thought–and it was more than a thought, it was a dead-solid conviction–was that all I had going for me in the world or would ever have was that swamp, all those goddamn mules, all those screwworms that I’d dug out of pigs and all the other beautiful and dreadful and sorry circumstances that had made me the Grit I am and will always be. Once I realized that the way I saw the world and man’s condition in it would always be exactly and inevitably shaped by everything which up to that moment had only shamed me, once I realized that, I was home free.

. . .

I’ve never had any notion of shooting myself. You know how they put that [shapes hand like a gun and awkwardly points his finger against the roof of his mouth]–eat the gun. Put that son of a bitch in there and pull the trigger. Well, yeah, you put brains on the ceiling. But it also–the blow back–you got brains come out of your nose, out of your fucking ears. Out of your mouth. I mean, you’d think it would blow, but it’s like a blow back in a fire. And I just–nah. I don’t think so.

. . .

I’m old enough now . . . I thought, back 30 years ago when I started–well, I didn’t start 30 years ago, but that’s when The Gospel Singer came out, 30 years ago this year–and I thought I was gonna be better than I am. I mean, I’m all right, and I’m not whining, but I thought I was going to be better than I am. I was thinking about this–thinking about it a lot, more than I should–but two or three days ago, I thought to myself, ‘Well, y’know, I wouldn’t be surprised if the very best novelists don’t think that. At least sometimes.’ I always think of that thing Faulkner said–well, I think of a lot of things that Faulkner said–but he said, ‘We all start as poets, find that too difficult and go to short stories, find that too difficult and go to the easiest of all forms, the novel.’ It’s the easiest because it’ll tolerate more errors and false moves without the reader stopping and putting it down and making a sandwich and forgetting about it.

. . .

If you’ve heard one story about pissin’ in an ice box when you’re drunk, you’ve heard ‘em all.

. . .

How many marriages have you known that the man and the woman would come into parties, they were smiling to one another? They were holding hands, they were arriving in the same car. They, as they say, ‘maintained appearances.’ And then one day you hear from a friend, ‘Did you know that Pete and Sally’s gettin’ a divorce?’ And you think, ‘No man! Wait a minute. I didn’t know that. No, you gotta be wrong. Pete and Sally came to my house and they were all huggy-bear, kissy-mouth and that kind of bullshit thing.’ But no. Underneath, the worms were crawling. They’re eating eyeballs… All very sad. All very tragic. And all very ugly enough to make a man almost murderously angry. But that’s the nature of the world. I don’t know about you, but the only world I know is the one I see.

. . .

Alcohol whipped me. Alcohol and I had many, many marvelous times together. We laughed, we talked, we danced at the party together; then one day I woke up and the band had gone home and I was lying in the broken glass with a shirt full of puke and I said, ‘Hey, man, the ball game’s up’.

. . .

The reading public bothers me, though. They don’t want to read about the blood and bones and guts of an issue. They want to read about something they’re not going to have to think about, and if it does hurt them, as say Love Story does, it won’t last very long. What has happened in this country is a failure of the imagination.

. . .

I had possessions once. I mean, I had them up around my fucking neck. I thought and felt that I was not in control, that they owned me. After all, if you have a house and a car and nine jillion pieces of furniture, you’re not mobile. You’re not anything. You’re stuck. Some people will say it’s a great way to be stuck, and maybe it is for them, but the notion of having a bunch of shit that I have to stay around and take care of doesn’t wear well with me.

. . .

But in terms of the satisfaction you get from doing something or the way you feel about it, money ain’t shit. Money does not count. It just simply does not. If money meant anything, then you would never become a writer anyway.”

. . .

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a violent person. But if you wrong me, I’ll kill your fucking ass, and I’ll spend the rest of my life in jail. I’ll kill your fucking ass and you can count on it; depend on it.

. . .

Faulkner’s rhetoric is the sea around us whose depth more than one of us has drowned. He is such an overwhelming talent that he has damaged a whole generation of writers, because they all come along and try to be Faulkner and to write about the stuff that to him was a blood-and-bone issue and to them only a kind of romantic nonsense. You see, you can’t fake any of this in art.

. . .

Being a fiction writer is a good way to go crazy, it’s a good way to be a nervous wreck, it’s a good way to become a drunk. You continually pick at yourself, the little sores that you have. They scab over and you pick them open again. Other people not only let them scab over, they let them scar over. They leave it alone. Writers don’t do that. They can’t keep their fingers out of the sore. They’ve got to keep it bleeding. And it’s off that blood that they make their stuff.

Because you Try-Works readers need a little more Country & Western (and I don’t use that ampersand lightly) music in your lives.

The usual Try-Works trolls have been huffing and puffing about my post on the latest news from Iraq: namely, that according to British polling organization ORB, 1.2 million Iraqis have died violent deaths as a result of our invasion. As you might expect they’re taking issue with the ORB’s conclusion because, like, it just isn’t “common sense.”

Since these are the same stock of fucking idiots who got this abattoir called Iraq rolling, you’ll excuse me if I don’t put much stock in their “common sense.” But, hoo boy, is it fun to watch them fume. And, even better, to see a couple regular Try-Works commenters rip them to shreds, with one of the best lines coming from long-time commenter Nixon:

Laurie, what is the magical body count where the number of deaths in Iraq begins to bother you? Please, pick a number between 1 dead innocent Iraqi and 27 million dead Iraqis (every single one of them). How may Iraqi’s will have to die before you think the number is too many?

It’s a damn good question. And one I’d really like one of these neo-con shits to answer. But, since they won’t, I will.

My answer is the title of this post: 2,974.

After the death of 2,974 Iraqis, I’d say Iraqi insurgents would be perfectly within their rights to invade the US.

To bomb the infrastructure of major US cities back into the fucking stone age. Including water treatment facilities and the electrical grid. Yeah, the old, the young and the infirm will die like flies, but, hell, that’s war.

To overthrow the government and institute one of their own choosing in its place. One beholden to Iraqi interests, of course.

To summarily gun down any American who doesn’t immediately comply with demands shouted at them in Arabic.

To employ mercenaries, with no military or legal check on their actions, to terrorize America’s streets.

To conduct continual, brutal raids on American households. Rousting families in the middle of the night, humiliating them, tearing through their personal possessions, and, of course, disappearing family members.

To kidnap American civilians arbitrarily. To detain them in concentration camps without due process nor any possible appeal to a rule of law.

To sodomize them with foreign objects.

To beat them to death with their bare hands.

To waterboard them.

To torture them.

To rape their children.

To cluster bomb American towns in hopes of possibly catching a terrorist in the firestorm.

And by terrorist, I mean any American who dares resist this hypothetical invasion.

Something which, obviously, no American would have any ethical right to do.

After all, why would any reasonable American resist this kind of liberation?

So, anyway, that’s my answer: 2,974.

Update: I realize the fundamental flaw in my logic, of course. After all, there was no evidence whatsoever that Iraq posed any threat at all to the United States, let alone had ever harmed an American citizen, prior to America’s invasion.

On the flipside, there’s incontrovertible evidence that the United States has butchered, using the lowest possible estimate, about 25 times 2,974.

I’ll ask the same question I asked in the initial post: what tactics would you be considering to put a stop to the murder? To get the murderers off your land and away from your children?

I’ll just link to this “scoop” from Mr. Martin about Ward Churchill with no comment. I’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for the howls of outrage and the tearing out of hair, and I think I’ll just sit back and enjoy the show for now.

As Columbus Day rolls around, one invariably gets in arguments with one’s peers about the Lord Admiral’s legacy.  And, of course, one invariably gets called a revisionist by the sort of half-read goons who get their historical model from Clear Channel shock-jocks. 

The fact is that most of the opposition to Columbus day is a result of the writings of Columbus’ contemporaries.  He was rightly considered a murderous thug by many of his peers, and his own journals do nothing to dissuade one of this impression.

But historical revisionism exists, and as such, I thought I’d point to one of my favorite examples.  The following was penned in a diary by an Italian nobleman who sailed with Columbus.  The Lord Admiral he refers to is none other than the Great Navigator himself.

…I captured a very beautiful Carib women, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me and with whom…I conceived desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it and treated me with her finger nails in such manner that I wished I had never begun. But seeing that, I took a rope and thrashed her well…. Finally we came to an agreement.

Pretty clear, right?  Also probably a pretty good indication of what initial, um, contact constituted for the indigenous women being contacted.

So, how do you think it ended up in the history books? 

Try this on for size from Pulitzer prize winning author and Harvard historian, Samuel Eliot Morison:

In the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola they found young beautiful women, who everywhere were naked, in most places accessible, and presumably complaisant. . . Never again may mortal men hope to recapture the amazement, the wonder, the delight of those October days in 1492, when the new world gracefully yielded her virginity to the conquering Castilians.

What else would you call that besides historical revisionism?

Except, y’know, rape.  And a pathological reveling in rape fantasy that would make Albert DeSalvo consider therapy.

I read a ton of Denver histories over the summer.  Most of which were impenetrable, and didn’t manage to penetrate me in the least.  There’s something about local histories which seem something like trying to eat a bowl full of cotton balls.  Meaning, perfectly sanitary, duller’n hell, and after you spit the dry taste out of your mouth, utterly forgettable.  One I read, The Wildest of the West, was different.  It was a run-down of Denver’s whorehouses, criminal enterprises, duels and fantastic tales.  It was a gas.  Inspired by it, I was pilfering pictures from the Denver Public Library’s Western History and Genealogy digital image collection and posting them on the other site for shits and grins.

Here’s one of my favorites, titled “Richard F. Heilman“. The summary reads:

Heilman, recaptured after the 1947 escape from the State Penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado, has a rifle aimed at his blood spattered, half shaved head. His hand, wounded by gunshot, is wrapped in bloody rags; he sits holding it. The guard holding the gun wears mittens. A trash can and dresser flank the convict. Heilman was convicted of kidnapping Deputy District Attorney Fred Pferdesteller in Denver, 4/24/45.

More to come.

And, yeah, I know, I’ve used that picture before, but just so’s you know, I’m a man of my word. I checked six Harry Crews books out of the library. In chronological order:

This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven
Karate is a Thing of the Spirit
Car
The Hawk is Dying
The Mulching of America
Celebration

I finished the first, was heartily amused, and am about a third of the way through the second. The thing I keep being struck by is, for all of the great grisly humor and grotesques that inhabit his books, Mr. Crews’ command of all the things that keep me reading novels. Y’know: metaphor, image, theme and old fashioned non-PoMo narrative. Sounds pretty banal, and it is, but maybe I’ll come up with something smarter as I move on. Right now, I’m spending most of my time wondering what the fuck it would take to actually drive one’s fingers through a plank of wood.

And if I have one more glass of Jim Beam, I just might try it. With, I’m guessing, unfortunate results.

Anyway, yeah, I’ve linked to this before too, probably in the same post where I previously posted the picture, but the Harry Crews website. From which comes one of my favorite quotes by one of my other favorite writers, Flannery O’Connor:

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.”

—Flannery O’Connor, “The Fiction Writer & His Country”

But Harry Crews is the reason I get up in the morning.

Watching Mr. Crews do his thing brought me to a new resolution. That is: read fewer books about scalp-hunting, genocide, the overthrow of governments, etc.; read far more fucking good novels.

I’m gonna stand by that. Harry Crews and Larry Brown — just off the top of my head — are two gentlemen who I’ve read far too little of, but whom I thoroughly fucking enjoy every time I crack cover on one of their books. My new-September resolution is to start tracking more of their shit and getting to reading.

According to a new study, this time by British polling organization ORB, there have been 1.2 million violent deaths in a Iraq as a result of the US invasion and occupation.

That’s a number that equals Cambodia’s killing fields and the Rwandan genocide, and it’s all ours. We’re no less culpable than those in Cambodia or Rwanda who washed their hands of the exterminations going on around them. Worse, as Alan Greenspan recently acknowledged, we’re enjoying an economy fueled by this holocaust. We benefit by these mass graves.

So here’s a question for you: what do you think an appropriate response would be from the people being exterminated? If it were your family? Your friends? Your people? How long would you wait? What would you sacrifice? What would you do?

Any ideas?

Yeah. I thought so.

And here’s a last question: how much sympathy would you have for the perpetrator population who stood by and watched their government liquidate your people?

I’d guess just about as much as they deserve.

I like Brenda Norrell a lot.  I like Brenda Norrell a whole lot.  I’m of the opinion Vincent Carroll oughtta be shitcanned tomorrow, and Brenda Norrell oughtta be hired to take his place at the Rocky Mountain News.

Show of hands?

Anyway, here’s a great recap of the top seven censored stories to come out of Indian country in 2007, penned by Ms. Norrell.  I’m posting it in full because, if you ain’t figured it out, I like Brenda Norrell.

The “Project Censored 2007″ awards are out and most of what was censored in Indian country was ignored. American Indian readers of the Censored blog say these topics were the most censored during the past year:

–Silencing of traditional and grassroots’ voices by those in power
–Nuclear, uranium and coal genocide of Indigenous
–Border deaths and abuse of Indigenous; racism in border news reporting
–American Indian delegations in Venezuela
–Zapatistas’ meetings at US/Mexico border
–Leonard Peltier

The silencing of traditional and grassroots’ voices by those in power includes tribal leaders and councils who have silenced the voices of spiritual leaders and other people in their communities. Those in power continue censoring these voices in the tribally-owned news media; by court actions; local political oppression and access to tribal services.

Explaining the role of “puppet tribal governments in the United States,” Hopi traditional elder Dan Evehema said it best, when he was 104 years old, before his death. Speaking through a translator, Evehema said the elected Hopi government was a “puppet government of the United States.”

Evehema said the elected tribal government was never recognized or endorsed by the traditional Hopi elders, who maintained constant support for Navajos at Big Mountain and elsewhere on Black Mesa in Arizona, and the Navajos’ right to remain on the coal-rich land that the United States government attempts to forcibly relocate Navajos from.

In some cases of media censorship of American Indians, highly-paid spin doctors discredit grassroots Indian voices in the mainstream media, such as in the case of the Navajos’ Dooda Desert Rock opposition to the planned power plant in New Mexico.
In other cases, tribes flush with casino revenues suppress spiritual leaders and target traditional people with police or court actions, as with the Shenandoah family of the Oneida in New York. Still in other tribes with casinos, including some in southern Arizona, management corporations reap huge profits while community members live in poverty.

One topic that is censored in the American Indian media is opposition to the war in Iraq. United States’ military recruiters continue to target Indians, Chicanos, blacks and poor whites to die in Iraq, as pointed out by Western Shoshone Carrie Dann. In Iraq, American Indian soldiers are considered “expendable,” remain serving as many as three tours of duty and are placed in the most deadly front lines.

As Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz and other American Indian activists point out, the same United States government responsible for the genocide of entire Indian tribes is now calling on Indian people to become soldiers and carry out the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in distant lands.

Censorship claws away, rooted in many sources. Advertisers play a role in the censorship, because publishers and editors often place revenues before truth. Sometimes elected political leaders control the newspapers, while other times politicians oppress editors. Sometimes writers and publishers fear for their own safety or loss of progress in their careers. Sometimes they just fear living daily life in a small community with harassment.

Access is not always granted to the media. The Navajo Nation Council opens their sessions to the news media, except for executive sessions on legal matters. However, other legislative councils require special permission for the media to attend sessions. The permission is seldom granted.

Across the nation, grassroots people struggling to protect sacred sites are receiving increased press coverage. Their efforts, however, have been thwarted if the struggles conflict with the agendas of tribal politicians.

Any issue related to Leonard Peltier tops the most censored in Indian country list, including the theater production “My Life is My Sundance.” The role of the American Indian Movement and International Indian Treaty Council in protecting local communities, events and sacred land is another of the most censored issues. In Sonora, Mexico, this includes working to halt pesticides banned in other countries which now results in the death of Yaqui in agricultural fields.

The fact that many of the migrants dying at the US/Mexico border are Indigenous Peoples is a fact seldom covered by American Indian media. Victor Rocha’s Pechanga Net is one of the few that does cover this.

Recently two Guatemalan Mayan women died on Tohono O’odham land, walking with their children in hopes of a better life. The Tohono O’odham Nation also has on its land an outdoor detention center near San Miguel, Ariz., where women and children are detained. One Mayan called it a prison “cage.” The U.S. is also constructing spy towers on Tohono O’odham tribal land, which would enable tribal police and federal border agents to spy on the daily lives of O’odham at home.

A series of great events was censored in 2007 by most of the American Indian media, including the border gatherings of the Zapatistas. Subcomandante Marcos and Mayan Comandantes from Chiapas established the Cucapa fishing resistance camp in Baja, Mexico and supported Seri, Mayo, O’odham, Yaqui, Kickapoo and Raramuri struggles in northern Mexico in 2006 and 2007.

The Indigenous Peoples Day event in Tucson, hosted by the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders in August and Yaqui director Jose Matus, was one of the most powerful events censored in 2007.

Indigenous youths across the nation rose up with their voices and their video cameras, in a new era of courage and filmmaking. Robert Free Galvan, Native activist in Seattle, continued his efforts uniting Indians in the United States and Canada with Venezuela President Hugo Chavez and the Indigenous Peoples of Venezuela.

The Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas was established, organized by Tohono O’odham Mike Flores, to fight militarization of the border, prevent deaths on the border and halt corporate profiteering, while upholding Indigenous rights.

On the Navajo Nation, nuclear free activists united with Indigenous from Australia, India, Africa and Brazil to ensure a nuclear free future. Western Shoshone joined forces with Indigenous in Australia, Peru and Ghana to fight gold mining and human rights atrocities by Newmont and other mining companies, who are coring out of the hearts of mountains.

On the northern border, the Mohawks have led the Indigenous movement with their strength and adherence to no-compromise. From the ongoing defense of their territories to the bold action of a recent trip to Venezuela to join forces to fight colonial oppression, Mohawk women have led the Indigenous empowerment movement, based on the Great Law.

From the great women of the Western Shoshone to the Navajo, Lakota, Goshute and Algonquin, across the Plains and throughout all of the Indian Nations, women have given birth to hope, resistance and the constancy that ensures the procreation of a spiritual way of life for the future.

Throughout the Americas, Indigenous continue to risk their lives to fight the genocidal invasion of nuclear waste dumps, nuclear testing, gold mining, power plants, coal mining, corporate profiteering and genetically-modified foods. They struggle everyday, most without pay or recognition.

The Censored blog’s Most Censored Award for 2007 goes out to all Indigenous Peoples who struggle, quietly and alone, without recognition or pay, answering only to the Creator.

This one’s for you.

• Pack your bags, mama, I’ve found the vacation spot for us.
• “Looks like all those Holocaust Museums were a waste of effort.”
• Everybody knows the inevitable result of this kind of fucking stupidity?  Right?
• “‘It has been called sperm, semen, ejaculate, seed, man fluid, baby gravy, jizz, cum, pearl necklace, gentleman’s relish, wad, pimp juice, number 3, load, spew, donut glaze, spunk, gizzum, cream, hot man mustard, squirt, goo, spunk, splooge, love juice, man cream, and la leche.’ What mesmerizing vernacular poetry!”
• “The next piece of shit is Christopher Columbus. Chris Loved raping women and committing genocide in order to get gold. As my sister said when she read Columbus’ Log, “It’s all about the Gold.” Some things just don’t change, do they, and you know what I mean. On Monday, September 3, it was the 515 anniversary of his original journey of death. No doubt there are re-enacters following his path right now, just like they do every year. Something about sick and insane genocidal maniacs that people just Love. I don’t get it. Fuck! Millions of people Love George Bush and Dick Cheney!”
• John Kerry: still a gutless shit.
• “As the neocons prepare to sell us another lemon — this time a shock and awe mass murder campaign against Iran — it is demonstrative to reflect upon the convoluted lies the neocons passed off as supposedly damning ‘intelligence’ prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For instance, those with a sharp memory — or sharper than the average American amnesiac — may recall the neocons claiming Saddam Hussein possessed UAV drones, infernal machines he planned to use against American grade schoolers.”

After 22 years of settler-state obfuscation, and votes against by the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the UN has finally passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Y’know, just another international agreement for the United States to piss on in direct violation of the US Constitution.

Read it here.

The following was handed out at DePaul by folks supporting the National Project to
Defend Critical Thinking and Dissent in Academia.  Needless to say, there’s a special place for ‘em in my tiny little black chicken heart.  (I’m thinking of trademarking that.)

Day of Shame for DePaul Administration; Resistance Emerges
On the resignation of Norman Finkelstein

The first day of classes this year was a sad one for DePaul University. After a year and more of extraordinary pressure, as well as a concerted smear campaign (which got extremely dirty with the recent release of “internal memos”) — the Administration got what they wanted: Norman Finkelstein will no longer be a part of the life of DePaul. They have forced the resignation of a remarkable thinker and teacher who was well-respected by scholars and students alike, they have violated the basic norms and practices of the tenure process, and they have re-enforced a terrible precedent setting in across the country.

On the same day, there was a very significant outpouring of support and protest from students and faculty at DePaul and elsewhere. An atmosphere of debate and discussion erupted, where very quickly much of the campus was discussing urgent matters of academic freedom, and the future of critical thinking and dissent on campus. People, including many freshmen, boldly stepped forward and held a protest and march which reverberated across the school.

It is unfortunate that things ended up with the settlement and resignation of Professor Finkelstein. This is not what many who stepped forward hoped for.

Finkelstein has said that he’s moving on. But we cannot accept what the University has done, and we cannot move on with business-as-usual. There is a foul stench on campus. The DePaul Administration must be held responsible for this deplorable and unconscionable sequence of events. We cannot let stand the completely unjust grounds upon which, nor the process through which this was done; we must demand a repudiation and apology from the Administration. This goes against everything that the intellectual life of a university is supposed to stand for.

This battle has both been very much about Norman Finkelstein, but it’s also been about something much bigger — the overall assault on critical thinking and dissent on campuses. With the recent firing of tenured-professor Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado, the attacks on Middle East and Ethnic Studies, and with the actions of David Horowitz, who was brought to DePaul just this spring and who has just announced plans for “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” on campuses across the country in October- these
attacks are growing by leaps and bounds. And if the whole process and grounds on which Norman Finkelstein was forced to resign are not repudiated and apologized for — then this opens the door for other attacks on professors, and it further sets a chill onto campuses everywhere. Now is the time for the resistance to both spread much more broadly, and come forward even more boldly. There’s not a minute to lose.

–Penny Brown and Samantha Hamlin, Supporters of the National Project to Defend Critical Thinking and Dissent in Academia, www.defendcriticalthinking.org

Images from my favorite FBI COINTELPRO operation. Break out your colored pencils, kids. Your tax dollars at work.

One of the best things about Baudrillard is that no matter what you think of him (and I love him as the king of one-liners, but not so much otherwise), you can have a ball applying his theories to, well, anything, no matter how mediocre or dull. Case in point as follows. It’s entertaining, if more than a little dumb.

When Bush stammers publicly about freedom, democracy, and the axis of evil, American media commentators gloss his remarks positively. Reporters and pundits chronically overestimate Bush in much the way Chance’s admirers do, discoursing about him as if he actually possessed a political philosophy and an understanding of government policies. They overlook, understate, or make excuses for his slipshod syntax, reliance on clichés, and inability to answer either theoretical or factual questions. They inevitably refer to him as if he were a “real” person with a complex sensibility, rather than a simulacrum entirely composed of sound bites and photo opportunities.

After the press conference of April 13, 2004, for example, one television reporter acknowledged that Bush had spoken “clumsily” at times, but speculated that the president’s plain speech is part of his appeal, that he uses the idioms of ordinary Americans. Other commentators approved his evident “conviction” about the war in Iraq — referring to moments when Bush uttered the clichés about freedom with apparent vehemence. On the April 13th, 2004, edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews expressed his admiration for Bush’s refusal to acknowledge any responsibility or any mistakes — a bizarre encomium, considering the long and embarrassing moments when Bush slouched down the side of the podium, grinning and stammering, unable to think of any response, as if a computer virus had infected his personal software.

On the following day, the New York Times lead editorial characterized the president’s performance as follows: “Mr. Bush was grave and impressive while reading his opening remarks, but his responses to questions were distressingly rambling and unfocused.”[7] The use of “impressive” seems precisely calibrated to ward off the blow of “distressingly.” None of the commentators mentioned the ingratiating smile that constantly played about the President’s lips, a nervous and inappropriate aspect of his demeanor, particularly considering the serious content of the reporters’ questions. No one referred to the software glitch, and it was not shown again, let alone played repeatedly — unlike other moments televised in 2004, such as Howard Dean’s “scream” and Janet Jackson’s bared breast. After observing how media pundits shed the best possible light on Bush, one has to wonder: are journalists and pundit colluding in his legitimization, or are they, like Chance’s many admirers, actually taken in?

Keep reading.

Just got this today.  Funny, Al Lewis has a blog at the Denver Post where he posts correspondence, and for some reason I ain’t seen hide nor hair of this letter.

Wonder why?

Cajamarca, Peru
August 9, 2007

Mr. Al Lewis
Columnist, Denver Post

Dear Mr. Lewis,

I would like to send an open letter to you and to the academic community of the University of Denver.

I have read your column, Not all that Shines is Good (was this the original title?), and I feel only consternation and indignation at the decision of the Dean of the School of International Studies at Denver University to award a prize to the ex-CEO of Newmont, Mr. Wayne Murdy, “for building relationships between Denver and the rest of the world.”  Due to the actions of Newmont, for the rest of the world where this company operates, Denver, Colorado is now seen as the headquarters of the company that destroys our ecosystems, corrupts our societies, threatens our lives, and condemns our people to live in pollution and poverty.

I am a parish priest in Cajamarca, where the Yanacocha Mine operates, the largest gold mine in Latin America, of which Newmont is the principal shareholder.  The majority of my life has been spent studying in different universities in Peru, as well as the Papal Gregorian University in Rome.  My life has been tied to academic work at universities and to pastoral service among the poorest peasants of my diocese, helping them to live in harmony with God, their brothers and sisters, and Nature.  I have always believed that universities are places for searching for knowledge and truth, and ethically I have always felt that “the truth shall set us free” (John 8.32).

So I was completely dumbfounded to hear that Denver University awarded a prize to Mr. Wayne Murdy, who has been responsible not only for the economic success of Newmont, but also for the destruction of habitats and the suffering of so many people in Ghana, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Cajamarca, Peru.

I met Mr. Murdy in two shareholders’ meetings in Denver, which I attended to present a group of demands having to do with violations of human rights and environmental damages that his company is committing in Cajamarca.  On both occasions, Mr. Murdy publicly committed to write letters responding to the demands.  Mr. Murdy lied to us, as he never sent the letters.  On the contrary, his company initiated an espionage operation in 2006 to intimidate and endanger the security of environmental leaders in Cajamarca. And in recent months, we have received death threats, and dirty campaigns have been unleashed against us in many of the media connected to Yanacocha.  Most painful is that three peasant leaders who were defending their water and lands have been killed for opposing Newmont’s expansion of mining activities in Cajamarca (November 2004 in La Zanja, August 2006 in Combayo, and November 2006 in Yanacanchilla.)

Yanacocha removes more than 600 tons of rock daily, it consumes more than 3 million gallons of fuel monthly in the watershed of my region, and it uses immense quantities of cyanide and water for leaching.  The consequences are devastating: lakes, springs, rivers and streams have disappeared, in order to make way for new monstrous mountains for cyanide leaching.  In all of the rivers affected by the mining operations, there have been systematically documented fish deaths.  Hundreds of peasant families have lost their water sources, and many others complain that their livestock have died because they cannot drink the water, or they die from unexplained strange illnesses. As the official health statistics show, so-called environmental illnesses have increased exponentially in the region: dermatitis, conjunctivitis, and respiratory illnesses- all during the same period of time as Newmont’s mining operations.

Of course, Yanacocha has also received awards in Peru: for provision of water, for social responsibility, and also for their work in communication.  All of these awards have been given by associations tied to the government, which is Newmont’s principal ally due to the money and benefits that many times are given to the families of government authorities for jobs or contracts with the company; or in other cases they have been awarded by private associations that receive donations or contributions from the mining company itself.  Personally, I had thought that only in poor countries would important institutions such as universities beg for funds from the companies that then impose conditions on research results.  I know that Denver is a city that has benefited from Newmont’s income.  But should a school in that University forget or turn a blind eye to the fact that a large part of that income comes from the dirty work that Newmont does in the rest of the world?  Even worse, that the School of International Studies awards a prize to Wayne Murdy for “building relationships between Denver and the rest of the world”.  The relationships that poor countries such as Peru would hope for with Denver are relationships of respect, collaboration, and solidarity, and not of lies, exploitation and abuse. As long as American institutions, such as the School of International Studies of Denver University, continue to close their eyes to the reality that Americans’ well-being is achieved at the cost of suffering, pollution, and exploitation of poor countries’ resources, prizes will not be awarded for the goodwill and wisdom of illustrious American citizens in solidarity with the rest of the world, but rather to promote impunity and justify greed, which in our countries translates into more poverty, more corruption, and environmental contamination.

What unpleasant news for the people of Ghana, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Peru to find out that a school at an American university, in exchange for financial support, ends up paying homage to a company such as Newmont, whose history is stained with the suffering of many countries!

Worse, in Cajamarca, Murdy’s award will not be seen as something far removed from our history.  According to the logic of the Dean of the business school at Denver University, certainly Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror, should be awarded a prize because over 500 years ago, also out of greed for gold, he murdered thousands of indigenous people and killed Atahualpa, the Inca ruler, a curious way in which the powerful of the North think they are creating relationships between our countries.  It is unacceptable that a University would be complicit in this.

Sincerely,
Father Marco Arana Zegarra
Recipient of the National Award for Human Rights, Peru

Word also has it that Tom Rowe has responded to Vincent Carroll’s horseshit column (first update).  Anyone wanna take a bet on whether the Rocky Mountain News prints it?

Stay tuned.

• Assault rocks on ebay.
• “The ‘This I Believe’ segments on NPR really make me want to hit something. These so-called ‘essayists’ are needlessly calm and the worldviews expressed generally involve some unhelpful ‘common sense’ you can all too easily obtain from a bland bookkeeper who has neither smiled nor walked on the wild side once in the past twelve years. So why do I listen to NPR? Well, I keep hoping that some crazy bastard will emerge, screaming ‘We’ve going to blow shit up in Torremolinos!’ and then proceed to deliver an enthusiastic, profanity-laced lecture on Borges, with a digression into the history of the graham cracker, with a mariachi band forcing the staid hosts to dance and speak in an inflection that isn’t that sedate, okay-I’ll-have-my-Valium-now NPR issue voice.”
• Olympic style genocide.
• “I’d like to ask Gioia’s boss, George W. Bush, how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors and composers he can name. Surprise me.”
• Toy Story 3, by Cormac McCarthy.
• Damn straight.
• Sex / Cheesecake / Good Girl Art.

Here and here for more.

Due to last week’s Eichmannalooza, I’ve been woefully out of touch with the latest Norman Finklestein news.  Mr. Finklestein is one of my favorite writers, and a hugely courageous critic of Israel, the US foreign policy propagated by our relationship with Israel, and the usage of charges of anti-Semitism leveled at anyone who criticizes Israel.  Needless to say this gets him in a bit of hot water from time to time.

As most of you know, Mr. Finklestein was denied tenure at Depaul recently after a massive and much hyped campaign by torture advocate, pathological liar and source-mining fraud, Alan Dershowitz.  (I’ve got a post coming soonly on one of Mr. Dershowitz’s more egregious whoppers.)

Well, a week or so ago, Depaul’s administration decided denying tenure wasn’t quite enough.  So they put Mr. Finklestein on administrative leave after a series of inane and unprovable allegations that he’d verbally abused members of the administration.  Mr. Finklestein swore civil disobedience, and just a day or two ago, the university and he reached a settlement.

All this while I was spending most of my free time reading Newmont Mining articles.  Which is probably a lesson of some sort, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what.

Anyway, you can get all the details and backstory here.

Update:  Well, I know the general lesson, of course.  Freedom of speech is absolutely guaranteed in this country, as long as you don’t ever make the mistake of exercising it.  And, if you’re dumb enough to pursue a job in academia, keep your fucking mouth shut and your fucking head down.