Schindler's List: The Girl in the Red Coat

The movie Schindler's List was filmed in black and white except for this small Jewish girl in a red coat who is seen several times in the film. In one scene, she avoids a round-up by slipping into a house and hiding under a bed.

Finally, however, we see her lifeless body flung on a cart before being dumped into a fire. Her pretty red coat is smeared with filth.

In this montage from Schindler's List, we see this little girl twice. Professor Paul Zweig describes this scene in his New York Times review of Thomas Keneally's novel:

[I]t began in earnest one summer day in 1942, when Schindler and his latest mistress were riding on horseback in the hills surrounding Cracow. Below them stretched a suburb with a wall around it, the new ghetto. Shouts drifted up the grassy slope, an SS Aktion was in course. Schindler saw Jews being driven out of houses, lined up and sorted with the crazed orderliness that was the signature of the killing machine. On one street, a man resisted, and an SS soldier shot him in the head. Schindler noticed a little girl in a red coat turn around to watch. The SS soldier patted her on the head and coaxed her back into the line. Schindler got off his horse and threw up. He understood now that the SS did not care who witnessed these acts, because the witnesses, even the little girl in the red coat, would die too. Death would erase the Jews, and also the killing. [Full text]

The cover of the book shows an adult holding the hand of a child with a red coat, but I don't remember anyone holding this child's hand. Perhaps the artist wishes someone had been holding her hand.

Link to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Davey Lane's Locker

The Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill has now been fired from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his lawyer David Lane has filed suit.

Lane told the Colorado Daily (7-25-07):

“I'm quite certain that we will find a jury who will give us a fair trial...I expect to crush them under the heel of my litigation boot.”

Mr. Paine, of PirateBallerina (July 27, 2007) opined:

Better hope that's better than a +10 Litigation Boot, Davey, 'cause we heard CU found the Evidence Of Truth (+100 Armor).

Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence

"The first responsibility of an intelligence professional is ground truth, and the second responsibility is to speak truth to power."---Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell

"Today, we face some of the greatest threats that any generation will ever know, and we must not be slow in confronting them. We must continue to emphasize integration across the Community to better serve our customers, provide frank, unencumbered analysis, and strengthen collection capabilities that continue to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable."--Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has interesting postings about our national security.

On July 22, 2007, Tim Russert had an exclusive interview with Mike McConnell on Meet the Press. [ODNI text]

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you an—a key judgment from this report [National Intelligence Estimate entitled “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland”], “We judge the U.S. homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.” In layman’s language, for the American viewers watching today, what is the most serious threat facing our country?

Admiral McCONNELL: Tim, the most serious threat is that the plotters that are being observed will be successful in penetrating our defenses and conducting an attack that would result in mass casualties. Their intent is to effect an attack with mass casualties. A secondary attempt, attempt would be political or infrastructure targets to even include economic targets that would have long-lasting impact.

MR. RUSSERT: Is it biological and chemical? Or the—is—do they achieve nuclear? [Full text]

On July 26, 2007, Mr. McConnell addressed the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on the topic of reforming America's national security.

Ward Churchill Case - Press Release - CU Regents Dismiss Ward Churchill

Below is a press release from the University of Colorado:

Ward Churchill Case - Press Release - CU Regents Dismiss Ward Churchill

July 24, 2007

BOULDER-The University of Colorado Board of Regents today voted to accept President Hank Brown’s recommendation to dismiss Professor Ward Churchill from the faculty of CU-Boulder for conduct that fell below minimum standards of professional integrity.

The vote concluded nearly two and a half years of an extensive faculty review process to investigate charges of research misconduct against Professor Churchill. More than 20 tenured faculty members from CU and other institutions served on three separate panels. Each panel conducted a thorough review of his work and faculty involved found evidence showing Professor Churchill engaged in research misconduct, and that it required serious sanction.

“The university has an obligation to ensure its faculty’s work is above reproach, said CU president Hank Brown. “Academic freedom requires academic integrity, responsibility and accountability.”

The record of the case www.cu.edu/churchillcase shows a pattern of serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct that fell below the minimum stand of professional integrity, involving fabrication, falsification, improper citation and plagiarism.

The university’s review of Professor Churchill focused on his professional activities, not his statements about victims of September 11, 2001. Professor Churchill, like every United States citizen, has the right to make controversial political statements. Early in the investigation, the university determined his speech was protected by the First Amendment. http://www.colorado.edu/news/reports/churchill/distefanostatement.html

The University of Colorado values academic freedom as the bedrock of any university. But for academic freedom to thrive, it must be accompanied by academic and professional integrity.

The lengthy review process adhered to shared governance procedures established by the faculty and adopted by the Regents. During the more than two years the investigative process has taken, Professor Churchill had the opportunity to present his position. The process allowed him to make his case in writing, in person, with his attorney and with his own witnesses.

The board’s decision to dismiss is final. Professor Churchill will receive one year’s salary as a tenured professor, but will be immediately relieved of his faculty post and responsibilities.

The University of Colorado is a three-university system with campuses in Boulder and Colorado Springs, and a Denver and Health Sciences Center campus located in downtown Denver and at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. CU is a premier teaching and research university, ranked sixth among public institutions in federal research expenditures by the National Science Foundation. Academic prestige is marked by CU’s four Nobel laureates, seven MacArthur “genius” Fellows, 18 alumni astronauts, 19 Rhodes Scholars and CU-Boulder’s ranking of 11th best public university and 34th best overall university in the world by the Institute for Higher Education.

For further information, please visit www.cu.edu or contact Ken McConnellogue at (303) 860.5626

Thank You, President Hank Brown!

"Controversy -- especially self-sought controversy -- doesn't immunize a faculty member from adhering to professional standards."---President Hank Brown

Picture Credit

Today the Wall Street Journal publishes an article by the President of the University of Colorado Hank Brown explaining why he fired Ward Churchill. Here are some highlights:

Why I Fired Professor Churchill
By HANK BROWN July 26, 2007; Page A13

...Mr. Churchill drew considerable attention to himself in an essay that compared 9/11 victims to notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

While no action was taken by the university with regard to his views on 9/11, many complaints surfaced at the time about his scholarship from faculty around the country. The university had an obligation to investigate. The complaints led to the formation of three separate investigative panels -- which included more than 20 of his faculty peers and which worked for over two years -- to unanimously find a pattern of serious, deliberate and repeated research misconduct that fell below minimum standards of professional integrity.

The panels found that Mr. Churchill rewrote history to fit his own theories. When confronted, he asserted he was not responsible. According to one report, "Professor Churchill has, on more than one occasion, claimed that certain acts that appear to have been his were instead the responsibility of some other actor: his editor or publisher, his assistant, or his former wife and collaborator." The report goes on to note that "we have come to see these claims as emblems of a recurrent refusal to take responsibility for errors . . . and a willingness to blame others for his troubles."

...A public research university such as ours requires public faith that each faculty member's professional activities and search for truth are conducted according to the academic standards on which an institution's reputation rests.

The University of Colorado's reputation was called into question in the matter of Ward Churchill. His claim that he was singled out for his free speech is a smokescreen.

Controversy -- especially self-sought controversy -- doesn't immunize a faculty member from adhering to professional standards. If you are a responsible faculty member, you don't falsify research, you don't plagiarize the work of others, you don't fabricate historical events and you don't thumb your nose at the standards of the profession. More than 20 of Mr. Churchill's faculty peers from Colorado and other universities found that he committed those acts. That's what got him fired....[full text]

Propagandistic "Art" That Denigrates American Indians

"[T]he colonized can over-come their situation through slitting the throat of their colonizer."--Fired Ex-Professor Ward Churchill

This picture is from the site of the Maoist MIM organization. In my opinion, the MIM denigrates American Indian people by depicting them as communist killers who are about to attack a home and murder people.

MIM doesn't care about issues that Indians care about; he cares about spreading communism and openly admits:

"MIM would only see importance in ...a struggle to resuscitate [First Nations] culture if it opposed imperialism........A national struggle that advances the fight against imperialism is positive. Preserving culture for its own sake is not part of the Marxist agenda. Whatever resources the tribes can wrest away from imperialism they should take." ["Resolutions on Cross-Cultural Breeding" 2004]

I can't help wondering who might be in the house that the demented artist who drew this picture wants to attack. I think that this sick puppy likes hurting people, but rationalizes his deviant impulses by cloaking them in the illusory imagery of communist liberation.

The Diary of Anne Frank

"I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out."---Anne Frank

Picture credit and on-line history of the teenaged writer Anne Frank and her times

Anne Frank died because ordinary people were terrorized, confused, or blinded by lies and didn't speak up against ignorant academics and criminals who spread an ideology based on lies, extremism, and hatred-- Nazism.

Throughout human history, there have always been demented teachers who have sought to spread their evil, ignorant, fanatical teachings. Sometimes these teachers of hate have been religous, and sometimes they have been secular. The teachers of hate usually have talked a lot about peace, freedom, and justice; but they always have created chaos, oppression, terrorism, and war.

Anne wrote in her diaries that she dreamed of becoming a writer. Hiding from the Nazis in an attic behind a moveable bookcase, Anne would never know that her little diaries, where she unlocked her heart to an imaginary friend "Kitty," would become one of the great books of the 20th Century.

Anne and her family were eventually denounced to the Gestapo, arrested, and deported to a concentration camp. This talented child died of typhus a few months before her 16th birthday in Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

More than 25 million copies of Anne's diary have been sold,
and the book has been translated into more than 50 languages.

According to Wikipedia:

Frank's already budding literary ambitions were galvanized on March 29, 1944 when she heard a broadcast made by the exiled Dutch Minister for Education, Art and Science, Gerrit Bolkestein, calling for the preservation of "ordinary documents—a diary, letters ... simple everyday material" to create an archive for posterity as testimony to the suffering of civilians during the Nazi occupation, and on May 20 notes that she has started re-drafting her diary with future readers in mind.

Here is a poignant slideshow about Anne's life set to Itzhak Perlman's music from the film Shindler's List, which is based on the book originally titled Shindler's Ark by the Australian-Irish writer Thomas Keneally.

Here is a narration with slideshow about Anne's life and fate.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

"Little Sure Shot"

This is a picture of the famous frontier sharpshooter and international showgirl Annie Oakley holding an animal pelt. Annie overcame very difficult childhood circumstances and went on to become a "star" in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She was America's first female superstar.

Another performer in Buffalo Bill's show, Sitting Bull, "adopted" the five-foot-tall Annie and gave her the Indian sobriquet "Watanya Cicilla," which was translated by Buffalo Bill's promoters as "Little Sure Shot."

A Lakota chief and holy man, Sitting Bull is famous because he defeated Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer on June 25-26, 1876 in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Sitting Bull is one of the most famous Indians in American history. According to Wikipedia:

In 1885, Sitting Bull was allowed to leave the reservation to join Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. He was rumored to earn about US$50 a week for riding once around the arena, where he was a popular attraction. Often asked to address the audience, he frequently cursed them in his native tongue to the wild applause of his listeners.

On a European tour, "Little Sure Shot" knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the future Kaiser Wilhelm. It was widely reported by "some uncharitable people" that "if Annie would have shot Wilhelm and not his cigarette, she could have prevented World War I." [Wikipedia]

Hollywood has immortalized Annie in Irving Berlin's musical Annie Get Your Gun. The musical has the hit songs "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better." At the end of this video, Annie sings, "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun." [Fun video of the musical's hit songs]

Perhaps you can't get a man with a gun; still, you can probably get a fellow's goat if you can shoot his butt out of his mouth.

Thank You!

Reprise of "Tomorrow" from Annie

Today the Regents at the University of Colorado voted 8:1 to fire the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill for research misconduct.

Thank you Mr. Paine, Mr. Martin, PB bloggers, and everyone in the Blogosphere for all your hard work.

Thank you Rocky Mountain News journalists for your terrific series of articles about Churchill.

Thank you Professors Thomas Brown and John LaVelle for your research about Churchill.

Thank you President Brown, the professors who served on the committees that evaluated Churchill's work, and the Regents.

We have a lot of smart, ethical scholars, researchers, bloggers, and journalists who stood up to Ward Churchill and the BIG LIE.

Tilting at Windmills!

"Hear me now Oh thou bleak and unbearable world,
Thou art base and debauched as can be;
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled,
Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!
I am I, Don Quixote, The Lord of La Mancha,
My destiny calls and I go,
And the wild winds of fortune Will carry me onward,
Oh whithersoever they blow.
Whithersoever they blow, Onward to glory I go!"---Cervantes

Amazing 6-year-old Amanda performs "I, Don Quixote" from The Man of La Mancha at the historic El Campanil Theatre in Antioch, California.

Wikipedia writes:

"Man of La Mancha is a 1965 Broadway musical in one act which tells the story of the "mad" knight Don Quixote as a play within a play, performed by Miguel de Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. It is performed on a single set, arranged to suggest, vaguely, a dungeon."

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow!

Here are pictures of talented young girls from all over the world who have played Annie on the stage. Alicia Morton (1999) sings Little Orphan Annie's famous celebration of optimism "Tomorrow!"

"It's a Hard Knock Life!" from the Musical Annie

Picture Credit: The Annie Site

The musical Annie has been performed by talented little girls from all over the world. Young girls everywhere love this musical about the optimistic drepression-era orphan.

This Youtube video gives credit to many international productions.

The musical Annie is based on a comic strip that was inspired by James Whitcomb Riley's 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie."

Maoist MIM Sings "Tomorrow!"

Picture Credit: Hooverville

"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"--Ward Churchill

Ever the optimist, the Maoist MIM checks in from some basement Hooverville to flog the bright future in his latest YouTube posting.

MIM seems to be commenting, in his usual Aesopian manner, on tomorrow's (7-24-07) much-anticipated vote on the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies, Ward Churchill.

C.U. Regents' Vote on Ward Churchill's Research Misconduct Set for Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The office of President Hank Brown posts this schedule for July 24, 2007:

CU Board of Regents Holds Special Meeting to Hear and Vote on Professor Churchill’s Case

Issued: July 19, 2007

WHO: University of Colorado Board of Regents, an elected nine-member board, has broad oversight of the university. One of the board’s responsibilities is to take action on recommendations for faculty dismissal. Regent policy provides that “the board shall take action, which may include adoption or modification of the president’s recommendation or dismissal of the action against the faculty member. The board’s action, which must be taken in public session, is final.”

WHY: CU-Boulder Professor Ward Churchill has requested a hearing in front of the Board of Regents based on CU President Hank Brown’s recommendation to dismiss him. Regent policy provides the faculty member an opportunity to request a hearing before the Board during executive session. The policy can be found at https://www.cu.edu/regents/Policies/Policy5I.htm

WHAT: The board has called a special meeting to provide Professor Churchill an opportunity for a hearing before to the board before it takes action on President Brown’s dismissal recommendation. Since this is a special meeting of the board, no public testimony will be taken as stated in Regent policy. https://www.cusys.edu/regents/Policies/Policy2L.htm
An open mike will be available after the event for anyone desiring to express their personal opinions on topics related to the events of the day.

WHEN and WHERE: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. at CU-Boulder’s University Memorial Center (UMC)8:00-8:15 a.m. Board convenes in public to announce it will go into executive session, UMC Room 235 (audio stream will be available at www.cu.edu)
8:15 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. (no earlier)
Board will be in executive session, which includes three parts:
1. Briefing by the board’s counsel
2. Hearing - includes three parties involved in the case (Churchill/attorney, university counsel and faculty’s Privilege and Tenure Committee/counsel). Each party will have a set amount of time to present its case to the board. The board can ask questions, but no new evidence can be presented.
3. Regents deliberate
No earlier than 4 p.m.
Regents will resume public session in UMC’s Glenn Miller Ballroom to vote on the president’s recommendation (video stream will be available at http://www.cu.edu/)

After regents meeting
CU President Brown and Board Chair Patricia Hayes will hold a press conference in UMC, Room 235. All media will need credentials from a recognized news agency to attend press conference, no exceptions. (video stream will be available at www.cu.edu)

VIDEO AND AUDIO STREAM: www.cu.edu
Audio stream of 8:00 a.m. public session and video stream of afternoon public session and press conference

Information: Contact Ken McConnellogue, office: 303.860.5626 or cell: 303.815.8481 or visit www.cu.edu

Think, Ben, Think!

Here is a comment I made to Mr. Ben Whitmer, an instructor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, following one of his posts on Tryworks:

Mr. Whitmer,

You might want to notice that in his 6-27-07 article, Trimbach called John Graham “the alleged trigger man who carried out the executioner’s mandate against Anna Mae.”

This suggests that she was killed on the orders of some AIM higher-ups–”an executioner.”

Trimbach also says that there have been “other killings” in addition to the execution-style murder of Anna Mae Aquash:

“Many of [Leonard Peltier’s] brothers-in-arms, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), have tried to construct plausible alibis to support his claimed innocence [in the murders of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge on June 26, 1975]. None of it has stuck, and many of the cover stories have only served to implicate AIM members in other killings, such as the execution-style murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash.”

Why are you writing about fiction when these are real murders of Indians that AIM is accused of?

If you are against killing Indians, why don’t you support law enforcement and Indian efforts to get to the bottom of AIM’s crime spree?

Why are you promoting the cover-up?

Ward Churchill is a con-man who has camoflaged the truth about AIM with his big lies.

AIM used the Indians as pawns in their war on the FBI, and Churchill seems to be using you. AIM and Churchill don’t care anything about how they hurt people.

When AIM members and reservation outsiders took over the Indian town of Wounded Knee, they stole from the store, trashed the museum and stole the artifacts, threw out the residents, wrecked people’s homes, relieved themselves on people’s floors, shot their pets, broke the children’s toys, posed as aggrieved villagers, and called it “liberation.” It was nothing but a big show that disguised vandalism and theft.

And now Wardo has ruined you, and you still don’t get it.

You like to say I am stupid and crazy, but I am not so stupid or crazy that I believe Ward Churchill.

Valerie Plame's Lawsuit Dismissed

Picture credit

"[T]here can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."
...Judge John D. Bates

The AP (7-19-07) reports:

WASHINGTON - A federal judge dismissed former CIA operative Valerie Plame's lawsuit against members of the Bush administration Thursday, eliminating one of the last courtroom remnants of the leak scandal.

...U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments. Bates dismissed the case against all defendants: Cheney, White House political adviser Karl Rove, former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

...While Bates did not address the constitutional questions, he seemed to side with administration officials who said they were acting within their job duties. Plame had argued that what they did was illegal and outside the scope of their government jobs.

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory, " Bates wrote.

"But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials." [Full text]

Oak Ridge Worker Arrested for Trying to Sell Nuclear Secrets

Jonathan Dienst at WNBC.com (7-19-07) reports:

[A] contract worker is accused of stealing nuclear secrets from the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee.

Investigators said the worker wanted to sell the secrets to a "foreign country."

...NewsChannel4 has learned that among the materials allegedly stolen was classified information about the uranium enrichment process.

...Officials said the worker was charged as a result of a later sting in which investigators posed as representatives of a "foreign government" willing to pay for the nuclear research materials.

Officials did not identify to which country the suspect allegedly thought he was selling the secrets. [Full text]

See Jonathan Dienst and the Investigative Unit

Standards and Privileges Committee Bans George Galloway!

Picture credit

The [British House of] Commons standards and privileges committee, in recommending the 18-day ban, said Mr Galloway had been "complicit" in the concealment of the true source of funds for the Mariam Appeal. Telegraph July 18, 2007

Writing in The Telegraph (July 19, 2007), the British journalist David Blair describes how he took some files from Saddam's foreign ministry that included "a memorandum dated Jan 3, 2000, purporting to show that George Galloway's campaign against Western sanctions had received funds from Saddam's regime."

These documents have now been studied and authenticated by a Parliamentary Standards Committee which has issued a 181-page report.

David Blair writes:

[O]n April 19, I went to the foreign ministry in central Baghdad. This labyrinthine tower block had been looted and some rooms were blackened by fire. But, unsurprisingly, the looters had no interest in paperwork. My Iraqi translator and I found thousands of documents bound in pale blue folders in a small room on the first floor.

My translator noticed that each of the brown boxes in which the folders were held carried an Arabic label marked with the name of a country. I asked him to look for any labelled "Britain". We found two and one marked "Britain and France".

On the following day, after going through many pages of tedious documents, during which I came within an ace of calling a halt - we came across a memorandum dated Jan 3, 2000, purporting to show that George Galloway's campaign against Western sanctions had received funds from Saddam's regime. Other documents in the same file referred to this one and filled in more details.

Around these relatively simple events, Mr Galloway later managed to create a smokescreen of innuendo. He claimed that I "stumbled" on the documents "in a burning, destroyed, looted building", as if I had entered a towering inferno in Baghdad.

Anyone listening to him during his successful libel action against The Daily Telegraph would never have guessed that I was not challenged in court over how I found the documents.

So I am glad that, having weighed up Mr Galloway's theories and my own account of how I came upon them, the Parliamentary Standards Committee has "no doubt" about believing me.

Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary standards commissioner, and the committee of MPs to which he reports, have both concluded that the documents I found were genuine.

Mr Galloway had repeatedly described them as "fakes" or "fabricated" and insinuated that they had been forged - although as far as I know, he never actually employed that word. It was enough for him to spread his usual brand of sophistry and innuendo.

Sir Philip endorsed the authenticity of the documents after they were examined by two forensic experts, each working independently of the other. He concluded: "Mr Galloway's explanation of his position has been characterised by repeated denial of facts, in some cases only conceded when they cannot be denied any longer." [Full text]

According to The Telegraph (July 18, 2007), Galloway may face a criminal inquiry:

Scotland yard is to take the first steps toward a possible criminal investigation against George Galloway, who faces an 18-day suspension from the Commons over his financial links to Saddam Hussein's regime, The Daily Telegraph can disclose today.

Detectives are to seek documents from the Serious Fraud Office, which carried out a previous investigation, to establish whether there are grounds to prosecute Mr Galloway.

The police may seek his bank accounts after a report by Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Standards Commisioner, concluded yesterday that Mr Galloway's Mariam Appeal charity received large sums from Saddam's manipulation of the United Nations oil-for-food programme.

Sir Philip said: "Mr Galloway has consistently denied, prevaricated and fudged in relation to the now undeniable evidence that the Mariam Appeal, and he indirectly through it, received money derived, via the Oil for Food programme, from the Iraqi regime."

He added: "Mr Galloway through his controlling position in the appeal, benefited from those monies, in terms of furtherance of his political objectives."
He went on: "He [Mr Galloway] had received such support at least recklessly or negligently, and probably knowingly"....

The 181-page report said that the Respect MP had "consistently failed to live up to the expectation of openness and straightforwardness".

The Commons standards and privileges committee, in recommending the 18-day ban, said Mr Galloway had been "complicit" in the concealment of the true source of funds for the Mariam Appeal. MPs will vote on the ban which will begin when Parliament resumes after the summer recess.

Mr Galloway called the inquiry a "politicised tribunal".

Speaking outside the Commons, he said: "I challenged everything that Sir Humphrey and Sir Bufton and Sir Tufton put to me because the points they were putting to me were false. I will not allow people to make false allegations against me.

"I am not a punchbag. If you aim low blows at me I will fight back. That's what I've done and that's what I've been suspended for. I was campaigning against sanctions and war on Iraq.

"If these people behind me had listened to me, hundreds of thousands of people now dead would still be alive and Britain would not be in peril, here at home and around the world. They should be striking a medal for me for my work on Iraq, not suspending me."

The investigation was triggered by The Daily Telegraph in April 2003 when David Blair, a foreign correspondent, discovered documents purporting to be about Mr Galloway in the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad shortly after Saddam's overthrow. The papers claimed to show that he received funds from Saddam's regime for the Mariam Appeal. [Full text]

Galloway claims that he should get a medal for opposing the sanctions on Iraq and the subsequent war. On the other hand, perhaps if we had never toppled Saddam, the people of the world would be increasingly manipulated and ruled by traitorous mouthpieces in government service who take their orders from weapons of mass destruction instead of from the voters.

AIM Members Implicate Themselves in Multiple Murders

"[T]he cover stories have only served to implicate AIM members in other killings, such as the execution-style murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash."--Joe Trimbach

A 6-27-07 article in News from Indian Country by the retired FBI agent Joseph H. Trimbach reported:

"June 26, 2007: The Supreme Court of British Columbia orders the extradition of John Graham to the United States. He is the alleged trigger man who carried out the executioner’s mandate against [the American Indian Movement activist] Anna Mae [Aquash]."

Who is the executioner who ordered the alleged "trigger man" Graham to kill Aquash? Perhaps the public will hear more in the days to come.

Trimbach writes:

"Many of [Leonard Peltier's] brothers-in-arms, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), have tried to construct plausible alibis to support his claimed innocence [in the murders of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge on June 26, 1975]. None of it has stuck, and many of the cover stories have only served to implicate AIM members in other killings, such as the execution-style murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash."

It is interesting that Ward Churchill made the unsubstantiated claim that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 Indians, but now Joseph Trimbach says that AIM may have murdered more people than the two FBI agents and the Canadian citizen Anna Mae Aquash, whose frozen body was found dumped in a ditch in early 1976.

Who are these other people that AIM members are suspected of murdering? Maybe these mysteries will become clearer when John Graham goes on trial.

Trimbach observes:

People familiar with the case believe that once Graham is on American soil, AIM’s legacy is up for grabs. As the embattled Professor Ward Churchill likes to say, the chickens have come home to roost.

The professor, however, would presumably not want the description applied to his old warhorse buddy, AIM leader Russell Means. On a cold morning in 1976, Means and his brothers boycotted Anna Mae’s funeral, evidently believing her guilty as charged.

AIM war chiefs and Anna Mae’s erstwhile friends must now reposition themselves for the coming storm. An old rusty prosecutorial engine is finally turning over, powered by an unlimited statute of limitations for murder in the first degree.

Former members know that aiding and abetting carries the same penalty that awaits Graham: life in prison. And so they are naturally concerned that Graham may cut a deal and sing like a canary. Stay tuned. This could get very interesting. [Full text]

News from Indian Country has collected some articles about Aquash's kidnapping and murder.

The Stars Align: Two Views

An Ethnic Studies instructor at C.U. Boulder named Ben Whitmer has a blog called Try-Works where he supports the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill.

In the comments to a recent post, Mr. Whitmer wrote this comment to me about a retired FBI agent named Joseph Trimbach, whom I have written about on my blog:

[T]hanks for the heads up on Trimbach, Snapple. I knew he was a shiteating moron and a killer, I didn’t know he was a fucking loon. I’ll make sure to highlight your love affair on the main page soonly. It’s exactly the kind of star-aligned convergence of dribbling idiots that makes my black little heart go pitter-pat.

The remainder of this post is my response to Mr. Whitmer, which I also posted in his comments:

Dear Mr. Whitmer,

You need to pay better attention to what is going on here.
If former SAC Joseph Trimbach were “a shiteating moron,” a “killer,” and a “fucking loon,” I doubt that he would be honored by being invited announce the extradition of Anna Mae Aquash’s killer in “News from Indian Country.”

The editor Mr. DeMain has followed the investigation of Aquash’s murder for many, many years, and he must think that Trimbach’s views make a valuable contribution to the story of this Canadian citizen’s brutal murder.

Mr. DeMain will probably take note of how C.U. Ethnic Studies characterizes law enforcement people who are invited to give their views in an Indian publication that has pursued the truth about Aquash’s murder for so many years.

It is hard for Indians to see C.U. Ethnic Studies professors as advocates for better justice for Indian people when they disparage this honored guest writer and law enforcement official as a “killer.”

Trimbach’s article in “News from Indian Country” was how I first I learned the good news that John Graham was going to be extradited for murdering the Canadian citizen Anna Mae Aquash.

You and Ward Churchill didn’t write anything. Former FBI SAC Trimbach did, and for some reason, “News from Indian Country” chose him to make that announcement.

Mr Trimbach wrote:

"June 26, 2007: The Supreme Court of British Columbia orders the extradition of John Graham to the United States. He is the alleged trigger man who carried out the executioner’s mandate against Anna Mae."

June 26, 1975 is also the day that the two FBI agents were murdered. The date was probably chosen for the murder of the agents because June 25-26, 1876 is the anniversary of Little Bighorn.

I think it is a pretty interesting “coincidence” that the Canadians chose that day to make their announcement.

June 26, 2006 is also the day that Phil DeStefano recommended that Churchill be fired.

Is the “coincidence” of these events what C.U. Ethnic Studies characterizes as a “star-aligned convergence of dribbling idiots”?

Now you brought up Jonbenet Ramsey. She was killed on December 26, 1996. Mao’s birthday.

Iraq: RFE/RL Report Reveals Weaknesses In Sunni-Insurgent Media War

"[A]nti-Shi'ite hate speech is an increasingly prominent part of the insurgent message. With sectarian killings on the rise in Iraq, the tenor of invective points to the possibility of even greater bloodshed. A wealth of evidence shows that hate speech paved the way for genocide in Rwanda in 1994, for example."

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 6-26-07 reports:

WASHINGTON, June 26, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The greatest strengths of the Iraqi Sunni-based insurgency's media strategy -- decentralization and flexibility -- are also its greatest weaknesses, according to a report officially released today by RFE/RL.

The book-length report, "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War Of Images And Ideas" by RFE/RL regional analysts Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo, provides an in-depth analysis of the media efforts of Sunni insurgents, who are responsible for the majority of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.

Kimmage and Ridolfo argue that the loss of coordination and message control that results from decentralization has revealed fundamental disagreements about Iraq's present and future between nationalist and global jihadist groups in Iraq and that these disagreements are ripe for exploitation by those interested in a liberal and democratic Iraq.

The report also finds that anti-Shi'ite hate speech is an increasingly prominent part of the insurgent message. With sectarian killings on the rise in Iraq, the tenor of invective points to the possibility of even greater bloodshed. A wealth of evidence shows that hate speech paved the way for genocide in Rwanda in 1994, for example.

Iraq's Sunni insurgency has developed a sophisticated media campaign to deliver its message over the Internet through daily press releases, weekly and monthly magazines, books, video clips, full-length films, countless websites, and even television stations. Part of the target audience for insurgent media projects are mainstream Arabic-language media, which often amplify the insurgent message to a mass audience.

The popularity of online Iraqi Sunni insurgent media, the authors contend, reflects a genuine demand for their message in the Arab world. A response, no matter how lavishly funded and cleverly produced, will not eliminate this demand. The authors argue that efforts to counter insurgent media should not focus on producing better propaganda than the insurgents, or trying to eliminate the demand for the insurgent message, but rather on exploiting the vulnerabilities of the insurgent media network. [Full article]

Read the report:

Entire report on pdf format

Part One Part Two Part Three
Part Four Part Five

Curious MIM and the Major's Assistant

"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"--Ward Churchill

The Maoist Internationalist Movement's 7-6-07 Scuttlebutt poses a question:

"If the major's assistant with things conspiratorial would like to answer a question, let it be where (in vague language) and approximately when s/he ran into MIM physically for a first and last time."

MIM complains:

"[S]upercitizens declassify information on-the-spot without regard to authenticity or overall historical issues, use it in a political context, and then claim free speech for government agents."

Well, as fate would have it, the felonious fingers of FOX and Friends and an outwardly unimpeachable supercitizen were able to filch some low-hanging fruit about when "the major's assistant with things conspiratorial...ran into MIM physically for the first and last time."

We trust that this Aesopian sneak-peek into the secret files of the grasping minions of the corporate power structure will be helpful to our Maoist comrades.

NOTES:

MIM's "What's New" page has all the very latest Scuttlebutt about the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill and his mock-heroic duel with the Evil Empire.

A explanation of MIM's hallucination about the major can be found here.

British Columbia Supreme Court Decision to Extradite John Graham

"Graham’s pre-meditation was evidently known to several others. In fact, dozens were said to be involved as co-conspirators, among them AIM legends, their lawyers, and the group’s lesser lieutenants...

[Anna Mae Aquash] died six months after [AIM ambushed and murdered two FBI agents], partly because it was feared that she would repeat Peltier’s boast which she heard “straight from the horse’s mouth”...

An old rusty prosecutorial engine is finally turning over, powered by an unlimited statute of limitations for murder in the first degree.

Former members know that aiding and abetting carries the same penalty that awaits Graham: life in prison. And so they are naturally concerned that Graham may cut a deal and sing like a canary..." Joe Trimbach, former Special Agent in Charge (SAC), Minneapolis FBI

News from Indian Country (7-7-07) has published the lengthy 6-26-07 decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia explaining why they decided to extradite John Graham for the murder of the Canadian Indian Anna Mae Aquash. [Note that on 6-26-75, two FBI agents were murdered on Pine Ridge and that on 6-26-06 the Chancellor of C.U. recommended that the tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill be fired.]

Here is a brief excerpt from the 6-26-07 decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia that describes how the Canadian woman Anna Mae Aquash was reportedly murdered:

Aquash's badly decomposed body was discovered in 1976, and police began to suspect foul play after identifying her as having been involved with the American Indian Movement. Due to lack of cooperation, the investigation made little headway until agents began talking to [Fritz Arlo] Looking Cloud in the mid-90s. Looking Cloud and almost every other witness in the case were members of, and were actively involved in, the American Indian Movement at the time of Aquash's death. The government's theory at trial was that Looking Cloud and other American Indian Movement members killed Aquash, who was also a member, because they suspected she was a federal informant, working with the government.

When the rumor began to spread around the American Indian Movement that Aquash was an informant, she fled Pierre to Denver. A few weeks later, Looking Cloud, Theda Clark and John Graham (also called John Boy Patton) received orders from the American Indian Movement to bring Aquash back to South Dakota. They tied her up and drove her to Rapid City to question her about being an informant. Aquash was constantly guarded and her requests to be let free were refused. At some point, Aquash realized that she was about to be killed. Looking Cloud, Clark, and Graham met with other American Indian Movement members in Rapid City and eventually the three drove Aquash to an area near Wanblee. Aquash begged to go free, prayed, and cried. Looking Cloud and Graham marched Aquash up a hill and Graham shot her at the top of a cliff. Her body was either thrown or it tumbled to the bottom of that cliff. [Full text]

The retired FBI agent Joe Trimbach, the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Minneapolis FBI office from February 1973-mid-1975, gave his perspective in a 6-27-07 article in News from Indian Country. I have written articles about Trimbach's views here, here, and here.

According to Trimbach:

Like Peltier before him, Graham has surrounded himself with supporters, some of them pitifully uninformed. But unlike Peltier’s murderous rampage, Graham’s pre-meditation was evidently known to several others. In fact, dozens were said to be involved as co-conspirators, among them AIM legends, their lawyers, and the group’s lesser lieutenants...

Months before he placed a gun to Ron Williams’s head [See details here], Peltier had placed a gun in Anna Mae’s mouth, in one of her early interrogations. She died six months after the Agents, partly because it was feared that she would repeat Peltier’s boast which she heard “straight from the horse’s mouth”...

People familiar with the case believe that once Graham is on American soil, AIM’s legacy is up for grabs. As the embattled Professor Ward Churchill likes to say, the chickens have come home to roost.

The professor, however, would presumably not want the description applied to his old warhorse buddy, AIM leader Russell Means. On a cold morning in 1976, Means and his brothers boycotted Anna Mae’s funeral, evidently believing her guilty as charged.

AIM war chiefs and Anna Mae’s erstwhile friends must now reposition themselves for the coming storm. An old rusty prosecutorial engine is finally turning over, powered by an unlimited statute of limitations for murder in the first degree.

Former members know that aiding and abetting carries the same penalty that awaits Graham: life in prison. And so they are naturally concerned that Graham may cut a deal and sing like a canary. Stay tuned. This could get very interesting. [Full text]

This article from Spring 2004 even claims that the Tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill was "a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) security team at the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota in the early 1970's."

I don't know if Ward Churchill was really a member of the Pine Ridge AIM security team in the early 1970's, as this article which appears to quote him claims, or not. Maybe Churchill was not quoted accurately. Or maybe he was making up one of his elaborate stories.

Wardo even claims that he driving across Pine Ridge to a new teaching job on either June 26 or 27, 1975 and witnessed FBI agents hunting for the killers of two FBI agents.

Perhaps when Graham goes on trial, this sort of claim might be cleared up; and we will find out if Wardo really was an AIM security thug in the early 1970's or if he is just a liar and a braggart.