Easter Thoughts 2009: Ward Churchill's Courtroom Blood Libel

[If you make a] "practice of killing other peoples' babies for your own personal gain... eventually, they are going to give you a taste of the same thing."--Ward Churchill in Federal Court (3-23-09)

Good Friday is almost upon us. On this day Christians remember how the totally innocent Jesus was slowly strangled to death by crucifixion while lawyers and teachers mocked and denigrated Him. Jesus' friends and relatives were downcast, and his enemies celebrated their victory; but not for long.

In his 9-11 essay "Some People Push Back" and probably in the quote above, the discredited ex-professor Ward Churchill accuses America of slowly starving Iraqi babies even though the Oil-for-Food investigation showed that the evil dictator Saddam Hussein corrupted the Oil-for Food program and smuggled oil outside the Oil-for-Food Program to enrich himself instead of buying enough food and other humanitarian goods with his oil wealth. Finally, the killer Saddam was hanged. [Full Oil-for-Food Report]

Of course, Ward Churchill doesn't really care about the suffering of innocent children. The discredited ex-Professor Ward Churchill complains in his 2003 book Perversions of Justice (p. 402):

There are currently no fewer than 24 books in print concerning the JonBenet Ramsey case.

It seems that Ward Churchill counted the number of JonBenet Ramsey books.

Ward Churchill also "jokes" in three of his "scholarly" books that children should be "snuffed" to "do the planet a real favor" since they use too many natural resources, so it's no surprise that Ward Churchill considers JonBenet books to be a waste of resources, too.

Never-the-less, Ward Churchill's books were stacked up in Federal Court in Denver to impress a jury in his March 2009 lawsuit against the University of Colorado. I think even one of Ward Churchill's books is a total waste of resources because his books are all filled with lies that spread racial hatred. I think Ward Churchill has probably wasted millions of tax dollars trying to protect himself from the consequences of his disgraceful historical lies.

Professor Thomas Brown writes in History News Network (4-6-09) that ex-professor Ward Churchill's canard about the U.S. Army deliberately giving the Mandan Indians infected smallpox blankets has been exposed (Hat Tip PirateBallerina, 4-6-09):

None of Churchill’s sources corroborate his story, and no historian who has studied this episode has ever even mentioned an Army presence within eight hundred miles of Fort Clark – which was a fur trading depot, not a military installation.

-Churchill has since abandoned all of the fabricated aspects of his story, while simultaneously claming that he did not fabricate it, because he still feels in his gut that the story is correct.

-Churchill now says that when he indicted “Army officers” for passing out smallpox blankets to the Mandans, he meant to refer to the local Indian agent instead.

-Churchill now admits that he has no evidence that any blankets came from an Army smallpox infirmary in St. Louis. His new story is that genocidal blankets were brought from Baltimore by a disgruntled fur trader.

-Churchill now says that when he indicted “Army doctors” at Fort Clark for violating quarantine in order to deliberately infect more Indians, he meant to refer to fur traders doing so.

-Churchill now holds that when he said that the Mandan tribe had been deliberately infected, he used the word “Mandan” not to refer to the actual Mandan tribe, but instead to refer to all Indian tribes in the Northern Plains, extending across the border into Canada.

In other words, Churchill no longer defends his original indictment of the Army, given that there is absolutely no evidence of Army presence anywhere in the vicinity for hundreds of miles. But he still refuses to concede that his tale of Army genocide is fabricated. Churchill holds that because he had heard stories about the Army giving smallpox blankets to Indians, he is justified in holding the Army accountable for this specific outbreak, and justified in inventing details of blanket distribution by the Army – details that he now admits he cannot substantiate. Churchill’s story still feels right to him, even though he has no evidence whatsoever of Army presence, much less Army involvement. [Full text]

Forced to abandon his smallpox canard, Ward Churchill moved right on to blood libel.

The Daily Camera (3-23-09) reports that on March 23, 2009, the Boulder, Colorado ex-professor stated:

[If you make a] "practice of killing other peoples' babies for your own personal gain... eventually, they are going to give you a taste of the same thing."

I certainly agree that people who kill other people's babies to make a profit should be punished, but Ward Churchill doesn't love the little children of the world. Remember, he "jokes" in three "scholarly" books that mothers should "snuff" their babies and kill themselves to "do the planet a real favor" because our babies use too many natural resources.

No doubt those three "scholarly" books were in the huge pile of books stacked up in court to impress the jury. It's too bad that this jury didn't get to read the Wardo's "jokes." It's too bad the jury didn't get to read how the Wardo constantly fantasizes about hanging politicians he doesn't like. It's too bad the jury didn't read how the Wardo lies and threatens in his 9-11 essay "Some People Push Back."

In his book Perversions of Justice (2003), Ward Churchill writes about JonBenet Ramsey in the same paragraph as he writes that former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright should be tried in the shadow of a gallows because she is supposedly responsible for starving 500,000 Iraqi children to death.

In "Some People Push Back," Churchill mocks American families and their children as materialists who don't care about the humanitarian suffering in Iraq. Churchill also targets Albright as a baby-killer in his dishonest and error-filled essay 9-11 essay "Some People Push Back." Churchill attacks Madeleine Albright for being a "baby-killer" in his 9-11 essay because of the trade sanctions imposed on Iraq.

Churchill never mentions in his 9-11 essay "Some People Push Back" that these trade sanctions were imposed after Saddam invaded Kuwait. The sanctions were imposed to keep Saddam from being able to attack his neighbor Kuwait again, killing their people, and setting fire to their oil fields. Churchill never mentions that by 1996 Saddam could by oil for food.

[It is notable that Osama Bin Laden's propagandistic February 23, 1998 fatwa, "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders," also criticizes the trade sanctions on Iraq while failing to mention the reason for the sanctions (the invasion of Kuwait) or the fact that by 1996 Saddam was permitted to sell oil to buy food, had he chosen to do so.]

NBC News (1-6-2006) explains:

The oil-for-food program ran from 1996 to 2003. It was created to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It let the Iraqi government sell limited — and eventually unlimited — amounts of oil primarily to buy humanitarian goods.

I think Ward Churchill writes pro-Saddam propaganda about the reasons people were hungry in Iraq under the sanctions. Perhaps it is no accident that the source of Ward Churchill's apocryphal New York Times "quote" for charges of genocide in Iraq is allegedly none other than U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday who worked on the U.N. Oil for Food Program.

The Wall Street Journal (9-9-05) reports that when Paul Volcker found out that this program had been corrupted by Saddam and the U.N., Halliday stated:

The [oil for food] scandal, quote, unquote, is, in my view, nonsense.---Denis Halliday, former United Nations Assistant Secretary General, November 2004

Yet according to Wikipedia:

Throughout its existence, the [Oil for Food] programme was dogged by accusations that some of its profits were unlawfully diverted to the government of Iraq and to UN officials. These accusations were made in many countries, including the US and Norway [3].

The Volcker investigation proved that Saddam evaded the trade sanctions that would have allowed him to buy food for oil so his people could be fed. Instead, Saddam paid-off U.N. officials, businessmen, and politicians who helped him get rich and buy what he wanted to buy, and it wasn't food.

According to Volcker (10-27-05), Saddam Hussein's manipulation of the Oil-for-Food Program diverted almost two billion dollars from the humanitarian purposes of the program. More than 2000 companies were involved in the illicit payments. Saddam made even more money smuggling oil outside the sanctions. According to Volcker, Saddam made an estimated 11 billion dollars by smuggling oil outside of the Oil-for-Food Program.

Certainly Ward Churchill knows that Saddam doles out money to his foreign supporters because the Denver/Boulder chapter of the Colorado American "Indian" Movement post on its own site:

Through the IITC [International Indian Treaty Council, an arm of the AIM], cordial diplomatic relations were developed by 1979 with the Baath Socialist Party of Iraq. Through this relationship, substantial contributions were made to AIM...

I think that Ward Churchill's error-filled 9-11 essay is nothing but deceptive pro-Saddam propaganda. Ironically, Saddam, who made his people go hungry was hanged; but look who the Wardo dreams of hanging:

[R]everies of malignant toads like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and Jesse Helms squatting in the shadows of the gallows are simply too pleasant to be suppressed. [2003 Introduction to Churchill's book Acts of Rebellion, xiii]

I have these delightful visions which is what puts me to sleep at night of Madeleine Albright, Jesse Helms, and Henry Kissinger all in a nice neat little row with nooses around their necks and...And the current crop is amply entitled to the same destiny as far as I'm concerned. Do I think anybody's going to do it? Well, that's an interesting question. Who would be doing it? There's only one possible answer: you. We. Us... [audio]---Ward Churchill 3-25-05

Were the opportunity acted upon in some reasonably good faith fashion – a sufficiently large number of Americans rising up and doing whatever is necessary to force an immediate lifting of the sanctions on Iraq, for instance, or maybe hanging a few of America's abundant supply of major war criminals (Henry Kissinger comes quickly to mind, as do Madeline [sic]Albright, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and George the Elder) – there is every reason to expect that military operations against the US on its domestic front would be immediately suspended. [Ward Churchill, "Some People Push Back."]