Press Action ::: Growing Chorus: Prosecute Ward Churchill for Treason

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Growing Chorus: Prosecute Ward Churchill for Treason

By Kurt Nimmo

Earlier today, I made a promise I am about to break.

I said I wouldn’t write about Ward Churchill until after the University of Colorado made its decision to keep him on or fire him, regardless of his constitutionally protected right to free speech, especially pertinent, considering Churchill is an employee of a public institution. Incidentally, I also made two minor criticisms of Churchill. If you are interested, you can surf on over to my blog and read them.

In the meantime, a growing number of people have said some rather dangerous and threatening things about Churchill and I feel it would be irresponsible to remain silent until after the factotums at the university complete their so-called investigation.

A growing chorus of people, in the corporate media and government, not only want Churchill fired, they apparently wanted him executed for treason, or at least locked up for a long time.

According to Bob Newman, host of the “Gunny Bob Show” on Newsradio 850 KOA and the “Inhuman Newman’s Anger-Management Hour” on 630 KHOW, both in Denver, Ward Churchill has violated U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2381, which states in part that citizens convicted of treason “shall suffer death” or imprisonment. Newman wants Churchill charged under this law archaic law, not used since the days of Joe McCarthy.

Of course, Newman is but a whack job hate radio talk show host, so what’s the big deal, I mean, we can ignore him, right?

Not exactly.

I’ll let Newman explain the situation, as he did today on the site:

"A few minutes after the state of the union address, Colorado Governor Bill Owens called in to my evening show, during which I cited the treason statute as I had on previous shows covering the ‘professor.’ My show is heard via the airwaves in 38 states and around the world via streaming audio (an Internet-based parlor trick), so the more I said ‘treason’ the more the word caught on. Now the governor has apparently looked into the treason angle and agrees that Churchill has committed treason. So, too, have some people like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, according to one of my listeners who watch MSNBC."

I checked out Joe Scarborough’s web site, but there is no mention of Newman’s suggestion Churchill be arrested and prosecuted for treason, although “Regular Joe,” as Scarborough calls himself, cites a “recent study” (no link provided) that allegedly “showed that an overwhelming number of college professors are big government liberals, while conservative professors rarely get a chance to teach college courses. This ideological monopoly ensures that another generation of college students will be brainwashed to believe that the values parents spent 18 years instilling in them are quaint, obsolete notions.” Joe writes, “Enough is enough. It is time to call your state representative and demand action,” apparently indicating it is time to sweep the universities of this “ideological monopoly,” that is to say opinion differing from that disseminated by the government and corporate media where “Regular Joe” collects a paycheck.

I worked for a state university here in New Mexico, and let me tell you, the political science department wasn’t exactly a nest of Marxists calling for armed revolution, although they were not Rush Limbaugh “conservatives,” either.

Soon after Bush invaded Iraq, I attended a panel discussion on the “war,” as it was billed, and during a question and answer session I complained about Bush’s remark that millions of people opposed to the “war” and filling the streets of American cities in opposition were nothing but a “focus group.” I was told that if I didn’t like Bush’s policies, I was free to vote for somebody else. Yeah, like maybe John Kerry, who stated over and over, ad nauseam, that he “supported” the “war” and simply wanted to “manage” it differently than Dubya? I was astounded by this professor’s ignorance of the American political system. I guess he is one of the “liberals” Regular Joe wants to throw out on the street and replace with warmongering “conservatives.” As for radicals like me, I suppose that’s why we have a Title 18, Section 2381.

Anyway, I figured it would eventually come to this—“conservatives,” more accurately described as warmongering fascists pathologically unable to tolerate those who disagree with them, calling for the opposition to not only be silenced and fired from their jobs, but rounded up and put on trial for treason, maybe even sent to the gallows, although Bob Newman believes hanging Ward Churchill “would be ruining a perfectly good rope.” I guess, instead, Churchill should be summarily executed, the same way the Nazis summarily executed those who disagreed and resisted their sociopathic insanity.

It is entirely possible, considering the political climate in America these days, that after the university of Colorado fires Churchill—and I believe he will be fired—some right-wing nutter in thick reading glasses with nothing better to do will find something “treasonable” in his voluminous writings and Churchill will be arrested, as Sami al-Arian was arrested, and put on trial.

Ward Churchill is a right-wing nutter wet dream come true. He is a poster child for the image right-wingers want to plaster over all of us who believe Bush is a sociopathic war criminal and our government has been hijacked by Republican Christian Zionists and Likudite neocons determined to torch the Middle East and, for the evangelical Christian Zionists anyway, usher in the Second Coming of Christ who was, by all accounts, a peacenik who turned the other check.

I’m afraid there are bad times up ahead, folks, especially after Bush invades Iran and Syria, as he essentially tells us he will do. In fact, if what’s going on behind closed doors at the Senate Intelligence Committee is any indication, the invasion or bombardment of Iran is pretty much a done deal. It’s just a matter of logistics from here on out.

Dissent will no longer be tolerated.

Finally, if you think I’m a paranoid crazy donning a tinfoil hat, consider the following: Eugene Debs, presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America in 1918, was arrested for making an antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, and sentenced to ten years in the Atlanta Penitentiary for treason. Debs received nearly one million votes in the 1920 election while locked up in prison. In addition to Debs, Bill Haywood, Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman, as well as nearly a thousand other people, were arrested and charged with treason under the Espionage Act of 1917. Anarchists—no relation to the black-clad window breakers of today—were arrested and charged with treason for publishing articles in Der Shturm. One anarchist, Jacob Schwartz, was so badly beaten by the police when he was arrested that he died soon afterwards. An antiwar activist, Rose Pastor Stokes, was arrested and sentenced to ten years for writing in a letter published in the Kansas City Star the following: “no government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people while the government is for the profiteers.”

It can’t happen here?

I’m telling you, my dear, as Frank Zappa sang, it can.

And it will.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, a collection of essays published by Dandelion Books. Visit his weblog at KurtNimmo.com.

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