Re: [Marxism] Ward Churchill Redux

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

It seems to me that Ward Churchill's (alleged) mistakes really amount to a
charge of tendentious interpretation of long-ago circumstances. 

As for his overall accuracy and carefulness, maybe it's no good for the
professoriat, but in my line of work, it may well wind up saddling you with
a Pulitzer prize -- if only the politics aligned with those of the ruling
class. Which in his case, they don't. Which is, of course, his real
transgression.

Let me illustrate with just ONE issue from my work in the last few days: the
number of H1N1 (swine flu) cases. 

The first wave of reports were truly alarming. They suggested up to a 6%
mortality rate in Mexico (NOT numbers the news media made up or even hyped
or misinterpreted, but rather presented to the broader public JUST AS the
Mexican authorities had presented them to us, which I think reflected a
freak-out on the part of top federal Mexico City government figures.

SOON, in two, three or four days, the initial panic seemed overdone. THIS
flu did not have a 6% mortality rate -- it just seemed that way because we
only heard about the most serious cases, the ones who were hospitalized. So
the Mexican authorities, the US Government and CDC, and the WHO tried to
reel it back in.

The MECHANISM they chose to use was to ONLY report the cases that had been
"confirmed" by expensive, laborious and time consuming testing for the
virus's DNA, the supplies for which were really only assembled in usable
form at the CDC's Emory Campus headquarters in this hemisphere. So Mexican
H1-N1 deaths fell from 170+ to single digits, the cases from thousands to a
hundred and some, etc.

The needed chemicals and other supplies to do the testing of viral DNA
weren't really scarce and the CDC has NOW gotten them out to most states and
Western Hemisphere countries that want it. 

In the overwhelming majority of news accounts, including by folks who should
know better, like thank-God-he's-not-going-to-be-Surgeon-General Dr. Sanjay
Gupta, the number of cases the CDC (and now other labs) have confirmed
through laborious DNA testing is being presented as the number of cases of
H1N1 flu.

THAT IS NOT RIGHT. And it is not a small matter. Quite likely the numbers
were off AT LEAST by an order-of-magnitude when this was unleashed a week
ago, although by now the multiplier might have dropped into the single
digits. And based on the US data, it appears that the number of people who
might feel compelled to seek medical treatment when they come down with this
flu is a minority. For many it appears to be a sniffle/cold, if that. MANY
of the very mild cases have been detected in the US. 

So for the last few days I've been waging the losing battle of INSISTING
that at least on the news casts I am responsible for, we say that medical
experts have scientifically confirmed with sophisticated and expensive DNA
lab tests that 46 of the nearly 200 people who died in Mexico in the last
few weeks while suffering from flu-like symptoms were, in fact, suffering
from influenza A (H1N1) infections. 

Instead, everyone else wants to say that the number of dead in Mexico went
up from 26 (on Monday) to 42 (on Wednesday) when IN FACT, no one suffering
from swine-flu-like symptoms has died in Mexico --or at least Mexico City
and the other major cities-- in seven days. The changing numbers reflect the
slow progress in processing samples from people who died mostly in
mid-April, since of course LIVE patients get priority in sample processing. 

What this ALSO shows is that Tamiflu is (thankfully) even more effective
against this virus strain than had been originally hoped for. Although
anecdotal, the number of doctors and nurses who report that their patients
were feeling much better within an hour or two of their first Tamiflu dose
is quite striking. It is also very effective in "preventing" the spread of
the disease (in reality, in routing whatever small beachhead the virus tries
to establish among those who have been exposed as the first step in a "full
blown" infection).

What does this have to do with Ward Churchill?

IF Ward Churchill had perpetrated the falsehood that news organizations are
pretty much UNIVERSALLY pushing (thanks to government manipulation) about
XXX swine flu cases and XX swine flu deaths, instead of HONESTLY explaining
these are not figures about how many have sickened or died, but about how
many test swabs have been actually processed --and never mind adding the
explanation that while the POSITIVE cases can be trusted, a NEGATIVE test
result could well be false-- I'm sure his Colorado critics wouldn't have
just fired him, but lynched him, a time-honored [white] American tradition.

IS Ward Churchill right, is it the TRUTH, that the real intentions and
significance of the North American white-settler regime dealing with native
peoples in the 1830's, was genocidal? I believe he was --is-- correct on
this score. 

Was Ward Churchill right in postulating that ONE mechanism or attack was the
CONSCIOUS spreading of epidemics through blankets in 1839? I will take
Louis's word for it that no, by the end of the 1830's committing genocide
against indigenous peoples was so automatic and second nature to white folks
that EVEN WHEN the supposed intention believed/accepted by many/all white
folks was to HELP "the savages" by keeping them warm, the AUTOMATIC effect
was (metaphorically speaking) to push native peoples into the gas ovens.

But who is the bigger liar, or, to "dial down" the overdrive as I recently
promised the comrades on the list, who has committed the larger error: the
liberal academics who ABSOLVE the European colonial-settlers AND their
enclave in North America of this particular count in the indictment for
genocide BECAUSE IT WAS NOT INTENTIONAL, or Ward Churchill, who --seeing the
actual genocide flowing from the "humanitarian help" of the white-settlers
and  their entity (the so-called "United States of America") AND
"humanitarian help" made necessary by the dispossession of native peoples
and their expulsion from their ancestral homelands -- imputes to those
actions conscious intentionality, as opposed to, say, my hypothesis --based
on an acceptance of Louis's conclusions-- that the mere existence in North
America of the European white-settler entity was, in and of itself,
inherently genocidal and inevitably lead to events like those at issue
around the 1839 blankets, genocide IN FACT whether it was consciously
intended or merely welcomed by white folks as a heaven-sent happy
coincidence.

What this says about the colonial settler POPULATION --especially in an area
like what is today called "Georgia"-- I leave to the comrades on the list to
answer for themselves.

THAT may seem a little harsh but remember at bottom what was involved in
these sorts of cases: white folks wanted to "steal" the land/habitats
indigenous peoples had been living on for (almost certainly) thousands of
years. I put "steal" in quotes because the idea of "owning" what Evo Morales
and his friends call mama pacha --our mother the earth-- would have seemed
absurd, repugnant and obscene to most indigenous societies of North America.

And remember what the land stealing was for: using ownership of the land as
the lynchpin in a social formation/relation that kept indigenous people from
Africa (or at least those that survived being captured and transported to
North America) as slaves on the colonial settler state's plantations in the
South.

Who is more mistaken, Ward Churchill who (let's grant for arguments sake)
MISTAKENLY concluded that the genocidal effects of the actions of the
white-settler regime infesting North America in the 1830's in the blanket
case were INTENTIONAL, or his critics, who after CENTURIES of massacres,
double-dealing, swindles, betrayals, theft, rape and looting by white folks
CLAIM that just because white folks weren't fully conscious that the
blankets they were giving to the Indians that were being driven from their
ancestral homelands were IN FACT weapons of genocide, that these white folks
"clearing the ground" for massive enslavement of African people were,
therefore, in some sense "innocent."

Who can be surprised that someone who comes from and identifies with the
VICTIMS of these centuries of genocide, upon seeing the events of September
11, 2001, says that among those killed were "little Eichmanns,"
beneficiaries and CONTINUING perpetrators of genocide against the native
peoples of the Americas? And ain't that the God's honest truth? 

That's REALLY WHY Ward Churchill got in trouble. The Eichmann thing. The
Zionist thing. He had the audacity to point out the Zionist scam that Jews
HAVE A COPYRIGHT OR PATENT OR LETTERS ROYAL giving them exclusive rights to
being victims of genocide. That OTHERS had just as much --and even 100 times
more!-- right to that mantle, obscene as the comparison sounds, but
necessary to make the point because the Zionist entity in Palestine and its
backers have so manipulated things. 

And Churchill is GUILTY of saying, and very crudely, that among those rubbed
out on September 11 --not ALL of them, not even a majority, perhaps even a
small minority-- were some of today's "little Eichmann's," or if one prefers
to Americanize historical references, "little Custers" although the general
was such a microbe among men that talking about LITTLE Custers is quite
repetitively redundant. 

These were people who accepted, rejoiced and reveled in the wealth and
privilege founded on the genocide against the Indians, the enslavement of
Blacks, the dispossession of Mexico and many other crimes. 

And who were part, parcel, and 110% committed to the modern continuation of
those crimes against humanity because it makes possible the importation of
water from a specific Swiss chalet so it can be stocked in the refrigerators
of the his-and-hers exercise rooms in the mansions or penthouses of filthy
rich people like them. 

EVEN "IF" --although it most certainly DOES-- mean the death of a lot of
people related to Ward Churchill, Rigoberta Menchu and Evo Morales.

Not that I think that justifies, exonerates, ameliorates or lessens in any
way the criminal and moral responsibility of the (mostly) Saudi bourgeois
and upper-petty-bourgeois elements that planned and carried out the
September 11 attack. Giving what might be viewed as their just deserts to
100 imperialists is not worth the life of one human being -- whether white
office workers or Salvadorean dishwashers. And there were plenty of those
kinds of people among the victims.

So, to sum up, I'm not just on Ward Churchill's side "despite" his mistakes.

I am also on his side, in a sense, BECAUSE of them. Granting (for argument's
sake) that Churchill was factually inaccurate, there is more genuine
historical TRUTH in his falsehoods than there are in the "facts" of his
critics.

Joaquin














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