Are his 15 minutes of fame over?

I guess everyone has heard of Ward Churchill by now. He is the professor of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado at Boulder. His essay on the 9/11 attacks contained the following gem:

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly.

And even worse, this tripe:

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

With the extensive but recent coverage of his essay it has come to light that his Indian heritage is a sham, he exploits Indians, he may have broken copyright law, he has been accused of plagiarism and fabricating evidence, he is a Baathist sympathizer, he advocates terrorism, he hates The Simpsons, he drives a Ferrari and he is a Log Cabin Republican (OK, I made up the last three items).

While the free speech issue is being bandied about, it is really just a red herring. Churchill has no business being a tenured professor in Ethnic Studies. A master’s degree in Communications and teaching the Weather Underground how to build bombs is not good enough. Free speech is not a trump card for plagiarism and lying in scholarly work. I wouldn’t doubt that this guy is a lousy teacher.

I say fire the guy not for what he says but for what he has done. He’s had more than his 15 minutes.

Bat Ye'or and Eurabia

Early this morning on C-SPAN2, Book TV had a presentation that Bat Ye'or gave at The Hudson Institute in which she discussed her new book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Unfortunately I have not read it since my order has not arrived yet. But I have read some of her other works and found them to be excellent. Bat Ye'or is an historian and an authority on dhimmitude. Here is her description of Eurabia from an interview done last year:

Eurabia represents a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC) which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions.

The field of Euro-Arab collaboration covered every domain: from economy and policy to immigration. In foreign policy, it backed anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and Israel's delegitimization; the promotion of the PLO and Arafat; a Euro-Arab associative diplomacy in international forums; and NGO collaboration. In domestic policy, the EAD established a close cooperation between the Arab and European media television, radio, journalists, publishing houses, academia, cultural centers, school textbooks, student and youth associations, tourism. Church interfaith dialogues were determinant in the development of this policy. Eurabia is therefore this strong Euro-Arab network of associations -- a comprehensive symbiosis with cooperation and partnership on policy, economy, demography and culture.

Eurabia is the future of Europe. Its driving force, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, was created in Paris in 1974. It now has over six hundred members -- from all major European political parties -- active in their own national parliaments, as well as in the European parliament. The creation of this body and its policy follow the 23 resolutions of the "Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples", held in Cairo in January 1969. Its resolution 15 formulates the Euro-Arab policy and its all-embracing development over thirty years in European domestic and foreign policy.

It stated: "The conference decided to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform for promoting support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance." In the 1970s, pursuant to the wishes of the Cairo Conference, national groups proclaiming "Solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance and the Arab peoples" appeared throughout Europe. These groups belonged to different political families, Gaullists, extreme left or right, communists, neo-Nazis -- but they all shared the same anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. France has been the key protagonist of this policy, ever since de Gaulle's press conference on 27 November 1967 when he presented France's cooperation with the Arab world as "the fundamental basis of our foreign policy".

This certainly helps explain the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe and the seemingly ease in which many Europeans are letting their cultures become diminished by the influx of Islam into their countries. The plethora of stories out of the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Britain and other countries in which Muslim immigrants not only do not integrate into the societies but actively undermine them with little resistance from the natives is amazing to me. In the question and answer session after her presentation, Bat Ye'or stated that it is virtually impossible to get any kind of criticism of the Eurabian phenomena published or even discussed.

It has been almost twenty years since I lived in Europe. From what I have read in the media, discussions with friends and colleagues there, and what I have gathered from academics such as Bat Ye'or, it looks like the Europe I knew is disappearing. With the rise of Islamofascism and the capitulation of Europe, I don't doubt that in two or three generations Sharia Law will be the law of the land in Europe.

Merchants of Despair

Here is an excellent article by Victor Davis Hanson.