http://64.39.30.79/guestcolumnists/oswell09-21-01.htm

Excerpts of free & open DIVERSE (HAH!) UNC Chapel Hill University speech follow:
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"If I were the President…I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and the impoverished, and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then . . . I would announce that America's global interventions had come to an end," preached William Blum, author of Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower.

"I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90 percent and I would use the savings to pay the reparations to our victims and to increase social services. . ."

Nod, nod, nod – clap, clap, clap responded the 700 faculty, students and community members in attendance.

"If one [of the perpetrators] is Osama bin Laden, send the international police for him and pick up Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet on the way home," declared Catherine Lutz, professor of Anthropology.

The UNC Progressive Faculty Network sponsored this "teach-in" on September 17, titled "Understanding the Attack on America: an Alternative View." It provided neither an understanding of the attack nor any surprising sentiments from the left: just the same, tired rhetoric that Campus Leftists have been spouting for years.

One crowd-pleaser was William Blum’s jab at Cuban immigrants and America’s relations with them.

"There are few if any nations in the world that have harbored more terrorists than the United States. And one example, the anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, have [performed] hundreds if not thousands of terrorist attacks in the U.S. and Cuba and elsewhere. All kinds of murders and bombings for decades, and they have been harbored here in safety for those decades."

UNC Sociology professor Charlie Kurzman blamed recent events on a Military Industrial Complex.

"We're…playing into the hands of our own militarists, whose interests always lie, I believe, in the exaggeration of threats, armed responses, and so on. In fact, I would argue that there is tacit collusion among the militarists of all sides."

Also drawing applause was a diatribe against the perennial scapegoat, the white male of European descent by self-proclaimed Arab-American activist and "person of color," Rania Masri.

"So it seems that simply looking Middle Eastern has become a crime. And this has further fueled the xenophobic sentiment that is taking hold of this country. And I say xenophobic because it’s not simply Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, and Indian-Americans that are being attacked, but also Asian-Americans, Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans. Anyone who looks different than your typical white man."

The forum hit a new low, however, when panelist Stan Goff equated the terrorist attacks with the German Nazis’ torching of the Reichstag in 1933.

"The de facto executive branch and the compliant press are putting the historical spotlight right now on December 7, 1941, and Pearl Harbor," said Goff, a disgruntled former U.S. Army Ranger. "I think we need to aim that spotlight at February 27 in 1933 and the Reichstag fire."

The mere fact that the audience clapped and... yes, nodded their heads vigorously in agreement, made it all the more nauseating.

All in all, it was a shameful example of how state-funded universities are responding to the deadliest terror attacks in our nation’s history.

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-philw (the prosecution rests)