UMKC's Judy Ancel: Professor of Kumbaya - via violence, criminal behavior, destruction of property and undermining America at home and abroad. Can't you feel the love?

Ever wonder where people come up with the comments they make? Regarding the recent videos illustrating our University of Missouri System of Communist professors professing the tactics of violence and intimidation in our college classrooms, one commenter, William, said,

"I am shocked at the assertions that Giljun is a communist or has influenced anyone in our membership to use violence in our collective bargaining units. I can categorically deny that this has ever been the case. "

This fascinates the heck out of me. The local CBS online news page on this matter did publish one of my earlier comments, but has kept my direct reply to William in perpetual moderation. Later on I'll elaborate on his curious curiosity deficit and apparently Google-impaired status, but I don't need to repeat the several links I gave there regarding UMSL’s Prof. emeritus of Union thuggery, Don Giljum, since Patch Adams has already provided a much more comprehensive one stop post which firmly establishes his communist creds, so we'll just move along for now - plenty more low hanging fruit to pick.

I'll come back to it at the end of this post though, because I do want to get at that curiosity question, take a look at how people can possibly even ask such questions, let alone claim such a thing, because it's intriguing to me... sure, I know, it does feel sort of like slowing to gawk while passing some unfortunate intellectual roadkill... but you just gotta look and ask, how did these people’s faculty of curiosity and comprehension die, and who killed it? How long has the corpse been rotting in their heads and why has no one alerted authorities before now? Near as I can tell, the disease has been obscured, or at least papered over with a blizzard of diploma’s, fiendish devices which largely succeed in presenting the brain dead as smart, perky and employable young people. Truly insidious.

To get a better look at that, first we need to take a closer look at our radical professors like Judy Ancel, because you see, it’s not just commenter's who seem unable to compare how what they read and hear does, or doesn’t comport with that info out in the real world; it almost seems as if the entire reporting and editorial staff of several metropolitan newspaper’s, the Kansas City Star for instance, who refers to Ancel as

"A reliable source on labor issues"

Reliable... for an objective view? Wouldn't that require evidence and a history fairly and objectively examining both sides of the issues, and not showing favoritism to one or the other? I easily found link after link of Professor Ancel extolling the virtues of labor unions, communist or quasi communist thought... but somehow I missed the equal number of her explaining the virtues of productive businessmen and the need for employees to respect their place of business... can someone show me them? Or might it be more likely these bozo's are looking for an opinion that agrees with what they already believe? Would someone who believed 'the opposite' speak admiringly of rioting in the streets, the massive destruction of property and disruption of lives? See how 'opposite' her views are from what her comments in these videos are, when you get to the end of this post. These folks are just as detached from the real world as those who read them, and so it seems that the facts need to be made a bit more in their face. Otherwise they get away with bits like this love letter in the Star openly sympathizing with Prof Ancel and her UMKC Provost Gail Hackett, who characterizes her as just a well meaning, peace loving, and overall cuddly instructor:

"Ancel, who directs UMKC’s Institute for Labor Studies, issued a statement Friday.

“My students and I are outraged at Mr. Breitbart’s invasion of our classroom and his attempts to intimidate us and my colleagues at the university,” she wrote.

Later, Ancel said she was speaking for herself, not the university.

Ancel said comments made by the instructors over several days were snipped, moved and pasted together so they appeared to endorse violence.

“This is in fact the opposite of the position both instructors took in class,” Ancel said."

An opposite position she says. Hmmm… well lets look at just how opposite that position really is, shall we? because, really, if you’ve bothered to do any googling on Professor Kumbaya, you'll find it hard not to notice that such a statement is truly bizarre, that is if you think Communism is something to be concerned about (if you don't, have a look at Patch's History of Communism links). Charitably, these are the utterings of fools and liars, but worse still, they are eagerly and uncritically swallowed by many people, a great many who were presumably employed in their positions in the hopes that they should know better than to look at only one side of the story, but who for some reason... don't - that, or else they do know better, and just flat out lie about it.

Lets have a look, and then you decide.

Before getting to just how un-opposite Professor Ancel is, maybe we ought to establish the fact that her alignment with radical views and sympathetic enthusiasm for violent tactics, is in no way shape or form a one time slip of the lip nor is hers a lone wolf position, by taking a look at some of her friends and co-workers.

Taking a look at some of the folks around Prof. Ancel

One of her fellow professors and oft time companion on the communist rubber chicken circuit, is Frederic S. Lee, Professor of Economics at University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA, he who a couple years ago put together the fabulously restrained, open minded and objective,
Radical Economics and Labour - Essays inspired by the IWW Centennial

The opening paragraph has this catchy little description,

" "To celebrate the centenary of the most radical union in North America - The Industrial Workers of the World - this collection examines radical economics and the labor movement in the 20th Century. The union advocates direct action to raise wages and increase job control, and it envisions the eventual abolition of capitalism and the wage system through the general strike."

Do you understand what this means? (William? You awake? ) 'Direct action' means forcibly preventing a business from operating, either by preventing those willing to work, from working, or by in some other way forcibly preventing the business from conducting their business.

To see what one example of 'Direct action' has meant to the IWW itself, and which is what the term 'May Day Celebration' commemorates, recall that,

"International Workers' Day is the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when, after an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they dispersed a public meeting, Chicago police fired on workers during a general strike for the eight hour workday, killing several demonstrators and resulting in the deaths of several police officers, largely from friendly fire"

What do you suppose the odds are that that unknown person who threw a dynamite bomb at police way back then... was with the radicals? Do you really think the IWW, 'the most radical union in North America', looks at the meaning of radicals, all that much differently today? If you're unsure, have a look at the pictures throughout this post and see if they give you any further clues. Or you can just review a more current instance of co-instructor Don Giljum’s mirthful recounting of his groups terrorizing of a CEO into wearing body armor on the floor of his own factory. These sorts of activities are not possible to practice without employing force – directly via thuggery, or indirectly via Govt regulation.

And what do they mean by "it envisions the eventual abolition of capitalism and the wage system "? Long before Marx popularized the term 'capitalism', as a pejorative description for our economic system, it was called by a term which describes exactly what it is - the free market - freedom - do you get that? William?

Freedom, everyone's freedom, is what they mean to attack. What do you suppose they mean to replace the 'wage system' with? Paying you for what you're worth? No, that's what the wage system does, what they mean to do is abolish individual wages altogether - do none of you ever listen to what these people are saying?! You may be all happy to reap the 'benefit' of their assaults in your seemingly increased wages, but how about when these same people prevent you from buying light bulbs for your homes, or prevent you from selling girl scout cookies on your front lawn? These are all part and parcel with the same view, the very same unrestrained use of force upon anyone who is inconvenient to the plans they have for you, anyone and anything which prevents them from enforcing a collective 'equality' upon us all.

Do you really think you're going to be allowed (allowed'!?) to opt out?!

Force, far from force being the opposite intent of their plans, is in fact the very motivation and purpose of them.

Patch Adams, who clued me in to most of the links in this post, couldn’t resist directing my attention to the ultimate display of their hypocrisy and corruption:

“Oddly enough this socialist wants you to pay $130 to read his paper.... fat chance.”
Incredible, isn’t it?

Fat chance indeed. But this is who they are and what they mean. Take a look again at the video above, it contains one of the latest disclosures (and there are many more to come) of how Ancel and Giljum discuss before the class how to use 'direct action' tactics to bankrupt a business, and then banter about the trials and tribulations of Giljum's automatic coffee machine that won't work correctly for him (I'll bet he'd be much happier with a CEO worker-release slave tending to them -you'll see what I mean in a minute), and of Ancel's anguish at driving to work in the morning, while eating cereal, when her car lurched and her cell phone pitched into the cereal bowl.

Aw Shucks! Isn't that cute?

Do you suppose these enthusiasts for "Heterodox" economics, or "Libertarian Communism" (I kid you not, look through Professor Lee's links) have bothered to give a single thought to where these toys they're so casually enjoy consuming from, come from? Do they really believe such high tech materials, whose manufacturing process requires highly coordinated logistics spanning the globe, somehow 'just appear in stores' as a result of 'labor'? Do you suppose they even give it a second thought? Do they give a first thought to what might happen if their 'direct action' tactics should put businesses out of business? Do they consider what will happen to the jobs their labor 'brothers and sisters' will lose when their 'direct action' tactics have shut their businesses down?

Fat Chance.

And don't fool yourself about Professor Ancel's regard for the rule of law, she favors only the persuasion of force that favors her personal views, with little or no regard for anyone else's priorities, civilly or nationally - if an issue comes between the interests of Americans, and that of other nationalities, hands down, she favors the other: In one of the more mild examples of this, you'll find that "Judy Ancel Doesn't Think ID Theft by Illegals is a 'Crime'",

""Judy Ancel, director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Institute for Labor Studies, said it's wrong to compare immigrant workers to criminals who take out fraudulent credit cards.

"Identity theft is when you steal someone's identity in order to profit from them," she said. "The crime they (illegal immigrants with fake identities) have committed is working under somebody else's Social Security number. The attempt to criminalize immigration is the wrong path. ... It's just going to make a bunch of families suffer."

So Judy is under the impression that the felon, aka Illegal Alien, that has already broken federal law for being in the U.S. ILLEGALLY doesn't commit the same crime by stealing someone's I.D. to work as someone who is here LEGALLY and steals credit card information because they don't PROFIT by it?

Hmmm.. lets see how that makes sense..

It' Doesn't!!"

No it doesn't make sense, Fat Chance indeed.

Same story from a different perspective, take a look at where Professor's Lee and Ancel participated in a conference which has a familiar theme running through it... see if you can spot it in this labour history for IWW, by Professor Lee: Labour History News - Radical Economics

Conference on Radical Economics in the 20th Century: Radical Economics and the Labor Movement
Date: 15 - 17 September 2005

"Proposals on any aspect of the theme are invited. Possible topics include:

1. the role of radical economics in the education of workers such as radical economics in labor newspapers, the teaching of radical economics in labor schools, party schools, and colleagues and universities, in labor education programs, and in labor history courses
2. the role of radical economics in trade union publications, such as the role of radical economics in IWW publications on the general strike or the machine and unemployment
3. the role of radical economics in trade union strike, bargaining, and organizing activities
4. radical economics and the new society or the economics in radical utopian literature
5. radical economics, syndicalism, Guild Socialism, and the IWW
6. past and present development of radical economic theory
7. recent developments in radical economics and their relevance to the radical labor movement and to rank-and-filers
8. radical economics and the radical labor and radical student movements in the 20th Century"

Do you suppose that they are using the word 'radical' here to denote feelings of kind hearted generosity and good will to all mankind? Do you think Lee is advocating anything there that has to do with freedom for all? After all the reading I've been doing on him, I'm inclined to believe that he's far more interested in securing the freedom of those who fall into a group he favors - muggers - than anyone else. Too harsh? I sure don't think so. But judge for yourself. See if this from Lee's bio tips you off as to where his roots are at, here he recounts how his grandfather had a position dictating agricultural policy in FDR's administration, and of his growing interest in… radical notions:

"… Consequently, for my father, the 1930s was not a time of desperation, but being a child growing up in an affluent home where important figures from the Roosevelt Administration visited and discussed pressing economic and social issues. However, the Great Depression did catch his attention and he became interested in Marxism (and nearly joined the Communist Party at one time). He acquired many of the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin; and his parents contributed to the collection by, for example, giving my father for his 20th birthday in 1944 Lenin’s State and Revolution. [1] "

Ma Lee’s background was much the same,

"… her father grew up politically aware and in circa 1916 acquired Marx’s three volumes of Capital which were displayed prominently on his book shelves as I was growing up. [2] My grandfather had another significant feature: he obtained a Ph.D. in political science in 1921 from Columbia University. [3] My mother was a politically active, progressive Democrat. So between my mother and father I grew up in a house where progressive politics and civil and workers rights were considered the norm and the book shelves were filled with … Collected Economic Papers… and … the works of Marx, and the books of other heterodox economists."

Which set the tone for little Frederic,

"The next two years were significant in my embryonic development as a heterodox economist. In the summer of 1973 I got my first economic publication as a letter in a local Marxist-Leninist paper critically evaluating the role of cartels in the definition of imperialism as the highest form of capitalism"

...I entered Rutgers as a Post Keynesian-heterodox economist with an overriding interest in developing a Post Keynesian-heterodox microeconomic theory that would completely replace neoclassical microeconomic theory; and I left it, thanks to my professors, infinitely more capable of achieving that goal."

Another fine product of 'higher education' hit the streets, and the Missouri University system reaps the benefits. Professor Lee’s book of edited essays, were taken from this conference below, which both he and Judy Ancel had leadership positions in, which lists the,

"PURPOSE OF THE CONFERENCE
2005 will be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, the most radical union in North America. To commemorate the anniversary, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is hosting the conference on radical economics. The Conference theme is the role of radical economics in the labor movement in the United States and around the world. Radical economics includes but is not restricted to anarchism, Marxism, syndicalism, radical Institutionalism, left-wing Keynesianism, and plain old-fashion radical economics.
Conference supported by the IWW and the Union for Radical Economics

How about that 'plain old-fashion radical economics' has a nice 'down home' ring to it, don't it? First up to bat on the speakers roster, was of course;

Dr. Frederic S. Lee University of Missouri-Kansas City

Isn't it nice to have your state run and funded university system prominently represented with 'plain old-fashion radical economics'? And lets not overlook the fact that also included on the roster with our professors, was this oh-so exciting sounding talk, called:

"Peter Donohue (PBI Associates/Portland State University), “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: Union Organizing on Commission”

Ever heard that phrase before? 'Let a hundred flowers bloom'? If you’re not familiar with the quotation, it is from our former Whitehouse Communications director's favorite political philosopher, the one and only Chairmen Mao, and what it means is,

“... to refer to alleged deliberate attempts to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, before wiping them out”

How’s that for radical? And so when we come to UMKC's very own Professor Ancel’s portion, we see another nifty title,

“Judy Ancel (University of Missouri-Kansas City), “The Regime Change 2004 Project”

Don’t you just wonder what that ‘Regime Change’ refers to? I'll just bet it’s radical. We also find her heading up the list of confirmed speakers for a May Day celebration,

"Judy Ancel - Director, Institute for Labor Studies, on the History of May Day"
with May Day noted as:

"May Day is an international worker holiday that originated in the USA 130 years ago. Over the years it came to be mainly observed in other lands. More recently, it has been revived in this country by immigrant workers.

This May Day American working people face our most serious challenges in living memory. GIs have been sent off to fight three wars abroad while we face a class war here at home.

But recently the working class has started to pull ourselves together, fighting back against the attacks by employers and the politicians they retain. The mass mobilizations in defense of union rights in Wisconsin inspired many others to do the same. The recent We Are One actions involved hundreds of thousands of participants in virtually every community across the land."

Do you recall those orderly and peaceful folks in Wisconsin recently? Is that the way you remember how a mob of SEIU protesters were arrested for bringing their thuggish demeanor to the House of Representatives? Did you feel at peace with their using Nazi references to adorn the American Flag with political bumper stickers, using it as a ponchos? That's what was on display in Madison, or did you find it nice the way they sprayed graffiti on the Capital building? Slept in their own liter in the halls? Broke in windows and doors in the Capital building? Threatened lawmakers with violence and even death? Brought children from school to provide propaganda pictures for the media?

If those tactics have a familiar ring to them, it's because those are the type of 'peaceful' actions which Professor Ancel advocates, and I don't know about you, but THAT is very much opposite to what I think of when I think of peaceful, Pro-American behavior.

Is this the sort of position which UMKC provost Gail Hackett had in mind when she said,

"This is in fact the opposite of the position both instructors took in class"

Hmm?

Professor Ancel has been quite the popular speaker at events such as these, for well over a decade, I can't tell you how many places she's popped up at over the years chatting with radical communist oriented groups - and I'm sure that she's been careful to deliver only purely 'historical narratives' to, carefully couched in peaceful, law abiding language, funny thing is though, while I found hundreds of links with her associating with one radical organization or cause after another... I wasn't finding much pro-business, pro-responsible behavior associations in her history. Does that sound like a fair minded, balanced, looking out for your child's interests sort of professor to you? Or does that sound more like a professor who is intent on professing a single minded ideology to a captured audience of impressionable young minds?

'opposite of the position both instructors took in class' u-huh, sure, sure... 'opposite' statements indeed. Such as this one, from Industrial Workers of the World -Radical Economics and the Labor Movement, whose description sheet summarizes it as:

"Other presentations addressed the need to take economics out of the academy. Judy Ancel reported on a project which toured hard hit communities throughout the Midwest in the months leading up to the recent elections, educating workers about the connections between trade policy and job losses. Labor consultant Peter Donohue argued that unions need to adopt a very different approach to organizing, as the traditional staff-driven model (whatever one thinks of its meager results) is simply unaffordable. IWW General Executive Board member Jim Crutchfield stressed the need for accessible materials to bring radical critiques and visions for a non-capitalist economics to ordinary workers… And Charles Reitz and Steve Spartan discussed their work raising issues of economic inequality and its consequences to students and in diversity training workshops.

They suggested that the best way to teach critical economics is to begin with concrete illustrations of wealth and inequality in our society. Among the examples they discussed was Send a CEO to Jail Day, in which students were assigned research questions demonstrating that it would be cheaper to house corporate chieftains in jail that to pay the social cost of allowing them to continue to exploit. "

Cheaper to jail corporate executives than to allow them freedom.
Roll that one around the brain pan for a moment.

Let it sink in.

What sort of 'economy' do you suppose such 'peaceful' ideas is going to produce? Think there's going to be a big call for workers to work in factories whose executives are housed in jail? Wonder if they'd get a work release option?

But here’s an event where we can see our Professor Judy really shine out her true colors, the entire paper is a gem, don't miss her discussions of labor unions proper foreign policy (yeah, foreign policy) and how best to effect regime change (kind of hints at the later paper, eh?) you really should read it all, in fact, the inspiring pictures you've been admiring in this post, came from what she described as an inspiring success, the WTO Riots in Seattle, November, 1999. I especially like how she opens it up, and I'm curious to see how many peaceful, nostalgic memories it brings up for you:

Ancel, Judy. 2000. "On Building an International Solidarity Movement: A Response to Kim Scipes." from the Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, Summer: 26-35. [Posted in English on LabourNet Germany

“On Building an International Solidarity Movement
by Judy Ancel
February 1, 2000

“Late last year in the streets of Seattle, thousands of grass roots activists from many different movements and countries came together with tens of thousands of union members, mobilized by their unions and the AFL-CIO. Collectively they succeeded in derailing the meeting of the WTO and the U.S. government's international trade agenda. The sheer size and scope of the mobilizations in Seattle, the unity, and the high level of coordination inspired a sense of the immense power of people organized. Many union members I talked to felt like they were present at the rebirth of a movement. One African participant verbalized something that I think was on many people's minds. He said that this was mainly a U.S. protest, but to succeed in stopping the corporate global agenda, we will have to make this a world-wide movement.

Since 1993, I have been working at the grassroots level on such a movement through a local fair trade coalition and a non-profit organization called the Cross Border Network. In that work, I have met many committed activists and workers from both the U.S. and Mexico who are rethinking and reworking historical relationships and attitudes about one another. “

In case you've forgotten those nostalgic scenes of peaceful activism that so typefied the WTO riots... er... demonstrations, look again at the pictures on this page, and here's a refresher of what occured:

"... Seattle residents asked why such violence and destruction had occurred in their normally peaceful city. Early reports suggested that property damage was $2.5 million (Flores, 1999). More recently, downtown businesses claim they lost $20 million in sales and property damage (Brunner, 2000). One ransacked Starbuck store incurred $15,000 in damages, mostly due to broken windows and looted merchandise (Fryer, 2000). The Mayor and Police Chief faced strong attacks for being unprepared and naïve about the tactics demonstrators would employ, and for not securing enough money beforehand to cover the overall costs for hosting the WTO Ministerials. "

Unprepared and naive about the tactics demonstrators would employ... hmmm... sorta sounds like violence IS a useful tactic, eh? Is it possible that UMKC Provost Gail Hackett is being naive as well about the tactics she assume's here nicey-nice professor of Kumbaya Judy Ancel might employ? Seeing as though she though three days of violent rioting was a rousing success? Take a look at these pictures again and see if they help you to imagine the equally peaceful instructions she is preaching to your students. Daily. At UMKC. On your dime.

And here's another look into the well and looong established thought processes of Professor Kumbaya in regards to... wait for it...

Unions roll in foreign policy, from the same paper:

"...Certainly Kirkland wasn't the only one responsible for the failings of the AFL-CIO's foreign policy. Many who are in leadership today participated. John Sweeney sat of the board of all four of the free labor institutes (Moody) as did others who serve on the AFL-CIO Executive Council, and many at all levels endorsed what they knew of the policy and supported the Cold War agenda of selecting good unions and bad unions on the basis of their friendliness to the U.S. and its corporations. But it's time to acknowledge that those policies did untold harm to workers in other countries and seriously damaged the reputation of American labor."

Did you get that? Read the paper and she makes it very explicit, she vehemently opposed the AFL-CIO leadership because their practices developed during the Cold War, our decades long battle with Communist USSR, in which the fate of the world, and perhaps nuclear destruction, hung in the balance - Ancel was dissatisfied, to say the least, that it tended to side with, and aid, the interests of the (gasp!) United States of America.

And that is what she objected to most of all. Read her own words.

"...This link between business unionism and the AFL-CIO's foreign policy is the skeleton in the closet, the reality the AFL-CIO must confront before it can ensure that the old policy doesn't resurface. Meany made a deal with the devil because he believed that his organization and members would benefit by being citizens of the dominant world power...
...
It would be a good start if the AFL-CIO came clean, opened its records to the public, and acknowledged the role they played during the Cold War. It would help too for them to acknowledge that current U.S. foreign policy is imperialist - in its foreign ventures as well as well as its trade deals - so that it can begin to construct an independent international policy based on the interests of workers wherever they may be. "

That, ladies and gents, is who you've got heading up a dept in Missouri's University system. Oh, I'm sorry, did I make 'distoring cuts' there? No, and you know what? You can go and verify it for your self.

Assuming you aren't a crude nationalist, that is, assuming that you think that being an American has a meaning apart from simply being born here, if being an American, means holding those ideals which we were formed from, and whose acceptance have traditionally turned millions of immigrants into Americans, constitutional government, the rule of law, individual rights, directed towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if those can be taken as defining characteristics of being American, then it is an inescapable conclusion that Professor Ancel, and most of her cronies, are anti-American to their very cores. And more, they are sympathetic, willing and even eager, to use force, intimidation and violence to break the laws, damage property and even cause bodily harm in order to further their hateful and extremist, radical, communistic agenda.

Self imposed ignorant enablers, like William at the top of this post, are willfully blind to their behavior. Nevertheless, these are the people who are teaching your children, on your dime, in the University of Missouri system, what and how to think and they are advising them on how they too can oppose and shut down everything American that they can.

How do minds wind up this way? Well, the most common way is through taking college classes from professors who profess a single, radical, extremely ideological point of view, a point of view focused upon material benefits, by means of glorified violence that’s feeding enviously upon 'the rich' with a slavering consumptive greed that mere money grubbers can only hope to admire from a distance.

That's enough HTML for one post, I'll leave the post-mortem for for next post.