For our more skeptical readers, we've transcribed the first few minutes of Churchill's Portland speech to show more context to the statements he made that we published last Sunday. The quotes we used earlier are in boldface.

Note: On the MP3 we found on indymedia.com and copied to PB, Churchill's comments begin mid-sentence at 21:36. We have been unable to locate a recording that covers his prior remarks. 

(btw: Did you know Churchill was a grandfather? Neither did we.)

[starts at 21:36]

[abrupt click]

(unintelligible) they killed the landlords, turned the landlords into a sport. How you see things is very much involved with how you act in the world. If you purport to be in opposition to war, well for starters you might as well be purporting to be in support of the sky. War we can all oppose. War is bad. We have just said nothing. Is there anything—any kind of specificity—that might be involved in that opposition to war? Is there a particular kind of war or is it just all war? 'I oppose oppression. I oppose violence; I oppose everything not nice. I blow bubbles and look at butterflies. I am groovy and cool. Like me! I'm different than the ones who would kill you.' No, you're not, because you're not stopping the killers from doing what it is that they do.

Question to the group, and actually it's sort of a statement of solidarity. I'm an old guy and I'm gonna be talking like an old guy in part tonight. I'm 57 years old. I'm coming on to 60. I'm a grandfather. I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't have to be doing this because I was part of something that happened 30 years ago that was supposed to prevent this sort of thing from being necessary now. but in that conjuncture—'cause a lot that was learned has been lost and forgotten maybe has to be relearned or maybe there can be a sort of conveyance. I make my statement of solidarity to the brother who was up here from the resistance. I remember that Omega from back in the day. Funny that we would have to be talking about it again 30-35 years after the fact, whole new generation here and we're gonna have to teach them about the necessity of resisting military induction. Thought that was over and done with.

And solidarity to the brother who spoke earlier from the lawyer's guild. Thanks not to you personally but to the organization for keeping me out of jail more than once over the last 30 years. There's other things I coulda been doing, like stamping out license plates or working for Bill Gates on circuit boards and things like that. 'Cause you know under those reconstruction amendments slavery's still legal in this country—you've got the greatest slave archipelago on the planet right here in the land of the free. One in three black men between the ages of 18 and 25—either doin' time, just got done doin' time, or getting ready to do time. Think of the implications of that, because those are legally enslaved people. And they're being selected on the basis of melanin content just like they used to be, like livestock, [and] they're being impressed into service to fuel this economy just like they were back in the early part of the 19th century. Taken at the prime of child-bearing age and disenfranchised and dispossessed. Forty acres and a mule my ass! That system hasn't changed much and that relates to what we're talking about now too.

Talkin' about, comin from a lawyer's guild perspective, teaching people about conscientious objection, well, that goes directly to the point I raised a moment ago: Is it all war you oppose, or is there particular forms of war that you find more reprehensible than others or are there actually forms of physical resistance—what might be called warfare—that you could actually support? I come from a background of supporting, say, the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, North Vietnamese army. Having fought in the [unintelligible] [least?] I could do is support them in the aftermath of that. [I] never did oppose all war. But for those of you who do, as a matter of principle, oppose war in any form, the idea of supporting a conscientious objector who's already been inducted [and] in his combat service in Iraq might have a certain appeal. But let me ask you this: Would you render the same support to someone who hadn't conscientiously objected, but rather instead rolled a grenade under their line officer in order to neutralize the combat capacity of their unit? That kind of resistance.

Lesson to be learned. the United States Army in that field in southeast Asia disintegrated in that field on the basis of in 1970 the reported number of 1100 incidents of which soldiers did exactly what I was talking about. The life expectancy in combat of a second lieutenant in an infantry unit was shorter than that of a sand-flea. The ability of the military to project what it was engaged in doing upon its opponents in the field disintegrated accordingly. that's 1100 reported incidents of what they call 'fragging." The cannon fodder, the troops, taking out the officers and neutralizing their capacity to direct them in combat operations in the field. And the unofficial number put out by the army that year was over 10,000. You cannot maintain a military projection of force in the field when your own troops are taking out the line officers who are directing them in combat. It is as simple as that. Conscientious objection removes a given piece of the cannon fodder from the fray; fragging an officer has a much more impactful effect.