A fruitful research avenue for tenured university professors?

“This is the kind of obviousness that a child can see—though the child may, later in life, become browbeaten into believing that the obvious problems are "non-problems", to be argued into nonexistence by careful reasoning and clever choices of definition.”
-- Roger Penrose

“... so obvious that it takes really impressive discipline to miss it ...”
-- Noam Chomsky

Here we have Israel as an internationally recognized thug, keeper of the largest open-air prison on earth, regularly practicing war crimes against civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure and continuously disregarding the Geneva Conventions – virtually unanimously denounced by the international community, by every human rights watch group on the globe, and by international civil society for the last many decades [1] – and how do Canadian politicians and parliamentarians respond?

Israel, the modern sate that shamelessly uses the Nazi holocaust to justify overtly racist domestic and foreign national policies, stock piles nuclear weapons, incites wars on its neighbours, overtly funds propaganda in foreign countries, routinely practices international pirating, kidnappings and murders, openly performs political assassinations [1]... and how do Canadian politicians and parliamentarians respond?

Israel has no significant economic exchanges with Canada and performs no significant geopolitical service of benefit to Canada; a Canada with virtually no economic ties with the Middle East and a Canada that is a net exporter of oil and gas.

Yet, apart from the independent-thinking Bloc Quebecois, it seems that half the time that English Canadian politicians open their mouths it’s to denounce a “new anti-Semitism” that social scientists and statisticians tell us is a media fabrication or to express Israel’s “right to defend itself” or to declare Canada’s “unwavering support for Israel.” Not to mention Israel’s “right to exist”! [2]

What about unwavering support for human rights and international law?

And I count the NDP (New Democratic Party) establishment prepared to sacrifice one of its own for stating a historic fact and happy to stand silent in the face of Zio-zeal.

The Canadian Zionism Question is: Why?...

Activists in the First World middle-class need to get real.

They are an avant-garde minority against a police state. Given their small number and given the relatively low degree of state violence directed at them, there is no point practicing armed urban guerrilla tactics unless the activists become targeted themselves by COINTELPRO-style executions.

Would the Black Panthers and their breakfast programs have survived if they had an organized covert counter assassination unit which killed cops in answer to every state assassination or abduction? There are way more black folks than cops in the US: Less than 2% (0.7M vs. 40M today) and the cops are busy with lots of stuff.

As long as the State refrains from summary executions of political dissidents there is no practical reason to practice armed guerrilla warfare; in view of the State’s predictable response which would be supported by a majority of the middle-class.

One can argue that the racist large scale prison attack against the lower economic class in the US is violent to the extent of justifying an armed guerrilla response but this response is primarily the self-defence responsibility of the targeted lower economic class and middle-class activists are not about to participate in large numbers.

Middle-class activists should concentrate on fighting their own oppressions using the methods to which they have access. These methods go far beyond petitions, letters to members of parliament, letters to the media, street protests, and one-day occupations of government facilities.

The State has assembled a large-scale anti-democracy apparatus which targets middle-class political dissidents. The State apparatus practices extensive surveillance and infiltration, pre-emptive arrests, intimidation of activists and their friends and family, police harassment, targeted and exaggerated or false criminal prosecutions, unconstitutional bail and undertaking conditions, and so on. [a]

Unfortunately, too many middle-class activists who fall prey to these state abuses of power are intimidated away from defending themselves and away from effective activism. Every such successful intimidation is a soul-breaker. The activist makes the demoralizing choice of accepting defeat and imposed conditions in exchange for a...

Suggested marketing slogan for the University of Ottawa:

U of O, Canada's university, where the information we gather on you will never end up in your employee file, in fact, you'll probably never know why you lose your grant, or scholarship, or get expelled!
 

Unfortunately, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) which represents student employees (Local 2626) at the University of Ottawa (which brands itself "Canada's university") has worked to thus help degrade civil and worker rights in Canadian society.
 

QUESTION: Can a Vice-President-Governance at a university have a tenured professor arrested, handcuffed, and dragged off campus in front of community members and students at the Cinema Politica weekly event that he created and has hosted for many years AND then become head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association?

ANSWER: Meet Nathalie Des Rosiers.

See video report and documents here:

http://uofowatch.blogspot.com/2010/10/ethically-challenged-nathalie-des.html

Nathalie Des Rosiers answered in letter to author Jeff Schmidt that she did it because it was her job to do so under president Allan Rock. See her letter here:

http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/Data/Documents/ccla/2010-April-20=NDR-to-JS=CCLA-matter.pdf

You can trust Nathalie Des Rosiers to do her job. It is now her job to protect civil liberties in Canada.

QUESTION: Can the Legal Counsel at a university coordinate an extensive covert information gathering campaign against a tenured professor and many students AND then become a judge at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario?

ANSWER: Meet Michelle Flaherty.

See video report and documents here:

http://uofowatch.blogspot.com/2010/10/ethically-challenged-michelle-flaherty.html

Michelle Flaherty continues to occupy her post at the HRTO.