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Jackboots in The Canadian Academy. Freedom of Expression And Inquiry Under Threat … Again. University of Lethbridge, Alberta.

Prof. Anthony Hall. Image credit:  Jeremy Rothe-Kushel/ YouTube
By Robin Mathews | American Herald Tribune | December 4, 2017

Freedom of Speech battles in universities often mirror problems in the larger community, and the one being fought at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, is no exception. It is conducted, on one side, by convinced believers as a response to alleged Anti-semitic positions which have surfaced there and which, the believers think, need relentless, radical, extreme responses. Conversely, the conflict looks, to some others, perhaps, as a program to create a huge smokescreen behind which representatives or friends or sympathizers of the State of Israel can attempt to cut off any examination of that State’s activities which might bring it into disrepute. And the quickest method is to brand any adverse references to the accounts of history held by the State of Israel as well as to any of its actions and policies as acts of Anti-semitism.

Forces wishing to dominate and to dictate inquiry and to control “freedom of expression” always seek to repress certain kinds of knowledge, investigation, and expressions of opinion.

In the late 1980s I was proposed for a year’s exchange with a professor in Simon Fraser University’s English Department – at the time dominated by U.S. immigrants holding U.S. citizenship. They rejected my presence at SFU – and were backed belligerently by SFU’s Canadian president who was quoted in the Vancouver Sun saying that he wouldn’t have Robin Mathews on his campus and he didn’t know a university president in Canada who would! (Amusing slander, but slander nonetheless.)

(If William Saywell’s comment sounds like an utterance by present University of Lethbridge president Michael Mahon it may be because both men appear to have fallen to thinking they could dispose of human persons in any way a passing whim suggested … and to make no bones about it!)

The U.S. citizen chair of the SFU English Department wrote me a letter saying that many people in the Department disliked my views on literary and cultural nationalism in Canada and did not want to give me a place at SFU to utter them. That was a ban on free (scholarly) expression. I took it to mean, also, that U.S. citizens intended to decide what Canadians could say to Canadians in British Columbia.

There was a battle. It was long … months and months. The national faculty body (the CAUT) was strong. It declared SFU in violation of academic freedom. At that point, SFU admitted it had lost. The intensity of the battle is hard to think of now – the basis of it is so apparently minor. Reports, however, were that “grown men” at SFU interviewed on the matter almost burst into tears. And, indeed, passions were running so high the SFU Administration asked me if I would teach from the Centre for Canadian Studies rather than from the bent, bleeding, and discountenanced English Department.

That battle was won at SFU for freedom of expression and inquiry! But the personal victory was muted because president Saywell and a few of his closest underlings, I believe, did everything they could in the next years to limit my effectiveness. No surprise. “The fortunes” one might say “of (academic) war”.

At the University of Lethbridge twenty-six-year professorial veteran of Native American Studies, Liberal Arts, Globalization Studies … and more … Anthony Hall has responded with invention, far-reaching research, and creativity to the hugeness of the body of knowledge he has taken as his province. In two large, scholarly, and fascinating works (The American Empire and the Fourth World (2003), and Earth Into Property (2010) Hall traces the oppression and exploitation of the globe’s indigenous peoples since the historic voyage to “the new world” of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

As a result of his wide-ranging research (and travel) Anthony Hall couldn’t fail to see the power and to observe the participation of the U.S.A. in what he names “imperial globalization”. Nor could he evade the intimate ties between the State of Israel and the U.S.A. Nor, of course, could he fail to see the huge influence the State of Israel has upon U.S. policy in the Middle East (a region populated with indigenous peoples, like the Palestinians).

He is, moreover, a scholar who believes genuinely that no subject worthy of study can be declared ‘off limits’ – whether Canadian culture and literary nationalism or the complex “Holocaust” in Nazi Germany operated preceding and during what we choose to call The Second World War (1939-1945). Donning the apparel of true scholars everywhere, Professor Hall accepts that there is no historical, scientific, or cultural fact – however apparently sunk in concrete – that cannot be revisited, re-opened, re-weighed, re-examined, reassessed.

Closer to home, professor Hall has paid attention to the rising tide of voices in the U.S.A. and Canada which claims the “official” account of 9/11 (of, that is to say, the destruction of the Trade Towers in New York on September 11, 2001) was, has been, and is the product of a huge Conspiracy by complex powers (involving U.S. government) producing a Conspiracy Theory created to mislead everyone and to place the blame for the event on people of Islam, especially in the Middle East … people, incidentally, who have become, it would seem, ‘by the accident of history’, enemies  – in fact – of both the U.S.A. and the State of Israel.

And so … if more and more authentic voices are saying “the official account” of 9/11 was created by government and Secret Intelligence Conspiracy Theorists wanting to pin onto Islam the guilt of 9/11 … a question forces itself forward.  If the formally accused did not … then who did organize and carry out the destruction of the buildings of the World Trade Centre (and of the building which, a little later, simply appeared to collapse into rubble without any apparent cause)?

Also, since September 11, 2001 an increasing number of so-called “terrorist” events and attacks have occurred all over the Western World and have (by persistent and often careful and scholarly non government-approved examination) been called by investigators arising in the population “faked events” or what is called “False Flags” undertaken (it is alleged) to terrify innocent Western populations and to condition them to accept “Islam” (in a hundred different forms) as the over-arching enemy of the peace-loving and (mostly) Christian West. In answer to the very active, very numerous, and wholly ‘un-government’ on-going operations and investigations into those “terrorist” events, Anthony Hall has found himself a co-host of “The False Flag Weekly News”.

It is hugely relevant to the whole subject (and especially to Canadians) that in July, 2016, Madam Justice Catherine Bruce in the B.C. Supreme Court declared that an apparent attempted “Islamic Terrorist Event” at the B.C. legislature grounds on July 1, 2013, was, in fact, wholly the work of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, [a major False Flag event] entrapping socially challenged converts to Islam, counselling them, coaching them, assisting them, giving them money, and delivering them to the terrorist site … and then arresting them as terrorist criminals … caught in the act! For all those who say that people questioning terrorist events are ‘conspiracy theorists’ making up lies – the highly organized RCMP criminal action proves absolutely that at least one State – Canada – has engaged in a major False Flag event in order to slander Islam. It did so employing hundreds of RCMP and millions of dollars of Canadian taxpayers’ funds (during the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper).

Subsequently, in answer to a call for a Public Inquiry into the RCMP, (Liberal) Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Ralph Goodale, responding for the Liberal, Justin Trudeau cabinet, expressed, in effect, approval of organized criminal activity on the part of the RCMP… what he calls in his letter the RCMP’s “major crime technique”. Nowhere in the letter does he refer to the request for a Public Inquiry, instead urging understanding and support for the Force he gives evidence of accepting as a criminal organization….

If the officially declared Islamic men did not plan, organize, and carry out what we call 9/11 … then who did?  All possibilities are open for consideration. One of them is that the State of Israel was involved, wanting to influence the U.S.A. towards an aggressive policy in the Middle East. The claim may be completely false. Naturally, the hosts running The False Flag Weekly News, Kevin Barrett and Anthony Hall, would air the possibilities (among many others) on their weekly program.  And they did … and, apparently Professor Hall was not unsympathetic to the idea that the State of Israel may have had a hand in the events of 9/11.

Then: in an astonishing event on Friday, August 26, 2016 when Anthony Hall was out of Canada, someone placed a despicable, violently Anti-semitic cartoon on his Facebook Page … completely unknown to Hall.  With truly remarkable speed, organizations and individuals, some apparently supporting the State of Israel went to work as if Anthony Hall was wholly guilty of the posting on his Facebook Page. People from outside the University, a few who would normally be thought of as related to the State of Israel in one way or another, pressed upon the University Administration, the police, officers of the Alberta government… and more. (The Alberta government, it seems, has insisted upon keeping secret some of the names of those complaining.)

If one were to suggest the possibility that a carefully staged campaign was unleashed against Anthony Hall, one might not be wrong to so suggest. The University Administration filed a complaint against Hall with Alberta Human Rights. The complaint was rejected. And so the University Administration filed another one.

In an action (some believe) marked by intemperance and folly – without having exchanged a single word with Professor Hall, a senior academic colleague – president Michael Mahon of the University of Lethbridge ordered Hall off every University of Lethbridge campus and suspended him without pay. He did those things while completely ignoring ALL carefully constructed processes within the university for managing complaints against professorial staff. The processes are written into almost every university faculty/administration agreement in Canada and have been honed and improved over many decades.

Slander and libel filled the Lethbridge air to match the wholly unacceptable actions of the University of Lethbridge Administration and Board of Governors. Nonetheless, the national faculty body, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, and the local Faculty Association held firm – the CAUT naming the University of Lethbridge in Violation of Academic Freedom, not a light designation in the university world in Canada. In a court procedure weighing the actions, a little later, the Administration of the university won over neither the judge presiding nor the Alberta government represented at the process.

And so on November 23, 2017, the University of Lethbridge Administration reinstated Professor Hall, lifting all sanctions against him and announcing it would also withdraw its complaint against him to Alberta Human Rights. After fifteen months of attempted Jackboot Justice, the Administration at the University of Lethbridge agreed to use the processes long set up to provide fair and impartial judgements of complaints against faculty members. At one level the return to civility by the University of Lethbridge Administration is a victory for democratic forces in Canada. But at another level its long hold-out, a period filled with injustice to Anthony Hall as well as being filled with violent language and slander, will long remain a scandal in the Canadian Academy.

On the same day – November 23, 2017 – a top B’nai Brith official declared that B’nai Brith is “outraged” at Professor Hall’s full reinstatement which is coupled with the move to due process in the examination of complaints against him.

December 4, 2017 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Prof. Tony Hall wins – U. of Lethbridge backs down, does the right thing

Tony Hall (on the right) has the courage to speak truth to power on False Flag Weekly News… and courage is not always appreciated in the academy
By Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today | November 23, 2017

In a victory for academic freedom (and common sense) Professor Anthony Hall is back at work at the University of Lethbridge, starting today, after the Board of Governors announced  that it is rescinding his suspension. Here is the Board’s statement:

The Board of Governors of the University of Lethbridge and the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association have agreed that the outstanding issues that have been raised concerning Dr. Anthony Hall will be addressed in the context of the Faculty Handbook. As a result, the suspension imposed on Dr. Hall has been lifted and he has returned back to work at the University. The parties will be fully participating in the agreed upon procedures in the Faculty Handbook to investigate and address the outstanding issues. – November 23, 2017

Professor Hall was suspended more than one year ago following a witch hunt orchestrated by B’nai Brith Canada. The anti-Hall PR campaign was launched by an outrageous and illegal “kill all Jews” image surreptitiously planted on his Facebook page by parties still unknown. B’nai Brith and its allies falsely insinuated (and in some cases stated) that Hall was responsible for posting the image. The Canadian mainstream media, including CBC, dutifully echoed those lies and false insinuations.

At the height of the media witch hunt, University President Mike Mahon, apparently backed by the Board, unilaterally suspended Hall without pay. Mahon never even contacted Hall to ask whether Hall had posted the offending image! Mahon and the Board took the position that they had the right to fire any faculty member at will, for any reason or no reason, with no due process of any kind, in complete violation of the procedures of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Handbook. In response, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued a stinging reprimand to the Board, threatening to censure and sanction the University for its outrageous conduct.  The U of L Faculty Association, U of L founder Owen Holmes, and others rallied to the defense of academic freedom, and the witch hunt gradually crumbled under the weight of its own absurdity.

Professor Hall and I will be discussing and celebrating his return to the University of Lethbridge this Friday, 11 to noon Eastern, on False Flag Weekly News, broadcast live on No Lies Radio and later archived at my VT page and also here.

November 26, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

Prof. Anthony Hall Vindicated

By Kevin Barrettt | American Herald Tribune | December 12, 2016

The witch-hunt against University of Lethbridge professor Anthony Hall may have just ended not with a bang but with a whimper. And it is the Israel lobby group B’nai Brith Canada, and its flunkies at the University of Lethbridge, who are whimpering.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) just issued a stinging reprimand for University of Lethbridge president Mike Mahon, a glorified gym teacher who unilaterally suspended Professor Hall without pay because he disagrees with Hall’s political views. See:

Lethbridge University President Says He Can Fire Tenured Faculty at Will for No Reason

Here is CAUT’s statement:

screen-shot-2016-12-06-at-11-19-03-pm

CAUT is using extremely strong language. The statement accuses Mike Mahon of violating “all principles of due process and natural rights” and “denying… legal rights” i.e. violating the law.

CAUT is not only threatening all-out legal action, but also “imposing censure” on the University of Lethbridge. This is a formal process that amounts to a complete boycott of the University of Lethbridge by the entire Canadian academic community – a sort of scholarly BDS action. Professors would refuse to work there, students would refuse to study there, and all Canadian academicians would essentially consider that the “University of Lethbridge” no longer existed.

How could the University of Lethbridge resolve the situation? I spoke to Professor Hall this morning. He was optimistic about the long-term prospects of his academic freedom struggle, and grateful to CAUT for doing the right thing. But he also hastened to point out that Mike Mahon and others at the University had created an extremely hostile work environment for him, and that the University of Lethbridge needs to do much more than merely allowing him to return to teaching in the horrendous environment they have created for him.

By suspending Professor Hall without pay, without any form of due process, the University essentially endorsed the outrageous, libelous lies concocted by the B’nai Brith and its suspected confederates. The biggest lie, the one that launched the entire witch hunt, was a Zionist-fabricated “kill all Jews” image that was mysteriously planted on Professor Hall’s Facebook page without his knowledge. B’nai Brith and Facebook conspired to create a media scandal about the image, and despite Hall’s complete innocence, media outlets including the Lethbridge Herald and CBC labored to fabricate a spurious link between the horrific, genocidal image and Professor Hall in their coverage of the incident. Rather than reporting the truth – that Professor Hall was the innocent victim of a smear campaign – they absurdly implied that Professor Hall himself wanted to “kill all Jews” !

The genocidal image was created by a Florida-based Jewish Zionist false flag terrorist named Joshua Goldberg (who has been arrested for plotting fake “Islamic terrorism”) and then planted on Professor Hall’s Facebook page by persons unknown. Though the planted image was credited to “Glen Davidson,” an Alberta resident, Davidson  says he was not the source of the image, and does not know how it came to be surreptitiously planted, under his name, on Professor Hall’s Facebook page. See:

The PLANTED weaponized image that got Professor Anthony Hall suspended

Why would B’nai Brith and its accomplices target Professor Hall for this kind of slander operation? Presumably they disapprove of Hall’s research and public statements on various controversial issues, especially his work on false flag terrorism. (Hall has interpreted such events as 9/11 and the Ottawa capitol shooting as apparent false flag public relations stunts designed to further the Zionist war on Islam and Muslims.)

The University of Lethbridge, by implicitly endorsing B’nai Brith’s libelous big lie, has managed to tarnish Professor Hall’s reputation on campus to the point that many students and colleagues have accepted the false notion that Hall is a “genocidal anti-Semite.” Hall has suffered hostile treatment on and off campus as a result of the University’s going along with the B’nai Brith’s witch hunt.

At a very minimum, the University needs to:

*Fire president Mike Mahon and Board Chairman Kurt E. Schlachter;

*Apologize in the strongest possible terms;

*Vow to support Professor Hall’s academic freedom to study, write, and speak about any and all issues;

*And make it absolutely clear that Professor Hall has done nothing wrong, but has in fact been doing exactly what all tenured professors are implicitly required to do by virtue of their tenure: Investigate the  most controversial issues and pursue the truth wherever it leads, no matter how much  powerful interest groups may be displeased.

December 12, 2016 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 3 Comments

Canadian professor libelously targeted as “anti-semite” in coordinated attack

By Rafiq | American Herald Tribune | September 28, 2016

In his Now Magazine article “Facebook Removes Anti-Semitic Post after Online Blowback,” Bernie Farber explains that “the Facebook ravings on the social media site of Anthony Hall,” a tenured professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, have been identified as anti-Semitic. This statement might lead readers to believe that there were anti-Semitic ravings by Dr. Hall on his Facebook page, but as the article makes clear, there are no examples of such ravings by Dr. Hall, only by “one Glen Davidson,” who we are told posted these ravings on Dr. Hall’s page.

Farber goes on to state that Dr. Hall “has publicly embraced the ridiculous and obnoxious notions of Gerard Menuhin, who has purported to have proof that the Holocaust is a myth.” Farber does not attempt to dismiss any of this proof, as one might expect an objective journalist to do, but instead takes the position that such proof can be dismissed out of hand as false without any investigation.

By comparison, Dr. Hall sounds like the more reasonable person for having actually looked at Menuhin’s book Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil. Note, too, that when Hall says “I’m reading that text and having to reassess a lot of ideas,” he does not say that he has changed his ideas, only that he is reassessing his ideas. Again, Hall sounds like the more courageous thinker for his willingness to reassess his thinking on a narrative as seemingly sacrosanct as the Jewish holocaust.

Having not yet said anything that convinces me Dr. Hall is an anti-Semite, Farber adds, “Hall reportedly linked Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, with 9/11.” The role of Mossad, along with the CIA, in the 9/11 attacks is a fact well documented by credible journalists and scholars and widely disseminated online and in books. It is public knowledge and in the public domain. To admit the role of Mossad and the CIA in 9/11 is to admit the villainy of national governments and their foreign policies. Jewish identity and anti-Semitism have nothing to do with it.

Regarding  the anti-Semitic Facebook post that did not even originate with Dr. Hall, Farber writes, “To the best of my knowledge, Hall was never moved to delete this post himself.” An unbiased journalist would have contacted Dr. Hall and asked him about this matter. Well, I did contact Dr. Hall, and he informed me that he didn’t even know that the post was up on the “wall” of his Facebook page until after it had been taken down and after he had learned of the resulting controversy. So, here again, Farber offers no proof that Dr. Hall is even remotely anti-Semitic.

Not only that, but Dr. Hall’s award-winning two-volume book The Bowl with One Spoon, published by respected arbiter of scholarly history McGill-Queen’s University Press, gives every indication that Dr. Hall is the opposite of a racist, particularly in light of his deep commitment to exposing the plight of Indigenous peoples. Indeed, renowned Canadian scholar Naomi Klein, who happens to be Jewish, doesn’t seem to think that Dr. Hall is a racist either. On the cover of Dr. Hall’s book, she writes, “I cannot overstate the importance of this book. If used properly, it could change the world.”

Nonetheless, Farber goes on to bemoan that “the combined efforts of B’nai B’rith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs were unable to move the University of Lethbridge to take action against Hall.” I would like to believe that this unwillingness on the part of the University of Lethbridge to help B’nai B’rith destroy Dr. Hall’s career is due to the university’s professed commitment to liberal education and liberal values, even if Farber does portray Lethbridge as a racist backwater in conservative Alberta, where Hall is said to have “found a comfortable home amongst Holocaust deniers.”

I would like to believe that the unwillingness of the University of Lethbridge to help B’nai B’rith destroy Dr. Hall’s career is due to the fact that, as a nation, Canada has shown itself willing to reconsider history when there is good cause. Notably, Canadians have recently begun the hard process of re-evaluating our own history with respect to our nation’s cultural and physical genocide against our Indigenous peoples. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools has just published a six-volume final report on its findings, and in the tradition of scholars like Dr. Hall, this report shows fearlessness in confronting past lies so that history can better reflect the truth, however uncomfortable that truth may be.

I would like to believe that the unwillingness of the University of Lethbridge to help B’nai B’rith destroy Dr. Hall’s career is due to the university’s high ideals and Canadian bearing, but when I contacted Dr. Hall, he informed me that the University of Lethbridge has indeed asked him to step down from his tenured position after twenty-six years as a professor. It seems that the university is ready to bow to outside pressure and to sacrifice Dr. Hall. I’m sure that Farber’s biased account of the anti-Semitic posting on Dr. Hall’s Facebook page did little to help Dr. Hall’s chances of staving off B’nai B’rith’s attack.

Farber’s misrepresentation of Dr. Hall is no less offensive than the crime of which Dr. Hall is accused, namely misrepresentation of the Jewish holocaust. The difference between the two is that, in the case of Farber, his accusation that Dr. Hall is an anti-Semite is clearly baseless, whereas Dr. Hall’s willingness “to reassess a lot of ideas” about the history of the Second World War seems to be well thought out given his reputation as a respected historian.

September 28, 2016 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , | 3 Comments