Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Sweeping agreements will further degrade university education in Ontario, "Canada"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-unveils-deal-with-universities-colleges-to-specialize-programs/article19969302/

 By Denis G. Rancourt


In mid-summer vacations we learned from the media that the "Ontario government has signed a sweeping set of agreements with universities and colleges that will oblige them to choose areas of specialty and avoid overlapping programs with one another". [1]

This is a structural change that goes to the heart of institutional identity and jurisdiction. Thus, it is important to ask what the large societal forces are that have driven this change, and what the foreseeable consequences of this change might be.

The significance of this massive legal and structural re-organization of the higher-education complex in Ontario is confirmed by the facts that these changes:
  • were not subject to public consultation;
  • were made entirely my management without seeking university senate approvals; 
  • were negotiated behind closed doors without collegial participation;
  • were announced when the students are away.

Since their creation, universities in Ontario have been independent bodies. This independence is statutory. Each university derives its legal authority from a law enacted by the provincial parliament. This gives each institution the responsibility to develop its academic programs through a collegial process culminating in decisions made by the university senate, subject to the management of financial funds overseen by the university board of governors.

The idea is that a university is suppose to serve the needs of the local (city and regional) population, although not exclusively, and that the collegial process involving students, professors, and community members, is best suited to identifying academic needs.

The university administrations (the executives) have now sold-off institutional independence without a fight, and without consulting their communities. They have collaborated with the service executives that run the province.

Increased specialization will necessarily have large societal costs, that will be paid by students and their families. Students will need to travel further and live away from home sooner, at great extra costs, without the option of a local institution that offers a desired program.

Increased specialization will eliminate much healthy inter-university competition, both competition for enrollments and intellectual competition between departments in a given academic discipline. Whereas, larger academic departments are known to be more hierarchical, often at the expense of the individual academic freedoms of professors and students.

As it stands, there is more variation in brilliance from professor to professor (and from student to student) than variation in brilliance from university to university. The academic reputation and influence of an individual researcher is relatively easy to gauge whereas the academic reputation of a department or university is ill-defined, and more often than not simply and superficially tied to size, and thus arising from the department's or university's political weight within the discipline.

Increased specialization will force-out individual brilliance by subjecting all the professors and students within a discipline to be subjugated to the authority of a large departmental hierarchy. All such hierarchies tend towards schools of thought, normalization of investigative procedures, and so on -- they constrain and stifle creativity and risk-taking.  

Increased specialization represents monopolizing and cantonizing of academic disciplines. The relative fluid ability that an institution possessed to create new programs and research areas will be replaced by fossilization tied to provincial funding.

Furthermore, the increased specialization will not produce savings for the province. Where are the studies that predict such savings and what are the underlying assumptions of those calculations?

The promise of savings for the province is a false pretext to achieve specialization. As with virtually all institutional changes, specialization is driven by covert underlying forces. Namely, the natural forces towards sharpening and consolidation of hierarchical control of the economy and of people who populate the economy. [2]

Specialization serves "globalization" and "corporatization" -- that is, further vassalization of "Canada" into the US corporate-military-finance empire (Empire).

Specialization of Ontario's higher-education complex enables a tighter control on students and professors in view of accepting "globalization", and of accepting their roles within the globalization project. Specialization facilitates indoctrination into the logic of the US corporate-military-finance empire. The mechanisms are as follows:

  • Cross-fertalization between disciplines is physically barred.
  • Disciplines that are potential threats are physically isolated and hierarchically controlled.
  • Students with different perspectives cannot physically meet.
  • Students in a given location are controlled by a single administration, allowing tighter discipline.
  • Students are virtually all away from home and thus more vulnerable to hermetical training and indoctrination.

As a result, a student is more tightly indoctrinated into his/her role in the service of the Empire, and is thus made more stupid than he/she otherwise would be. He/she is also less able to adapt to any other role than the prescribed role -- a dangerous attribute in a changing world.

To give ONE EXAMPLE, the main geopolitical obsession of the US corporate-military-finance empire these days is its policy in the Middle East. Empire strategists believe that controlling the Middle East allows the US to control access to energy, and thus control development and a strategic resource. This militarily-enforced control of the Middle East and of the exploited realm also allows the US to impose the US-dollar as the World (energy) currency, and the dollar (which the US prints), in turn, is the empire's main economic exploitation device. [3][4]

In order to keep control in the Middle East, the US must constantly prevent the Arab Wold from coalescing and liberating itself. It must generate controlled perpetual war, as needed. It must kill Arabs. Its main agent in the region is Israel. [3][5]

In order to help make its perpetual waring acceptable to the citizens of the Empire, there must be a "war on terror", and there must be Islamaphobia, including regular discoveries of "sleeper agents", "terrorist plots", and so on [6]. All this is difficult to swallow for many students (professors generally have an easier time).

Overall, their is a risk that the Empire's perpetual waring, including Israel's pet project of its genocide against Palestinians, will become fatally unsavory to liberal citizens of the Empire (except in Israel where killing Arabs is, by necessity, culturally normalized by state indoctrination and enforcement). The main agent at home to align political positions, thought, and discourse on Israel is the Israel Lobby [3][7][8]. But the Lobby is becoming insufficient. Campuses are alight with "Israeli Apartheid Weeks" and with "BDS campaigns". And genocides and war crimes seen on YouTube make people quite angry.

One part of the solution, for universities, is a classic divide and conquer: Specialization. [9]

When campuses become unimodal professional-training boot camps, there is no campus activism that could poison societal consciousness [10]. And the professors are not disturbed by colleagues in other fields having different perspectives.


Endnotes

[1] "Ontario unveils deal with universities, colleges to specialize programs" by Adrian Morrow, Globe & Mail, August 8, 2014. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-unveils-deal-with-universities-colleges-to-specialize-programs/article19969302/

[2] "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, Stairway Press, Mount Vernon, WA, 2013; see chapter entitled "Institutions Naturally Evolve Toward More Control".

[3] "The Intended Roles of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 30, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-intended-roles-of-israel-lobby-and.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[4] "Global Economic Model of War: Understanding Syria and more" by Denis G. Rancourt, September 3, 2013; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2013/09/global-economic-model-of-war.html -- and at Veterans Today.

[5] "Israel's attempted genocide must fail -- Lessons from Canada's genocide" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 29, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/israels-attempted-genocide-must-fail.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[6] "Canadian judge goes bonkers on a thought crime: Case of Mohamed Hersi defended by lawyer Paul Slansky" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 25, 2014. http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/canadian-judge-goes-bonkers-on-thought.html

[7] "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

[8] "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" by Norman G. Finkelstein, Verso, NY, 2000.

[9] Similarly, all the major societal changes that have occurred in Canada since Jean Chrétien was ousted -- prominence of the Israel Lobby, change of position on Palestine at the UN, seeking foreign investments as the main economic "motor", allowing exponential increase in foreign ownership, privatization of public holdings, change of geopolitical stance from peace-keeping to war-mongering, treatment of refugees and immigration policy, politicization/corporatization/globalization of universities, militarization of police, surveillance practices, increased criminalization of citizens, reduction of democratic processes, alignment of the media, ... -- are attributable to the on-going vassalization of "Canada" into the US corporate-military-finance empire, and its pillaging.

[10] See "Disciplined Minds -- A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes their Lives" by Jeff Schmidt; Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK

Saturday, August 9, 2014

How Canada's NDP enables and seeks to participate in the Israel genocide

Logo from the NDP petition

By Denis G. Rancourt


It is no longer a question of serious debate whether Israel's intentions and actions constitute genocide, versus less serious crimes against humanity, or simple war crimes [1]. The Israeli establishment, Jewish Israeli citizens, and some prominent members of the Jewish diaspora all expressly call for genocide (extermination, cleansing, "mowing the grass", etc.). Op-Eds and media statements by Israeli government officials are explicit. Thus, Israel's actions since 1948 need not speak for themselves, although the actions themselves do speak plenty loud enough. [2][3][4]

All three major Canadian political parties (Conservatives, Liberals, NDP) directly enable the Israel genocide against Palestinians by:
  1. staunchly refusing to condemn Israel for its now-routine mass slaughters in Gaza, or for its latest and most brazen mass slaughter in Gaza of the last month;
  2. expressly, repeatedly, and glibly insisting that Israel -- the aggressor, occupier, and perpetrator -- has a "right to defend itself";
  3. accepting and enforcing the US-Israel stance that the forefront formation of Palestinian resistance -- Hamas, the elected representatives of Gazans -- is a "terrorist" organization; 
  4. using this contrived classification of Hamas as a false pretext for allowing the Israel genocide to continue unimpeded, and as a pretext to prevent any meaningful negotiations by allowing Hamas to be excluded from all settlement discussions. 
The Green party also plays this role admirably well. 

But mostly one has to admire the Conservatives for being consistently vehement with their support for the terrorist state of Israel, whereas the others are pathetic in the apologetic tone of their public statements in support of Israeli crimes, and in their sustained attempts to deceive their potential supporters.

And it is an obvious question to ask how it is that all these parties follow the exact same script? It's almost like there is an edict being decreed from some unseen body, otherwise known as the Israel Lobby -- the US-Empire's de facto whip on the Empire's Middle East policy [3].

Back to the NDP. In trying to deceive concerned Canadian citizens while serving the Israeli project of genocide, the Zionist Thomas Mulcair (leader of the NDP) is testing a particularly disturbing tactic: He wants to "bring injured children from Gaza to Canada for treatment" [5][6][7]. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is apparently allowing himself to be used in this way, and is fully participating in the proposed scheme [5][6][7].

The NDP would have us follow Dr. Abuelaish who "rejected the politics of hatred and revenge, and instead committed himself to reconciliation and love" [5]. Translated, in its context I take this to mean: to not condemn Israel for its abominable on-going crimes, including incremental genocide, and, instead, to remove children from Gaza in a vast guilt-alleviation scam rather than demand that the blockade be lifted immediately so that all Gazans can begin to benefit from improved medical care and healthier living conditions.

As far as I can tell, this latest public-image-management scheme is not something that originated from Gazan civil society, or from the victims themselves and their extended families. Such systematic child removal is an ethical nightmare: How could this crass proposal have been cooked up and why? Have any of the MDs who want to participate ever asked to volunteer in Gaza, or have they ever spoken out against the Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza? On so on.

This is lower than low: "Let's save Gazan children by bringing a token 100 of them to modern medicine in Toronto! Let's put all the needed diplomatic and logistical resources into this scheme rather than sending aid to Gaza to the people in the field who best know the priorities of what is needed."

One of the possible defining characteristic of genocide is "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" [1]. Arguably, this is the only characteristic of genocide that racist-Israel had not yet materialized. It would appear that it took Canadian multiculturalism and the NDP -- benefiting from Canada's extensive experience from its own highly successful genocide against the First Peoples [2] -- to bring us there.

Bravo Thomas.

To me, the NDP scheme is repugnant, à la Zionist Mulcair, and it shows how naive the Canadian public has become (at least the potential supporters of the NDP) that such projects can be proposed for public consumption, and seriously be echoed in some media, without critical analysis. Have we gone mad?


Endnotes

[1] See the definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes given in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Articles 5 to 8.

[2] "Israel's attempted genocide must fail -- Lessons from Canada's genocide" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 29, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/israels-attempted-genocide-must-fail.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[3] "The Intended Roles of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace" by Denis G. Rancourt,July 30, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-intended-roles-of-israel-lobby-and.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[4] "Israel-US has interrupted its slaughter in Gaza only to press forward with its genocide" by Denis G. Rancourt, August 6, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/08/israel-us-has-interupted-its-slaughter.html -- and at Dissident Voice.

[5] "Act now to help bring injured children from Gaza to Canada for treatment" NDP petition started in the last few days; http://petition.ndp.ca/children-from-Gaza

[6] "Canadians can help to heal wound in the Holy Land -- Canadians should help save 100 children wounded in Gaza by bringing them here to be treated, says Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish" Toronto Star, July 30, 2014; http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/07/30/canadians_can_help_to_heal_wound_in_the_holy_land.html

[7] This entire blog article is, obviously, an opinion piece. The author does not question that Dr. Abuelaish authentically holds well-meaning personal motives. The author does not know Dr. Abuelaish. This article is meant as sociopolitical analysis in an attempt to understand the mechanisms of complicity and of cover-up regarding Israel's abominable on-going crimes, which operate in Canada.


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Israel-US has interrupted its slaughter in Gaza only to press forward with its genocide


By Denis G. Rancourt


Israel's long-term goal is to cleanse all of the territory that it militarily controls, by whatever most-efficient means it can get away with, which is facilitated and funded by the USA.

Since 1948, the name of the game is genocide, and this is no secret. Israel's plans have been explicitly expressed and Israel's genocide against Palestinians follows exactly the pattern of Canada's genocide against First Peoples, except that it is in full-throttle rather than being in end-phase as in Canada [1].

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998Entry into force: 1 July 2002, in accordance with article 126

Article 6

Genocide

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In the latest slaughter in Gaza, Israel again targeted civilian infrastructure and again targeted the civilian population -- following the School of the Americas doctrine of killing the resistance by killing the population that supports the resistance.

No wonder Latin American countries were the most active in applying diplomatic sanctions against Israel: their own populations have been brutally and repeatedly assaulted by the same criminal methods of the same US-Empire that is now exterminating Gazans.

The "reason" for Israel's genocide is tied to Israel's geopolitical role in the service of the US-Empire; to control, divide, and weaken the Arab World in order to prevent emergence and independence from the Empire [2].

Israel-US has finally decided to stop this round of the slaughter in Gaza, for now. Next it will apply the most vicious blockade that Gaza has ever seen, unless we stop it. And, again, it has made this explicit [3]:

"What we want to do is support the Palestinians and their desire to improve their lives and to be able to open crossings and get food in and reconstruct and have greater freedom," US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

"But that has to come with a greater responsibility towards Israel, which means giving up rockets, moving into a different plane," he said ...

Recent Latin American history of violent oppression by the US-Empire has proven that for a resistance fighter to lay down his weapons before the US-oppressor is both to commit certain suicide and to commit one's people to certain and total deprivation. Those fighters who have not learned this lesson will suffer the ultimate consequence, and Gazans know this perfectly well.

In the words of Gazan Nasman Al-Ashi [4]: "We either live in dignity and free or we all die. ... We either live free or we die here."

In this reality -- a reality created by the US-Empire's brutality -- John Kerry's words are diabolical. He is announcing the predictable next step in the continued crushing of the Palestinian Nation. ...Destroy all civil and sanitary infrastructure, spread death and terror, then strangle with a blockade until the caged victims become susceptible to fractionation and deterioration... The model has been repeatedly applied, in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and on and on.

One problem is, Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, and their co-combatants in southern Lebanon, are remarkable freedom fighters, among the most valiant and tenacious that humanity has ever produced. They can only be stopped by a direct hit or by starvation, and they are exceedingly hard to hit and hard to starve.

Another problem is that Palestinians are loved and admired in the entire World precisely because of their courage and determination against the Israel-US monster, and in contrast to the inhumanity of that monster that has been on display for the last month.

In addition, Palestinian fighters have demonstrated themselves to be outstanding combatants since the previous assault on Gaza, and this time defended themselves by killing almost 100 invading IDF soldiers in intense close-range encounters.

In the words of a major establishment intelligence firm [5]:

Hamas appears to be attempting to create the spectre of a continual potential threat to IDF ground units in Gaza, thereby undermining IDF morale. Hamas is also keenly aware of the impact of inflicting casualties on the IDF - not just in the Palestinian Territories and Israel, but in the wider Middle East region - and so it and the PIJ are striving to combine tactics and their geographical knowledge and advantage to inflict maximum casualties on the IDF.

A highly notable and successful example of this occurred on 19 July, when Izz al-Din al-Qassam militants lured a force from the IDF's Golani Brigade into a minefield in the Shujaiya area of Gaza, before then attacking the unit's Merkava Mk 4 main battle tanks (MBTs) and M113 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) with anti-tank missiles. Six IDF soldiers were killed in the attack, while a seventh soldier - Sergeant Oron Shaul - went missing. While Hamas subsequently claimed that Shaul was alive and had been captured by its fighters, Israel stated that the soldier was likely to be dead. A further six Golani Brigade soldiers were killed in separate clashes in Shujaiya on the same day, and the unit's commander, Colonel Rasan Aliyan, was also wounded, underlining the intensity of the fighting.

It is precisely because Gaza and Palestine are so dedicated to their own self-defence, and are so valiant in opposing the vile US-Empire, that we must not allow Obama, Kerry, Netanyahu, Harper, Trudeau, Mulcair, and all the other thugs to strangle Gaza with a continued and more vicious blockade.

The planned blockade announced by Kerry is part of the actuation of the on-going genocide and it is no less criminal than the direct slaughter itself. We must be as repulsed by the planned continued and augmented blockade as we were repulsed by the land invasion.

And we must be as repulsed by Israel's pathological refusal to accept an independent Palestinian Nation as we are repulsed by the blockade. The blockade must die now, and an independent and viable Palestine must be allowed.


Endnotes

[1] "Israel's attempted genocide must fail -- Lessons from Canada's genocide" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 29, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/israels-attempted-genocide-must-fail.html

[2] "The Intended Roles of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace" by Denis G. Rancourt,July 30, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-intended-roles-of-israel-lobby-and.html

[3] "Gaza truce enters second day as Israel and Palestine prepare for talks" (Reuters, AFP, Al-Akhbar), August 6, 2014; http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gaza-truce-enters-second-day-israel-and-palestine-prepare-talks

[4] "Palestinian tells BBC "The World is failing Gaza"" (BBC News), Shazlqbal77 YouTube channel, August 4, 2014; http://youtu.be/OOf1kozJMOI

[5] "Palestinian militants inflict substantial casualties on Israeli forces in Gaza" (IHS Jane's Terrorism & Insurgency Centre), August 1, 2014; http://www.janes.com/article/41421/palestinian-militants-inflict-substantial-casualties-on-israeli-forces-in-gaza


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK