University of Ottawa: Dean caught lying in cover up

Denis G. Rancourt
academicfreedom.ca


Dean André E. Lalonde

"IPC rules in ATI case at U of O: Dean, VP-Academic and Legal Counsel conspired to send dubious letter questioning dissident professor’s ‘physical and mental well-being’"

INTRODUCTION

The Denis Rancourt case at the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada) is a major ongoing academic freedom case being presently investigated by a Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Independent Committee of Inquiry and expected to go before the courts as a significant labour dispute. [Endnote-a]

The case has been covered by national and local media in both Canada and the US (New York Times -twice, Globe and Mail -twice, National Post, CBC radio The Current, TV Ontario). [Endnote-b]

Rancourt has presented his views on the case at a conference on academic freedom at New York University. [Endnote-c]

Academic workplace expert Professor Kenneth Westhues’ independent report concluded that Rancourt was subjected to an academic workplace administrative mobbing [Endnote-d].

The present example can be understood as one incident in the broader administrative mobbing phenomenon described by Westhues and enacted by the Allan Rock administration of the University of Ottawa. Several of the players mentioned by Westhues appear here also.


Why we love to hate conspiracy theories: 911 Truth as threat to the intelligentsia

Denis G. Rancourt
Activist Teacher Blog

Especially left and liberal professionals and service intellectuals but also right-wing members of the intelligentsia vehemently attack and ridicule “conspiracy theories” such as the present 911 Truth movement.

Why?

It’s as though power did not covertly orchestrate its predation of us? Is that not the modus operandi of power?

Is it so difficult to believe that the complex and highly successful military attack on US soil that was 911 (levelling three gigantic sky scrapers, blasting a hole into the Pentagon, and destroying four commercial jets and their passengers) was not orchestrated by a religious zealot from a cave in Afghanistan and executed by failed Cessna pilot trainees with box cutters? Or that those who measurably benefited in the trillions had nothing to do with it?

What the hell? Not even (admittedly rare) authoritative mainstream reports seem to matter [1].

What ever happened to “war is a racket” and “follow the money”?

In rigorous compliance with the true meanings of "academic freedom" [2] and "freedom of the press" virtually no academics or mainstream journalists have made it their research to find truth or to radically (at the root) question the establishment version.

Indeed, all the major and considered-radical academic pundits such as Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill, have actively avoided the possibility that the 911 attacks could have been known or aided from within the finance-corporate-military complex.

What keeps them from crossing that line? What makes them demean attempts to cross that line? [3]


Roundabout as conflict-avoidance versus Malcolm X’s psychology of liberation

Denis G. Rancourt
Activist Teacher

In the present essay I introduce the general notion of “roundabout” as a mechanism of conflict avoidance used by privileged social justice activists. I then contrast this pseudo-liberation activism with the needed true liberation activism of Malcolm X, which I argue to be consistent with the model of liberation of Freire.

INTRODUCTION

The now familiar concept of “pacifism as pathology” was introduced by Ward Churchill as the central characteristic of First-World middleclass so-called social justice activism. Churchill argued from history that all liberations were leveraged through violence and proposed that pacifism as cowardice was pathology. [1]

Gandhi stated that it was better to practice armed resistance than to use pacifism as an excuse for cowardice [2]. Both men (Churchill and Ghandi) saw acceptance of and self-justification for one’s (legal or circumstantial) slavery as pathology.

Paulo Freire’s work showed that all hierarchies, no matter how cushioned in comfort, are violent and oppressive and argued that we could only fight our own oppression – that “solidarity” meant standing side by side with those fighting our same oppression. Freire advanced that all liberations had to be rooted in and driven by the struggles of the oppressed themselves no matter how underprivileged and that inter-social-class “solidarity” was insignificant and limited to rare individuals who joined in battle on the front lines. [3]

Churchill concentrated on the use of pacifism as an excuse to avoid the needed direct confrontation with the oppressive system. He and others have deconstructed and exposed First World pacifism as avoidance; including mainstream life-style environmentalism, ecological or economic isolationism, love ideologies, and so on, when taken to be activisms in themselves. These authors did not explore the main creative active strategies whereby pacifism can be enacted.

I explore the latter strategies of evasive action (roundabout) used by the most activist-minded sector of concerned citizens.

My goal is to provide a radical self-criticism for dedicated anti-hierarchy (social justice) activists to help ensure that we are as effective as possible and are not simply fooling ourselves. I hope that my analysis will help us to more easily recognize when we are fooling ourselves and wasting our energies and will help us to identify optimally effective outlooks and strategies.


WHY SYSTEMS BECOME MURDEROUS EXPLOITATION MACHINES

Denis G. Rancourt

On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism

Arguably the three most influential end-point models of political organization are best represented by Adam Smith (capitalism), Karl Marx (socialism/communism), and Mikhail Bakunin (anarchism).[2][3][4] These three men and many other persons who contributed to critiquing, perfecting and adapting or combining these end-point models were unquestionably brilliant, acute and incisive.

Problem is none of these models has ever been put into practice in a sustainable way. This is because none of these models or their adaptations and combinations can successfully be put into practice by engineering a system for people to inhabit.

For these ideal models to work they must arise from a self-organization in which every individual has both the capacity to recognize when a foundational element of the model is being corrupted by a particular practice and the capacity to intervene to prevent or correct the corruption. With capacity to intervene comes capacity to recognize.

The American libertarians understood this and inspired a revolutionary constitution that guaranteed the individual the right to intervene (bear arms, free speech, etc.). This libertarianism also nurtured a deep and healthy cultural distrust of governments, institutions, banks and corporations.

To be sustainable, the above-mentioned socio-politico-economic models and their combinations cannot be imposed and managed from the top but instead must be driven from the base; must be discovered and developed by the individual connected to his/her community and must be controlled by the individual via personal agency. As soon as the individual has little or no influence to correct the system then there is runaway hierarchical command and control and all the nasty oppressions that this necessarily implies.


They’re not just pigs

Denis G. Rancourt

G20-Toronto participatory inquiry in full swing

The 2010 G20 police state mass aggression in Toronto has led to unprecedented alternative and popular media coverage. Photos, raw video footage, video reports, Indy media articles, independent radio reports, documented testimonies, and social media commentaries are pouring in.

Taken together, this spontaneous and autonomously produced information is the evolving factual, interpretative, and recommendation parts of a self-organized participatory inquiry into the police state crimes of G20-Toronto. It will be more complete and more true than any official report from a government-appointed inquiry or than any ruling from a group action lawsuit.

We don’t need daddy to tell us what happened or that “mistakes” were made. We need daddy to be subjected to the consequences of having designed and allowed this mass aggression. A few of those consequences are and should be the lawsuits, the official inquiries, the human and civil rights organization condemnations, the negative media coverage, demotions and firings, the loss of credibility and legitimacy, and much more.

One of the most disturbing results of the participatory inquiry, at a systemic level, is that these cops aren’t just pigs.

The targeting, intimidation, and terrorizing of protestors - treated like “the enemy” in a war – was, like with all recent anti-globalization protests, systematic. The patterns described by the thousands of victims (from psychological intimidation to broken skin and rape, e.g., HERE, HERE) are identical. These are no ordinary pigs. These thugs had to be trained to execute these manoeuvres against civil society.


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