BC Liberals 'Proportional Mis-Representation' straw vote: Compares the country of Belgium to the province of British Columbia

One has to wonder why the BC Liberals seized upon the Washington Post article which used Belgium's 589 days to showcase the possible failure of Proportional Representation here in British Columbia, if implemented, by the Minority government of the NDP supported by the Green Party.

Why didn't the BC Liberals use second place Cambodia's 353 days?

Why use the country of Belgium, or Cambodia, at all as a comparison?

Why not use just ONE of Belgium, or Cambodia, PROVINCEs?

The reason?   BC Liberals couldn't find an example of a Province having a 'problem' with PR from a list of      87 countries.

The BC Liberal Party's official position is:

"Proportional representation leads to confusion and chaos. In Belgium after elections in 2010 it took 589 days for politicians to come to a governing agreement. That's 589 days without a government with a mandate from the people. BC doesn't need an electoral system that leads to confusion and less accountability for voters.

https://www.facebook.com/BCLiberals/
 December 20, 2017

If the BC Liberals are going to quote from the Washington Post then they should go a bit further and give credit to Valerie Strauss' October 1, 2013 article which used the Country of Belgium to explain what was happening in the United States based on an article from the Telegraph.  'Belgium day-to-day affairs of the country were tended to by a temporary government run by a former prime minister' whereas Ms. Strauss was asking for a Caretaker Congress to run the United States, just like Belgium.

Washington Post

The BC Liberals fail to mention that in the 'province of Belgium' voters cast their ballots for their MP and their SENATE.   Yes, Belgians elect their Senators.  Not so in the Province of British Columbia, ooops, in Canada.   Successive Prime Ministers of Canada have that responsibility by appointing their trusted 'foot soldiers' to the Senate until they reach the age 75; retirements with a fully INDEXED pension.  Whereas the Belgians term is for only four years and then must face another election.

Reuters' FactBox

ELECTORATE: About 7.7 million of Belgium’s population of 10.5 million. It is compulsory for all people aged 18 or over to fill in a ballot sheet.

ELECTORAL SYSTEM: Proportional representation, with 5 percent minimum threshold.

PARLIAMENT STRUCTURE: The parliament is split into the Chamber of Representatives (150 seats) and the Senate (71 members of which 40 are directly elected). The Chamber is the more powerful of the two, with control over state finances.

VOTING: Two votes -- one for the Chamber, the other for the Senate. Voters are given a list of candidates from each party and can either vote for this list, backing the party’s order on who should get seats, or choose specific candidates from it, potentially pushing that person up the pecking order.

CONSTITUENCIES: For the Chamber, parties have lists for each of Belgium’s 10 provinces and the Brussels region. The number of seats available depends on each province’s population.

For the Senate, there are just two lists -- one for the Dutch-speaking Flemish community and one for the French-speaking region of Wallonia. Residents of Brussels, the third community, choose from one of the two lists. Belgium’s tiny German-speaking community select from the Walloon list.

While the Chamber has more power, politicians seeking to become prime minister are typically placed as the leading candidate for the Senate because it is a clearer demonstration of their popularity in their respective communities. The Senate vote is effectively a prime ministerial popularity contest.

GOVERNMENT FORMATION: After the election, the monarch typically appoints a senior politician (informateur) to investigate whether potential political coalitions are viable. The informateur can be replaced.

The monarch subsequently appoints a person (formateur) to form a new government. This person will typically be the next prime minister. The monarch can immediately designate someone as the formateur, without the need for an informateur.

The entire process can take from a few weeks to a few months. It is expected to last at least two months this time.

The government is in power for four years.

Google Search Criteria: "Proportional representation" Belgium 2010 it took 589 days 



Google Search Criteria: Belgium Elections via Wikipedia

Voting is MANDATORY

Provinces of Belgium

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The Perils of Proportional Representation

By Jonathan Manthorpe. Published on Jun 1, 2016 8:58pm

 Spain’s experience over the last six months suggests that Canadians shouldn’t be spooked into dismissing PR out of hand. Not having a government can be a good thing — in the short term, at least.

After a long recession, the Spanish economy started rebuilding in 2014; last year the economy grew by 3.2 per cent, one of the strongest showings among European Union countries that use the euro. Of course, Spain has still accumulated debt and faces a challenge in keeping the deficit below the ceiling mandated by Brussels: three per cent of gross domestic product. But its overall direction is positive.

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Merritt Herald

Historically, Proportional Representation (PR) systems often lead to smaller parties and encourages coalition governments. If we look to other countries as examples of PR, Belgium’s coalition government took 589 days to form government in 2010.

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Hmmmm IF WE LOOK TO OTHER COUNTRIES????? .....

Blog: NonSuch HP

Between 2010 and 2011, Belgium spent 589 days without an elected government. During this time, they broke the world record for the longest time for a democratic country to go without an elected government, overtaking Cambodia’s record of 353 days set in 2003 to 2004.

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Hmmmmmmm CAMBODIA'S RECORD OF 353 DAYS?????  Cambodia has PR????  Countries in transition???

Cambodia Daily

“For countries in transition [such as Cambodia], elections ex­perts often argue that proportional representation works better” because it lets various factions help reconstruct the country, said Mark Stevens, deputy chief observer for the European Union Election Observation Mission.

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"Belgium has become the country that in peacetime has known the longest period without official government," says the Guinness entry. "Iraq still has the record for longest period without a democratic government after a period of conflict."

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November 22, 2017

Andrew Coyne: Germany's political 'crisis' is not an example of proportional representation's ills

.......  the small matter that this is not remotely typical of proportional representation systems, least of all Germany’s: it was in fact the first time negotiations had failed to produce a coalition — though they still might — in the history of the Federal Republic. That’s why it came as such a shock. In every one of the previous 18 elections (that’s four fewer, by the way, than Canada has held in the same period) any negotiations had been concluded successfully. ....

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Here you go BC Liberal-lites.... 86 other examples in addition to Belgium with PR

 Wikipedia:  Countries with PR

	Country
1	Albania
2	Algeria	Party list
3	Angola	Party list
4	Argentina	Party list
5	Armenia
6	Aruba	Party list
7	Australia	For Senate only, Single transferable vote
8	Austria	Party list, 4% threshold
9	Belgium	Party list, 5% threshold
10	Bénin	Party list
11	Bolivia	Mixed-member proportional representation, 3% threshold
12	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Party list
13	Brazil	Party list
14	Bulgaria	Party list, 4% threshold
15	Burkina Faso	Party list
16	Burundi	Party list, 2% threshold
17	Cambodia	Party list
18	Cape Verde	Party list
19	Chile	Binomial voting (party list with 2-seat districts)
20	Colombia	Party list
21	Costa Rica	Party list
22	Croatia	Party list, 5% threshold
23	Cyprus	Party list
24	Czech Republic	Party list, 5% threshold
25	Denmark	Two-tier party list, 2% threshold
26	Dominican Republic	Party list
27	East Timor	Party list
28	El Salvador	Party list
29	Equatorial Guinea	Party list
30	Estonia	Party list, 5% threshold
31	European Union	Each member state chooses its own PR system
32	Faroe Islands	Party list
33	Fiji	Party list, 5% threshold
34	Finland	Party list
35	Germany	Mixed-member proportional representation,
36	Greece	Two-tier party list Nationwide closed lists and open lists in multi-member districts.
37	Greenland	Party list
38	Guatemala	Party list
39	Guinea-Bissau	Party list
40	Guyana	Party list
41	Honduras	Party list
42	Iceland	Party list
43	Indonesia	Party list, 3.5% threshold
44	Iraq	Party list
45	Ireland	Single transferable vote (For Dáil only)
46	Israel	Party list, 3.25% threshold
47	Italy	Party list The winning party or coalition receives a majority bonus.
48	Kazakhstan	Party list, 7% threshold
49	Kosovo	Party list
50	Kyrgyzstan	Party list, 5% threshold
51	Latvia	Party list, 5% threshold
52	Lesotho	Mixed-member proportional representation
53	Liechtenstein	Party list, 8% threshold
54	Luxembourg	Party list
55	Macedonia	Party list
56	Malta	Single transferable vote
57	Moldova	Party list, 6% threshold
58	Montenegro	Party list
59	Mozambique	Party list
60	Namibia	Party list
61	Netherlands	Party list
62	New Zealand	Mixed-member proportional representation, ......
63	Nicaragua	Party list
64	Northern Ireland	Single transferable vote
65	Norway	Two-tier party list, 4% national threshold
66	Paraguay	Party list
67	Peru	Party list
68	Poland	Party list, 5% threshold or more
69	Portugal	Party list
70	Romania	Party list
71	Rwanda	Party list
72	San Marino	Party list If needed to ensure a stable majority, .... majority bonus.
73	São Tomé and Príncipe	Party list
74	Serbia	Party list, 5% threshold or less
75	Sint Maarten	Party list
76	Slovakia	Party list, 5% threshold
77	Slovenia	Party list, 4% threshold
78	South Africa	Party list
79	Spain	Party list, 3% threshold in small constituencies
80	Sri Lanka	Party list
81	Suriname	Party list
82	Sweden	Two-tier party list, 4% national threshold or 12% in a district
83	Switzerland	Party list
84	Togo	Party list
85	Tunisia	Party list
86	Turkey	Party list, 10% threshold
87	Uruguay	Party list

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Bill and Sue and Bob have set up a Society with opposing goals

We will support Proportional Represention  sic
And
We will support Proportional Representation 

BC Legislative Library: "Grizzly Overkill in B.C. Bear Management 1999"

BC Legislative Library   .... you have to be an MLA, or the Press, to access the full document ... paid for by taxpayers.   Grizzly population in 2016 estimated by the province: 15,000.

Best guess done  nearly 20 years ago ......

 Grizzly Overkill in B.C. Bear Management       A. D. de Leeuw     November 1999

Year	Yearly	Yearly Kill	Yearly Kill	Yearly Kill
	0	133	400	536
1998	7819	7819	7819	7819
1999	8141	8003	7725	7583
2000	8477	8194	7626	7337
2001	8826	9393	7524	7082
2002	9189	8600	7418	6815
2003	9568	8816	7307	6538
2004	9962	9041	7191	6249
2005	10373	9275	7071	5949
2006	10800	9519	6946	5636
2007	11245	9772	6816	5310
2008	11708	10036	6680	4970
2009	12191	10311	6539	4617
2010	12693	10598	6392	4249
2011	13000	10896	6239	3866
2012	13000	11206	6079	3468
2013	13000	11530	5913	3052
2014	13000	11866	5740	2620
2015	13000	12217	5560	2170
2016	13000	12581	5373	1701
2017	13000	12961	5178	1213
2018	13000	13000	4975	705
2019	13000	13000	4763	176
2020	13000	13000	4543	0
2021	13000	13000	4313	0
2022	13000	13000	4075	0
2023	13000	13000	3826	0
2024	13000	13000	3567	0
2025	13000	13000	3298	0
2026	13000	13000	3017	0
2027	13000	13000	2725	0
2028	13000	13000	2421	0
2029	13000	13000	2104	0
2030	13000	13000	1774	0
2031	13000	13000	1431	0
2032	13000	13000	1073	0
2033	13000	13000	701	0
2034	13000	13000	313	0
2035	13000	13000	0	0
2036	13000	13000	0	0
2037	13000	13000	0	0
2038	13000	13000	0	0
2039	13000	13000	0	0
2040	13000	13000	0	0
2041	13000	13000	0	0
2042	13000	13000	0	0
2043	13000	13000	0	0
2044	13000	13000	0	0
2045	13000	13000	0	0
2046	13000	13000	0	0
2047	13000	13000	0	0
2048	13000	13000	0	0
2049	13000	13000	0	0
	637992	618634	182055	99125

 Grizzly Bear Index

Grizzly Bear Value     DRAFT  August  2016

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December 18, 2017

Vancouver Sun's  Larry Pynn:

The hunting of grizzly bears for trophies and food is banned effective immediately across B.C., the NDP government announced Monday in a major policy shift.

“Protecting this iconic species is simply the right thing to do,” Minister of Environment George Heyman told a news conference in Vancouver.  Snip

 In 2016, hunters in B.C. killed 235 grizzlies — 30 per cent of them females — out of a population estimated by the province at 15,000.  Snip

Globe and Mail's   Wendy Stueck

.... Of those bears – an estimated 329 each year – 87 per cent have been killed by licensed hunters, with other kills attributed to causes including the shooting of problem bears by conservation officers, illegal poaching and collisions with cars and trains. ... Snip

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 Google Search Criteria:
Grizzly Overkill in B.C. Bear Management  A. D. de Leeuw, November 1999

Recent information: Media and Outreach

BC Auditor General:

 An Independent Audit of Grizzly Bear Management

http://www.bcauditor.com/pubs/2017/independent-audit-grizzly-bear-management

http://www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/reports/FINAL_Grizzly_Bear_Management.pdf

http://www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/news-releases/MEDIA_Grizzly_Bear_Mgmt_NR_FINAL.pdf

I am brainwashed. You are brainwashed. We are brainwashed.

by Robin Mathews, December, 2017

Vast numbers of people (many more than we think, probably) are aware of a major, constant process by ‘Established power’, by the Mainstream Press and Media, by ‘Imperial Globalization’, by the Deep State, [there are more names] to blanket the population in misinformation, ‘disinformation’, misleading reporting, half-finished news and misanalysis of events   to use, in effect, a continuing blanket of propaganda to assure we do not know the truth about the world around us and to make us feel we are the enemies of perfectly self-respecting countries attempting to live peaceful lives .

Being aware is one thing.  Seeing through the propaganda is another  and there are not many who can (consistently) do it “which is what all the named forces above intend.  None of us gets  and stays  free.  That’s why the title of this column.  We all know we are being brainwashed.  But until we replace the present power structure/power system we will not be able to prevent what is being done to us  constantly, daily, intentionally, internationally.

Occasionally (with us all) a light shines in and reveals an insight, a small revelation  (or a large one). That makes the propaganda process clearer and its magnitude more evident.

Take the on-going repetition of (false) terrorist events in Western countries.  They are alleged to be produced by government-connected forces (alleged, that is, by non-official, independent investigators constantly at work). The investigators (most know) are almost all authentic, serious, responsible, even scholarly people concerned about the health of the community.  They toil away gratis for the good of the community.  Continuous accusations are made that those well informed researchers and critics of sensationally staged (Islamic?) terrorist events are Conspiracy Theorists who besmirch and ridicule the noble and selfless work of our official defenders.  But more and more people are less and less sure that the so-called Conspiracy Theorists are wrong.

Since the Cenotaph-and-after terrorist event in Ottawa on October 22, 2014, for instance, a number of researchers (I think of Graeme MacQueen and Barrie Zwicker) have brought telling arguments of a False Flag event created by shadow Canadian State operatives to hoodwink the nation and the world.  (Once again, a single, semi-insane ˜terrorist’ was killed before any testimony could be gathered from him.) So far the argument for the Ottawa terrorist event as fraudulent can’t be proved absolutely.  But we have one crystal-clear example of a Canadian False Flag: the wholly fraudulent Islamic terrorist event at Victoria, B.C., July 1, 2013.

Think of how much secret organization and how much deciding to do criminal things had to go on in order to create the terrorist event in Victoria.

Justice Catherine Bruce  judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia (on the case)  was applied to for corrective action after sitting through the jury trial (that found the two converts to Islam guilty). Justice Bruce had observed much. She struck down the terrorist conviction against the two socially challenged converts to Islam  and unveiled the judgement that the RCMP (and by implication the federal Conservative government) was planner, initiator, and controller of the whole elaborate sham “ using more than 200 RCMP and millions of dollars of unsuspecting taxpayers’ dollars.  Since the replacement of the Conservative government by a Liberal one, cover-up of the event continues, the Liberal cabinet refuses to discuss a Public Inquiry of the RCMP and an Appeal against the Justice Bruce decision is to take place in the B.C. Appeals Court on January 18, 2018. 

No one was killed or maimed in that ˜operation’ but innocent Canadians were jailed, charged, misused  and if the Crown wins the Appeal against the judgement by Justice Bruce, the two accused “ declared innocent by Madam Justice Bruce - can go back to jail and serve life sentences!

Historically the public-spirited investigators constantly at work (for no pay) started investigation of what might be called False Flag activity at a time when the hand of the evil U.S. government and/or Deep State could (almost) be plainly seen.  The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963; the Gulf of Tonkin faked ship battle in August, 1964, (to provide reason to intensify the War in Viet Nam); the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 brought an intense focus on U.S. government (˜Deep State’) criminality in the U.S.A.

It was when the unconvincingly explained murder of leading personalities in the U.S.A. began to be evident that the False Flag investigative process appears to have gone into high gear. Since the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy up to and including the most recent multi-Western nation terrorist events (still carried out mostly by apparently demented and “ usually-single-acting madmen who are almost always shot dead on the spot making live testimony from them impossible to gain) the number of terrorist events has blossomed  and the propaganda flowing from them has been imprinted over and over and over on the minds of Western populations.

Almost always, ISIS (the demonic, savage, heartless, brutal, and mostly invisible organization) ˜claims’ responsibility from  somewhere. Thus Islamic evil is established.

The pattern is relentless.  Almost always innocent people are killed or maimed, revealing the brutal heartlessness of the perpetrators.  But  pause.  Pull back.  Think a minute.

Surely if there is a powerful, designing force with tentacles into every Western country  through actual contact people or by wickedly-created terrorist-electronic-contact networks “ and is a force with considerable power and influence (and doubtless money)  wouldn’t it make something else happen  as well?

Wouldn’t that force, that evil organization, that unwearying actor on the world stage be able to enlist a few other people than the nut-case truck-drivers and the single shoot-out madmen we have been asked to accept?  And  (I suppose what I write next is sort-of kindergarten stuff) “ surely the evil organization could pick a few more telling targets than random gatherings of innocent citizens.  If the evil force wanted to make the point that it is the enemy of all those who are daily making war against Islamic peoples  wouldn’t it (at least now and then?) pick off a significant political operative, a known intelligence/military person, a major public figure involved in the damnation of Islam?  Surely “even if very rarely“ wouldn’t it drive one of those trucks into a significant store of weaponry, or a meaningful chemical factory  or  even just a significant anti-Islamic institution?

Now that I’ve said it  mustn’t it strike every thoughtful ordinary person in the Western World as very, very strange that the cruel, wicked, barbaric, brutal Islamic fighters (working in the West) have never targeted a single, meaningful actor contributing to the War Against Islam?  If that were to happen, ordinary people in the West wouldn’t be thunderstruck. They would think “ ˜yes yes, that makes sense: tit for tat’.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t happen. (That doesn’t mean any sane person would want any terrorist brutality.)

The failure of ISIS (or whatever organizations detest the war-making West) ever to undertake attacks on centrally responsible persons in the West leads one to believe that the attacks are not undertaken by Islamic sources at all  and are connected to Islam only through the propaganda channels of Western power and its Deep State.  The actual perpetrators of the brutalities visited upon innocent, ordinary people in Western countries might just be part of a force within those countries perpetrating acts of brutality against ordinary people to BRAINWASH whole populations in order to make them learn to despise those who are ACCUSED of the brutalities.

People in Western countries will protest.  Surely no force in Western democracies, they will say, would be permitted to violate groups of the wholly innocent, killing and maiming many for propaganda purposes!  But pause again  and think. Isn’t that precisely what the Western perpetrators of the brutalities against innocent people would depend upon “the essential decency of Western World citizens who wouldn’t believe the cause could possibly be found inside their own democratic countries?

The perpetrators would depend upon that good faith of citizens and would feed that good faith from controlled government sources, from controlled press and media, from lavishly supplied eye-witnesses to the events, from consenting elected representatives who are bought actors or misled innocents who will always mouth the appropriate propaganda phrases.

Looking at the bloodstained sidewalks and the blood-splattered market stalls where innocents have been brutalized, concerned citizens do ask: WHY THEM?  They do not ordinarily ask: Why not, instead, visible perpetrators of violence against Islam? or How come a person visibly responsible for the endless carnage in the Middle East is never picked off by a terrorist or a terrorist group?

Is it possible we don’t ask those questions because we have been indoctrinated, manipulated, brainwashed, taught to believe those questions don’t even exist, or may not be asked, or that only madmen and madwomen would ask them? When we think through the meaning of the state of mind we are in are we looking at what it is to be brainwashed ? And if we are what do we do about it?

BC Liberals cook the books: In one year BC Hydro customer base went from 1.9 in 2014 to 4 million in 2015?

Amazing isn't it that there can be a 2.1 million increase over one year in new customers to BC Hydro statistics from 2014 to 2015 and the 95% ! dot depicting a pac man pie remains the same ! ! ! !

Serving

 95%

 of the Province's

 population 

!

It would be interesting to find the source of those 2.1 million new customers.  Fort St. John?  Kelowna?  Metro Vancouver? Victoria?

http://www.llbc.leg.bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs/358355/quick_facts_2015.pdf

4 million customers  290 substations

http://www.llbc.leg.bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs/358355/quick_facts_2014.pdf

1.9 million customers - 300 substations

http://www.llbc.leg.bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs/358355/quick_facts_2002.pdf

1.6 million customers

------------------------------------------------------------

Who knows where the 2.1 million extra customers came from?  

Another one of those Post-it notes from Premier Christy Clark's office  wall sent to her by Chairman Brad Bennett?

https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/accountability-reports/financial-reports/annual-reports/bc-hydro-annual-report-2015.pdf

=======================

Index for: BC Hydro Quick Facts for the Year Ended March 31 ...
http://www.llbc.leg.bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs/358355/index.htm

2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002

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PS  Link to WAC Bennett Dam 8.0 Tremor 2014 Post
PPS  Updated link to Report: WAC Bennett Dam 8.0 Tremor  via the WayBack Machine

Translink Station Escalator Alerts: Incapable of working as stairs?

Mandatory servicing may be a valid reason for what appears as an ever ongoing shut down of the escalators at various Skytrain stations, but why is it that Waterfront Station outage is listed under Sapperton Station?

Does the Sapperton Station even have an escalator, let alone one that is indeed out of service?

At the REAL Waterfront Station there are two escalators going down (northbound) and two escalators going up (southbound) and in yesterdays instance the Southbound Left escalator of two was out for the Mandatory Maintenance without a worker in sight.

There we were backed almost to the vessel we had just departed waiting for access to the one working escalator with the right half of the tread holding those pedestrians that refuse to walk up the steps and those to the left were shuffling, moving upwards under their own energy.


Typically the holding pen for northbound travel has the commuters ready and willing and waiting with a few stragglers seen running for the departure area.  Those of us who just departed the vessel are looking at two EMPTY escalators coming down (northbound) with nary a soul in sight.

Why can't one of the northbound escalators be reversed to travel up, and if not, why can't it be used as a set of stairs?   Appropriate signage at the top should be sufficient of a warning.
 

Station Alerts
https://www.translink.ca/Schedules-and-Maps/Alerts.aspx

Google Search Criteria: Translink Waterfront Station escalator

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

                                         by Robin Mathews   December 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, counseling 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 (CAUT), 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.

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[Because of the almost total breakdown of press and media in Canada (including the CBC) because much of the reporting of the matter dealt with here has been reactionary, brainwash propaganda, I urge readers to post this column and to send it on to contacts, friends, and elected representatives.
R.M.]