By Prof. Tim Anderson and Jordan Baker
December 08, 2018
Global Research is in solidarity with Professor Tim Anderson who was suspended from his position as Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, Australia.
This decision by the University’s Provost was largely motivated by Professor Anderson’s research and public statements on Syria, Iraq and Palestine including Anderson’s carefully documented book entitled The Dirty War on Syria,
“Through careful analysis, professor Anderson reveals the “unspoken truth”: the “war on terrorism” is fake, the United States is a “State sponsor of terrorism” involved in a criminal undertaking.
Scroll down for reviews of Prof. Anderson’s book on Syria (published by Global Research). (click book cover right to order Tim Anderson’s international bestseller)
It should be understood that this is not an isolated event. Academic freedom is threatened. Several prominent academics have been fired or intimidated under different circumstances.
Below is Tim Anderson’s text on his Facebook page followed by an article published by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Yesterday University of Sydney Provost Stephen Garton suspended me from my position as a senior lecturer and banned me from entering the university. I have worked as an academic at this University for more than 20 years and am appealing the decision to a Review Committee.
This move is the culmination of a series of failed attempts by management to restrict my public comments. I have always rejected such censorship. The latest complaint concerns my advisory analysis of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Examine the graphic below and decide for yourself whether or how this infographic might be ‘offensive’.
These complaints, over the last 18 months, have been petty and absurd. In my view they represent an unusually aggressive regime of political censorship, in which no decent university should be involved.
Most of the management complaints have to do with my criticisms of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine. I don’t accept such censorship.
Stephen Garton has ignored the ‘intellectual freedom’ rule of the university, which states that academic staff are entitled to ‘express unpopular or controversial views, provided that in doing so staff must not engage in harassment, vilification or intimidation’. I will point this out to the Review Committee.
I have told Provost Garton that I don’t abuse or engage in gratuitous criticism, but I do criticise dishonest propaganda harshly, when justified. I have rejected his attempts at political censorship as unprincipled.
Academics fight suspension of lecturer over swastika image
by Jordan Baker,
Sydney Morning Herald, December 7, 2018
Sydney University academics have criticised the suspension of an academic who showed students material featuring the Nazi swastika imposed over Israel’s flag, saying it was a body blow to academic freedom. (see above image, left hand corner)
By Friday afternoon 30 academics, including several emeritus professors, had signed the open letter arguing that academic freedom was “meaningless if it is suspended when its exercise is deemed offensive.”
The academic at the centre of the controversy, senior lecturer in political economy Tim Anderson, has also been criticised by federal ministers for visiting Syria and North Korea, where he expressed solidarity with their dictatorial regimes.
Earlier this week, Sydney University served Dr Anderson a termination notice, saying the swastika material amounted to serious misconduct that was “disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the university’s behavioural expectations”.
Dr Anderson was given a week to show why he should not be sacked and has been barred from entering the university in the meantime. He is appealing the decision, describing the complaints as petty and absurd.
The academics, mostly from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, said employment should not be dependent on their work remaining within the bounds of “contested and intrinsically indefinable constraint”.
Some of the signatories of the letter are also vocal opponents of a proposal by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to fund a course in western tradition at the university. They argue that the proposal also compromises academic freedom.
“The suspension of Dr Tim Anderson pending the termination of his employment is an unacceptable act of censorship and a body-blow to academic freedom at the University of Sydney,” the academics wrote in the open letter.
“There can be no better-known or more banal occurrence in intellectual history than the suppression of ideas on the grounds of their offensiveness to powerful interests.”
The Dirty War on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. In seeking ‘regime change’ the big powers sought to hide their hand, using proxy armies of ‘Islamists’, demonising the Syrian Government and constantly accusing it of atrocities. In this way Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a mild-mannered eye doctor, became the new evil in the world.
The popular myths of this dirty war – that it is a ‘civil war’, a ‘popular revolt’ or a sectarian conflict – hide a murderous spree of ‘regime change’ across the region. The attack on Syria was a necessary consequence of Washington’s ambition, stated openly in 2006, to create a ‘New Middle East’. After the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Syria was next in line.
The Dirty War on Syria
by Professor Tim Anderson
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-8-4
Year: 2016
Pages: 240
[Seven] years into this war the evidence is quite clear and must be set out in detail. The terrible massacres were mostly committed by the western backed jihadists, then blamed on the Syrian Army. The western media and many western NGOs parroted the official line. Their sources were almost invariably those allied to the ‘jihadists’. Contrary to the myth that the big powers now have their own ‘war on terror’, those same powers have backed every single anti-government armed group in Syria, ‘terrorists’ in any other context, adding thousands of ‘jihadis’ from dozens of countries.
Yet in Syria this dirty war has confronted a disciplined national army which did not disintegrate along sectarian lines. Despite terrible destruction and loss of life, Syria has survived, deepening its alliance with Russia, Iran, the Lebanese Resistance, the secular Palestinians and, more recently, with Iraq. The tide has turned against Washington, and that will have implications beyond Syria.
As western peoples we have been particularly deceived by this dirty war, reverting to our worst traditions of intervention, racial prejudice and poor reflection on our own histories. This book tries to tell its story while rescuing some of the better western traditions: the use of reason, ethical principle and the search for independent evidence.
Reviews:
Tim Anderson has written the best systematic critique of western fabrications justifying the war against the Assad government.
No other text brings together all the major accusations and their effective refutation.
This text is essential reading for all peace and justice activists. -James Petras, Author and Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Tim Anderson’s important new book, titled “The Dirty War on Syria” discusses US naked aggression – “rely(ing) on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory,” he explains.
ISIS is the pretext for endless war without mercy, Assad the target, regime change the objective, wanting pro-Western puppet governance replacing Syrian sovereign independence.
There’s nothing civil about war in Syria, raped by US imperialism, partnered with rogue allies. Anderson’s book is essential reading to understand what’s going on. –Stephen Lendman, Distinguished Author and Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Host of the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
Professor Anderson demonstrates unequivocally through carefully documented research that America’s “Moderate Opposition” are bona fide Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists created and protected by the US and its allies, recruited and trained by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, in liaison with Washington and Brussels.
Through careful analysis, professor Anderson reveals the “unspoken truth”: the “war on terrorism” is fake, the United States is a “State sponsor of terrorism” involved in a criminal undertaking. Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Professor of Economics (Emeritus), University of Ottawa.
Anderson’s excellent book is required reading for those wanting to know the true story of the imperialist proxy war waged on Syria by the U.S. and its Western and Middle Eastern puppet states. This account could also be titled “How to Destroy a Country and Lie About it”. Of course Syria is only one in a long line of countries destroyed by Washington in the Middle East and all over the Global South for more than a century.
Anderson’s analysis is particularly useful for dissecting the propaganda war waged by the U.S. to hide its active support for the vicious Islamic fundamentalists it is using in Syria. In spreading this propaganda the U.S. has been aided not only by the West’s mainstream press but also by its prominent so-called human rights organizations. Asad Ismi, International Affairs Correspondent for The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor.
