Mixed reactions from the crowd, shoes and toast welcome former president


By Katy Anderson
Published: March 19, 2009

Perhaps the most powerful man in the world for the last eight years, former president of the United States George W. Bush, gave his first speech since leaving office in Calgary on Tuesday.

The setting outside the Telus Convention Centre was intense as approximately 200 shoe-baring protestors rallied outside-- four of whom were arrested-- and at least two snipers were visible on the rooftop of a neighboring building.

The Calgary Police Service separated the activists from the 1,500 guests who had paid $400 to hear the Texan speak. Guests included members of Calgary's economic elite-- one protestor suggested to a friend that these were the real capitalists, "all they were missing was a monocle"-- to two of Calgary's aldermen, John Mar and Ric McIvor, and former-Alberta premier Ralph Klein.



The lunch not only garnered front pages in the city, but across the continent. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann featured the event on his Countdown program, bringing Canadian Gail Davidson of Lawyers Against the War onto his program.

Davidson led the fight in calling for Stephen Harper, who declined to comment on Bush's visit, to bar the former American president from Canada.

Davidson told Olbermann (alternate link to YouTube clip) and his viewers that Canada has a legal obligation under the Convention Against Torture to either prosecute him or extradite him to a country that is willing and able to do so.

"The fact of the matter is, if we're going to look at stamping out torture, the torture created and administered by the Bush administration has to be remedied and one of the principal remedies is criminal prosecutions of those people that are responsible," she said. . . . --NewsHammer 3/27/2009

Continue reading the March 19, 2008 article from the University of Calgary's Gauntlet.

Read the Bush satire in NewsHammer, "Shoes For Bush World Tour" . . .



*****UPDATE

Lawyer: Ex-US officials must face torture charges

Associated Press / Boston Herald
Published: March 30, 2009

. . . The case against the American officials — including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith — was brought by human rights lawyers before Spain’s investigative judge Baltasar Garzon, who has sent it on to prosecutors to see if the charges merit a full investigation.

It alleges the men gave legal cover to the torture of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by claiming that the U.S. president could ignore the Geneva Conventions . . .

Continue reading the March 30, 2009 AP article from the Boston Herald.


More Related News And Video

Torture Prosecutions Greenlit [by Obama], April 22, 2009 CBS News video

U.N. rep.: Bush lawyers must be prosecuted, April 25, 2009 AP article from MSNBC

John Bolton replies: Spain's illegitimate torture prosecution, May 7, 2009, The Guardian UK


More Student News And Comment On Bush Policies On Torture




If I don't see you, you don't exist: America the torturous

By Andrew Mendes
Published April 27, 2009

I came across an article this week entitled “Obama Stands Nuremberg on Its Head,” by Mike Farrell, a contributor for the progressive web magazine Truthdig. His opening paragraph:

“President Obama’s decision to spare CIA torturers from prosecution stands the Nuremberg principles on their head. ‘Good Germans who were only following orders’ are not exempt from the bar of justice. Individuals must be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Last week, United States President Barak Obama released four memos outlining the interrogation techniques authorised by the Bush Administration. Techniques included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, slapping, and covering a prisoner’s body in insects, Fear Factor style.

Just for some background information, waterboarding was among the torture methods used by the Japanese against American prisoners of war in World War II. I know people whose grandfathers were awoken in the night from nightmares of when they were prisoners of Japan.

Although President Obama has put a stop to the practices outlined in these memos, he said that he would not be prosecuting CIA agents who did the torturing. At Nuremberg, making sure that the Holocaust trains ran on time was found to be a crime. How flimsy the rule of law seems these days. . . .

Continue reading the April 27, 2009 article from Victoria University of Wellington's Salient.


"The only approach I stand against is doing nothing."

By Andrew Mendes
Published April 30, 2009

I received an email update this morning from my Representative, Congressman Robert Wexler from Floirda’s 19th congressional district. The subject line: Wexler Calls for Special Prosecutor on Torture

I wanted to share it with you to prove that some people on the Hill are trying to bring these offenses to light and attempt to begin repairing the many criminal and heinous acts form what history will remember as one of the darkest times in America’s history. Or perhaps I just want to prove it to myself.

I hope this catches on like a house on fire. If this initiative is blocked, it will happen at the Executive level, in which case I’ll have all faith in “change.” Still, this is a step in the right direction. The email begins below.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration and Justice Department’s role in authorizing torture. With the release of the so-called “Torture Memos” last week, and the instrumental role that Bush Administration Justice Department and Executive Branch officials had in orchestrating and approving these techniques, it is evident to me that we need an independent investigation into this troubling series of events that have damaged our national security and diminished our nation before the eyes of the world.

Click here to view the text of the letter I sent to Attorney General Holder. . . .

Continue reading the April 30, 2009 article from Salient.




Dispatches from the Ministry of Love

What at first appears to be a relatively innocuous memo lifted from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984 is in fact an accurate account of the treatment by US forces of two detainees


By Sebastian Henderson
Published May 12, 2009

Take a journey down into the depths of the Ministry of Truth’s Records Department and fact check history. Change the names of Julia and Winston to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Abu Zubaydah. Replace the names Ministry of Love to Joint Task Force Guantánamo, the Ministry of Peace with the Department of Defense and Emmanual Goldstein with Osama bin Laden. When life begins imitating literature in strange and dangerously coincidental ways, we must put the plagiarists on trial. . . .

Continue reading the May 12, 2009 article from Salient.

Campus groups address one another, York admin via press release


By Ryan Buchanan
Published: March 18, 2009

The recent sanctions York imposed on the Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), Hillel at York and Hasbara Fellowships at York were not enough to silence the groups. Less than a week after the conclusion of the controversial Israel Apartheid Week, the opposing organizations issued press releases condemning the other of harassment, intimidation and actions contrary to the sanctions recently imposed against them. On March 13, Hillel at York and Hasbara Fellowships at York issued a press release to ask the York administration why they continued to allow SAIA to operate on campus, despite the sanctions imposed against them.

“It is outrageous for York University to issue a news release announcing disciplinary actions while refusing to take action itself against a suspended group operating contrary to the sanctions against it,” stated Daniel Ferman, president of Hillel at York, in the March 13 press release. York University vice-president students Rob Tiffin said there is a difference between representing a group and sharing the group’s views. “I think what they [Hillel and Hasbara] might be referring to is Vari Hall, where we have a very liberal policy for people who come in to set up,” Tiffin said. “My understanding is that the people coming to set up are not members of SAIA per se, but may certainly be supportive of SAIA’s views.”. . .

Continue reading the March 18, 2009 article from York University's Excalibur.


Related Articles On Pro/Anti-Israel Student Clashes At York U From Excalibur

Shoukri’s task force

Students and admin work to improve York University

By Scott McLean
Published March 18, 2009

In an effort to prevent intimidation and harassment on campus, York University president Mamdouh Shoukri announced that he would set up a task force to review concerns about the student environment on campus.
He, however, stopped short of potentially setting restrictions on the use of Vari Hall. The York president said he would be surprised if the task force resulted in tightened restrictions on the use of Vari Hall since he was proud of easing the restrictions last year when he saw peaceful demonstrations. He explained that there were only a few incidents where he “thought the dialogue was not at the level that one should expect.”

Shoukri didn’t cite a specific event that sparked the need for a task force but spoke in general terms about the environment on campus in recent weeks. “With all of these events, I feel that it is really important that we look at what we are doing, and we look at our current policies, whether they improve the learning environment or actually are creating hurdles for our students to learn,” he said. Shoukri released the names of seven faculty members of the task force. Among them were Patrick Monahan, the dean of Osgoode Law School and newly appointed vice-president academic, and Rob Tiffin, York vice-president students. The task force will also consist of seven students chosen through an application process.

Adonis El-Jamal, a spokesperson for the Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) – one of the groups recently fined by the university for recent events in Vari Hall – said he didn’t think the task force was independent. “We would be better served if this was an independent task force, absent from individuals such as Rob Tiffin, who just recently arbitrarily suspended and fined groups for participating in a political protest,” he said. . . .

Continue reading this article . . .



Apartheid Week quiet

York University began the winter term in a controversial fashion. Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) arrived on York’s Keele Campus, stirring the emotions of an often-divided student body.

By Ryan Buchanan
Published: March 11, 2009

IAW is a controversial event; its goal is to raise awareness about the alleged Israeli apartheid system. [Alternate Video Link to Israel awareness at York University, above] “The overall goal of IAW is to raise awareness about the plight of the Palestinians and the state of Israeli apartheid,” said Adonis El-Jamal, SAIA media spokesperson. The protests were tamer this year compared to recent years. This is likely due to the sanctions that the university issued against SAIA and two of York’s Jewish student organizations – Hillel at York and Hasbara Fellowships at York – for disrupting classes in Vari Hall during protests last month.

Hillel at York president Daniel Ferman disagreed with the sanctions but said he wanted to see the university impose them more equally. “I think the university needs to take a closer look at how it’s applying the Student Code of Conduct,” he said. “What we are looking for is for it to be applied fairly to every incident and not just in isolated cases.” Aaron Rosenberg, president of Hasbara Fellowships at York, disagreed with the distribution of the sanctions to an even greater degree. “It’s obvious that these sanctions are not fair because they gave different sanctions to different groups,” he said. “It’s never fair when sanctions are handed out unevenly.” El-Jamal condemned the sanctions as oppressive.

“We condemn the use of the Student Code of Conduct and think it’s an illegitimate code used to repress student activity and political debates on campus,” said El-Jamal. . . .

Continue reading this article . . .



Middle-Eastern conflict affects students at York

Pro-Israeli students say university failed to properly defend their rights

By Alexandra Birukova
Published: March 4, 2009

Over the past month, York University’s Keele Campus has seen a number of clashes between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students, leading some groups to accuse the university of not doing enough to protect students from intimidation. The events that took place on Feb. 11, [Alternate Link to Excalibur Video, above] specifically the impromptu protest outside Hillel’s office in the Student Centre, have raised concern from some students. Daniel Ferman, the president of Hillel at York, said that the heated atmosphere on campus has left some students feeling intimidated. “I think the university should take its Code of Conduct and enforce it on a regular basis. [They should] apply it equally to all parties involved and ensure that it’s applied equally and fairly,” Ferman said.

Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) spokesperson Adrianna Boni said none of the events of the past few weeks have been ethnically or religiously directed toward the Jewish community. . . .

Continue reading this article . . .

Related News On Censorship Of Canadian Student Activists:

"Jewish Canadians": Criticism of Israeli Apartheid Week like McCarthyism!

Judeopundit
Published: March 20, 2009

Daily Muslims [full text with 150 signatories] is undoubtedly delighted to print this:

Statement: Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel

We are Jewish Canadians concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice. We believe that the Holocaust legacy "Never again" means never again for all peoples. It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.

We are appalled by recent attempts of prominent Jewish organizations and leading Canadian politicians to silence protest against the State of Israel. We are alarmed by the escalation of fear tactics. Charges that those organizing Israel Apartheid Week or supporting an academic boycott of Israel are anti-Semites promoting hatred bring the anti-Communist terror of the 1950s vividly to mind. We believe this serves to deflect attention from Israel's flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.

B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Congress have pressured university presidents and administrations to silence debate and discussion specifically regarding Palestine/Israel. In a full-page ad in a national newspaper, B'nai Brith urged donors to withhold funds from universities because "anti-Semitic hate fests" were being allowed on campuses.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have echoed these arguments. While university administrators have resisted demands to shut down Israel Apartheid week, some Ontario university presidents have bowed to this disinformation campaign by suspending and fining students, confiscating posters, and infringing on free speech. . . . --NewsHammer 3/21/2009

Continue reading this article in Judeopundit . . .

Related Middle-East News

UN demands Israel compensation for stikes on Gaza facilities, accuses government of lying, AP, May 5, 2009

Israeli soldiers say army rabbis framed Gaza as religious war, McClatchyDC, March 20, 2009

Palestinian reconciliation talks break up, no deal [Hamas/Fatah] AP, March 19, 2009

ANALYSIS / Why isn't Netanyahu backing two-state solution?, Haaretz, March 3, 2009

More student coverage of Israel-Palestine in NewsHammer On Campus . . .

More coverage of Israel-Palestine in NewsHammer . . .

Three months ago, I eagerly anticipated my grades as I sought to boost my CGPA so that I might participate in the co-op program this fall


By Sarshar Hosseinnia
Published: March 16, 2009

I was pleased with the outcome of three of my courses, but intrigued as to why it was taking so long to get a mark for Philosophy 241: Philosophy in Literature.

To be fair, I think the course was a joke; the professor barely showed up, and when he did, his teaching was questionable, to say the least.

A course that was supposed to be about literary icons such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, et cetera, soon turned into piffle about whether or not we should kill ourselves, and the role of apes in Early-Modern society.

Fair enough; the reason for debate about where humans originated is parallel to numerous theories regarding man’s existence. But really, the title of the course is, “in literature.”

As if the communication breakdown didn’t cause the class enough confusion, we were also subjected to films that most students were shown in high school.

Again, I agree that Lord of the Flies and The Lives of Others are key films in any argument of morality, but did it really need to take up 12 of our lectures? . . . --NewsHammer 3/19/2009

Continue reading the March 16, 2009 article from Simon Fraser University's The Peak.

Love, betrayal and stress are all feelings that present day university students face during their university years

By Roman Auriti
Published: February 12, 2009

William Shakespeare understood this when he wrote Hamlet and managed to express these emotions in a very human way that, literally, people of all ages could relate to in some way. The University of Calgary drama department will channel his words Feb. 17-28 as they embark on their own version of the play.

U of C has never attempted one of Shakespeare's four big plays (Macbeth, King Lear, Othello and Hamlet) and director Patrick Finn says they're adding in a twist.

"It's an all female cast," he explains. "Calgary is loaded with brilliant female actors. There are a lack of roles for all of these brilliant women. I can't imagine why anybody would stage a Shakespeare play without doing gender-blind casting. I said that anybody could try out for any role, and when you do that, what you find is that you have so many brilliant women actors that you're going to be able to stage just about anything as long as you give them the chance to do the roles."

Finn also explains they decided to stage everything in the original time period as well as alter all of the University Theatre for their purposes. Hamlet is also getting its own unique score written right here at the U of C. . . . --NewsHammer 2/17/2009

Continue reading the Feb 12, 2009 article from the University of Calgary's Gauntlet.

Program termination one of three short-term suggestions outlined in panel assessment report


By Jane Switzer
Published: February11, 2009

The University has moved to immediately terminate the Intergroup Dialogue Program following a recommendation from a report assessing its usefulness in residences.

The program, created by Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Arig Girgrah, consisted of six trained student intergroup facilitators who lived in residence and whose mandate was to engage students living in residence in discussions and activities related to diversity.

The report was written and submitted to Vice-Principal (Academic) Patrick Deane [photo] by a panel made up of Rector Leora Jackson, professor emeritus John Meisel and law alumnus, former MPP for Kingston and the Islands, former Ontario cabinet minister and former Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Keith Norton. . .

The report acknowledges the program was the subject of widespread criticism by national media outlets such as the Globe and Mail, who wrote about the program in a Nov. 20 editorial, saying “The nanny state has hired the KGB” and calling the intergroup facilitators “spies.” Deane said it’s obvious that a program that attained so much negativity would find it difficult to achieve its goals. . . .

Continue reading the Feb 11, 2009 article from Queen's University's The Journal.


Media with a grain of salt

By Jeff Fraser
The Journal / Opinions
Published: February 11, 2009

With so much sensational reporting, it’s the responsibility of the press to ensure news is accurate.

I’m not sure which was harder to watch last semester: the Globe and Mail vilifying six average undergraduates for nothing worse than trying to teach first years about diversity, or the number of students who bought the hyperbole. It’s still a mystery to me why we’re so willing to accept an image of our Alma Mater as a democracy-hating master of puppets, but I did learn one thing from the experience: even the national media is looking for a flashy front page. Gone are the days when good reporting was the mark of a good newspaper. Sensationalism is now the only way the corporate media can keep readers’ attention away from the Internet. . . .

Continue reading the Feb 11, 2009 article from Queen's University's The Journal.


Beware the campus thought police

National Post
Published: November 20, 2008

Just who is Queen's University trying to kid? The school may call its new political-correctness cops "facilitators." It may insist they will not be eavesdropping on private conservations, "preaching" to students they overhear using "offending terms," serving as "disciplinarians" or being judgmental. But administrators are simply deluding themselves with euphemisms if they swallow their own tripe. . . .

Continue reading the Nov 20, 2008 article from Canada's National Post.


Another Orwellian Program Shouted Down.

By Margaret Soltan
University Diaries
Published: February 12, 2009

Happens all the time. This one happened in Canada. As long as decent people exist, these programs will die on the vine. But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Calling it “incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech,” Queen’s University in Kingston yesterday scrapped its controversial “dialogue facilitator” program.

It caused a scandal last year when it was revealed the six student “facilitators” were mandated to intervene in private conversations to encourage discussion of social justice issues and discourage offensive language. . . . --NewsHammer 2/15/2009

Continue reading the Feb 12, 2009 article from Margaret Soltan's blog University Diaries.

Engineers caught by Police, five students arrested at Ironworkers Memorial Bridge

By Samantha Jung
Published: February 2nd, 2009

February 2, 2009—9:12pm: Five UBC Civil Engineering students were arrested early Monday morning when their faculty’s annual prank failed.

Vancouver police officers responded to a call at 4:15am from concerned citizens, who spotted the students attempting to hang the shell of a Volkswagon Beetle off the side of the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing. The students were caught red handed and arrested. Later that morning, the cables the engineers were attempting to use snapped, and the shell fell into the Burrard Inlet.

This the first time engineering students have been caught performing their annual prank, says Chris McCann, president of the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS). Engineering pranks are annual traditions, performed to commemorate Engineering Week, which runs February 1 to 7 this year.

The first prank, or “STUdeNt projecT,” involving a Volkswagen beetle was in 1980, when students placed it on top of the Ladner Clock Tower. Past pranks include the theft of the 9 O’Clock Gun at Stanley Park in 1969 and of the Rose Bowl trophy from the University of Washington in 1992. Previous pranks involving the Volkswagen beetle hung from a bridge include the Lion’s Gate Bridge last year, and more famously, from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2001. --NewsHammer 2/04/2009

Continue reading the Feb 2, 2009 article from the University Of British Columbia's The Ubyssey.

One Canadian's journey Through the Looking Glass and into the world of American partisan politics

By Tarik Chelali

Published: January 27, 2009

Like many of you, I woke up early January 20, 2009. The date has been etched into my mind for a few months now. It is the day an idol and an inspir­ing figure would begin his new­est journey. Barack Obama and I are not brothers, although a few of my friends say we look alike. Nor is he my president—I hold three passports, none of which are dark blue with a bald eagle on the cover. But, it is fair to say we share a few things in common.

Like President Obama, my ancestry lies in the heart of Af­rica. My father was born at the doors of the Sahara desert in a north African village in Algeria. Like President Obama, I con­sider myself a veteran in the process of moving from house to house and neighbourhood to neighbourhood; until UBC, I had never been at a school for more than two years at a time. Most importantly, I share with President Obama the belief that citizens, and not their govern­ment, are accountable for the state of their nation.

It is under this paradigm and with a flurry of enthusiasm that I took a trip to visit New Hamp­shire Democrats the weekend before Senator Obama became President-elect Obama.

On exchange to McGill Uni­versity from September to De­cember of this year, I joined the campus Democrats club. The club, which was mostly made up of Canadian students, orga­nized weekly trips to a variety of Democratic campaign offices throughout the Northeastern states. My group and I went to Claremont, New Hampshire and did everything we could to get these white people to vote blue.

I found myself in Claremont waving my arms with a sign that read “Red Sox Fans for Obama.” On the busy boule­vards, drivers honked, yelled or called me a nigger. Later on, I phoned old ladies only to hear them hang-up, cry with joy or complain that we had called them six times in three days. I knocked on enough doors to learn when to back down from seemingly evil Republicans and their small but vicious poodles. Claremont gave me a slew of photos for Facebook and a win­dow into the AmericanDream. --NewsHammer 1/28/2009

Continue reading the Jan 27, 2009 article from the University of British Columbia's The Ubyssey.

The first step of a successful invasion is controlling public opinion.

Israel has done this by banning international journalists from Gaza during their bombing campaign. Word of the violence’s extent got out due to the efforts of local journalists like Sameh Akram Habeeb, who posted this photograph online. During the war, Habeeb spent his days trying to find a way to charge his computer so that he can post photographs and blog entries to bring us the horrifying images of Gaza. SAMEH HABEEB


By Naushad Ali Husein, Hilary Barlow
Published: January 20, 2009

After 22 days of savage destruction that spared neither schools, homes, hospitals nor places of prayer, Israel has announced an end to its bombing campaign. Here are stories from the ground.


The first bomb lands while you’re writing your exam. You pause for a second, startled. But the occasional bomb has become commonplace these days, and you’ve studied too hard for this final, so you get back to work. Then there’s another explosion, and another. Your teacher tells you to finish the exam in the hallway, but the explosions don’t stop and you’re dismissed.

This is what happened to Sabah, a 19-year-old medical student at Gaza University. She rushed home, frantically trying to contact her family, all of whom survived. Nonetheless, the experience was an awakening for Sabah. “It was then that I realized that it was a big thing; it was not the ordinary bombing like on other days,” she said. “I am so afraid that I will lose my brothers or parents. I keep thinking about what would happen if they bombed the house.”

Freelance journalist and filmmaker Fida Qishta is also worried. She’s seen violence in her community for years, her family’s house was destroyed in 2004, but she says attacks from the Israeli army have gotten worse. According to Qishta, soldiers used to allow her and others to evacuate building before raids, but that is no longer the case. “You can’t even say anything to them. If you want to say something, you’re going to die.” She claims to have witnessed numerous acts of violence. “It’s really more violent,” she said. “Israel doesn’t [spare] anybody, not children, not civilians, not women.” She sees a double standard where the Israeli government cites self-defence while the Palestinian civilians hardly have a chance for the same. --NewsHammer 1/25/2009

Continue reading the Jan 20, 2009 article from the University of Toronto's theVarsity.ca