There is something deeply, deeply wrong with Libyan President – or, perhaps one should say, ex-President – Muammar Gadhafi.

But in reality, it isn’t just him. It’s his entire family.

For evidence of this, one needs look no further than his daughter, Aisha Gadhafi. In what she must have imagined to be a heart wrenching interview on French television, Gadhafi spoke about the inhuman havoc allegedly being wreaked by NATO forces in Libya.

“I've already lost one of my children and my brother in the bombings,” she remarked. “Every day there are members of my people who die. Civilians. Anyone who has a heart can understand what I feel."

Certainly, to lose a child or other family members is a terrible thing, something that someone should not wish on most people. However, personally I can’t help but wish that the astoundingly disingenuous Aisha Gadhafi loses one more family member: her father.

After all, the civilian casualties sustained during the NATO campaign in Libya pale by comparison to the civilian casualties sustained prior to the intervention, when her father ordered Libyan fighter jets to strife unarmed civilian protesters from the sky with machine gun fire.

Those who pay close attention to...More >>

When considering the adopted standards of the so-called academic discipline of “Globalization Studies”, it’s not only fair to wonder what, precisely, passes for research in this obscure corner of academia. It’s actually becoming deeply necessary.

In the days following a weeks-overdue military intervention in Libya – Canada has joined a coalition of countries imposing a UN-mandated no-fly zone – the usual suspects have come out to denounce the action. Operation Odyssey Dawn’s detractors declare it, as usual, to be an act of imperialism, and rush to report the unfolding atrocities.

Cue the Centre for Research on Globalization’s Madi Darius Nazemroaya. A self-described “multidisciplinary sociologist”, and former Ombudsman for the University of Ottawa’s Fulcrum newspaper.

To date, Nazemroaya has reported that French fighters jets – as many as five – have been shot down over Libya, that an Italian naval vessel has been sunk and sailors captured, and that the coalition has attacked Libyan hospitals.

His source for all of this? “Libyan sources”. Roughly translated, this basically means Libyan government sources.

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There’s good news and bad news for Queen’s University Rector Nick Day.

The bad news is that, contrary to his preference, there will be a debate on the Queen’s University campus, and Israeli Apartheid Week will be at the centre of it. The good news (for him) is that he’ll be at the centre of that debate; in this regard it will be everything he ever wanted.

The debate will swirl around a letter wrote to Canadian Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff and publicly published (including on arch-leftist website Rabble.ca) in which he exploited his elected position as Rector of Queen’s University to denounce the Liberal Party leader’s criticism of Israeli Apartheid Week.

Within hours of Day publishing these letters, the Queen’s U campus Conservatives, campus Liberals, and Israel on Campus club collaborated in a campaign to collect the signatures necessary to hold a referendum on Day’s impeachment.

They weren’t the only ones concerned about the Rector’s abuse of his title. Queen’s University Principal Daniel Woolf met with Day to discuss his actions.

“The views in the letter are not the issue—agree or disagree, he is entitled to them—it’s the context in which he...More >>

In all honesty, one should probably know better – know much better – than to expect cogent argument from a publication like the Socialist Project.

But when considering a recent essay published on their website decrying what they consider to be the relentless oppression of the “Palestine Solidarity Movement”, only one response really comes to mind: oh, brother.

You see, it apparently isn’t enough for the “Palestine Solidarity Network” to stand up on behalf of what they considered to be an oppressed people. Apparently, they themselves have to be oppressed, even if they themselves actually tend to be the most relentless censors.

The essay, penned by Mary-Jo Nadeau and Alan Sears, starts out with the narrowest sliver of merit, and quickly degenerates into a disingenuous effort to conflate legitimate criticism into oppressive censorship.

Nadeau and Sears kick off the essay by complaining about a very recent effort to ban “Israeli Apartheid Week” entirely from the campus of McMaster University. This happened in 2008. They also point to efforts to shut down...More >>