A bisexual male student at the University of Texas–San Antonio said during an informal conversation outside class that he was uncomfortable with Islam because people still receive the death penalty for being gay in 10 Muslim-majority countries.
For expressing this thought, the student—Alfred MacDonald, who no longer attends the school—was instructed to meet with the chair of the philosophy department, Eve Browning. Prof. Browning told MacDonald in no uncertain terms that he had committed the crime of “offending” someone, and she warned him that his habit of saying what he thinks could bring down the entire program. She threatened to call the Behavior Intervention Team and refer MacDonald to counseling. She did everything but send him to Room 101.
County legislator Jennifer Schwartz Berky apologized today for her behavior during a traffic stop in May. A video of the stop was released Tuesday, Oct. 24 by the Town of Ulster Town Board following several FOIL requests.
“The video released earlier this week of my Town of Ulster traffic stop captured a tough moment for me,” stated Berky. “Like so many working families, I too face tough times and stressful situations. As a professional, a public servant and a mother, I know my interaction with Police Officer Gary Short was unacceptable. I want to apologize to Officer Short and thank him for his patience and professionalism with me during a very difficult time.”
She continued:
“This has been a humbling experience for me. I hope to use it to grow and learn how to better represent the diverse working families who reside in the great the city of Kingston.”
The dashcam recording of the 26-minute traffic stop was released over the objection of Berky’s lawyers, who argued that it would compromise her ability to receive a fair trial for the speeding ticket.
The tape shows Short approaching Berky’s Prius in the Aldi’s parking lot after following her for about a quarter-mile from the intersection of Ulster Avenue and Morton Boulevard onto Route 9W. On audio she is heard asking the officer why she was being stopped. He tells her it’s for speeding, 43 miles per hour in 30-miles-per-hour zone.
Berky told him she never speeds and was driving with traffic. She said she was headed home to feed her young son and had a job interview in downtown Kingston. Sounding increasingly agitated, she said she could not afford a traffic ticket as it will increase her cost of insurance. She says she was “broke.”
Short went back to his patrol car to write a ticket. Berky stepped out of her car, apparently gasping for air and bent over double. Short returned and inquired about her health. She said she was having “a panic attack.” Short asked whether she wanted medical assistance. She did not reply, but seemed to be breathing better.
Short returned and offered to write a ticket for failure to wear a seatbelt, a much lesser offense than speeding. Berky told him she always wears her seatbelt and refused the offer. Short then wrote the speeding ticket.
At about halfway through the 26-minute incident, Ulster officer Kevin Woltman appeared to inquire as to Short’s status. The officers chatted briefly and he leaves. Woltman is the nephew of Brian Woltman, Berky’s Republican opponent in the November 7 election.
As Short issued her the speeding ticket, Berky was heard to say, “I don’t trust you. I don’t feel safe here. Tell me what my rights are. I didn’t understand.”
“I’ve explained everything to you,” Short replied, his voice reflecting exasperation. “I’m not going to argue with you any longer.” He then returns to his patrol car and the video ends.
Berky, a Democrat, represents the city of Kingston in the county legislature. She is up for reelection Nov. 7
A joint statement of support for Berky was also released today by Joseph Donaldson, chairman of the Kingston Democratic Committee; Phil Leber, regional political director of the Working Families Party; Callie Jayne, lead organizer of Citizen Action of the Hudson Valley; and Hector Rodriguez, Democratic leader of the Ulster County Legislature.
“Jennifer has been a dedicated public servant for decades and an important progressive voice on the Ulster County Legislature. We stand united in supporting her re-election as the legislator of District 7. We know she is a knowledgeable city planner, environmental advocate, and steadfast champion of human rights– her many strengths serve her well in her her position as a legislator, including her ability to reflect and learn from her experiences…We would like to thank Officer Short for his professionalism and patience in a difficult situation.”
Federal agents arrested the founder of a major drug company in an early-morning raid Thursday on charges stemming from an alleged scheme to get doctors to illegally prescribe a powerful opioid to patients who don’t need it.
John Kapoor, 74, was taken into custody in Phoenix, Arizona. Kapoor is the billionaire founder and former CEO of the pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics. He faces charges including racketeering, conspiracy, bribery and fraud.
Kapoor is the most significant pharmaceutical executive to be criminally charged in response to the nationwide opioid crisis.
Brian Kelly, an attorney for Kapoor, said his client “is innocent of these charges and intends to fight the charges vigorously.”
Kapoor stepped down as CEO of Insys in January but still serves on its board. The company makes a spray version of fentanyl, a highly addictive opioid intended only for cancer patients.
Authorities allege Insys marketed the drug as part of a scheme to get non-cancer doctors to prescribe it. Numerous physicians were allegedly paid bribes by the company to push the painkilling drug.
Weinstein grabbed her, she said. “He shoved me onto the bed, and he got on top of me.” Sciorra struggled. “I kicked and I yelled,” she said, but Weinstein locked her arms over her head with one hand and forced sexual intercourse on her. “When he was done, he ejaculated on my leg, and on my nightgown.” It was a family heirloom, handed down from relatives in Italy and embroidered in white cotton. “He said, ‘I have impeccable timing,’ and then he said, ‘This is for you.’ ” Sciorra paused. “And then he attempted to perform oral sex on me. And I struggled, but I had very little strength left in me.” Sciorra said that her body started to shake violently. “I think, in a way, that’s what made him leave, because it looked like I was having a seizure or something.”
WHEN ABU FAZEL listens to news of the civil war still raging in Syria, he thinks about how he very nearly ended up a foot soldier there. But Abu Fazel isn’t Syrian, nor was he ever a would-be Islamic State fighter. He’s an 18-year-old Afghan refugee, living in the small city of Leverkusen, Germany. He spent most of his life in Iran but fled to Germany, rather than be sent to Syria by the Iranian government to fight on the side of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Abu Fazel is one of an unknown number of Afghan teenagers that have been recruited by Iran to fight in Syria’s civil war over the past several years. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported that it had identified the graves of eight Afghan children who had died in Syria, and collected evidence of other teenage recruits, some as young as 14. Conscripting children under the age of 15 as soldiers in active hostilities is a war crime, Human Rights Watch noted.
Abu Fazel was 15 years old when he was set to begin training for Syria. He and Ali, another 18-year-old Afghan refugee living in Germany, told The Intercept about Iranian militias targeting teenagers in immigrant neighborhoods.
“We are cheap cannon fodder for them,” said Ali, which is a pseudonym. The Intercept is also referring to Abu Fazel by only his first name because both youths fear retaliation against their families still living in Iran.
The FBI undercover agent at the centre of a plot by two men planning to derail a VIA Rail train travelling from New York to Toronto stands by a controversial decision to target a third suspect who was living in Quebec City at the time.
Ahmed Abassi, originally from Tunisia, was a student attending Laval University in 2012.
He was drawn into the investigation by the agent, despite terrorism charges against him that were eventually dropped and criticism that he was “entrapped” by the agent.
The undercover agent is being identified as Tamer Elnoury, the pseudonym he used during the Via Rail investigation in Canada. CBC News agreed to protect his true identity because he’s still working as an undercover agent.
Book Launch with Nitsana Darshan-Leitner Founder and President of Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center
Harpoon is the story of legendary Mossad director Meir Dagan and the top-secret task force he created to wage a spectacular cloak-and-dagger campaign targeting the finances that funded attacks against Israel. Dagan’s unit was one of Israel’s most guarded state secrets, and assembling the book required in-depth research and coordination with the country’s security services so that the manuscript could be cleared and approved for publication. The book is extremely supportive of Israel and its intelligence services, and underlines the dramatic challenges that men and women in the front lines, and in the shadows, face in the war of survival.
Date/Location:
Thursday, November 23 at 8 PM – 9:30 PM
BAYT
The Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Synagogue Centre 613 Clark Ave W, Thornhill, ON
905-886-3810 ext. 0
Israeli archaeologists this week unveiled the results of large-scale excavations that lend unprecedented insight into the transformation of Jerusalem around the time of its destruction during the Second Temple period more than 2,000 years ago.
The discoveries—including massive portions of the Western Wall unseen for 1,700 years and an ancient Roman theater—were made in excavations conducted during the past two years in Jerusalem’s Old City.
A Rutgers University professor has published multiple social media posts containing antisemitic canards and caricatures, including blaming the Armenian genocide on Jews, describing Judaism as “the most racist religion in the world,” and calling Israel a “terrorist country.”
As first reported by the Israellycool blog, Michael Chikindas — a microbiology professor at Rutgers’ department of food science and director of the school’s Center for Digestive Health — promoted dozens of anti-Jewish conspiracies and comments on his Facebook page this past May, among them references to “international fat Jewish pockets,” and descriptions of “orthodox Judaism” and Zionism as “the best of two forms of racism.”
In one post, Chikindas claimed, “Israel is the terrorist country aimed at genocidal extermination of the land’s native population, Palestinians,” and added: “we must not forget that the Armenian Genocide was orchestrated by the Turkish Jews who pretended to be the Turks.”
He argued that Israel was failing in this attempted “extermination” mainly “because of the number of the Jews of ‘alternative’ sexual orientation (25% of the Tel Aviv inhabitants are gay/lesbians and Israel has more of these than the Netherlands).”
In an earlier post, Chikindas wrote “that Israel, the country of the Jews and for the Jews, has one of the highest percentage of gays in the world.”
Kellogg’s will be remaking Corn Pops cereal boxes after a complaint about racially insensitive art on the packaging.
The Battle Creek, Mich.-based cereal and snack maker said on Twitter Wednesday it will replace the art, which showed cartoon corn pops populating a retail mall. Some pops were shown shopping as others played in an arcade or frolicked in a fountain, while another skateboarded down an escalator.
What struck Saladin Ahmed was that a single brown pop was working as a janitor waxing the floors. Ahmed, current writer of Marvel Comics’ Black Bolt series and author of 2012 fantasy novel Throne of the Crescent Moon, took to Twitter Tuesday to ask, “Why is literally the only brown corn pop on the whole cereal box the janitor? this is teaching kids racism.”
PragerU, the conservative digital media organization from Dennis Prager, is suing YouTube and its parent Google over alleged censorship of their videos.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday, “says YouTube’s more than 30 million visitors a day make the site so elemental to free speech in the digital age that it should be treated as a public forum.”
Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk revealed this week that Kathleen Wynne’s government hid the cost of its “Fair Hydro Plan” from taxpayers.
The way they did it has raised concerns that other governments across the country could follow suit and bury deficits.
Although ratepayers will get a temporary, 25% break over four years on their hydro bills, the plan will cost “up to $4 billion more than necessary” in interest, Lysyk said.
The Liberals also “improperly” moved $26 billion in hydro debt off their books, borrowing the money through Ontario Power Generation, and as a consequence hydro ratepayers will face increases for 30 years.
The number of terrorism-related cases investigated by German authorities have quadrupled over the past year, newspaper Welt am Sonntag revealed Sunday.
The Somali terrorist who stabbed a Canadian police officer and ran over four pedestrians a few weeks ago entered the United States through the Mexican border and was released by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), allowing him to continue his journey north. The ISIS operative, Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, was ordered deported, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman told various media outlets recently, but was released on an “order of supervision” and the feds never saw him again.
After an outcry on social media over “racist” instructions in a nursing textbook, the publisher has said it will be removing it from publication.
Pearson, a UK-based educational publishing house, was hit with a wave of criticism after a page from its book Nursing: A Concept-Based Approach to Learning was posted online. This version of the book was published in 2015.
The page in question contained a section called Cultural Differences in Responses to Pain. In that section, the potential attitudes of a variety of different minority groups were addressed. Jews, according to the book, “may be vocal and demanding of assistance.” They also “believe that pain must be shared and validated by others.”
The book also said that Arabs/Muslims may opt for thanking Allah over pain relief, that Asians may think complaining about pain implies poor social skills and that blacks report higher pain intensity than other groups.
The notion promoted by President Barack Obama that Israel needs to be saved from itself still resonates among the majority of Jews who voted for him. This view holds that Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank is the prime obstacle to peace as well as the future of the Jewish state. But while this liberal consensus deems Netanyahu a problem, its proponents rarely stop to ask why he was elected prime minister four times, including winning the last three elections in a row.
The complaint filed with the Rouen prosecutor’s office in northwestern France, by the Salafist turned secular activist, detailed criminal acts of rape, sexual assault, violence, harassment and intimidation, according to document reviewed by AFP.
The Liberators Association, which Henda Ayari is president of, said on Facebook that she was “a victim of something very serious several years ago” but did not reveal the name of her aggressor for safety reasons.
In her book “I Chose to be Free”, published in November 2016, she described her aggressor as Zubair.
She said in her writings that she met him at his hotel in Paris after the Islamist thinker gave a lecture.
“I will not give precise details of the acts he has done to me. It is enough to know that he has benefited greatly from my weakness,” Ayari wrote.
She said in her book that when she rebelled against him at one point he screamed at her, insulted her, slapped her and treated her violently.
In a written ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith said the Crown failed to prove that the accused had formed the required criminal intent — mens rea — to sexually assault his wife in 2002.
“I find that the accused probably had sex with his wife on many occasions without her specific consent, as both he and she believed that he had the right to do so,” Smith said.
However, the judge ruled the man was not guilty of sexual assault because the Crown had failed to establish that he knew his behaviour was, in fact, criminal.
The decision, issued earlier this week, followed a five-day trial in June.
The man was part of an arranged marriage in Gaza. His wife, a Palestinian who grew up in Kuwait, lived in Ottawa and the family settled in this city.
She testified that during their marriage, she considered it her obligation to have sex with her husband. Often, she told court, she did not consent, but they both believed it was his right.
Nadjary’s duties included receiving crowds of Jews as they were forced to undress before entering the gas chambers. The chambers were fitted with dummy showerheads, and Jews arriving in transport trains were told they were merely being taken into shower rooms.
“They went to their deaths suspecting nothing,” wrote Nadjary, adding that he occasionally “told the truth” if asked. Other Sonderkommando reported running into distant cousins in the change rooms, and similarly telling them of their imminent fate.
After approximately 3,000 had been packed into a chamber “as in a sardine tin,” SS men would use portals in the roof to drop Zyklon B canisters among the crowd.
“The boxes of gas always came in cars from the German Red Cross,” wrote Nadjary, noting that it took about five to six minutes for the gas to kill the whole 3,000.
When the chambers were unsealed, it was the job of the Sonderkommando to carry the bodies to adjacent crematoriums. Given the crowded conditions of the chamber, many bodies would still be standing up when they entered, the skin discoloured by the poison.
All evidence, ashes and crushed bones, was then dumped into a nearby river. “Thus they eliminate all traces,” wrote Nadjary.
Five Feet of Fury
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