maybe YorkU should also sue the excalibur

for those of you who don't know, george galloway spoke at york university yesterday.

considering that he was banned from entering canada last year it's quite an accomplishment for york to secure such a big name speaker.

not everyone sees it that way though.

according to the always fair and balanced excalibur:

"Lots of legitimate points of debate need to be brought up surrounding George Galloway’s visit to York’s campus. The opinions he has voiced on the Israel-Palestine conflict have rightfully divided many York students into harshly opposed camps. Meanwhile, the YFS’s involvement in the event brings up tough questions about how far the union’s elected leaders should be allowed to pursue their own political agenda over the concerns common to all students."

well, the event WAS sold out... so it's kind of a supply and demand thing.. but i guess that's behind the point.

according to the author of this piece, it's not fair for the YFS to provide speakers that only represent one side of a debate:

"it’s hard to imagine what insight those who support Galloway got out of the speech. While Galloway is a big name, calling him an expert on the Middle East and Asia is a contentious claim, especially considering how little interest he has in alternative views of the issues there.

Ultimately, those students who agree with Galloway’s general position got to listen to an extreme voice affirm views they already held, unchecked by any moderator or opposing stance to provide new information or a different perspective. Those who don’t agree with Galloway got nothing."

well, excalibur writer, i would say the exact thing about rag you have the nerve to call a newspaper. the excalibur consistently towes the administrative line and only represents a specific chunk of the student population at york university. it features shoddy journalism at best and has often taken an explicitly anti-student stance(do i need to recall your vari hall debacle, where you lied about carrying out polls with hundreds of students?)

but, it has every right to exists and produce garbage that idiot student journalists can put on their C.VS when they get out of business school and cash in their membership to various zionist organizations for a six figure job.

i digress. so normally what the administration says at york, excalibur parrots back. in this case, however, yorku and president shoukri himself are standing up for the galloway talk.

in a surprising twist of events, president shoukri is threatening to sue a rabbi who had the gall to call him an anti-semite(the story in the national post, here)

rabbi aaron hoch is being told to stand the fuck down by yorku's legal representative (harriet lewis, who has impeccable morals), to stop spreading "defamatory remarks about the...president and stop encouraging non-students to protest the george galloway speech on campus."

apparently rabbi hoch wrote in an email that president shoukri "has again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for jewish students on campus."

i think that shoukri and the administration should take the excalibur to task as well since the "newspaper" is obviously supporting the idea that shoukri and the university are backing up the YFS conspiracy to end free speech on campus.

obviously, according to this story, the university doesn't take being called an anti-semite lightly anymore--unless your name is dr. david noble.