Year: 2006

There are encouraging signs that the criminal enterprise, known also as the Bush administration is, after fully five years of free reign being called to account for its myriad transgressions. The Grand Jury investigation into the Valerie Plame affair has, many believe, all the elements necessary to bring down George W. Bush, but is there the political will in America to carry it through?

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Russ Baker is an award-winning, unabashed muckraking investigative journalist whose work has appeared across the media spectrum. He is a co-founder of MediaBistro, a website serving as a bridge between journalists and “new media” professionals. His latest endeavour is The Real News Project, which he describes as a “media production shop for groundbreaking, transformative, independent investigative journalism. Russ Baker in the first half.

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And; far-reaching laws enacted in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in the U.S. have allowed for all manner of state excess. None have felt the sting of these laws more acutely than America’s Muslim community: imprisonment without due process, so-called “extraordinary rendition,” and broadened powers of search and seizure have combined to create a climate of fear for many Americans. But none of these is more disturbing than the “case” against Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir. Last month, after serving nearly three years in federal custody, Dr. Dhafir was sentenced to 22 years in prison: his crime; sending humanitarian aid to Iraq.

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Katherine Hughes is a Syracuse, New York potter and student who followed the prosecution of the local doctor, Rafil Dhafir, and says she became so concerned with the ramifications of it held for civil liberties she took a hiatus from her studies to look more deeply into the case than the local media was willing to. Katherine Hughes and the United States v. Rafil A. Dhafir in the second half.

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And; Janine Bandcroft will be here to bring us up to speed on all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, Russ Baker and testing the media’s mettle.

There can now be left no doubt, America is today history’s grossest defiler of humanity. There need be no more allusions to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, as atrocity goes, with the recent admissions of the deployment of White Phosphorous in its attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the Bush administration is breaking new ground and guaranteeing it will survive into the future as a cautionary benchmark against which all other atrociousness will be compared. <br><br>And what’s worse, fully half of the Americans polled by the Pew Research Center, say they approve of Mr. Bush’s torture policies against suspected terrorists. This after Abu Ghraib and Bagram, and Guantanamo, and the horrors of Afghanistan. Lila Rajiva is a Baltimore-based freelance journalist and author of ‘The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media.’ Lila Rajiva and atrocious conquest in the first half.

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And; Though hardly in the same league as its southern neighbour, Canada too has imperial ambitions. In April 2004, the tripartite coalition of Canada, France, and the United States conspired to take Haiti. Haiti’s populist President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped and spirited out of the country, his reformist government annulled. <br><br>Now, following more than a year and half of near chaos in Haiti, long promised federal elections are due. Jean St. Vil is a Canadian journalist and founding member of the Canada Haiti Action Network. He’ll be appearing here at UVic later this week for the symposium, ‘Why Haiti? The Ottawa Initiative or Canada’s First Coup d’Etat’ and to present the film ‘Aristide and the Endless Revolution.’ Jean St. Vil and Canada’s imperial ambition in the second half.

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And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, Lila Rajiva and America the Atrocious.