GUERGIS-JAFFER AFFAIR
By: Puneet Riar, Grade 12
When the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal happened, all eyes were on the scene. Clinton was impeached in result. Yet it seems that our government will let a scandal go unpunished.
Rahim Jaffer, former Conservative MP and now co-owner of Green Power Generation (a company that promote green energy) was travelling northwest of Toronto on September 11th, 2009, when his car was stopped by a police car. The officer, who pulled him over, smelled alcohol and proceeded to search Jaffer’s car, where the officer found cocaine. Jaffer was charged with drunk driving and possession of cocaine. In addition, his licence was suspended for 90 days. Rahim Jaffer pleaded guilty on March 9th, 2010 to one charge of careless driving. His cocaine and drunken driving charges were then withdrawn and he got off with a $500 fine.
NUCLEAR SECURITY SUMMIT 2010
By: Puneet Riar, Grade 12
Remember that time in Social Studies 11, when you were half asleep, the teacher just kept droning on and on about some “The Manhattan Project” or “The Cuban Missile Crisis”? How about the whole “Cold War” thing? Do you remember what any of that stuff was about? Well, questions like those might be on your next test, so I’ll give you the answer: they all revolved around the theme of nuclear weapons; that theme also applies to the Nuclear Security Summit that occurred this past April.
“It’s impressive,” Obama told reporters as world leaders and delegations from 47 countries converged in Washington, D.C. from April 12th to the 13th for the president’s Nuclear Security Summit. The point of the summit was to “reduce the threat of having a nuclear weapon fall into the hands of terrorists” by agreeing on an action plan that ensured security for the nuclear substances of many countries so that they would not be stolen by terrorist groups. This summit is a warm-up for the conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will be held this month in New York. In advance of the summit, the United States and Russia — which together hold 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons — signed a treaty April 8th which would reduce the limit of nuclear warheads of the two countries to 1,550 per country over seven years.
The Irony down There
By: Valerie Wong, Grade 11
In places in the world, such as Sierra Leone, young girls are being forced to undergo a female circumcision, which is 
extremely painful and leaves the patient extremely susceptible to disease, infection, and other complications throughout their lives. These women who experience FGM (Female genital mutilation) are pressured by societal values and a need to be accepted. Compare this with the Western world’s culture, where your genitalia are not a common topic of discussion or acceptance.
First, there are of course medical reasons for the women in more developed countries to have the procedure called labiaplasty. Much of the reason behind it has to do with elongated clitoral hoods, which could cause a woman discomfort during exercise and sexual intercourse.
Why Wal-Mart?
By: Cassandra Ly, Grade 11
It’s getting late and, you’re finishing up your art project. Three sharpies have been used up; right as you go for the final details of all the things that can possibly happen the darn ink runs out. Let’s say Superstore is closed for the week for maintenance. Where do you go now to buy a new package of Sharpies? Wait, isn’t there that new Supercentre that just opened not too long ago? What was it called again? I think it started with a W. W for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart isn’t just one of the most successful retailers today; it is also the largest company, and one of the fastest money-makers in the world. How fast you might ask? Americans spend approximately $36,000,000 a day at Wal-Mart. In smaller terms, that’s $20,098 profit every single minute, of every day, of every week, of every month; you get the picture. Just a little less than the average annual income flows into the company every minute. Mind boggling or what? Two words to describe them = BEYOND RICH.
A NEW YEAR FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
By: Nikki Siu and Puneet Riar, Grade 12
That’s right! Windermere’s very first Amnesty International Club is geared up and ready to go for the New Year. For the
remaining months of the school year, Amnesty International will be focusing on a different human rights issue each month. Here are the human rights topics we will be covering for the following school year:
February 2010, Rwanda Genocide: the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda’s Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the Hutu dominated government. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from 6 April through mid-July, at least 500,000 people were killed. (Below, right)
What Can We Do For Haiti?
By: Valerie Wong, Grade 11
An earthquake rocked the world of the citizens of Haiti on January 12th, 2010. The natural disaster left thousands dead and countless others injured and missing. The government of Haiti is running around like a headless chicken, scrambling to put disaster in order.
With a disaster like this on our hands, you’d think that developed countries like Canada and the United States would be first in line to help. You’d think that our government is super keen on the idea of disaster relief. It would certainly ease the heat on them now – what, with the human-rights controversy surrounding prisoners of war in Afghanistan.
What Has Our World Come To?
By: Riya Talwar, Grade 9
Money, to me, was no more than paper with numbers painted on the front when I was a kid. Even now, I still can’t comprehend how those small pieces of paper can create so much chaos. I know we’re still young, and although a lot of people might not care about this, I do. When corruption goes on undetected in countries, companies are able to buy their way out of everything. One thing they can’t buy their way out of, however, is the environmental damage that they are responsible for.
After using up so much of the earth’s resources, what will we resort to? It might be said that oil will last “blah, blah” years, but exactly how many is that? What will happen afterward? Will it be back to the old drawing board? Or will we butcher up the earth even more, killing off endangered species? I want my kids to be able to travel to the North Pole and see a polar bear. I don’t want the Internet to artificially stimulate the experience.
