October 2018 by The Newspaper

the newspaper University of Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s independent community paper

Since 1978

Volume XLI October

Issue III 18th 2018

Masthead

Cover Jacob Himmelhoch

the newspaper University of Toronto’s independent community paper since 1978 Editor in Chief Rel Ryann Managing Editor Judy Hu Business Manager Sarah Zhao Public Relations Coordinator Nina Anggala Senior Copy Editor Olivia Anderson-Clarke News Editor Carsten von Wersebe Comment Editor Manjiri Deshpande Arts Editors Renna Keriazes & Frida Mar Music Editor Ben Cannon Associate Editors Robin Fuller, Saba Javed, Saarah Khan, Sonia Scarlat & Shreya Vohra Design Editors Victoria Hong & Alex Jain Illustration Editor Jacob Himmelhoch Photo Editor Maarya Zafar Staff Illustrators Cordelia Cho, Emma Hasaralejko & Jaylin Kim Online Editor Zeynel Akkus Web Developers Dania Ismadi & Devin Ma Distribution Coordinator Thomas Chan Therapy Dog Honeybee Contributors Olivia Anderson-Clarke, Nina Anggala, Cordelia Cho, Amelia Eaton, Corrina Fowlow, Emma Hasaralejko, Jacob Himmelhoch, Saba Javed, Jaylin Kim, Sonya Roma All U of T community members, including students, alumni, faculty, and staff are encouraged to contribute! The Newspaper is published by Planet Publications Inc., a non-profit corporation

thenewspaper.ca

we used to have an office address here but UofT evicted us to build a new faculty and then the Student Commons suddenly rescinded their offer of a new space for us despite years of us discussing it and yeah we’re still salty about it

The Newspaper Interviews:

Jaylin Kim

KALLE MATTSON OLIVIA ANDERSON-CLARKE | Senior Copy Editor

Kalle Mattson is a Ontario pop/folk musician who began writing his own music during first year university. He is known for being nominated for the 2014 Polaris Music prize and the Video of the Year at the 2016 Juno Awards for “Avalanche” as well as touring with Hozier, Blue Rodeo, and Cuff the Duke. N: Your album is called Youth. What drove you to look to your youth as inspiration for an album? K: I had always had this idea of writing a coming of age record; I thought there were a lot of coming of age movies and novels out there but not a lot of records that explored that. I wanted to write a record about the period of time that I’m at in my life where there’s this middle period between post-adolescence and pre-adulthood that affects “millennials”. It’s an album called Youth, but it’s about the loss of youth and becoming nostalgic for the first time for a period of your life that’s sort of gone. N: Would you say the album is more about celebrating youth or leaving it behind as you grow up? K: Definitely not celebrating, it’s a pretty sad record. [laughs] I guess it’s about leaving it behind but also it’s about that period of time in your mid-twenties when your teenage dreams become regrets or things you haven’t done. Your first love becomes your first loss. That’s how I would describe it; it’s not a celebration but it’s also not mourning it. It’s meant to capture that entire feeling of not knowing what your life is in your mid-twenties. N: What contributes to the different sound of Youth in comparison to your other albums? K: The coming of age concept was one half of the equation of this record and the other half was the motto that I’ve put out there of “folk is dead”. I’m a white guy with an acoustic guitar singing sad songs. There’s a lot of me in the world; probably too many of me. It was a challenge and realization of what I do and how to go at it differently. The “folk is dead” motto is a way of us going into this record to change what folk music sounds like in 2018. We made this record similar to a pop record is made in 2018. I demoed the songs in my apartment on my acoustic guitar. Then we tore the songs apart, my producer Colin Munro and I, and we sent files back and forth for two years. [We] had a bunch of different versions of songs, went down a bunch of different paths, and the record came out sounding pretty significantly different than all of my past releases, and hopefully sounds like a bit of a different take on genre that I’m in. N: What have you been up to between albums? Has it all been writing for Youth.?

K: Between 2014 and 2015 I toured nonstop. I did six tours in Europe. I was pretty much on the road the entire time. And then Avalanche came out in August 2015 and we toured that. After that I was sort of burnt out. Like I said, that album that was before Avalanche [Someday the Moon WIll Be Gold] was really emotional. It’s a tough record to do every single night, to tell stories about my mom and be really open about it. I wanted to slow things down a bit and not be on the road. I also needed to figure out what kind of record I wanted to make again. I like to say that I make concept records, and coming up with that sort of box and story that you want to thread across ten songs is tricky. It’s easier said than done. So a lot of it was writing, and we just took our time with this record. The way that this record sounds… it wasn’t like we just stumbled upon the sound of this record right away, it took a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, and it was very frustrating at times. But I’m happy with how it all turned out. N: In “Once”, you use the line about being “a killer without blood”. What are you trying to convey with this imagery? K: So “Once” I wrote and right away, I knew it was going to be the first song. Not just because the once/ once-upon-a-time thing, but it was sort of meant to be the beginning of a story. The verse has “Once I was a stranger”, “Once I was a killer” and I guess my idea behind it was [that] I was lamenting the way I used to care about things more. As you get older life takes more and more out of you and you become less passionate about things. This could be purely my own experience [laughs] but that was sort of where I was going with that one. N: “Astronaut” is such a powerful conclusion to the album. Is there a story behind it? Did you want to want to be an astronaut when you grew up? K: I was a pretty typical young boy in that I wanted to be a firefighter or I wanted to be an athlete, which I definitely didn’t become. [laughs] “Astronaut” was one of the first songs I wrote from this record. Like I said, I always have these rules or boxes of my writing because I find that’s sort of limiting. I don’t get that idea, that “I don’t even know what I want to write about”. But one of them is never write about death again because I have done that before and in 2015 my grandmother got sick and she was going to pass away and I visited with her one last time. She’s my mom’s mom and she spoke really frankly about her life in a way that I’d never heard her talk before and she said the line “every regret is something you never do” and the songwriter part of my brain just immediately turned on. I’d like to think it’s a song about life rather than death but she ended up writing the hook on that song and I built it around it.

Kalle Mattson is playing the Great Hall on November 17th .

the news

BREAKING down THE NEW MENTAL HEALTH POLICY AT U OF T Part II: PRESCRIBING SOLUTIONS AMELIA EATON | Contributor

Mental health on campus has become an area of focus at U of T since the mandated leave of absence policy (MLAP) was first proposed. Although the issue has gained attention, little has changed. Last year, students utilized every tool they had to speak out against the policy, from leveraging their positions on governing boards to protesting the vote. So why haven’t they been heard, and why does the larger call for reform go unanswered? While labelling this experience as a “learning moment” feels like an irresponsible platitude, there is a need for self-reflection when it comes to mental health advocacy at U of T. The urgent need for reform is much larger than a single policy. Rebuilding trust between student leaders, students, and administration The relationship between students and administration remains damaged from the process of the MLAP. But reform depends on a larger reconciliation. When it comes to mental health advocacy, there is a complex interplay between elected student representatives, university administration, and students who rely on mental health resources. Students who feel the impacts of damaging policies are frustrated, not just with the administration, but with the students who have a seat at the table and who fail to use it effectively. Compounding this problem, the discrimination mentally ill students face -- like other forms of ableism -- is intersectional, says Kristen Zimmer, a student mental health advocate. “If you’re already marginalized, if you’re Indigenous, Black, a Person of Colour, part of the LGBTQ2+ community, have another disability, if you’re an immigrant… your mental health is more likely to be affected as a result of existing oppression. By upholding discriminatory mental health policies, we are complicit in this oppression,” adds Zimmer. Students who already face other forms of oppression are the most impacted by discriminatory policies, while simultaneously having the least power to influence these policies. It is vital that elected student representatives leverage their positions to support mentally ill students, but it equally necessary for students who face mental health challenges to gain their own seat at the table. Josh Grondin, the Vice-President University Affairs for the University of Toronto Students’ Union, has talked openly about his experiences with mental illness. He says that “by allowing mentally ill students to take on leadership roles, they can control the conversation and directly engage with their own experiences”, adding that “firsthand experience” of the barriers that mentally students experience “goes a long way”.

Solidarity between student groups is crucial to amplify the voices of marginalized students. However, the different strategies undertaken by groups on campus can make cooperation difficult. While some student groups meet with administrators, others choose grassroots approaches. But for Harry Orbach-Miller, a graduate student who sits on the Governing Council, the choice between meetings and protests is a “false choice” as there are enough students to do both. In fact, an artificial dichotomy between student groups only serves to divide students and ultimately silence them.

“

The choice between meetings and protests is a “false choice” as there are enough students to do both. In fact, an artificial dichotomy between student groups only serves to divide students and ultimately silence them.

A model for reform

people advocate for softer approaches”. She adds that “data collection would take years... in the meantime, while this data is being collected, what would happen to the students who are being affected by the policy?” Even student groups that present the case for mental health reform with solid evidence and concrete recommendations are not always heard. Despite their yearlong project, Active Minds Western acknowledges that “Western administration has not formally recognized We Demand More and committed” to undertaking the recommendations. The group says they will continue to use the recommendations to shape their future mental health advocacy.

Magic pill or bitter pill? Harry Orbach-Miller still sees data-collection culminating in policy recommendations as a worthwhile route for student advocacy, commenting that “it’s easier” for students to push for change they would like to see “versus saying ‘we don’t like this’”.

”

Orbach-Miller comments that while “there’s a lot of importance in people standing up for things they don’t like” the focus of mental health advocacy at U of T should be on concrete policy recommendations. He comments that U of T can turn to Western University, his alma mater, for an example of what student-led policy reform can look like. Active Minds Western is a student-run mental health advocacy group that recently completed a year-long project to determine the landscape of mental health at Western University. The group surveyed more than 700 students, and met with 10 campus stakeholders, culminating in the release of a report titled “We Demand More: A Pathway to Mental Health Policy Reform”. The paper breaks down challenges for mental health policy into 11 recommendations for the university including mandated mental health training for faculty members, incorporating mental health education during orientation week, employing diverse mental health professionals, and improving transparency on policy reform. The paper also had some dire revelations: 40.8% of Western students surveyed struggle to maintain their mental health, and 82.9% would not approach a professor for help. Only 29.2% of students found the mental health resources on campus accessible. While the recommendations are based on the information gathered from Western students, the group told The Newspaper that “there are some common challenges faced by all post-secondary institutions when it comes to mental health”. The report reflects similar issues to those at U of T, such as inaccessible services and professors that lack mental health awareness. It could also serve as a guide for how student groups here could begin a similar project. Kristen Zimmer, however, cautions against abandoning frontline activism in favour of long-term projects like data-collection, commenting that “it’s frustrating when

Josh Grondin has focused his efforts on creating a companion guide to the Mandated Leave of Absence Policy. He says that “dealing with the Policy through its various draft stages over the past year and a half ” he “was aware of many of the questions students frequently have and what the relevant answers would be”. Grondin says students will soon have access to the guide. The University College Literary & Athletic Society’s Mental Wellness Commission has been working on an interactive resource map for students. The Victoria University Student Administrative Council has also introduced a mental wellness representative this year, and I currently serve as the Woodsworth College Students’ Association’s mental health director. It is essential for mental health advocacy to be brought into the framework of student governance in order for mental health to be recognized as an integral part of students’ well being. Effective mental health advocacy will require a coordinated effort from student groups and associations, but it will also require students to each contribute in ways that match their skills. While Kristen Zimmer has inspired a call to action drawing on her own experiences navigating U of T’s mental health resources, other students may be best suited to take up the process of policy review and data collection. For a cause as dire as mental health on campus, widespread participation and a wide variety of approaches are needed. A recent Op-Ed in The Varsity posed the question “What does effective mental health advocacy look like?” I have been grappling with this question for the last year, and I will probably continue to grapple with it for years to come. As the Op-Ed points out “a critical approach must be taken in order to truly be impactful.” Challenging each other and ourselves is necessary in this movement. But it is comforting to know that other students are asking the same questions. While we look for the best way to be heard, we are demonstrating to the institutions we want to change what it means to listen.

Read the read the first part of this two-part series online at thenewspaper.ca

How To Be More Sustainable Than Trudeau From trail mix to sippy cups: What you can do to be more like Starbucks and less like the PM

Bring Your Own Coffee Cup

Am I really part of the sustainability commission if I don’t put number one as bringing your own reusable mug? Coffee shops often offer a discounted price on your coffee if you bring one, Starbucks themselves has 5 cents off, which over the course of the hundreds of coffees you probably consume in a year, adds up. Additionally, when you go to that quaint café like Jimmy’s Coffee, request that your drink be “for here” and they will give it to you in a mug that you return later. Caffiends, Victoria Colleges’ student-run cafe, lets you choose your mug from an assortment of funky designs, and you are free to carry it with you to classes, provided you return it at the end of the day. It really cannot be much easier than that! Consignment Stores

The trips to noteable thrift stores like Value Village and Black Market are a bit disappointing. For one it’s hard to sort through all the scattered items, but also lots of items are honestly gross. If I find something that’s cute, sometimes I’ll also find garbage and chewed gum in the inner lining due to pockets with holes in them. One way to circumvent this is consignment stores—there are tons scattered on Bloor and Queen St, with my personal favourite being Kind Exchange. At these stores, only items in good condition and of high quality are accepted, like a vetting system for clothes. As a result they are teeming with brands like Aritzia and Zara at upwards of 60% off original prices and it close to perfect condition. Bulk Barn

CORRINA FOWLOW | Contributor

In wake of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s call for Commonwealth nations to ban single-use plastic straws last April, it seems the only willing entity is, ironically, Starbucks. By 2020, the coffee giant has initiated a plan to replace their iconic green straws with a sippy cup. Yes, the days of preschool have returned and I am sure you will all eventually see these cups and feel a little strange about it. Truthfully, the design is not all that drastic, and if it helps reduce plastic from our oceans then I am all for the initial twinge of immaturity. As it turns out, Starbucks is doing more for the banning plastic movement than even our own government. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when asked his response to May’s invitation, suggested that Canada was “open to a broad range of ideas,” but of course no policy has been put in place. Perhaps this is an unfair critique as the governing body of over 36 million people and thousands of businesses, simply banning plastic straws is rather daunting and probably would create more bureaucracy than they think worth. As with most changes to the status quo, a grassroots approach is a more effective strategy, raising the question of what the university is doing to support such initiatives. You are probably familiar with some of the sustainable features around campus—like the Exam Centre’s (fake) green wall or the scattered compost bins. Illustration: Cordelia Cho.

Indeed, most of the new buildings, like the beloved Myhal Centre, are designed to save energy as indicated by their LEED certifications. Despite this, specific problems arise each year, and each year they go unresolved. As part of the sustainability commission within University College, I regularly meet with people who have ambitions on how to make residence and university as a whole more green. Yet the reality is that of all the dozens of ideas generated during the first committee meeting, only one has a shot of actually being carried out (bringing your own reusable cup for free coffee in the Junior Common Room.) The reasons why are twofold: one, the committee is made up of students who understandably prioritize homework over sustainable activities, and two, the plethora of old buildings on campus means engineering changes are not permitted on heritage structures. But when the commissioner of the committee shows up with a plastic bag of chips and a double wrapped carton of Oreos and announces that “we can’t really do much” as a group, it sets a tone of resignation that has carried throughout the months in which I have attended such meetings. Evidently, the culture surrounding sustainability needs an uplift. It should be easy to limit our ecological footprint. Oreos in recyclable or reusable packaging should be just as accessible as their plastic counterparts, and incentives need to be put in place to facilitate greener choices. This begs the question of what we can do as individuals and as part of a community to make changes to our plastic consumption and waste—changes that you have the power to make, like these:

There are two Bulk Barns close to campus: one at Bloor and Howland Ave, the other downtown at Carlton and Yonge. Take your pick and choose from hundreds of types of trail mix, candies, flours and other baking needs. They even have stations where you can grind your own peanut, almond, or cashew butter. The best part of all of this is that you can bring your own glass or plastic containers to fill them up. All you need to do is bring them to the cashier upon entering and they will zero their weight so that the container is not included in the price of your snacks. Save money and plastic, all while catering to the inner child in a candy store. Homemade cleaning products

An all purpose cleaner from the store costs more and utilizes lots of plastic when you can just make it yourself with 1/2 c white vinegar, 2 Tbsp baking soda, and 2 cups water. There are many recipes online for cleaning solutions of different purposes, so use the spray bottles you have already but instead of throwing them out, make your own—free of harmful chemicals and for cheap! The main takeaway from this list is to use what you have, and think about reusable or sustainable alternatives when you need to buy something else (bamboo toothbrushes, anyone?) As long as you begin to make more conscious choices, you make an impact on both the environment but also those around you who may be inspired to adopt some of your habits as well. The butterfly effect is that the groups on campus supporting individual change in turn influence university policy, which then can work within the city, eventually reaching the federal government, who now cannot deny the evidence that sustainability is both feasible and an issue voters care about. Once voters care, there can be no more excuses for policy to follow, so start small, because you never know where your actions may ripple.

0% Indifferent A startling glimpse into Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene SABA JAVED | Associate Editor

On the first Thursday of each month, the Art Gallery of Ontario hosts a party for Toronto’s public—attracting art connoisseurs, business people, foodies, and me: an overwhelmed, relatively eco-friendly UofT student.

Continuing through the exhibit, I wallowed in the profound discomfort, guilt, and rage I felt at the impacts of climate change, and how little I had done to make the abstract tangible for myself. Did I really need to get a press pass to view a series of photos and experience AR in order to remind myself of the costs of climate change?

Continuing through the exhibit, I wallowed in the profound

Ticket stub in hand, I quietly followed a mass of people towards the main attraction: Edward Burtynsky’s much-acclaimed exhibit, Anthropocene.

discomfort, guilt, and

Collaborating with filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky created the multimedia exhibit Anthropocene to capture the lasting imprint of human activity in the age of gross capitalism. The word “Anthropocene” describes what many geologists argue as the newest geological epoch, wherein human development dominates planetary change. Through photography, film, and augmented reality, Burtynsky has graciously invited the public into the minds of photographers and climate scientists alike, to witness decay alongside development. Though I’m not familiar with the world of art critiques, I did not feel the overwhelming confusion I typically experience when I go to exhibits at the AGO. Unfamiliar with the technical lexicon of the art world, I typically navigate the AGO with apprehension and confusion. Much to my surprise, Burtynsky broke this barrier, actively encouraging viewers to engage and reflect with each piece, accomplished through the sheer scale and interactivity of the photos and augmented reality. From bleak and barren landscapes to overpopulated, dusty markets, the exhibit skillfully juxtaposed feelings of desolation and claustrophobia woven into the experience of climate change. Photos captured corners of the earth subjected to an onslaught of industrial activities—from copper smelting to petrochemical plants—that would make a climate activist shudder. Consumed by the desolate aerial photos lining these first walls, I continued on with a sense of dread mired in curiosity, willing myself to step further into Burtynsky’s world. Walking through each room, a persistent ticking escalated in the back of my mind: From the comfort of this cushy art gallery, whose home was I witnessing the desolation of ? One photo in particular, was that of a man sitting down, dwarfed by the piles of trash and colourful plastic debris of the Dandora landfill. In seeing this photo, I was reminded that the surreal aerial photos lining the first wall grounded themselves in daily life of marginalised people. I was struck with Burtynsky’s ability to make the abstract tangible in this moment. I had, of course, read the locations and descriptions of each photo, from lithium pools to marble extraction, but the Dandora landfill photo contextualized the climate crisis along a chord of deep empathy for me.

scanned the list, I noted the least popular feeling, and with an odd sense of satisfaction I finally felt able to justify my need to see Burtynsky’s work up close, why this exhibit had become so popular, and why I had been asked to review it. Typed in Futura next to a white italicized 0%, glowed the word Indifferent.

rage

I felt at the impacts of climate change,

and how little I had done

to make the abstract tangible for myself. As I lamented about the woes of individual responsibility in the face of a warming planet, I entered the final room of Anthropocene. This moment marked my realization of the genius behind Burtynsky’s intention. The conclusion of these works were materialized through a set of FAQs and answers, and climate science figures made palatable for the layman (or enraged, misinformed student). I was not enthralled by Burtynsky’s work, but was captured by a single monitor, which allowed exhibit-goers to choose one of a range of emotions. Conflicted by my messy internal monologue of negative emotion, I selected worry, a feeling which I had yet to shake. Above this list, a second screen ranked the emotions on a simple bar graph. As I

Burtynsky has managed to remind me, and I hope many others, of the stakes of this new epoch. The decaying earth, the vibrant lithium pools, and the man among the garbage shocked me out of my removed complacency, and into desperate and disturbance. Burtynsky’s photos have navigated the entrenched and privileged normalization of climate change in a way that is notable through the organisation of his work: from surreal abstract aerial photos, to snippets of profoundly human moments, and a final descent into the hopelessness of facing a destroyed climate. Anthropocene has reminded me to stay awake, angry, and appalled at the indelible mark humans have left on this land and the need to destroy their remnants of indifference towards our climate crisis.

Photographs: Edward Burtynsky/courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto. Illustration: Emma Hasaralejko.

the music

we give dubstep “ a chance, maybe politics will give us one.” In Europe’s uncertain political climate Turkish DJ Kaytan discusses the impact of EDM. SONYA ROMA | Contributor

Somehow, Kiev had become the middle ground. Having grown up in this beautiful city, I was used to the assumption that Ukraine’s capital was free and westernized until Soviet Ideology occasionally crept in from the back of the bar and reminded us of our Eastern European baggage. Maturing culturally seemed hard, but the need to consolidate identity after the 2013 Euromaidan protests pushed for a new wave of artistic expression in the music scene. Artists like Grib and Andrey Palash took influence from Swedish EDM bands and mixed it with North American R&B to render their own underground electronic genre. Music became about the raw freedom that could be experienced in techno parties held in skateparks, abandoned hotels and office blocks which began to get international recognition. It was no longer the era of massive drug-fuelled raves with second-rate DJs, but rather a coming together of home-grown underground heroes who created unique sounds and vibes. Kiev has since been labelled “the new Berlin,” and the city is rapidly making its own future. Knowing this, however, didn’t keep me from being surprised when I found out that the guy drinking watermelon cider in Kiev’s Bar Tvoix Druzhei was a Turkish EDM artist. Was EDM becoming a funnel of musical expression in places other than Kiev? He was surprised I even asked.

Regarding “Falling Down” At this point, posthumous Lil Peep releases are tasteless. JACOB HIMMELHOCH | Illustration Editor

Earlier this fall, a surprise collaboration between contemporary rap icons Lil Peep and XXXTentacion entitled “Falling Down” was released. The song was met with controversy for a number of reasons. For one, the release is posthumous as both artists died tragic deaths this past year. For another, while both artists were pioneers of the same wave of emo-infused trap music, their moral values could not have been more different.

Born in Istanbul, Kaytan is a nineteen year old DJ who became an avid member of this rising music scene in Istanbul. Learning how to play guitar and drums at the age of ten, Kaytan says he first “got inspired by heavy metal bands” like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. It was evident that the West had managed to creep into the musical climate in Turkey early on. But it seemed to only be a gateway for musicians like Kaytan, who were “bored of the shitty pop music” disguised as “new and hip with a metal rip here and there” and ultimately looking for something new. In other words, for Kaytan, the electronic scene developed without the forceful push of Western influences to seep into the staggering music market. “Then I met the Pixie Underground,” he continues. “It’s the first and only bass club in Turkey, and I didn’t like dubstep before I went there; I thought they were loud and full of distortion.” (A familiar story for many musicians trying to get off the ground in Turkey.) Dubstep and sub-genres of EDM, though aggressive for a newly developing music scene, possess an element of collectivity. This community attracted musicians like Kaytan who were looking to escape the staggering political climate, to fully connect with his own people and country. Following an attempted coup in 2016, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan’s policies have aimed to realign with a more moral dogma rather than the secularization that would allow for the kind of liberalism EDM needs to flourish—as seen in Stockholm and Berlin’s multi-million underground music scene. With venues closing down because of government regulation, it would be obvious to think that for people like Kaytan, entering a venue such as the Pixie Underground would change his view on music altogether. Opening in 2008, this hole-in-the-wall dive with “no lights except the glow of the turntables” dedicated its sound to drum and

Despite their aesthetic and topical similarities, the two rappers left behind legacies almost oppositional to one another. Peep was a voice for the depressed and addicted, his music an unrepressed materialization of pain that spoke to millions around the globe. He was openly bisexual and outspokenly disgusted by domestic abuse present within the rap industry. Ironically, this is what his “collaborator” is most known for. XXXTentacion, while similarly renowned for his unrelenting commentaries on depression, had a dark shadow behind his music. Rather than addiction, XXX’s depression manifested into gruesome accounts of domestic abuse. In fact, the “Free X” movement that kindled his fame was a response to the jail time XXX was serving for brutally assaulting his pregnant girlfriend. Domestic abuse is just one of the many reprehensible aspects of XXX’s legacy, along with his anti-feminist stances and belligerent homophobia. In his notorious ‘No Jumper’ interview, he barbarically recounted the time he beat his homosexual cellmate (who he referred to exclusively through homophobic slurs) to near death, only to be stopped by a reluctant guard. After his description, he showed no remorse for his actions not only in the interview, but for the rest of his career. How does someone with a history like XXXTentacion end up on a song with Lil Peep, a bisexual artist who, according to Peep’s GothBoiClique collaborators, never liked X in the first place? The answer is simple. In the eyes of labels, and sometimes even other artists, a dead musician is nothing more than a piggy-bank. Posthumous

bass, electro, and acid house which was unusual for the pop atmosphere of Istanbul. Kaytan continues, “I met a few people [there] I liked and they were enthusiastic to help me get into the scene… They made me realize dubstep was more than Skrillex and had a lot to do with the atmosphere.” In Kaytan’s opinion, “When politics are shitty, the people find a way to come together.” As a country where the political climate seems similarly complicated, this revolution seems to echo in Ukraine’s music scene. But why was it so easy for EDM to grow despite all of this political hardwiring? I asked. “I think despite everything—I mean terrorism, war and politics—you can’t stop the development of music if the rest of the country isn’t developing, “ Kaytan suggests. It’s evident that the venture is dangerous and DJ’s are still risking it all just to play their tables. On New Year’s of 2017 an upscale Istanbul nightclub called Reina felt a hail of bullets from a Daesh gunman. 39 were killed and the club was shut down. A few months later, Kaytan remembers “two rap musicians were jailed because of their lyrics on ‘drug content’ which scared a lot of people even in different genres, but it caused a lot of people to stand up and realize that music was being marginalized and needed our support.” For Kaytan, if there is no political change, then music becomes the change—and a tool of liberation for the people. This week Kaytan is releasing his new single in partnership with Subworld—a bass music collective who are looking to support international artists. “It’s called ‘Sopa’” he says with a sheepish smile. “That means kicking ass in Turkish.” And he is kicking ass, as music venues are now clamoring to book the nineteen year old prodigy. But going international doesn’t stop Kaytan from acknowledging his impact at home; the artist is now looking to collaborate with Turkish music collective BADMASH to release his third compilation album. “The key is for collectives to form and underground artists/ musicians to work together and gather people to listen to cool music and make art,” he says. “If we give dubstep a chance, maybe politics will give us one.”

Follow DJ Kaytan

@xarmutx soundcloud.com/kaytanke

content abuse is something we’ve seen happen to many beloved, deceased musicians. Kurt Cobain, Prince, and Michael Jackson especially have suffered posthumous releases, and many more have had content released by their labels or peers once their voice is gone.“Falling Down”, is proof labels are more concerned with profit margins than maintaining an artist’s legacy. But one aspect of this collaboration separates it from the typical posthumous cash grab: it was never supposed to exist in the first place. Lil Peep collaborator ILoveMakonnen revealed the backstory to this sick post-mortem puppet show in an interview with XXL Magazine. Peep’s verse on “Falling Down” was recorded for a collaboration between him and Makonnen, left unfinished in his passing. XXXTentacion later heard a snippet on YouTube, and contacted Makonnen asking to collaborate. “Falling Down” is the result. One might say, “XXXTentacion reached out to work with Peep? Isn’t that progress? He was showing growth by wanting to collaborate with a queer artist!” But Peep was never involved. According to GothBoiClique members on social media following the release, Peep never would have consented. It wasn’t until Peep had no voice in the situation that X intervened. “Falling Down” is worse than the average posthumous cash grab. It is a stain on Peep’s name. It is a morally void attempt for XXXTentacion to attach his name to an artist that rejected him—an artist that would make him look better.

the revolution 7

The Children of Freedom NINA ANGGALA | Public Relations Coordinator

Three million lives hang in the balance. These are the residents of Idlib, a region in the northwest of Syria and the last stronghold of her major rebel forces. Between them and a devastating attack stands a tentative demilitarization deal signed by the government, its foreign allies, and occupying jihadist groups. If the rebels don’t withdraw by mid-October, the deal stipulates the launch of a full-scale assault. On the horizon: the Russian navy, the Syrian military, and standing guard against the latter, Turkish forces, all reminders of the consequences of disobedience. If this comes to pass, it will paint our headlines red, a humanitarian catastrophe in an already catastrophic war. Of the three million people in Idlib, one million are children and more than half are seeking refuge from other parts of the country. Eleven million Syrians have been displaced. The death toll continues to rise, even with this temporary peace. If this comes to pass, those who are left will live under President Bashar al-Assad’s thumb, revolutionaries of a failed revolution. When the red fades, the war will be over for us. There is a perception of the Middle East that people hold, often unwittingly, of an inherently violent place; by virtue of the people who live there, the religion they practice, and the governments who reign. Advocates of antiimmigration policies monger fear of an infection. If these people step foot on Western soil, they cry, they will bring with them the bloodshed that permeates their homes like a plague. But when you look closer, a different picture emerges: one of crime, perpetrated by corrupt governments, foreign and national, against the citizens of the Middle East. For Syria, it was the imprisonment and torture of 23 teenaged boys for their involvement in a piece of proArab Spring graffiti. On a larger scale, it was the invasion of Iraq by the United States and the UK in the Second Persian Gulf War. The headlines around that are long gone, but for the Iraqi people, as it will be for Syria, their troubles aren’t over. The war in Syria is only a civil war in the strictest sense of the word. In everything but name, the Syrian conflict is essentially a proxy war; Syria is the Colosseum and its citizens are gladiators, enlisted by foreign powers to fight in a melee of foreign policies and power dynamics. Michael Ledeen, American historian and neoconservative foreign policy analyst, once wrote of the Iraq War, “this war is not new in any meaningful sense. Indeed it is a very traditional sort of war, one at which the U.S. has always excelled: It is a war against tyrants and in the name of freedom.”

“Our greatest weapon in this war,” he writes, “is the people oppressed by tyrannical regimes. They constitute a lethal dagger aimed at the hearts of their rulers. And knowing this, the tyrants fear us.” On June of 2007, the Bush administration revealed their plans to maintain a strong American presence in Iraq. By 2009, the US had built 283 bases in Iraq, the largest of which (and of any US embassy in the world) is located in Baghdad. Comparable to the Vatican City in size, the mammoth embassy looms over the Iraqi capital. The building of these permanent bases was a potent source of controversy in America even in the midst of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror”. There was no such controversy in Iraq and her neighbours. It was clear to the Iraqis that the US was attempting to establish itself as a colonial power in the region. Tehran and Damascus were next.

While the world’s eye is on Idlib, Syrian citizens pay the price for revolution. to rise to prominence. Today, the dominant rebel organization in Idlib is the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: a radical, Salafist militant group with roots in al-Qaeda. The inflation of sectarianism in Islamist countries has long been a prominent strategy in the American arsenal. After dismantling Saddam’s government, which was controlled by the Ba’ath Party, a historically Sunni group, the Bush administration made sure to appoint Shiite officials as replacements for those who worked under Hussein, regardless of their personal ideologies and feelings towards the dictator. The exacerbation of sectarian hostility prompted nationwide fear of persecution, a fear Osama bin Laden would later weaponize when he unveiled himself as a protector of the Sunni people. Prior to that, both Sunni and Shi’a officials walked the halls of Iraq’s government. These officials also had close ties to Iran and the result of their appointments was the beginning of a cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The latter currently provides weapons and munitions to rebel groups.

Today, Iran stands behind President Assad, alongside the Russians. The rebels, an umbrella term that denotes the diverse and largely disorganized groups fighting against President Assad, are backed by the US and Turkey, whose borders run across the region of Idlib. For once, in the last decade or so of war, it seems that the US is finally on the right side of history.

But who provides for the people?

Except there are no winners or losers on the ground. Whether US-led or Russian-financed, indiscriminate war tactics kill civilians; their grief is written off as collateral damage. When the Free Syrian Army first rose up in Daraa, following President Assad’s orders that the army use violent means to quell protests, they represented the hopes and the sorrows of the Syrian people. Hundreds died or were imprisoned in those protests. Inspired by the Arab Spring’s success in Egypt and inflamed by the torture of the Graffiti Kids, they were the culmination of years of festering resentment against a corrupt, oppressive government.

Since the beginning of the war, it has been a favourite strategy of President Assad’s to target hospitals. Water and electricity are only provided in government controlled regions of Syria. The temptation to run to those places is tempered only by the fear that should they seek asylum elsewhere, residents of Idlib will be branded as traitors by the government and their families imprisoned or killed.

When the US was given the opportunity to provide early, critical support for the Free Syrian Army, they backed out. They were cowed by the disastrous effects of their occupation of Iraq. They wanted to minimize their presence in the Middle East. They wanted a free Arab world. In Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, he said, “We also can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis … that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately will weaken us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam; it’s the lesson of Iraq -- and we should have learned it by now.” Since then, the Free Syrian Army has disintegrated. What was once the strongest hope of the Syrian people and a formidable, secular, force has given way to a fragmented mess of power struggles and extremism. When the Americans assassinated Saddam, they left behind a vacuum of power that allowed al-Qaeda

Three million people are threatened not only by an impending doom, but by the uncertainty of day-to-day survival. Water, food, healthcare, electricity - all are scarce in Idlib, a city built to sustain a population half of that which resides in it now.

Anywhere they run, their safety is threatened. For many of those who escaped abroad, the vilification of Islam during the Iraq war, built on an existing hotbed of xenophobia, is yet another barrier to safety and security. If you take an even closer look at the Syrian conflict, what you find isn’t a political drama about the machinations of Western powers. December, 2010: Mohamed Bouazizi, 26 years old, set himself on fire in front of a government building in Tunisia. January, 2011: Esraa Abdel Fattah, 40 years old, organized the protest in Tahrir Square in Egypt. And on February 16, 2011, Naief Abazid, then only 14 years old, painted the words “It’s your turn Doctor Bashar al-Assad” on the wall of his school in a region of southern Syria: Daraa, the birthplace of the revolution. The history of the Arab world is distinguished by its tragedy and by the strength of its hope. Whatever the outcome of the Battle for Idlib, whether it is the final act to this war or not, it will not be the end of that story.

Growing Up On The Internet In which age is no excuse

EMMA HASARALEJKO | Staff Illustrator

For anyone growing up with the Internet, we should be all too familiar with childhood warnings to be wary of whom we spoke to and what personal information we revealed online. Few can say that they ever heeded those warnings as seriously as they were expected to. I certainly didn’t. A lonely, art-inclined pre-teen, once I realized all the validation I desired was online, no warning could have stopping me from creating an online account and flooding it with whatever it was that I called art at the time. My first Deviantart account was a foray into a world I had never seen before, a place I could throw my art and have strangers tell me how impressed they were. This satiated me for a short while, but soon I wanted more. I saw how other, more successful artists engaged with their followers by putting out commissions and taking requests. So, at the veritable age of fourteen, I opened my commissions to those who followed me for the first time. In retrospect this was endowing more trust in the moral character of the Internet than I should have. Unfortunately no website is free from those wretched few who seem to have decided that there is no need good taste online, and Deviantart was no exception. So it was one day after school I came home to find an innocuous message sitting in my inbox. Opening it revealed that the person who sent it hadn’t even bothered to ask if I would do anything for them and had instead launched right into a graphic description of the very specific bondage porn they wanted me to draw. Yes, bondage porn. It wasn’t until that moment that my fourteen-year-old self realized exactly where my parents had been coming from whenever they warned me about the dangers of talking to people online. Today, with the internet being even more accessible than it ever has been, there are more minors using it as their primary method of interacting with media than ever before. Thus, the question of who is responsible for curating minors’ experiences online becomes crucial to discuss. The issue is divisive, with people arguing both for and against the restriction of adult content online, and other places that minors could easily access it. The most extreme amongst those arguing for restriction claiming that in order to make the internet safe for minors all communities must police their content to ensure it remains within acceptable moral grounds. For the sake, of course, of those underage consumers who may end up seeing something they should not. It’s whenever this debate rears its head that I think about the time someone sent me a request for bondage porn online.

Looking back I now have a much better understanding of the warnings that had been afforded to me, but at the time I saw them as nothing more than useless blocks of text I needed to click through blindly before I could get to my account. This is the case I imagine for many of us, and unlikely to be any different for any other newcomers to the world wide web. For my younger self, age really was just a number, and, if pretending I was older than I actually was could get me the things I wanted, then no warnings, regardless how accurate would have stopped me from doing so. In this context, whose fault was it when a minor was exposed to something they shouldn’t have been? The minor who lied about their age, or the adult who thought they were interacting with someone of age? A single detail that can change an interaction from an offence to merely in very bad taste. The solution mentioned earlier may suddenly sound somewhat more reasonable, after all, why risk the chances of exposing minors to NSFW content when you can just ensure that such content never exists for them to come across at all? Aside from the fact that doing so would be a colossal infringement on free speech, there is no way to honestly and fairly construct a system of morality that would be applicable to all minors. Adult content has always existed and trying to pretend otherwise, or believing that by eliminating the right of one group to create content we are protecting a vulnerable group requires a great deal of self deception. Whether we want to or not, minors are going to come across adult content, online or otherwise. Rather than trying to shield them from the inevitable, making clear exactly what 18+ constitutes as a warning would be a far more effective defense. While this sort of content may be more accessible than ever, if a site has a warning declaring its brand of content and a person underage still chooses to go ahead then it cannot be the fault of the content creators if that person then becomes uncomfortable. Furthermore, if a person is too young to understand those warnings in the first place then it is still not the fault of the content creator but rather of the parent or guardian who failed to properly provide safe boundaries for their child. No one type of person should have the right to decide who is allowed to create content online. Fundamentally, the type of experience each of us have online is unique to the boundaries we create and the borders we refuse to cross. Thus, the maintenance of those boundaries should not fall on anyone’s shoulders but our own. While I confess that I could have lived without being sent bondage porn at fourteen, I would rather have had an uncomfortable experience then, than the need for my personal comfort taking precedence over that of everyone else online. It is the internet after all, and it is just as easy to fall into something we rather wouldn’t as it is to click away.

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