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News

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

3

Clinton accepts McGill degree Stephanie Law News Writer

F

ormer United States president Bill Clinton spoke to a crowd of around 800 people on Friday when he accepted an honorary doctorate from McGill for “a lifetime of outstanding leadership” from McGill. The ceremony was held at the Centre Mont-Royal, a privately owned building off campus, as part of the University’s inaugural Leadership Summit.

The event was a private, invitation-only ceremony. Attendees included McGill Senate members and active volunteers with the Campaign McGill fundraising initiative. Very few students were invited to the ceremony, but those who attended included student senators and Clinton-Dahdaleh scholars.

“We wanted to make it part of our Leadership Summit. We couldn’t invite all the students; the space of course would not be appropriate,” said Marc Weinstein, Vice-Principal (Development and Alumni Relations).

Weinstein also said that the University did not pay Clinton to accept the degree and that no donation was made to the Clinton Foundation. The invitation was made at no cost to the University by an alumnus, Victor Dahdaleh, who is a “very close ally” of Clinton.

The Senate approved Clinton’s candidacy for the honorary doctor-

ate on May 20 but invitations were not sent out until October 2.

Antonia Maioni, political science professor and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, said that honorary degrees are a reciprocal relationship.

“It’s a two-way relationship that will be developing between McGill and President Clinton’s foundation.

It says that the foundation is global in reach to get an honorary degree from one of the world’s top-rated universities. And it is certainly an honour for McGill to have someone who is perceived as a leader on so many fronts and places [accept the degree],” Maioni said.

Gil Troy, history professor at McGill who studies American politics, said that Clinton’s reputation has f luctuated with the current world financial situation.

“Whats interesting with the [George W.] Bush debacle and the rise of Obama [is that] in some ways Clinton’s administration has been both enhanced and diminished. It was enhanced because the recession was the Republicans’ fault and now there’s a resurge for the Democrats,” Troy said. “[But] if we look closely at the causes of the recession, [we] have to link the eighties with the nineties. It’s very hard to take Clinton out of the narrative of Reagan and [George H.W.] Bush.”

After being conferred with the honorary doctorate, Clinton gave

Sara Traore for The McGill Daily

800 attend private, off-campus event

During his acceptance speech, Clinton spoke about global inequality and poverty. a speech to the crowd. “I am profoundly honoured to be here at this magnificent university,” he said.

For much of his speech, Clinton focused on addressing inequalities around the world. “We know that half the world is living on less than $2 a day; a billion people go to bed hungry; a billion people have no access to clean water; [and] two and a half billion people [have] no access

to sanitation,” Clinton said. He reiterated throughout his speech that the world today is extremely interconnected and interdependent, and stressed the need for a world conscience.

“We have to have a world conscience, and in the absence of it, we will not make the right decisions….

This inequality problem cannot be solved by anybody alone; it will require a communitarian mental-

ity,” Clinton said.

Science senator Andrew Ling was one of few students who was invited to the ceremony. Ling thought that Clinton’s speech was inspirational.

“I thought he really showed how every single individual can have an impact on the world, regardless of his or her life and social circumstances. If we can get each person to take a small action, we can make progress,” he said.

McGill & SSMU to team up on sustainability fund Non-opt-outable fee to go to referendum in November Niko Block The McGill Daily

M

cGill has committed to supporting the Sustainable Projects Fund (SPF), an initiative that would support various environmentally friendly initiatives at the University.

At a meeting on October 8, former Sustainable McGill coordinator Jonathan Glencross and SSMU VP University Affairs Rebecca Dooley proposed the establishment of the SPF to Provost Anthony Masi, asking that McGill contribute to it by matching the amount of money the project raises through SSMU. The following day, Masi called Glencross and confirmed that the University was on board.

“The purpose is to create a culture of sustainability,” said Glencross. “In looking at environ-

mental projects, it’s not just about decreasing your [carbon] footprint.

If you’ve lowered your footprint but you haven’t really changed perception or behaviour, then you haven’t really changed much.”

The SPF would be administered by a committee composed of four faculty members and four student representatives: two from SSMU, one from the Post-Graduate Students’ Society, and one from the Macdonald Campus Students’ Society. The estimated $840,000 annual fund would provide funding for campus initiatives that promote environmental sustainability. “[The University] has never shared this much responsibility with students, and they’ve never committed up front to something with a matching component. This is all a new precedent,” Glencross said.

At Thursday’s SSMU Council

meeting, Glencross and Associate Vice-President (University Services) Jim Nicell both laid out the project and its objectives.

Councillors agreed to hold a referendum on the SPF’s proposed non-opt-outable $0.50-per credit fee in November.

“The fund is meant to be a point of collaboration between the Univeristy and students,” said Dooley. “There are about 27 environmentally-oriented groups on campus, and they have a lot of drive and ideas [for sustainable projects], but don’t have the capital.”

If approved by students in the referendum, the SPF is likely to work closely with the Office of Sustainability, a relationship Dooley said would improve the Office’s efficacy as a student resource.

A sustainability coordinator and three students in the work-study program will oversee the spon-

sored projects and occasionally write reports for the committee.

Before writing their proposal, Dooley and Glencross studied the sustainability funds administered by the University of Guelph and the Concordia Students’ Union, but decided that both models were not adequately consultative and that the SPF should be jointly administered with the University.

“Interest in sustainability should not just be supported by students,” said Dooley. “Without the University’s buy-in, there isn’t as much institutional memory. Having parity [on the committee] gives the fund more power in terms of changes that we can make.”

Glencross said that the SPF would also offer students an opportunity to apply their research to local projects, and that he hopes the program will facilitate closer relationships between students and

the administration.

“McGill is a research-driven institution, and part of this fund should be connecting the academic components of sustainability to what we’re doing locally on campus.

And I think that will be the catalyst for some serious transformative change,” Glencross said.

He added that given the amount of interest in sustainable initiatives, he believes that the funding will be put to good use. “People want action right now. People are desperate for people who are being successful at implementing this stuff, if it’s not coming from the government.”

Both Dooley and Glencross said they were relieved that the University had decided to endorse the program, given its recent decision to decrease its operating budget for the 2009-10 academic year by $5 million.

General Assembly

L’AssemblÊe GÊnÊrale

Students’ Society of McGill University October 21st, 2:30pm – Shatner Cafeteria

Associa�on Étudiante de l’UniversitÊ McGill le 21 octobre, 14h30 – à la cafÊtÊria du Shatner

Students must bring their McGill IDs.

MOTIONS OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY FALL 2009

Les ĂŠtudiants doivent apporter leur idenďż˝ďŹ caďż˝on McGill.

MOTIONS DE L’ASSEMBLÉE GÉNÉRALE L’AUTOMNE 2009

Mo�on Re: Seafood on campus

Mo�on Concernant : Fruits de mer sur le campus

Be it resolved that SSMU move towards the permanent eliminaďż˝on of the sale of all “Red Listâ€? ďŹ sh species within the Student Union Building; and, Be it further resolved that SSMU put their best eort into working with campus groups to pressure McGill administraďż˝on to replace all of the “Red Listâ€? ďŹ sh species from the menus of all cafeterias and food vendors on the McGill Campus, as well as in McGill Residences; and, Be it further resolved that SSMU meet with all future contractors in the Student Union Building to insist upon adherence to Canada’s Seafood Guide, in order to facilitate progress in sustainable seafood choices with future food vendor contracts.

Il est donc conclu que l’AÉUM se doit de se diriger vers l’Êliminaďż˝on permanente de la vente de toutes les espèces de poissons ďŹ gurant sur la ÂŤ Liste Rouge Âť dans le bâ�ment de l’Union Étudiante; et, Il est ĂŠgalement conclu que l’AÉUM devrait concentrer ses eorts sur une collaboraďż˝on avec les groupes du campus aďŹ n exercer pression sur l’administraďż˝on de McGill dans le but de remplacer toutes les espèces de la ÂŤ Liste Rouge Âť ďŹ gurant sur les menus des cafĂŠtĂŠrias et d’autres vendeurs alimentaires sur le campus de McGill, ainsi que ceux qui se trouvent dans les rĂŠsidences universitaires de McGill; et, Il est conclu en dernier lieu que l’AÉUM rencontrera tous les futurs entrepreneurs visant le bâ�ment de l’Union Étudiante pour insister sur l’adhĂŠrence au Guide canadien des fruits de mer, aďŹ n de faciliter le progrès vers des choix de fruits de mers ĂŠcologiquement durables dans les contrats des futurs vendeurs alimentaires.

Moďż˝on Re: Space EďŹƒciency in the Shatner Building Be it further resolved that the SSMU install a hinged desk on the back of every bathroom stall door in the Shatner Building for the purpose of studying while “taking care of businessâ€?; and, Be it further resolved that installaďż˝on be completed

by March 1st, 2010, so that the stalls may be used for studying for the Winter term ďŹ nals.

Mo�on Re: Porn!

Be it resolved that By-Law III-8, Part V, arďż˝cle 28 is amended to read: “28.1.The Students’ Society shall not parďż˝cipate in the producďż˝on, funding, markeďż˝ng or distribuďż˝on of oppressive pornographic material for non-academic purposes.

28.1.1. Ac�vi�es organized, endorsed, or funded by the Society, its clubs, or interest groups shall also abide by the above.�

Moďż˝on Re: Energy Usage in Shatner Building Be it resolved that the SSMU aim to lower its energy intensity to to 2.04 Gj per square meter, the average for Canadian university buildings, by September 1, 2015; and, Be it further resolved that, in order to achieve this goal, the SSMU seek out a professional audit of its energy usage and suggesďż˝ons for reducing it; and, Be it further resolved that, in order to achieve this goal, the SSMU undertake large scale projects with a signiďŹ cant impact on energy usage, including but not limited to building renovaďż˝ons and remodeling of the lighďż˝ng structures.

ďż˝

Be it resolved that SSMU Execu�ves be mandated by the student body of the SSMU to priori�ze student employment in all future sub-lease nego�a�ons and renego�a�ons for all tenants in the Shatner Building; and, Be it further resolved that SSMU execu�ves work to enshrine a commitment to student employment in all future sub-leases.

ďż˝

Be it resolved that the SSMU a�empt to renego�ate the current lease with the Royal Ins�tu�on for the Advancement of Learning; and, Be it further resolved that the SSMU obtain the longest possible term of lease.

ďż˝

Be it resolved that SSMU move towards the banning of Styrofoam in the Student Union building by the fall semester of 2010 and replace the disposable Styrofoam opďż˝on with a healthier alternaďż˝ve, such as corn starch plasďż˝cs; or be it even beďż˝er resolved that SSMU moves towards insďż˝tuďż˝onalizing the Plate Club and supporďż˝ng them to run for all meals, ďŹ ve days a week; and, Be it further resolved that SSMU lobby McGill administraďż˝on to follow suit and eliminate the use and distribuďż˝on of Styrofoam on the McGill campus; and, Be it yet further resolved that SSMU distribute informaďż˝on to all clubs and services, and to the student body on issues pertaining to Styrofoam and the Plate Club’s alternaďż˝ves to it. *Quorum for a regular or special general assembly is one hundred (100) members of the associaďż˝on from at least four dierent faculďż˝es or schools. No more than 50% from one faculty. Quesďż˝ons or comments regarding this agenda may be directed to pres@ssmu.mcgill.ca, 514-398-6801 www.ssmu.mcgill.ca/GA

Moďż˝on Concernant : EďŹƒcacitĂŠ de l’espace dans le bâ�ment Shatner Il est conclu que l’AÉUM devra installer une table Ă charnière sur le dos des portes de chaque toileďż˝e dans le bâ�ment Shatner dans le but de permeďż˝re aux ĂŠtudiant(e)s d’Êtudier tout en ÂŤ eectuant leurs besoins personnels Âť ; et, Il est ĂŠgalement conclu que l’installaďż˝on sera complĂŠtĂŠe au plus tard le 1er mars, 2010, aďŹ n que les toileďż˝es puissent ĂŞtre uďż˝lisĂŠes comme lieu d’Êtude pour les examens ďŹ naux de la session d’hiver.

Mo�on Concernant : Pornographie !

Il est conclu que le Règlement III-8, Parďż˝e V, arďż˝cle 28 devrait ĂŞtre modiďŹ ĂŠ pour lire comme suit: ÂŤ 28.1. L’Associaďż˝on Étudiante ne parďż˝cipera pas dans la producďż˝on, le ďŹ nancement, la promoďż˝on ou la distribuďż˝on de contenu pornographique oppressif Ă but non-acadĂŠmique. 28.1.1. Les acďż˝vitĂŠs organisĂŠes, endossĂŠes, ou ďŹ nancĂŠes par l’Associaďż˝on, ses clubs, ou ses groupes d’intĂŠrĂŞts seront ĂŠgalement tenues de respecter ce qui prĂŠcède. Âť

Moďż˝on Concernant : Usage de l’Ênergie dans le bâ�ment Shatner Il est conclu que l’AÉUM devrait viser une rĂŠducďż˝on de l’intensitĂŠ de la consommaďż˝on ĂŠnergĂŠďż˝que Ă 2.04 Gj par mètre carrĂŠ, soit la moyenne pour les bâ�ments universitaires canadiens, pour le 1er septembre 2015 ; et, Il est ĂŠgalement conclu que, aďŹ n d’aďż˝eindre cet objecďż˝f, l’AÉUM devrait entreprendre des projets de grande envergure avec un impact signiďŹ caďż˝f sur l’usage d’Ênergie, incluant mais ne se limitant pas aux rĂŠnovaďż˝ons et remodelage des structures lumineuses.

Mo�on Concernant : L’emploi d’Êtudiants dans le bâ�ment Shatner Il est conclu qu’il devrait être exigÊ des ExÊcu�fs de l’AÉUM, par le corps Êtudiant de l’AÉUM, qu’ils rendent prioritaire l’emploi des Êtudiants dans toutes les futures nÊgocia�ons de sous-loca�on et renÊgocia�ons avec les prÊsents locataires du bâ�ment Shatner; et, Il est Êgalement conclu que les ExÊcu�fs de l’AÉUM devraient travailler pour inspirer un engagement envers l’embauche des Êtudiants dans toutes les sous-loca�ons futures.

Mo�on Concernant : Le Bail pour le bâ�ment Shatner Il est conclu que l’AÉUM devrait renÊgocier son bail actuel avec l’Ins�tut royal pour l’avancement de l’appren�ssage ; et, Il est Êgalement conclu que l’AÉUM devrait obtenir le terme de loca�on le plus ÊlevÊ.

Mo�on Concernant : L’Usage du styromousse dans le bâ�ment Shatner Il est conclu que l’AÉUM œuvre à bannir le styromousse dans le pavillon de l’associa�on Êtudiante au plus tard à l’automne 2010 et remplace les op�ons en styromousse jetable par une alterna�ve meilleure pour la santÊ, comme les plas�ques en amidon de maïs ; ou, encore mieux, Il est conclu que l’AÉUM œuvre à ins�tu�onnaliser le Plate Club et l’appuie pour tous les repas, cinq jours par semaine ; et, Il est Êgalement conclu que l’AÉUM tente de convaincre l’administra�on de McGill de suivre son ini�a�ve d’Êliminer l’usage et la distribu�on du styromousse partout sur le campus de McGill ; et, Il est Êgalement conclu que l’AÉUM distribue de l’informa�on à tous les clubs et services et à tous ses membres au sujet des enjeux liÊs à l’u�lisa�on du styromousse, ainsi qu’au sujet des alterna�ves proposÊes par le Plate Club. * Le quorum pour une assemblÊe gÊnÊrale rÊgulière ou spÊciale est de cent (100) membres de l’Associa�on provenant d’au moins quatre (4) facultÊs ou Êcoles diÊrentes, sans que plus de 50% ne provienne d’une même facultÊ. Toute ques�on devrait être envoyÊe aux prÊsentateurs de l’AÉUM à pres@ssmu.mcgill.ca – 514-398-6801 www.ssmu.mcgill.ca/GA

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

Speakers criticize Canadian complicity in human rights violations Kallee Lins News Writer

S

tudents crowded into Peterson Hall last Friday to attend a discussion by environmental activist Yuri Melini, on the plight of communities in Guatemala affected by Canadian mining companies. The talk, “Human Rights and Natural Resources Extraction in Guatemala,” is one of many to be held across Quebec and Ontario in an effort to raise awareness of the effects of Canadian mining abroad.

Melini told the audience, in Spanish, that “every economic decision has a social impact, and this generates a social protest.”

“In Latin America, people are demanding the right to their natural environment [being respected],” Melini said. He also criticized what many in the region see as corporate disregard for the environment and indigenous rights – especially in states that do not have the institutional capacity to defend themselves.

“What happens when this neighbour [a corporation] inserts itself in a country with weak laws?”

Melini asked the audience. “It has the capacity to block information from the media, finance political campaigns, or most delicate of all, influence judges and prosecutors,” he said.

Melini pointed out the example of Vancouver-based Goldcorp Incorporated that operates a large

open-pit gold mine in Guatemala. “[Goldcorp] has the right to 280,000 litres of water a day, while the community has the right to only about 60,000.”

It is estimated that roughly 75 per cent of mining companies in the world are registered in Canada.

These corporations control over a thousand exploration projects and active mines, and dominate the mining industry in Latin America.

The McGill research group for the Investigation of Canadian Mining in Latin America (MICLA) distributed a pamphlet at the event that identified at least 100 cases of communities currently in conflict with Canadian mining firms.

According to speaker Catherine Duhamel, from the International Research Center, there is no recognized framework for the Canadian government to punish firms for violations committed outside of Canada. Duhamel did indicate that there are international pressures to do so from various UN agencies, such as the Committee on Social and Cultural Rights and the Committee against Racial Discrimination – which recommended that Canada “take steps to prevent abuses abroad by a corporation within their jurisdiction and hold them accountable.”

Panelist Catherine Coumans, from Mining Watch Canada, explained that communities have made progress through civil society pressure, saying that the Canadian

government is beginning to respond to their concerns.

Coumans pointed to Bill C-300, a Private Member’s Bill brought forward by Liberal MP John McKay, would require Canadian mining, oil, and gas companies to act in accordance with international human rights and environmental standards when operating abroad.

Bill C-300 was passed at a second reading in the House of Commons last April, succeeding by a close margin of only four votes. The bill is now under review by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development and must pass a third and final reading before it is implemented.

Coumans encouraged the audience to put pressure on their respective MPs to get the legislation passed, though she acknowledged that the bill is only one step in the process.

“It would really make a big difference if this bill would pass,” said Coumons. “[It is] the most amazing piece of proposed legislation we could’ve possibly imagined,” Coumans said.

Melini is known for his work in the area of human rights, environmental protection, and community development. While serving as director of the Centre for Legal, Environmental, and Social Action of Guatemala (CALAS), he received widespread exposure after winning a court case in the Constitutional Court of Guatemala in 2008 – which ruled that seven articles of the

country’s mining laws were unconstitutional.

Melini suffered an attack on his life in September of that year, aftermasked men shot him sevearl times. This attempt is widely speculated to be a result of his activism on behalf of CALAS, as close to 50 other environmental activists were subject to threats or aggression in the preceding days, according to the Guatemalan press.

“I suffered a criminal attempt on my life,” Melini said. “I spent 62 days in intensive care, for my work in human rights.”

Despite the attempt on his life, Melini seemed unfazed. “I just want to share with the young people: Idealism is worth it.... We can construct a more just society, a society with more dignity.”

“It is not the theory and academia that matters, it is the practice. This is what makes sense [when working] for human rights,” Melini said.

“I am not against mining,” said Melini, “[but] every country has a right to define its development model.”

Melini is currently working with the Guatemalan Congress on a new mining law, which stipulates three non-negotiable principles: broad environmental controls, the rights of indigenous communities to consent to projects, and higher taxes and royalties from extractive companies.

“If a company wants to come to our country and comply with these laws, they’re welcome,” Melini said.

Quebec to extract shale gas Energy-intensive process may produce greenhouse gases and pollution Shirine Aouad News Writer

A

ssocation québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique (AQLPA) has called for the implementation of new and comprehensive legislation to regulate a new speculation of a shale gas formation in the Saint Lawrence Valley in Quebec.

Natural gas produced from shale, a fine-grained sedimentary rock, is known for the difficulty of its extraction. However, recent technological breakthroughs, including innovations in drilling and sediment fracture, and the energy potential of shale gas increased interest in production during 2008.

Though the Quebec government recently issued prospection permits to companies such as Questerre and Talisman Energy, the permits for prospection and extraction of this gas are not regulated by the Règlement sur

l’évaluation et l’examen des impacts sur l’environnement. AQLPA president André Bélisle feared this may fail to protect the water supply of smaller municipalities and agricultural enterprises.

The prospected area in the Saint Lawrence Valley is highly populated, yet as Bélisle pointed out, “there is no law restricting extraction sites,” and the situation could come into conflict with individual property rights.

Bélisle explained that the geological formations of shale can extend to a width of a few kilometres, and that shale is generally fractured with recourse to dynamite or by vapour pressure to release the gas. The undertaking consumes a lot of energy, and pollutes the water used for extraction. In the U.S., extraction also includes the injection of chemical solvents into the ground, which risks contaminating both groundwater and the soil.

“It is important to understand that we have not been given a

characterization report. We do not know the conditions of extraction in Quebec, though we know those of New York. Everything hinges on ground formation and gas composition itself,” Bélisle said, explaining that it is still uncertain how intensive the extraction process will be in the Saint Lawrence Valley.

AQLPA is also concerned with methane emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and hydrogen sulphur, a toxic gas considered potentially fatal to both humans and animals.

However, the Ministry of Natural Resources’ Coordinator of Gas and Gasoline Exploration Activities Jean Yves Laliberté denied that there are any traces of hydrogen sulphur in the Saint Lawrence formation.

“This [shale gas] is the same gas as those contained in other sources of natural gas. In the Saint Lawrence Valley, the gas is very pure. It can almost be used without treatment. And the more we aim to

substitute energy sources such as coal or gasoline, the more we will reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Laliberté said.

He also noted that the implementation of a new hydrocarbon law was announced last March

by Claude Béchard, the former Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife. Mining extraction regulations will have to follow.

With Quebec’s surplus production of hydroelectric energy, Bélisle was still concerned the extraction of shale might not be necessary for the province.

“We need to be able to justify the need for this exploitation,” Bélisle said. “Quebec’s interests in this endeavour are few – these are corporative interests. “ Laliberté, though, disagreed. In spite of its surplus, Quebec imports up to 200-billion cubic feet of natural gas from western Canada.

“Putting to use a local resource will be beneficial to us,” Laliberté said.

WHAT’S THE HAPS

Mining Latin America

5

Register for TEDxMcGill October 19, 12 p.m.

Register on Ocotber 19 for TEDxMcGill, an independent event happening November 5 from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. that brings together students, alumni, and faculty to share their ideas worth spreading. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design – three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. At our TEDx McGill event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. $10. Register at tedxmcgill.com Ivan E. Coyote at McGill Tuesday, October 20, 8 p.m.

Leacock 219 Author and storyteller Ivan E. Coyote presents “Chest Air” at McGill University on Tuesday, October 20, 2009, as part of the Quebec Storytellers Festival. Ivan’s work tackles the difficult subjects of family, class, gender identity, and social justice, always with the silver tongue of a master storyteller. Co-presented by the Union for Gender Empowerment, Queer McGill, the McGill Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, the Quebec Storytellers Festival, and the Social Equity and Diversity in Education Office. Free admission.

Green Business Week Monday, October 19 – Friday, October 23 1001 Sherbrooke O. Come to S.T.O.P.’s second annual Green Business Week at the Bronfman Library – a week full of events, lectures, and activities aimed at sensitizing students and faculty to the environmental impacts of “doing business as usual.”

Highlights of the week included: Greenwashing lecture by Scott McDougall, president of Terra Choice Environmental Marketing, Cheryl Gladu, Co-Founder of ECOCITE, explaining the risks and rewards in eco-development; a screening of “Who Killed the Electric Car,” and more.

Indian New Year October 24, 7 p.m.

Restaurant Bombay Palace, 1172 Bishop , Metro Guy- Concordia The Indian Student Association of McGill invites you all to celebrate Diwali, the Indian New Year festival. Festivities will include a wide array of mouth-watering Indian dishes, traditional Indian dance performances, and a Bollywood dance party amongst others. Ticket prices are $15 for paid members and $18 for nonmembers.

6 News

Miranda Whist / The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

Council debates tuition Discussion includes self-funded MBA model, sustainability fund Kallee Lins News Writer

S LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM

Leadership Skills Development Workshops If you are a student involved in campus activities as an executive, organizer or event planner, you qualify for the Leadership Training Program’s FREE Skills Development Workshops.

Develop and build your leadership skills. Attend a minimum of five workshops throughout 09/10 academic year and receive a certificate of completion.

This October and November check out...

Event Planning and Promotions-Make it Happen Wednesday, October 28, 5:30-7:30pm Red tape got you down? Learn the ins and outs of event planning at McGill. If you’re in a club or service planning on holding a fundraiser - make sure you’re there!

Balancing Act of School, Work & Social Life Tuesday, November 3, 5:30-7:30pm Having a tough time juggling all of your different school, work and social commitments? Take steps towards a more balanced life by attending this practical workshop focusing on time management tips and strategies.

Registration now available via Minerva!

SMU Council convened on Thursday evening for their third meeting of the academic year, and was the first session to implement a new style of debate.

Under this parliamentary model, Council members argue clearly “for” or “against” the motion up for debate.

Debate Drama The longest debate arose out of a motion suggesting SSMU take a formal stance against the self-funding model of the MBA program.

Supporters of the motion held that SSMU should uphold its commitment to fighting for accessibility in education. “This could be a testing balloon of a trend that could spread to other professional programs,” VP University Affairs Rebecca Dooley said, voicing a common concern.

Councillors against the motion attempted to quell concerns over accessibility by assuring Council that students in the MBA program are unique, in that they have completed an average of eight years in the corporate world and are capable of paying higher tuition. SSMU VP Internal Alexandra Brown noted that funds from the switch would make more funding available to the undergraduate program. After a lengthy debate the motion failed.

Support for Green Initiative The first section of the meeting held the attention of a large section of the audience anxious to support the proposed Sustainable Projects Fund. Jonathan Glencross,

U3 Environment and Jim Nicell, Associate Vice-Principal (University Services), presented detailed plans for the fund in hopes of gaining the support of SSMU Council – in spite of the new $0.50 per credit, non-opt-outable fee that would be applied to every student for the next three years.

This proposed annual contribution from students would then be matched dollar-for-dollar by the university administration, to be implemented toward specifically large-scale developments to create long-term environmental, social, and cultural impact. The combined fund could reach $840,000 annually.

Nicell said that McGill is the largest real estate holder in Montreal (covering 780,000 square feet), so it is time for McGill to take this dramatic initiative and start implementing projects faster. “If we want to change the world, we have to start with our community and export it to the rest of the world,” he said.

Council and audience showed their full support for this project at every point of the presentation.

Maggie Knight, a SSMU Environment Commissioner, commented on the benefits of this program to the existing SSMU Green Fund.

“There’s been a lot of excitement from the people I’ve been talking to. The Green Fund is a great start, but when we have to take funds away from it for larger projects, it makes it harder for regular students who just want to make their events a little greener,” Knight said.

Push for GA Participation Council discussed the upcoming General Assembly (GA) meeting at multiple points during the night.

Councillor Yaakov Stern highlighted the importance of persuading at least 100 students to attend the meeting in order to meet quorum, as one GA failed to meet quorum last year.

“The GA is an institution that took a long fight and a lot of mobilization on behalf of students to exist in the first place,” VP External Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan said.

Stern highlighted the more targeted promotional approach that has been implemented this year. As part of this plan, students can expect to see SSMU councillors performing skits around campus to bring attention to particular motions.

Testing the Waters Looking towards next week’s GA, Council passed two non-binding plebiscites to be posed to the student body in efforts to gauge popular opinion. The first, presented by Dooley, asked, “Would you prefer that course materials be moved completely online?” With the large cost and environmental impact of printing course material, the University projects an online version will be cheaper and more readily accessible.

The second plebiscite questioned a move to shorten the add/ drop period in order to allow for an earlier release of the exam schedule. Exactly how much time could be taken off of exam schedule planning is not yet confirmed, Dooley noted, as the idea was in the very early stages of consultation with the University.

To access the site, go to our website at: http://www.mcgill.ca/firstyear/leadertraining/ For more info, drop by the First-Year Office in the Brown Building, Suite 2100, or call 514-398-6913

Not self obsessed? (like Culture)

Write about current events, Daily style. news@mcgilldaily.com

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

7

“Don’t get arrested” The perils of police interaction when you’re trans

Binary is for computers

I

was at Choose Life’s event two weeks ago. But I don’t want to write about “Echoes of the Holocaust” or Choose Life or abortion. Instead, I want to write about a text message my girlfriend sent me during the protest.

It read, “Don’t get arrested.”

Now, I wasn’t doing anything that would call for my arrest – I wasn’t even protesting. And the text message, knowing my girlfriend, was probably a joke. However, I hadn’t fully considered the implications of what would happen if I got arrested at this point in my life.

First, I’m not a Canadian citizen; I’m not even a permanent resident.

I’m an American citizen on a study permit. This puts me in a rather precarious position, since the Canadian government can deport me if I violate the terms of my study permit.

That would mean leaving McGill, having to explain my situation to another university, and finding it difficult, if not impossible, to enter – let alone live in or immigrate to – Canada for the foreseeable future.

Second, I’m a trans person. This is, astoundingly, even more significant than my nationality.

As a trans person who has not

changed any legal documents, any interaction I have with the state involves denial of my identity. The state doesn’t recognize the name I’ve chosen for myself and use in daily life; it doesn’t recognize any sex or gender for me other than the one I was assigned at birth.

If I attempt to identify myself with my chosen name or gender, not only will the state refuse to recognize me, but it may accuse me of fraud – of lying about who I am. The irony of this is painful. I’m being far more honest when I tell people to call me Quinn and not to treat me as though I were male. It’s when I attempt to pass myself off as a male or use my legal name that I engage in fraud.

The state, however, only cares about what the paperwork says, not what I say.

Interactions with the police in particular can lead to problems for trans people. If I don’t represent myself the way they want me to, I face hostility. And because the state doesn’t recognize my gender, if it placed me in a segregated prison, I would be in a men’s prison, against not only my own self-identity but also my own safety.

Justin K. Wong / The McGill Daily

Quinn Albaugh

Trans people, because of their precarious legal situation, often have trouble with the fuzz.

This is particularly true because I’m a trans person in a physical transition. This means that my body, regardless of how I present myself using social behaviours, is somewhere “in between” sex expectations. Society already devalues the bodies of trans people by practically condoning systemic physical violence against us – I don’t even want to contemplate what that means in jail.

When I realized all of this at

“Echoes of the Holocaust,” I immediately became quite edgy, since I knew the police would come.

I already don’t trust the police. I know the role that law enforcement has played in the institutionalized oppression of a variety of communities, based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, or a variety of other factors. I know how much power the police force has, which they could use to detain, assault, or even kill me. I know how

dangerous having the police turn against me could be.

However, this was the first time I felt all this actually sink in. And, to be quite honest, I’m still terrified when I think about this.

Quinn Albaugh will be writing about trans people, legal documents, prisons, and police in the coming weeks – stay tuned! Write them at binaryforcomputers@ mcgilldaily.com.

Obama wins peace prize: get over it It’s not his fault, OK?

Little bitter Riva Gold

W

hen I was five, my friend got a holographic Pog in his loot bag at a birthday party. Bitter and resentful, I glared at him for a week, refusing to share my snacks with him at recess or look for him during our daily games of hideand-seek. He didn’t deserve that Pog, and I was convinced that if he had an ounce of integrity in his four-foot-tall body, he would have given it back.

But I’m not five anymore, and I realize now how absurd it was to blame him for his unsolicited good fortune.

So now that Barack Obama has found the Nobel Peace Prize in his loot bag,

it’s time for us to stop blaming the man and get over it.

Does bestowing the award upon Obama somehow delegitimize the Nobel Peace Prize? In short: no. I’m inclined to believe the title already lacks a whole lot of legitimacy. After being awarded to the likes of Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, I tend not to take it too seriously. If we were to believe that despite being awarded to Al Gore for his care of trees, the prize is still important, we would also have to believe that no single recipient could delegitimize it, Obama included.

Has Obama achieved world peace? No. But neither have most winners, and we need to reassess whether we actually want to treat the Peace Prize as a piece of post facto self-congratulatory pomp. A prize awarded to someone who has already finished their work vis-à-vis international solidarity does little good to foster actual prospects of peace. The prize is far more valuable as an expressive statement of the hopes and desires of the world, intended to guide those in power as they face tough decisions.

Fact: Obama is president while Iraq and Afghanistan are in a state of total disarray. But we can hardly expect him to undo eight years of damage overnight or resolve bitter and bloody battles that reach far beyond his short term in office.

If we look instead to the closing of Guantánamo Bay, his speech in Cairo, his dialogue with Iran, and Netanyahu saying the words

“Palestinian state,” we can see that Obama has not just promised peace but is taking meaningful steps toward achieving it. It may be only nine months into his presidency,

would be. Who would want to go down in history as the president who’s against peace? It’s not reasonable to expect anyone to decline this award. What we can expect is

If you still think the Nobel committee was wrong, don’t criticize the recipient but he’s endured a lot of labour pains to birth a new era of diplomacy, and this award may be the breast milk it needs to develop.

And if you still think the Nobel committee was wrong, don’t criticize the recipient; blame the committee. Sure, Obama could have declined the prize, citing his own unworthiness in some touching and well-delivered speech. But imagine the international PR disaster that

for them to take its mandate seriously, and continue to work toward peaceful humanitarian ends. I have every reason to expect Obama to do this, and I’m not going to criticize his character in my Facebook status.

Riva Gold is one of The Daily’s weekly columnists. Send her an aggregate of your Facebook statuses at littlebitter@mcgilldaily.com.

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

L’art du pick-up français

The French connection Joël Thibeault Every other week, Joël Thibeault writes a column for French learners, as a way of encouraging them to practice their French. ous êtes dans un bar qui se trouve dans l’est de la ville en compagnie de quelques bons amis. Vous vous retournez afin d’aller commander un autre verre lorsque vous apercevez un garçon qui vous plaît particulièrement. Vous revenez à votre table et vous en discutez avec vos amis qui vous convainquent finalement d’aller lui parler.

-Hey! How’s it going?

-Good, good. Mais je ne parle pas vraiment anglais.

Je le répète: vous êtes dans l’est de la ville, ce qui veut dire que vous ne vous en sortirez probablement pas sans les quelques notions de français que vous avez apprises à l’université. Alors, que faire dans une telle situation? Certes, vous pouvez simplement rebrousser chemin.

Toutefois, les personnes que vous considérez vos amis et qui sont assises à votre table se moqueront très certainement de vous. Laissez-

V

moi donc vous suggérer quelques phrases, des pickup lines, qui pourraient s’avérer utiles dans ce genre de situation. J’essayerai aussi de ne pas utiliser les différents clichés bidon qui ne démontrent que le manque d’originalité et d’intelligence de celui ou celle qui les emploie.

«Est-ce que cette chaise est prise?» Il s’agit d’une phrase élégante, charmante et polie.

Cependant, vous devez vous assurer que la personne à qui vous poser la question soit bel et bien seule. En outre, vous devrez trouver un sujet de conversation rapidement parce que la réponse sera soit «oui», soit «non».

«Venez-vous ici régulièrement? J’aurais besoin de votre avis pour....» Oui, c’est un cliché. Vous pouvez toutefois le faire marcher en votre faveur. Si vous hésiter entre deux verres ou si vous avez faim et désirez commander quelque chose à manger, pourquoi ne pas demander l’aide de la personne qui vous intéresse? Vous pourrez ensuite commencer une

Lukas Thienhaus / The McGill Daily

To learn how to get a date in French, read this article! conversation sur les suggestions qu’il ou elle vous aura faites.

«Vous ne trouvez pas que cet endroit est…?» Tout ce qu’il vous reste à faire est de compléter la phrase avec un mot tel que «classe», «génial» ou «cool» et le tour est joué.

La conservation sera donc entamée.

Si vous êtes chanceux, la personne sera d’accord avec vous, et vous pourrez éventuellement parler de la décoration, de l’emplacement et des spécialités offertes. Évitez cependant de vous plaindre. L’image du pleurnicheur n’est définitivement pas celle que vous voulez projeter.

«Excusez-moi, j’ai remarqué que vous aviez un très joli…»

Let’s face it; everybody loves compliments. Par contre, pour cette phrase-ci, je vous conseille de porter une attention particulière à la personne que vous êtes sur le point de complimenter. Par exemple, n’allez pas dire à une fille qu’elle a de beaux yeux s’il est évident qu’elle a passé plus de trois heures devant le miroir à se coiffer. Ici, il faut savoir utiliser son sens de l’observation afin de trouver le compliment qui aura le plus grand impact positif.

Il est vrai que ces phrases sont vieilles comme le monde. Toutefois, n’oubliez pas que le français est une langue très romantique; si vous les dites de la bonne manière, vous

pourriez être surpris des résultats.

Vous aurez aussi l’avantage d’avoir un accent. Je vous le garantis: un Québécois ou une Québécoise à Montréal aura beaucoup de difficulté à refuser les avances faites en français d’une personne dont la langue maternelle n’est pas la langue de Molière.

To listen to Joël read this article, surf to mcgilldaily.com/blogs. You can also write to him at thefrenchconnection@mcgilldaily.com.

Like reading in French? Why not read Le Délit? Find it on stands tomorrow.

HYDE PARK

TAs shall not pay for this crisis Ted Sprague

I

n the past year, McGill released a number of statements about how the financial crisis would affect the University. They were preparing us for what is to come: cuts in education. This spring, McGill asked all workers on campus to take a pay cut amounting to $6.2 million in order to help the University weather the financial crisis. Teaching assistants were asked to take a pay cut of approximately $128 per semester for the next two years.

A fierce debate has ensued amongst the TAs. Should we or should we not take the pay cut? In its 2009-2010 budget, McGill made a veiled threat that if we didn’t take the cut, they will have to make cuts elsewhere. These reductions could come in the form of reducing TA hours, firing other members of staff, or increasing tuition fees. It is indeed political blackmail: take the cut or suffer the consequences!

Let’s be clear here: the financial crisis was not caused by the workers of McGill, or by any workers in general. We all know that Wall Street and the banks are the ones to blame.

After making billions of dollars in fictitious capital and mortgages,

they plunged the whole economy into an unprecedented crisis, causing trillions of dollars of tax payers’ money to be spent on bailing them out and millions of jobs to be lost. I don’t remember us TAs making any

students and other workers to pressure the government for massive reinvestment in education.

You might ask: where will the money come from? Last year, the Canadian government handed out

The TAs must pressure the government for massive reinvestment in education money during the boom, and I don’t think the average worker remembers making any, either. Thus, we are not responsible for the crisis, and we will not pay for it.

However, it’s not enough for TAs to refuse the pay cut. We cannot be satisfied protecting our narrow interests. There is a bigger problem on campus, and we have to show our solidarity – the chronic underfunding of our education system has caused increases in tuition fees for students and has worsened conditions for workers on campus. If these problems are not dealt with together, the students will be pitted against the workers and vice versa.

To show solidarity – real solidarity – the TAs must not only refuse the pay cut but also work together with

$75 billion to bail the banks and credit market out. In the same year, it gave $50 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations. No wonder this year Canada has the largest deficit in its history – $56 billion.

We do indeed have the money, but it’s being used for things other than bailing out the workers. Trickledown effect, they say, but we all know what trickles down the pants of the CEOs and the owners of big banks and corporations.

The TAs will not pay for this crisis, and neither should the rest of McGill’s workers and students.

Ted Sprague is a Master’s III Chemistry student’s pseudonym.

Write him at ted_sprague@yahoo. com.

October 16 Shatner B-24

Dear Reader, I had a funny dream last night.

You were in it.

It was a melding of souls: you & I became one for three minutes and twenty-five seconds.

It wasn’t a dream.

I can’t live with this elephant in the room.

Get in touch. Now.

letters@mcgilldaily.com

Letters

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

9

Re: “Paging Doctor Cornett” | Commentary | October 8

Bubba did not lay off the quality dispenser and accompanied this exposure with real face-to-face people Giancarlo Maiolo BSc Biology 2007

Yet more about Dr. Cornett

What’s wrong with learning?

Friends with benefits

Re: “Paging Doctor Cornett” | Commentary | October 8

Re: “Something’s fishy about IDS internships” | Commentary | October 8

Re: “Something’s fishy about IDS internships” | Commentary | October 8

Emily Rose Antlick paints a very true portrait of life in Cornett’s class. As a former student of his, I also shared in the pseudonym-creating, the dialogic session-debating, and the uninhibited expressing of our thoughts. Many outsiders might consider Cornett’s methods a form of pedagogical madness, but I can assure you that the professor has a method in his madness. Rather than being a number or a statistic on a bell curve, we were made agents of learning who were able to engage with each other and with scenarios of life with real personal experiences. Cornett, or Bubba, as we called him, brought to our attention fascinating and often difficult topics such as the Holocaust, aboriginal rights, and palliative care.

In doing so, Bubba did not lay off the quality dispenser and accompanied this exposure with real face-toface people. This included powerful pow-wows with former prime minister Paul Martin, famous director Alanis Obomsawin, elite medical doctors, U.N. lawyers and officials, supreme court judges, community leaders, and the list goes on and on.

This man has magnetism and manages to bring the highest quality learning experience to his students.

I often look back at the Bubba days as some of the most engaging and stimulating I ever passed.

I think this article is addressing the wrong issue. This summer I went on internship to Bolivia. It was not an IDS internship – it was through Québec sans frontières. I lived and worked in the Bolivian Amazon basin for six weeks where I helped write projects for protected areas and indigenous reserves. I then lived in the city of La Paz where I did similar work for another protected area for four weeks. I went through a hard decision process – the exact argument this article makes was going through my head – “Do I actually think this will help them?” At the time, I had grave problems with the philosophy of the IDS program as well, specifically with the idea of learning about the problems of the developing world from a cozy McGill classroom. However, what is the purpose of an internship? To learn. And, I learned. I think we have to stop saying that we are going to Bolivia, India, Ghana, and a wide variety of other “non-industrialized countries” to help them, and realize that these internships help us. This is not necessarily a bad thing: we are able to learn about another culture, another way of life, and learn in a way that is dynamic and not from a lecture or a textbook. This is a great opportunity to learn and share with other human beings, and more often than not, they help us far more than we could ever hope to help them.

While I appreciate the warning against the potential reinforcement of colonialist ideas offered in Lisa Miatello’s article, two words came out of my mouth to no one in particular as I finished reading this article: “Excuse me?”

Okay, sure, everything’s not perfect over here “in our own backyard,” as one might say. But in my view, those in need in Canada can access various resources that are simply unavailable to those in need in the “Third World.”

Believe it or not, there are some

Giancarlo Maiolo BSc Biology 2007

Devon Willis U2 Political Science

I got your culture shock right here Re: “Something’s fishy about IDS internships” | Commentary | October 8 As an IDS student, my peers and I promised to forgo hopes of large salaries and guilt-free resort vacations in the tropics to work to explore global inequality.

We spend three to four years at the undergraduate level, taking classes on every developing area in the world imaginable, as well as the cultural, economic, and social factors of development. If we’re lucky enough to afford to spend a summer unpaid, we can apply for IDS internships and see these areas first-hand, perhaps even help those who have been disadvantaged by the global market. Also, IDS internships may be short, but they can influence many

people who exist that don’t think incessantly about their CVs, but for argument’s sake, let’s consider those who do. Does the benefit of a valuable experience undermine one’s noble intentions and one’s contribution? Of course not. Dear people of privilege, don’t ever help anyone if the experience also benefits you – that’s only for “righteous pioneers” with “colonial mentalities.” (Seriously?)

A better emphasis should also be made on extended help. Internships are displayed too often only as “a few months abroad” where the end of the internship marks the end of your contribution. Lifelong relationships and commitments

can be forged to ensure enduring growth for a community.

It is also true that internships can be framed in a way that suggests we are to further our careers with them. Without specifics, we can’t quite evaluate the effectiveness of the “great white traveller” in benefiting foreign communities. But, I say, if you can help yourself by helping others, then it’s a win-win situation.

I felt good after giving my friend a hug and making him smile today. I benefited; does that mean I shouldn’t do it again?

students to return to the developing world to volunteer for years in the framework of programs like the Peace Corps and Engineers Without Borders. Lisa Miatello, perhaps if you actually went on an IDS internship or interviewed internship alumni for your column, you could have learned this.

In addition, culture shock is not some sort of isolated feeling that only over-privileged Western students searching for a “warm and fuzzy” feeling get when they travel to the developing world.

The term was first coined in 1958, and has been used to describe the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees who have been

resettled in industrial nations, as well as those who come from relative luxury who choose to travel to the “Third World.” Maybe this terrible culture shock you describe wouldn’t be as awful if there wasn’t such a wide gap between the G20 and the rest of the world.

But oh wait, it’s wrong for us, as “white Westerners” (in perhaps the most racially-diverse major at McGill) to go to these countries and see these problems first-hand, so we can get experience for careers in which we actually have the power to bridge this gap!

Aquil Virani U1 Humanistic Studies

Jamie Berk U1 IDS

The Daily received more letters than it could print this issue. The rest will appear in the next issue. Send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print letters that are racist, transphobic, or otherwise hateful.

HYDE PARK

Sex before marriage: what’s the deal?

Mays Chami

I

s premarital sex deviant?

While I was taken aback when this was recently proposed as a discussion question in my sociology class, I quickly realized that the answer is more complicated and subjective than one might think. I suggest that you consider the proposed question for a minute to form your own opinion before reading mine.

Deviant behaviour is often regarded as behaviour that takes place on the margins of society, and defies expectations in some way.

Following from this, premarital

sex is not deviant, as it is a widely practiced behaviour dating back as far as history can take us. It doesn’t exist on the margins, nor is it wholly beyond expectation either. Just as prostitution is said to be the oldest profession – and probably the most persistent – premarital sex is an act that will always happen. This being the case, it is hard to see it as being deviant.

Now let us analyze how religious or societal prejudice is sufficient to make an act deviant. To understand this, we need to acknowledge that premarital sex is deviant only in light of the institution and implementation of marriage into the legal and religious systems. When a ban is

placed on something, it naturally becomes less freely discussed. From there, it progresses into being a taboo, and voilà, you’ve witnessed the birth of a “deviant behaviour.”

Before dismissing this, as we are wont to do, as insufficient grounds to deem something deviant, let us consider why the rule was brought about in the first place. Since every societal rule, be it in the form of legislation or religious commandment, originated to serve a specific purpose, it follows that this rule too was necessary for the smooth functioning of society. It arose from the chaos and instability that at some point upset a certain balance that society needed to maintain.

Now, just as with all rules, such rules were not expected to be adhered to, but rather to serve as a guideline – as a mere suggestion to consider before delving into one’s carnal desires. Thus, members of societies from thereon out acted with this in mind. In today’s Western society, it is no longer the case that people only engage in premarital sex clandestinely for fear of being gossiped about. However, I believe that a society that lives, like ours does, with even the slightest vestiges of such a dated rule works better in the long run than it would have had this rule never existed.

In this way, premarital sex is not deviant in the sense that it is

unnatural or perverse; it is deviant in the sense that society would have run less smoothly had it not been, at some point in the past, regulated and deemed wrong. Although the advent of contraception provided one less reason why premarital sex was controlled – unwanted pregnancies – the guideline exists in the back of our minds as an ode to our ancestors, and still influences the way we elevate certain sexual relationships above others.

Mays Chami is a U2 Chemical Engineering student. Tell her about deviance at mayschami@gmail. com.

10 Features

Insurgency in the oil sands

The Ryerson Free Press’s Kaitlin Fowlie analyzes the impact of Greenpeace’s recent protests

T

he Athabasca oil sands are immense sights to behold. Hubs of activity, forklifts, drills, and dump trucks move around dirt and sand in an attempt to reach the rich oil beneath it.

If production of the Athabasca oil sands increases as planned, annual carbon emissions are expected to swell from 27- to 126-million tons by 2015, according to Greenpeace. The persistent growth of this energy development is pushing us closer and closer to ecological ruin. Unfortunately, fossil fuels remain the most popular and affordable source of energy we have, and as our current energy situation makes evident, they will likely continue to satisfy the majority of the world’s needs in decades to come.

Northern Alberta’s oil sands are evidence that our days of cheap and easy oil are over. Whom do we have to blame for the enormously demanding oil sands that continue to devour water and to pollute our air and soil?

Two dozen Greenpeace activists thought they had the answer. On September 15, the eve of Harper-Obama meeting and less than three months before the next major global summit on climate change in Copenhagen, 25 activists inserted themselves into Albian Sands Muskeg River Mine to protest the heavy-footed oil sands.

The activists barricaded some of the project’s giant machinery – which led to the grounds temporarily shutting down – for 31 hours until they finally released their chains and left peacefully.

T

he oil sands are widely known to have colossal environmental consequences, and Greenpeace’s concern lies in an apprehension of the future. The undertakings of the oil sands are enough to horrify any conscious earth dweller; their harm spreads from earth to air to water. The boreal forests of northern Alberta are being destroyed in order to reach the oil beneath; the Athabasca River is being increasingly exhausted; wildlife is suffering. Worst of all, the damage caused by project will have a lasting legacy on the earth.

The complicated and demanding process of extracting oil sands – a mixture of clay, minerals, water, and bitumen – requires more energy than processing con-

ventional oil. It also produces at least three times more greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of oil produced – not including the emissions released through the destruction of the boreal forest under the development.

The oil sands project currently uses 370-million cubic metres of fresh water each year from the Athabasca River. Most of the water used for the project is diverted into lakes called tailing ponds.

The tailing ponds cover more than 130 square kilometres along the Athabasca River – so large they can be seen from space. The waste in these ponds is severely toxic to aquatic life, birds, and humans that come in contact with it. In a way similar to the flow of the pesticide DDT, the contaminated water permeates its surrounding soil, affecting life cycles of wildlife and plants. Greenpeace estimates that the tailing ponds are leaking more than 11-million litres back into the Athabasca River daily.

T

hroughout the 31 hours of protest on September 15, updates direct from the mine were recorded onto the Greenpeace activist blog. Climate campaigner Mike Hudema wrote a few hours before entering the grounds: “Today we are going in to say ‘stop.’ We are going to stand in the way of the world’s largest dump trucks – over three stories tall and say ‘no further.’ I am going because the tar sands represent the toxic future in store for all of us if our politicians continue to choose the health of big oil profits, over the health of our planet and the people on it. I am tired of sitting on the sidelines while our world is pushed to the brink of climate chaos. Tired of political stalling while millions are displaced or will die due to global warming. Today, I will make a stand, like thousands before me and hopefully millions after, to push for a better, greener world. Wish me luck!”

Greenpeace’s blockade made headlines internationally. The security of the oil sands was called into question, prompting international security experts to note that they’re a prime terrorist target.

The protest was certainly heard, but did the protest actually do anything to discourage the multibillion-dollar energy development from operating? To put an

end to political stall

I

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Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

Voices of opposition through the years

87

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The UN begins an investigation that ultimately declares recent developments violate the Lubicon Lake Cree’s civil and political rights.

When heavy oil was found on their traditional territory, the Alberta government sold resource rights to multinational corporations.

Eco-activist and religious leader Weibo Ludwig from Peace River, Alberta is jailed for sabotaging oil wells. Ludwig and his community, who lived on self-sufficient organic farms, opposed the environmental and health impacts of the tar sands.

Members of Ludwig’s family were charged for similar acts.

U.S.-based lobby group Natural Resource Defense Council sends letters urging airlines to stop relying on the oil sands for fuel.

Jan

s in Alberta

08

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ling? To work toward a greener future at all?

work of the oil sands employees is comparable to giving somen arm a band-aid. The fact that a serious environmental issue velation, and making a statement by breaking onto the grounds to the activists and could have had serious, unnecessary cone need is to work toward a rational solution to the fossil fuel n an attempt to shock the world in an act of protest. which owns 60 per cent of the mine, has been criticized in ding claims that their enterprise is ‘sustainable,’ the company o qualms with drawing attention to the environmental issues sands – as they see the attention as an opportunity to explain is resource. And, it remains an unfortunate fact that the human ly on crude oil for thousands of products, ranging from crayons . consumes oil at a frightening rate is not the fault of the oil who had to deal with the Greenpeace activists as they attemptetter, greener world.” Many people hope for a fossil-fuel-free ng the lives of the oil sands employees and the residents of ose community is being used as a launch pad for Greenpeace’s genda (no matter how green or well-intentioned it may be) is ard a feasible solution. lesson can be derived from all of this. Greenpeace definitely y global warming issues, but 25 of their activists did succeed wide statement. If 25 people against the massive oil sands can headlines for a fossil-fuel-free future, then perhaps we, as indifeeble. To be sure, the fact that a $67-billion oil sands indusit is tearing up our natural environment with no end in sight, t of hope for the future of sustainability. This story can remind voices’ potential weight.

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The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

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To the Tar Sands, which documents a group of environmentalists as they cycle across Alberta’s oil sands, is first screened at the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

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Two acts of sabotage target Encana sour-gas pipeline near the B.C.-Alberta border. Similar attacks since have elicited the RCMP to call these instances of “terrorism.”

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Mikisew Cree First Nation, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and environmental group Forest Ethics together place anti-oil sands ads in the US Daily.

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The National Geographic runs a 20-page feature exposing the Canadian oil sands. Anticipating its publication, federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice reasserts the important role the oil sands play in the North American economy.

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Greenpeace activists make international headlines with their 31-hour protest barricading machinery at the Albian Sands Muskeg River Mine – 21 are later charged.

Greenpeace protestors are arrested after sneaking into a Suncor oil sands site near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Activists hold a similar resistance at a Shell upgrader plant in the same area days later, ending in 16 arrests.

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QPIRG-McGill working group Tar Sands Free Zone Montreal is promoting Cinema Politica Concordia’s screening of H2Oil on November 12 at 9 p.m at Concordia, Room H-110, 1455 Maisonneuve O.

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—compiled by Whitney Mallett

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

13

Why we should never trust our memories The Split Brain Daniel Lametti

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ne fall evening in 1987, Anthony Hanemaayer, 19 and newly married, was relaxing at his Toronto home when the police banged on his door and arrested him for sexual assault. The victim’s mother had spotted Hanemaayer at work on a local construction site and identified him as the knife-wielding attacker she had confronted in her daughter’s bedroom. She had seen the attacker for perhaps 10 seconds, but she was positive it was Hanemaayer.

The case went to trial in 1989.

Convinced by his lawyer that he would be locked up for a long time based on the mother’s testimony, Hanemaayer pled guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence. Hanemaayer, though, was innocent. The crime was actually committed by Paul Bernardo, Canada’s most notorious serial killer. Hanemaayer served two years in prison, losing his wife and job in the process. It wasn’t until 2008 that his name was finally cleared. The thing is, Anthony Hanemaayer looks nothing like Paul Bernardo. Hanemaayer has

straight, wire-thin blonde hair, while Bernardo has thick, curly, brown hair. But the victim’s mother was convinced the attacker was Hanemaayer. How could she have been so wrong?

The Hanemaayer case is not the only example of eyewitness testimony gone wrong. Of the 244 exonerations that occurred in the United States since courts began allowing DNA evidence (17 of which were prisoners on death row), faulty eyewitness testimony played a role in 74 per cent of the original convictions. Is it possible that our memories are that bad? Well, as it turns out, yes – and a recent breakthrough in our understanding of memories helps explain why.

Nine years ago, a post doc at NYU named Karim Nader ran an experiment that his supervisor at the time told him would surely fail. First, he conditioned a rat to associate the sound of a bell with an electric shock. That is, he rang a bell just before delivering a mild

jolt to the rat’s foot. After several bell-shock pairings, the rat soon remembered that the bell was followed by a shock and it began to freeze in fear at the bell’s ring.

Nader then injected anisomycin, a drug that stops the construction of new neural connections, into an area of the rat’s brain where he thought the memory might be stored. He found that if the drug was injected just after the bell rang, while the rat was in the process of remembering that the bell signaled a shock, the memory of the fearful association remarkably vanished – poof! Gone. At the sound of the bell, the rat no longer froze in fear. Nader’s experiment provided the first evidence that the neural connections that store memories have to be rebuilt every single time they are remembered.

And during rebuilding, memories can be altered or even erased.

Nader is now a professor in the psychology department here at McGill. An interesting aspect of his

work is its ability to explain why eyewitness testimony is, at best, unreliable. Going back to the case of Anthony Hanemaayer, one can imagine the victim’s mother being asked by the police to recount the image of her daughter’s attacker over and over again. Each time she recalled the assault, the neural connections in her brain that stored the memory of the attacker’s face had to be rebuilt and thus became susceptible to alteration.

Soon, the unfamiliar face of Paul Bernardo morphed into the face of Anthony Hanemaayer, a man she’d seen before around her neighbourhood.

No one is asked to remember an event more often than an eyewitness, but Nader’s discovery tells us that the most accurate memory is the one least remembered.

Daniel’s column will appear again in two weeks. You can write him at thesplitbrain@mcgilldaily.com, but you’ll probably forget.

Digging up the truth on Ardi Shannon Palus The McGill Daily

A

rdi, officially known as Ardipithecus ramidus, is a million years older than Lucy, the Australopithecus fossil, and is offering us the latest data on human origins – and conclusions that have been mangled into sensationalist journalism.

“Science reporters are very prone to this problem of trying to put every discovery into the category of ‘The Most Important Thing Ever Discovered,’ and that’s often not the case,” explained PZ Myers, popular science blogger, self-proclaimed godless liberal, and University of Minnesota biology professor.

Fossils of the 4.4-million-yearold hominid, including 125 pieces from the same skeleton, were found in Ethiopia in the early nineties. Data from Ardi’s fossils indicate that the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees, our closest DNA relatives, lived in the forest and walked on two feet. This means that chimpanzees developed their characteristic knuckled-walking after diverging from humans.

On October 2, the research journal Science published 11 papers produced by an international team of anthropologists and paleontolo-

gists, introducing Ardi to the scientific community and the general public. Three of the papers printed are jargon-free, and all of the papers are online and available to the public free of charge.

Yet even with the accessibility that Science offers, journalists have made more than one error in translation.

A National Geographic headline about Ardi includes the words “missing link” − an often-used phrase, which, according to Myers, is misleading. “[Missing link] implies a linear series, a chain, where what you do is you go back and find one fossil, and then the next fossil in the series, and the next, and the next, and the next, and eventually you get a complete series, and that’s not the way it works,” said Myers.

Sarah Bean, manager of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill, agreed that the term is frequently misapplied.

“The notion of the ‘missing link’ …implies that evolutionary biology is waiting for some essential piece of evidence to prove its credibility, which is certainly not the case,” Bean said.

According to Myers, most of the individuals that came before us do not survive in preserved, fossilized form, making it impossible to construct a complete tree diagram to depict human evolution.

Myers further explained that Ardi is probably not a direct ancestor of humans. “I mean, it’s possible,” he said. “But because there are so many different species, and so many of them are lost, it’s highly unlikely.”

The Torstar News Service committed what Myers considers among the worst of the sensationalist offenses, publishing an article with the hook, “Man didn’t descend from apes.”

“We’ve always been thinking, well, you know, if we go back far enough what we will find is that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans probably looked more like a chimpanzee than us. What this fossil is saying, what Ardipithecus is saying, is that it’s a little different than that,” said Myers. “[Ardi] has characteristics of humans, characteristics of chimps – but mostly characteristics that are neither chimp nor human,” said Hendrik Van Gijseghem, a professor in the anthropology department at McGill.

Van Gijseghem also offered a slightly more optimistic view of the media. “Generally speaking, [articles] recognize that the results raise more questions than they answer,” he said.

Myers has advice for navigating the voices of so many reporters.

“Well, it’s actually something that I think is a little counter-intuitive.

Matthew Milne/ The McGill Daily

Latest evolutionary discovery misunderstood and exaggerated by media

Ardi foresees her impact on science millions of years in advance.

That what we need to do is encourage more skepticism,” Myers said.

Evolution in particular is a topic that the public can benefit from reading up on. “Human evolution is something that unites all of humanity, regardless of language, culture, socio-economic status, et cetera.

Why shouldn’t we all be interested in learning as much as we can about our origins?” said Bean.

Still, skepticism and general

appreciation for intellectualism seem to be beyond some. A piece on the ABC News web site devotes itself, headline and kicker, to the likes of David Menton, a Young Earth creationist with an Ivy League credential. Menton’s faith in the Bible is not budging, and is backed up by his opinion that Ardi is just an ape.

“What did Menton expect? A frickin’ giraffe?” blogged Myers.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

14

Sing out Buskers start to organize at Berri-UQAM

Eric Wen Culture Writer

“M

eet here tonight at 11 o’clock,” said Gerry, a busker at Berri-UQAM metro station, echoing a suggestion I’d heard from another performer just a little while earlier at Place des Arts. Having watched too many movies in my day, I felt as though I were in the midst of discovering an underground secret society – an eclectic collective of artists who gather nightly at Berri-UQAM. Jumping on my bike, I anxiously sped down to Berri-UQAM through the cold autumn night. Inside, I saw Gerry and began talking to him about this new organization.

Gerry called over and introduced me to Dino, a middle-aged man with a grey mullet and a flip of hair swept to the side of his forehead.

Dino is the secretary of this newlyfounded collective of musicians. He performs regularly at Berri-UQAM, playing guitar and singing popular songs by Radiohead, David Bowie, and Joe Cocker. Before I knew it, Dino and I were deep in conversation.

Then, with a few pats on the back and quick departing words, the meeting was over. There was no secret society. In fact, there were only seven people present at the meeting. It was more reminiscent of a group of friends determining the order of their fantasy football draft than of the Knights Templar. But this was the grassroots beginning of le Regroupement des musiciens du métro de Montreal. As of 3:17 p.m. on October 14th, 2009, the Regroupement became an official non-profit organization. Its aim? To represent and fight for the rights of Montreal’s metro buskers.

The new group had held its first meeting on September 12, 2009, with the simple goal of supporting and promoting metro musicians’ needs. “We want to be recognized by the public,” said Dino. “We want to be recognized as musicians and not just beggars.”

“We want to be organized to continue,” added Gerry, “and for that we have to be together.”

A busker is a performer whose stage is public space. According to Dino, there are nearly 300 metro performers in Montreal. Around Christmas time, that number doubles. Buskers perform all over the city – on the street, in parks, and in

the metro. But contrary to perception, busking is more complicated than just finding a spot and setting up shop. Buskers have to deal with permits if they’re performing on the streets, STM regulations if they’re working in the metro, and arguments over turf.

The Regroupement isn’t the first organization that was founded to represent the interests of metro buskers in Montreal – l’Association des musiciens indépendants du métro was established in 1983. I tried to find out if they’re still around, but their contact number isn’t active anymore. According to Dino, however, its cavalier attitude of people looking out for themselves was a big shortcoming.

While at some metro stations the buskers who show up first are the ones who get to play, every night the Berri-UQAM performers gather together at 11:00 p.m. to determine who will play the following day, and to assign timeslots. The little group has big plans. They hope to bring new standards of ethics and fairness to metro musicians. But most of all, the Regroupement is built on respect. As Dino said, members of the group want to be seen as artists and not beggars, but they also recognize that they must have respect for people in the metro. As they gathered together to decide when each would perform the next day, they all took two-hour blocks out of respect for other musicians and the general public. “So the STM employees don’t get sick of us,” Dino notes.

Additionally, they hope to begin holding auditions this upcoming February and establishing membership in March, as part of an effort to ensure the quality of the musicians who play in the metro.

“If someone only plays the same three songs, the people who work in the metro will go crazy and that will give us a bad reputation,” says Dino. The hope is to have the best musicians possible in the metro, so that in general, buskers will be seen in a more positive light and be given more respect.

After spending over an hour talking to Gerry and Dino, though, I was beginning to be a little skeptical.

Montreal has a reputation for very liberal and lenient laws regarding metro performers. Though a busker has to pay for a permit to play on the street, anyone can play in the metro. The only restrictions are that the busker must play in a

Dominic Popowich/ The McGill Daily

Dino, a guitarist and singer, hopes the new organization will help garner respect for buskers. designated area, marked by a blue sign with a lyre on it, between 5:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. Given all this, would establishing a membership system where performers are required to audition undermine the spirit of Montreal busking?

Would it create an elitist hierarchy?

With my misgivings in mind, I went back to Berri-UQAM the following night to ask some follow-up questions. I arrived at 10:40 and walked around a little bit. I saw a young, long-haired guitarist with a beard and round John Lennon spectacles playing – appropriately – “Glass Onion” by the Beatles. As he switched to the first few notes of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android,” I apologized for interrupting and began to ask him a few questions. Nick, an aspiring musician who recently moved to Montreal from Moncton, New Brunswick, helped me see the efforts of the Regroupement through a less cynical lens.

“If you busk in Moncton, people look at you like you’re a bum,” Nick told me. “[In Montreal], there are people who look at [buskers] as musicians who are just trying to

get a start, but there are still people who look at you like you’re a bum.”

“Having an organization will bring respect to musicians that play in the metro,” Nick continued. “[With auditions implemented] there would be a certain standard that would weed out the few people that think by picking up a guitar, it would be another way to squeeze money out of people.”

Though I never questioned the motives or intentions behind the Regroupement, I began to see that implementing auditions was not a method of exclusion that defied the freedom and liberal reputation of Montreal’s metro performing.

Nick didn’t know about the organization until I told him about it, but he understood the Regroupement’s goals immediately. It’s a way of ensuring the reputation of and establishing a level of respect for the artists.

As my conversation with Nick wound down, I looked over and saw Gerry, Dino, and others gathering at the same spot as before, writing their names on 8x8 centimetre slips of paper, folding them, and sticking them into a hat. I walked

toward them and also noticed the opera singer/guitarist I’d seen at Place des Arts the day before, who first advised me to come to BerriUQAM. The group was already starting to grow.

After spending some time with them, I realized that the Regroupement is not a secret society or an exclusive club of elitist metro performers. It’s a group that has the interests of artists in mind.

Since it is a brand new organization, members are still working out the details of what they’re going to do, but they know that they want to present a unified front to represent and support these talented metro musicians. Dino mentioned plans to distinguish Regroupement members from independent performers, but when asked to elaborate on them, he said with a wry smile, “It’s a secret. You’ll see.”

“There was an organization since 1983 and they weren’t able to do much,” he continued. “How will I be able to do more? I don’t even know!” With that and a grin, Dino walked through the turnstiles and left. Maybe the Regroupement’s got a little bit of that underground mystique after all.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

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n October 14, Phyllis Lambert, founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), launched the Institut de politique alternative de Montréal (IPAM) with the help of several other Montrealers. The new organization, dedicated to longterm, sustainable urban growth, was announced last Wednesday morning to reporters over breakfast in an ornate Victorian room at the CCA. Lambert spoke with Dinu Bumbaru, policy director of Héritage Montréal, and Dimitri Roussopoulos, founder of the Montreal Urban Ecology Centre, both vice-presidents of IPAM. Speaking in French, Bumbaru identified six areas of activity for the institute: “heritage, poverty, social housing and justice, ecology, urban planning and transportation, and democracy.” The huge range of issues covered by IPAM means that it will have to work closely with high-level politicians as well as grassroots and community organizations.

In a very frank moment, Roussopoulos emphasized IPAM’s board members’, particularly Lambert’s, access to politicians: “When Madame Lambert picks up the phone and wants to speak to the mayor of Montreal, she can get his or her ear, or get a meeting with him or her at the drop of a hat.”

However, Roussopoulos went on to say that “this is not enough,” an opinion shared by Lambert, who was particularly frustrated by the disregard for public consultations.

“We worked on that very hard, and we finally got [public consultations] passed,” she said. “The city charter finally put [public consultations] in and now they don’t listen to them!

Well, that’s up to the citizens to say ‘My goodness, what’s happening?’”

IPAM’s directors envision the

Institut de politique alternative de Montréal will function as a check on the municipal government. institute as a bridge between Montreal citizens and the City’s many bureaucrats. To that end, the board recruited representatives from all four of Montreal’s universities, including McGill urban planning professor Raphaël Fischler, local community organizers, and citizens’ group representatives.

One of the most important initial recommendations, which IPAM intends to take to whomever wins the November 1 municipal election, is for the City to hold a “Citizens’ Forum,” open to all interested Montrealers. While public consultations are open to anyone, they are technical and time consuming, deterring some of the people most affected by large-scale developments – for example, people without an education and those who work long or inconvenient hours.

At the same time, IPAM’s directors emphasized the need for a

holistic approach to urban planning. According to Bumbaru, “a city is more than just a catalogue of projects.” Following this maxim, the institute is trying to think long term. Instead of simply intervening in urban planning decisions that it sees as harmful to the sustainable development in the city, IPAM’s goals are longer-term – in fact, they want to challenge and ultimately change the way Montreal, and even other cities, are planned. Said Lambert: “I think that we’re not going to try to deal so much with this or that particular project, but what happens in cities more generally.”

This broad view has obvious advantages, in that it sees all aspects of the city as integral to its future and considers more than just the short-term benefits of glamorous new projects or gentrification in the guise of “revitalization.” However, it also means that IPAM lacks a con-

Simply reading the title of Ducharme and Dales’s multi-disciplinary piece might shock some – it’s called Celui qui aime est à Dachau, or “The one who loves is in Dachau.”

As its title implies, the work is focused on the connection between love and destruction, drawing inspiration from Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments – a book that Portland bookseller Powell’s describes as “best read immediately after the end of an intimate relationship.” But don’t make the mistake of assuming that the piece is merely about hating on those in love – it’s bigger than that. Ducharme and Dales see love as problematic, yes, but the questions they raise are anything but one-dimensional. Their work cuts to the heart of society’s obsession with

love, and pushes the audience to wonder why, and how, we’ve become “junkies for love.”

The artists go about this project by putting their audience in an uncomfortable situation. Ducharme and Dales become lab rats, and spectators are given a window into a domestic setting to observe the duo’s moments of intimacy as well as their cataclysmic disasters. The audience is meant to feel as though they are present at a scene where they’re not meant to be, but it’s hard to turn away. Though the work might be difficult, it’s also important. After all, as Morton Mendelson recently reminded us, stepping out of your comfort zone every once in a while is a good thing.

—Amelia Schonbek

crete set of initial projects.

Lambert and her fellow board members are certainly well-connected to the Montreal political and urban planning establishments, and seem to have a genuine desire to change the way new developments are made. IPAM may well become a powerful lobbying force, a new check on the City government. But at this point – less than a week after its launch and less than a month before a municipal election – it is almost impossible to tell.

Said Roussopoulos: “Anything that has to do with the urban question, with the future of cities, the future of our city, will be part of our work.” With luck, they will be able to instigate change in the future, but as all IPAM’s directors emphasized, we can’t predict what will happen, and we must always consider the larger scale and the longer term.

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CULTURE BRIEF Dancing all over love Perhaps Francis Ducharme and Sophie Dales discovered their penchant for the provocative over the course of their work with choreographer Dave St-Pierre. The local actor/ dancer duo worked with St-Pierre on 2004’s wildly successful – and undeniably controversial – La Pornographie des âmes. It was only after collaborating with St. Pierre again, on followup piece Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde!, that Ducharme and Dales struck out on their own, with the intention of creating a work that was “a punch in the stomach.”

Too pretty to write for News?

Culture Meetings Shatner B-24 5:30 Tuesdays

16Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

Reading a new Russia Contemporary Russian writers forge a new path, while keeping sight of their roots Jane Hu The McGill Daily

W

hat does it mean nowadays to say, “I’m reading the Russians”? Francine Prose poses this question in her introduction to Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia, an anthology of 23 short stories penned by the generation of writers currently living in post-Soviet Russia. “The Russians” conjures a literary tradition that contains Tolstoy’s verbose depictions of battalion lines, Dostoyevsky’s tortured exploration of mental labyrinths, or Chekhov’s doomed cherry orchard.

But these conceptions are changing. Rasskazy shows that to speak of “reading the Russians” signifies not only the country’s literary past, but also the fiction being written by Russia’s new generation of creative talent.

In their forward, editors Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker describe the writers featured in Rasskazy as “free people, but…also Russian writers, and Russian writers need a measure of nonfreedom to feel free, to realize their relevance.” So perhaps appropriately, these contemporary authors frequently use their fiction to explore a past at once foreign and hauntingly familiar. Consequently, their cultural amnesia is translated onto the page, in the form of stories about deterioration, sacrifice, and regeneration.

German Sadulaev’s “Why the Sky Doesn’t Fall” begins during the harvest season with a “late white St. Petersburg autumn” that will ultimately blossom to when “spring has come to St. Petersburg.” Maria Kamenetskaya’s “Between Summer and Fall” centres around the Russian proverb, “Every man should build a

house, plant a tree, raise a son” as part of his life’s legacy and work.

Like Sadulaev, Kamenetskaya fills her story with images of autumnal abundance, where “wherever you go, everywhere it smells like stewing sugar” and concludes with the phrase “Harvest year” – a two-word proclamation of promised plentitude.

In more sinister tales, however, authors talk of Halloween and werewolves, animals that represent the potential sacrifice has to bring renewal and metamorphoses, implicitly commenting on Russia’s ever-fluctuating political conditions. The anthology’s opening piece, Linor Goralik’s “They Talk,” is composed as a postmodern patchwork of overheard voices, wisps of imagined conversations. Goralik’s disjointed narrative strands reflect the incongruities and instabilities of Russian life.

In the concluding lines of Goralik’s story, he imparts that “art—it is precisely that, this ability to discern big issues in small things…in the simple things of life.”

While cognizant of Russia’s towering cultural history, Rasskazy contains fewer conspicuous social critiques than one might expect it to.

Here, Russia’s contemporary artistic movement mirrors that of post-Unification Germany, where artists are less intent on deliberately working through the dense implications of the Third Reich than with purely portraying a story. German director Andreas Dresen, once asked why he does not call greater attention to the political significance of using Berlin as the unambiguous setting of his films, responded that his aim lay solely in story-telling. Further, contemporary German writer Ingo Schulze – coincidentally, a former resident of St. Petersburg – chose the title Simple Stories for his recent

Olivia Messer / The McGill Daily

anthology. The very title Rasskazy translates simply into “stories,” suggesting that the anthology is principally interested in the timeless, fanciful, and folkloristic aspects of a text. Against the tradition of post-Soviet Russian authors such as Victor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin, who create surrealist, absurdist, or dystopic landscapes, the stories of Rasskazy are characterized as “New Russian Realism,” telling terminology that aligns these authors closer to Pushkin than to their presentday peers.

One evening, over tea and dark chocolate, the Russian mother of a friend expressed her distaste for Nabokov in response to my guileless

rhapsodizing. Trusting that I’d find a kindred opinion in anyone who had traipsed between the pages of Lolita, I was taken aback by her critique of Nabokov’s shameless and amoral decadence. She informed me that whereas Chekhov depicted the honest tragedy of working citizens, Nabokov merely managed to emphasize what was already banal and lewd about the human condition.

Such a marked opposition between Nabokov and Chekhov may hold some truth – Nabokov once accused Chekhov’s work as a “medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, repetitions.”

Yet it is these “repetitions” which one encounters in the stories that

populate Rasskazy – recapitulated themes of unfulfilled passion, failed attempts at communication, residual hope, and nature’s potential for regeneration. When reading Rasskazy, we become immediately conscious of each writer’s unmistakably “hip, modern, [and] contemporary” voice while simultaneously acknowledging that we are nonetheless still reading “The Russians.” These young authors are clearly aware of the literary lineage to which they are eternally rooted.

Yet ultimately they know their prose must grow beyond such lineages in order to articulate a distinct and alternate future: new fiction for a new Russia.

A bigger, better tsunami!

Korean blockbuster draws from some questionable source material for disaster flick Florence Shahabi Culture Writer

I

n his new and immensely popular movie Haeundae – billed as South Korea’s first disaster film – director Yoon Je-kyoon follows his titular seaside resort town’s residents as they attempt to survive the coming of a merciless 100-foot killer wave.

Though it dramatizes the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake – using the event as a springboard for the plot – the film better adheres to the director’s signature genre, the romantic comedy, than the disaster genre. For the most part, the approach works in the film’s favour, as its application of South Korean

cinema staples (slap fights, overthe-top romance, an upbeat soundtrack) aid its departure from familiar genre tropes.

Without taking long to make the jump from 2004 to 2009, the first half of the movie wraps us in the interwoven melodramas of the movie’s half-dozen protagonists, who unfortunately register closer to stereotypes than actual characters.

We find the couple driven apart by a dangerous secret; the drunken son and his pushy mother trying to get him on his feet; the innocent coast guard rescuer who saves a big-city college girl, later falling for her; a crooked businessman; and a disgruntled scientist who unsuccessfully tries to warn authorities of the coming disaster.

Rather predictably, the movie

also exposes us to the sunny beach resort’s seedy underbelly: an unlicensed restaurant, children being used in money-making scams, street fights, et cetera. Equating excessive alcoholism to comic relief, the characters frequently drink to excess, behaving in an inane Three Stooges kind of way. For the Western viewer, however, the film’s saving grace may lie in those unintentionally funny moments where the filmmaker’s intention was lost in translation. For instance, at one point, the central character belittles one of his drinking buddies by asking him what type of grades his son gets.

Then the tsunami hits. The movie’s effects treatment – featuring collapsing buildings and a toppled giant freighter – was conceived by Hans Uhlig, the man who created

the digital effects for The Day After Tomorrow, The Perfect Storm, and Star Wars I, IV, and V. In the outrageous chaos, those characters that were drawn up as self-absorbed losers predictably prove to be heroes, occasionally finding themselves reunited with loved ones.

As a whole, the film doesn’t take very many risks. Transitioning from one formulaic sequence to another, it tries to please every age group and fans of almost every genre. It’s pure entertainment – the type that Hollywood often promises but fails to deliver even on a much bigger budget. Unfortunately, Haeundae’s status as a foreign film will probably limit its reach, its target audience failing to give it a chance.

Still, cataclysmic, end-of-theworld movies have always drawn

crowds, and domestically, this one is no exception. In fact, Haeundae has registered over 11 million admissions, a figure that barely accounts for its overwhelming popularity on Internet piracy sites and the black market. Its crossover to other markets is equally impressive, having arrived to foreign markets a mere two months after original release.

That being said, viewers risk forgetting the dark shadow lurking over this film – the fact that it’s based on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which killed 230,000 people across 11 countries. If it weren’t for the goofy bits and the slapstick humour, some people might realize how inappropriate it may be to be making entertainment flicks out of recent history’s most colossal tragedies.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

17

The salty, simple taste of cheap

Beggar’s Banquet Gavin Thomson Culture Writer

T

here are few things so pleasurable as guiltlessly eating a cheap and filling meal. For a starving student such as myself, quantity often precedes quality – which is why St. Henri diner Nouveau Système felt like such a great discovery.

Nouveau Système lies on NotreDame Ouest, in an area that reminded me of Steel City, where at any given moment you might spot a Sylvester Stallone-type figure drifting right on by the diners, gas stations, and florists – possibly on his way to meeting other Sylvester Stallone-type figures for drinks and fisticuffs.

A greasy diner just like every other greasy diner, Nouveau Système’s counters boast scattered Pepsi cans and pizza boxes stacked high. Behind them, a few chefs mumble jokes as they fry everything imaginable. A selection of cheese and carrot cakes sits below a flat screen TV, while decade-old pictures of meals line the back wall.

Completing the look were its tables and tiled floors – coloured in a forlorn and unclean teal – its tarnished pink booths, and its oddly abundant mirrors, seemingly placed to allow you to watch yourself eat.

In short, it looks like the Seinfeld diner, populated by King of the Hill’s cast, spending their mealtimes watching hockey, making desultory remarks, and growing bald.

My friends and I sat down in one of the pink booths, with the intention of eating a full meal for under $10. Having leafed through the menus, we all realized it would be impossible to spend any more.

Système’s selections consisted of fries, gravy, chicken, steak, pizza,

to-based meat sauce was straightfrom-the-can; overwhelmingly salty, it enveloped my pallet with a certain je ne sais quoi aftertaste.

Meanwhile, my Chicagoan friend, Clay – who was in Canada for the first time – thought it appropriate to have a go at the poutine.

It was so large it had to be shared.

A friend reported that there was a hint of cinnamon beneath the mass amounts of gravy and salt. I couldn’t pick it out, but I trust it was there.

But don’t get the wrong impression. When you eat cheap, you get the sense you deserve food like this: there should be gratuitously large amounts of calories; there should be substantial health risks. “It’s the best kind of bad,” Emma said prophetically.

When we had finished eating, we collectively felt full, fat, and greasy. So, in a vain attempt to burn calories, we decided to examine the paintings on the wall.

The one with the most effective

race with a sword – because an applauding crowd had gathered behind him at the finish line. They too were dressed in white.

I couldn’t find a reason for the cultish motifs of light and fencing, but they certainly gave Nouveau Système a distinct charm. We had a very pleasant time eating, discussing the artwork, and digesting our food amidst the clamour of spitting

grease and smoker’s cough.

Nouveau Système isn’t worth going to if you aren’t in the area. But if you ever wake up there, finding yourself next to Sylvester Stallone in one of its onerous pink booths, you might as well – you know – take a look at the paintings.

Nouveau Système is located at 3419 Notre-Dame O.

When we had finished eating, we collectively felt full, fat, and greasy and spaghetti. Everything else was a combination of such staples.

The most instantly appealing option was “Pizzaghetti” – a pizza cut into the shape of Pacman, with spaghetti crammed inside its cheesy triangular mouth. Second to that was the “Michigan avec frites,” a large hotdog oozing with grease and covered by an onerous meat sauce, which settled elegantly over the plate.

Feeling somewhat risk-averse, I avoided such extravagant dishes, ordering the simple “Spaghetti and Chicken” dish. It was awful. The toma-

power depicted a blonde woman in a garden, looking like she either belonged in a cult or the fifties, thrusting a fencing sword into a small mirror – which was on fire.

We concluded that she was piercing the fiery frame of eternity and Hell.

“Avant-larde,” Clay said.

Next to her was a painting of an Olympian man dressed entirely in white, thrusting his fencing sword triumphantly into a heavenly sky, from which rays of sunlight enveloped him in an angelic spotlight.

Presumably he had run a race – a

Sarah Mongeau-Birkett for The McGill Daily

Nouveau Système offers greasy eats in a bizarre setting.

Canada can tell a good poop joke Torontonian filmmakers score a gross-out hit with You Might As Well Live

Ali MacKellar Culture Writer

Y

ou Might As Well Live, a twisted comedy that has all the makings of a cult hit, is the first film from two talented Torontonians, actor/writer Joshua Peace and writer/director Simon Ennis. Set in small-town Ontario, the film channels Napoleon Dynamite, if you add a bizarre Canadian twist.

Air hockey tournaments, a raccoon roast, and a cross-dressing heroic police officer are just some of the bizarre things that can be found in

this underdog story.

This is the tale of Robert Mutt (Joshua Peace), a moronic middleaged man with a receding hairline and a lousy reputation. After multiple unsuccessful attempts at suicide, Mutt winds up in a mental institution, where he finds he is the most at home and happy he has ever been. After a glorious win against the facility’s new doctor in an air hockey match, Mutt is deemed sane and sent back out into society. But he does not adapt well. After accusations of sending child pornography to his neighbour via email, the town’s residents chase Mutt out of his home.

During a séance with his friend Hershey (Dov Tiefenbach), Mutt has a vision of his hero, Clinton Manitoba (Michael Madsen), a local washed-up sports celebrity.

Manitoba tells Mutt that in order to be somebody, he needs three things: a girl, some money, and a championship ring, and thus begins Mutt’s quest.

You Might As Well Live succeeds in the richness of its characters. For instance, the audience can, to a certain extent, empathize with Mutt, but that doesn’t stop them from laughing at his foolish shenanigans.

Similarly, Mutt’s first love interest, Edna (Liane Balaban), an employee

at the local bowling alley who has also spent time in mental institutions, is a quirky masterpiece. Mutt’s seemingly only friends, Hershey and his girlfriend Cookie, provide a counterbalance to the film’s oddball characters. Though they seem far too hip and put together for Mutt, they support him through his journey toward becoming a “somebody.”

This film is not your classic satirical Canadian comedy. Clever in an offbeat way, the film combines Mutt’s innocence with the troubles of living in the real world, and the result is very funny, and very vulgar. Peace and Ennis take crudity

to a new level. From public defecation to full frontal nudity, nothing is off limits. But truth be told, it was sometimes taken too far for my personal taste. Though I am not one to shy away from such types of comedic entertainment, more than once I was forced to cringe and cover my eyes.

You Might As Well Live is not for those who are easily offended, and if you want to enjoy the film, it’s best to bring an anything-goes attitude. But if you leave your scruples at the door, you might just be able to enjoy a cult comedy hit and the best gross-out movie you’ve seen all year.

Compendium!

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 19, 2009

Lies, half-truths, and puns galore

18

Desks installed in toilet stalls SSMU prez supports motion, mob rule unmasked as absurd Télésphore Sansouci

decision. Said Reactionary McGill’s president: Archibald Harper: “On the one hand, we’re really upset because it’s a waste of tax-payer money. This motion’s implementation proves how the stupid and uneducated masses should not have any power.

“On the other hand, we’re really happy, because SSMU could be concerning itself with making bathrooms trans friendly, but instead

The McGill Daily

H

inged desks have been installed on the back of every bathroom-stall door in the Shatner building. SSMU was obligated to make the move due to the passage of a General Assembly motion.

Reactionary McGill both denounced and applauded the

decided to say a big ol’ ‘fuck-you’ to trans people. That’s pretty great.”

Harper noted that SSMU president Niva Seilnon seemed to be on Reactionary McGill’s side, given the fact that he signed on to only one of the eight motions presented at the GA – the one mandating his organization provide these hinged desks.

Seilnon was not available for comment.

Man, I’m so hungry right now.

Mallory Bey for The McGill Daily

feeling wildE? Camilla Grudova for The McGill Daily

Write! draw! contribute! compendium@mcgilldaily.com

Bless your heart Charity Bloomberg

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