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News

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

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Hundreds protest George W. Bush Angry crowds of Montrealers mobilize as former president defends his legacy Erin Hale The McGill Daily

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ive people were arrested, two American flags were burned, shoes were thrown, and an effigy was beaten to a blaring Wu-Tang soundtrack as Montrealers gathered to protest a talk by former president George W. Bush on Thursday at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

The protest was organized in part by the George Bush Welcoming Committee, a coalition of many anti-war, anti-poverty, and solidarity groups. They held signs and banners, blew horns, and chanted slogans in French and English, calling the former president a terrorist and demanding that he return to the United States.

“George Bush, we know you.

Your daddy was a killer too!” the crowd chanted.

René-Lévesque was shut down between University and Peel, as hundreds of protesters blocked off the street. Dozens of riot police guarded the entrance and streetlevel windows, one of which advertised the hotel as the site of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Montreal Bed-In for peace in 1969.

Matthew McLauchlin, who cochairs the NDP’s Federal Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Transsexual committee, was present at the protest.

“It’s not every day that you get to denounce in person the man who started two wars this decade, ushered in an economic collapse, and did more to disrupt the world treaties and fragile agreements that kept the world at some level of basic decency,” McLauchlin said.

Inside, Bush received a standing ovation at the beginning and end of his talk. He spoke about life after the presidency, Canada-U.S. relations, and the milestones of his time in office – September 11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the economic crisis – before taking questions from the moderator, John Parisella, the former chief of staff for Quebec premiers Robert Bourassa and Daniel Johnson.

The audience applauded Bush as he defended the U.S. response to September 11.

“When the first plane hit, it was an accident, when the second one hit it was an attack, and when the third one hit it was a declaration of war,” Bush said. “This is a war against ideologues who kill innocent [civilians]. I made the decision that my most important job was to protect citizens.... My mission was to stay on the offensive, and be relentless.”

Bush also commented on how he felt Iraq and Afghanistan were “two fronts in the same war” against “ideologues that spread hate in the name of false religion.”

“Some say Muslims don’t want to

be free,” he said. “I believe freedom is universal.”

Bush was paid $100,000 to speak at the private, invitation-only event sponsored in part by the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, and the prominent law firm Ernst & Young.

Judith Berlyn, one of the main organizers of Collectif Échec à la Guerre, was upset that prominent Montreal institutions had invited Bush to speak and paid for his appearance.

“The Montreal Chamber of Commerce is applying a double standard here. I mean they wouldn’t invite Pinochet. [Bush] should be treated as persona non grata,” said Berlyn. “The war industry flourishes in Montreal, and I personally wonder whether there is a connection with his visit,” she added.

During the question and answer session, Bush stated that if Saddam Hussein were still in power, there would be an ongoing arms race between Iraq and Iran. When asked for his thoughts on his achievements and failures, Bush said he felt his best work was helping to foster democracy in the Middle East, while his greatest mistake was failing to reform social security.

At least a dozen McGill students were present at the protest, and twice as many attended the event after winning tickets raffled by the political science department.

McGill student Sean Simeson, U3 Political Science, reflected on Bush’s faith in his own ideology.

“One thing that struck me was how candid he was. Everything that comes out of his mouth he believes to be true,” Simeson said.

Max Suderow, U3 Political Science and History, had a similar reaction. “[Bush] frames the world into an ideological debate. I fundamentally disagree with him. The way he was discussing the Middle East seemed very naive,” Suderow said. “He talks about himself as someone who fights tyranny, brings freedom, but he picks and chooses.”

Bush responded directly to many of the criticisms of his administration, occasionally admitting to mistakes. In response to a question on what decisions he would have made differently, Bush pointed to his public image and his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

“I think some of my language sent bad signals. I was a pretty bad speaker and did sloppy work,” he said. “When I think about Katrina, whether I should have sent federal troops, even if it was illegal.... I’ll leave the answer to my book.”

He commented on the financial crisis that escalated during his term in office and criticized the current American government for increasing involvement in the economy.

“I don’t believe the government should lead us out. I believe in the

Sarah Mongeau-Birkett for The McGill Daily

Protesters accused the former president of being a war-criminal and a terrorist. private sector only. Taxes must reward risk. In order to recover, the government needs to get out of the private sector, like autos,” he said.

Bush’s prescription for poverty was similar, recommending that free trade was the only way out of abject poverty for developing nations Ewald Friesen, a political science graduate student commented on Bush’s economic stance after the talk.

“One of the most unsurprising things is that he is unapologetically committed to neoliberalism,” said Friesen. “In many ways he is the embodiment of his brand of neoconservatism. Trade is the answer

to whatever ails you…. In response to the global economic meltdown, on bankers and stockbrokers, he claimed that ‘greedy’ is too strong a word.”

Despite admitting to his own faults, Bush maintained that the U.S. would see Republicans return to power.

“I believe 2010 will be a comeback for our party. The two presidents who picked up seats during their first term are FDR and me,” he said. “American people tend to reject extremes, and pretty soon sober leadership will show up.

We’re not very long into the new

administration. It’s the beginning of a new cycle, but the environment will change.”

The press was not formally invited to attend, though reporters from Le Devoir and Radio Canada were present. Claude Levesque, a journalist at Le Devoir, commented that the exclusion of the press may have raised eyebrows.

“The press wasn’t disallowed, but it wasn’t formally invited,” Levesque said. “It may look as if they wanted to hold this behind closed doors without the press.”

—with files from Michael Lee-Murphy

4 News

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

Dalhousie loses medical accreditation Admin and student society staying positive Kartiga Thiyagarajah The McGill Daily

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alhousie University’s Medical School was recently put on probation for two years, after failing to comply with ten standards set by the Liaison Committee of Medical Education (LCME).

LCME, a U.S. based accrediting body responsible for the accreditation of all medical schools in the U.S. and Canada, has 132 standards that schools must meet. Initially, Dalhousie was found to be noncompliant with 17 standards, but this ruling was changed to 10 after an appeal.

“The appeal went well, as we won seven appeals. We are still, however, on probation,” said Thomas Marrie, the dean of Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Medicine. “We did not appeal a number of standards because we felt the Committee was right in its ruling.”

Many of the LCME’s concerns had to do with Dalhousie Medicine’s curriculum management and learning environment.

“The ‘non-compliant’ standards range from not having enough lockers in the hospital for medical students to not having reviewed the curriculum for years,” Marrie said, explaining that Dalhousie has already begun improving the program. “We are reviewing our under-

graduate medical program closely.

A number of staff are taking a look at the practices of various medical schools and seeing how we can fold them into a new curriculum.”

Aris Lavranos, the president of Dalhousie Medical Student Society, said that despite the LCME’s ruling, medical students feel secure in their program.

“Dr. Marrie and his team have kept us in the know and have taken into consideration the opinions of the students. We aren’t overly concerned,” Lavranos said. “Most of the problems are of an administrative nature, such as improving the clarity of our unit objectives. This doesn’t reflect what we learn. The content is the same.”

Like Dalhousie, McGill’s Faculty of Medicine is accredited by the same two bodies that accredit

all Canadian medical schools: LCME and the Committee on the Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS).

According to Joyce Pickering, the associate dean of Medical Education and Student Affairs at McGill, the accreditation process helps faculties of medicine adapt to new standards.

“The accreditation process represents an opportunity to continue raising the bar of excellence within McGill’s Faculty of Medicine,” Pickering added.

Pickering noted that the last time McGill went through an evaluation in 2007, they were fully accredited. Since then, McGill has been been working to improve its program, developing more rigorous evaluation tools and working on formalizing periodic reviews of its

curriculum.

According to a letter from Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine to prospective students, students should not hesitate to apply to or accept an offer of admission from Dalhousie Medicine.

“We have wasted no time in starting to remedy the problems cited by the LCME and in going beyond its requirements and developing a new leading-edge curriculum,” wrote Marrie.

As for the futures of Dalhousie Medicine’s graduating students, Marrie does not expect the school’s probationary status to affect them.

“Our current medical students are aware of the actions we are taking to better the school and are not concerned. Dalhousie still offers a good medical education,” he said.

Parc Oxygène in danger Milton-Parc fights against green space redevelopment Vicky Tobianah The McGill Daily

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esidents of the Milton-Parc community are fighting to preserve a small patch of green space known as “Parc Oxygène.”

Montreal recently changed the zoning laws in the area, which would allow small housing units to be constructed on the private land. Many of the residents have said this will be a deciding issue in the upcoming municipal elections.

In the mid-eighties, a small alleyway stretching from Hutchison to Parc, just south of des Pins, was used as a shortcut by taxi drivers and other motorists. Residents complained at the time that it was a danger to the local children.

The land was purchased by Maurice Fattel, who wished to convert it into a parking lot. Local residents were upset with this development and decided to pool their resources to transform the lane into a park.

Norman Nawrocki, a member of the non-profit housing co-op known as the Milton-Park Project, dedicated to maintaining the Parc Oxygène, has lived in the area since 1981. “It was a nice, quiet neighbourhood before developers started to destroy it,” he said.

After complaints to the City went unnoticed, a group of anonymous residents brought flowers and potted trees and began to landscape the area, turning it into a green space.

According to the residents, Fattel did not mind that his land was being used as a park. “In the beginning, we asked the City to preserve

it for the long term by purchasing the land. They insisted it was safe, that they didn’t have money to buy the land but we didn’t need to worry since no one would build on it,” Nawrocki said.

Recent zoning changes have left the residents fuming. One resident wrote to the City after he saw a developer surveying the land last month, and he was informed that a zoning change was made in 2008 at the request of the owner. The previous zoning regulation only permitted construction of buildings six to 12 stories high, which would have made building on this 6.6 metrewide lot difficult. The change permits construction of three- or fourstorey buildings.

“The City prides itself on all its green initiatives, so how do they justify taking away a neighbourhood park? Local people invested time and money into the park to keep it green and with one stroke of the pen, all our hard work can be erased,” Nawrocki said.

Michel Prescott, city councillor for the Jeanne-Mance area, said that the best-case scenario would be for the City to purchase the land and allow it to remain as a park. However, he said the City does not have the budget to purchase this area and doesn’t want to set a precedent.

“We cannot buy all the small lands in Montreal and create parks and if we do it for this park, then we will be asked to do the same thing for other areas and we cannot afford that,” Prescott said.

Nawrocki thought this could be a good precedent for the City to set.

“Why is the City afraid of setting

a precedent? Set an environmentally friendly precedent. Our park provides a breath of fresh air in this neighbourhood, so for the City to say they have no money is not true.

It’s a political decision. They have decided they know better than us, but it is in our best interests to keep this park or we wouldn’t have worked so hard to maintain it,” Nawrocki said.

The City argues that a small housing project is a better alternative than a condominium building, and that the residents will benefit economically from these new developments.

“It’s not a park, but it’s better than a high-rise,” Prescott said.

According to McGill architecture professor Derek Drummond, this is not an environmental issue but a social one.

“These urban spaces that allow citizens to gather and enjoy social interactions are vital to their sense of community and well-being. If the land is in private hands, the community has no right to demand the owner provide the space for public use,” Drummond said.

“What must happen is that the City must purchase the land at a fair price and then devote the space to public use,” Drummond said.

“We’ve transformed a dangerous intersection into a beautiful park, adding to the health of the neighbourhood. Our co-op has won awards for beautifying the neighbourhood. Without this park, it would be a sadder neighbourhood.

It’s inhumane to live with concrete and asphalt around you–who wants to live in a city without greenery?”

Nawrocki said.

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

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McGill student victim of racial profiling Quebec Superior Court to hear the case

Stephanie Law News Writer

M Miranda Whist / The McGill Daily

Protesters waited for Jason Kenney as he entered an Arts classroom.

No One is Illegal protests Kenney at McGill Conservative McGill invites immigration minister to speak Eric Andrew-Gee News Writer

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ason Kenney, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, visited the student group Conservative McGill on Friday. The event was held in Room 160 of the Arts Building.

As Kenney approached the room, he was stopped by a loud group of protesters from No One is Illegal Montreal. Kenney and his coterie were prevented from moving toward the doors. One of the protesters, Jaggi Singh, asked Kenney about a recent report in the Toronto Star that tells of a 24-yearold Mexican woman named Grise who is believed to have been murdered in June by the same group of drug traffickers she sought refuge from in Canada in 2004 and 2008.

Grise was denied refugee status twice, and following her return to Mexico in 2008, she was raped and impregnated. After having a caesarian-section to deliver her child, she was kidnapped and shot through the head.

The minister did not respond.

When the protesters accused Kenney of pandering to racial biases against Mexicans in his policies, he shot back, sarcastically saying, “I plead guilty: I’m a racist,” and pushed toward the door. The protesters began chanting, “Immigrants in, racists out” and tried to prevent Kenney from entering the room, while being pushed back by a number of Conservative McGill members and McGill Security agents. When Kenney and his aides finally entered, the doors were closed, but protesters continued yelling, “No borders,

no nations, stop the deportations,” and “Immigrants in, Kenney out”.

Inside, Kenney referred to the activists as “some of Canada’s leading anarchists”, and later as “thugs.”

The sounds of protests continued to resonate through the room during most of Kenney’s appearance.

When the doors were occasionally opened to let someone out, Kenney was completely drowned out as the pitch of the protest shot up.

The protest dissipated after 15 or 20 Montreal police officers were called in. No arrests were made, and Robyn Maynard of No One is Illegal said, “We left on our own free will.”

After Kenney’s presentation, the officers could be seen walking in double file out the back doors of the Arts Building.

In a speech describing his approach to immigration, Kenney lamented the challenge of finding appropriate jobs for well-qualified immigrants, saying, “Canada has the best qualified taxi drivers in the world.” To combat the endemic underemployment of immigrants, Kenney said the Conservatives have tripled federal funding for vital integration programs.

Addressing a question about his refugee policy, Kenney cited the 5,000 Nepalese Hindus claiming refugee status recently admitted to Canada from India, and the 12,000 Iraqi asylum-seekers the Conservatives expect to admit over the next three years.

Kenney has expressed concern in the past over Canada’s acceptance rate of refugee claimants, which, at 40 per cent, is twice the rate of any other industrialized

country, according to the minister. When asked specifically about his concerns, Kenney attributed the high rate, in part, to “massive flows of false refugee claims,” and “people using the asylum system as a back door to get in [to Canada], to avoid the immigration system.” He mentioned Mexican immigrants as being particularly culpable.

Kenney’s ministry imposed visa requirements on migrants from the Czech Republic and Mexico this July. The minister told The Daily it was in an effort to curb what he termed as “bogus” refugee claims.

Robyn Maynard saw another motive. “He’s using borderline racial stereotypes to make it difficult to apply for refugee status,” she said, referring specifically to Roma and Mexican migrants.

Kenney stressed that the Conservatives have played a constructive role, historically and recently, in immigration policy.

He referred to John Diefenbaker, Conservative prime minister from 1957 to 1963, who eliminated racial considerations in immigration decisions. Of his own time in office, Kenney said of the refugee claims process that, “any changes I make will likely add procedural fairness to the asylum system…including a system with a lot of appeals.”

Last Tuesday, according to the Toronto Star, the Parliamentary citizenship and immigration committee voted to establish an appeal division to hear the cases of rejected refugee claimants, though the five Conservative representatives on the committee voted against the motion.

cGill student Jackie Jones will be heard at the Quebec Superior Court on November 25, after she filed a racial profiling complaint to the Quebec Human Rights Commission (QHRC) in early July, with the help of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR). Jones, a black woman, was accosted and arrested by five security guards at the Peel metro station in late March of this year.

At the time of arrest, Jones was standing at the top of the stairs of the downtown station with a Hispanic male friend. They were asked by two Société de transport de Montréal (STM) security guards to step aside in French. One of the guards became angry when Jones requested they repeat their request in English.

“They said ‘move now!’ and it was a bit aggressive. I listened and was going to move on, but I told them that there is no need for the aggression. At this point they asked for my ID and were going to give me a ticket,” Jones said. “When I started to question them about why I was receiving a ticket, one of the guards grabbed my arm and twisted it to my back. They called for three more male security guards, who slammed me onto the ground and handcuffed me,” she added.

After a brief discussion with the police who later arrived, and the discovery that Jones was a McGill student, she was released. But Jones felt that she was a victim of racial

profiling and asked for help from the CRARR. According to Adrienne Gibson, a civil rights advocate at CRARR – a Montreal-based non-profit public interest organization – this is not an individual incident, but is among many other cases that are related to racial profiling.

“We have a number of cases where the police [or metro security guards] target members of the black community, particularly young men and women, but not exclusively.

These kinds of incidences happen and it is a systemic problem. It is a larger problem and has serious consequences for communities,” Gibson said.

In August, Jones received court papers citing two criminal charges for obstructing the work of civil servants in relation to the incident and was fined $100.

Jones advised students who have faced similar situations to share their experiences so that the systemic problem can be resolved.

“If there’s anybody who has ever been assaulted in this type of way without any reasoning, if they can share their stories with CRARR, then we can try to attack this situation from a citizen standpoint…and try to see what the source of the problem is,” Jones said.

Gibson felt that a solution would not be possible unless other victims also come forward.

“We think that the only way to stop this is to get people to come forward and to talk about what’s happening so that we can start coming up with some solutions,” Gibson said.

Just a heads up,

The Daily will be taking next Thursday off, so the first special issue of the year, Migrants, will be published on November 2.

Still interested in getting involved?

Contact coordinating@mcgilldaily.com, or stop by our office, Shatner B-24.

See you in November!

The McGill Daily Editorial Board

6 News Sunday, October 25 - Saturday, October 31 Defenders of the Land invites students to a week of educational events on indigenous rights and indigenous struggles. Events include: workshops, films, panels, Kahnawake community tour, AntiColonial Thanksgiving, Ya Basta!

Halloween Party and more! For more information visit defendersoftheland.org/montreal.

Green Drinks Montreal Tuesday, October 27, 5-7 p.m.

Thomson House, 3650 McTavish The PGSS environment committee presents “Sustainability at McGill: Mission impossible or never ending story?” a talk by Alexander Poisson and Jonathan Glencross of Sustainable McGill, Mix at 5 p.m., talk at 6 p.m. All welcome.

Projet Montréal’s Vision for a Sustainable City Tuesday, October 27, 4-5:30 p.m.

Lev Bukhman NDP McGill invites you to meet Luc Ferrandez, who will explain how his party’s progressive, pro-sustainable development vision will take our city in a greener, more equitable, more democratic direction. For more information about Projet Montréal visit projetmontreal. org

WHAT’S THE HAPS

Indigenous Sovereignty Week

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

Youth run for office in Westmount Candidates aim to increase youth involvement Courtney Graham The McGill Daily

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cGill alum – and former Daily editor – Nicholas Smith and McGill education student Phil Cutler are running for Westmount City Council in the November 1 municipal elections.

They are the only two university-age contestants in a race where six out of nine positions are contested.

Young politicians, however, are not a widespread provincial trend.

According to Quebec’s municipal affairs and regional elections web site, only 9.4 per cent of councillors elected in the province in 2005 were between the ages of 18 and 34.

Cutler is running in District 2 of Westmount, which has three candidates, the other two of which are senior members of the community.

“It’s the first real opportunity that I’ve had as an adult to get involved in municipal politics,” Cutler said. “I want to take advantage of that.”

“Our generation has been disengaged from political matters, without the involvement of youth.

At any age, it’s important that people become aware of what is going on around them, the decisions that affect them,” said Cutler.

Smith is running in District 4 against incumbent councillor Kathleen Warner Duncan, who has only served one term in Westmount. He said the majority of a councillor’s responsibilities involve tackling small projects, such as installing speed bumps and keeping Westmount’s bike lanes open to traffic during the winter.

“I have a lot of interesting goals.

We’ll see how naive and idealistic I am, [and] if I’m able to accomplish everything I said,” Smith said.

Though they were still uncertain how their youth might affect their work as potential councillors, Cutler and Smith felt they could offer a fresh perspective to residents who have lived in uncontested districts for longer periods of time.

“There’s a huge demographic that feels a disconnect in poli-

tics and I think that having one [young] councillor, and maybe two, would reflect the demographic weight of the age bracket that has tended not to care in the past,” said Smith.

“Once that has started, people will realize that it’s not just a closed-off, elderly branch that nobody knows about. Young people can actually get involved and do something for the better,” said Smith.

Youth involvement is important, Smith said, because municipal politics have the greatest effect on residents’ daily lives, and smaller, local problems are often easier to fix. More importantly, the youth living in Westmount today are the ones who will feel the effects of municipal decisions, such as the construction of a superhospital on the area’s borders.

A part of their strategy is also to highlight their youth as beneficial to the aging population of the community. “[The older residents are] looking to the younger generations who are much more competent

at developing the next level and taking it to the top in technology,” Cutler said.

Cutler added, however, that some residents took his age as a reason to not take him seriously as a politician.

“People are waiting for you to slip up. You can tell that they’re not going to [say], ‘I want to make decisions with a 21-year-old,’” Cutler said.

“They want wisdom, they want someone who supposedly is an expert, but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily the best.”

Neither Cutler nor Smith seems to be deterred by the lack of precedent for young councillors in Westmount, however.

“The only reason I am running is to win; that’s why people get involved in politics. I’m not running a campaign as just a joke. I’m using everything possible to put myself in the best position,” Cutler said.

Westmount residents can vote in Victoria Hall on Sunday, October 25 from 12-8 p.m.; or on Sunday, November 1 from 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

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 P ro g r a m ’s F R E E S k i l l s 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.

Coming this November...

Balancing Act of School, Work & Social Life Tuesday, November 3, 5:30-7:30pm (Downtown Campus) 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.

Communication Skills for Dealing With Different Personalities Monday, November 9, 4:00-6:00pm (Macdonald Campus) Thursday, November 12, 5:30-7:30pm (Downtown Campus) Is there a clash in personalities in your organization or club? Learn techniques and strategies that will allow you to handle difficult conversations and difficult people with skill and confidence.

Registration now available via Minerva!

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

It’s the most wonderful time of the year... the AUS FALL BY-ELECTION and REFERENDA period is here!

Call for nominations: • Arts Representative to SSMU (2) • REFERENDA QUESTIONS Due by: November 4th at 5pm Meeting with candidates: November 4th Campaign Period: November 5th, 9am to November 12th, midnight Advanced Polls: November 10th, 9am to November 12th, 5pm Polling: November 13th, 9am to 5pm Nomination forms are available at the AUS office, Leacock B-12.

For more information: aus.election@gmail.com

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

7

Montreal corruption: a primer The atmosphere surrounding the approaching November 1 election has quickly soured in recent weeks as numerous corruption scandals have come to light.

Recent news reports on the sordid dealings of municipal officials, construction firms, and even the mafia have prompted Montrealers to question whether their City’s government has their best interests at heart. Indictments of Hell’s Angels for laundering drug money through construction subcontracts and the underhanded funnelling of hundreds of thousands of corporate campaign donations into political coffers have begun to define the election season. With the two leading parties – Mayor Tremblay’s Union Montreal and opposition party Vision Montreal – both embroiled in scandal, third party Projet Montréal, led by Richard Bergeron, has been making recent gains in the polls.

The affair of the water meters The first shock of this election season was long in coming. On September 23, Mayor Gérald Tremblay cancelled a contract between the City and the private consortium GÉNIeau to install water meters and other expensive gadgets in buildings across the city. The contract’s value ballooned from its initial estimate of $32 million to approximately $355 million, making it the largest contract in Montreal history.

Allegations and consternation over the contract started last April, when it was revealed that Tremblay’s former “right-hand man,” Frank Zampino, had taken a lovely Caribbean vacation on the yacht of construction magnate Tony Accurso during the bid-tendering process. By the time these revealtions surfaced, Zampino was already out of politics and comfortably positioned as vice-president and chief financial officer of Dessau Inc., a partner in the consortium, which included businesses owned by Accurso, that received the water-meter contract.

Zampino resigned from his corporate positions, and following an announcement that some of Accurso’s businesses were being investigated for tax fraud, the water meter contract was “put on ice.”

Montreal’s auditor-general, Jacques Bergeron, was put on the case and announced on September 21 that the water meter contract should be cancelled, and that the City needs to overhaul the way it makes deals, saying that the process was “too fast, too big, too expensive.”

Tremblay announced that the deals were kaput – along with the City’s top two civil servants. But the mayor may have breathed a sigh of relief, as Bergeron blamed no one except a general climate of incompetence for the mishaps.

Tremblay owed the situation to “administrative shortcomings” and “procedural oversights,” and played it up as an opportunity to improve.

—Sam Neylon

Mafia runs road construction On the night of October 15, Radio-Canada aired its investigative radio program Enquête, in which whistleblower François Beaudry – a former senior engineer at the Quebec Transport Ministry – along with construction company owners, revealed widespread tampering with the supposedly closed bidding process for Quebec road construction.

Beaudry alleged that firms now control who is awarded municipal contracts and the prices of those contracts. Beaudry went even further, revealing the forces behind this widespread collusion.

“It’s Montreal’s Italian Mafia that controls what is going on in road construction. They control, from what we can tell, 80 per cent of the contracts,” Beaudry told Radio-Canada.

The “Fabulous Fourteen” were 14 construction firms that would decide amongst themselves who would receive a contract and for how much. The agreement would be communicated through code: “We’ll start on the fourth hole; we’ll be a party of nine,” meant that the winning, lowest bid would be $4.9 million, according to Radio-Canada.

This report also stated that this system of collusion has inflated the cost of road construction in Quebec up to 35 per cent compared to other provinces.

These revelations have ignited a shit storm

of accusations and political brouhaha at the municipal and provincial levels, with the top three parties in Montreal’s upcoming election and the opposition parties in Quebec all asking for a public inquiry.

On Thursday it was announced that Quebec was initiating the ominously named Opération Marteau (Operation Hammer), a special Sûreté du Québec (SQ) police squad, to investigate allegations of Mafia influence and widespread corruption. Quebec Premier Jean Charest has rebuffed calls for a public inquiry. The federal government has indicated that it will let the province handle the investigation.

The Montreal Gazette reported that some of the issues of serious concern to the police squad are that a man with close ties to the mafia sat in on a meeting to decide who would repair City Hall’s roof, and that “the Hells Angels have been using the construction industry to launder profits from drug trafficking by muscling their way in as subcontractors on large projects.”

After being up for one day, the Gazette reported that the SQ squad’s corruption hotline has already gotten many tips.

Construction magnate tries to stop Boisbriand election On October 16, Quebec’s chief electoral officer launched an investigation into reports that the owner of a construction firm in the suburban municipality of Boisbriand attempted to bribe two mayoral candidates into dropping out of the upcoming election.

Local construction magnate Lino Zambito discouraged Patrick Thiffault and Marlene Cordato, both municipal councillors, from running for mayor in a meeting with Zambito and Boisbriand mayor Sylvie Saint-Jean last spring. Thiffault and Cordato surreptitiously recorded the meeting, and recently turned a copy of the recording over to Radio-Canada.

CBC reports that Zambito’s Infrabec has won over half the municipal contracts awarded under Saint-Jean’s administration – cumulatively valued at about $50 million.

Saint-Jean claims that the purpose of the meeting was simply to try to curb the campaign costs of the upcoming election. “I thought it would be interesting to avoid an election that would cost $300,000 and work together,” Saint-Jean told the Montreal Gazette.

—SN

—Niko Block

Opposition leader resigns, accused of shady fundraising It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Ville-Marie borough mayor Benoit Labonté.

Two weeks ago, reports surfaced that he had accepted over $100,000 from the powerful local construction mogul Tony Accurso.

He was later excommunicated from his own party, Vision Montreal.

Labonté and Louise Harel, Vision’s mayoral candidate, both denied the allegations at first and accused Mayor Gérald Tremblay of promulgating rumours of corruption. Behind closed doors, however, Harel asked Labonté to step down as leader of Vision, according to the Montreal Gazette.

Currently, $180,000-worth of contracts doled out under Labonté’s tenure as mayor of Ville Marie are under review, including a $125,000 in contracts to a consulting firm run

by Michel Petit, who reportedly served as one of Labonté’s top advisers in the 2008 Vision leadership race.

Labonté decided to go for broke on Thursday and bust the cesspool of Montreal

and Quebec politics wide open. A former member of Tremblay’s Union Montreal party, Labonté has since accused both Tremblay and Harel of turning a blind eye to illegal campaign fundraising.

In an interview with Radio-Canada, Labonté admitted that he was lying when he initially denied that he had met with Accurso and accepted funds from him during his 2008 bid for leadership of the opposition party Vision Montreal. Labonté then joined the chorus of pundits calling for a public inquiry into municipal influence-pedalling Thursday, saying, “The system is so poisoned that we need a public inquiry immediately….

The real scandal would be not to have a public inquiry.”

Labonté also alleged that corporate payolas are constantly being funnelled into leadership races and electoral campaigns “in all the parties, municipal and provincial.”

—NB

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

Birth certificates: a gendering apparatus The state imposes unfair requirements on trans citizens

Binary is for computers Quinn Albaugh

L

ast week, I touched on why I’m uncomfortable interacting with the police as a trans person. However, the police are part of a larger system in which the state “genders” its citizens, deciding for each one what their legal gender will be and ignoring what those citizens have to say about the issue.

Generally speaking, the state assumes that all people are cis (or “non-trans”). As a result, it sees no problem in assigning each citizen a perceived sex via the birth certificate, then putting this assigned sex on subsequent documents, such as driver’s licenses and passports. In order to reverse this assignment of sex on all gendered documents, it’s often necessary to change it on the birth certificate first.

This legal gendering reinforces the gender binary, providing a bludgeon against people who don’t conform to their legal sex. For example,

a police officer or a security guard can deny trans people access to anything from a bar to air travel if their documents don’t match their gender presentation. In 37 U.S. states, there are no non-discrimination statutes protecting trans people; in those places, if an employer runs a background check that turns up any documents that don’t match, they can fire or refuse to hire someone for being trans. And, worst of all, legal documents can out trans people to those who might react violently against them.

As a result, many trans people need to change their legal gender so that their documents match their presentation or identity. The state doesn’t make this process easy; it imposes all sorts of requirements to change one’s legal gender, hurdles that make it very difficult for trans people to obtain that change.

Most U.S. states and Canadian provinces require proof of sex-

reassignment surgery (SRS), usually a letter from the surgeon who completed the surgery and another doctor (except in certain intersex cases). This requirement excludes all sorts of people who cannot undergo SRS for a variety of reasons – SRS’s prohibitive expensiveness, the lack of coverage in most provincial health plans, limited access to the surgery even in provinces that do cover it (e.g., Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and,

who are therefore legally legitimate; and those who cannot or do not want to have the surgery, and who are therefore illegitimate.

Furthermore, it’s simply absurd to disregard what trans people have to say about their gender while considering two doctors’ statements on it to be authoritative.

This requirement is not, however, the end of the legal obstacles for trans people who want their gender recognized. The state often

The state’s identification policies reduce citizens to their genitalia until a few months ago, Alberta), and the existence of medical conditions that would complicate the surgery. Most importantly, this requirement disregards the many trans people who don’t want SRS. Simply put, no state should require SRS for legal changes of gender. This policy legally reduces citizens to their genitalia; it reinforces the idea that to be a “real man” or a “real woman,” you need to undergo surgery. This creates two classes of trans people: those who can or want to have SRS, and

restricts changes in status in other ways. For example, in many places no minor can change their legal gender, making trans youth dependant on their parents’ good will – and not all parents are supportive or accepting. Moreover, even if a trans kid’s parents are supportive of their transition, in many jurisdictions, it’s still not legal for youth to get their legal sex changed – with or without parental consent.

In my case, this probably means that I have to return to Vermont, my place of birth, if I want to change

my legal gender. And after jumping through all these legal hoops, when I come out of the courthouse, I’ll have at best an “amended” birth certificate: it will always read “male,” but the state will be kind enough to maybe cross that word out and put “female” beside it. This attempt to continue gendering me without my consent is not only unjust but unsafe – my birth certificate will out me as trans every time I have to show it, and I have no way of knowing who’s hostile to trans people.

But the most frustrating question of all is this: why is there even a gender or sex marker on legal documents? Why does the state gender its citizens as “male” and “female,” thereby excluding anyone who doesn’t fit into those categories?

Even though I’d change my legal gender to female if I could, that’s not my ideal – it’s only a compromise.

The simplest solution to these problems would be to scrap the whole system – from sex assignment at birth to the hurdles the state has erected to changing legal gender.

Quinn Albaugh is going to write about queer people and immigration, trans people in prison and the police. Tell them what you think: binaryforcomputers@mcgilldaily. com.

Which witch are you?

Little bitter Riva Gold

A

friend once told me about a girl who wore a solid yellow unitard and pointy hat on Halloween, claiming to be a “naughty crayon.” I’ve since adopted a healthy cynicism toward modern Halloween costumes. But there’s one popular costume that seems to persist from year to year and is far scarier than any sex-worker + inanimate object combo: the witch costume.

Men and women, children and adults alike seem to have a particular propensity for dressing up as the ugliest witches they can imagine – old, discoloured, hunchbacked creatures of the night.

Irony and jest aside, the message seems to be clear: witches are evil, powerful, and potentially watersoluble. I think we need to seriously reconsider how we create and respond to these stereotypes, even

if they’re not intended to be taken seriously.

This week, five Muslim women, including three widows, were stripped and tortured in the Deoghar district of Jharkhand, India. According to local news channels, they were lucky to come out alive. Their crime? They were accused of practicing witchcraft.

In Tanzania, the belief that tragedies and social ills are caused by witchcraft has grown widespread of late, leading to surprise attacks on hundreds of elderly women. In Nigeria, roughly 15,000 children have been tortured or murdered in the last decade for the same reasons.

While we might not consider witches to be a serious threat here in North America, accusations of witchcraft are unfortunately not a thing of

the past. Across the world, in situations of disease, poverty, or oppression, ordinary women and children continue to be scapegoated into this role and tortured until they admit relations with the devil. Given that there are still people today submitted to this terrifying reality, it’s more than insensitive to make light of it in Halloween stereotypes.

Witch hunts also shouldn’t be seen as in any way alien to the West. Accusations of witchcraft constituted a prevalent and serious form of female oppression in 16th- and 17th-century Europe that has only recently been recognized in history books. Contrary to popular belief, the witch hunts of the Middle Ages were not about paranoid minorities accusing people who actually subscribed to heterodox religious beliefs.

Instead, women who owned land and those who actively confessed Christian faith were targeted.

Their property seized, these women were tortured, murdered, and subsequently forgotten.

Halloween costumes may be in good fun, but they have a very real impact on the formation of children’s worldviews and what we deem acceptable as a form of entertainment. Perhaps Mary

Matthew Milne / The McGill Daily

The costumed kind, or women tortured because they’re “witches”?

Stop dressing up like a witch, Stalin.

Malone, a feminist Christian historian, puts it best: “Although the actual experience of being burnt at the stake is unimaginable for us, the issues of denying women’s ideas, experience, and very personhood are still shockingly familiar.” Not only does propagating this stereotype reflect a serious ignorance of our own past, it is cruelly indifferent to the suffering of people who continue to be

oppressed across the world today.

We don’t like when people dress up as Stalin for Halloween: we’d think it seriously offensive to dress up as victims of female genital mutilation: we shouldn’t dress up as witches.

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

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

9

COMMENT

Don’t shoot the messenger Critiques on CFS shouldn’t devolve into mud slinging Erin Hale

I

n September, I broke a story about some students at 13 universities across Canada petitioning for their student unions to leave the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), the largest student lobby group in Canada. While this news did not directly pertain to undergraduates – since SSMU is no longer a prospective member – it did apply to graduate students at McGill, and was a nationally important story. I also felt it fit The Daily’s Statement of Principles, as the students I mentioned in the story were critical of a multi-million-dollar lobby group, which is important even if the organization espouses left-wing principles that Daily editors like myself might otherwise agree with.

Since then, assorted pro-CFS

types have been throwing my name around, accusing me, among other things, of manufacturing a crisis, of being a Conservative and a poor writer who would have failed in journalism school. While there’s nothing I can really say about that last one, I want to set the record straight from my end – because let’s face it, when a group of politically motivated students chooses to take down journalists rather than focus energy on constructively addressing actual grievances (however much you disagree with them), that’s a serious problem.

I don’t deny that there were issues with the article. A fairly evenhanded comment on a blog said my article was a bit hyperbolic, because I suggested the petition movement to leave CFS was massive – I concede that point. Only movements at seven of the 13 schools were being led by the student union execu-

tives. That fuck-up did discredit the impartiality of my story, but it didn’t mean that the story was false.

The same story ran in the Link, the Peak, and the Gauntlet, with stories of individual petitions (with varying degrees of success) in the Eye Opener, the Charlatan, the Ontarian, the Univesity of Western Ontario’s Gazette, the Martlet, and the Concordian. There were also posts on Maclean’s oncampus blog who seemed to endorse the story.

Similarly, just because some of the petitioners were in the minority doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be reported on. They’re critical of a multi-million-dollar industry, and that’s a news story.

How this whole debacle makes me a Conservative, I’m not sure. A poor writer, maybe. A liar, definitely not. Getting my name thrown around by people who don’t even bother to read my articles – they might find out

that I am, in fact, not a clandestine Conservative – is less annoying than how juvenile the CFS debate seems to be. The Internet is ablaze with blogs and opinion pieces on either side of the debate, but as Maclean’s blogger Robyn Urback points out, none of them actually address how to improve the CFS. Instead, they shout and point fingers, seeking to discredit the writer of any piece they don’t immediately agree with.

From some of the pieces I’ve read, I personally think the burden is on pro-CFS writers to respond constructively. The Daily’s Statement of Principles, which mandates that writers analyze power relations, makes me cast an inherently critical eye at any multimillion dollar lobby group, no matter its politics. CFS seems to suffer from the problems of a typical bureaucracy; even the United Nations needs more transparency and accountability, and its

members are upfront about it. The fact that CFS makes it so difficult for its members to leave, has an overzealous team of lawyers, and is slow to reveal its financial statements distracts from the good work it might do. The same thing goes for its critics and champions. When you sling mud at someone you agree with – much less journalists for mistakes that could have been settled with a simple and polite erratum – you undermine your points. Call me naïve, but both sides should take into account what students at their schools are saying, even if they’re in the minority, and bring their views to the upcoming CFS annual general meeting.

Erin Hale is The Daily’s coordinating News editor. She’s a U3 Philosophy and IDS student. Tell her she’s a crypto-fascist at erin. hale@mail.mcgill.ca.

HYDE PARK

Mendelson misunderstands free expression shameful and unworthy of McGill as a place of higher learning. What will you do to address it, Deputy Provost?

cGill

Daily

Stuart Wright is a U3 History stu dent. Write him at wright.stw@ gmail.com.

he M

accord it our highest reverence?

Mendelson has made clear that his office intends to treat repugnant political acts as if they were critical ideas, deserving the University’s protection. I fear this situation is

fo r T

ing the validity of abortion. Rather, it was purely interested in eliciting the conviction that abortion is wrong, and it relied on unreasoned and deliberately provocative means to do so. That’s what I mean when I call the event a political act: persuasion is the goal, and ideas are irrelevant.

Choose Life had every opportunity to make this event a civil discussion of abortion.

They were warned against using CCBR’s methods, and instead of presenting bare arguments, they chose to be provocative at considerable cost to themselves. If ideas were really the issue, would this event have taken the ugly form it did? Would any protester have risked a criminal record to shout down a reasonable debate?

By all means, let somebody make the case that abortion is the spiritual cousin of Auschwitz, and let the court of educated opinion put it in the bin with every other half-baked cultural critique. But let’s not suppose that we have a duty to stand for disgusting propaganda in the service of that idea.

I even submit that the principle to protect freedom of speech requires us to actively combat those who attempt to substitute images and emotional appeals for words and reasoned debate. Why should we tolerate sensationalism, let alone

K ay

T

he discussion we’ve seen so far regarding the “Echoes of the Holocaust” event needs some clarification. In particular, I’d like to examine Morton Mendelson’s response to the SSMU censure, and question the idea that our duty to protect free expression is relevant to how we deal with events of this nature.

SSMU’s pre-emptive censure of the event, issued on the grounds that it seemed likely to violate the rules governing the activity of student clubs, was a good reason to cancel it, and the case to cancel became obvious and compelling once police were called and charges threatened against protesters. In short: it would have been prudent to cancel the event before it happened, and even more so once it was disrupted, and we need to appeal to some strong opposing principle if we wish to do otherwise.

The principle Mendelson invokes is that, as a university, we should wherever possible advance and protect the expression of ideas, even when it seems prudent not to.

My argument is that Professor Mendelson’s appeal to the freedom of speech requires him to construe that principle in broader terms than are justified. In particular, his argument takes for granted that the principle should apply not only to the verbal statement of ideas, but also to the presentation of those ideas in any form.

To the contrary, we must draw a hard distinction between ideas and the means used to advance those ideas. A test case such as “Echoes of the Holocaust” makes

it very clear that while expression deserves the University’s protection, not all means of expression do. In a serious and fundamental way, the event was a political act and had little to do with ideas.

The reason why Jose Ruba’s presentation should be treated as a menace has to do with its form more than its content. For the following I refer you to Ruba’s organization, the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR). At issue are CCBR’s characteristic devices: pictures of gory fetuses, graphic abortion videos, and testimonials from women who regret their abortions. These are not the tools of argument; they are the arsenal of one who wishes to appeal to the emotions.

CCBR’s web site makes quite clear that its approach centres on the use of provocative images because they are “effective” in the “moral persuasion” of an audience.

Small wonder: it’s hard to imagine a person who wouldn’t feel revulsion and sympathy at the sight of a bloodied human figure. But does that instinctive reaction really have any value in the market of ideas?

Need we treat the pornography of revulsion as “evidence” relevant to the abortion question?

Worst of all are the Holocaustthemed advertisements – and ads are what they are – for which there is no possible justification. It is morally repugnant to use pictures of Holocaust victims for any political purpose. Full stop. There is hardly a more emotionally explosive tactic available, and Choose Life must have been aware of that.

What I’m getting at is that “Echoes of the Holocaust” was not interested in examining or criticiz-

M at t

Stuart Wright

10Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009 HYDE PARK

Freedom of expression is integral to education Morton J. Mendelson

F

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

HYDE PARK

The devil & the activists Former president Bush’s visit exposes rifts in the Left Adrienne Klasa

O

n Thursday, the devil – to some – descended upon Montreal. George W. Bush graced us with his presence at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel for $400 per head for a thousand guests. No members of the press were formally invited.

Outside, protesters had gathered waving signs that read “Fuck (my) Bush,” “George Bush=War Criminal,” and “Don’t Duck.” Riot police arrested five people.

When I was offered a free ticket, Here was my opportunity to see the man who symbolized everything my political education has taught me to despise. I can hear it all – the lies, the proselytizing, the mispronunciations – from the horse’s mouth.

Yet the question remained in the back of my mind: was I in some way corroborating his legacy by sitting calmly in his presence?

Some would argue yes. There was no yelling or shoe-throwing.

Most people laughed at his jokes.

There was no uproar when he shat all over democratic accountability: “I didn’t care about the polls; they didn’t matter a damn bit.” If there was adversity in the room, he was only made to feel it minimally. And now, he is laughing all the way to the bank.

Outside, crowds were cheering as his effigy burned. The protestors could not be accused on any level of “participating.”

This divide in action is emblematic of a larger debate that our generation is grappling with: what is the best route for effecting political action? Mobilizing in the street might seem like the most obvious answer – it is visible, it is democratic, and it doesn’t compromise those involved.

Nevertheless, people our age are largely disenchanted with grassroots politics. The protest era faded along with our parents’ ideological aspirations into the rampant materialism of the eighties. The formative years of our understandings of global politics were dominated by the paradigms of the Bush administration – which overtly lied to its own people, capitalized on fear-mongering, and steamrolled the demands of the millions worldwide who protested the Iraq invasion. We are identified as apathetic and careerist; and frankly, given the precedents, these tendencies are understandable, if not acceptable.

Was I rationalizing self-promotion in the name of intellectual interest while indulging in some kind of morbid curiosity?

All of this was on my mind during the speech. By the end of Bush’s presentation, though most of the information wasn’t new, my appreciation for the man’s significance was.

People go on about how Bush was a bobble-head mouthpiece for the powerful hawks in his cabinet.

Perhaps, but in the space of those few hours I understood that he is not stupid. He is well-spoken, if familiar, and funny, fielding awkward questions with certainty.

Those of us who disagree with him have tended to underestimate him in order to avoid facing the uncomfortable realization that Bush is a daunting opponent. His success was not pure fluke (though the Supreme Court helped). I can appreciate now how he managed to polarize American society. If I had forgotten for a moment what he represented and the discrepancies between what he was saying and the facts, I could almost have liked the guy. This explains how he captured the vote of the vast number of Americans who do not devote much time to politics and

so choose based on personal rapport with the candidate. Bush is personable, charismatic, and magnetic. This realization was frightening and, I hope, useful, an insight that I could only have gained by accepting to be on the “inside” for a time.

I’m still unsure how to distinguish “gaining knowledge” from “participating.” What I do know is that the two approaches, protesting and working from the inside out, need to stop being perceived as antithetical. It fractures those who are working toward common ends by different means. Sellout, conspirator, hippy, daydreamer: these words all have their application, yet the lines we draw too often lack nuance.

We need both approaches to work effectively and cooperatively. I resent the assertion in the ad hoc George W. Bush Welcoming Committee’s press release that the only people in attendance at the event would be “other crooks.”

This is not a mechanism for mobilizing people effectively; it creates an entity of “others” that is easy to use as leverage but is ultimately too simplistic. Never assume you can encapsulate everyone’s motives in a catchphrase. Should there have been a protest? Absolutely. But that doesn’t negate the contribution that dissenters who choose to get an inside look can also provide.

The constructs of our globalized society are monolithic. As the experience of the Bush administration clearly demonstrates, we will need every means possible if we wish to have an impact.

reedom to express a wide range of ideas – a privilege of our democracy – is essential in a modern university. Sharing ideas is indispensible to the quest for knowledge, which drives the intellectually curious people who make up a university. It shapes our research and our attempts to discover what we do not yet know. It enriches our understanding, allowing us to add dimension and nuance to what we think we know, and to what we may even take as accepted truths. And it helps us understand that, in fact, there is so much yet to learn.

In a context of intellectual freedom, we expose ourselves to a wide range of ideas. We will agree with some of them and disagree with others; we will be mildly dismissive of some, but we will be repulsed, offended, or even shocked by others. And, with luck, this active engagement with the world of ideas will continue throughout life as we learn more, and some of our perceptions of what is true and what is offensive or nonsensical change.

Accepting and protecting another’s right to express a point of view does not preclude our right to express our own opposing opinion. But there is a crucial difference between expressing disagreement and preventing others from presenting their views in the first place.

Keeping others from speaking or otherwise stifling debate or intellectual exploration violates the concept of free speech, which is fundamental to a university and thereby attacks the very core of the academy. A university must provide a very wide berth indeed to the ideas that can be expressed within its community. And that is why it acts to defend the right to free expression when someone attempts to undermine it. But there are limits to what may be said and disseminated on campus. Our legal system prohibits hate speech, defamation (libel or slander), and obscenity – prohibitions that apply here. On campus, there may also be limits imposed on the placement of disturbing images meant to support positions or on handouts to people who have not willingly agreed to accept such materials.

There is an important difference between legally defined hate speech and speech that some find

hateful. The former is not permitted; the latter can be, even if some are offended or disturbed by it. Our tolerance may be tested, but as long as the audience is present by choice and not by accident or requirement, even objectionable speech ought to have its place.

The students who sang and shouted down the speaker at the recent Choose Life event violated one of the University’s core values: ideas must be given free expression in a place of learning and discovery.

No one was compelled to attend the event; it was scheduled in a room that is not an open public space. No one was forced to see graphic imagery that many would find offensive; the publicity advised that the imagery would be shown, and the images were confined to the room.

Yet the protesters – a small group of self-appointed guardians of “truth” – decided that others should not be allowed to hear the speaker’s views, even adults who voluntarily came to do just that.

The protesters assumed that members of our community are not sufficiently mature to decide for themselves whether the speaker’s views are legitimate or nonsense, worthy of debate or worthy of derision.

Some have mistakenly argued that once SSMU voted to censure the Choose Life event, the University had no business allowing the event to proceed. When an event is duly organized according to McGill’s rules, as this one was, no individual or group of individuals – be they parents, donors, a student association, interested outside parties, or others – should be able to restrict free expression on our campuses.

There are legitimate ways to express opposition to a particular view – e.g. debating in good faith or holding an event to present a counter-argument or an opposing point of view. Indicating opposition through protest can itself be legitimate expression. But stifling others’ speech goes too far and undermines a basic tenet of the University. Freedom of expression is a fundamental element of our civilized and democratic society, without which we would be immensely impoverished. We must all do our part to protect this essential right at McGill.

Morton J. Mendelson is the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning).

Write him a dry treatise on a controversial topic and send it to morton. mendelson@mcgill.ca.

Want to see a letters page?

Adrienne Klasa is a U3 Honours student in political science and philosophy, as well as the editor of the McGill Foreign Affairs Review.

Write her at mcgillfar.editor@ gmail.com.

Write us a letter. letters@mcgilldaily.com

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

11

HYDE PARK

African NGOs aren’t so bad Volunteer groups do legitimate, necessary work Nick Lefrançois

T

he Facebook surveys Sana Saeed referenced in her article on images of Africa (“The popular, pornographic view of Africa,” Commentary, October 15) bring up a good point: unfortunately, most of us do think of poverty, disease, famine, and corruption before culture when asked about Africa. Previous to my trip to the continent in the summer of 2008 as a Youth Ambassador for World Vision Canada, I was relentlessly asked why I was even interested in going to a place where everyone is violent and sick. This overly simplistic and degrading impression of a whole continent is clearly an inadequate way of thinking about 53 countries and so many more different cultures.

However, is it reasonable to discuss the idea that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are partly responsible for the projection and exacerbation of this erroneous, simplistic idea of Africa? In a single

accusatory paragraph, Saeed holds NGOs partly responsible for the way most of us think. She writes: “Every time you donate to World Vision, you are undermining the ability of Africans to be the agents of change of their own condition.”

First of all, I feel that I should point out that there would be no need for NGOs if there were no poverty, disease, and corruption in the world. Their main goal, in fact, is to combat these issues. We must keep in mind that raising funds and gathering resources for healthy, prosperous people is more difficult and insignificant than doing so for the sick and poor. It would be fruitless for NGOs to show only the thriving arts of Africa on our television screens.

They choose to depict the continent as a place “ravaged by war, lawlessness, illiteracy, disease, and drought” because it is in so many ways.

As for the depiction of Africa as a single “country,” I think that is a misinterpretation on our part.

Many of the problems in Africa have

no respect for borders. We cannot accuse NGOs of giving Africa a bad rap if those NGOs are focused on achieving their goals. If anything, they can only be blamed for raising awareness in our society of the realities that many people face.

It is also completely unfounded to claim that NGOs are undermining the ability of African communities to help themselves. One must understand how a development project in Africa is structured before deciding that it does not include African thinkers, workers, managers, etc.

For example, UNICEF staff have the vital task of building alliances with local communities, helping them to ensure the education and well-being of their own children. Education and assistance are ways to encourage Africans to be agents of change, not to undermine them. The fact alone that so many NGOs focus on education contradicts Saeed’s assertion.

All the NGOs she mentions allocate a large amount of their resources to education.

I can only speak from personal experience regarding World Vision, however. Throughout the month that I spent in Tanzania, I participated as a Youth Ambassador in a number of meetings and made visits to projects in different communities. Nothing I learned led me to believe that Africans are being denied the chance to be agents of change. Canada is a support country. This means that it partners with countries like Tanzania and supports their World Vision chapter.

World Vision Tanzania is made up of a dedicated Tanzanian staff that is responsible for tasks ranging from establishing communication links to project management and oversight.

These staff members are being the agents of change in their communities and they are African.

Perhaps more demonstrative of the incorrectness of Saeed’s accusation is a central feature of the Youth Ambassador program: the Youth Forum, a three-day event at which student representatives from

high schools throughout the region of Singida meet with six young Canadians. One of the main goals of this forum is to give these inspirational Tanzanian teenagers an audience with key leaders in their communities, to give them a voice so they too can exercise their ability to be agents of change. In many ways, they are the most successful.

It is with these two examples and the many more like them in mind that we are able to sleep at night when we donate to World Vision or to any of the other organizations mentioned. It is unfair to NGOs to use our increasing knowledge of the suffering and injustices in the world to be angry with them, instead of using it to further raise awareness. And we should raise awareness, especially in those who have such a distorted view of an amazing continent.

Nicholas Lefrançois is a U2 Civil Engineering student. Write him at nicklef09@gmail.com.

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12Features

Recycling is a gateway drug

Alison Withers explores how it’s the first dose when it comes to campu

I

t’s late on a Sunday night in McLennan Library, during midterm crunch season. The garbage and recycling bins in the basement are overflowing with evidence of students’ cram session dinners: a Jenga tower of pizza boxes, sushi trays, coffee cups, and other fast-food remains.

Dan Shiner, a co-founder of the TEVA Recycling initiative, eyed the stack nervously. “Everything in that recycling bin is probably going to the garbage, and I can tell you why,” he said. He’s referring to paper, glass bottles, plastic cups, newspapers – all items stamped with a recycling logo. He explains that unlike municipal recycling – which offers a carte blanche to put anything and everything in the green bin you have in your apartment – McGill has a blend of rules and contracts that makes recycling a different exercise altogether. For the past 10 months, Shiner and a small, dedicated team of management undergrads – Emily Tiechman and Ryan Borenstein – have been designing tools to mitigate the issue.

“When I see an overflowing bin, it reminds me of an overflowing world,” Shiner said. “The reason I recycle is because I’m nervous about where we’re going to put all our stuff.”

Armed with a colourful education campaign, their pilot project in McLennan Library (officially the Humanities and Social Sciences Library) could, if successful, divert large amounts of recyclable products from landfills. Beginning today, a series of informative posters and nine mega-bins will replace stand-alone garbage bins and the misused recycling bins throughout the study area.

A quick survey of administrative opinions at McGill gives the sense that the University was waiting for this godsend of a project to land on their doorstep, since it addressed a long-standing problem on campus.

In the past five years, McGill made considerable investments to installing indoor and outdoor heavyduty bins for recycling, but nobody was instructing students on the specifics of how to use them.

“They came up with ideas about how to promote visibility and awareness [about recycling],” commented Jim Nicell, Associate Vice-Principal (University Services), of the student-led TEVA project.

“It’s a great example of a synergy [between students and the administration],” he added. With McGill Libraries backing it, the project’s effectiveness could signal its introduction to all campus libraries.

But eco-oriented students on campus probably didn’t catch wind of this initiative until a few weeks ago, when Shiner and his team started advertising their project launch.

Jonathan Glencross, Sustainable McGill coordinator, was impressed by the group’s ability to isolate a specific problem on campus and craft a solution to address it. “It was based on a campus need, which is good,” he said. “Lots of campus groups perceive a global need and try to rubber stamp it locally.”

T

here are three large misunderstandings about recycling on campus. The first misconception is that the University gets the City to pick up its waste.

In fact, McGill, a small city of 238 b large institution, contracts its was private waste collector. Embedded is a finicky set of rules that qualif recyclable goods.

“People are looking for a unive what can and can’t be recycled, exist,” Shiner explained. “You ha rules on campus, or anywhere you Since recycling programs are erned, every time you move you’re form to local conditions and prov city-to-city consistency is nearly impractical.

Many haven’t adapted to McGi and don’ts. The second misunde that: many people don’t know wha recycled. This means that a lot people are polluting McGill’s system recycling bins have been lowering that gets converted into new ma the wrong item in the wrong bin ish its entire contents to the landfill its waste into three streams – clea metal-glass, and trash – and contam these streams is ironically high in where food and drink aren’t allowe Emotions have flared in the pa noticed custodial staff throwing re tents in the garbage. The anger however. It’s not in the job desc McGill staff or waste collection staff

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

g

us sustainability

ersal principle of but that doesn’t ave to learn new u go.” municipally gove required to convincial guidelines; impossible and

ill’s recycling do’s erstanding is just at can or can’t be of well-intending m. Contaminated the tally of waste aterials; dropping could easily banl. McGill channels an paper, plasticmination between libraries, an area ed. ast when students ecycling bin conwas misdirected, cription of either f to straighten out

people’s disposal errors.

“We’ve seen many instances where the contamination is so high that the person would be irresponsible to put it with the recyclables,” said Nicell.

Putting things in the right bins has an economic value that goes beyond their ability to be recycled, as McGill pays a lower fee to the contractor for highvalue recyclable goods – like clean paper and newsprint.

Dennis Fortune, University Services Sustainability Director, confirmed that McGill simply didn’t, and probably wouldn’t, have the capacity to sort its own recycling bins. “We don’t have the facility,” he said.

“The best thing is to take it to a transfer station where they’re doing the sorting.”

The root of the contamination issue is attributed to the third unfortunate unknown about recycling on campus: if you don’t know which bin to drop it in, throw it in the garbage. The roster of non-recyclables includes used pizza boxes, coffee cups and lids, milk cartons, waxed paper, plastic cutlery, Styrofoam cups or trays, and Iced Cappuccino cups.

“Some people use [recycling] as a personal statement about what should be recycled,” Nicell said.

Let’s say you’re standing there with your used coffee cup, made of paper and plastic, and because you believe it ought to be recycled, you drop it in the paper bin. That’s a bad move.

“If everyone knew where coffee cups and lids went – both in the garbage – recycling would be a hell of a lot better,” Shiner said.

R

ecycling is good for the environment, but it’s largely a feel-good action. Ask anyone with a strong science or environmental background, and they’ll tell you that recycling is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to initiatives to create sustainability.

“When I say the word ‘sustainability,’ it’s incredible the amount of people who start talking to me about recycling paper,” said Glencross. “I’m talking about the ability for our entire species to continue over the next hundred years and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s great that you recycle!’”

Recycling is like a gateway drug, Glencross told me. Once you understand the process of recycling – and how much energy and pollution are created in recycling materials – you start reducing and reusing more; recycling is the third step in a whole series.

“Recycling is just diverting waste. It’s the lesser of two evils,” he said.

An obvious starting point for waste reduction could be our paper output. Last year alone, McGill estimated it printed some 150-million odd pages, accounting for around 60 per cent of its waste stream. Once you wrap your head around the magnitude of that number, consider the mismatch in our recycle rates: as of September, only 38 per cent of McGill’s waste is being diverted as recyclable goods according to its audits, falling short of the 65 per cent provincial target.

“I tell my students [that] your eye shouldn’t be on your recycle rate. The emphasis has to be on reduce, not recycle,” said Nicell, who doubles as a civil engineering professor and has taught solid

waste management.

Glencross, who’s the green force behind projects like the Food Systems project and the new Sustainability Fund, had some suggestions for putting sustainable goals into operation. McGill has a lot more information on its waste audits than ever before, and should continue to publish the data publicly. Making waste audits or recycling faculty- or building-specific on a manageable scale would also sensitize people to their waste habits. “It’s kinda like a diet, where if you don’t have a scale, how can you lose the weight,” Glencross said, adding that allowing people to monitor their progress could be an effective strategy.

Part of this strategy may be realized under a new sustainability policy, which is set to surpass the lesseffective environmental policy.

“Our objective is to make sustainability a reflex, not an afterthought,” explained Nicell, “It will only be embodied if people are doing the rethinking and reducing.”

Nicell and his team are talking about a full-scale cultural move toward sustainability at McGill, which will be a tough project to say the least. Part of educating McGill about proper recycling will be undoing certain previous “knowledge” about trendy or mainstream “sustainable practices” that are in fact detrimental. The social pressure to be an eco-conscious citizen and to do one’s part by recycling now needs to come with a specific, localized knowledge about how each system works. Ignorance about these issues isn’t helping anyone.

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

buildings, like any ste disposal to a d in that contract fy what counts as

13

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

Opposite: The Flos celebrate under a downpour of Pabst Blue Ribbon. This page, clockwise from top right: Flo Tracy congratulates the team as they head to the locker room; a team member stocks up on provisions before the game; the Flos celebrate the game-winning goal late in the second period; team members dish out equal amounts of abuse and encouragement from the bench.

Sports

15

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

16

Abortion, scientifically speaking A look at the medical misconceptions within a moral issue Rhea Pavan Sci+Tech Writer

A

bortion. We’re no strangers to the arguments on all sides of the discussion, nor are we ignorant of the controversy surrounding the issue. Debates, demonstrations, and protests bring the subject to our doorsteps, right here on our own campus.

But with everyone wanting to weigh in, a lot of facts and myths can be thrown around freely with little regard to their truth or relevance. How much of what we “know” is misinformation, or based on skewed or selective data? What do we really know about the science of abortion?

Procedures explained A conversation with any MD or scientist will reveal that medical professionals divide abortion into two categories – medical and surgical.

Medical abortion involves taking certain drugs to terminate a pregnancy while surgical abortion involves emptying the uterus with special instruments. A common misconception is that medical abortion can only be performed in the early stages of pregnancy, and that anyone further along has to opt for a surgical procedure.

In reality, prostaglandin drugs can be used to induce labour in pregnancies that are up to 20 weeks along, and surgical methods, such as vacuum aspirations, can be used as early as five weeks. Although certain methods are more common at certain points in time, medical professionals often use their own discretion to accommodate each client based on situation and preference.

One of the most common methods of medical abortion includes a combination of the drugs methotrexate (MTX) and misoprostol; the first stops the growth of cells in the uterus while the second causes uterine contractions, which expel the tissue. This method is used in the first eight weeks of pregnancy.

You may have heard of the drug formerly known as RU-486 – infamously protested and campaigned against internationally after its initial release in France. Although not legally available in Canada, it is now called mifepristone, and is a common substitute for MTX. The emergency contraception drug Plan B, or the morning-after pill, is commonly known. Taken in the first three days after suspected conception, Plan B is, strictly speaking, not an abortion pill, but rather a pregnancy preventative.

Surgical options involve using suction to remove the tissue (as with vacuum aspirations and Ipas syringes). In pregnancies that are further along, dilation and evacuation

(D&E) can be employed. This method takes longer than other medical or surgical options because dilators are applied overnight to open the cervix and uterus entrance, and the next day, instruments are used to evacuate the tissue.

Complications – Risky business?

Both types of procedures carry some degree of risk. Some of the after-effects include pain, nausea, cramping, and bleeding, but physical recovery usually occurs within a few hours. With surgical abortion, the risk of damaging internal organs increases and an additional set of risk factors accompanies any procedure that uses anaesthesia.

Even though there is a vast array of information available about abortion, especially on the Internet, there is almost as much misconception and speculation.

Jacqueline Coté, the head nurse at Clinique médicale Fémina, attests that eight out of 10 patients know what procedures they want performed before they even enter the clinic, thanks to their own independent research, but that most women are also misinformed about the procedure’s side effects, both long- and short-term.

“Everyone is surprised; the risks are over-exaggerated,” said Coté.

“There is more danger [associated] with pregnancy and with childbirth than abortion.”

One of the most widespread and false accusations against abortion is that it increases a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. A lot of research was carried out to determine the validity of this claim and while many older studies did seem to verify a tentative link between the two, review by the scientific community found these studies to be flawed and inconsistent.

A World Health Organization (WHO) fact sheet entitled “Induced abortion does not increase breast cancer risk” refers to a sampling bias in many case-control studies that attempt to relate abortion history and breast cancer prevalence later in life. These studies gathered results from an unrepresentative sample population and relied on the honesty of self-reports, limiting the reliability of the data.

The WHO fact sheet states: “Women with breast cancer (cases) tend to truthfully report induced abortion while controls, who often are healthy women, have no ‘incentive’ to provide information about personal and sensitive matters such as induced abortion.”

There are also countless arguments linking abortion to future health risks such as decreased fertility or riskier future pregnancies.

Newer studies, for the most part, show no direct link between abor-

Andrea Zhu for The McGill Daily

tion and these medical issues. Coté dispelled the notion that any longterm medical effects are related to having an abortion.

“There are no problems with the uterus, no birth issues, no cancer, no nothing,” she said.

In the U.S., federal constitutional law gives adolescents the right to abortion, but certain states have tacked on additional barriers, such as requiring parental permission, that can lead to delays in obtaining timely abortions and even push some teens to opt for alternate solutions outside the official system.

Anne Davis, an MD at Columbia University, acknowledges some of the common obstacles faced by teens when obtaining abortions in the U.S. “[Risks arise with] later abortions for this group, which are less safe, less accessible, more time consuming, and more expensive,” said Davis.

Health risks associated with unsound practices and means of termination, in later stages of pregnancy for teens, can be overgeneralized when applied to abortion and then communicated to the population at large.

In Montreal, there are a number of pregnancy support and crisis hotlines available for free, as well as confidential information services. Charlotte, a medical professional who volunteers for the pregnancy crisis line Grossesse-Secours (last name and position withheld for confidentiality purposes), urged that women should have access to accurate information.

“Everyone should talk to a health professional. There is a lot of false

information out there on the net,” she said.

each abortion centre also has its own reporting requirements, thus making it difficult to compare much of the data. Results are then weight-

“There is more danger [associated] with pregnancy and with childbirth than abortion” Jacqueline Coté Head Nurse, Clinique médicale Fémina

Presenting the information – Aggregation, Manipulation Statistics can be easily manipulated to support either side of the argument – even something as simple as an accurate provincial or national abortion rate is difficult to determine. In developing countries, there are high numbers of under-the-radar abortion clinics and unsafe abortion practices, making it difficult to get an exact idea of each regional situation.

However, around 70 per cent of abortions take place in developing countries, and there is still a large amount of confusion surrounding abortion rates and practices. Even government health departments are not considered a very reliable source of data on abortion. Their reach only includes certain registered abortion providers in the area, since they must operate within restricted geographical boundaries.

Even within their jurisdiction, their ability to acquire reliable and accurate responses is limited.

Each health department and

ed differently, depending on population and region, causing variation when compiling statistics.

Academics tend to turn to private agencies and institutes to compile information straight from abortion providers. These, however, can also be unreliable if they are rallying for funding, or pushing their own agenda.

In a political and moral debate, knowing the scientific accuracies of “facts” and statistics is crucial. There are countless groups, institutions, and individuals that knowingly or unknowingly abuse flawed or skewed information to support their arguments. With the air around science and research becoming increasingly foggy, and false accusations and wrongly interpreted data appearing at every corner, hopefully we can remember to search for the medical realities in our arguments and not take others’ interpretations as the final word.

Sci+Tech

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

17

Methods in backyard stargazing Plus or minus sigma

16+16 = 32 32+32 = 64 64+64 = 128 37x98 = ???

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zero and two standard deviations of the mean. No, we’re not covering systematic error in this course because that requires something other than a sheet of prescribed formulae.

Ernest Rutherford is quoted on a lecture slide: “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” And then, we launch into the first lecture of what might very well be an entire semester of standard deviations and weighted average calculations. Homework is assigned twice a week, and consists mostly of coaxing MATLAB – ”matrix laboratory” software – code into an acceptable syntax. Marks off if the points on your graphs aren’t circles. Ten per

So, start preparing your applications!

Any questions can be forwarded to illustrations@mcgilldaily.com

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The McGill Daily

= = = =

But those years of amateur stargazing gave way to nights of too much webwork, of cramming for midterms.

As I sit in my weekly hour-anda-half Experimental Methods 1 lecture – a required course for all physics majors, honours, and atmospheric science students – my brain begins to freeze over. Zero credit on homework assignments if you use the improper number of significant figures in your calculations or you neglect to staple your paper in the upper left hand corner. No extra words in your answers – this is physics class, not story time. Conclusions in the lab write-up must be between two and four sentences, all acceptable experimental values between

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1+1 2+2 4+4 8+8

gen and helium gaseous bodies, it felt so safe on those chilly summer nights. Beyond five miles of atmosphere, beyond the future years of rocket science, of faster and cheaper innovation – and, perhaps, a bend or two in the laws of physics as we know them – who knew a world so empty and foreign and vast existed. And to think that we are the exception. Even if there are so many colonies of life alien to our own, there is still surely more space than stuff, more planets empty than those slowly being trashed by cells, able to grow and replicate in an orderly fashion.

Spending the daytime curled up inside with an illustrated copy of Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, problem sets about rocket ships, and episodes of the Scientific American podcast on black holes and the Drake Equation, each seemed like a new adventure and made returning outside after sunset all the more interesting.

Why does Saturn have rings? How is a star born? How does one find out what stars are made of? How can we know what was going on in the universe in the very moments after its birth?

will be looking for a new Illustrations editor for the winter semester.

I

used to spend evenings sitting in an Adirondack chair on the back porch of my house in Summerfield, North Carolina, where – before developers caught onto the acres of easily-clearable trees – the light pollution wasn’t too bad. At night, the sky was an impossibly black ocean afloat with silver pinpricks, like hundreds of diamonds on black velvet, or an overturned pasta strainer with light that poured through the holes in the dark, dark metal.

Leaning back and staring straight up, I felt as if I could fall straight off my quiet little patch of Planet Earth and into the cosmos. No spaceship, no escape velocity required.

The Milky Way, Orion’s Belt, Pleiades the Seven Sisters, and Venus, which, like all planets, does not twinkle, and shooting stars, which will always appear, if you wait and stare upward long enough – a little composite picture of the past, a collage of what existed in different nooks of the universe 640 years ago, 440 years ago, three minutes ago, and .00000002 seconds ago.

Though our little planet pales in size to the shimmering hydro-

Evan Newton / The McGill Daily

Shannon Palus

cent gone if you forget to number your pages.

Vulgar derivatives of “suck up to the teacher for a good grade” begin to circulate among the students as we crunch data and crumple up another piece of half-used graph paper.

Somewhere between N = infinity, reviewing rounding numbers, Gaussian curves, and the 200-person rush to pick up our assignments at the end of class, I can’t help but wonder: is this what we came here for?

Shannon Palus’s column will be appearing every other week. Until then, you can write to her at plusorminussigma@mcgilldaily.com.

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Culture

18

Lukas Thienhaus/ The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

Cutting out the middleman Canadian writer Andrew Smith chronicles his efforts at self-publishing Kira Josefsson The McGill Daily

W

alking through a big library can make one a bit shaky in the knees.

So many books, so little time – and then one realizes that new volumes are constantly being added to the already full shelves.

It’s dizzying, and one wonders how the sheer number of books in existence doesn’t deter all prospective authors. It seems as though it would require an extraordinary amount of self-confidence to try to add one’s own work to the huge collection of great (and less great) literature that’s out there. But there is no indication that contemporary writers hesitate to promote their creations. In the shadow of big publishing houses’ crises of waning readership, and their desperate search for a saviour in blockbusters from the likes of Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer, another branch of the business is thriving: doing it yourself. Today, almost anyone can surpass the hierarchical gatekeeping structures that characterize publishing companies through

self-publishing, a trend that may be called the democratization of the literary field.

Andrew Smith, a Canadianbased writer who keeps a day job as a book designer, got tired of slow dancing with publishers who took years to give him a straight “no” about his book. He decided to go a different route and self-publish his novel Edith’s War, a process he documents in the blog edithswarselfpublish.com.

“There definitely was interest, but nobody who’d actually commit to trying to publish the book,” Smith recalled. While it is his first novel, Edith’s War is not the first thing Smith has written. His short fiction and non-fiction have previously appeared in magazines like Descant and Real Travel, and he has been shortlisted for both the CBC Literary Award and the Journey Prize. Extracts from Edith’s War that have appeared on the blog give a promising glimpse of a tale about the second World War, projected onto two generations, in two different settings, through two modes of storytelling.

Still, it’s hard not to be hesitant about a work when the term “self-

published” is attached to it.

There is a definite stigma surrounding self-publishing, a fact that Smith discusses on his blog. In an interview in the New York Times last January, Robert Young, CEO of the self-publishing house Lulu Enterprises, said that his company had “easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind.” While Young’s comment was both disrespectful and ill-advised, self-publishing is nicknamed vanity press for a reason, and it’s impossible for such associations not to affect a serious writer with self-publishing in mind.

But the question still remains, should writing even be democratized? Or are there certain markers of quality that only professional editors can recognize? Smith notes that he had his initial doubts, but felt encouraged by the interest expressed by prospective editors before they turned the book down.

After critically reading it through, he decided it was worth a try, and has found an independent editor to help him, called J.D. on the blog.

“I honestly don’t still have doubts about the quality of the book”, Smith wrote in an email. “Now that

a well-respected editor with lots of publishing experience has read it and pronounced it definitely of good enough quality, I don’t doubt for a minute that the book stands up really well against other published works of fiction.”

Smith’s remarks suggest that self-publishing, then, might not be an enterprise to take on completely by oneself; it’s possible that the absence of a discerning editor is the issue at the root of all the bad poetry Young claims to have helped publish. But with the aid of an editor, why shouldn’t somebody like Smith go ahead and publish a book himself? The decisions made by publishing houses are often based on economic factors, a reality that Smith himself faced when a couple of his works were rejected because of his age – at 62, publishers thought, he wouldn’t be able to give them the additional two to three books that would justify the costs of publishing and marketing the first. Not only do such decisionmaking processes value profits above all, they’re also often flawed.

J.K. Rowling was rejected twelve times before Bloomsbury picked up Harry Potter. Thanks to the

Internet, a private person today can sidestep these concerns and take care of most of the functions of a publishing house themself, streamlining the process and perhaps publishing a work that really does deserve to be read by the public.

“Publishing seems to be a very cumbersome endeavour and one wonders if there isn’t some way to make it less ponderous,” says Smith.

“I can’t help but feel there’s loads of really good writing out there that falls through the cracks because of the way in which the industry looks at new work and the way in which it sells (or doesn’t sell) new work.”

Smith, for one, doesn’t seem fazed by library shelves buckling under the weight of books. He’s probably right. After all, censoring great ideas just because there are a lot of them already out there would be ridiculous, and with self-publishing’s decreased economic imperative, we might see less of the big houses’ safe cards and more quirky, weird, and unique novels that really make us think in new ways.

Follow Andrew Smith’s progress at edithswarselfpublish.com.

20Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

The relevance of records Kamran Aryah investigates whether wax will wane.

T

he current generation of music listeners has grown up in a digital era, where songs are immediately accessible for download, either as online purchases or free streams on various web sites. But as the transition from analog to digital progresses, one might wonder what will happen to the neighbourhood record store. Once an essential part of the process of finding new music, the independent record store has been turned into an obsolete relic by the Internet’s elimination of the middlemen between the listener and the artist – the label, the distributor, and, most tragically, the record clerk. So, in order to get an idea of where the record store fits into the Montreal music scene in the digital age, I visited independent record stores throughout Montreal, in the hopes of understanding what keeps their owners going. Eduardo Cabaral, the owner of Primitive on Saint Denis, in part credited his business’s survival to a vinyl revival he has noticed in the past five years. Manifesting itself in the number of clients who get excited

over LPs and EPs – routinely curious of where they can find a turntable – listeners seem to be captivated by the thought of hearing music in the format it was originally recorded. Though the commodity has become the relic, there is still plenty of room for the record store to thrive.

By catering to collectors and tourists, and those who value the tangible, physical aspect of the music purchasing process, record stores stand a chance of surviving well into the digital age.

And by acting as a physical “record” of the music that unites us, it seems that vinyl is here to stay.

I sat down with Christian Pronovost – owner of inBeat Records, at 3814 Saint Laurent since 1987. In Beat specializes mostly in electronic dance music. Pronovost has seen the progression from vinyl to the digital, and claims that he has managed to maintain his store through his careful selection of music and trust in his own taste. Hoping to get to the heart of the matter, we talked about the changes he’d noticed in the way people approach music since the creation of the MP3.

Doug Breuer / The McGill Daily

The McGill Daily: How has your customer base changed over the past 10 years?

Christian Provonost: Initially all my customers were DJs, buying 200 to 300 dollars of music a week.

Ten years ago, I was going through $800,000-worth of records a year.

Today, that’s down to less than $200,000. Most of my customers [today] are tourists.

MD: Do you see a future for yourself as a record store owner?

CP: The game is pretty much done – record stores are totally obsolete. The only reason why I can still justify running the record store is that I’ve been carefully buying back a lot of records and selling a lot of music that is only available on vinyl, being very careful in my

choices of music.

MD: Why has vinyl been able to persevere through the digital transformation?

CP: I’m always impressed when I put vinyl on the turntable and start mixing records…the way it makes me feel, the sonics of it. It sounds different; it feels different – there’s a real emotion to it, which I don’t think exists if you play the same music on a CD. I’ve tested it a thousand times. My own physical reaction is different when sound is conveyed through the physical connection of needle to vinyl.

MD: Do you think it is relevant for artists today to release their records on vinyl?

CP: There are people out there who want to put out records on

vinyl, and that’s okay. They might be limiting themselves, but that’s fine. I don’t know how relevant it is in terms of business. It’s becoming less and less relevant putting out stuff on vinyl – there are fewer opportunities to play it. It is impossible to be a DJ in this city playing vinyl anymore.

MD: Do you resent technology for harming your business?

CP: I love technology and embrace it. There has been a natural progression from vinyl to 8-track to cassette to MP3. All those formats are obsolete. I don’t think MP3 is a “real” format – it’s a [transitional] format.… I record most of my vinyl digitally, so that it’s in a format where I can play it [in clubs].

And that’s great because – as a DJ –

having access to music is the [priority]; the format is unimportant.

Records, though, are physical testimonials of my travels, of places I have been, and what I have bought, or where I was in my life. I have over 30,000 records, and technology can never replace the pleasure of taking an album out and remembering where I was when I bought it. So no, technology is great, but for me I have to have both.

MD: Would you ever convert your store to a digital format, where people could come in with their iPods and pay to rip an album to it?

CP: Never. There is no commitment in a digital store – you just receive a cut of what you sell. As a record store owner, if I buy something, it’s paid for out of my own

pocket, and I take the liability of trusting my own taste. This way I maintain my role as a filter. In a digital store, that filter is gone.

Honestly…people are pretty music illiterate in North America, when it comes down to it. There are very few music publications – as opposed to Europe where people read music journals [to get informed]. People need an educated filter to decide what is good and bad. [The absence of such a filter explains] why we see people today buying music that – two or three years from now – will be irrelevant.

They don’t know how to choose for themselves. As long as I buy music that is relevant – that isn’t disposable – I will have a future in this business.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

21

Queers of all kinds Dan Walber dives into the image + nation film festival

L

GBT film is nothing if not eclectic. Ironically, there is a measure of freedom that results from being largely excluded from the mainstream that allows for both exciting and experimental art house filmmaking, as well as uniquely entertaining and creative genre movies. In any one film festival there’s the possibility to include romantic comedies, thought-provoking documentaries, dazzling foreign imports, witty (or gritty) dramas, and even some tongue-incheek gay horror.

The image + nation festival has all of these in spades, and plenty more. The oldest LGBT film festival in Canada, image + nation has actually been downsizing in recent years, to create what Director of Programming Katharine Setzer calls a “boutique” assortment of films. Nineteen years ago, when the festival made its first appearance, it was an accomplishment to even put together enough material for an extended event. Since then, LGBT cinema has grown quite a bit, and image + nation has learned to filter. While the number of movies presented is still impressive, there is now more of a focus on showing not simply a lot of films, but the best films available.

Just mouth-watering And what are these films? To begin with, the festival’s closing night programming is worth a look.

Drool, the first film showing on closing night, is a whimsical family dramedy imported from the U.S. that unexpectedly delivers on the festival web site’s promise of “the trailer park love child of Thelma and Louise and The Opposite of Sex.” It follows a dysfunctional Southern family through racism, domestic violence, murder, and quite a bit of sexual frustration.

Mom and her two kids, Tabby and Little Pete, are helped along the way by their cosmetics saleswoman neighbour (a radiant Jill Marie Jones). To say that hilarity ensues would be an understatement for this entertaining and emotional Southern gothic romp.

Festival features Drool, in addition to closing the festival, is the last film in this year’s tribute to the horror film.

Homohorreur, timed of course around Halloween, features not only five full-length movies but also an exciting assortment of short films. One can find just about everything, from scary shorts about vampires, sea cucumbers, and steam rooms, to Pornography: A Thriller and Zombies of Mass Destruction.

In addition to Homo-horreur, the festival’s other special focus is Generation Q, which puts a spotlight on young queer filmmakers.

Made up of eight full-length films and 11 shorts, the series offers a

Courtesy of image + nation

Nancy Kissam’s Drool will close the Homo-horreur series at this year’s festival. wide variety of new and exciting voices on the cinema scene, and features directors from seven different countries. One film in particular, the “post-cool operetta” Fruit Fly, begs to be seen. Centred around an American-Filipina performance artist trying to make it in San Francisco, it certainly lives up to Generation Q’s goal of showing “what it means to be young and queer in the 21st century.”

International images It would be misguided to discuss this festival without at least momentarily delving into the great collection of international cinema presented by image + nation. The Portuguese film To Die Like a Man follows the aging drag star Tonia as she struggles toward the end of her life. Wellreceived at Cannes this year, it’s certainly worth a look, as is as another fascinating piece of Iberian cinema, Ander.

Produced by the Basque regional government as part of its program to support and promote LGBT culture, Ander is an astute pastoral look at a lonely farmer and his family. The visuals are striking and rugged, though the film is occasionally slow. However, the pace of the film recovers around the halfway mark and leads to a conclusion that, if perhaps a bit melodramatic and unrealistic, is an interesting meditation on sexuality in the Basque countryside. At the very least, it is a refreshing piece of artistic cinema, with a unique perspective and not too much cliché.

North of the border. image + nation draws from a large international pool, but the strong presence of American films is hard to miss. The U.S. could seem to dominate the festival, the source of not only Drool but also the open-

ing film Hollywood, je t’aime, and upwards of 20 features and quite a few shorts. However, instead of falling prey to this seemingly inevitable influx of LGBT film from the States, image + nation has done a good job not only of bringing in a great variety of international cinema, but also encouraging LGBT cinema here in Canada. There is a masterclass on young Quebecois voices emerging onto the scene, featuring five filmmakers represented at the festival, and the program contains quite a bit of exciting Canadian film.

One of these Canadian movies worth noting is the intriguing demi-documentary Fig Trees.

Almost impossible to describe effectively, this piece by the awardwinning filmmaker John Greyson uses documentary interviews with AIDS activists Zackie Achmat and Tim McCaskell as the focal point of an atonal operatic meditation on Gertrude Stein, Bono’s Red campaign, and sainthood. Stein collaborated with composer Virgil Thompson in the 1930s to create the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, which serves as the skeleton onto which Greyson adds the two activists, St. Martin of Tours (portrayed by an albino squirrel), St. Teresa of Avila, Bono, and a countdown of the Top 100 AIDS Songs.

The problem with Fig Trees is that throughout this experience, the audience doesn’t necessarily know where they are, intellectually. It is clear how Greyson feels, but it is not necessarily clear why he feels the need to be so terribly confusing. There are moments in the film in which so many different variables – visual, textual and auditory – are superimposed onto each other that the audience is left feeling both terribly overwhelmed and oddly barren at exactly the same moment. Fig Trees is a film that is not for the faint of mind, and it renders the viewer almost impartial

to the entire cast of operatic characters, from the reconstituted Gertrude Stein with her four different hairstyles to the beatified albino rodent.

The only truly redeeming parts of the piece are McCaskell and Achmat’s moving and important testimonies; the activists manage to cut through the noise and say something of value to the audience. Watch videos of the two activists speaking on YouTube, and skip the film.

LGBT cinema is in an exciting place. That a festival with such diversity, youth, and creativity

CULTURE BRIEF Make-up cover-up Ever heard of Ahava? It’s a cosmetics company that specializes in skin care products. Cosmetics companies often stir up enough controversy on their own, through questionable ad campaigns and poisonous ingredients not declared on their bottles.

But that isn’t the kind of controversy that you’d expect Tadamon!, the Montreal diaspora solidarity group, to engage in. Nevertheless, Ahava has raised Tadamon!’s ire because of the controversial origins of their products. Ahava proudly advertises their use of Dead Sea salt – salt, Tadamon! says, extracted on illegally occupied West Bank

could find a place in the world of cinema and thrive is something to celebrate, especially given how unlikely this may have seemed as recently as two decades ago. So grab some tickets, head down to the beautiful Imperial Theatre, and try something new. There’s more than enough to choose from.

The image + nation festival runs through November 1 at venues around the city. Visit image-nation. org for more information.

lands. Ahava’s being sold at the Bay these days, and for Halloween, Tadamon! is throwing either the most fun protest, or the most political party you’ve ever been to, depending on how you look at it.

In collaboration with the Quebec Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Committee (BDS), Tadamon is hosting a costume party outside the Bay at 12:30 p.m. on Halloween to launch their Boycott Ahava campaign. Ahava’s committed a double sin in the eyes of Tadamon! – not only do they extract their salt on the West Bank coastline, their products are actually manufactured on West Bank settlements deemed illegal by the UN. Regardless of your politics, this might be the only chance you’re going to get to see “zombies of apartheid” or “war crimes mud monsters” walking around Ste. Catherine.

— Ian Beattie

Compendium!

22

The McGill Daily, Monday, October 26, 2009

Lies, half-truths, and snifffffffffffffff

Laura Moncion for The McGill Daily

“The archery of Mithras is well-documented iconographically over snifffffff a wide area. It is reasonable to suppose that its mimesis snifffffffffff by a mithreaum’s Father was widespread too - which is snifffffffffff not to say that it was universal. The reason why the archery ritual is attested so far only at Mogontiacum is not sniffff that it was merely a local snifffff initiative; it arises from something already noted” (Roger Beck).

Tomorrow, I’m meeting with a mercurial professor to present my pisspoor findings, gathered over 48 hours, on the 600-year history of an obscure Roman cult. Too bad secretive groups that met in caves and engaged in human sacrifice were reluctant to divulge much information to historians.

Yes, I am terrified. No, junior, your widdle case of the sniffles isn’t helping.

Fuck This! is a therapeutic anonymous rant column ’bout anyt’ing you want. Send your 200-word-or-less harangues every week to compendium@mcgilldaily.com. Anonymity is guaranteed, but nothing hateful – just frustrated!

Mallory Bey for The McGill Daily

He’s in heaven now.

hey you. are you funny? send SOMETHING my way! compendium@mcgilldaily.com Katherine Peter for The McGill Daily

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