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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 12:30 - 2:00 pm Tanna Schulich Hall New Music Building 527 Sherbrooke Street West Information: townhall@mcgill.ca www.mcgill.ca/townhall

Literary Supplement We will be accepting submissions until tonight at midnight Send any work to litsup@mcgilldaily.com

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

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Khadr to be prosecuted by U.S. military Supreme Court deliberates Guantánamo prisoner’s repatriation Humera Jabir The McGill Daily

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TTAWA – Canada’s highest court debated whether the federal government has an obligation to repatriate the country’s last remaining detainee at Guantánamo, Omar Khadr, on Friday. The same day, the United States Department of Justice announced that the U.S. will continue to prosecute Khadr by military commission.

Khadr’s Canadian attorney, Nathan Whitling, announced the U.S. government’s decision to the court, and drew attention to the growing urgency of his client’s circumstances. Whitling argued that the Canadian government had failed in its duty to protect Khadr, and asked that the Court order the federal government to repatriate his client at the earliest possible date.

The 23-year-old Canadian has been held at Guantánamo Bay since 2002. He is charged with war crimes, and accused of having thrown the hand grenade that killed an American soldier in Afghanistan.

He was 15 years old at the time of arrest, making him a minor under Canadian and international law.

Khadr has been subjected to crude interrogation methods: waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and sexual humiliation at Guantánamo.

Whitling argued that the federal government’s decision to send Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents to interrogate Khadr at Guantánamo, knowing that he had been subject to torture, amounted to complicit participation and was a fundamental breach of Khadr’s rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A Security Intelligence Review Committee report criticized CSIS for proceeding with the interrogation given that Khadr had been “kept incommunicado, and denied access to legal counsel, consular representation or family members.”

Though Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin recognized that Khadr had suffered over the course of his ordeal, she questioned whether it was within the Court’s jurisdiction to order the federal government to repatriate Khadr, and whether sufficient grounds could be established to permit such an ruling.

Federal lawyer Rob Frater told the justices that the Court has no authority to request Khadr’s repatriation.

“State to state representation is an area where the executive holds the full range of discretionary authority,” said Frater. “We are in the realm of diplomacy here. The government has the full authority to decide what sort of request [for repatriation], whether a request can be made, how it can be made, why it can be made, and what is the most effective way of having influence with the United States.”

The federal government has repeatedly told the media that Khadr faces serious charges, and that he will not be allowed to return to Canada until his prosecution in the U.S. is concluded.

Last August, the Federal Court of Canada ruled in favour of repatriating Khadr to Canada. The Harper government appealed the decision at the Federal Court of Appeals.

The court, however, upheld the initial ruling, prompting the government to take the case to the

Supreme Court – Canada’s highest legal authority.

Figures released earlier this month show that as of July, the federal government has spent $1,335,342.37 on legal fees to keep Khadr out of the country.

Simon Potter, a representative of Avocats sans Frontières and le Grouple d’Étude en droits et libertés de la Faculté de droit de l’Université Laval, defended Khadr’s repatriation, arguing that “there cannot be a carte blanche” for the federal government. He told the Court that he found it strange that there could be an unaccountable executive sphere, and that the Court should have no power to ensure that the executive uphold its legal duties.

Potter was one of a larger group of lawyers from Amnesty International, the National Council for the Protection of Canadians Abroad, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and other organizations, who all spoke in favour of Khadr’s repatriation.

Kathy Vandergrift, chair of the Coalition for the Rights of Children and Justice for Children and Youth, said that the federal government’s failure to consider Khadr’s young age was extremely disappointing. Khadr moved to Afghanistan with his parents in 1988, and is viewed as a child soldier by human rights organizations in Canada and abroad.

“There is no question in my mind that the will of Parliament is quite clear [on the Optional Protocol on the Rights of a Child]. It is the prime minister’s office that has not followed through,” said Vandergrift in an interview with The Daily. “It’s

time that we take children’s rights seriously, rather than holding it up as some vague idea. So we see this court case as an important moment in this trajectory. People should be able to appeal to the courts when the government fails to protect their rights.”

Dennis Edney, who also represents Khadr, has been the one of the most outspoken advocates of repatriation. He was critical of the federal government’s arguments.

“It’s nothing you wouldn’t expect.

At the end of the day, I always thought that every citizen under the law is accountable, and here we are, saying that our government in Canada has breached Omar Khadr’s rights in a fundamental way…but those actions are to be accepted in order to keep a good relationship with other governments,” Edney told The Daily.

“I sometimes wonder about the fiction of justice we create.

The reality is that a boy went to Guantánamo, and has been there ever since, and has been abused horribly, so then why should the government not be made accountable?” Edney added.

Khadr’s lawyers have asked the court to expedite the judgment in his case, and a ruling is due in the coming months. In the meantime, much attention has turned toward the continuation of military prosecution in the United States, since it remains unclear when and where Khadr’s U.S. hearing will take place.

The continuation of the military commission process came as a surprise to many today, including Khadr’s American attorney Barry

Coburn, who said he was shocked by the decision.

An executive order issued by President Obama days after his inauguration called for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay dentention centre, as well as a stay on the military commissions process.

This led many to believe that prosecution by military commission had come to an end, including Lieutenant Commander William Keubler, Khadr’s former Pentagonappointed attorney to the case.

He told The Daily last year that “[Khadr’s] military prosecution is effectively dead and...there are significant obstacles to any future prosecution of Omar Khadr by U.S. authorities.”

Coburn commented, however, that he was optimistic that the Supreme Court of Canada would uphold Khadr’s right to repatriation.

“We are extremely hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold what the lower court did, and we think that was a really well-reasoned opinion, and from our sense of it, we think that court was right and we hope the Canadian Supreme Court agrees,” said Coburn.

After the Court had adjourned, Coburn, who attended Friday’s hearing, commented that Khadr’s advocates would not be walking away from the case, despite the challenges.

“I’m going to continue as his counsel from now until the end,” said Coburn. “That’s my intention.

For as long long as he wants me, I’m going to continue to defend him, until his process comes to an end.”

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News

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

Plan will affect 72 per cent Quebec land, and four aboriginal nations Eric Andrew-Gee News Writer

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ive Innu First Nations communities are threatening legal action against Quebec’s governing Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ) over the government’s proposed “Plan Nord,” a loosely defined set of potential mining, foresting, fishing, and industrial projects. Together, the projects would reshape the landscape of northern Quebec.

The five Innu groups boycotted a meeting on the Plan Nord on November 6, which was attended by over 200 people, including senior government ministers and representatives from Cree, Inuit, and Innu groups. The head of the Innu coalition, Chief Raphael Picard of the Pessamit Nation, has promised to block any Plan Nord projects in Innu territory that do not provide his people with a share of the revenue produced.

“With its Northern Plan, the government must understand that without the participation and consent of the Innu, not a single development project will go forward,” Picard was quoted as saying in Friday’s Globe and Mail.

Pierre Corbeil, Quebec Minster of Aboriginal Affairs, said though he would prefer dialogue, the government could pursue other means.

“If [the Innu] pursue legal means, we will, unfortunately, have

to engage with them,” Corbeil said in French.

The scope of Plan Nord is huge.

72 per cent of Quebec’s land is implicated in the development plans, or 1.2 million square kilometres. Christian Tanguay, the press secretary of Natural Resources Minister Natalie Normandeau, said there are 63 separate communities in the affected area, and over 120,000 people living there. Four indigenous nations also exist in the region: the Cree, the Inuu, the Inuit, and the Naskapi.

The government has recently announced new projects that will make up Plan Nord. Describing the projects as a “new paradigm,” Tanguay said that about $25-billion will be invested in hydroelectricity alone. Another $825-million will finance the construction of 14 new airports in the north of the province. The government also received praise from Inuit business groups for the estimated 1,000 new houses to be built in the Nunavik, an area that roughly comprises the northern third of Quebec.

The hydroelectric development on the Romaine River, one of the projects launched under the banner of Plan Nord, has already deeply divided the Innu community.

Representatives of four of the Innu communities signed a revenue-sharing deal with HydroQuébec in 2008 to get a portion of the profits from the $6.5-billion-dollar project. The Unamen

Shipu alone will receive $14.5-million, according to their leader, Chief Georges Bacon. However, at least two Innu groups vowed to block the development “by any means necessary,” according to a Le Devoir story from December 2008.

The concerns of the Innu groups opposing the resource-driven projects stem from the absence of a territorial treaty between Canada and the Innu nation. Chief Ghislain Picard of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador explained, “There are communities that are not being respected....

There is no acknowledgment on a political level that the rights of the Innu exist.”

Inuit and Cree representatives support Plan Nord and attended the meeting on November 6. So did several Inuu groups, a fact that Natural Resources Minister Natalie Normandeau has emphasized in her comments on the plan. Ghislain Picard argued that the support of a few First Nations groups does not invalidate the criticism of those in opposition.

“This has become a too-easy game for the government, to say we have 25 of 31 groups that support us, so the others are wrong,” Picard said in French.

While officially supporting Plan Nord, the Cree have serious concerns about the PLQ’s commitment to respecting Cree territorial rights that were estab-

lished in treaties in 1975 and 2002. Ghislain Picard noted that there were “25 years [between the treaties] during which the government did not respect their agreements.”

In a Montreal Gazette op-ed piece, Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come cited the pending legislation, Bill 57, which would alter the 2002 territorial treaty, know as the “Paix des Braves.” It does this, he wrote, by circumventing the agreement on forest management that the Crees and Quebec established in 1975 and in 2002.

Chief Coon Come also mentioned an independent report by Judge Rejean Paul of the Superior Court of Quebec, which determined that the Quebec government had disregarded its obligations to the Cree by handing over governance of the James Bay municipality, traditionally Cree territory, to non-Cree politicians in 2001.

PLQ-rivals like the Parti Québécois (PQ) and Québec Solidaire also have doubts about Plan Nord. Luc Ferland, the PQ Member of the National Assembly for Ungava, a constituency of 24, 944 people in northern Quebec, said that the government is jeopardizing its environmental goals for the north with these developments.

He pointed out that while the PLQ has promised to protect 12 per cent of northern Quebec from development, it has so far cordoned off just 8 per cent.

Vaccine queues cut amidst H1N1 worries McGill urges students to remain patient Ethan Feldman The McGill Daily

T

he government of Quebec has imposed strict guidelines over who can and cannot receive the H1N1 vaccine, but some have attempted to skip ahead in line at some Montreal hospitals.

When the vaccine was first released, the government demanded that only those who provide direct care to patients and those who are at very high risk receive the vaccine.

Despite these limitations, the Montreal Gazette reported on November 7 that 200 of the top donors to the Jewish General jumped the queue and received inoculations before they were eligible. Additionally, loose restrictions at Royal Victoria Hospital failed to prevent non-medical students from slipping into the line as early as two weeks ago.

According to Santé et Services sociaux Québec, the list of at-risk individuals who could receive the

vaccine consists of pregnant women, chronically ill people under 65, children between six months and five years old, people living in remote or isolated locations or communities, health care workers, and people living with high risk patients who cannot be immunized, like babies under six months old and immunecompromised people. As of Friday, November 13, all Quebeckers under the age of 20 are eligible for the vaccine.

Wayne Wood, the head of McGill’s Pandemic Contingency Planning Committee, believed that the implementation of new policies and the distribution of sanitizer and information has already slowed the spread of H1N1 on campus.

“There has been a drop in the number of visits to the McGill Health Clinic, perhaps related to the self-reporting, which allows students to stay home and get well rather then go out and cause infections,” Wood said. “H1N1 is quite mild for most adults and young people, and they don’t really need

medical attention.”

Wood said that one-seventh of the Quebec population has already been vaccinated, and that as this process speeds up, it becomes less likely that McGill’s day-to-day operations will slow to a halt.

Pierre-Paul Tellier, director of Student Health Services and director of the Office of Student Affairs for the Faculty of Medicine, told The Daily that he supports the government’s efforts to reduce risk and urges younger McGill students who are now eligible to be inoculated as soon as possible.

“As of [Friday], we are starting to immunize all those who are 19 and younger, so those students who are eligible can – and should – be vaccinated. This is good news because this date has been moved ahead by a week, so these students may all be fully protected by the time examination period begins,” Tellier said.

Tellier said he observed rigid application of the rules while at Place Alexis Nihon – the vaccination centre on Atwater where

many McGill students are zoned to attend.

“They’re doing the vaccination according to risk, so those who are more likely to become fairly ill once they have become infected get the vaccine first. We have a list of diseases and immuno-suppressing medications that was given to us by the government,” Tellier said.

“If a person comes in and requests the vaccination, but doesn’t have anything that is on that list, they are asked to come back at the time that they are supposed to be vaccinated.”

Tellier stressed that all McGill students should wait their turn rather than rushing to receive the rationed vaccine. “Skipping lines is natural human anxiety. However, the government has been very strict and been trying to apply the rules as stringently as possible to prevent the entire medical system from being overwhelmed.”

Two convenient clinics for McGill students are at Place Alexis Nihon at 1500 Atwater, or CLSC du PlateauMont-Royal at 4625 de Lorimier.

WHAT’S THE HAPS

Innu oppose Northern Development

5

Submit your lit!

Monday, November 16, 11:55 p.m.

It’s the last day to submit to The Daily’s annual literary supplement! Any McGill student is encouraged to submit their creative writing, regardless of experience.

Submissions will be selected through a blind-review process by a team of Daily editors. Send prose less than 2000 words, and poetry less than 50 lines. Email litsup@ mcgilldaily.com with your name and faculty. (re)doing it!

Monday, November 16 - Saturday, November 21 Sex. We love to talk about it, think about it, and (maybe) do it. But how much of what we know about sex is taken for granted? How do social values of “privileged sex” affect what types of sex we’re having or may want to have?

What about our culturally sexed and gendered bodies?

This isn’t your high school sex ed class. Come get (re) educated. Check the “(re) doing it” Facebook page, or contact Queer McGill at 514398-2106.

World Aids Week Monday, November 16 - Friday, November 20 The McGill Global AIDS Coalition, in collaboration with other campus groups, will present film screenings and panels on such topics as HIV treatment in Rwanda, HIV in the Montreal community, and the criminalization of HIV/AIDS. Schedule at treatthepeople.com.

Cinema Politica: Our Daily Bread Tuesday, November 17, 8 p.m.

Leacock 26 The film depicts how modern food production companies employ technology to maximize efficiency, consumer safety, and profit.

It consists mainly of actual working situations without voice-over narration or interviews as the director tries to let viewers form their own opinion on the subject.

Coffee 'n’ SSMU Tuesday, November 17, 2-5 p.m.

Shatner Cafeteria Come have coffee and a muffin with the SSMU executives. We want to answer your questions, hear your concerns, and act on your ideas! (Please bring a mug if you can.)

Inherit the Wind screening Wednesday, November 18, 8 p.m.

Lev Bukhman room, Shatner Join the Freethought Association to watch and discuss Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer: 1960), a film based on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925.

6 News

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

The forgotten crisis Iraqi activist Asma Al-Haidari discusses the plight of Iraqi refugees Stefan Christoff News Writer

Sasha Plotnikova / The McGill Daily

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raq’s refugee crisis extends across the world, as millions of Iraqi refugees have been displaced since the American-led invasion in 2003. The majority of Iraqi refugees are living in dire conditions and without permanent status in countries bordering Iraq, with the largest populations residing in Jordan and Syria. As media headlines remain focused on the ongoing violence inside Iraq, the refugee crisis expanding across the Middle East is often forgotten. It is estimated that there are around one-million Iraqi refugees currently residing in Jordan, where many face serious poverty and economic marginalization.

Asma Al-Haidari is an independent Iraqi activist based in Amman, Jordan, who speaks to the situation facing Iraqi refugees today in the Middle East. Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based journalist and activist, who spoke for the Daily Publications Society’s Journalism Week at McGill on Thursday.

Stefan Christoff: Today, Iraqi refugees present a major crisis for the Middle East. Given the number of Iraqi refugees living in Jordan, could you outline for us the current reality facing Iraqis in Jordan?

Asma Al-Haidari: There are over one-million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and around five-million throughout the Arab world. Today, the largest number of Iraqi refugees is currently in Syria, while the second largest Iraqi refugee population is in Jordan. Iraqi refugees have put serious pressure on the social infrastructure in both Jordan and Syria.

There are less Iraqi refugees in Jordan than in recent years as there have been some placements for Iraqi refugees elsewhere in the world, a small number going to the U.S. and to Europe. However, there is still a very large number in Jordan, while some have now returned to Iraq. The majority of Iraqi refugees in Jordan are in a very bad state; they can hardly pay for their food or their health needs. Today, Iraqi refugees are going to school in Jordan, but that only began last year after a major effort organized by non-governmental organizations, specifically Save the Children International.

Still, there are many Iraqi children who don’t go to school because they haven’t been able to register or they need to work to support their families.

A very serious but often hidden problem in Jordan is that young Iraqis are being forced into sex work, due to poverty and coercion. This is a very real problem as many young Iraqi women are being abused and, despite this being a taboo subject in Arab society, people need to talk about this and take action.

SC: Can you talk about the poverty that Iraqi refugees face today in

Jordan, the economic situation that Iraqis are facing in Jordan?

AH: Certainly Iraqi refugees living in Jordan receive no government pensions from their own government in Baghdad. Also Iraqi refugees get no major economic assistance from the local governments, in Jordan, or even the UN, and they don’t have food rights or vouchers. It is often charities who assist a number of families, but not all families. Many Iraqi families who live in serious poverty today in Jordan have never lived in such poverty in their lives. Iraqi refugees in Jordan have often been forced to sell their homes in Iraq in order to survive in Jordan and to pay for their children’s education. Iraqis are not officially able to work in both Jordan and Syria.

If Iraqis are working in Jordan, they are working under the table and this puts them in immediate danger of being deported. Clearly the Jordanian government knows that thousands of Iraqis are working, and often authorities turn a blind eye; however, there is always the possibility that authorities can clamp down.

SC: Most of the news on the Iraq war is centred on reports from the ground in Iraq, headlines detailing armed combat, direct confrontations, realities of war.

However, this other effect of the war, the refugee crisis, which has expanded across the Middle East, certainly isn’t getting as much media attention. Could you talk about the crisis facing Iraqi refugees throughout the Middle East, a crisis which has been compared to the Palestinian experiences of exodus and exile in both 1948 and 1967?

AH: I think that the situation is similar in some ways but also different. Remember that the numbers of Iraqi refugees today is much larger than the Palestinian refugee crisis in either 1948 or in 1967, as there are millions of Iraqi refugees displaced across the Arab world. When Iraq was invaded by the Americans and the British, many Iraqis had good lives and jobs despite the crippling sanctions. Economic security has been erased for all Iraqis due to the invasion. Our society was ripped apart.

Also many Iraqi women were forced to flee sexual violence in Iraq. Many Iraqi women were raped

by U.S. or Iraqi security forces and fled for their lives. Actually, it is Iraqi women and children who have suffered the most during the past six years since the U.S. invasion.

SC: I was wondering about your perception of the political situation in Iraq today. There has been a great deal of fanfare and attention drawn to the projected withdrawal of U.S. troops announced by Barack Obama. What are your thoughts?

AH: Total U.S. withdrawal will not happen. Obama’s plan is simply to try to present a tidier picture for the world. U.S. forces came thousands of kilometres across the seas to settle in Iraq and have spent billions of dollars. Americans came not only for the oil but also to try to control the entire region politically.

I also think that the American political establishment aimed to destroy the Iraqi spirit, to crush the Arab nationalist spirit present in Iraqi and in Arab culture generally.

U.S. troops are in Iraq to stay; if you read the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces

Agreement (SOFA) agreement this is clear. U.S. troops will remain in Iraq under the SOFA agreement, staying in the massive U.S. military bases from which they can emerge when necessary. U.S. forces won’t leave the country until they are forced to withdraw.

This means that the Iraqi resistance must make it very expensive and very dear for the U.S. administration to stay. In the end, the U.S. will be forced to withdraw as they were forced from Vietnam.

Iraq has been invaded many times throughout history and each time, occupying forces have been forced to retreat. However, it is this invasion that has been the worst.

Attempts have been made to make Iraqis forget their culture, their history, and their independent spirit but military occupation will not destroy our memory.

Christoff’s interview was first posted on the web site of Tadamon!, a Montreal-based collective that works in solidarity with Middle Eastern struggles for self-determination, equality, and justice.

News

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

NEWS BRIEF Sustainability fund approved Students approved fees for the Sustainable Projects Fund, the McGill Legal Information Clinic, and the Ambassador Fee in last week’s SSMU referendum.

Polls closed on the Fall referenda questions at 5 p.m. Thursday.

The results revealed the second largest voter turnout on record, with around 5,300 students, or one quarter of the downtown campus undergraduate body, participating.

The non-opt-outable Sustainable Projects Fund, which would be supported by student fees matched by administrative funding, and run by an equal parts student and administration committee, passed with 79 per cent in favour.

The referendum at Macdonald campus had 27 per cent turnout, and voted 88 per cent in favour of the Sustainable Projects Fund.

For Jonathan Glencross U3 Environment and Sustainable McGill coordinator, this was the successful end of a long fight for a wellfinanced Sustainable Projects Fund

with students and administrators on an equal footing. “Having that many people vote, with such a huge majority voting yes, means students are not only excited about the types of change this fund will bring, but also the way that change will be governed – by consensus – a collaborative model, breaking the culture of us versus them [with the administration],” Glencross said.

The question of whether to renew student fee funding for the McGill Legal Information Clinic, which will also be non-opt-outable, passed with 74 per cent in favour.

The question establishing an opt-outable Ambassador Fee to help fund extracurricular and academic trips passed narrowly, with 51 per cent in favor.

The non-binding plebiscite question asking students what they thought of moving coursepacks online received 52 per cent in favour.

The other non-binding plebiscite question, asking students whether or not it was a good idea to shorten the add/drop period in order to facilitate the early release of the finals schedule, lost with only a 30 per cent approval.

—Sam Neylon

Sara Traore / The McGill Daily

Student councillors endured a five-hour meeting Thursday evening.

Choose Life status suspended Club sent to Equity Committee by SSMU Council to revise constitution Emily Clare The McGill Daily

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SMU Council voted 16 to 7 by secret ballot in favour of suspending Choose Life’s club status on Thursday.

Two separate motions were put forth to change the club’s status.

The first resolution called for the club’s status to be revoked. After being defeated 11 to 12, a motion to suspend followed.

The students who put forth the two motions claimed that Choose Life had disseminated false health information and exposed students to graphic images associated with abortion and fetal life.

Additionally, the students felt that past events hosted by the club had threatened safe space for students on campus, and violated SSMU policy.

On behalf of the authors who presented the resolution to revoke Choose Life’s status, Elaina Kaufman said, “Regardless of whether a formal promise was made, there had been a verbal agreement with SSMU Council and they still contravened the equity policy.”

In her rebuttal, Choose Life president Natalie Fohl addressed general questions and apologized for allowing some of her club’s guest speakers to distribute questionable information in the form of pamphlets in the past. She conceded that this was a serious issue and explained that the pro-life group Silent No More Awareness had provided the material in question at a Choose Life event in September.

Included in the pamphlets were statements that linked breast and cervical cancer to abortions, which contradicts statistics from Health Canada.

Fohl also stated that she did not feel that the club had contravened

McGill’s equity policy, explaining that the club’s mandate is to promote respect for human life and human rights from conception, defined as the moment of fertilization. Fohl quoted SSMU’s constitution and went on to describe fetuses as victims of oppression.

“The goal of our group is to promote the well-being of all persons, including those discriminated against based on age,” Fohl said.

Members of Choose Life contended that they were being treated differently than other clubs, but opponents argued that no other club has pushed the same boundaries. Last month, SSMU Council censured a Choose Life event called “Echoes of the Holocaust,” which featured Jose Ruba of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Before his talk was disrupted by protesters, Ruba attempted to parallel what he considers the dehumanization of fetuses with similar tactics used to justify genocide.

During council, Rebecca Dooley, VP (University Affairs), indicated that four complaints against Choose Life have been brought to the attention of the Student Equity Committee since it was granted club status last year.

The motion to suspend incorporated a clause which would send the club for evaluation by the Equity Committee.

An amendment was added and stipulated that the club would meet with the Committee to develop a document that would allow for the expression of a pro-life viewpoint while remaining in line with the SSMU constitution and equity policy.

Dooley explained that this would be a long-term process that would start as soon as possible. “We’ve been the ones who have been on

the receiving end of most of the student concerns surrounding Choose Life,” she said. “We have been dealing with it on all levels, and I think we are the ones who have the most in-depth understanding of the policies.”

Engineering Senator Daniel Keresteci questioned why the equity committee represented women, as less than half of students on campus are male.

In an email to The Daily, Kaufman wrote, “We felt that a lot of councillors listened to our arguments and the facts we presented. However, a couple councillors responded to our arguments by repeating that students should be able to express opinions, even though we had made it very clear that we are against specific actions – not opinions.”

Afterward, Fohl said she was disappointed with the process and outcome. She felt her club had not been treated fairly throughout the whole process and that the club’s right to free speech was being limited.

“I really don’t feel that if people properly understood what our position was that they would be saying what they said,” Fohl said. “It sounds good to say, ‘No, we’re not limiting free speech,’ but it really is saying, ‘You say what you want but only this way.’”

In spite of the motion, Fohl stated that she wouldn’t make any decisions without consulting the rest of the club.

“We will certainly sit down with the Equity Committee and see what their suggestions are but that doesn’t mean that we are necessarily going to accept everything,” Fohl said.

At Council, a resolution to ban the sale of “Red List” fish was also passed. An update on the spread of H1N1 in McGill residences was also discussed.

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

Queer faith The Right has monopolized religion for too long

Binary is for computers Quinn Albaugh

I

’ve already told you I’m trans.

However, now I feel a need to come out to you again – this time as an Anglican.

When I reveal that I’m Anglican to people, they often ask certain questions: “Why are you part of a religion that hates you?” “How can you be both queer and a Christian?”

These questions usually have their basis in a certain belief I’ve frequently encountered in queer circles, and in leftist circles more generally, which holds that Christianity is inherently anti-queer. According to this story, there’s no way to queer Christianity.

This belief poses several problems.

First, it oversimplifies Christian thought. Christianity as a religion is extremely diverse. Anglicanism, in particular, gives its adherents much leeway in matters of faith. You can find everyone from Roman Catholicstyle “traditionalists” to “postmodernists” within the Anglican Communion. This narrative usually reduces Christianity as a concept to Roman Catholic or conservative evangelical theology. Though Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism are very socially prominent, their views obviously do not represent all Christians.

Second, it ignores the progress that Anglicans have made within their own faith and in society in

general. In recent years, various Anglican clergy have started blessing or marrying queer couples without the Church hierarchy’s say-so.

Although it’s against church policy at present, it’s pretty clear that North American Anglicanism will have marriage equality soon, both because support for it is common and growing and because many hardline conservatives have been trickling out of the established church. In the U.S., conservatives have been particularly discontent with the ordination of openly gay bishops, such as Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, and the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first female head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the American province of the Anglican Communion.

Furthermore, Anglican clergy have also supported the LGBT rights movement within the political sphere. For example, Stephen T. Lane, the Bishop of Maine, openly opposed Question 1, a referendum question in the state which sought to deny queer people civil marriage.

Third, this construction of Christianity creates a bizarre and foolhardy consensus with conservatives, who hold the same beliefs about the inherency of anti-queer messages in Christian theology.

This consensus implicitly accepts the conservative reading of the Bible, even though it’s based on

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cherry-picked verses known as the “clobber texts,” passages interpreted without any consideration of their historical-cultural context – or of the context of the Bible as a whole. By agreeing with conservatives, leftists cede all ground to the conservatives in Christian discourse, which allows them to gain ground among people of faith, since their ideas face fewer challenges in the public sphere. This retreat marginalizes the Christian left, including queer allies.

Fourth, this discourse ironically parallels the gender binary.

The binary assumes that all people are straight and cis gender. As a result of these assumptions, society “straight-washes” and “cis-washes” queer people, effectively denying either the existence of queer people as individuals or as a group.

In the same way, this idea about Christianity “conservative-washes” Christians, denying the existence of those who dissent from the conservative view.

Such a conception of Christianity erases many people’s personal experiences in faith. At my own current church, Christ Church Cathedral on Ste. Catherine, I see the rainbow flag flying in the narthex every Sunday, and I hear explicitly pro-women and pro-LGBT sermons quite frequently.

Most importantly, Anglicanism has provided me with the support to come out as trans. A couple months after I came out to myself as trans, I had lunch with my Anglican minister back home. He suspected I was queer and attempted to make me feel comfortable enough to come out. He was so successful that, several hours later, I came out to my parents, even though I hadn’t come out to anyone else before that, apart from one of my best friends in Montreal and a therapist.

Not surprisingly, then, I find this view of Christianity frustrating.

That said, the church today isn’t queer. Queer people still the face “Christian” bigots, both in churches and in the public sphere,

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where conservative interpretations of Christianity serve as justifications for bigotry. Additionally, even though there’s support for LGBT Anglicans, there’s still a crucial lack of understanding of what “queer” or “genderqueer” mean – or what the gender binary does. That binary infects Christian ritual – for example, in the Eucharistic prayer, where it’s said that “male and female He created them,” and the binary governs one of the most socially-significant Christian rituals: marriage.

However, I don’t believe the binary to be inherent to the religion – indeed, when I read the Bible, I find a message that opposes all forms of oppression. As a result, I have no intention of leaving the faith. Instead, I seek to queer Anglicanism, just as I seek to queer society.

Quinn Albaugh writes in this space every week. Draw them a fish in the sand: binaryforcomputers@ mcgilldaily.com.

HYDE PARK

The Afghan war strategy must change Slawomir Poplawski

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he latest series of combat deaths for coalition armies confirms that the evolving American war strategy to recruit and train more Afghans for combat is a fiasco. Shocking statistics about this program recently revealed that “one out of every four or five men in the security forces quit each year” (“Reviews Raise Doubt on Training of Afghan Forces,” New York Times, November 6). Ironically, this policy may lead to the inadvertent recruitment of new Taliban army recruits.

The war effort is failing in many regards. Isn’t that enough to spark deeper reflections?

The presence of armed foreign occupiers undermines the supposedly free and democratic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq. Recent news has shown these elections to be dubious, while public opinion in coalition countries remains largely

unaware of this fact due to our own governments’ censored portrayal of conditions in the occupied nations, effected through either the manipulation or the tacit consent of our media. Such developments damage our national interests and undermine the foundations of a democratic tradition that we are trying to build in Afghanistan, if indeed that is our objective.

There’s clearly something fundamentally wrong with this invasion when, instead of peace, we see violence increasing after eight years of war. The Taliban’s growing resistance to coalition forces proves that they are not without support in the country. The latest killing of five British soldiers training police officers shows once more the shocking failure of efforts by the West to build democracy in Afghanistan. Our military and our politicians ignore this growing resistance; they’re organizing elections for their local supporters,

instead of working to fix the problems that antagonize the majority of the population. Ironically, the Taliban were able to restore order in Afghanistan after years of corruption and lawless infighting between warlords. Currently, the country has a rapidly increasing percentage of drug addicts. It was only during Taliban rule that poppy cultivation was reduced from 12,600 acres to only 17 acres in 2001. The “liberated” Afghanistan also now sees thousands of civilians being killed in armed attacks as so-called “collateral damage.”

We must stop this senseless war immediately: it is resulting in the deaths of too many poor people from Afghanistan and deployed personnel from other countries.

We need to send a group of volunteers accompanied by the Taliban, the United Nations, and governmental representatives to all of Afghanistan’s regions and survey the position of the population. So

far, we only hear a redacted view of the situation from politicians and manipulated media. It is time to learn directly if the Afghan people perceive us as brutal invaders or liberators. A comprehensive, representative poll of the Afghan population would achieve this goal, would cost hundreds of times less than new elections, and could perhaps help calm down the situation. After this, and similar polling in some coalition countries (about maintaining or withdrawing an armed presence in Afghanistan), their governments will have a clearer picture of public opinion.

Let’s start organizing what I will call “Polling for Peace/Humanity” (PFPH). The group’s first mission will be to search for sponsors and volunteers ready to help a suffering Afghanistan, but in a different way.

Thus far, help from the West, which has accompanied military actions, has been limited to humanitarian aid such as providing food, schools

for girls, and medical assistance.

Although these actions are helpful, the opinions and priorities of the Afghan people should be heard directly from the horse’s mouth.

Our media and officials are expressing their willingness to ressurect this country, but they don’t translate this willingness into listening to the true opinions coming from these suffering people. We must allow for contrary opinion: we should be acting humbly and respectfully toward the people whose trust we need.

This is a credo for the PFPH: collecting, publicizing, and equally respecting randomly selected individual opinions about key topics concerning our humanity.

Slawomir Poplawski is a technician in the mining and metallurgical engineering department. If you’re interested in organizing the PFPH, contact him at slavekpop@yahoo. com.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

9

Not Jewish like you The Reform movement is not mere pomp and circumstance

Little bitter Riva Gold

Sally Lin /The McGill Daily

Mange la poutine!

Une exploration de la fine cuisine québécoise

The French connection Joël Thibeault Every other week, Joël Thibeault writes a column for French learners, as a way of encouraging them to practice their French. l est passé cinq heures du matin, et vous êtes en train de rentrer chez vous après une nuit de débauche et de plaisir. Le soleil se lève, mais vous n’avez malheureusement toujours pas terminé votre walk of shame. Il vous reste encore une longue demi-heure de marche, et vous décidez donc de vous arrêter dans un petit restaurant afin de grignoter quelque chose. Toutefois, vous n’avez pas envie d’un petitdéjeuner.

Bienvenue au Québec, chers amis! Il existe dans notre très vaste gastronomie un met qui saura satisfaire vos envies nocturnes les plus folles en matière de nourriture. Je vous parle bien évidemment de notre fameuse poutine. La recette est simple: patates frites, sauce brune et fromage en grain (que nous appelons tendrement aussi «fromage en crottes»).

Je sais ce que vous vous dites en ce moment: «C’est absolument dégoûtant». J’admets que l’idée d’une telle mixture peut donner l’envie de vomir. Par contre, l’essayer, c’est l’adopter! Quand vous y aurez goûté, je vous garantis que vous ne pourrez plus vous en passer. La sauce fait fondre le fromage qui à son tour fond dans la bouche. Les frites, si cuites correctement, bien sûr, rajoutent un aspect croustillant absolument succulent.

Malheureusement, si seulement l’un des ingrédients de la poutine n’est pas frais ou n’est pas bien cuit, vous en aurez probablement mal au cœur. Il faut donc savoir où aller pour obtenir une poutine de qualité. Vous pensiez la préparer

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chez vous? Oubliez ça! Il est impossible de cuisiner une bonne poutine dans le confort de son foyer; il faut aller l’acheter (ce qui peut parfois être problématique en janvier, lorsqu’il fait moins vingt degrés à l’extérieur).

Celle offerte chez McDonald’s, quoique pas très coûteuse, n’est pas recommandée car leurs frites ne sont tout simplement pas adéquates. Celle de La Belle Province, par contre, est excellente à trois heures du matin quand vous sortez d’une boîte de nuit ou d’un bar et que vous avez un verre dans le nez.

Elle est toutefois trop grasse pour être mangée pendant la journée. Le restaurant Patati Patata au coin de St-Laurent et de Rachel ainsi que La banquise, situé sur Rachel près du parc Lafontaine, offrent selon moi les meilleures poutines de Montréal.

En outre, il est important de mentionner que la poutine vient sous différentes formes. Chez Patati Patata, vous trouverez ce qu’ils appellent la Patatine: une poutine normale à laquelle ils ajoutent des légumes. En remplaçant la sauce brune par de la sauce à spaghetti, on obtient une poutine Michigan.

Enfin, la poutine au poulet est également très populaire; on ne fait qu’y ajouter quelques tendres morceaux de poulet afin de rehausser le taux de protéine de notre repas.

Bref, la poutine est un met qui s’adapte à tous les goûts. Il est carrément impossible de vivre au Québec sans y avoir goûté au moins une fois. Bon appétit!

You can write to Joël at thefrenchconnection@mcgilldaily.com.

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

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few weeks back, the McGill Tribune’s ever-controversial columnist Ricky Kreitner wrote an article called “A sketch of my Jewish identity” (McGill Tribune, Opinion, October 10). I think it exemplified everything that’s wrong with modern understandings of the Jewish Reform movement. I’m not sure what’s more troubling: that this article was published despite including factually incorrect and derogatory assertions about a major religious denomination, or the fact that after it was printed, no one bothered to correct him.

Maybe it’s just that no one reads the Tribune, or that no one reads weekly opinion columns in general (something I tell myself over and over each week as I tear up over my column’s empty email account). But a gross mischaracterization of a large religious denomination deserves a little bit of attention, if only in another column.

While I’m not a Reform Jew myself, I do think that religious ideologies should not be critiqued on the basis of the personal practices of a handful of individual adherents. Kreitner writes that “Reform Judaism essentially reduces religious observance to thrice yearly family gatherings in vague recognition of what ancestors considered major holidays.”

Bullshit. Since Kreitner’s only evidence for this claim is his family’s practice, the strongest assertion he could make is “The Kreitner family essentially reduced religious

observance to thrice yearly family gatherings in vague recognition of what ancestors considered major holidays.” As it happens, the movement called Reform Judaism encourages religious observance to saturate the daily lives of its members on a number of levels. At the very least, the architects of the Reform movement expect weekly attendance at Sabbath services, which equals at least 52 times a year, to be precise.

But more to the point, Reform Judaism is not about “family gatherings” intended to vaguely “imitate” the authentic, ancestral versions of Jewish holidays. Instead, it aims to preserve those rituals that remain meaningful to its members in light of modern social and ethical standards. “Ancestral traditions” are specifically reimagined in the Reform movement so that the core ideas of the movement – the principles found in the Torah, the Jewish people’s particular religious and historical experience – can speak to modern adherents in ways that are fresh and meaningful. This is why the Reform movement dropped the requirements for things like Jewish dietary laws or the unequal treatment of women, while insisting upon maintaining principles of ethical monotheism.

Kreitner claims he knows of no one for whom the experience of being called to the Torah to become a bar or bat mitzvah was anything more than a scheme to extort money from friends and family members. He concludes that

“the realization that nobody really cared led me to consider the whole Judaic enterprise mere pomp and circumstance, and believers of any faith delusional and usually hypocritical.”

While it’s disheartening to learn that Kreitner had such shallow friends, his experience is not to be generalized, and his conclusions are both harmful and unfounded.

At a Reform bar or bat mitzvah, a child is for the first time given the explicit privilege and responsibility of leading a meaningful Jewish existence: they take on the duty of leading ethical lives in accord with the principles of their faith, incorporating mitzvoth into their daily lives, and taking on certain ritual requirements. Through direct engagement with rabbinic authorities, family members, and traditional Jewish texts, this can be an incredibly meaningful experience founded on neither delusion nor pomp.

At the heart of Reform Judaism is the belief that an individual may choose to take on an attachment to those Jewish rituals and ceremonies that they find significant or relevant to them. If Kreitner and his friends embraced a few rituals for the sake of money or approval, the problem isn’t with Reform Judaism – it’s with their own appropriation of it. I’d like to think they’re not emblematic of the movement as a whole.

Riva Gold’s work appears every Monday. Don’t trivialize her religion at littlebitter@mcgilldaily. com.

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Gotta send ’em first!

So give us your comments, thoughts, opinions in 300 words or less.

We pledge to publish anything sent by a McGill student, as long as it’s not slanderous, libellous, full of nuts, contains animals, homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise hateful.

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10Commentary

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

HYDE PARK

Busting through the Iron Curtain The clichés of the Cold War still blind us today Derek Lappano

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ast week, The Daily published an editorial about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (“Let’s rethink the Cold War,” November 9). The piece asked us to consider the politics of remembering and urged us not to forget the dire problems we face today. However short in length and modest in scope, the piece is a significant movement in the right direction – a gesture that needs to be taken up and carried even further, moved beyond simply rethinking the Cold War to examine the possibility of a political project in its wake.

I’m asking, in other words, what is the most urgent task facing the Left 20 years after state communism’s collapse? My answer is without irony: the task is to rethink communism, the common name for radical emancipation and the call for what truly appears impossible.

Popular memorializing of the Cold War obscures our understanding of present conditions and current struggles between ideologies and from within the present ideological system. Images of denim-clad youth alongside mothers and their children, all with hammers in hand, picking and kicking at the crumbling wall remain common in today’s iconography of democratic struggle. Even the fantastic video footage of David Hasselhoff performing in a crane high above millions of excited Berliners at the peak of the movement conjures up a euphoric sense of celebration. It’s as if the history of revolution and struggle culminated at this very moment, with the Wall as a stand-in for global divisions. “It’s the end of history,” they joyously told us.

Of course, the Left customarily reacts to such images and slogans with a slightly arrogant smirk: “They demanded freedom in those days, and look at what they got – nothing but rampant capitalism!”

This is not only a fashionable, academic critique, but also a recurring sentiment among many former citizens of the Eastern Bloc who live in Germany today. We shouldn’t be too dismissive of the truth contained within such criticism – we need only look to the reality of the past 20 years, since the supposed defeat of oppressive and grand political ideologies, to understand why this typical response to post-Cold War life is, in fact, completely appropriate.

Yes, the oppression and violence of an authoritarian regime was heroically overcome by a committed grassroots movement and powerful international interventions. Yes, liberal democracy has become the global imperative, with developing nations moving only in the direction of this ideology, and not toward Soviet-style communism. We must ask, however: can we really ignore the misery and social malaise that continues all over the globe, always tinged with the sharp pain of betrayal and deception? This bitter realization bubbles up in post-Soviet nations whose economies have only worsened, with unemployment, poverty, and corruption running deeper with each new free election. But of course we know this! Even those brainwashing mainstream media-types love to talk about the problems with liberal capitalism – or capitalism “run unchecked” – and a precious democracy taken for granted, as they say.

In a sense, the core of this historic ideological battle did not disappear with the Berlin Wall. The ghost of the Cold War, lingering at every crisis moment in capitalism, still asks us, “Can we honestly abandon posing liberal capitalism against a global alternative? Can we really go beyond the division

between communistic forms of life and those of capital?”

The short answer is no. If liberal democratic capitalism persists, reaching into deeper aspects of life but growing increasingly unstable, so too will the desire to organize collectively, to produce in co-operation, and to govern autonomously, however disparate these goals might appear at first glance. This project – the open system of struggles united against inequality and for liberation – has a common name: “communism.”

Capitalism has indeed triumphed – not just as an economic system but as a socially-structuring principle, a form of governance, and yes, as an ideology. Soviet-style socialism

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has suffocated itself, though in China it supposedly endures, in hyper-capitalist, statist form. As The Daily points out in the aforementioned editorial, the world is no longer ordered along the lines of “Communist states” and capitalist liberal democracies. The false choice between these two modes of life finally failed to make sense once the Cold War officially ended. There must be no illusions about the Soviet era, which is accompanied by a kind of nostalgia for its monumental rev-

olutions and an erasure of its perversity. It has been defeated, and the fall of the Wall marked a possible turning point in progressive politics. Despite this celebratory moment, an undying spectre still haunts the world: capitalism’s polar opposite, its practical and theoretical negation, that remains a joyous, communistic hypothesis.

It is here, with this counterintuitive return to a despised term, that the possibility for a truly progressive politics in the wake of the Wall can emerge. This is why the Left needs to take up and re-pose the regressive ultimatum pushed on the world during the Cold War: capitalism or communism? The promise of freedom and democracy must no longer go handin-hand with capitalism or liberalism, nor with cynical Leftist projects that don’t name capitalism as an obstacle, seeking rather to change its façade. The aim must not be to carve out temporary spaces of liberation within capital, but to discover its alternative. Perhaps the failure to establish real equality around the world is not because capital is managed poorly, or because liberal democracy is taken for granted, but because the production of exploitation and subordination is actually internal to these systems, inextricable from their values and practices.

The fall of the Berlin Wall should not only force us to reflect on the crimes of oppressive regimes and American imperialism – realities we need to confront and let illuminate existing problems. The memory of the Cold War and those 20 years of “bliss” afterward must also signal an injunction in the present to rethink communism, the common name for radical global emancipation. We should not fear this word. It is already at play when philosophers such as Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou use it openly to describe and redefine an entire movement’s demands. It’s also in use when activist communities here in Montreal work to animate its legacy as they establish a network of informal connections, fighting against the racism of borders and multiculturalism, while also creating spaces for subordinated sexualities and genders. It’s employed when workers in the U.S. organize against the precariousness of their livelihoods, shutting down sites of production and taking control of their workplaces.

What’s lacking here, however, is not direct unity in their campaigns, or that each movement does not directly fight against economic exploitation proper. What’s missing is the recognition that each is struggling against the ever-changing totality of liberal capitalism: what’s missing is the recognition of a common project, which is always in the direction of a fundamentally communistic experience.

Now, more than ever, we must view our situation after the fall of the Wall, during an economic crisis, according to the idea of communism. It is from this political standpoint, the “communist hypothesis,” that remembering the Cold War and its legacy in the present will finally remove our proverbial blinders to offer wholly new possibilities.

As Marx wrote in the German Ideology over 150 years ago, “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” Let’s return to this idea, not to fill an empty shell that was improperly executed by the Soviets and the Chinese, but to retrieve this revolutionary kernel and make it real again in today’s common struggles.

Derek Lappano is a U3 Philosophy and Cultural Studies student. Show him some solidarity at dereklappano@riseup. net.

Art Essay

Soon it will be cold enough Matt Kay

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

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Science&Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

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Does rejection actually hurt?

The Split Brain Daniel Lametti

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couple of months ago, I met a girl in a bar. She was attractive, smart, and, importantly, shorter than me. After we exchanged some witty banter, I was smitten. I suggested we go out, my stomach aflutter when she agreed and gave me her number. We made plans to go to an art gallery the following weekend.

The afternoon of the date arrived, and I was, so to speak, on – she laughed at my jokes, I made insightful comments about modern art, and, in my favourite pair of skinny jeans, I looked great. By the end of the date, though, I had started to develop a sinking feeling. The usual signs of romantic interest – suggestive glances, unnecessary body contact, sloppy make-outs – were missing, and I went home that evening unsure if we’d go out again.

And then, two days later, while sitting in a coffee shop working on a piece for The Daily, she texted me. My heart soared – that is, until I actually read her text and realized that it made little sense. It turned out she had confused my number with that of another “Dan”; she had never meant to text me. Ouch.

Leaving half an Americano on the

table and my column for the week unfinished, I sulked home feeling like I’d been punched in the gut, my stomach firmly lodged in my throat.

Rejection. Like everyone, I’ve experienced it and I’ve even dished it out (sorry, Caroline from third year…). We say that it hurts, but does it actually hurt – does the brain experience the emotional pain of rejection in the same way that it experiences physical pain?

Six years ago, neuroscientists working at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) decided to find out.

To simulate rejection in the lab, the UCLA scientists had test subjects play a game of virtual ball toss.

While having their brains scanned and looking at a computer screen, a test subject had to pass a blip on the screen – the “ball” – to one of two characters also on the display.

Crucially, the subject was told that the actions of the characters – whether they passed the ball back to the subject, or between themselves – were controlled by two other test subjects in a separate room, also having their brains scanned.

In reality, though, there were no

Lukas Thienhaus / The McGill Daily

other test subjects. A computer controlled the other characters, and after a few minutes of playing fairly, it abruptly stopped passing the ball back to the subject. The subject was then forced to sit and watch the characters on the display gleefully pass the ball between themselves without ever passing it back – in other words, laboratory-style rejection.

When the game made subjects feel rejected, the scanner found that neurons in an area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACG, fired.

difference between physical pain and emotional pain.

If the brain doesn’t distinguish between physical pain and emotional pain, then those of us who have a high tolerance for one must also have a high tolerance for the other. So, before I go on my next date, perhaps all I need are a few boxing lessons.

If you could push your hands through the middle top of your skull, peeling apart the two lobes of your brain, a bulbous structure, almost in the middle of your head, would pop out; that would be the ACG. The ACG plays a role in processing emotion and empathy and, as a 1998 study confirmed in dramatic fashion by shooting lasers at subjects, it also fires neurons when you experience physical pain. The UCLA scientists concluded that, from the brain’s standpoint, there is little

You can email Daniel Lametti at thesplitbrain@mcgilldaily.com.

You might never hear back from him though, so prepare yourself now for the pain.

tiny, perhaps about the fraction of the radius of an atom. Of course, this also means that black hole waves are almost impossible to detect, and is one of the reasons we haven’t actually heard them yet – though giant experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and the planned Laser Interferometer Space Antenna should soon change that.

Despite the lack of recordings, Levin didn’t disappoint and played a few audio clips of what these waves should sound like, according to mathematical models. “Songs” may be a bit of an overstatement, but the waves produced by a newborn black hole eating up a dying star sounded eerily like whale song. A recording of two black holes spiralling in on each other generated a distinctive techno-like beat which got faster

and faster until the beats – which Levin explained could be likened to two black holes acting as “mallets” on the “drum” of the spacetime continuum – became indistinguishable and the black holes finally collapsed into one with a high pitch slide and a disturbing “pop” sound.

While new scientific knowledge can be gained by listening for black holes, Levin hopes these sounds will also be inspirational, much like the Hubble Space Telescope’s deep space photographs. They could give us a “soundtrack of the universe,” and although these “songs” may not turn out to be chart-toppers, chances are good they will find their way into at least one sci-fi movie theme song.

So when will these recordings be made? According to Levin, probably not for another 10 years or so.

Stay tuned.

Intergalactic music Physicists use sound ripples to detect black holes Iain Martyn Sci+Tech Writer

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n olden times, astronomers used to say they heard the “music of the spheres,” meaning that they could interpret the beautiful, periodic movements of the planets across the sky as musical tones and harmonic intervals.

Today, thanks to astrophysicists like Janna Levin of Barnard College at Columbia University, that phrase has a whole new meaning and is no longer restricted to lumps of rock or burning balls of gas. The final speaker in McGill’s commemorative lecture series to honour the International Year of Astronomy, Levin is in hot pursuit of some of the strangest music this universe has to offer, produced by the darkest, and perhaps most mysterious, objects humankind has ever known. She’s

listening for the songs emitted by black holes.

Levin is not just “another theoretical physicist.” Standing before the audience Thursday evening in red high heels and a yellow leather jacket was a scientist who writes prize-winning popular science books, paints, and writes essays to accompany contemporary art exhibitions that are influenced by the “weirdness” of physics. Levin has even been on The Colbert Report. It’s almost fitting that she listens to the sounds of black holes as her day job.

“A black hole,” Levin explained, “is the death state of a star, a supermassive dense object that stretches space-time into a singularity, creating a gravitational field so strong that, past a certain point – the event horizon – even light cannot escape.”

Levin said that until now, black

holes, due to their invisible nature, have only been observed indirectly, often just by studying some visible object orbiting around seemingly empty space. For Levin and many other physicists, this isn’t enough. It might actually be more effective to hear black holes rather than see them – especially those far from any visible neighbouring objects.

Since black holes are so dense, a pair orbiting each other should produce a noticeable sound.

“Just as a big object, such as a whale, can create ripples and waves in water by its movement, so can the orbits of two black holes create waves in the fabric of space-time,” Levin said.

For those who might be worried about being stretched or shrunk by passing black hole waves, rest assured that the magnitude of this phenomenon is

16Science+Technology

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

A call to integrate science into politics Former politician says issue applies to all parties David Zuluaga Cano Sci+Tech Writer

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divorce may yet be avoided in the often-shaky marriage between science and politics.

This rapprochement was started last Thursday by Darin Barney, a professor from the McGill Department of Art History and Communications, and Preston Manning, president and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, during an event organized by Media@McGill.

Entitled “On the Politics of Science and Technology in Canada,” the talk provided a forum to examine the challenges that exist in using science to create public policy.

Manning studied physics at the University of Alberta for three years, but chose to transfer into the economics program before the end of his degree. As the leader of the former Reform Party, he represented Calgary Southwest in Parliament from 1993 to 2002.

During his time there, he was the opposition critic for science and technology. From this vantage point, he discussed why science does not play a more prominent role in the legislative work of government and why scientific consensus sometimes takes a backseat to political expediency.

“I’m conscious of the communications gap between the political community and the scientific community,” Manning explained. “I try to bridge that divide.”

Barney, however, challenged the Conservative record by listing several actions taken by the present government since coming into power. He mentioned

was Environment Minister Rona Ambrose forbidding a public servant from promoting his own novel in 2006 because it discussed climate change. Another example, from 2008, was Health Minister Tony Clement, who questioned in a speech to the Canadian Medical Association the ethics of physicians who support safe injection sites.

Manning rejected the idea that these claims are evidence of an antiscience bias in the Conservative Party.

He pointed out that instead, there’s simply a shortage of scientific talent in all political parties. Manning claimed to be interested in developing intellectual capital by getting more scientists elected into public office.

“There’s a profound misconception that confuses Canadian Conservatives with Republicans,” countered Manning. “The challenge with Conservatives, and all political parties, is an apathy to applying science to what it is doing.”

To Manning’s credit, he is not a government apologist. Part of the discussion focused on examining the present government’s shortcomings in addressing the concerns of the scientific community on climate change, and he did not dance around the issue.

“Conservatives have not applied their own view to the preservation of the environment,” Manning reflected.

“The principle behind fiscal conservatism is living within your means.”

This admission should not be taken as a shift in his politics. Manning simply believes that there are marketdriven solutions to the environment that the government has not applied.

“Conservatives should special-

Manning emphasized a need for scientists in public office. ize in harnessing pricing mechanisms in order to address climate change,” he counselled.

Manning argued that such challenging issues require more than government action; there must be a commitment by the general population to a change in lifestyle. He observed that private enterprise can be very successful in tackling such problems, and that the private sector would inevitably have to take part if these issues were

Miranda Whist / The McGill Daily

to be fixed. Pretending otherwise, he argued, would only do more harm.

“You can condition [people] that governmental intervention is a solution to everything,” he said.

A conversation between an academic and a retired politician may seem unlikely to effect change, but the participants took a different view. Part of the problem when debating science with politicians is that during a cam-

paign, everything factors into political calculus: debates are not framed on the merits of the issue, but on whose image will benefit from them.

Manning suggested that our officials might take up the offer of discussing their views more often if they had a place available that allowed for neutral dialogue, such as the one provided on Thursday. In short, he called for a forum where the main concern is not about winning.

thirties. These polio vaccines were subsequently refined and have virtually eradicated the disease.

Bernstein envisions a similar fate for HIV. He further emphasized that the proper way to interpret these results is to consider the incremental nature of scientific progress.

“It’s actually very rare in science

unrealistic to expect…home runs; to demand that is to guarantee failure.”

Perhaps more than anyone, Bernstein understands the challenges facing the developers of a viable HIV vaccine. HIV is the most efficient virus at subverting the immune system, and there is no perfect HIV animal model. But the success of the recent HIV trial has given Bernstein hope.

“I’m quite optimistic that we’ll get a vaccine one day,” said Bernstein.

Bernstein also had an important message for the students in the audience. “One of the messages I want to convey to everyone here is just how important young people are to [HIV vaccine development], and to global health and to Health Canada. Science is all about young people…because young people, by definition, see things with fresh eyes.”

Stumbling upon progress HIV researcher hopeful for the future of youth in science Daniel Ting Sci+Tech Writer

O

n November 6, Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Enterprise, delivered an open lecture entitled “Global Science for Global Challenges” to a capacity crowd at the Lyman Duff Amphitheatre.

The former president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Bernstein described his career path as a “random walk.”

Bernstein completed a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics before beginning his PhD in genetics. More than 20 years later, and having never done any research work on the virus, he became the head of the Global HIV Enterprise.

Yet Bernstein holds that one of

the major reasons for his career success lies in the fact that he was able to bring a fresh approach to his various positions.

“Most real breakthroughs in science happen by people who know nothing about the breakthrough they’re doing,” Bernstein said.

He suggested that often the creative, outside-the-box ideas come from individuals who are free from the dominant paradigms of a particular field.

Last month, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine described the first successful HIV vaccine trial in Thailand, now referred to as the “Thai trial.” The Thai trial took the innovative approach of combining two separate HIV vaccine candidates, neither of which had worked individually.

Bernstein pointed out that

many of the supposed “experts” in the field were opposed to the Thai trial from the get-go, claiming that it would be a waste of time and resources. And despite the surprisingly positive outcome of the trial, the results remain controversial: critics note that the vaccine only showed a 31 per cent efficacy from a limited sample.

“I’m quite optimistic that we’ll get a vaccine one day” Alan Bernstein Executive Director, Global HIV Enterprise According to Bernstein, however, the potential of this trial result is enormous. He noted that whereas 31 per cent efficacy is not license to produce a vaccine, it does represent a higher success rate than the first polio vaccine trials in the

that you hit a home run,” Bernstein said, “In [the HIV vaccine] field, there is an expectation that this will be different, and unless a trial confers 100 per cent protection, there’s something wrong with it.

We don’t get that anywhere. It’s

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

17

Art and punishment Panel discusses the legal issues surrounding street art Zoë Robertson Culture Writer

W

hat started as Peter Gibson’s midnight rebellion against Montreal’s restrictive traffic infrastructure soon became an underground art form, recognizable (literally) on the city’s streets. Downtown, you can find Gibson’s easily identifiable art – under his alias Roadsworth – in the form of pedestrian crosswalks decorated with bullet shells, or floral vines lacing around the stop line at a street corner. Roadsworth’s simple stencilled ornaments create a completely novel look for the concrete monotony that often characterizes city life. Though he favours the Mile-End and Plateau areas, you can likely find some of Roadsworth’s art near your home.

The artist’s original intent – to raise awareness for the lack of bike paths in Montreal – compelled him to start using city streets as a canvas in 2001. Since then, his work has become a phenomenon that has earned the admiration of local citizens as well as the careful scrutiny of city officials. We can’t forget, after all, that his art is entirely illegal.

On November 9, Faculty of Law student club Rethinking Intellectual Property Policy held a talk discussing the legal aspects of street art.

The panellists included prominent Montreal-based graffiti artist Sterling Downey, Roadsworth, city councillor Raymond Carrier, and Karen Crawley, a doctoral student specializing in the regulation of graffiti in Melbourne, Australia.

Downey, the panel’s self-proclaimed “shit-disturber,” was by far the most vocal and assertive of the presenters. Publisher of Under Pressure magazine, and founder of the annual International Graffiti Convention, he began by raising the pertinent question, “Who would be dumb enough to claim ownership of something they did illegally?”

The issue at hand is neither straightforward nor clearcut. “What gives us the right to paint something on someone’s wall?” asked Downey, illustrating the perplexing dimension of unchartered intellectual property laws for graffiti. “It’s funny, what I just created on the wall is now my property on your property, and if you paint over the wall then you’ve infringed on my intellectual property but I infringed on your personal property.”

The bad guys here appear to be the money-grabbing corporations that take graffiti images, unccredited, and sell them without any compensation for their creators.

“Whether graffiti is legal or illegal, you still have a responsibility to find out who did it when you’re using it,” said Downey. “Many companies are doing this without permission, assuming that people are ignorant and won’t find out about it.” While the artists and unwitting corporations can duke it out in court battles, there seems to be some code of respect among street and graffiti artists when it comes to intellectual

All illustrations by Olivia Messer / The McGill Daily

property laws and their violation.

“I didn’t contact anyone to publish these photographs [in Under Pressure magazine],” declared Downey with an air of pride, showing off one of the perks that comes with being part of that community.

He claimed that the City is generally cooperative with graffiti artists, creating opportunities for legal work by commissioning murals, for example. Carrier, who works alongside Downey in certain negotiations, explained that while the City understands these types of expression, there needs to be a link made between street art and municipal regulations. The idea is to have a dialogue with youth, respecting their possibility to express themselves while maintaining that there are consequences to the notion of expression.

Crawley offered an approach that would “foster general appreciation for...[the] innovation and creativity of street art and at the same time try to target and educate graffiti artists... [and] move artists away from tagging, toward more acceptable forms of street art.” As a less invasive alternative, Crawley suggested placement art, which “is very well situated and deal[s] with already existing features of the natural cityscape,” bringing to mind Roadsworth’s local

embellishments.

Sure, we can call this type of art graffiti, but there’s something constricting about the term that may not do Roadsworth’s artwork justice. In a phone interview, he said, “I think labels are always problematic in any genre or any art form because, you know, it’s sort of a necessary evil... when you have to categorize something.”

Within a legal context, he says, the issue is the canvas. “A lot of graffiti writers hit private property, so there’s that difference right there....

Technically, I’m entitled to using... public space. I pay taxes; I’m a public citizen, so in some way the space that I paint belongs to me as much as anybody else.”

Street artists who don’t necessarily want to engage in the art form illegally have a loophole to consider – selling their work or having it commissioned. But that opens up a new can of worms entirely, one that affects the artist on a personal or community-based level.

Roadsworth explained that after he began to sell photos of his work, “a lot of the attitude was often, ‘Oh you call yourself a street artist...I thought you were real, man...you give your work out for free and now you’re charging for your photos.’”

The panellists were united in their opinion that selling street art doesn’t defeat its purpose.

Justifying the practice is the fact that it gives the artist greater control over what their work is used for. Downey explains that “selling out is doing something you don’t want to do that you don’t have control of.... I’m not just selling [my art] to somebody to do what they want with it; I’m selling it to them under very specific conditions.” Selling

work does also legitimize the artist.

Roadsworth, somewhat more gently than his artistic counterpart and panel-mate Downey, argued that he sells his work “also as a way to screen people...once you get people to pay for something, you get taken more seriously.” Crawley also points out that “it’s not as though graffiti artists don’t use resources and capital and money and leverage...in order to do what they do.”

Clearly there are many issues surrounding the legalities of street art, but until the art form can be appreciated as valid and self-sufficient, there may be difficulties in reaching consensus about policy.

“It’s interesting,” noted Crawley, “that all of these...artistic practices...[are] never actually looked at through the laws of freedom of expression; they’re only ever looked at through a criminal lens.

And it’s very much a detriment in trying to rethink intellectual property policy.” This art form isn’t very different, argued Roadsworth, from other forms of post-industrial sediment people routinely deposit – and certainly a more visually appealing one. “Graffiti is a by-product of human activity. It’s almost like moss growing on a wall.

There are a lot of tire treads and... traces that are created by human activity...that we can’t legislate because it’s considered accidental, but in the end ...for me, it’s sort of a reflection of society.”

18Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

Tell us your stories! (and poems, and anything else....)

for the

Daily’s Literary Supplement Submissions due today (Monday, November 16) at midnight Send work to litsup@mcgilldaily.com

CULTURE BRIEFS Look out Wagner – here comes the future!

Only one band would cover Black Flag’s “Damaged” by memory: the same band who wrote a vocal suite for Björk and collaborated with David Byrne on a charity compilation less than six months prior.

Dirty Projectors frontman Dave Longstreth’s influences range from Nietzsche to Jay-Z, and it shows on their latest, Bitte Orca, one of the year’s most unclassifiable releases.

Dirty Projectors (the band once had, but has since removed “The” from their name) began as Longstreth’s tape-recorded experiments. His rather inaccessible musical exercises eventually built enough momentum to support full-fledged albums like The Getty Address – an opera about Don Henley, ancient Mexico, oil, and post-9/11 America. It sounds like Wagner, it sounds like R. Kelly – it sounds like the future.

But it was only this year that they broke through with Bitte Orca, an album that tempers Longstreth’s more difficult musical tendencies with genuine pop sensibilities. “Stillness Is the Move” combines West African guitar work with Projector Amber Coffman’s R&B vocal delivery, creating one of the strangest party jams of this summer. “No Intention” effortlessly switches between girl-group coos and dissonant noise blasts, with enough time to throw in a percussionheavy rap verse. “Two Doves” appropriates Nico’s “These Days,” and the result is a moving showcase of Angel Deradoorian’s formidable vocal talents.

In terms of their live show, Dirty Projectors features some good old-fashioned technical prowess.

Look out for overwhelming vocal counterpoint between the band’s three female singers in “Remade Horizon.” Meanwhile, Longstreth plays through difficult guitar runs like he washes his hands. The band played last Sunday at Le National for their impressive John Cage-as-MC rock show. They visit Montreal regularly, so make sure to catch them next time they’re in town.

—Joseph Henry

The sounds of solidarity This past Wednesday, diaspora solidarity collective Tadamon!, in collaboration with the Suoni per il Popolo music festival and CKUT, hosted the eleventh edition of Artists Against Apartheid. The event, a musical contribution to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, was held at Sala Rossa and featured performers including Sam Shalabi and former members of Silver Mt. Zion.

“Tadamon!” means “solidarity” in Arabic, and the concept had a palpable presence in Sala, with Palestinian flags and kaffiyehs draped over most of the room’s surfaces. The night’s theme was “remembering political prisoners in Palestine,” and between the evening’s three performances, the stories of two Palestinian political prisoners were related to the audience.

The evening’s first performance was an Oud trio featuring Montreal music-scene giant, Sam Shalabi, and Omar Dewachi, an Iraqi musician and academic. The performance, arguably the evening’s highlight, reprised many of the musical themes from Shalabi’s recent Land of Kush release, which brought together elements of free-jazz, psych-noise, and Nasser-era Egyptian orchestral music.

Seven Arrows, a new ensemble partly composed of musicians from Lhasa de Sela and Silver Mt. Zion followed. Likely because of its unusual instrumentation (harp, flute, steel pedal lap guitar, cello, and light percussion) Seven Arrows played a nuanced and unfamiliar brand of post-rock that would have been appealing to fans of Silver Mt. Zion, while remaining wholly distinct from their forebearers.

The evening closed with the Visual Music Project, led by film score composer Antoine Bustros. Against a projected background of striking images of 9/11, prairie farm towns, and brutality in Palestine from Mary Ellen Davis’s film Territoires, the VMP’s jagged blend of traditional instruments and creative sampling was haunting, raising goosebumps on many a spectator. Benoît Piché’s soaring trumpet was given a modern take as the sampler twisted and bent its already-eccentric phrasings.

As the musical profile of Artists Against Apartheid grows, the series could be one to watch for bigger and bigger acts, with some significant political implications to boot.

—Michael Lee-Murphy

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Ollivia Messer/ The McGill Daily

Your first gig Student bands weigh in on how to break into the Montreal music scene Sophia LePage Culture Writer

M

ontreal’s unique fusion of diverse national influences makes for a creative cultural atmosphere unmatched by most other North American cities. It’s home to some of the finest musical acts of recent years, including Arcade Fire, Silly Kissers, and Chromeo. It draws a variety of acts for its well-known festivals, Osheaga and Pop Montreal, from large-scale artists such as Coldplay to less mainstream but still wellestablished bands like Yo la Tengo.

Such a large variety of musicians and the overall competitive nature of the music world can make getting involved in Montreal’s music scene intimidating. However, as I found out by speaking to three different Montreal-based bands, getting involved, even on a small scale, actually proves to be very doable.

If you’re willing to commit yourself fully to your band, and really want to break into the music

scene, then booking a few good shows might be all you need. “I think if you’re in a city, and you work hard and you play a couple of good shows, and you can kind of dedicate yourself to that, then it’s totally feasible that you’ll start to meet people who want to book shows for you, or just who like you enough to tell their friends about you” says Josh Frank, an East Asian Studies major at McGill, member of positive noise duo Hot & Cold, and former Daily editor. If you don’t have time to dedicate yourself fully to your band, however, the city offers a variety of other possible ways for you to establish yourself on your own terms.

“There’s tons of venues in Montreal that don’t charge any initial cost to rent out the place for the night,” says Devon Welsh, a U3 double major in religious studies and drama and theatre, and member of The Pop Winds. Casa del Popolo, Bar St. Laurent 2, and Vinyl are favourites of these bands.

“That’s just the easiest way; that’s just the most direct route to play-

ing shows, and hopefully people will like it and maybe they’ll offer shows for you to play or you can keep putting on your own shows,” Welsh continues.

Another of Welsh’s favourites was lab.synthèse, a loft venue on Beaubien. Loft spaces offer musicians an open place where it’s easy to interact with the audience and which doesn’t feel as formal as a classic venue. It gives the crowd and the musicians a more intimate dynamic during the performance. lab.synthèse recently closed down, but Edwin White, one half of psychedelic pop duo TONSTARTSSBANDHT, shared his experience of playing there with me, saying, “lab.synthèse is our…was our favourite place to play, because it had a ton of floor space, and a really good PA and a really wide stage, so you could see everyone in the audience and they could see you, and if you wanted to play on the side, or on the floor, you could still get tons of people surrounding you, so yeah, a good place, good space.”

On top of booking fee-free and DIY venues, there’s also the possibility of going and contacting bands directly in the hopes of playing with them. “If you’re a fan of a band, and you think that that band fits your sound, [you could say,] ‘Hey, I noticed there’s an open space for a local band, we love this band, and we think they’re kind of like equal counterparts for our style of music like that would a great fit for the show’.… If you can convince them, then you’re pretty much golden,” White said.

However, “establishing oneself” does not have to start or even end on a big scale – it can be something as simple as putting yourself on the map at school by, for example, playing a great set at a party. Beginner bands take note: “[New bands] definitely shouldn’t think that if they couldn’t play at a bar, they’re not a legitimate band,” Frank says. “Part of the fun is playing in strange places or in friends’ basements or living rooms, or making friends who have big living rooms.”

All three band members also

emphasized that it wasn’t about playing the biggest venue in Montreal, but playing a great set and having a good interaction with your audience. As White puts it, “it doesn’t really matter if you know, like, if it’s a prestigious place, but if it’s the kind of place that invites a good, like, a good kind of atmosphere, that’s where you wanna play a show. It’s very important to make a show go well. Even if you’re good, [if] you know the crowd’s not feeling it because all the different circumstances, you know, then you don’t have a good show for yourself.”

Regardless of where you end up playing, it’s about making the crowd really grasp what you’re conveying through your music. Opt for any space that can culture this kind of relationship. Frank sums this up by stating that “You kind of make the most of the space you have, and if you can make people forget that they’re in a living room or a dingy dive bar, because that’s the only space you could get, then that’s a success, I think.”

20Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

Paternal processes A son reconnects with his father through music and art

Joseph Henry The McGill Daily

“H

ere is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.” So sayeth the book of Revelation about the False Prophet. But it turns out the book may have made a mistake in quantification: instead of 666, try 162636.

That is, if Constantine Delilabros had had his way.

Delilabros, a sailor from Athens, died in 2000, leaving his numerological formula for the Bible, as well as his visual art, and seemingly all of reality, behind. But it hasn’t ended there. Delilabros’ son Panayiotis has reconstructed one of his father’s most extensive experiments into the installation When You Go Back, Nothing is Real. The work, which is centred around a musical composition based on Delilabros’ calculations extracted from the Bible called Automatic Reproduction of Constantine Delilabros’ Music Scores,” is up at articule through December 13.

As an installation, the presentation is stark. The younger Delilabros’ hand-

written transcriptions of his father’s code serve as the visual component: framed sheets of tiny numbers that, because of their pseudo-Pointillist aesthetic, seem like masses of black geometry from far away. In the centre of the gallery, Panayiotis has encased a Bible, a calculator, and a relay box in a glass container. The numbers depicted on the wall are entered into the calculator, and then processed into the gallery’s speaker system. The resulting aural tones, random kazoolike pitches, are then played into the gallery space in direct mimicry of his father’s work.

Though this may seem like a formal dialogue on minimalist sound interactions, the presentation actually belies a deeply personal motivation. Panayiotis has recreated his father’s experiment to reconnect with an often-missing paternal figure and to compensate for an unsubstantiated father-son relationship.

The two had what Panayiotis calls a “difficult” connection, exacerbated by Constantine’s absence from the household due to his work. “He believed everything was numbers,” Panayiotis said of his father, whose personal numerological perspective informed not only his stratification of Biblical figures (angels had dif-

ferent numbers based on number of wings), but also the paper sculptures he created while at home. According to Panayiotis, Constantine kept his sculptures, musical compositions, and numerical formula to himself, and never attempted to publish his work. To Constantine, the art making and numerological theorizing were escapist indulgences out of touch with the overtly masculine Greek society in which he lived. To his son, Constantine’s formula was “borderline between madness and genius. Probably madness.”

Panayiotis has gone through the motions of attempting to artistically recreate his father’s actions: painstakingly learning his father’s handwriting and legitimizing it as an actual font, writing approximately 100 numbers for each of the sheets, and even creating an Internet connection to constantly stream the music into his kitchen, where Constantine first played his compositions. The processes behind the work seem to carry more personal weight for Panayiotis than the actual product,

the music he has acknowledged as “random.” In the same way children act out their parents’ mannerisms, Panayiotis is replicating an experience that he was excluded from as a child.

“You, Me, and Him in Trocadero,” one of the three videos Panayiotis is showing alongside “Automatic Reproduction of Constantine Delilabros’ Music Scores,” shows Panayiotis and his boyfriend – who wears a paper mask printed with Constantine’s face – entering a photo booth.

At one point, Panayiotis chooses to have the photo booth program “draw” the two men’s faces.

The rather drawn-out computer sketching mirrors Panayiotis’s own processes of discovering his father and discovering himself in that context. Yet the final product in “Trocadero” is a kitsch representation of the artist and a caricature of his father together, demonstrating the partial and insuffi-

Olliv

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cient identity constructed in the end. As the title states, when you go back, nothing is real.

Panayiotis refuses to provide his father’s mathematical formula, enabling Constantine’s genius, or madness, to retain its elusive and incomprehensible (or unfounded) properties. He has also opened up his father’s hidden art the public sphere, legitimizing what was once considered shameful. As the artist says: “[The] most important thing for [me is] exhibiting his work in a gallery.” What remains is an act of respectful recognition, regardless of a relationship that never was.

When You Go Back, Nothing is Real is up at articule (262 Fairmount O.) through December 13. To hear the musical section of the work, go to whenyougobacknothingisreal.info.

WIN ONE OF THE 75 DOUBLE PASSES TO SEE THE MOVIE! Presented by

STARTS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27 !

Come by the McGill Daily Office (Shatner B-26) and get a free double pass to The Road.

First come, first served. Student ID required.

/ The

Culture

The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

21

Canadian voices Three contemporary poets read their work at Green Room Gavin Thomson Culture Writer

A

friend and I recently had a conversation about Canadian poetry. We didn’t get very far. Literature inevitably represents the place and time from which it emerges. But it’s always difficult to define the age you’re in. We can point to Alice Munro or A.J.M. Smith as representative of their time periods, but what are we pointing to now?

Of course, this is not a question I can answer; even an attempt suggests naïveté. But to be sure, there are many parallels between notions of what it means to be a Canadian and what means to say “contemporary Canadian literature”: both point to vastness, space, and a multi-this and multithat response – multilingual, multicultural, multidimensional. And in the case of poetry it seems to point to a multiplicity of voices, speaking from different milieus and natural environments.

The poetry reading at Green Room on November 12 attested to this sentiment. Canadian poets Erin Mouré, Stephen Collis, and Norma Cole each presented some of their material to a warm and utterly attentive crowd.

Green Room offered a snug and relaxed setting; its smallness fit the crowd, who sat mostly on the purple velvet couches along the exposed brick walls, on which a selection of oil-based paintings was on display. The bar, across from the couches, sold mainly beer. And near the back, faint Christmas lights hanging from an

air vent somehow added a quaint appeal.

Cole, born in Toronto and now teaching at the University of San Francisco, was introduced as “a poet who enters the body of expectation.” Indeed, her poetry offered the sense of being led somewhere. According to Mouré, Cole’s poetry “keeps us awake, as insomnia does – by repetitions and jags of perspective, shifts. It lights gardens.” Cole seemed to playfully yoke startling and fragmented images together into a sinuous whole, all the while evoking a sense of sprightliness through her terse, nuanced language.

A reading from “Natural Light” exemplified this: “music was/ playing, heavy/ breathing said/ hello, concrete/ proof, treeless/ space, nothing/ but sand.”

Collis’s poetry, on the other hand, was replete with AngloSaxon rhythms and tough, pounding sounds. At times echoing the style of “sprung rhythm,” invented

by Gerard Manley Hopkins, his poetry affected a sense of uplifting, of tugging onward as if moving one’s feet with one’s hands.

His latest book, The Commons, depicts contrasting tensions and freedoms in urban landscapes through the eyes of the “madpeasant poet,” John Clare. We are lead on a search for commonalities between people and places in the privatized terrain of capitalist society, particularly in Vancouver where “colonialism is still rawly present.” “Blackberries,” one of Collis’s longer poems, follows Clare as he partakes in the urban berry-picking tradition in Vancouver, where – using what-

Matt Kay for The McGill Daily

Norma Cole, Stephen Collis, and Erin Mouré exemplify the diversity of Canadian poetry. ever they can – locals collect berries as if picking apples in the countryside. Often droll and witty, Collis’s poetry was at once critical and sensitive: “Commodity, filling itself up/ just able to mute ‘oil can, oil can’/ through tin lips.”

Mouré discussed body, mind, sex, poetry, and censorship by reading excerpts from a collection of her essays. Borrowing terms from Spinoza, she rendered the body

as something made of “velocities and relationalities,” and discussed porn – “an expression of sex” – in relation with this image. But, she conceded, how much does the censorship of poetry in Canada even matter, if poetry is so unattended to? As Mouré said, “How far a fall is it, from the sidewalk to the gutter?” Overall, though, her stance on poetry was critical, funny, and inquisitive.

What we are pointing to in Canadian poetry at the moment, then, is a diversity of voices, not linked by any particular means of poetic expression, but by a general freedom – which, of course, is difficult to define. And the poetry readings at the Green Room offered direct access to a few poets who epitomized this diversity, each writing in their own particularly captivating voices.

paint illuminates and projects on the gallery space itself. Beyond questioning the artist’s relationship with the wall, Off The Wall aims to challenge the relationship between the art and the gallery. The physical space of the exhibition site sets parameters for what can be showcased and how it can be arranged.

During a discussion event at the gallery, Dorion explained, “The structure of a gallery, its walls, its shape, its design, all influence how an exhibition can be shown and what kind of oeuvres can be shown.” A curator may have a certain vision when putting together a collection of pieces, but that does not always mean they come to life.

Thériault added, “Certain connections are desired, but they can’t be forced. Some links between the oeuvres are discovered after the

assembly.”

Those with contempt for contemporary art can easily dismiss Off The Wall and its common thread of monochromatic minimalism, but talking with the curator, director, or any of the artists can help elucidate the exhibit’s artistic statement. Be sure to take advantage of the numerous events and online resources offered for this exhibition. Biweekly walkin tours and “meet the artists” events are ways to really get behind the exhibition and break down the wall between the audience and the artist.

Working the Wall New exhibition examines the fundamental constructs of gallery space Tiana Reid The McGill Daily

O

ff The Wall – the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s latest exposition – attempts to explore and challenge the relationship between the artist and the physical wall, inspecting the construct’s paradoxical roles as both constraint and source of creative freedom.

Typically, it is understood that artists use the materials available to them, exploiting their limitations as well as their resources. Gallery director Michèle Thériault, for one, considers the wall a constraint. But working off the wall can be a challenging way to reframe the connections between the artist, the wall, the artwork, and the gallery.

Off the Wall examines two broad artistic approaches to the wall.

Artists like Neil Campbell, Louise Lawler, Barry Allikas, and Wanda Koop directly intervene on the walls of the gallery to create their artworks. Others sculpt pieces protruding off the walls and into the rest of the gallery space – a method adopted by Alexandre David in his untitled plywood-based piece.

However, the other artists – Claude Tousignant, Michael Merrill, Guy Pellerin, and Betty Goodwin – use alternative techniques, alternatively in-between and beyond the former two approaches to reassess the notion of the wall.

Two photo series by Betty Goodwin stood out: The Clark Street Project and The Mentana Street Project, the latter of which employs Montreal apartments as

a medium. The series was a black and white exploration of the theme of passage through representations of doors, lobbies, entryways, walls, and blank surfaces. Through this, Goodwin created what curator Pierre Dorian calls a “destabilizing experience” by intervening and morphing the walls of a domestic space into “a sort of monolithic black cell.” The desolate and abandoned areas depicted in the photographs were almost unrecognizable as the rooms that inform daily life.

Berry Allikas’s homage to Blinky Palermo, Bridge (For Blinky Palermo), was created on site directly on the walls of the gallery.

Allikas uses the geometric motif of a bridge to challenge the artistic concepts of white and negative spaces.

The piece’s fluorescent yellow latex

Off the Wall is up at the Ellen Art Gallery (1400 Maisonneuve O.) through December 12. For more information, visit ellengallery.concordia.ca.

Compendium!

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The McGill Daily, Monday, November 16, 2009

Lies, half-truths, and set patterns

Hey, you on the bicycle over there I’ve let this fester for too long. Cyclists of Montreal – we need to talk.

I’m tired of you jackasses whizzing past me along Parc as I make my way to campus. Don’t get me wrong; your commitment to whatever environmental goal is the current fad is admirable, but you’re covering Montreal with an equally toxic product: douchebaggery. I’m tired of seeing you on sidewalks, and not just any sidewalks, but the ones RIGHT BESIDE THE FUCKING BIKE PATHS. Seriously, what the hell goes through your head to reach the “The bike path is 20 feet away.... I’ll use the sidewalk” conclusion?

If I weren’t so polite, I would naturally select a few of you with a stick through the spokes – but that’s mean and I wish to conform, rather than punish you. The only time for which your being on the sidewalk is appropriate is when you are dismounting at your final destination. Things with wheels go on the road – that’s the price you pay for faster-than-foot transportation. The bike riding situation in Montreal does not stand to reason.

I’ve lived in many different cities, and the city with the best cyclist accommodation has the worst cyclists. Instead of a car-free Montreal, I think we need a jackass-free Montreal.

Mallory Bey / The McGill Daily

Fuck This! is a therapeutic anonymous rant column, not necessarily about the library. Send your 200-word-or-less harangues every week to fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com. Anonymity guaranteed, but nothing hateful – just frustrated!

You can find more of Mal’s work at malbouge.blogspot.com.

Un crossword bilingue Sophie et Julien

Across 1. Children’s despised vegetable 9. Thai currency 13. Minnesotan Protestant 14. Rhymes with polio 15. Tor___ 16. What the vampire did to me 17. Husband, in Paris 18. Earth-shaped ellipsoid 20. Wheelbarrow 22. Le chat est ___ la chaise.

24. Anger 25. French article 26. Sends a different way 30. French dorm furniture 31. Afghan ruler 32. Month after avril 33. Goalie's kick 34. Stir 35. Cause inconvenience 37. __ the crow flies 38. Merlot, e.g.

39. Town meeting turn-down 40. Kind of calendar 43. Pippi Longstocking, e.g.

47. Indian bread 48. School bag for French class 50. “The Dock of the

Bay” singer Redding 51. Coastal raptor 52. Raises an outcry 54. Turned blue, maybe 55. Speed up

Down

in Trois-Rivières 33. Cheap building material 35. Faint 36. Tights for Montreal winters 38. Feathered arrow adj.

41. Alleyway 42. Mineral Residue 44. Rouge a levres holder 45. Gossip 46. Latin existence 49. “___ Ou Pas Cap?” 53. First-person reflexive word, in French

1. Popular complaint medium 2. Ancient alphabetic character 3. ___ Maass 4. Boire ou conduire, il faut ___!

5. This, in French 6. Sun, e.g.

7. Café additive 8. Woman's ___ Solution to “Better 9. Atomique, e.g. living through chemistry” 10. Winglike 11. Slavey 12. W.C. 19. C’est pas facile!

21. Miss after marriage 23. Wax nostalgic 26. Stayed behind 27. Go-between 28. Apres neuf 29. En ___ d’urgence 30. Him,

Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah-ah, roma roma moma, Gaga ooh la la How’s the crossword? Too hard? Too easy?

Let us know: compendium@mcgilldaily.com