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News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

3

Band appeals B.C. Supreme Court order Ruling permits commericial logging on land under investigation for title claim Rana Encol The McGill Daily

O

n March 12, judge Caroline E. Brown will hear the Okanagan Indian Band’s (OKIB) application to appeal a February 1 order prohibiting their interference with commercial logging operations by Tolko Industries on contested land. The band alleges that the initial decision by the Supreme Court of B.C. did not consider the irreparable harm that logging will cause to an ongoing investigation to determine the band’s title claims to the area.

The OKIB has taken all measures to prevent Tolko from initiating the project at Brown’s Creek Watershed near Vernon, B.C. – an area that supplies drinking and irrigation water for the 1,800 residents of the OKIB. Logging will also affect the headwaters of the Bouleau and Nashwito Creeks, disturbing the habitat of Okanagan fisheries.

The band has constructed a checkpoint on Westside Road and a blockade of the Bouleau Creek Forest Service Road. They also intend to file a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Commission for the failure of government agencies to protect their water supply.

The Ministry of Transportation has challenged the blockade, claiming ownership of the roads, – but OKIB chief Fabian Alexis has defended his band’s rights.

“We have a specific claim: the road runs through our land on our trails, and we haven’t been compensated. Our community is ada-

mant that no commercial logging will take place in our territory anymore,” said Alexis.

He and other members of OKIB were issued a “cease and desist” letter by Tolko in October of last year.

The watershed has been legally disputed territory since 1999. Under economic pressure, the OKIB began harvesting trees for domestic use under a permit issued by the Okanagan Nation Alliance. When the province issued a stop-work order on these activities, the OKIB challenged its constitutionality in connection with ongoing title claims over the watershed.

According to Louise Mandell, a lawyer representing the OKIB, the litigation “challenges the province’s claim to 100 per cent ownership and jurisdiction in the absence of [a] treaty.”

“Tolko knew that the Brown’s Creek Area was before the court and about the conflict on the ground.

Tolko went into it with its eyes wide open,” said Mandell.

Despite the ongoing case, B.C. granted Tolko Industries cutting permits in the disputed area.

According to Alexis, the logging threatens the archaeological collection of aboriginal title evidence.

Tolko hired its own third party consultants to carry out archaeological investigation over the winter, which concluded on February 25.

Alexis asserted that the investigation disregarded adequate Okanagan involvement, as ordered

by Brown.

“We have to first prove our existence, which is ridiculous. There is

Courtesy of Alexis Ruby

The OKIB fears that logging will cause irreparable harm to a nearby watershed. no bill of sale; we never sold this land. They are saying that there is no evidence of Indian people in higher mountain elevations, but how can you find trails under feet of snow?” said Alexis.

In a March 5 press release, Mark Tamas, Tolko Industries’ Okanagan Woodlands regional manager, described OKIB’s blockade as “in defiance of B.C. Supreme Court Orders.... Tolko has a courtissued injunction and enforcement order to allow access to our legally approved cutting permits.”

Will Koops, a coordinator for the B.C. Tap Water Alliance, a

group that advocates for the protection of community water supply watersheds from resource use exploitation, has voiced support for the OKIB. Skeptical of any B.C. court decisions, he argued that in the ‘60s, the attorney general’s department began systematically acting for corporate interests.

“In whose interest does the provincial government act? On behalf of the companies. There is no legal mechanism that looks at both the companies’ and indigenous and non-indigenous public interest.

This means unequal representation to the courts,” he said.

The majority of watersheds in B.C. were protected until 1962, when the Social Credit government moved to protect them from commercial logging.

“The province has been granting tenure to companies for decades without honouring First Nations, and the forestry is not sustainable,” said Koops.

Alexis also commented on the fact that most B.C. First Nations have never formally ceded their territory.

“The government presents a facade of trying to recognize rights, but meanwhile nothing is happening. If anything, our rights are being lessened.”

First Nations group speaks out for Palestine Group from Kansas says the two peoples face similar obstacles, forms of oppression Andra Cernavskis The McGill Daily

M

embers of the 7th Generation Indigenous Visionaries (7thGIV) spoke about their experiences as part of the Indigenous Youth Delegation to Palestine at an Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) event held Sunday at UQAM. Speaking at the event were Clifton Nicholas, a Mohawk activist from Quebec, as well as 7thGIV members Marei Spaola, Melissa Franklin, and Jodi Voice.

7thGIV is a grassroots organization from Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas. The group travelled to Palestine in August of 2009 to learn about the struggles Palestinians face as compared to those that North American First Nations people experience.

Having spoken in New York City and Toronto for IAW events there, Montreal was the third stop on

their tour.

The idea to travel to Palestine first came to 7thGIV when some of its members, including those who spoke at the event, took a class called “Decolonization” at Haskell University. The course’s professor had traveled to Palestine previously, and drew parallels between the predicaments of Palestinians and First Nations people.

“We saw similarities with resolutions, treaties, and broken promises,” Franklin recalled.

During the planning of their trip, the Youth Delegation faced some setbacks. According to Voice, the U.S. government kept intervening in their plans, questioning professors at Haskell about how 7thGIV was receiving its money.

“We did take our group off campus, but they still harassed us. They got anyone they could to harass us, including Kansas senator Pat Roberts. It’s a sticky situation because our school is governmentfunded so these professors’ liveli-

hoods are dependent on the governments,” Voice said.

Representatives for senator Roberts did not comment by press time.

After strong organizational and fundraising efforts, the trip finally became a reality. “The Palestinians wanted us to come over so we could all share each other’s culture, create connections, and strategize about how we can all create solidarity,” said Franklin.

“We believe it’s all one struggle.

It’s not their struggle or our struggle. It’s everyone’s struggle. We are all human. We are all brothers and sisters in this world.”

During their three-week visit, the 7thGIV worked mostly with Palestinian youth in refugee camps, striving to accomplish their goal of finding connections between the Palestinians and themselves.

Voice said that a shocking connection was made between the two peoples. Even considering all the political and social issues the two

cultures share. “We, as natives in North America, are extremely connected to the land, and we found the same to be true with those natives in Palestine,” Voice said. “Now they can’t even farm or do things that connect them to the earth because of the conditions of the lands they have been relocated to.”

Displacement is often seen by both Palestinians and First Nations people as being historically connected to an erosion of their cultural identity.

Moreover, said Voice, “Natives here can’t speak their language. In universities in Palestine, they can’t speak their language either. They have to take all of their exams in Hebrew.... The trip to Palestine made my history real.”

Spaola stated that native people in the United States are still struggling with the repercussions of Europeans’ colonization of North America. She went on to state that part of the process necessary to address native mistreatment is connecting with peoples facing similar

struggles around the world.

Nicholas said, “We can bring hope back home by showing the natives here the struggles these people go through, and how in a sea of destruction, they are still determined to be Palestinian.”

This hope goes both ways, said Franklin. “The hope we gave to the Palestinians is that we’ve been under occupation for 500 years, and we are still here.”

“Even coming here to Montreal, we have learned about the struggles natives in Quebec are facing that we didn’t know existed before.

Creating these connections is really important,” Franklin said.

After their speeches, the speakers were asked why they would go to Palestine instead of focusing their efforts on issues at home.

Voice responded, “By organizing this, we created a platform for us to get to talk about our problems, as well as theirs.” She added, “Hope is an inherent thing. It passes all borders.”

4 News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

Community raises funds for relief efforts in Concepción Eduardo Doryan The McGill Daily

NEWS BRIEFS

Montreal responds to Chile quake S

ince last month’s massive earthquake in central Chile, the Associación de Chilenos de Québec (ACHQ) has spearheaded the effort to connect Montrealers with their friends and families in the affected region, and has coordinated a number of relief efforts.

“We had to be creative,” said ACHQ vice president Ledda Urbani in Spanish. “There were people who still had some access to the Internet, so we had to form a chain of communication from which the details could flow little by little.”

Contact with the area has been difficult due to the breakdown of electricity, telephone lines, and road networks since the earthquake rocked Chile in the early morning of February 27.

Measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale, the three-minute earthquake was the seventh strongest ever recorded, and the strongest since 2004’s Indian Ocean earthquake. It has caused widespread devastation in the country’s second largest city, Concepción, and the surrounding area. The number of confirmed deaths currently stands at over 700.

Urbani said the most important problem is currently reconstruction, as “500,000 houses have been destroyed and two million people [have been] left without a roof.”

ACHQ has planned a series of events ranging from folklore shows to club nights to fund Chile’s National Office for Emergencies and the Chilean Red Cross.

“The volume of the damage has left people without jobs, schools, or health services,” said Urbani.

Nicole Collier, a U1 Sociology student at McGill who has lived in Chile with her family since 2005, was in a suburb of Santiago during and after the earthquake. She described the situation as surreal, stating that although “most of the damage was in [Concepción], there were clues of destruction everywhere: broken light bulbs, cracks in the pavement.”

Collier described a trip to the supermarket the following day as “a typical end-of-the-world movie scene where everyone is running for supplies.”

India moves toward greater representation for women Women might soon occupy at least one-third of the seats of India’s upper house of parliament, thanks to a bill that passed the upper house on Tuesday. The bill still has to be passed by the lower house of parliament and be ratified by 15 of India’s 28 states to become law. Currently only 10 per cent of India’s parliamentary seats are held by women.

The bill has faced staunch opposition since it was first introduced in 1996.

—The Guardian.

Equal marriage comes to D.C. Officials performed Washington D.C.’s first same-sex marriages on March 3. The bill recognizing equal marriage was signed into law by D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, and subsequently approved by a Congressional review. D.C. is the sixth jurisdiction in the U.S. to recognize equal marriage.

—The New York Times CSIS complicit in Candian’s torture, judge A Canadian judge released previously-classified information on CSIS’s role in the arrest and torture of Ahmad Abou-Elmaati. An Egyptian-born Canadian citizen, Elmaati was deemed an “imminent threat” with ties to Al-Qaeda by CSIS in 2002, and was arrested in Syria while on a family trip. CSIS agents interrogated Elmaati after he was transferred to an Egyptian prison, where he says he was subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings, and electric shocks.

The judge’s report, released February 23, found that the agents did not consider the protection of Elmaati’s human rights to be their responsibility.

—The Toronto Star

February 27 was shortened by one-millionth of a second, due to the quake.

Chilean president Michelle Bachelet declared a state of emergency in response to the quake, which was followed by a series of aftershocks and a tsunami warning for much of the Pacific coast.

Nelson Odeja, president of ACHQ, said that Bachelet handled the situation responsibly and competently. “Things are much better, though there are still problems at the epicentre” said Odeja in Spanish.

“Not of a lack of [basic goods], but problems of sheer destruction, problems of getting things to those who need them.”

He extended deep thanks to the Quebec community for the support it has given the organization, while calling attention to the ongoing aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake earlier this year. “We need to harmonize coordination; this isn’t about absorbing or polarizing attention

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

from Haiti.”

Odeja added that Chile is wellprepared for such natural disasters, partly due to their frequency.

Rex Brynen, a professor in McGill’s political science department, stated in an email that “there will be major long-term reconstruction costs, but Chile’s relatively high gross national product per capita means that it wouldn’t qualify for assistance from many

aid agencies.”

Brynen added that “the impact of natural disasters is always shaped not only by the disaster itself but the social, political, and economic context within which it occurs.”

According to NASA, Chile’s earthquake shortened the day by approximately one-millionth of a second, and shifted the earth’s axis by eight centimetres.

Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, will take place on For more information, please contact the DPS chairperson

chair@dailypublications.org

Tuesday, March 16 in Leacock 232 at 6pm.

Members of the DPS are cordially invited. The presence of candidates to the Board of Directors is mandatory.

News

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

5

SSMU elections turn aggressive Campaign violations rooted in Facebook, alcohol Stephen Davis The McGill Daily

T

he most hotly contested SSMU elections in recent memory might also be the most bizarre. With polls scheduled to close today, candidates are juggling campaign violations, accusations of prejudiced Facebook profile photos, and, in one case, physical violence.

Presidential candidates Stefan Link and Sarah Woolf have been slapped with censures from Elections McGill for a variety of violations. Woolf was censured after Elections McGill chief electoral officer Mike Vallo was informed that Woolf’s campaign site and YouTube videos were online at 11 a.m.

Tuesday – two hours after the deadline for the removal of campaign materials. Link was also censured for leaving his Facebook group and YouTube videos online after the 9 a.m. deadline.

Vallo sees Link’s recent violation as proof that the presidential candidate did not actually know the election regulations. “I still don’t think… he’s intentionally breaking the bylaws as much as he can. He just doesn’t know the bylaws,” Vallo said.

Link deleted himself as administrator of his Facebook page, rather

NEWS BULLETINS Ontario nuclear workers exposed Almost 200 workers may have been exposed to unhealthy amounts of radioactivity last November at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, Ontario.

According to an online news release by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog, “on November 28, 2009, routine airborne surveying at the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1, which is undergoing refurbishment, detected elevated radiation (alpha) contamination.”

A partition was immediately installed around the area where people were working. Although protective suits are mandatory on site, samples were taken for each worker to be tested for radioac-

than taking the page down. Facebook groups without administrators can remain online indefinitely.

VP (Clubs and Services) candidate Anushay Khan has had similar problems. Khan said she logged onto Facebook recently and was surprised to find that she had somehow been deleted as administrator of her own group. She has since removed all content from the group, though it remains online.

In addition to his online violations, a memo from Elections McGill also attributed Link’s censure to his “persistent disregard for the bylaws.” Last week, members of Link’s campaign violated bylaws by writing his name in chalk and handing out campaign flyers outside the McLennan Library.

SSMU electoral bylaws forbid flyering outdoors, as well as the display of campaign materials outdoors.

In response, Link pointed to discrepancies between the online version of Elections McGill’s bylaws and the hard copies given to candidates.

Vallo acknowledged that the online version of the bylaws are outdated and limit candidates to 400 posters, while the updated hard copies given to candidates limit them to 200.

Vallo added that Link is not alone in his lack of familiarity with the bylaws.

“The overwhelming majority [of candidates] did not read the bylaws at

tivity.

“When the analysis came back [on December 21, 2009], we discovered that it was alpha activity,” explained a media officer for Bruce Power.

Work on the unit has been shut down and tests for alpha activity are currently underway for any worker who may have been exposed to more than one millisievert of radiation.

“We’re sampling about 195 people. We’ve gotten the first 39 samples back and so far all levels are within what our regulator determines to be safe,” the media officer said. “The ones we thought would have the highest exposure were tested first and those results are coming back well within the limits set by the CNSC.” He also said that many of the workers are being tested primarily to give them peace of mind. “It’s their health and safety and that’s important to us as well as to them,” he said.

The radioactivity tests, or bioassays, are urine samples sent to the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.,

all…and then were surprised when they got in trouble,” he said.

Vallo said that Woolf has adhered to election bylaws throughout the campaign period, with the exception of her recent violations. “She’s run a really clean campaign so far,” Vallo said.

Link has said that he is convinced the bylaws limit voter turnout and awareness of the election among students.

Keeping things under wraps Campaign violations are not the only thing troubling candidates in the final stretches of the election.

Presidential candidate Zach Newburgh has had to explain a Facebook profile photo that shows him wearing a scarf wrapped around his head and holding a knife. One commenter expressed concern that Newburgh appeared to be “mocking Arabs and/or Muslims.”

Newburgh said that he is wearing “Moroccan dress” in the photo, which he has removed from his profile.

Woolf said the image could undermine Newburgh’s promises to promote dialogue between polarized communities. “I think that it certainly shows a serious lack of good judgment,” Woolf said. “But it is especially disappointing coming from a candidate who has based his campaign on building bridges,”

the only lab in Canada accredited by the CNSC for testing. The total testing process takes about four weeks and results for all 195 workers are not expected until midJune, 2010.

Executive vice-president and chief nuclear officer Norm Sawyer said that Bruce Power is installing new alpha-sensitive monitors, as well as other air sampling monitors in an ongoing project to redesign its radiation protection program.

When asked about the conditions of workers, Sawyer said that “several interactive sessions have been held...to keep employees aware of the status of the situation.

Potential and final dose results will be discussed with each individual as they are calculated and confirmed.”

But if the final dose results are less than satisfactory, Bruce Power has no plan to compensate the affected employees. “It’s not something that is anticipated, not something that we are contemplating as an issue,” Sawyer said.

Get the news everyday at mcgilldaily.com

—Portia Crowe

she added.

The photo has been sent to The Daily by both students and a McGill alumna.

Newburgh referred to the photo as “a joke that was taken way too far.” He also emphasized his track record as president of Hillel Montreal, where he says he has stood for diplomacy among disparate groups.

“I have always stood for dialogue and always stood for bridge-building,” Newburgh said, pointing to his work with Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. “I am absolutely, without question, sorry if I offended anyone in any way as a result of a joke that really went too far.”

Link had not seen the photo.

Presidential candidate Trip Yang had seen the photo but declined to comment.

The gloves come off An unidentified person punched Link in the stomach while he was campaigning in Gerts this past Friday.

He believes it was a response to the strength of his campaign. “We were gaining a lot of support in the bar that night,” he explained, adding that he is convinced he will win the election.

Link dismissed the possibility that the attack was a random act of violence. “There is no way [the

Quebec bursary deductions spur lawsuit Last month, the Fédération des associations de familles monoparentales et recomposées du Québec (FAFMRQ) filed a class action lawsuit against the provincial government on behalf of Émilie LaurinDansereau, a student and single mother.

The FAFMRQ demanded that the provincial government reimburse Laurin-Dansereau for funds deducted from her student bursary because the government considered child support to be a source of revenue, despite the fact that the law on financial aid to students did not make this clear.

If the court rules in favour of FAFMRQ, Sylvie Lévesque, the director general of the Fédération, said that the province could owe a total amount of $9 million in retroactive funds to 1,500 students.

The Quebec Appeals court made a decision last October in favour of a student who made a similar claim.

Although the attorneys-general of Quebec appealed the ruling, the

attacker] was just drunk and violent.

That’s not a possibility,” he said.

Initially, Link denied that other candidates were involved in the attack. When questioned further, he speculated that Woolf may have enlisted someone to attack him.

“The person who did it was Asian, so it kind of makes it look like she would be the least likely person,” he said, adding, “If you want to cover something up, that’s a good way to do it.”

According to Link, people would likely attribute the attack to Yang’s campaign team, because Yang has “a lot of Oriental [sic] support.”

Yang called the speculation “ridiculous.”

The next night, Link was spotted at Verdun venue Clap Trap, where he says he was invited on stage by performers. Vallo explained that campaigning off campus would constitute a serious bylaw infraction.

However, he has been unable to corroborate the story. “Most of [the people present] said they were too drunk to tell me what happened,” Vallo said.

Link said he cannot clearly remember the evening’s events. “I was actually drinking alcohol and I can’t tell you exactly what it is that I said,” he explained.

Election results will be announced this evening in Gerts.

Supreme Court rejected the appeal in February.

On average, child support for single parents amounts to $3,343 per year. In December the Ministry of Education rewrote the law, affirming that all but $1,200 of that money should be considered income and therefore deducted directly from the bursaries of students also receiving child support. This leaves single-parent students with bursaries that are over $2,000 less than what they otherwise would have received.

Since the Income Tax Act of 1997, child support has not been considered as a source of revenue – except in cases of post-secondary financial aid, lodging subsidies, and social aid.

According to Lévesque, “All these dossiers are linked together, and because the amount of funds involved in social aid are more considerable than funds involved in education, so as long as the minister of the Ministère de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale doesn’t take action, the Ministère de l’Éducation won’t take action either.”

— Laurin Liu

6 Commentary

Sally Lin | Th e McGill Da ily

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

Downwardly mobile and loving it Radically reread Lisa Miatello

G

rowing up as a middle-class white kid, I thought everyone was like me. Books and TV narrated my experiences, my neighbourhood and schools shared my family’s values, and I saw myself reflected in the faces of my friends and teachers. We rarely worried about money; I saw doctors on the regular, ate nutritious meals, went on family road trips, and took lessons to cultivate supposedly latent talents. I had it good. The “world” seemed like a pretty friendly, albeit homogenous, place, and I felt like I belonged. Oh, to be young again.

I think it’s time to rip off those rose-tinted glasses. Class mobility is a hard and cold fact in my family history. Growing up blue-collar meant my dad paid and worked his way through his undergraduate and professional degrees. In keeping with the white-collar-migration trend, he’s recently made the move from middle class to upper-middle class. Along the way, he made sure to pound all the skills and values into me that would guarantee my success in the race to the top.

What’s more, he pays for my food, my rent, my education, my health care, my clothes, and my train tickets. I have class privilege seeping out of my pores. His wealth is my safety net and the reason I can write for The Daily.

Pumping out a column every couple of weeks for a newspaper connected to one of Canada’s most prestigious universities is a move toward gaining and consolidating class privilege. Five years of paying to read, write, think, and learn has culminated in the publishing of my opinions. Reckon that. My voice and perspectives are considered valuable enough to be put on such a platform. This has less to do with my own merit, and more to do with luck of the draw. In other words, this is privilege in action.

C

ozying up to Montreal’s political scenes and the subcultures they overlap with has boggled my mind about class status. While capitalism taught me that poverty is shameful, the kids on these scenes wear it like an accessory. Discounted and

stolen clothes, dumpstered food, cheap rent, squatting, and free activities are one thing. But glorifying being broke while fronting like you grew up working class or poor is another.

Treating class marginality as “hip” is reactionary politics. Despite being a by-product of dissent, it fundamentally misunderstands how power works. The ability to couple the trappings of class alterity with a hushing up of wealth stems from class privilege. This sort of phony downward mobility is not cool, let alone radical.

Messed-up manifestations aside, a lot of the beliefs that underpin the “opting-out” of one’s class positioning contain kernels of hope. The conviction that there is something wrong with the lifestyles and values of the middle, upper-middle, and owning classes is heartening. At the very least, this attitude signifies a departure from the mentality that locates the ills of capitalism in those without privilege. By signalling a move away from blaming poverty on the supposed laziness, incompetence, and stupidity of the poor, it motions us toward a critique of materialism, consumerism, the cult of upward mobility, and the hoarding of wealth.

Unfortunately, much of the appropriation of class oppression that goes down often does come from a more critical and politicized place – whether it’s feigning class solidarity by acting like you don’t have resources, trying to

understand poverty by “living it,” hiding wealth out of some weird notion of respect, or fighting the devaluation of the poor simply by living “poverty” proudly. Part of what it means to have class privilege is to abstract from and dismiss the lived realities of those without it. This type of me-centric philosophy that purports to be fighting classism is dehumanizing and unproductive.

Capitalism and the class stratification it produces and depends on are wrong, immoral, bad, and every other negative modifier you can think of. Class privilege and classism are sustained by a system that sees the instability, financial insecurity, and struggles of the poor and working class as the sometimes unfortunate, but mostly justifiable, side-effect of an otherwise wellfunctioning economic structure.

Apparently, the expendability of billions of lives around the world is a small price to pay for the top 10 per cent owning 85 per cent of the world’s wealth.

I

f we’re going to have any hope of opposing and fighting this deleterious system, an analysis of class privilege is vital. To start, class privilege is definitely not something you can just throw out like a chewed-up wad of gum. Approaches that treat it like it’s disposable ignore the fact that privilege has more to do with effects than with intentions. You can still be, do, and benefit from something you oppose.

Class privilege is about way more than just the money in your pocket, the clothes on your back, what you eat, or how you live. It’s about your family’s wealth: their assets, the inheritance you’re entitled to, and the income and education of your ’rents. It’s about your education, the vocabulary you use and understand, your skills, and the various safety nets that will save your ass when your downward mobility doesn’t pan out. It means being part of the dominant culture that defines what is considered normal, moral, acceptable, credible, and legitimate knowledge. It means thinking you’re naturally more intelligent, creative, and talented than the majority of people. It means being over-empowered because entire classes of people are powerless. It means thinking class privilege doesn’t exist and being able to disavow it on a whim.

In the interwoven radical and subcultural scenes, the shame projected onto poverty by mainstream society has shifted to a shame around wealth and the aping of poverty. Class oppression isn’t chic; it’s fucked up. Challenge one of capitalism’s main dictates – break the taboo that keeps class inequality hidden. Demystify and own up to your class privilege.

Lisa Miatello writes in this space every week. Tell her what you think of downward mobility: radicallyreread@mcgilldaily.com.

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

7

COMMENT

Disabled? See you later

Hannah Freeman

O

n Monday, Quinn Albaugh’s column (“Unreasonable accommodation,” Commentary, March 6) described the way “reasonable accommodation” policies have ensured that privileged groups of people, who have never experienced what it is like to wear a niqab or use a wheelchair in Quebec, decide what is sufficient for the people who do. Albaugh remarked in their insightful piece, “Who decides what’s reasonable?... The dominant groups decide what’s reasonable for groups with much less political and social power. The people actually affected have little say.”

This logic needs to be mapped onto discussions of disability policy in Quebec and Canada, particularly in light of obstacles to immigration and assimilation for people with disabilities. Section 38(c) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act declares a foreign citizen “inadmissible on health grounds if their health condition…might reasonably be

expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services.”

The “excessive demand” clause, like “reasonable accommodation” policies, sets up this way of thinking: able-bodied people set the standard for what is acceptable use of the health care system; beyond whatever they require, there’s a bright line where the actions we should take for people with mental or physical disabilities turns into “excessive” or “unreasonable.”

In practice, what this means is that Canada prevents people with physical or mental disabilities, even ones who pass the point system, from becoming citizens. This year, David and Sophie Barlagne are fighting to keep the lives they’ve built since coming to Quebec from France on a work permit in 2005. David owns a computersoftware business and Sophie voluntarily teaches French to other immigrants, according to the Montreal Gazette. They have been denied permanent resident status because one of their two daughters, Rachel, has cerebral

palsy. The Gazette reported that “Barlagne has been told they must leave the country after his work permit expires next year, because his daughter’s medical needs place an ‘excessive burden on social services.’ According to documents filed in Federal Court in Montreal, the ‘excessive burden’ amounts to $5,200 a year in special educational costs” (“Family with disabled daughter launches appeal to remain in Canada,” February 23).

They aren’t the first to lose status because of discrimination against disability – just last year, immigration officials deported Chris Mason, a permanent resident who became paraplegic while working in Canada. MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis puts it best in the open letter published on her web site: “This outdated and discredited approach views persons living with disabilities primarily as a drain on the economy and ‘a burden’ to society. It reinforces a negative stereotype that those living with disabilities continue to have to struggle against. It is even likely in this context that world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking would

be rejected if applying to immigrate here.”

The “excessive demand” clause is an excuse allowing immigration policy-makers to rationalize their prejudiced belief that the social and economic contributions of people with disabilities will never exceed the costs of their health care. This economic valuation of a human life, based on the inaccurate social stigma that disabled people aren’t productive, is beyond disturbing.

What’s “excessive”? For Rachel Barlagne, Canadian immigration officials have decided it’s $5,200 per year. What if her “costs” were $10,000? What if they were $10?

At what arbitrary point does ablebodied Canada decide that that price is above what her lifetime presence here will contribute, what she will invent, or whom she will help? If Canada wants a just immigration policy, we cannot allow officials to let an applicant’s level of mental or physical ability influence the make-up of Canadian society.

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Canada’s “excessive demand” restriction on immigration is discriminatory

Hannah Freeman is The Daily’s copy editor. Write her at hannah. freeman@gmail.com.

HYDE PARK

Iraq’s lesson for Canada Eric Andrew-Gee

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want to make the next 12 months the year of the purple thumb. What the fuck is he talking about, you ask? Well, the idea began last Sunday in Baghdad, in Fallujah, and in Kirkuk, where Iraqi voters turned out in unexpectedly huge numbers to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections – 62 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots at the last count.

Still, whence the purple thumb, you prod? I’m getting to it. Iraqis stain one finger purple after they’ve voted, a measure to keep people from voting more than once. This is a cheaper and more crass explanation than is owed, since the purple thumb – or whichever finger the Iraqi chooses to mark – has gained a talismanic

quality over the course of Iraq’s turbulent history as a democracy.

In elections in 2005, 2009, and now this past week, the purple thumb has been waved defiantly by young professionals, cagey politicians, and hunched old women alike. They are resolute that their will, and their vote, will ultimately be stronger than the forces of sectarian and religious reaction that seek to tear the country at its seams.

Voters have plenty of good reasons to stay home, too. Thirty-eight people were killed on voting day, mostly by gruesome rocket and bomb attacks. One rocket collapsed an entire apartment block, killing 25. The violence was expected. The response to it was not.

Many voters were encouraged by the attacks, seeing it as perfect proof that their vote counted – that the alternative to voting was

not a respite from violence, but violence’s triumph. As Ahmed Ali, a voter in Baghdad, put it, “Believe me – I was ready to come to the voting station even if there were missiles.”

I would be embarrassed to compare the relative humility of Canada’s political situation to the viciousness of Iraq’s, but the political conditions here are also dire and shouldn’t be compared away.

The government released its budget last week – you know, the one it used as an excuse to prorogue Parliament. We need time to “recalibrate” our economic agenda, the Tories had said. As it turns out, the budget proposes absolutely no shift in government priorities and almost no new taxes or spending cuts.

So the last fig leaf of respectability behind which Stephen Harper’s arguments for prorogation have

hidden has suddenly fluttered off.

And it was a pretty skimpy leaf to begin with. There was no “recalibration.” We should be furious.

And in times like these, trying times that threaten to damage our democracy beyond repair, we must look to the elections in Iraq, to the sea of purple ink spilled in the hope that it could wash away real problems. And it can.

The Harper government is rumored to be considering an election before the 2011 budget.

We will have the battle that Iraqis had on Sunday. Although we will be spared the danger of physical violence, the risk of being complacent, of giving in to the ease of the status quo – an increasingly autocratic one at that – will be present. After a groundswell, and Facebook-swell, of anger left Conservatives and Liberals with about even public support

in January, the Conservatives have again slipped into the lead, according to an EKOS polls.

The election is 12 months away.

What can you do now? Register to vote. I just filled out the Elections Canada voter registration slip that had been sitting on my desk for weeks. I had been lazy. The images of voters braving mortar fire, of daring death, to do what I was putting off shamed me.

The simple piece of bureaucratic paper, folded in three, is not as gorgeously symbolic as the purple thumb of the Iraqi voter. But it does represent my commitment to bear witness to the gravity of the situation in Canada right now, and to act on it. This year, I will remember Iraq.

Eric Andrew-Gee is a U0 Arts Legacy student. Show him some thumb at eric.andrew.gee@hotmail.com.

8 Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

HYDE PARK

Change the anthem Ishmael N. Daro CUP Opinions Bureau chief

S

ASKATOON — On March 3, the Conservative government presented its new agenda in a speech from the throne. Although it was mostly about the gloomy economy, there was also this nugget: “Our government will also ask Parliament to examine the original gender-neutral English wording of the national anthem.”

In less than 20 words, the government ignited criticism across the country. Numerous editorials were written about the stupidity of wanting to change O Canada and how this was “political correctness run amok,” a remarkably versatile straw man dragged out whenever some dare to point out societal inequalities.

People wrote in to newspapers, phoned radio shows, and joined Facebook groups to protest the potential change to the anthem and before long the government caved to the pressure.

The offending line, of course, is “True patriot love in all thy sons command.” But the suggested change would have been a small one. After all, it was to examine the “original” gender-neutral language, not to concoct a new anthem entirely.

When Stanley Weir wrote his patriotic poem in 1908, it started as such: “O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love thou dost in us command.” Over the last 100 years, however, there have been numerous tweaks to the language, leaving us with “sons” and a rather awkward reference to God (but that’s another hornets’ nest altogether).

Changing four words would not have resulted in some anarchofeminist manifesto. It simply would have expanded the true patriot love Canadians feel for their country from “sons” to everyone. Indeed, it would have been a restoration of the anthem to some extent.

What is even more surprising than the violent reaction the proposal was met with is that many people seemingly don’t know the words to the current O Canada.

In numerous online discussions, people talked about “In all our sons command,” which does not appear in the anthem. The Province newspaper in British Columbia even wrote an editorial suggesting a change from “sons” to “hearts” in order to sing, “True patriot love in all our hearts command,” making

one wonder if the national anthem is sung differently in B.C. There are some good reasons for keeping the anthem as it stands.

After all, national symbols lose their meaning when changed too often.

Most people don’t sing O Canada with the intention of excluding women anyway, interpreting it as a universal call to patriotism.

But regardless of how people interpret O Canada, the anthem still needs an update. People rarely employ the word mankind anymore, choosing instead to refer to humanity or humankind. Using sons to refer to the entire country is just as outdated a notion, especially given that women form a majority of the Canadian population.

National symbols are not set in stone. In fact, the current version of O Canada has only been Canada’s official national anthem since 1980 when it replaced God Save the Queen – certainly a change for the better. Canadians often pride themselves in being able to examine the country critically – something frequently lorded over those silly Americans to the south.

But the most dangerous part about the backlash to the proposed changes has been a similar unwillingness to even discuss the role of the national anthem and what it means to citizens, particularly because the changes would have reflected the supposed Canadian value of inclusiveness. That the debate soon veered into hysteria does not bode well for future discussions about national identity.

One momentous change in Canada’s history occurred 45 years ago with the adoption of the red and white maple leaf as the Canadian flag. After considering hundreds of other designs, Parliament approved the wonderful flag flown proudly across the country today. At the official ceremony, Senator Maurice Bourget welcomed the flag as “the symbol of the nation’s unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief, or opinion.”

Those same principles of inclusion and unity ought to guide any discussion about the national anthem as well. A rational dialogue about national symbols shows off the best principles of Canadian society; blind adherence to tradition does not.

Ishmael N. Daro is the CUP Opinions Bureau chief. This article originally appeared in the Canadian University Press.

Want more opinion?

Lukas Thienhaus | The McGill Daily

Animals get lawyers?! What a crazy world!

HYDE PARK

Swiss reject animal lawyers Referendum follows dead fish’s suit against fisherman Adam Winer

L

ast month, Swiss lawyer Antoine Goetschel affirmed the importance of human rights while defending his client.

“It’s about fairness and defending a minority,” he said. His client? A dead pike. A Swiss animal advocacy group felt that the fish had been subject to cruel treatment when a local fisherman took 10 minutes to reel it in before killing it.

Since the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into international law in 1948, this all-important tenet of “human rights” has been in a state of constant flux. Its plain meaning is crystal clear: absolutely all humans have the inalienable right to be recognized as humans. This maxim guarantees an array of fundamental rights and freedoms for all, regardless of who they are. Theoretically then, people are protected from state cruelty, religious intolerance, and many other atrocities. Today, these protections form much of the backbone of international law and – in many places – domestic law.

Unfortunately, this noble notion is often used and abused by individuals and groups attempting to promote a specific cause unrelated to human rights. Goetschel is one such user and abuser.

With his arguments, we enter the realm of the ridiculous. Goetschel,

who spoke at McGill this Tuesday, is Switzerland’s – and the world’s – sole public animal rights lawyer.

He was at the forefront of a heated public debate over a referendum this past week to appoint an animal rights lawyer in each of the 26 districts of Switzerland, funded by taxpayer money. The referendum failed, garnering less than 30 per cent of the vote.

Animal advocacy groups put the question to voters in response to perceived injustices to non-humans in Switzerland. Voters were not pleased – an attitude reflective of the absurd nature of this referendum in a country where popular support for animal protection is already quite high. Just look at the legislation already in place. Animals classified as social (including pigs, budgies, and even goldfish) are not allowed to be kept alone. People wishing to own pet dogs must undergo training courses. Farm animals are legally required to be exercised regularly.

So why, you might ask, should we begrudge these creatures the right to a lawyer? Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate animals. On the contrary, I am a devout vegetarian who can barely look at a piece of meat without cringing. I love my pet dog, and have verbally abused friends who see fit to ignore her. As much as I love animals, however, there is a certain line that our society cannot cross. We must show ani-

mal life respect, but not to the detriment of people. If you give animals the rights enjoyed by humans, then you strip “human rights” of their special meaning.

We need to consider some fundamental questions with far-reaching implications. Is there something exclusively human about our rights?

Is there a line that separates human beings from animals? In allowing the campaign for animal protection to adopt the terminology of rights, we actually put our rights into question.

Sure, it’s fine to say that animal protection laws must be enforced, but to use taxpayer funds to hire animal rights lawyers, even in a prosperous country like Switzerland, is madness. The 4.4 per cent of Swiss that are unemployed (as of 2009) need that money a whole lot more.

To be sure, animal welfare is important – we must act ethically toward animals. But Switzerland sent an important message by drawing the distinction between animal welfare and animal rights.

A spectre has raised its cute, furry head, and we must put it down before it deprives us of our intrisic rights.

And in case you were worried, the Swiss fisherman was found not guilty. The pike was unavailable for comment.

Adam Winer is a U0 Arts Legacy student. Bark at him at adam.winer@ mail.mcgill.ca.

» Go to our web site for special online-only content: » Reflections on International Women’s Day by Olivia Messer, Benjamin Heller, and Adrienne Klasa; » Musings on the Oscars from Alexander Kunev.

» mcgilldaily.com/commentary

Commentary

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

9

HYDE PARK

The news about Iran Western media narratives obscure human rights abuses Kasra Safavi

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n the midst of social and political change occurring in Iran, the mainstream American media and state news agencies across the world seem to share the peculiar tendency to report on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy production.

When the Iranian dictatorship and the American global mafia are presented as threats to each other, public opinion in both countries favours their respective rulers. As a result of the way the current international situation is structured, the internal horrors of post-election Iran have been marginalized in North American media.

Widespread suppression of people opposed to the government continued through February. This opposition is heterogeneous: many different groups and individuals are involved, with differing motivations and tactics.

Yet the enemy is the same as it was in 1979: dictatorship.

What does dictatorship mean in a country like Iran? If arrest, imprisonment, torture, and rape of protesters and organizers do not imply dictatorship, then perhaps it is the act of breaking up peaceful demonstrations by running people over with pickup trucks, stabbing protesters while disguised as fellow demonstrators, and shooting at civilians with machine guns. The Iranian state has skilfully executed these inhuman acts.

It is not just Iranians inside Iran who have become politicized, however. The Iranian diaspora, one of the largest in the world, is active in supporting the opposition within the Islamic Republic.

Here in Montreal, many in the Iranian community are organizing for change in their home country. There have been regular protests here against the Iranian regime. Two weeks ago, postcards addressed to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon were distributed on campus in an effort to get the UN more involved in releasing Marxist political dissidents imprisoned inside Iran.

I

ranians in Montreal see their involvement with their compatriots in Iran as important for a good reason. A widespread, deeply rooted social movement has been forming in Iran for the last decade in response to numerous concerns ignored by – often even created by – the state. The oppression of women, workers, students, and ethnic minorities has always existed, but high unemployment, high inflation, and economic mismanagement as

well as corruption have resulted in a downward-spiralling economy, fuelling the politicization of these groups. One could say that the only opportunity left for change was the vote, and with that taken away in last June’s fraudulent elections, it is clear that these protests are not just about an election result.

While the Western media promotes certain American interests by propagating the belief that the real threat to the West is Iran’s electrical energy production, the Iranian state continues to murder its citizens. An isolated Iran would not be able to suppress them this freely. However, Iran is by no means isolated.

The dominance of the Iranian regime is built on its monopoly over the nation’s crude oil exports.

Iranian oil fuels industrial production in China and Japan. The result of that production lands in American markets. It is thus unnecessary for Iranian oil to be directly exported to the U.S. for that oil to play a role in American markets. It is clear then that the American economic sanctions on Iran do not mean much. American consumerism’s dependence on Iranian oil is more than enough to allow the suppression of Iran’s social movement by the state. Not only is suppression being allowed, but it is economically encouraged by the Western world because of Iran’s oil.

M

eanwhile, the mainstream press is busy reporting the newest updates in the international quest to distract the public. Russia’s president Dmitri Medvedev stated this week that his country considers sanctions against Iran as a last resort.

China is also pursuing diplomatic talks with Iran at the same time as the U.S. says that the People’s Republic – a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council – should vote for sanctions on Iran. If the U.S.’s environmental initiatives to reduce its dependence on Iranian oil are successful, China sanctioning of Iranian oil exports may actually be strategically useful to Washington. For the time being, however, Americans are as dependent on Chinese slavery as Chinese slavery is dependent on Iranian oil, so the strategy of pressuring Beijing lacks substance.

Even less substantial are Iran’s regular announcements about nuclear or military accomplishments, conveniently broadcasted by the Western media before every human rights violation in Iran. For example, the Iranian state announced a milestone in uranium enrichment a week before February 11, 2010, the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. On this important

Kasra Safavi | The McGill Daily

The way we frame the conflict between the U.S. and Iran suppresses the opposition’s story. political date, opposition rallies could have escalated to another Tiananmen if they hadn’t been effectively suppressed.

W

hile media coverage of the Iranian social movement has been quiet, the Iranian people have not. Nevertheless, the opposition is divided – as one might expect of a diverse group. The reformists are the political leadership of the Green Movement, which considers the current government, formed after the fraudulent elections, illegitimate.

For the past eight months, the reformists have attempted to consolidate the larger social movement under the Green banner in order to strengthen the reform agenda that aims to get the state to respect the Iranian constitution. This constitution includes the freedom of assembly. If this freedom is recognized, the social movement will have the opportunity to push for reforms through organized collective action.

Many, however, have become disillusioned with the reformist camp of the opposition. Radicals are proposing alternatives for wider reforms, such as the dismantling

of the current state and the establishment of a completely new Iran.

They believe either that the reformists will not carry out true reform, or that even if they are successful in carrying out reform, the pace of political change will not keep up with the country’s economic decline.

History will see how this crisis unfolds, but even the 1979 Iranian Revolution did not happen overnight. It was the work of at least a decade, a decade in which the radicals were either murdered by the dictatorship or allied with the mainstream Islamic revolutionaries.

Today, the strategies have changed. The official opposition is trying to reform Iran without causing civil war, and radicals are vocally attacking the reformist strategy.

Even if the radicals are successful, it’s unclear how long they can govern before the weight of international capitalism squeezes them out of power.

T

hese divisions also exist within the Montreal community, more so than other expatriate Iranian communities in Canada and the U.S. In the most recent protest in

Montreal, demonstrators displayed only red colours – symbolizing an alternative to the mainstream “Green” opposition.

“The old community [in Montreal] is overwhelmingly left-leaning, with many individuals belonging to pre-[1979] Revolution groups that fought both the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes,” says Farzan Sabet, a political organizer in Montreal.

The main division stems from the fact that “the new community tends to be made [up] of newly arrived graduate students with ties to Iran,” he said. This younger generation – who started to come to Montreal in 2000 and whose immigration continues today – tends to be pro-reformist.

The protests have strengthened ties between these two groups, though political divisions remain.

And while the future is unclear, what’s certain is the Iranian diaspora’s role: to counter the mainstream media by being vocal and honest about the events taking place in Iran today.

Kasra Safavi is a U0 Arts & Science student. Write Kasra at kasraman@ gmail.com.

Letters

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

11

Re: “It is apartheid” | Editorial | March 4

Dearest McGill Daily – are you still calling yourselves that? Or have you officially converted into the SPHR newsletter?

Mookie Kideckel U2 History, president of Hillel McGill

Neh-neh-neh-neh Norman!

Co-co-co-co Cornett!

“Stefan Link” unfairly “discussed” by “The Daily”

It does not seem like anyone is scared to speak up

Wait, I thought she wanted to sign the abstention....

YOU’RE little more than large assumptions

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

Re: Campaigning violations pile up against presidential candidate” | News | March 4

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

Re: “It is apartheid” | Editorial | March 4

Re: “A turn to the dark side” | Sci+Tech | February 15

Neh-neh-neh-neh Norman!

Co-co-co-co Cornett! I hereby, in an open and transparent manner, request that The Daily commence a Cornett update box. It could be a neat segment tucked away in the Compendium! section. You can even get one of your ever-so-talented drawers to make a pretty border with frills and dots. Just think: this can be a potential collaborative project with CKUT, tripling it up as a featured RSS feed and weekly segment on Off the Hour. Nehneh-neh-neh Norman! Co-co-co-co Cornett! Move over John Cameron, emoticons, and reality TV, Cornett is coming to a lecture hall near you. I’ve heard that if you play The Wizard of Oz in coordination with Pink Floyd under a printed image of Professor Norm, it precisely mirrors the experience of playing The Wizard of Oz in coordination with Pink Floyd under a printed image of Professor Norm. Go figure! Nehneh-neh-neh Norman! Co-co-co-co Cornett! As a second order of business, I nominate Zoog as ceremonial leader of the Cornetts’ home planet.

I am an avid supporter of Stefan Link and I believe he is the most “practical” out of all the candidates out there. I also believe his campaign ideas and promises affect the student’s lives, more than “promises” of other candidates.

Speaking from a student’s perspective, a 24-hour library service (if not for all the libraries, but just one) is essential for a student, especially at McGill. The other 24-hour access buildings are not as workfriendly as normal libraries are.

Regarding the campaign violations, Link’s campaigners did mistakenly hand out flyers outside McLennan, but once he was warned

by Elections McGill, he made sure none of his campaigners made the same mistake. After all, as I have noticed, when the flyers were handed out, the students were actually intrigued and interested at the idea of a 24-hour library service and a student co-op food service.

In conclusion, I think this story is being as “over-hyped” and “exaggerated” as the Twilight movies – totally unnecessary.

Promit Barua U2 Physiology Originally appeared as a web comment

Dearest McGill Daily – are you still calling yourselves that? Or have you officially converted into the SPHR newsletter? Two articles about Israeli Apartheid Week and an editorial promoting the week’s events?

This is almost as good as when you had your whole cover devoted to Gaza the same week as the General Assembly (GA), and in that same issue put your GA endorsements in the News section. And I understand you graciously allowed a dissent (curiously and misleadingly titled abstention) underneath your first editorial. But, then again, I’ve never seen an editorial go forward with dissent before, and the anti-Israel piece was penned as a traditionally anonymous editorial while the dissenter was forced to give her name, effectively making it a Hyde Park on the editorial page.

I’d like to congratulate you on the first piece’s excellence in deception – attempting to dilute a complex conflict into simplistic allocations of blame; belittling the legitimate security concerns of Israelis; failing to find irony in the fact that you are promoting an elected Arab official speaking about how his country doesn’t give Arabs any political rights; ignoring the fact that Arab gays and women have more rights in Israel than in any Arab country and that gay Palestinians have been granted refugee status

by Israel; neglecting to acknowledge the respected speakers this week who are disputing the antiIsrael narrative, like Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh....

I could go on, but I mainly wanted to congratulate you for doing your best to delegitimize and marginalize supporters of Israel on campus. I can assure you they will no longer take much of what you have to say too seriously. But aside from the congrats, I do have a favour to ask you: please stop making Jewish students feel targeted on campus. Let’s keep the blood libel to the history books.

During my regular perusal of The McGill Daily, I chanced upon an article about dark energy by David Zuluaga Cano. To make his point that “many scientific models rest on educated guesses” (which is an absurd claim), he cites three examples, one of them being evolution by natural selection. I was astonished to read that he thinks of natural selection as being “little more than large assumptions.”

First off, scientific models that rest on educated guesses are not called models – they are called educated guesses. If sufficient evidence is gathered, they become accepted as theory. Science is not an ad-hoc process, as the first paragraph disparagingly portrays it to be.

Second, evolution by natural selection is not based on assumptions; it’s based on observation, experimentation, and evidence from a dozen fields of science. The point is not that “experimental observation cannot contradict” evolution, but rather that every single experiment in the past 150 years has done nothing but reinforce its validity.

Jesse Gutman U0 Nursing

I first met Norman Cornett at an exhibition of my paintings, and noticed him because he took the time to look. Since then, I have met with him, read his art critiques, and developed a respect for his educational methods. I saw an excellent film his students produced after one of his summer workshops, and appreciate his methods as an educator. I consider him an excellent translator of the visual language; an academic who questions the artificial boundaries of departments and faculties; and a man who understands the life-affirming nature of art and therefore its ethical potential for human commonality and learning.

Utilizing art and artists, he asks the difficult questions, challenges the standards and conventions of the Madhatter’s tea-party of academia, and thereby gains my respect as an isolated artist/educator at McGill. I hope others will muster the courage to speak up for academic freedom at McGill, and continue to ask why.

Why was he fired? Why are we scared to speak up? Why are we so afraid to challenge the status quo? The lack of place for the visual artist and free thinker at our university is ironic in light of the work of the respected McGill researcher in psychology and physiognomy, Edward de Bono: “It might be wondered where the artist comes in. In his search for new ways of looking at things, in his dedication to breaking down the old conventions of perception, is not the artist the supreme user of lateral thinking? In the world of art, it would seem that lateral thinking is going on all the time under the more self-satisfying name of creative thinking. The artist is open to ideas, influences, and chance. The artist seeks to develop an intense awareness. The artist tries to escape from the accepted vision of things, often by deliberate use of unreason.”

“Escape from the accepted vision of things often by deliberate use of unreason?” Why, that sounds like the criticism directed at the freestyle teaching methods of Norman Cornett, doesn’t it?

Errata The article “City stonewalls inquiries into racial profiling” (February 18) was credited to Stephanie Law. In fact, it was written by Rana Encol.

In the article on Anushay Khan (SSMU elections coverage, March 8), a quotation was attributed to Myriam Zaidi. The quotation should have been attributed to Anushay Khan.

In the chart for VP (Internal) (SSMU elections coverage, March 8), Marta Gruntmane was described as a U1 student and “a little” bilingual.

Gruntmane is in fact a U3 student and

speaks Latvian, Russian, and Spanish, as well as English.

In the article on David Lipsitz, we wrote that Lipsitz (SSMU elections coverage, March 8) sits on “several committees, including [sic] Library Improvement Fund”, and that he has sat on McGill Senate for “several months.” In fact, he only sits on two committees – including the Senate Committee of Libraries and not the Library Improvement Fund – and has only sat on Senate since its last meeting on February 10.

The Daily regrets the errors.

Joanna Nash Visual artist, adjunct professor of freehand sketching McGill School of Architecture

Robert Aboukhalil U3 Computer Engineering

Mookie Kideckel U2 History President of Hillel McGill The Daily received more letters than it could print this issue. The rest will appear the next time you send in enough got-damn letters. Send your letters to letters@mcgilldaily.com from your McGill email address, and keep them to 300 words or less. The Daily does not print letters that are lesbophobic, ableist, or otherwise hateful.

12Features

Small loans, big changes

Jerry Gu | The McGill Daily

Augustin Charbrol illustrates how sincere humanitarianism empowers women in the developing world

I

n La Libertad municipality in El Salvador, Dominga Granados was struggling to raise four children. Her husband usually earned $200 a month for the family working in construction, but his income was always unstable. She was looking for a new way to support her family.

In Rwanda, FĂŠbronie Nyiraminana was also struggling to raise her five children. At the same time,

her husband hit her everyday, telling her that she was worthless and that all she did was eat. Feeling belittled by her living situation, Nyiraminana needed a way to restore her dignity.

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

M

icrocredit financing has allowed both Granados and Nyiraminana to begin improving their situations.

This local banking practice provides small, trust-based loans to small entrepreneurs, helping people all over the world pull themselves out of poverty and build their confidence. Small loans, often under $100, are enough for hardworking individuals to start or expand a small business: the funds allow them to purchase the necessary materials to produce their own goods, to buy items wholesale and resell them in markets, to raise livestock, to practice artisanal crafts and trades, and to maintain farms. The resulting income provides entire families with better food, housing, health care, and education.

Having been in the practice of making tortillas for 11 years, Granados came up with the idea of opening up a tortilla shop in her home. In May of last year, she was granted a $900 loan, which was used to purchase ingredients to make tortillas, enabling her to look after her children and to work at the same time. Ever since July, she has been paying back the loan at a slow but steady rate.

Today Dominga has repaid 75 per cent of her loan and her business continues to grow.

With a loan of $40, Nyiraminana was able to invest in charcoal, resell it, and thereby earn enough money to buy clothing for her children. “We eat until we are no longer hungry,” she writes in a testimonial. “I can buy medication and cover tuition costs for my children.” Now that Nyiraminana is earning an income, her husband no longer abuses her, but respects her and says that she is very useful to the family.

D

espite Granados’s and Nyiraminana’s success stories, microcredit’s critics point out that these small loans can be harmful to the borrowers, their families, and communities. In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Vandana Shiva, worldrenowned environmental leader, physicist, and ecologist questions whether these loans did in fact liberate the borrowers. It is “a debt trap sucking people into permanent dependence on more and more borrowing,” she argues. Microcredit malpractice disempowers individuals by robbing loan recipients of their financial independence and of their productive capacity, according to Shiva.

Shiva has said that the capitalist nature of the Graheem Bank microfinance model poses additional threats to local economies.

Microcredit can make harmful resources, such as genetically engineered seeds, available to entrepreneurs, she explains. Moreover, microcredit is being used to turn autonomous and sovereign producers into consumers.

“Women who were [once] producing their soaps and their potato chips are today sellers of Lever’s detergents,” says Shiva.

Shiva’s criticism highlights an important

characteristic of microcredit: loans are usually given to women and often take advantage of domestic skills like cooking and sewing.

Women in the developing world are doubly disadvantaged: not only do they face poverty but also suffer misogyny and have an unequal status in society and in the home. Loans directed at women attempt to provide them with the means for material autonomy and emotional empowerment.

However, many are skeptical that these goals are in fact realized. In “Who takes the Credit?” Goetz and R. Sen Gupta argue that women can end up collecting money for their husbands, brothers, and sons while putting their own credit at risk. Still, microcredit should be applauded for its efforts to close the gap between men and women in the developing world.

F

urther criticism asserts that large financial institutions take an interest in microcredit not for its potential for good, but because of its potential to turn a profit. “Microcredit is becoming a macro-racket,” writes Alexander Cockburn in Counter Punch, a political newsletter. “Today the World Bank and the IMF, along with state-owned and commercial banks, are diving into microfinance. The microloan business is fast becoming a gigantic empire, bringing back into control the very banks and bureaucracies women have been trying to bypass.”

Microcredit has the potential for harm, but at the same time it has the potential to be an empowering tool. The agents of microcredit and their motives ultimately determine whether individuals, such as Granados and Nyiraminana, are able to utilize their inherent capabilities.

Muhammad Yunus, the founder and white knight of the microcredit movement, connects the practice with the idea of social business. In his 2006 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Yunus defined social enterprise as “a new kind of business introduced to the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world.” This idea expands on capitalism’s profit motive, adding the new incentive of positive social change.

Yunus predicted that “young people all around the world, particularly in rich countries, will find the concept of social business very appealing since it will give them a challenge to make a difference by using their creative talent.” Today, in Vancouver, the creators of Global Agents for Change (AFC) are proving Yunus right. These young people are committed to finding sustainable solutions to poverty and recognize microcredit as a tool that helps individuals realize their potentials and, in turn, help their communities.

This is where Granados comes into the picture. When she needed funds for her tortilla business, she went to Integral, a microfinance

association located in El Salvador, to ask for a loan. Integral then uploaded a profile of her onto Kiva, a web site that provides a platform for borrowers to post their stories, pictures, and business goals and needs. Through its Kiva account, the AFC Opportunity Fund committee was able to choose to lend directly to Granados among the many other potential loan recipients also on Kiva.

“Microcredit…gives a hand-up rather than a hand-out,” explains Yassaman Nouri, an AFC member who worked on the Kiva account – the organization’s first large loan. She was first incited to learn about microcredit from an interview of Yunus.

“It gives them the financial support to expand on [their skills],” adds Nouri. “It helps the loan recipients be independent and build a self-confidence that will allow them to use their skills to create something for themselves, their family, and their community.”

A growing organization, AFC is currently working on building an experienced advisory committee to improve the AFC lending process. “That way, we’ll make sure that the projects we’re helping will make a bigger difference in the long run,” says Yassaman. “The decisions that we want to make are not ‘bandaid on a wound’ solutions, but actually healing the wound.”

O

n the other side of the world, Jeanne Mwiriliza, a Rwandan genocide survivor, founded Tubahumurize, an organization committed to helping traumatized women.

Microcredit loans are an integrated part of the non-profit organization’s mandate, helping women to overcome their torn and battered sense of self.

“To understand just how significant a financial contribution can be, you really need to understand the context in which the women were living,” says Simone Helene Hanchet, a Montreal student who interned at Tubahumurize. Today, the Rwandan women who survived sexual assaults during the genocide are still haunted by events that took place 16 years ago. Their trauma subsequently lowers their self-esteem and diminishes their confidence.

Noticing that these disenfranchised women needed consolation, Mwiriliza started an informal prayer and support group with the purpose of helping women relieve their suffering. The counselling provided women with someone to talk to help overcome feelings of isolation. However, when the group developed into a formal non-profit organization, Mwiriliza began to notice that trauma counselling was not enough. “Once that process is underway and women are feeling better, they need something to do. They need support,” says Hanchet. “The director realized that the women cannot be helped in only one sphere without being helped in another; you cannot help them emotionally without helping them practically.”

13

Mwiriliza began to raise funds to start a microcredit program within the organization. She received funding and was able to train in Bangladesh under Yunus. As a result of Tubahumurize’s program, the lives of those who have received loans have changed dramatically. “What they heard when they received the money was ‘We believe in you and we think that you’re capable of something,’” says Hanchet. “Paying back their loans was a huge sense of pride; they would dress up really fancy whenever they would come into the association to finish paying back.”

For Nyiraminana, also a rape survivor, microcredit dramatically changed her domestic relationship. “When a woman is earning money, she has more power in the home. And when she has more power she has more confidence. It’s a real source of pride for her not to have to ask her husband for money if she wants to buy something like pencils for the children,” explains Hanchet.

“In the context of the work that I was doing, I would say that the main purpose [of the loans] was not only financial or economic,” says Hanchet. Unlike traditional microcredit models, whose main purpose is to provide loans to the poor, this grassroots organization was originally established to help traumatized women, many of whom are HIV-positive, survivors of rape, widows, extremely poor, or uneducated. Hanchet reports the unfortunate reality that almost all of Tubahumurize’s beneficiaries fit into several of these categories.

Because Tubahumurize’s activities aim to support individuals develop a sense of dignity and happiness, Hanchet doesn’t see it as a failure if a womanis not able to repay her loan entirely within the set timeframe.

“Because working made her feel better about herself and helped her help her family. This in itself makes microcredit a success for these women,” she says.

N

ouri, Hanchet, and other agents play an important role in social business because their incentives are sincere and pure: they have no high financial nor economic interests at stake other than aiming to do good in their world. The support that individuals around the world who are capable of providing ought to be acknowledged and valued since it is this human sincerity toward one another that keeps us human in the end. Microcredit is a tool and it is up to the user to help rather than to harm.

For more information about Tubahumurize, email simone.hanchet@mail.mcgill.ca. For more information about Global Agents for Change, visit globalafc.org.

Check out the benefit concert BENEFEST – a fundraiser for the Global Agents for Change’s Opportunity Fund – tomorrow at 9 p.m. at Les 3 Minots (3812 St. Laurent).

14 Features

Mean gr

The Daily’s Justin Sch being tricked by false e

G

reenwashing is relatively easy to spot so you’re willing to adopt a healthy amount o cism and know what to look for:

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•

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Dominic Popowich | The McGill Daily

•

W

e see a field. Lush, vibrant, green grass rolls in calm waves of vegetation to the horizon under the clear, blue sky. Bright red poppies flourish here and there, turning their faces toward the sun. We see the splendour of nature, a flourishing expanse of serene blossoming and growth. It is

bucolic, tranquil, idyllic – it is a lie – a plastic label wrapped around eight litres of thick, sticky, navy blue detergent, filled with phosphates and far from “green.” Detergents like these choke lakes and streams with duckweed and algae, disrupt ecosystems, and kill wildlife. And yet, it felt good to buy it. I felt a gratifying twinge of self-righteousness. I was doing my part for the environment, or so I thought.

I fell victim to greenwashing: a marketing technique that uses “green” imagery and vague, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims to sell less than sustainable products, people, or services.

T

Hidden environmental trade-offs: Exxo claims to have reduced their greenho emissions even though they produce ov lion barrels of oil every day to be burned on 2008 figures).

No proof: Many cleaners claim to be “bio able” without listing a reliable certificatio centage, or the length of time their produ to biodegrade. Given a couple of thousan even the toughest plastics will break dow “Green” products produced in dirty f In order to build the battery of one sup “green” hybrid car, the nickel has to b in Canada, shipped to China to be pr shipped to Japan to be put into a battery, a shipped back to the assembly plant to be a car.

The use of scientific-sounding jargon: poo bottle advertising 80 per cent post-co HDPE (High Density Polyethylene).

he roots of greenwashing lie in the history of e mentalism. At some point in the latter half of t century, environmentalism stopped being just movement of hippies and idealists. It gradually mo the mainstream. Apocalyptic narratives of an envir tal endgame began to percolate through the me the constant effort of activists and artists expose of the devastating injuries we inflict on the plan ghastly scars left by open-pit mines, smoke stacks toxins into the atmosphere, choking metropolita melting glaciers, levelled forests, dead landscapes tions – the threat became familiar, people became and public opinion slowly shifted toward enviro sustainability.

This was a huge success for environmentalis movement toward “buying green” began at the gr and expanded until spending habits began to reflec spread desire for environmental sustainability. Ac to Futerra Sustainability Communications, “ethica ing” in the U.K. increased by 81 per cent betwe and 2008. The “green dollar” mushroomed bey expectations, and what was a tiny niche market in has become an impressive trend. In an economic with the consumer at the centre, this shift toward spending should theoretically have precipitated en changes in the environmental practices of corp and producers.

In appearance, this is exactly what happened. M responded to the burgeoning demand for environm “friendly” products with an explosion of green a ing. By appropriating the imagery and vocabular environmental movement, marketers were able to the impetus of “environmental friendliness.” Su everything from kitty litter to cars is marketed

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

15

reen advertising machine

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Vague assertions and fluffy language: Claiming to be “all natural” doesn’t mean you’re “green.”

Formaldehyde, heavy metals, and uranium are all technically “natural.”

False labels or certifications: Beware of tiny, green, official-looking logos that say things like “eco certified,” “eco-safe,” or “eco assured.” Companies often invent these logos to “certify” their own products. Some legitimate labels include the EPA’s “Design for the Environment” label, Eco-Cert, EcoLogo, Energy Star, EPEAT, FSC, Green Seal, SFI, USDA Certified Organic, and Water Sense.

Irrelevant assertions: Many air fresheners claim to be “CFC-Free” even though CFCs have been illegal for decades.

Claiming to be the lesser of evils: An SUV claiming to have lower emissions than other vehicles in its class.

Blatant lies: “Non-toxic” bleach.

Associative green imagery: The luxuriant, green tropical leaves on a cosmetics package. The images are extraneous and completely unrelated to the product.

green focus. In a survey of six popular magazines’ advertising trends – Time, Fortune, National Geographic, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and Vanity Fair – a TerraChoice study found that green marketing rose from two per cent of the total advertisements in 1999 to over 10 per cent in 2008.

Between 2007 and 2009, the number of “green” products in 24 North American big-box stores increased at an average rate of 79 per cent per year. Now, green marketing has become so ubiquitous that many people don’t even notice it. It has blended into our cultural landscape. All of this wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that most of what looks like plain, honest green marketing is in fact deceptive or disingenuous at best.

I’m not talking about a few products, either.

Greenwashing is a massive phenomenon. According to the TerraChoice study, 98 percent of the 2,219 products they surveyed were greenwashed to some extent, leaving a meagre 25 innocent products. Children’s toys, cosmetics, and household cleaners were the worst offenders of all. Of the 18 children’s toys they surveyed in Canada, they found 53 “green” claims, none of which were legitimate. The same held true for the 119 baby products and the 236 claims they made. In Canada, 215 common cosmetics made 613 claims and all of them were guilty of greenwashing; cleaners made 537 claims and only three products were properly labelled. While most greenwashing errors occur because of marketers’ laziness or ignorance rather than malevolent intent, the result remains clear: most of the “green” we see falls short of the truth.

You might ask, “So what?”

Aside from the fact that greenwashing is essentially lying (and last I checked, lying is a bad thing), it threatens to undermine the positive effects of any consumer-led sustainability movement. For every environmentally consci-

entious consumer who buys a falsely labelled, greenwashed product, a similar product making legitimate claims loses support. It eliminates the potential benefits of a green purchase. Although many companies have actually ameliorated their products or manufacturing processes and ought to have support for doing so, greenwashing takes business away from these legitimately green companies and their work is for nought. According to TerraChoice, legitimate eco-labelling in North American big-box stores nearly doubled from 14 to 23 per cent of total “green” products between 2007 and 2009. While this statistic is encouraging, greenwashing renders any real green efforts effectively useless by diverting support away from where it is deserved.

More threatening than anything, though, is the cynicism greenwashing creates. If consumers can’t trust green claims at all, they’ll get angry, they’ll get fed up, and they’ll stop caring. If we fall back into complacency and stop giving a shit, nothing will be done and decades of environmental progress will be wasted. We can’t let that happen.

T

he obvious first step is to avoid greenwashed products.

Learning to recognize greenwashing takes little time, and withholding our individual capital exerts pressure on companies that aren’t green. Letting others know about greenwashing is also important. Advertisers need to be held accountable for disingenuous messages, and the more people that are doing this, the better.

But is this enough? To help answer this question and shed some light on the future of media activism vis-à-vis greenwashing, I spoke to Kalle Lasn, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Adbusters Magazine.

We shouldn’t be surprised by the deception of greenwashing, Lasn explained. “Corporations are interested in selling stuff. They’re not on some kind of do-goody mission to save the planet. They’ve discovered that it’s hard to sell to an ecologically-minded population without some green component to their brand or advertising.” While there is always a genuine component to this “ecological mind-shift” and many corporations have really changed their corporate culture for the better, being completely green is rarely possible, and companies resort to greenwashing. Calling them to account for this deception is an important but incomplete solution.

“The real problem is that there’s a fundamental contradiction between the $1-trillion per year advertising industry [that’s 12 zeros!] and being green. Ultimately, what being green requires is that we consume less, not that we buy more green products,” illustrated Lasn. In part, green advertising has absorbed any impetus for the fundamental changes originally espoused by the environmental movement and diverted it toward buying. “Our media systems give us a bit of information while prompting us to consume at the same time,” he said.

Consumerism is predicated on constant consumption, and the resources being consumed must come from the earth in one way or another. Even if we buy “green” and this extraction becomes slightly more sustainable, the total amount of resources we’re consuming hasn’t really changed and the environment still suffers. Buying will never really

save the planet. Consumerism will never become truly sustainable. Instead, we need to go the next step and move beyond consumption as a solution.

Remember the first of the three Rs: Reduce! If we consume less, fewer resources will be extracted from the earth.

Lasn explained that consuming less is important but still only a partial solution. “We have a simplicity movement. We have Buy Nothing Days. We have a small percentage of the people who have already recognized the problem, and they’re buying local, buying less, growing their own gardens, and taking their money-power away from mega-corporations. A lot of us are already doing this, but I think it is a very tiny percentage, and this will never go too far. Ultimately, I think the only solution is to go for fundamental changes.”

“That is the real story here. We, the consumers, are in denial about what’s really happening. Deep down in our guts we know that our children and future generations could be in big trouble because of the way we’re living, because of the way we’re consuming, and because most of us in the rich first world have five-planet lifestyles,” said Lasn, drawing attention to the fact that our one Earth does not have enough resources to sustain our lifestyles.

“There’s a contradiction not only within the corporations that are selling us stuff, but there’s denial and contradiction in our own lives. The two somehow collude, and instead of reducing consumption; instead of taking some power from corporations and giving it back to civil society; instead of realizing that we don’t need a $1-trillion per year advertising industry telling us to consume more; instead of thinking about different information delivery systems and coming up with a way to communicate that isn’t so commercial; instead of going even deeper and realizing that our whole economic paradigm, the one taught at your university, is fundamentally flawed and that we need to move from a neo-classical economic paradigm to an ecological one; instead of making the fundamental changes we need, we are changing light bulbs, buying hybrid cars, and doing the frothy stuff that doesn’t actually make a huge difference at all,” he said.

According to Lasn, most of us haven’t realized what’s at stake: “There hasn’t been a scary enough tipping point. Not enough wise people have realized what’s really happening.

We need people with the guts to wake up out of denial and actually confront the cracks in the system instead of just reading articles about greenwashing and doing that surface stuff that doesn’t really count.”

“What we really need is a cultural revolution.”

And the onus to act is ours. Whether you want to call it a cultural revolution, a mind-shift, or a change in paradigms, it’s just as clear now as it has been for 20 years: something needs to be done – about greenwashing, about corporate influence, about the myriad of other problems we recognize every day – and we’re the ones to do it. Young people, students, us; we need to realize that our education and youth make us responsible, whether we like it or not, for any changes we want to see in the world. Rather than hiding behind an insipid haze of irony and complacency, doing nothing, and abetting the problems with our tacit consent, we need to act. There are no excuses. We have all the tools.

We are pure, passionate potential.

Sports

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

17

Protecting the

Lukas Theinhaus | The McGill Daily

The NHL is leaving players on open ice, and out to dry Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

W

hen the Florida Panthers’ David Booth dropped the gloves to square up against Philadelphia’s Mike Richards last Wednesday, it was the first time he had decided to fight in his four-year NHL career. It wasn’t much of a fight, with Richards and Booth both getting in only a punch each before falling on top of one other. The short bout was, however, almost five months in the making.

Back in October, Richards blindsided Booth in a vicious open-ice hit as he came across the blue line.

Booth was severely concussed and missed more than half the season. Last week’s game was the first time the two players had seen each other since the illegal hit, and as NBA veteran Kevin Garnett would say, Booth needed to “knock the bully out.” Any skeptics looking for the justification of fighting in the NHL need only look to the BoothRichards fight for a demonstration of hockey’s complex psychodrama, of which fighting plays an indispensable role. The league failed to protect Booth’s integrity and safety by having a rule governing blind-

side hits, so it was left up to him to demonstrate to Richards that his behaviour was unacceptable.

The blindside headshot that sent Booth to a Philadelphia hospital is just one incident in a season full of similarly disgusting hits. Just this past Sunday, Marc Savard of the Boston Bruins took an elbow to the side of the head from the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Matt Cooke, in what seemed like a replay of the Booth hit from October. Savard received a grade II concussion, meaning a loss of consciousness and likely posttraumatic amnesia, and is probably out for the season, threatening the Bruins’ chance in the playoffs come April. He is still having severe headaches and has difficulty staying awake for long periods of time. The admittedly hyperbolic New England Sports Network broadcaster Jack Edwards, has compared the NHL’s reluctance to punish Cooke to King George III’s turning of his back on Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – cementing the distrust between the newly independent America (the Bruins) and the British crown (the NHL). Edwards’s statement is histrionic at best, but it demonstrates just how wide the gap is between the game’s natural violence, and the league’s ability to control these actions.

The NHL’s general managers convened in Florida this week to discuss possible rule changes after what has been a particularly violent season. The language surrounding this summit has been interest, if not downright weird. Militaristic euphemisms like “hawks” and “doves” are being used to describe the different sides of the debate, as if hockey were a war and the objective of this mission was to entertain fans and make money for the league. However, it’s encouraging to see the league addressing this issue in some form or another, especially after NHL senior vice president and director of hockey Operations Colin Campbell, made the ridiculous decision not to further punish Cooke for ending Savard’s season (Full disclosure: this Sports editor of a Montreal-based paper is, in fact, a Bruins fan).

We finally have some rule changes. Yesterday the managers announced the creation of a new rule that shifts the onus from the player who was hit to the player doing the hitting in blindside situations. The new rule creates what is best visualized as a triangle, pointing outward from the puck-carriers face. The triangle represents a puck-carrier’s field of vision, and illustrates the possible legal direc-

tions from which the puck-carrier may be checked – only within his line of sight.

General managers are claiming that through the new regulations against blindside hits, the culture of the game is being fundamentally altered. Brian Burke, general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, told nhl.com that “we want to take out a dangerous hit where [one player] targets [another player’s] head. He can still reef the guy; he just can’t target his head.” Burke’s quote gives the new rule more credit that it deserves. Hits that target the puckcarrier’s head have not been made categorically illegal, just those that come from outside the carrier’s field of vision. Under this rule, devastating full frontal checks that target the head, like the one Andrew Ladd of the Chicago Blackhawks delivered to Matt d’Agostini of the Montreal Canadiens back in October, would still be acceptable. The hit removed d’Agostini from the game and left him listed as day-to-day with a concussion.

While this effort is commendable, general managers and even most sports writers have failed to address the fundamental, if uncomfortable, question surrounding big hits in the NHL. Thanks to Commissioner Gary Bettman’s sun-

belt business model, much of the NHL’s business and management strangely takes place in non-traditional American hockey markets, with teams that have been struggling for years to sell tickets and make money. There, business considerations are often take precedence over what’s right for hockey, something that is more important in Canada and northeastern states where market profitability will likely never be a problem. This creates the difficult scenario where dirty hits in hockey function like steroidfuelled home-run races in baseball.

A certain percentage of sports fans just want to see exciting action, and don’t care about steroids or the dangers of blindside skull-crushers. These fans will probably stop watching if the hits don’t come fast enough and hard enough, Grade II concussions be damned.

This serves to explain why the league has dragged its feet so much in recent years regarding the regulations surrounding the dangerous phenomenom of blindside hitting, and even now isn’t going far enough to protect players.

It’s a pity that David Booth, Marc Savard, and many others this season needed to be carried off the ice on stretchers for anyone to take notice.

Sports

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

17

Protecting the

Lukas Theinhaus | The McGill Daily

The NHL is leaving players on open ice, and out to dry Michael Lee-Murphy The McGill Daily

W

hen the Florida Panthers’ David Booth dropped the gloves to square up against Philadelphia’s Mike Richards last Wednesday, it was the first time he had decided to fight in his four-year NHL career. It wasn’t much of a fight, with Richards and Booth both getting in only a punch each before falling on top of one other. The short bout was, however, almost five months in the making.

Back in October, Richards blindsided Booth in a vicious open-ice hit as he came across the blue line.

Booth was severely concussed and missed more than half the season. Last week’s game was the first time the two players had seen each other since the illegal hit, and as NBA veteran Kevin Garnett would say, Booth needed to “knock the bully out.” Any skeptics looking for the justification of fighting in the NHL need only look to the BoothRichards fight for a demonstration of hockey’s complex psychodrama, of which fighting plays an indispensable role. The league failed to protect Booth’s integrity and safety by having a rule governing blind-

side hits, so it was left up to him to demonstrate to Richards that his behaviour was unacceptable.

The blindside headshot that sent Booth to a Philadelphia hospital is just one incident in a season full of similarly disgusting hits. Just this past Sunday, Marc Savard of the Boston Bruins took an elbow to the side of the head from the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Matt Cooke, in what seemed like a replay of the Booth hit from October. Savard received a grade II concussion, meaning a loss of consciousness and likely posttraumatic amnesia, and is probably out for the season, threatening the Bruins’ chance in the playoffs come April. He is still having severe headaches and has difficulty staying awake for long periods of time. The admittedly hyperbolic New England Sports Network broadcaster Jack Edwards, has compared the NHL’s reluctance to punish Cooke to King George III’s turning of his back on Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – cementing the distrust between the newly independent America (the Bruins) and the British crown (the NHL). Edwards’s statement is histrionic at best, but it demonstrates just how wide the gap is between the game’s natural violence, and the league’s ability to control these actions.

The NHL’s general managers convened in Florida this week to discuss possible rule changes after what has been a particularly violent season. The language surrounding this summit has been interest, if not downright weird. Militaristic euphemisms like “hawks” and “doves” are being used to describe the different sides of the debate, as if hockey were a war and the objective of this mission was to entertain fans and make money for the league. However, it’s encouraging to see the league addressing this issue in some form or another, especially after NHL senior vice president and director of hockey Operations Colin Campbell, made the ridiculous decision not to further punish Cooke for ending Savard’s season (Full disclosure: this Sports editor of a Montreal-based paper is, in fact, a Bruins fan).

We finally have some rule changes. Yesterday the managers announced the creation of a new rule that shifts the onus from the player who was hit to the player doing the hitting in blindside situations. The new rule creates what is best visualized as a triangle, pointing outward from the puck-carriers face. The triangle represents a puck-carrier’s field of vision, and illustrates the possible legal direc-

tions from which the puck-carrier may be checked – only within his line of sight.

General managers are claiming that through the new regulations against blindside hits, the culture of the game is being fundamentally altered. Brian Burke, general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, told nhl.com that “we want to take out a dangerous hit where [one player] targets [another player’s] head. He can still reef the guy; he just can’t target his head.” Burke’s quote gives the new rule more credit that it deserves. Hits that target the puckcarrier’s head have not been made categorically illegal, just those that come from outside the carrier’s field of vision. Under this rule, devastating full frontal checks that target the head, like the one Andrew Ladd of the Chicago Blackhawks delivered to Matt d’Agostini of the Montreal Canadiens back in October, would still be acceptable. The hit removed d’Agostini from the game and left him listed as day-to-day with a concussion.

While this effort is commendable, general managers and even most sports writers have failed to address the fundamental, if uncomfortable, question surrounding big hits in the NHL. Thanks to Commissioner Gary Bettman’s sun-

belt business model, much of the NHL’s business and management strangely takes place in non-traditional American hockey markets, with teams that have been struggling for years to sell tickets and make money. There, business considerations are often take precedence over what’s right for hockey, something that is more important in Canada and northeastern states where market profitability will likely never be a problem. This creates the difficult scenario where dirty hits in hockey function like steroidfuelled home-run races in baseball.

A certain percentage of sports fans just want to see exciting action, and don’t care about steroids or the dangers of blindside skull-crushers. These fans will probably stop watching if the hits don’t come fast enough and hard enough, Grade II concussions be damned.

This serves to explain why the league has dragged its feet so much in recent years regarding the regulations surrounding the dangerous phenomenom of blindside hitting, and even now isn’t going far enough to protect players.

It’s a pity that David Booth, Marc Savard, and many others this season needed to be carried off the ice on stretchers for anyone to take notice.

Financial Statements April 30, 2009

Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the Daily Publications Society (DPS), publisher of The McGill Daily and Le DĂŠlit, will take place on

Tuesday, March 16 in Leacock 232 at 6pm.

Members of the DPS are cordially invited. The presence of candidates to the Board of Directors is mandatory.

For more information, please contact the DPS chairperson at chair@dailypublications.org

Health&Education

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

19

Inequality takes a toll on women’s health “Invisible” labour is undervalued in the making of health policy Stephanie Law The McGill Daily

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espite numerous advancements in women’s rights within Western society, panellists at an International Women’s Day discussion agreed that women’s health issues remain inadequately addressed in policy and research. The panel discussion took place on Monday at McGill’s Purvis Hall, and focused on issues related to women’s health.

Panellists argued that work and labour performed predominantly by women at home and in society are not properly acknowledged by health research and policy.

“A woman has [multiple roles] to play – caregiver of the family, domestic work or childcare.... All that invisible work, which has been underplayed and under-analyzed, has a direct impact on the woman’s health,” said panellist Lydya Assayag, director of the Réseau Québecois d’action pour la santé des femmes. “A lot of [research] is focused on male-dominated work like construction work...but a whole realm of daily activities [performed by women]...is not analyzed because the focus is on workplace accidents.”

Angela Campbell, assistant professor of law and director of the McGill Institute of Comparative Law, uses caregiving as an example of a task that is usually performed by the women in a household.

“Women are twice as likely as men to assume caregiving responsibilities for sick or disabled relatives

or relatives who are adults.... In many cases caregivers are older and have pre-existing health problems and this is exacerbated by the stress of the caregiving work. Apart from physical health issues, the mental health of the women who take on caregiving is very often diversely affected,” said Campbell.

According to Campbell, research has indicated that when a woman takes on the care of a spouse or a contemporary, her sense of stress is enhanced, which negatively impacts her mental health. Campbell feels that the lack of support for these women is particularly evident when examining existing legislation in Canada.

“The issue of caregiving for an adult dependent is largely ignored by law and policies in Canada.... These caregivers are by and large women.

Canada has taken only minor steps in recognizing this, allowing for a very limited caregiver tax credit to be claimed,” said Campbell. “There needs to be a movement, both legally and socially, to [start] thinking about caregiving as work as opposed to being something that people could be naturally good at or naturally want to do. [Caregiving is] work and labour that requires and demands adequate accommodation,” she added.

Panellist Sadeqa Siddiqi, coordinator of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre (SAWCC), shared some of the health challenges facing immigrant and refugee South Asian women.

“Learning [a new] language is difficult because of cultural barriers.

Most of the time, husbands don’t

allow them to learn the language,” said Siddiqi. “Due to their language problems, they are not aware of the types of resources available to them. They don’t even know their rights.”

Siddiqi explained that, in her experience, immigrant and refugee women are often heavily influenced and controlled by their husbands, who would frequently take on the role of interpreter for the women and make health decisions for them during physician visits. Furthermore, she said that the women are often subjected to domestic violence but are unable to share these experiences due to language barriers the fear of shaming themselves and0 their families.

“All these conditions must have an effect on not just their mental health but also their general health.

The isolation, loneliness, absence of extended family, and fear of the rest of society and her husband are many factors undermining their health,” said Siddiqi.

Siddiqi pointed out that there needs to be more cultural sensitivity in Quebec’s health care system, particularly for women. She explained that community groups like SAWCC are necessary in trying to bridge the cultural and language gap between health care services and immigrant women – but she warned that the community groups alone do not suffice as a solution.

There was general consensus at the end of the discussion that there remain many issues that must be tackled in order to improve women’s health.

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Caregiving is hard work.

“We forget that women’s liberation is still something that has to happen; it hasn’t really happened.

We’ve made some steps...but there

are still many more,” said Antonio Ciampi, McGill professor in biostatistics and an audience member at the event.

the back of the bottle, but we suspect he’s just looking to associate his product with a valuable gem.

In discussing the colour (sorry, “colour profile.” Everything to do with wine has a “profile.”) we reached an impasse: “I think it looks like Cran-Apple juice.”

“Cran-Apple? Are you serious?”

“Well, what do you suggest it looks like?”

“It has the classic Cran-Grape hue. Learn your Ocean Spray.”

The Ocean Spray litmus test results are still pending.

We all drank our first mugs without much problem or hesitation. The wine itself smells vaguely of feet. Not straight-from-the-gym feet, but three people felt that the Du Marchand had a foot odour

problem. Others complained that it left a bubble in the backs of their throats, like when you drink something very sweet; one of our tasters complained that his mouth started producing a lot of saliva as soon as the wine hit his tongue. The Du Marchand had what qualified tasters would probably call a “subtle flavour profile.” I call that “no real or discernible flavour.” I would love to say that it tasted fruity or woody or spicey, or even winey, but it was just there. It looked and tasted like someone had poured a real glass of wine through a Brita water filter and then into my mug.

Straight talkin’ wine tasting The Sour Grapes committee takes on dep wine #2

Sour grapes Max Campbell

Tasting 2: Du Marchand Red ($11.99/litre) (2/5 Stars) First sip: watery. Second sip: my mouth feels puffy. Second glass: not so puffy.

W

e brought back the Sour Grapes committee to do wine tasting #2, this time with an award winning (Médaillé)

vintage named Du Marchand. We still don’t understand bouquets or tannins, or how to detect subtle flavours, or really how to gauge overall quality. We are the same bottom-ofthe-barrel wine tasters that we were last week, but that’s okay, because we are sure that Du Marchand comes from the same part of the barrel.

When red wine is poured out of a bottle, the first thing that you gauge is how it looks: Is it dark? How would you describe the colour, the hue?

Then you notice how it pours into the glass: how thick is it, how heavy is it? And then you feel it pour into your mouth, and you can taste how heavy it is. Wine reacts very differently from water when it’s poured from a bottle. I’ll let you decide whether to pour it into a glass first or straight into your mouth.

After decanting in the now-standard Boreale pitcher, we poured the Du Marchand into a few mugs and passed them around the living room. The first thing we noticed?

It wasn’t thick. It was like watery juice. The second thing was that it was the colour of a car tail light.

The vintner calls it “ruby red” on

The label suggests you pair this wine with “beef in a sauce or grilled and mild cheeses.” We paired with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

21

Doesn’t make sense, doesn’t matter Aniessa Antar | The McGill Daily

Confusion is the order of the day in TNC’s production of The Bald Soprano

Gavin Thomson The McGill Daily

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he critic Martin Esslin coined the term “absurd” in reference to theatre in the introduction to a Penguin anthology of plays entitled Absurd Drama. The term evokes an anxious confrontation with a meaningless world, a loss of illusion and solution and fantasy, and an attempt to make sense of nonsense. Like Sisyphus, we’re all pushing a rock up a hill and watching it fall and pushing it up again and watching it fall until even time offers no solid ground.

It’s not strange, then, that Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist “antiplay” The Bald Soprano is alienating, but it is strange that it’s hilarious. After its first showing in 1950 the audience either laughed or left miserable. McGill Tuesday Night Theatre’s first performance of the play had similar results, though the perpetual laughter made it difficult to measure the amount of sadness.

“Such kakas such kakas such kakas such kakas such kakas such kakas such kakas. I could never have imagined that my dream of one day flying a cacao tree while playing the Crhihuahua would one day come true in the suburbs of London,” said McGill’s director Julien Naggar in the director’s note.

“There is logic to that statement in the same way that there’s a logic to everything that is said in this ‘antiplay.’” Despite being utterly ridiculous, unpredictable, fragmented, and irreverent (or perhaps because of this), McGill’s The Bald Soprano is deeply challenging and affective. Ionesco thought misery was constant, and this “anti-play” goes beyond just presenting the misery of the absurd by putting it right there in front of us, where we feel a part of it.

In the first scene, Mr. and Mrs. Smith sit in their “English middleclass interior.” Mrs. Smith, who is played by a man (James Thorton), darns socks and rambles about dinner, grocers, and eating well.

Mr. Smith (Michael Ruderman) sits across from his wife and responds with a slight click of his tongue.

He finally speaks to argue about a doctor. Then follows a contradictory conversation about a large family, every one of whom is named “Bobby Watson.” The characters are immediately obscure and nonsensical but oddly human.

The audience can’t help but ask if Mrs. Smith is a woman or a gay man. And what the hell are they talking about? As the maid (Lara Oundjian) tells the audience later, we are supposed to make sense of the nonsense. Gender and sex, among the many concepts the play challenges, appear eerily illogical.

The most basic things – the phras-

es in small talk and the everyday motions of walking to the door and sitting on chairs – appear completely absurd.

Much could be said about the play’s complexity and affective power. What separates The Bald Soprano from other artworks dealing with similar issues is that it forces them upon us. Presenting the things that are assumed to be logical and obvious in an illogical way shows how illogical and unobvious they are.

The performance itself deserves as much praise as it received laughter. Naggar chose a superb cast and crew and provided them the freedom to show it. The minimalistic stage design is clever and off-putting, as is the music. The actors’ talent for dialogue is only outshined by their masterful and eccentric physicality.

Thorton does not even have to move for his body language to raise questions. He sits like a ’50s woman, and right away it’s unsettling – not because he doesn’t get it right, but because he gets it so right it confuses what “right” means anymore. His back looks frail and his knees shiver. Like the whole play, he embodies a precarious cusp: at any moment things might fall into madness.

His/her/their husband, Mr. Smith, does the same in the opposite way (embrace the logic of contradictions!). Ruderman,

like any perfectly normal ’50s British man, conducts himself with a masculine tenseness that is so stiff it’s breakable. When his wife talks to him he tenses his jaw and narrows his brow, and when he finally bursts into an intense moment of anger nothing about him changes. His temper is there the whole time, even in the way he crosses his legs while he reads the paper.

Danji Buck-Moore, who plays Firechief-Benjamin Harwick III, both a fire chief and a door, moves with a hilarious and endearing childlike charisma. He maintains a balance between energetic ambition and sensitivity, both sexual and intellectual. His stories about animals and family trees make no sense at all and carry on without any intelligible train of thought, yet it is obvious that in his mind they are intelligible, and he is desperate to tell them.

His lover, the maid, played by Oundjian, is fiery and haunting.

Like all the actors, she plays her role as a stereotype, but is at the same time base and individual.

Her subconscious sexuality manifests itself without any need for restraint. Her smile, perhaps the highlight of her character, is mad.

More than any other character she revels in this insanity. Perhaps this is why she appears so natural in such an entirely unnatural setting.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin (who are really imposters of Mr. and Mrs. Martin) played by Spencer Thompson and Phae Novak respectively, parallel Mr. and Mrs. Smith in many ways.

They conduct themselves in the same typical manner. They keep their backs straight and refrain from any gesture that suggests honesty – a model of perfect small talk decorum. But there is something gentle behind Thompson and something innocent behind Novak. Thompson lives the absurd like a boy. He’s amused by it. The Bald Soprano captures the subjectivity of emotion and time (at one point there is an extremely long and hilarious awkward silence), which Thompson adopts into his physicality. Novak’s eyes widen as the play goes on.

That, and her raspy, playful voicedelivery, would be endearing in any normal setting, but in the play she is the most alienated. The more innocently she looks at things, the more detached she is from the way the things actually are. And the way things actually are is what The Bald Soprano destroys with such perfect imperfection.

That is the absurd, and McGill’s interpretation of it is both visceral and gut-wrenching; it will either wrench your gut with laughter or misery.

The Bald Soprano is playing in Morrice Hall, 3485 McTavish, from March 10-13, and March 17-20, at 8 p.m.

22Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

Function is the future Concordia design students unite tradition and innovation Susannah Feinstein Culture Writer

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rom March 4 to March 20, “Material Applied” – an exhibition that focuses on the relation between art, commerce, and design – will be running as part of Concordia’s Art Matters Festival, a three-week long celebration featuring new work by Concordia’s art and design students.

Sean Yendrys, the show’s curator, cites the material and its relationship to function as two of the exhibition’s main concerns.

Yendrys selected each of the pieces in the show himself, using both his previous knowledge of most of the artists’ work and the proposal each artist submitted. He emphasized the dual focus of his criteria for selection, based on “how unique the building materials were, as well as how the artist used these materials to make an object functioning outside of what they traditionally compose.”

Although his studies have focused primarily on graphic design and typography, Yendrys gained an interest in three-dimensional design after he worked as a curator during last year’s Art Matters Festival.

“I was running a show in 2-D and I thought that this year a 3-D exhibition might be interesting,” he said.

“This is the only show in the festival that focuses on design rather than art.” According to Yendrys, a notable distinction exists between the two. “With art, you make a piece.

In design, you create for a client with a specific purpose in mind,” he explains.

This concept of creating art for consumption is a key element in the concept of a “creative economy” – a term which the U.K. government’s Department For Culture, Media, and Sport defines best as a conglomeration of “those industries

which have their origin in individual creativity, skill, and talent, and which have a potential for wealth and job creation.” In this sense, the human creativity encompassed in design harnesses the capacity not only to please the eye, but also to foster economic prosperity, portraying the art form as one of the most accessible and traditionally useful mediums showcased in the festival.

Though he didn’t specifically mention the creative economy, much of Yendrys’s discussion of “Material Applied” echoed the concept. “The show is about functionality, exploration, and experimentation, with an undertone of sustainability,” he said. “It is about learning to explore using new material.” The pieces in “Material Applied” feature exotic working materials like discarded newspaper, gravel, and old school desks, proving an enthusiasm on the part of the artists to branch out from their traditional – perhaps more mundane – raw materials. He noted that – although the concept of “green” building materials was not intended to be the focus of this particular exhibition – it is a major component of the design curriculum at Concordia.

Though interesting in theory, the exhibition contains quite a few flaws that detract from its effectiveness in conveying its target messages. As of March 9, there were no name cards accompanying the pieces – the viewer had to match up pieces and artist names using the information booklet.

The exhibition was also lacking write-ups disclosing exactly what materials were used to make each work.

Additionally, there seemed to be little innovation in creating new uses for easily recognizable materials. For example, as visually appealing as it was, I failed

One of the pieces on display was a necklace made out of repurposed building materials. to see the innovation in using screen-printed newspaper as wallpaper or creating jewelry out of building materials. Gaia Orain’s Paper Bag created bags out of “discarded materials of a passé era,” a description, the meaning of which I had trouble deciphering, but I did notice the incorporation of satin into her work.

“Material Applied” is still

worth seeing, as it shows promise regarding the future of furniture design – some of these latter pieces were particularly impressive, especially David Abraham’s Charred Light light fixture.

However, the lack of variation and creativity in many of the featured pieces was disappointing.

As comparatively static visual art becomes less relevant and the

The Daily Publications Society will hold a referendum starting the 22nd of March for a $1 fee increase.

A member of the Society may form a “Yes” or a “No” committee, and not both, for accepted referenda questions through a petition signed by one hundred members of the Society for that purpose. The name and phone number of a chair, plus a signed list of committee members, must be submitted to the Elections Coordinators during the designated nomination period.

For additional information, please contact chair@dailypublications.org

Courtesy of Sean Yendrys

demand for accessible design rises, this art form will become increasingly important. Ideally, the content in this show and all of the Art Matters Festival would have reflected and subverted this inevitable trend in art.

“Material Applied” will be on display at Les Territoires (372 Ste. Catherine O., Suite 527) until March 20.

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

23

Moving through memories The Sentimentalists blurs the line between reality and reminiscence Amelia Schonbek The McGill Daily

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arly in Johanna Skibsrud’s new novel, The Sentimentalists, the reader realizes things may not be exactly as they seem.

Driving north with her sister and her father, who is moving from his home in Fargo to live with his friend Henry in rural Ontario, the narrator says “I imagined the different ways I might recount [the trip’s] events, even as they occurred.” It is here that the reader stops trusting, or trusting completely, in the possibility that things are ever committed objectively to memory, or that they might be retold objectively either.

Everything that follows in the novel comes with this small disclaimer attached, creating something of a subtly hazy feeling in the work. A feeling that, when you think about it, is the one associated with real life memory as well.

In this way, the first half of The Sentimentalists meanders along, details revealed in between musings, memories, and beautifullycrafted images. This type of writing is enjoyable to read – it allows the reader to move slowly through a text, to soak up the imagery and think through the metaphors, not having to rush to keep up with the pace. The reader learns that the narrator’s father, Napoleon, is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and that Henry is the father of Napoleon’s friend Owen, who was killed in action in Vietnam. Events in the narrator’s life lead her to retreat to the government-built house Napoleon and Henry share – a house that sits on the edge of a lake that covers the remnants of an old town, flooded in the ‘50s by a hydro-electric dam.

It is here that the narrator begins to sift through her father’s past and her own, and to struggle with their implications.

Further blurring the line between fact and fabrication is the author’s

CULTURE BRIEF Artists in residence Making It Montreal, a program designed to promote the work of artistes émigrés in Montreal, was born out of organizers Tasha Anestopoulos and Louis Rastelli’s interest in the city’s status as a breeding ground for young artists. The project, which officially launched on February 4, aims to

Zara Meerza for The McGill Daily

Johanna Skibsrud’s novel explores the fallibility of memory. addition of an autobiographical element: Skibsrud’s own father fought in Vietnam and his true testimony about Operation Liberty II, in which he witnessed a higherranking soldier murder a civilian woman, was incorporated into the book. But Skibsrud has said that the work is “not my father’s story, but my own. And it is not a true story.

At its root, though, are two true things. One is my father’s testimony following Operation Liberty II in 1967…. The other is the feeling I got floating over the buried towns of Flagstaff Lake: a feeling of the way that everything exists in layers, that

encourage anglophone artists to stay in Montreal and to dispel the city’s reputation as merely a stepping stone for everyone but artists native to the city. Showcasing music, visual art, and spoken word, the project aims to help newly-arrived artists connect with Montreal’s broader art scene by indicating avenues for them to display their work and gain exposure.

Last week, the first of Making It Montreal’s scheduled art exhibits opened at Casa Del Popolo.

Though the featured artists – Jesse

nothing disappears; it just gets hidden sometimes.” his theory of memory and being that Skibsrud continues to develop in her novel is one of the book’s greatest strengths. Every so often she will unwrap another small strand of thought – about “the false presumption that a thing could, quite simply, be forgot,” or that there is “a ghost for every moment of a life.” And though these reflections are necessarily introspective and pondering in nature, they never feel heavy-handed, and they never keep the book from looking

outward as well as inward.

In fact, the dissection of memory allows the novel to engage in a critique of war and the way we remember war. Napoleon wonders, for example, while he watches his captain hit a woman with the butt of his gun, whether the captain’s name was, like the other platoon members’, affixed to the gun with red tape. Or, alternately, “Might that be a privilege of rank? An anonymous gun?”

Skibsrud relates the events of Operation Liberty II twice in the book. The first account, Napoleon’s chaotic experience of the operation, Skibsrud narrates in hazy,

Purcell, Aimee Van Drimmelen, Kierra Albina, Tyler Rauman, and Harley Smart – work in different styles, the exposition is tied together by their shared experience as anglophone artists who have chosen Montreal as home.

Though Casa doesn’t lend itself particularly well to art exhibits, the work on the walls – which will be on display for the rest of the month – evidenced its creators’ thoughtful commitments to each of their unique styles. A strong first showing for the project, the exhibition clearly demonstrated

Making It Montreal’s worth as an avenue for local talent to gain exposure.

The exhibit’s vernissage last Tuesday gave Making It Montreal’s organizers a chance to elaborate on their experiences in the city, as well as the difficulties they’ve encountered integrating into the art scene. Much of the conversation centred around the participants’ perception of the linguistic barriers in the city, and the extent to which the anglophone art community is distinct from its French counterpart. Anestopoulos emphasized the accessibility of the visual

T

detached real time. But the second is in fact an epilogue containing the transcript of the hearing at which Skibsrud’s father testified about civilian deaths during the operation, and the narrator’s reaction to this testimony. Reading through the transcript, the events become much clearer; our understanding is deepened. Ultimately, though, we learn that all charges in relation to the operation were dropped by the army, “for lack of real evidence.” So this incident, too, has been covered over and obscured by the layers of time, though it hasn’t fully disappeared.

art scene, claiming that as long as art was worthwhile and provocative, it would be appreciated by people speaking any language. Expressing a slightly less optimistic perspective, Tyler Rauman – who moved to the city six years ago – recalled the obstacles he encountered upon his arrival, describing how he was welcomed “slowy but surely” to the art scene.

But in spite of his difficult experience adjusting to the city, he agreed with the consensus that Montreal offered a fitting environment for young artists to experiment.

—Helen Lock

Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

25

Shakespeare and the

BEAST within

How Shakespeare’s animality made him an everyman Jane Hu Culture Writer

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ut on your best British accent and repeat after me: “William Shakespeare.” Feels heavy, doesn’t it? The unrivalled cultural weight afforded to the name is almost mythic. Yes, William Shakespeahhh. Literary genius!

Bard of Avon! Writer of premium love poetry! The guy has a sonnet form named after him. Even Milton – that egotist who literally coined the phrase “self-esteem” – felt the anxiety of influence from old Will. And let’s face it, we’d all need some self-esteem in comparing ourselves with Shakespeare.

Unquestionably, the reasons for reading Shakespeare are endless. English literature majors know that, in addition to fulfilling a quota of Renaissance courses, their degrees almost always require a separate compulsory Shakespeare credit.

At the Annual Shakespeare Lecture last Thursday, however, Paul Yachnin – Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies at McGill – argued against such glorified portrayals of the Bard.

Instead, Yachnin’s lecture, “The Beast in Shakespeare” reveals how Shakespeare was also simply an animal – just like you and me. Borrowing a quotation from Montaigne’s Essays, Yachnin states that Shakespeare’s plays strive to bring “all human things... under the same general throng.”

From Auschwitz to the subjugation of women, equating humans with animals has been used persistently to justify forms of brutal exploitation. Shakespeare’s plays confront such vulgarities of human immorality; not coincidentally, the early days of European trade on African shores coincided with his life. The lecture concentrated on The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear – written at opposite ends of Shakespeare’s life – to reveal his gradual meditation on facets of human animality.

In Shrew, Yachnin focused Petruchio’s domestication of Katherine through tactics of starvation, constant close surveillance, and forced labour. As an aside, Yachnin wryly noted the practice of similar methods still used today. Feminists and those behind modern restagings of Shrew have long struggled with the famously misogynistic conclusion to the play: Petruchio’s successful domestication of Katherine. His catego-

ries of animalization not only justify degrading the human shrew, they also work. “If Katherine is a falcon, then Shakespeare is a crow,” says Yachnin. Through the outspoken Katherine, we glimpse Shakespeare voicing his own social anxieties from the inside.

Indeed, Shakespeare’s legendary status arises in part from the improbable nature of his success.

Born in a small town without wealth or a university education, Shakespeare – despite his own ordinariness – somehow became the greatest playwright of all time.

Shakespeare represents his own status as a commoner through highly articulate and eloquent creatures; not only are these animals, but they possess the ability (and will) to speak publicly.

While Shrew concludes happily with a jubilant marriage, Yachnin calls King Lear Shakespeare’s “darkest and truest play.” Written much later, Lear achieves a sharper recognition of humans’ bestiality. Defined social categories are dissolved as Lear discovers personhood in animals, finally realizing that “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, / forked animal.” Illustrative of the work’s gravity is the final scene – where Lear carries a dead Cordelia across the stage – about which Yachnin told an anecdote.

When renowned Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier was asked about his portrayal of King Lear, Olivier answered, “Get a light Cordelia.” Although the crowd laughed, Yachnin immediately emphasized the bleaker implications of Olivier’s advice. Words no longer adequately convey Lear’s sorrow and Shakespeare intends for both actor and audience to feel the weight of Cordelia’s dead body. “Human animality,” Yachnin states, “gives us back our love.”

But this love simultaneously comes at a great cost. The equivalence of humans and animals necessitates our acknowledgment that we share their physical mortality. This theme of fatality gives Shakespeare his greatest resonance today, for our inevitable death threatens our unfulfillment.

Do I relate with Juliet’s cry, “Too early seen unknown, and known too late!”? Well, yes. Don’t you?

Alongside his characters, Shakespeare invites us to “sing like birds i’ the cage.” With wings to ascend toward the divine or feet to tread the grounds of humanity, Shakespeare’s voice continues to sing for us all. And really, who can deny Shakespeare’s insight on the

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

In early modern England, people of Shakespeare’s class were considered akin to animals radical nature of our responsibility to others? In fact, Yachnin makes this responsibility to both humans and animals explicit. His lecture was dedicated to his recently-deceased dog, Sophie, from whom Yachnin learned about “love, loyalty, and natural civility.” Sound familiar? Indeed, after Yachnin’s lecture, Sophie and Shakespeare seem to have much in common.

Since he’s been on sabbatical this year, Yachnin’s absence has been felt throughout the English department, as students wait anx-

iously for the reappearance of his Shakespearean Publics course in the catalogue. We scholars of American postmodernism and the Bloomsbury Group must pay our dues. Supplied with a new outlook on Shakespeare not as literary giant, but as an animal like us, we are ever the more prepared.

Our fidelity to Shakespeare – the reason every English department requires its students to dedicate courses purely to him – stems not only from his formally

beautiful language, but also from the enduring social and historical meaning behind such beauty.

Yachnin believes we relate best to Shakespeare when he is most a man of his own time: “He speaks to us and we to him because he faces with open eyes the limitations of his own understanding of the world.” The more personal his struggle, the more universal his message becomes. Shakespeare’s allegiance to his contemporaries makes him our contemporary too.

26Culture

The McGill Daily, Thursday, March 11, 2010

Naked dignity Controversial photographic exhibit explores disability and sexuality

Sally Lin | The McGill Daily

Through his nude portraits, Christophe Jivraj helps to grant the privilege of the subject position to the disabled.

Kira Josefsson The McGill Daily

D

uring Nuit Blanche a couple of weeks ago at SKOL, the gallery showing his latest exhibition, Christophe Jivraj saw one visitor storm out of the room, loudly declaring that the photographs were disturbing and disgusting.

One can understand why the man was upset – the exhibit certainly has the capacity to provoke strong emotions. “1,5-1,5” consists of individual photographs of a group of cognitively lucid but severely physically disabled adults, posing daringly on their beds, halfnaked. The work of Diane Arbus comes to mind: her photographs of what she called “her freaks” – transvestites, strikingly short or tall people, cognitively disabled adults,

blind children – have been criticized for presenting her subjects as spectacles for others to gape over.

However, where Arbus used the camera as a shield to make herself invisible, Jivraj is interested in how he is implicated in the photograph, and in the way it shows his relationship to his subjects.

In discussing the controversy surrounding his work, Jivraj points to the fact that photography in general is never neutral. “Just the structure of portraits is exploitative; taking pictures of another person is exploitative, for whatever reason.

It’s impossible to get a photograph to be sincere.”

However, Jivraj is still aware that his subject matter can be more problematic than most portraiture.

He says that his first work was terrible for this reason. As an undergraduate student of photography at Concordia, he got in touch with

a day centre for disabled adults through a friend who worked there, with the intention of doing some kind of photographic documentary work. At first, Jivraj was hampered by his discomfort with bodies that were different than his own. “The photographs showed things like the back of their wheelchairs, computer screens – I couldn’t even acknowledge their faces. I mean, it’s scary if you’re not used to it, I get that.

That’s why the guy left angry; he was not used to seeing these things.”

Jivraj realized that he first needed to get to know the people he photographed – something that took a lot of time – and thus implicate himself in the pictures. He continued to work as a caregiver at the centre, developing a friendship with his models, and since that first failed attempt, his work with the group has morphed into a collaborative effort between photographer

and subjects, through his career as a master’s student and then as a professional photographer. Jivraj is careful to explain that he does not see himself as a spokesperson for disabled people. Rather, these people are his friends. “What I’m interested in is my friendships, and the possible pitfalls of the artist’s relationship to his models. There is no denying that these persons are disabled, but how do I get past it?

Can I get past it? How do I get as close to that line as possible?”

He also says something that should be obvious to the viewer who, thanks to the exhibition text, knows that the persons in the pictures are fully mentally capable: his subjects know what their bodies look like, they know what it means when a photograph is taken of them, and they want to do this.

They wanted to take off their clothes. Giota, one of the women

featured, says that she feels like a woman in “the magazines,” and Jivraj compares the shots to a retake on the classic nude, an age-old format of art. The only difference is that in his version, the nudes have disabled bodies.

Assuming a portrait is exploitative simply because its subject does not look like your average person removes the privilege of subjecthood from them. It implies that those photographed do not understand what they look like or what a photograph is – a condescending sentiment, which further reaffirms the idea that function of body is correlative to function of mind, and that disabled people need to be spoken for. In the 21st century, we ought to have come further.

“1,5-1,5” will be showing at SKOL (372 Ste. Catherine O., Suite 314) until April 3.

Of art and action Performance series aims to highlight individuals’ role in global exploitation Seble Gameda The McGill Daily

“H

ow Many Slaves Do You Own? Art and the economies of exploitation past and present” is a weekend-long event that was born out of artist and activist Devora Neumark’s research into the history of slavery. The series of performances, which features the work of a large number of multidisciplinary artists, will take place at the Montréal, Arts Interculturels (MAI) this coming weekend, and aims to paint a detailed picture of the different systems of exploitation and coercive economies that are voraciously alive in the present day.

Neumark, co-director of Engrenage Noir/Levier, a community organization that fosters art and activism, describes the group’s

work as an “invitation to create art that interrupts, that addresses, that somehow critiques the systemic forces that lead to poverty… that impact people’s capacities to live well.” Systems of oppression are constantly evolving, taking on appearances that become increasingly masked to the public.

In response to this ever-changing process, Engrenage Noir Levier has commissioned a breadth of artists, performing in many different forms, to create art that exposes the multiple ways in which traditional slavery and coercive economies are constructed.

Multidisciplinary artist Naila Keleta Mae, who will perform a show called On Love next weekend, comments on the multiplicity of ways in which oppression reveals itself, but also highlights a kind of strength that may come out of it. “I

think that the ways our bodies are read changes,” noted Keleta Mae, “so I’m interested in the transformative possibilities too of being in this body…. Of course there’s the violence of oppression…but there’s also a real wealth of information, and knowledge, and creativity, and imagination, and resilience that comes as a result.”

Performances in a variety of mediums, including street art and dance, allow audience members the opportunity to evaluate their own role in prolonging exploitation.

“There’s a whole host of ways in which our very current society, our entire capitalist, consumer culture perpetuates economies of coercion,” said Neumark.

We have a tendency to place the stories of slavery behind us, as a legacy long gone; doing so, however, devalues the fact that economies

of exploitation still prosper today.

The collection of art performances presented over the course of the weekend will examine how global oppression still persists in structures like the international sex trade and the subjugation of migrant and domestic workers.

Performance artist Eric Létourneau is interested in personal relationships to global structures. His work, which he refers to as a “micro-sociological study and a socio-aesthetic study,” examines the role of small-scale, individual consumption in allowing exploitation to continue. Létourneau states that his piece, How many slaves do you own?, will look at “how people perceive their relationship with the global economy, [and] more specifically…as consumers, their relationship with the people who make the goods.”

Caroline Hudon also creates art that looks at exploitation on a small scale. Her work addresses the deprivation and challenges that individuals face as a result of the prison industrial complex, a structure that allows for the perpetuation of violence and isolation in prison systems. “It’s about how prisoners feel about the dehumanizing treatment of incarceration and…how they feel when freed,” stated Hudon.

The wide array of mediums that are on display in this three-day event embody the intricacies and layers that exist in current economies of exploitation. The strength of these artistic interpretations is that many of them come from lived experiences, evoking a sense of sincerity and realness. Their stories reaffirm the notion that coercive economies still thrive today, while also providing inspiration to change this reality.