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The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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All GA motions passed SSMU now SSTEIRBBPPUSAMC; gender parity abolished Queen Arsem-O'Malley and Maya Shoukri The McGill Daily
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he fall 2010 General Assembly (GA) in the Shatner cafeteria passed every motion on the agenda last week, but struggled to maintain quorum throughout the proceedings, prompting questions about advertising efforts and the viability of the structure of the GA. SSMU President Zach Newburgh thought that the poor turnout “displayed the need to review the General Assembly,” and that SSMU should explore “another mechanism by which the average student can engage in the legislative process.” The motions passed included a mandate for SSMU to refer to itself as the “Students’ Society of The Educational Institute Roughly Bounded by Peel, Penfield, University, Sherbrooke, and Mac Campus” (SSTEIRBBPPUSAMC) for the duration of 2010, the formation of a SSMU Board of Governors (BoG) in order to maintain SSMU’s liquor license, and the abolition of gender parity in speaking privileges at GAs and Legislative Councils.
Liquor License The creation of a seven-member BoG for SSMU was approved in order to maintain the liquor license. In consultation with their lawyers, SSMU discovered that it was in violation of Quebec provincial law, which mandates that the holder of a liquor license be Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Quebec.
Copi-EUS A motion for SSMU to use CopiEUS, a student-run printing service, for all printing jobs exceeding the capacity of the SSMU office printer, faced concern about SSMU being forced into a monopoly. The motion was passed with an amendment stating that SSMU “strongly consider” using the service.
Gerts Volume Regulation An attempt to place a decibel cap on volume for Gerts passed, though an amendment eliminated the decibel limit in favour of a consensus of a majority of Gerts patrons regarding reasonable volume levels.
AUS Fundraiser EUS member William Farrell authored a motion that would require SSMU to host a bake sale to raise funds for the AUS executive, which has posted a deficit this year. AUS President David Marshall commented on EUS’ lack of collaboration with AUS, saying, “We do have plans to get on track and do amazing things with our funds, so if a bake sale were to happen, we would most likely be donating the money to a charity.” The motion passed with an amendment that would donate the funds to a not-forprofit organization.
Liability In response to the administration’s recent movement to disassociate the McGill name with certain clubs and services, the motion regarding liability detailed a plan for SSMU to refer to itself as SSTEIRBBPPUSAMC. Author Eli Freedman defended the resolution,
saying, “This is a joke, but it is a joke with a very serious punchline. I personally find [the administration’s actions] to be belittling to the students. … Using the new title will force an uncomfortable conversation with the administration.” VP Clubs & Services Anushay Khan voiced concern about logistical difficulties and the potential blow to SSMU’s reputation. “The acronym SSMU has become popular for its reputation and credibility not only internally but externally as well,” she pointed out. “This takes away the reputation we worked for 102 years to create. … We are consistently sidelined from the
Students rally for mining bill Photo by Victor Tangermann Students marched from Shatner to the Roddick Gates last Thursday in support of Bill C-300, a federal Private Members Bill that would enhance the accountability of Canadian mining company operations abroad. Students also collected signatures for a petition to send to Parliament ahead of the vote on the bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The demonstration was organized by Greenpeace McGill. The McGill chapters of Amnesty International and Engineers Without Borders have also endorsed the bill. —Henry Gass
Campus Eye
Blair Elliott | The McGill Daily
The GA struggled to meet quorum, but passed all six motions community, why alienate ourselves further from our campus?”
Gender Parity The resolution to abolish gender parity in speaking privileges passed with little debate. After the vote, Senator Amara Possian explained her disappointment with the decision and the method of debate surrounding it. “It’s not necessarily that I have a problem with a motion itself, it’s the process, because I think that the way the motion was passed is potentially offensive to a lot of people. A lot of white males in lab coats abolishing gender parity doesn’t make sense.” The policy for gender
parity “took years to put in place because it is important to a large number of students, and the fact that 100 students can vote it down with no debate is ridiculous. This is a highly sensitive issue, and it needs to be discussed.” Student Equity Commissioner Emily Clare echoed Possian’s sentiment, remarking that the resolution was unclear. “I think the issue was rooted in a misunderstanding about what gender parity really is. It’s not correlated with the percentage of the population [of males and non-males] in the student body, it’s more about the structure within SSMU. It’s too bad that it passed.”
“If you take away the spaces in which a society can think about itself, you are building a society for authoritarianism. “ Eric Martin For coverage of Friday’s education panel, see page 7.
4 News
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
Third annual McGill global food security conference Wednesday: Water management One of Wednesday’s panel discussions included representatives from Indian, Chinese, and Costa Rican institutions. The question and answer period was sometimes tense because of the disagreement that members of the audience had with India and China’s practices regarding water management. M. Gopalakrishnan, Secretary General of the Indian International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage started off the talks by explaining the current and future situation of India. “Extreme conditions are becoming a yearly phenomenon,” said Gopalakrishnan. “India has to learn to live with water scarcity.” he maintained that 27 per cent of the world’s undernourished are Indians, and that thus far government intervention has failed to redistribute wealth to the rural poor. However, he concluded that India may see sustainability of food production and water management by learning from “success stories.” Zhanyi Gao, director of China’s National Centre for Efficient Irrigation Technology Research, talked about how China will respond to its foreseeable problems, involving mostly technological innovations – like building thousands of reservoirs and implementing drip irrigation systems. For China, it will be a diffi-
cult task to manage demand for food and water, as China’s population will reach 1.5 billion by 2030. With rapid development of urbanization, and there will be an increase in water competition between industry, domestic use, and agriculture. José Joaquín Campos, the Director General of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center in Costa Rica viewed socio-ecological rural systems not as problems of technology, as the two previous speakers had done, but as “interconnected, complex, and dynamic.” Campos stated that “both social and ecological resilience is key for local and sustainable development, [since] seventy per cent of poor live in rural areas.” Campos also stressed the importance of social responsibility and equity, which could be achieved through local “collective action.” In the question and answer session, one audience member questioned China’s research in food diversity and resilience. Another doubted that China could solve its problems through its increase in damming and water reservoirs, especially because global warming will make such water storage facilities unsustainable because of increased evaporation. — Aaron Vansintjan
Tuesday: Global prospects Last Tuesday, October 19, McGill hosted a Public Lecture Forum as part of its Third Annual Conference on Global Food Security. The event featured David Nabarro, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition and Beverly Oda, the Canadian Minister for International Relations. The forum also marked the official launch of the McGill Institute for Global Food Security. Daniel Jutras, Dean of the Faculty of Law, began the conference by welcoming the establishment of the new institute that would help tackle “one of the key dimensions of our collective future.” Nabarro was “delighted that McGill is taking leadership on an issue
Thursday: Response of international agencies Day three of the conference brought together four representatives from various international development agencies. They evaluated the different strategies used to deal with the 2008 food price crisis, and highlighted future areas of focus for improving agricultural productivity. The panel acknowledged the importance of empowering smallscale agriculturalists, who are responsible for eighty per cent of the food production in developing countries, yet constitute fifty per cent of the worlds malnourished people. The panel suggested helping these farmers to expand their enterprises by improving market access and scaling up their businesses. The panel said that because the world faces unprecedented population growth and a subsequent strain on global food resources, there was even more
of such importance,” adding that “we can’t move forward on food security without the combination of natural and social science research.” He said food security should encapsulate not only universal access but also “access to nutritional food within a sustainable environment.” Because of this, any approach will require governments and communities to come together in a manner that is interdisciplinary. He continuously emphasized the importance of trade but stated that community and small stakeholder involvement is integral to any sustainable approach. “[This] approach,” he said, “puts people at the centre, not production.” Oda discussed the Canadian International Development Assoc-
iation’s (CIDA) belief that women are key when discussing food security. “Women are the guardians to nutrition,” she said. “Small farmers are the backbone of the rural economy and the majority of these farmers are women.” Food Security is at the heart of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG). “Unless we make sure that people, and not production, are placed at the centre of our goals, we risk a very embarrassing miss come the MDG 2015 deadline,” said Nabarro. McGill hopes that its new institute will be well placed to help bring an end to food insecurity worldwide. —Stephen Eldon Kerr and Rachel Reichel
urgency to help small-scale farmers. Rebekah Young, from the Canadian Department of Finance, cited innovative technologies as a means of accomplishing this, charging the private sector with the responsibility of funding research and development initiatives. Meanwhile, Cheryl Morden of the International Fund of Agricultural Development (IFAD) discussed tailoring agricultural solutions to the specific ecological and economic needs of small-scale agriculturalists. Calling the population “a huge untapped potential for meeting the increasing global demand for food fuel and fibre,” she advocated for their direct involvement in the planning, development and decision-making processes, as well as the increased involvement of traditionally marginalized groups, namely women, youth ,and indigenous peoples. The need for sustainability in any
proposed solution was also heavily emphasized, despite the fact that governments tend to favour shortterm solutions with immediately tangible results. “Everyone wants results; not because they’re perverse, but because they’re out of business themselves if they can’t show results,” said Carlos Delgado, Strategy and Policy Adviser for the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank. Florence Rolle of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) proposed a combination of short-term solutions, directed at consumers, and long-term solutions. She gave the example of Ethiopia, where immediate government responses such as subsidies were paired with time-intensive solutions, such as the preparation of a five-year development plan. —Nouran Sedaghat
Crash course in student activism Student and labour unions host symposium Eric Andrew-Gee The McGill Daily
“T
Off- Campus Eye
UQAM takes to the street Photo by Victor Tangermann
An estimated two hundred students took to the streets last Thursday to protest the Recontre des partenaires de l’éducation, a yearly meeting between the provincial government, university administrators, and student groups. The Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ), which organized the protest, is planning to boycott the meeting, where they expect the Ministry of Education to announce details of the 2012 tuition hike announced in the Liberal government’s March budget. ASSÉ is the only province-wide student lobby group that doesn’t plan to attend, although no student groups have yet been invited to the meeting. A date has not been set, but it is expected to take place in late November. —Eric Andrew-Gee
hank you for being here, and I hope we can stop this before it destroys what’s left of us.” That’s how Eric Martin, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa, signed off to his audience in the Shatner Ballroom Friday, after giving the opening presentation in a marathon symposium on education and student activism hosted by SSMU, PGSS, and AGSEM. Martin, who also works for the leftwing think tank Institut de recherché et d’information socio-economiques (IRIS), was introduced by a panel of VP Externals: Myriam Zaidi of SSMU, Ryan Hughes of PGSS and Michal Rozworski of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill. Zaidi, Hughes, and Rozworski, sitting together, went after the McGill administration, accusing it of seeing students as “cash cows,” “indentured servants,” and “indentured employees,” respectively. Thomas Collombat, a doctoral student at Carleton University sits on the information committee and pre-bargaining committee of
the Syndicat des chargées et des chargés de cours de l’Université de Montréal (SCCCUM), spoke after Martin. The day’s keynote speaker was Angus Johnston, a history professor at the City University of New York and expert on student movements in North America, and runs the blog studentactivism.net. Martin had harsh words for administrators, politicians, and business people. Referring to external representatives on universities’ boards of governors, Martin said, “They obviously have conflicts of interest, because they are capitalist pigs.” In his speech, Johnson presented a vision of public education and student activism that was both dire and hopeful. Pointing to tuition increases at the University of California and elsewhere, Johnston said, “Its almost a misnomer to talk about public higher education anymore [in the U.S.].” He also noted an upswing in student mobilization against these changes, however. “They used to ask me why there isn’t any student activism,” he said. “Now they ask me that less.” See page 7 for interviews with Martin, Collombat, and Johnson.
News
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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WHAT’S THE HAPS
Green Drinks Montreal Tuesday, October 26, 5 p.m. Thomson House Restaurant, 3650 McTavish The PGSS environment committee presents the film Lake Invaders: the Fight for Lake Huron. Mixer at 5 p.m., film at 6 p.m. Open to all.
Talk with author Tarek Fatah Thursday, October 28, 7 p.m. Leacock 232 The McGill Freethought Association and the Freethought and Humanist Club of Concordia, will be hosting a talk by political activist, writer, and broadcaster Tarek Fatah as he discusses his book The Jew is not my Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism. His talk will be followed by a question and answer session and book signing. Admission is free and open to the public.
CKUT Funding Drive
Montreal is hoping federal and provincial funding will come through.
Oubai El Kerdi for The McGill Daily
Mayor’s homelessness plan takes heat Advocacy groups point to funding gaps and misplaced priorities Laura Pellicer News Writer
E
arlier this month, Montreal’s mayor, Gerard Tremblay, announced an ambitious plan to tackle homelessness in the city in conjunction with the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). Advocates for the homeless have accused the mayor of simply sweeping the homeless under the rug and city hall of counting its financial chickens before they hatch. The plan calls for the construction of 750 housing units for the homeless and a respite centre to provide mental health and addiction services. The city’s police will also undergo “sensitivity training” in order to reduce discrimination toward Montreal’s homeless. In order to execute the plan, Montreal is asking for $29.5 million from Quebec, and a further $21 million from Ottawa. As part of the plan, the SPVM has also created Équipe mobile reference et d’intervention en itinérence, a mobile outreach program which seeks to aid homeless people who are repeatedly charged with criminal offences and fines. The city has sought the assistance of the Makivik Corporation, an Inuit non-profit that aims to hire Inuktitut-speaking social workers as well as develop an Inuit- and Native-specific outreach program. Montreal’s homeless are disproportionately Native and Inuit. The plan was met with criticism and opposition from organizations working on the ground with the
city’s homeless. Matthew Pearce, the Director General of the Old Brewery Mission – a hundred-year-old homeless support centre – said that although the plan is an important step toward addressing homelessness, it is significantly flawed. “We’re troubled by the plan in that the city has all of the actions it wants to take, but does not have the funds to do it,” said Pearce. “Their plan is dependent on the province agreeing to their request for money. If the city is truly putting homelessness as a priority it also has to do so in its budget,” he said. Pearce went on to say that that the announcement of the initiative is premature. “I don’t think they should be advertising what they would do with money they don’t have. What they should do is: complete their conversations with the province, find out how much money the province will give, and… then they should develop a plan.” Isabelle Raffestin, a representative from Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM) – an organisation which defends the rights of Montreal’s homeless population – said that the city’s plan will make concrete improvements in the area of housing, but thought it fell short in it’s treatment of judicial issues. She pointed out that when homeless people fall victim to arrest and fines from the police, it is often for minor offenses. Public urination and sleeping on public benches can garner fines starting at $144. In the Ville-Marie – or downtown – area, fines for public disturbance and
misuse of urban space can reach up to $628, a fee which few homeless people can afford. “The Commission des droits de la personne [Commission for Human Rights] published a twohundred page review which accuses the SPVM of social profiling,” said Raffestin. “What we at RAPSIM are asking for is a revision of municipal regulations that are discriminatory,” she said. The SPVM’s mobile outreach project seems beneficial, but the city needs to go a step further in “sensitizing judges and crown prosecutors to the different realities of
people, including the homeless,” according to Raffstein. In a press release dated October 15, Montreal’s Collectif Opposé à la Brutalité Policière (COBP) has also voiced opposition to the plan. Sophie Sénécal, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote in French that the city’s plan only perpetuates a zero-tolerance approach to dealing with the homeless. COBP maintains that the plan does not address the judicial victimization of homeless people and is an effort to conceal the problem of homelessness rather than eradicate it.
All Week 3647 University CKUT is finishing up its ten-day funding drive this Sunday. The campus radio station is trying to raise $50,000 and is offering gifts and chances to win prizes in return for donations. Donate online at ckut.ca/ fd2010home.php.
UNICEF McGill Halloween Campaign: Dare-to-Wear This Week Throughout the month of October, UNICEF McGill raises funds and awareness for child protection, survival, and development. McGill professors will be asking for donations from their classes, and if the class can reach the goal of raising the equivalent of half its size, the professor dresses up for class on October 27 or October 28.
Call for Candidates he Daily Publications Society, publisher of he McGill Daily and Le DĂŠlit, is seeking candidates for
two student positions on its Board of Directors.
Send us your fiction, spooky or otherwise. The Literary Supplement litsup@mcgilldaily.com Deadline: October 28, 6pm
he position must be ďŹ lled by McGill students belonging to any faculty other than the Faculty of Arts, duly registered during the upcoming Winter term, and able to sit until April 30, 2011. Board members gather at least once a month to discuss the management of the newspapers, and make important administrative decisions. Candidates should send a 500-word letter of intention to chair@dailypublications.org by November 8th. Contact us for more information.
News
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Continued from page 4
Eric Martin Researcher with think tank IRIS
Thomas Collombat Union organizer at UdeM
should use any means necessary. MD: You said the response from students should be “violent.” EM: I’m not saying to oppose this by violence against people; I’m saying that it has to be stopped. So there must be mass demonstrations, there could be some occupations [of buildings] or some economic blockages. You have to be combative because the way to fight this is not by going to the prime minister’s office with a nice little document with numbers. They know all about that. They don’t care. They have decided they are going to destroy education in Quebec and with it the very possibility of forming youth that will be able to critically resist what’s going on with capitalism. They’re bent on this. They have the principals with them, they have the business class, they have the political class, and the media have been put into the fold because they don’t understand what’s going on. This must be opposed. If you take away the spaces in which a society can think about itself, you are building a society for authoritarianism. —Compiled by Eric Andrew-Gee
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The McGill Daily: What have you found to be the most effective tactics for students trying to move their administration one way or another? Angus Johnston: Doing actions where you’re soliciting the support of alumni and parents. On a bunch of campuses in the last year, universities have cut back on library hours, claiming that they didn’t have the money to keep the libraries open. And students have staged study-ins in the library, where they just go and they’re studying and they refuse to leave when the library is supposed to close. And it’s really hard to arrest students having a study-in in a library. It puts the administration in a box. And again, it’s not clear that you can have a revolutionary transformation of the university through a study-in in a library, but you can get the hours back. And another thing that that does is it puts the plight of the student, it puts the financial circumstances of the university, on the front page of the media. Because the media love a library study-in. And [the administration] are going to feel heat. The idea is that you are operating from within your own experience and outside of
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Angus Johnston History professor at CUNY
they wanted to be incorporated into the regular faculty union. Had they done that at that time – had regular faculty accepted sessionals into their regular faculty union – things would be very different today. There is a good chance that you would have some kind of collective agreement with some kind of career path. But things have developed differently: there are many sessionals who are not interested in a career, that are teaching a course for the experience, or for their resume or for another source of revenue, et cetera. MD: Can you speak about the relationship between tuition hikes and sessional and TA wages? TC: At UdeM, a sessional is paid $7,800 per course right now, but we’ve just signed a new collective agreement, so this will become higher in the next four to five years. By 2012 the average amount paid for one course for a sessional in [francophone] Quebec will be $9,000. And this is set in stone, because we’ve negotiated the agreements. At Carleton, CUPE 4600 collective agreement, the TA union had a clause in its collective agreement saying that wages were indexed to tuition hikes – so that if tuition went up, automatically TA wages would go up in the same proportion. But the university of course wanted to get rid of that, because it basically meant a tuition freeze for TAs (and most grad students are TAs because it’s included in our grad program). In Quebec it’s a different issue, since tuition has been frozen for a few years now, so it’s not a concern for unions. Up until three years ago, McGill was the only university in Quebec where TAs were unionized. It’s actually one of the rare cases where McGill was at the forefront of unionization. It’s very recent that TAs are unionized at UQAM, at Laval...and it’s by a different organization, by the public service alliance of Canada. I don’t know how they will react if tuition is unfrozen, and I don’t know how they will include some kind of indexation of tuition rates in a way that may compensate for some of the burden of the [tuition] hikes.
The McGill Daily: In terms of job security, can sessionals [course lecturers] apply for the equivalent of tenure? Thomas Collombat: There is no bridge between the two groups – tenure and sessionals. If a sessional is hired as a tenure – then de facto he doesn’t teach as a sessional any more. There is only one case of collective agreement: it is UQAM’s agreement between sessionals and university management, which says that sessionals should be given some kind of preference for hiring...but this actually jeopardizes the autonomy of the departmental assembly to choose who they want to hire: and they are very keen on their power to decide who they want to hire, so it doesn’t actually work. There is a very strict separation between the two groups [course lecturers and faculty]. UQAM is historically very departmental and controlled by tenure faculty – this is the case in most universities, but even more so in UQAM – so they resisted the idea that some kind of external rule would challenge their sovereignty to hire a new colleague. MD: So does it make sense to merge the groups? TC: Both movements are interactive. When sessionals started to unionize in the seventies, at first
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The McGill Daily: Do you think lobbying the government on a wide range of political issues is the right way to go? Eric Martin: No, because if you’re lobbying them, you’re playing their game. You’re using their language, the language of economy. FEUQ [Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec] has been doing this for a long time: trying to convince the government that, for example, it’s worth it for universities to invest in people because they’re going to pay their taxes in the future, they’re going to pay seven times as much as anybody else, so it’s a good investment. When you use this language, you’re using the economic categories by which knowledge is being destroyed. So you’re not putting yourself in another theoretical vantage point from which you can attack. FEUQ, for example, and FECQ [Fédération étudiante collégial du Québec], have been using the knowledge economy as a positive term. They’ve been putting out press releases saying, “We love the knowledge economy, we just want it to be more for us and less for them.” So they’re in the same paradigm. They’re not attacking the categories of what’s happening, they just want a piece of it. I’m not sure if it’s out of ignorance, or bad political analysis, or dishonesty. I don’t presume of anything. [In terms of under-financing] they’re using the numbers of the principals; you have to be wary of this. You’re not supposed to get your numbers from the governing class, this is a very elementary trick. When you want to argue something, the left must make their own numbers. So the only way to attack this is to, first of all, have a good analysis of what’s happening and not saying, “Oh we’re lacking 500 million and if we put it back, everything’s going to be okay.” No, no, no. The problem is not resources or money; the problem is a sense of purpose about what we’re doing. MD: So what do students do about it, in terms of tactics? EM: It’s not sufficient to oppose the tuition hike: you have to oppose the whole model of universities in the economy of knowledge as a patent-producing factory. To do this you
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[the administration’s] experience. That what you’re doing should be something that you feel comfortable with, that makes your opponent feel uncomfortable. It’s tricky to do that, and it’s getting trickier all the time. MD: Over the summer, the Architecture Café was closed without real student consultation. Have there been cases that you know of the corporatization of food on campus? AJ: I don’t know specifically about food stuff. But…at my campus, we had a record store on campus that was student-run, and it was constantly a fight to kept the university from saying, “Well, we need the space.” One of the things that’s really significant about that, in addition to the fact that it’s students providing a service for other students and it’s not profit-driven and all that, is the fact that it gives students an opportunity to be in a position of responsibility and leadership in terms of running these facilities, which is a tremendous opportunity. MD: There’s a possibility that Quebec tuition will be brought to the national average in 2012. It’s not clear right now what student politicians and activists are going to do
—Compiled by Rana Encol
you suggest? AJ: I’m usually pretty skeptical about the idea of a global student movement, because I think students’ experiences are very different in different places. But, having said that, this current tuition spike is a global phenomenon. We’ve been seeing it going on in the United States: California is bracing for possibly another tuition increase. They’re now at well over $10,000 a year and they’re looking at the possibility that it could rise next month as much as ten or twenty per cent more. Britain is going through this right now. The new government has announced that they are planning to cut support for higher education by eighty per cent. I think what we’re finding is that the privatization issue is a global thing and students have been responding in a global way. Privatization is a nebulous term if you’re not already politically connected. If you don’t already have an analysis of higher education, then the concept of privatization is not going to be one that gets you out in the streets. But this ballooning of tuition – for a while in the United States we thought this was a one-year thing. But it’s becoming clear that this
is just going to keep happening and happening. So I think there is an opportunity presented by this for a grass roots global movement. MD: You’ve said that there wasn’t much media coverage of the University of California upheavals in recent years. How can students get their faces in print? AJ: The first answer, which is the standard student answer, is to do something big, something really splashy. And that works to a certain extent. But in watching the media more…I’ve realized that keeping up a drumbeat of action is incredibly effective. Because the first time you have an action, in many cases you’re going to catch the media flat-footed. Or they’ll just think it’s a fluke, they’ll think it’s a one-time thing. But then when you have another action a few weeks later, they’re already primed, they already know what you’re issues are, they’ve already got their antennae up, and if they feel that it was a mistake to miss the last one, they’ll be sure not to miss this one. It’s an irresistible hook for the media…it takes it from being an anecdote to being a narrative. —Compiled by Eric Andrew-Gee
Letters
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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A nearly meaningless online vote is hardly the best way to engage in “more consultation.” Zach Margolis U3 Environment
Leibnizian capitalism Re: “Capitalism with a conscience” | Commentary | October 18 I take issue with Koay Keat Yang’s characterization of capitalist greed as excessive and unwarranted. Your logic echoes the 1960s call for “socialism with a human face;” is that not exactly your “conscientious capitalism?” The problem is that capital is the governing mechanism of a system which is inherently greedy, founded on exploitation, and unviable without recourse to profit and growth. To call its greed excessive is redundant: capitalism by definition requires excessive greed, or else it is not capitalism. Are microloans a new arm of the liberal-democratic charity brigade, out to save sorry slum-dwellers from themselves? Or are they a sinister tool for the continued imperial subjugation of the Third World? Ultimately, both questions fail to recognize the assumption on which they are grounded: that late capitalism as it is, is the best and (in the case of the latter question) only organization of labour relations that human beings are capable of. We shouldn’t choose one side of the coin over the other; we should reject the whole coin: these microloans have the distinct capacity to disrupt capitalist labour relations, but they must be recognized as doing so. To allow them to be sublated into the ever-expanding maw of late capitalism would be a terrible loss, but an unavoidable one if we talk about them as though they are the harbingers of a “new” capitalism. Mathew Powes U1 Arts
Enough said Re: “Please be our readers’ advocate, Sean. No one else wants to” | Letters | October 14 McDOOM! Erin Hale U3 Philosophy Daily Staffer Former Coordinating News Editor
Errata
In the article “Masi directs removal of union posters” (News, October 18), we wrote that course lecturers’ current salaries are $4,000 per course, when they are in fact $5,000. The caption to the graph accom-
Self-determination begins at home
Students being students powerless to change Arch Café
Re: “The name is a justification” | Commentary | October 18
Re: “Let us eat cake!” | Commentary | October 14
Marie-Jeanne Berger wrote in her last article, “In response to ‘Revisionism Hurts’ (Commentary, October 7), I would like to avoid the question of the Jews’ right to live in the land of Israel, within or without Judea and Samaria, and instead discuss the way articles like Russell Sitrit-Leibovich’s obfuscate and complicate the reality of modern-day Arab-Israeli politics... When we cut away the fat from the carcass of this issue, we see that Israel is usurping land, and the Palestinians are becoming further disenfranchised, and effectively caged into smaller and smaller turfs. What might surprise the optimistic or uninitiated observer is that this is happening during the first direct peace talks in two years.” Blaming others for their misfortune is nothing new to the Palestinians. From ’48-’67, it was the Arab states who failed to achieve a separate Palestinian state. Afterward, it was the failure of the PLO. And, as always, it’s the failures of the Israeli government, who by initiating peace talks, is apparently also causing more disenfranchisement, as Berger’s piece argued. Naturally, the Palestinians are unhappy in their situation. Yet the Israeli government willingly gave up Gaza in 2005 so they could run their own territory as they wished. They chose to elect a terrorist organization as their government. It seems that decision has backfired, and they now have come crawling back to international organizations to make the peace that Hamas refuses to do. If they want self-determination, it starts with asserting responsibility for your own mistakes. Vicky Tobianah U3 Honours Political Science and English Literature McGill Daily news writer Tribune columnist
It is important to resist the temptation to remember the past as we wish it had been, rather than as we honestly remember it. In Carol Fraser’s “Let Us Eat Cake,” this tendency to be nostalgic about the past rather than realistic about the present is particularly evident. The Arch Café was awesome. I sincerely loved it. But it’s gone, and the fact is that students simply don’t have the power to bring it back. This is for a huge number of reasons, all of which are unfortunately converging to make student life at McGill increasingly, and possibly irredeemably, shittier. So what is there to do? Should we continue to allow ourselves to be mocked by a draconian, uncaring, callous administration? It’s after all clear to them that we are, for all our furious candour, merely “students being students.” Or should we accept what’s been lost and come to the realization that “mobilizing” for the sake of this café, excellent though it was, is not worth our time or effort? Should we keep railing for the sake of railing (or because our friends are doing so, as Sam Baker notes in “This Is My Beef,” Commentary, October 14), or should we find constructive outlets to concretely improve student life on campus? All this is not to say that I disagree with the motives of or find childish the membership of groups like Mobilize McGill and I hope that’s not the impression given, because I sincerely think they manifest some of the only true nobility left on campus. This is just to say that, despite admirable motivations, they’re punching way above their weight when they should be busy building something worth fighting for.
Mathew Powes U1 Arts
Admin unhappy with article Re: “Masi directs removal of union posters” | News | October 18 I wish to respond to some inaccuracies in the October 18 article by Michael Lee-Murphy, relating to the removal of AGSEM union posters. First, course lecturers are currently paid $5,000 per contract, not $4,000, as stated in the article. The salary increases slated for January 1, 2011, and January 1, 2012, will bring course lecturers up to par with what other universities are offering for similar positions in the Montreal market, contrary to the statement that course lecturer salaries remain “far behind other universities in the province.” Second, free expression has always been respected by this administration and will continue to be. The right to unionize clearly falls into that category, but according to the Quebec Labour Code, certain rules prevail. For example, unions are not allowed to solicit employees during hours of work. Furthermore, employers have the right to ensure total respect of their sites as private property. The University was, therefore, within its rights to make the decisions regarding the appropriateness of materials to be posted on its billboards. There are protocols for posting materials and AGSEM did not follow them. Third, the Labour Code also places very significant restrictions on the free exchange of ideas regarding unionization, thus what might normally be viewed as a topic that should benefit from the free expression of ideas on campus is legally limited and constrains open and frank debate. Finally, as for the reference to the slogan AGSEM used to tag its posters, it was and remains misleading, and that is what is truly “hurtful.” AGSEM is certified to represent teaching assistants, so it is not the “teachers’ union.” Any such representation as McGill’s teachers’ union on posters or any other promotional vehicle initiated by AGSEM is false. Lynne B. Gervais Associate Vice-Principal (Human Resources)
panying the story “Bill to investigate Canadian mining” (News, October 21) was misleading. It should have read: “Location of ownership of companies with alleged CSR violations since 1999.” The article “Senate shoots down
Arch Café committee” (News, October 21), Director of Residences Michael Porritt was misquoted. He said that residences were still operating at “over 100 per cent capacity,” not “100 per cent over capacity.” The Daily regrets the errors.
Scuttling of ArtSci Council seat scandalous On Thursday SSMU council declined to pass a motion that would have put to referendum the question of whether Interfaculty of Arts & Science students, through the Bachelor of Arts & Science Integrative Coucil (BASiC), should get a seat at SSMU Council. As one of the co-sponsors of the motion, I was shocked by the decision; going in, we expected it to pass to referendum with little to no controversy. While I’ve calmed down a bit, and am not nearly as furious as I was on Thursday, I still cannot comprehend the decision. Setting aside the issue itself, all that was being asked was to let students vote directly on the question, which was apparently too much to ask for. Zach Newburgh opined that if put to referendum, the motion would certainly pass, which was for some reason an excuse not to allow an exercise of democracy by the student body. Among the arguments presented Thursday against this motion was the idea that ArtSci students are well-enough represented by representatives from the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science. This story itself destroys that notion, as Council voted down a proposal that was supported by 86 per cent of ArtSci students, something that can hardly be described as representing their interests. After the vote on the motion failed, it was amended to place the question on the ballot as a non-binding plebiscite, the purpose of which is not exactly clear; a nearly meaningless online vote is hardly the best way to engage in “more consultation,” the catchphrase of those opposed to the motion. In the wake of these events, we are still committed to addressing this fundamental flaw within the structure of SSMU Council, and are determined to bring this issue to vote at the next opportunity, during the winter referendum period. Zach Margolis U3 Environment Arts Rep to SSMU (The views expressed here are his own.)
We got too many letters this time ’round. Send us some more letters, and we’ll publish them all next issue. If we can. Write to letters@mcgilldaily.com, 300 words or less, from your McGill email address, and no hate please: racism, sexism, homophobia, et cetera, will not be tolerated!!!
Commentary
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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And the Peace Prize goes to...a warmonger Liu Xiaobo isn’t such a nice guy after all Red star over Asia Ted Sprague ted.sprague@mcgilldaily.com
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
W
hat has our society become when we begin to bestow the highest distinction in peacemaking to warmongers? Eager to rectify their mistake of giving last year’s Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, who just signed a $60-billion war funding bill this summer, the Norwegian “Minipax” moved heaven and earth to find a winner who won’t embarrass them this time around. Their choice fell upon Liu Xiaobo, a well-known Chinese dissident who was thrown in jail for co-signing Charter 08, a manifesto signed by Chinese intellectuals that demands democratic reforms in China. The Nobel Peace Prize committee thought they had it all figured out. Liu doesn’t have the power to send troops to “troubled” regions. His signature cannot declare war. Little did they know, this seemingly harmless, mild-mannered dissident turns out to be a staunch militarist. While millions of Americans filled the streets to protest the invasion of Iraq, Liu argued in an open letter (“American attack on Iraq,” Shi ji sha long lun tan, 2003) that the war was good for humankind, as were all other wars fought by the U.S., with the sole
exception of the Vietnam War. This apostle of peace and democracy carries the torch of American patriotism even further than many homegrown, flag-waving Republicans. Trying to emulate Martin Luther King, Jr., Liu talked about “counter[ing] the hostility of the regime with the best intentions, and defus[ing] hate with love.” (“I have no enemies,” Foreign Policy, December 23, 2009). This liberal democrat likes to cloak himself with non-violent messages while handing out guns to average Joes and Janes and encouraging them to ship out to spread democracy. Liu’s fellow liberal dissident, Jiao Guobiao, even wrote a poem about how much he wanted to fight in Iraq: If not this life I want to be an American soldier in my next life I would like to join and I wish to die Shoot me! Shoot me! In 1988, when interviewed by a Hong Kong journalist, Liu declared that China would have been better under colonial rule for 300 years: “In 100 years of colonialism, Hong Kong has changed to what we see today. With China being so big, of course it would take 300 years of colonialism for it to be able to transform into how Hong Kong is today. I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough.” Suffice it to say, he is parroting the colonial ideology that the savages of the third world need to be civilized with whips and chains. The likes of Liu have been put in
the spotlight by the Western media as the leaders of China’s democratic movement. There’s no doubt that China needs deeper democracy. However, these liberals cannot be trusted to lead the movement. They are notoriously timorous, inconsistent, and half-hearted. Their democracy is the democracy of the propertied class. Charter 08, despite its pleasant democratic phraseology, is in reality calling for more privatization and an expansion of the free market. Prominent economist Mao Yushi, the third signatory of the charter, claimed that “the minimum wage is meaningless and not beneficial for the poor” and that “only by protecting the interests of the rich preferentially can we make the poor rich.” This doesn’t mean that China is a worker-friendly state. Far from it: China is moving rapidly toward the free market and is privatizing public sectors left and right. However, it wants to do so on its own terms. While liberals like Liu cause a massive headache to Chinese officials because of their international popularity, the real threat to the Chinese government lies in the growing strikes by millions of workers who are thrown into factories by the thousands and there learn the true meaning of socialism. o
Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
Welcome to the movement Newly politically conscious or old hands, everyone should get involved with activism The character of community Adrian Kaats adrian.kaats@mcgilldaily.com
T
here are a number of indicators that the political climate is heating up, and quickly. In response to the “global financial crisis,” governments worldwide are implementing austerity budgets which significantly diminish public services, social systems, and, ultimately, the average citizen’s quality of life. At the same time, these budgets incentivize corporate growth and the sequestration of wealth – its removal from the public pot. Internationally, governments have invested trillions of citizenpaid tax dollars to bail out corporations that are mechanically and shamelessly turning around to post record-breaking profits
accessible to only a handful, and doling out jaw-dropping executive salaries and bonuses. As media coverage increasingly describes this grotesque betrayal of the public trust, activists and organizers are able to mobilize ever-larger numbers of protesting citizens. Fixed-term “democratic” governments recognize what is hopefully an imminent translation into votes. Their response is to accelerate the implementation of their wealth sequestration schemes. When they are booted from office, we can expect the cupboards to be bare. It will be left to us to restore the social systems they are wantonly destroying. There is little unique or surprising about these events, and although the cycle is not new, at this point in it, we must ask ourselves, “This time, have we let things go too far?” I believe there is room for things to
become much worse if we are not very careful about how we plan our way out of the present state and trajectory of affairs, particularly in activist circles leading the charge against the erosion of our “common good.” Popular support for “progressive” and more “radical” messages is becoming increasingly possible. While popular awareness of the dangers they foretold lay dormant, a necessary insularism allowed certain groups that fostered these messages to “hold the fort.” Now, however, that insularity may impede their ability to flourish. Indeed, these groups and the individuals that held them together weathered harsh times, and in many cases existential threats still loom large. In their veritable seclusion from popular culture, these groups have developed what seems to me a somewhat exclusive culture of activism, and
it threatens their ability to seize the present opportunity to beat back the pandemic of blindness which caused that seclusion in the first place. There are two phenomena which must be guarded against. First, we must resist the urge to be bitter – we must not close our hearts, minds, and doors to those that did not share the cultural and intellectual hardships suffered in the absence of popular support. The disease we are fighting is blindness. It is our biggest challenge to relieve that blindness, and it cannot be accomplished by shaming those unwittingly blinded. If people become interested in participating, but don’t use the “right” nomenclature or don’t express the outer, more superficial accoutrements of the “activist,” “progressive,” or “radical,” they are not to be dismissed. Their presence and willingness to participate is testa-
ment to their will and intent; the rest can be worked on. Second, we must resist the urge for public redemption that individualizes experience and fractures collective movement. Yes, activists should be recognized for their persistent contributions and fortitude, but our personal experiences are not the message, nor are they an accurate reflection of the problems that we face. We must focus our energy on putting forth a coherent, common, and well-articulated vision of how the present and future can be brightened by embracing our interdependence, and institutionalizing and expanding the systems that embody it. If we find that our energy is being directed toward individual experience and input to the “movement,” then a disservice is being done to the collective effort and momentum presently taking shape. o
10 Features
Falling into an o Lesya Nakoneczny The McGill Daily
C
anadian mining in Latin America has accelerated exponentially in the last twenty years. Often marketed as means of economic development, many mines cause environmental degradation and leave communities divided. Canadian companies are currently developing over one thousand mining project across Latin America. Over one hundred community conflicts associated with a Canadian mining company have been identified by MICLA (McGill Research Group Investigating Canadian Mining in Latin America). Every Canadian has a vested stake in several of these companies through the Canadian Pension Plan. My friend Kathleen Whysner and I witnessed such a conflict during an internship in the Ngöbe-Buglé Comarca last spring. The Comarca is a territory of indigenous selfgovernance within the Republic of Panama, and also lies on top of Cerro Colorado, the 14th largest copper deposit in the world. Currently, Canadian-based resource development and exploration company Corriente Resources Inc. is active in the communities located around the mine site.
Mining activity in the Comarca Canada, the U.S., South Africa, Australia, and the U.K. have something in common. In addition to sharing the bulk of responsibility for the world’s extractive industry, not one has signed the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous Tribal peoples. Written in 1989 and ratified by twenty two countries, the bill acknowledges an indigenous community’s right to consultation before activity – industrial or otherwise – takes place nearby that might significantly alter its culture or environment. Besides the devastation of fish populations in exploration phases during the 1970s and 1990s; risks of contaminated groundwater from leaching that will grow if the mine opens; a landscape that will no doubt be pul-
verized; and consistent malnutrition and high infant mortality rates due to neglect from the government and the international public, it is also the Ngöbe-Buglé identity and way of life that is under threat. There has been strong opposition to the mine since prospecting began in the 1970s. The Ngöbe-Buglé do not believe they will profit in the end. Each Latin American mine employs an average of eleven thousand workers. For the first five years of construction, eighty per cent of those workers are local. When the extraction phase begins, only twenty per cent remain local, leaving many others unemployed. The transport system created by the mining company endures after the mine has closed, exposing the community to exponential change. Initially, it is developed because every mine depends on machinery and mobility. After all, as one mining executive stated, open pit mining is, “the business of moving mountains.” Not only must a major highway be constructed in almost all cases to the mine camp, but smaller roads must be constructed to every drill hole in the area, and all processing plants, waste sites, and treatment facilities in between. At Cerro Colorado, an extensive drilling campaign produced over three hundred perforations, each of which, I would estimate, requires about one hundred squared metres of land to be cleared. The highway that was constructed to the mine camp at Escopeta now carries workers to and from San Felix, the largest town in the area, but it also brings experts from across the globe. The community is skeptical of technical experts, stated Celestino Mariano, the cacique – a regional indigenous authority – of the province. “We can see between the mountains that there are many trees which have a trunk and nothing more,” he said in Spanish. “We didn’t see these things before the mining. The mentality in the Comarca comes from the fact that we do not have scientists who are interested in working for us, to technically investigate the causes. Nevertheless, we can note that the vegetation has suffered because of the leaching done during the exploration.” Now a government checkpoint exists at
the base of the highway. Conflicts are already brewing, demonstrating that paved roads open a torrent of cultural change to the region, while mining jobs will quietly leave out the side entrance.
When being Canadian is a bad thing You’ve probably heard stories of Americans who travel and pretend to be Canadians because our reputation is less obviously marked by certain undesirable stereotypes. This is not the case in the Comarca. I never thought it would be possible to be embarrassed or ashamed to be Canadian. During the course of our research, another very present reality was that people were suspicious of us, and we had to constantly prove that they could trust us. The Ngöbe have every right to question our intentions and who we are, considering their previous experiences with outsiders. We had been told stories of people pretending to work for NGO’s but who really worked for companies – either to gain exploitable information from people or to cause divisions within their communities. Our contact had to escort us to any communities we visited and assure the local cacique that we weren’t double agents. At every interview we held, we were asked about who we were, and questioned about all the aspects of our project. Kate and I responded, and it was helpful that Kate was American. We held true to our promises and gave them a copy of the report we eventually produced. Now one needs written permission from the regional cacique to be where we were. On one hand, this restriction can be seen as an expression of strengthening sovereignty and a greater assertion of control over Comarca lands. In reality, however, it is more likely born out of a need for such control. To me, it indicates that many of foreigners who travel into the Comarca do not have the community’s best interests at heart.
Development? Mining companies tend to justify their operations with rhetoric of bringing development to impoverished rural communi-
ties. According to villagers living around Cerro Colorado, Vancouver-based Corriente Resources has even told local people that the motive driving the project is the company’s concern for local poverty. But how much do communities really profit from open pit mines? Panamanian mining law dictates • There are 1,020 min that for every one America. hundred dollars • 78.5 per cent of min of a foreign minare Canadian. ing company’s • 75 per cent of Ca profit, the fedextract gold or silver eral government • 8.25 years is the ave receives two dol• 950,000 kilgrams o lars – of which every kilogram of go the local municipit gold mine. pality receives all • 450,000 kilograms of thirty cents. for every kilogram o This is assuming open pit copper min these royalties • 68,147 litres per m are, in fact, colmate for the Cerro C lected. In 2008, consumption. the neighbouring Petaquilla Gold project, working a deposit worth hundreds of millions of dollars, paid $735 in royalties to the Panamanian government, only $110 of which was presumably remitted to the municipality. In some cases, companies pledge to build schools or health clinics in the communities. Such social programs are funded during the mine’s average 8.25-year lifespan – long enough to develop a dependency on temporary employment – but are then unceremoniously abandoned by the company. With next to no money left, and degraded agricultural land, local governments and populations often struggle to sustain themselves as they did before. Octavio Rodriguez, Secretary of the General Congress of the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé, asks: “If there were no copper in this mountain, would Canadian companies be here? No. We are not starving here; we have enough food to eat.” At least, they do while their land is arable. While no study has yet been conducted at Cerro Colorado, heavy metal contamination is associated with many open pit gold and
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily
open-pit disaster
copper mines. A study in Tanzania shows that plants with elevated levels of arsenic and reduced growth lie as far as four kilometres away from mine sites. The extreme topography in Panama could lead to erosion, unleashing billions of tonnes of contaminated sediments to lowland farms. Yet not a ning projects across Latin single one of the hundreds of comning projects world-wide pany reports we have read from anadian projects aim to Latin America has r. pledged to aid or erage mine life. develop the longof waste are produced for term livelihoods old in the average open of agricultural or artisanal work. s of waste are produced Such efforts never of copper in an average seem to be part of ne. these companies’ minute is a low-end estiagendas. Forty Colorado project’s water years of “development” at Cerro Colorado has quietly sustained the community’s inadequate nutrition and infant mortality rates.
False information People say ignorance is bliss. But is it? Being uninformed is not necessarily a choice but something one has to accept due to a lack of choice. Some of the Ngöbe people we visited guarded the information they had like a precious good. But they were thirsty for anything we could tell them about mining in Canada or Latin America. They in turn shared with us what information had been given to them: newsletters, brochures, handouts, and colouring books that they claimed came from Corriente Resources. The publications included claims that mining would bring development to the region with little or no environmental impacts. This is hardly believable considering Cerro Colorado is the largest unexploited but known copper deposit in the world. Twice in the past forty years, the site has been abandoned due to fluctuations in the copper market. Zero environmental impacts?
This would be difficult to judge in light of the recent weakening of checks and balances in the Panamanian government. (Companies are no longer required to submit environmental impact assessments (EIA) before the approval of their projects.) Yet, what really iced this cake of misinformation was the colouring book they showed us. In the book, the reader follows a mining helmet with shoes on his wonderful, jobfilled, remediated journey through mining. This book was distributed at capacitaciones (or special meetings) held by Corriente Resources that preached the benefits of mining instead of providing its workers with capacity training. The company was brought to the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights in 2007 by human rights and environmental organizations as part of a complaint on the state of resource exploitation in Ecuador. Part of corporate social responsibility includes community consent, but how can we be sure this was actually attained? How much can we trust corporations to be socially responsible when it is so easy to hide what happens in the highlands of Panama? Corriente Resources has a tainted history. Its mineral concessions in Ecuador are surrounded by communities fraught with “social unrest,” according to the company in its technical report. Prior to our arrival, indigenous leader Raul Petsain addressed the company on behalf of the ten thousand people affected by the project. He wrote that Don Clarke, a self-identified Canadian First Nations member, and an employee of Corriente Resources, was bribing community leaders in return for entry authorization, a form of “community consent.” According to locals, the company also dispatched eighty workers in 2008, mostly former members of the military, to stop opposition to the mine. Corriente Resources and Clarke are now using similar tactics in Panama. The community is skeptical of their information, but many attend meetings. In an interview, Felix Wing, director of CIAM (Centro de Incidencia Ambiental), the organization I worked for, described company strategy: “The usual mechanisms they use are lists.
People will sign them believing they are attendance lists. They will then attach whatever document and validate it. In the case of hydropower companies this has happened in Panama. It’s quite a pattern. They see this as a requirement, ‘We need to meet with you because we are required by law.’ The transparency law and EIA regulations do not say that you need the approval of the community. The Comarca law says that you need prior informed consent.” Community leaders are cynical, but they realize that for the thousands who lack employment and government attention, the company’s message is enticing.
Dislocation and cultural transformation Panama’s regime under Ricardo Martinelli says they aren’t prioritizing foreign investment and national economic development over the well being of its poorest citizens. They have. however, made some “minor” legislative adjustments to facilitate foreign mining operations in the country. The Canada-Panama Free Trade Agreement, signed on May 9, 2010, will allow Canadian companies to sue the Panamanian government if their profits are compromised. Ley Chorizo, or law thirty, was enacted more recently and eliminates any company’s obligation to complete an environmental impact assessment for “social interest” projects. A clause of Ley Chorizo acquits any police officer who may have committed a crime on duty, meaning that demonstrations have become a dangerous way to criticize the government. A mine can now be installed without determining whether the local community will have enough water left over to satisfy its needs. If the community protests, police officers are now authorized to brutalize and silence the opposition. According to Wing, the solutions are political: “[This] might be more the problem of political will. ... We have the legal provision that protects the environment, that obliges the government to get prior informed consent. ... We have economic tools that determine whether the financial economic ben-
efit for the country and indigenous peoples would be higher or lower than the environmental damage, and we simply don’t use it in the decision making process.”
Respecting self-determination The Ngöbe we spoke to have no desire to relocate. They have a history embedded in the land, and have tried to establish rights to protect their claim to this landscape. These rights do not include subsoil rights, which essentially means they have no surface rights. Their landscape would be forever changed once mined, and so would the lives of thousands of Ngöbe. They do not want a mine. From our interviews, I understand what they want to be access to adequate health care and education – development that promotes the life they value. I respect their right to selfdetermination, because I would not want my own self-determination to be limited.
You can do something about it Parliament is slated to vote on Bill C-300 this week. Co-written by McGill professor Richard Janda, the bill would make Canadian mining companies more accountable to the federal government for human rights violations and environmental standards. We cannot stop Martinelli from enacting more laws which preference international and national mining profits over the livelihoods of the people who live in mineral-rich mountains. We can, however, hold our Canadian companies responsible for the social, environmental and human rights abuses they may commit in Panama, and elsewhere. Contact your MP and ask for Canadian corporate social responsibility. For more information, visit the MICLA blog, miclamcgill.blogspot.com or contact miclamcgill@gmail.com. We urge you to write to your MP and tell them that you support Bill C-300, an important first step in ensuring that our money and political support is not being abused by irresponsible companies. —Kathleen Whysner and Joshua Nobleman contributed to the research and writing of this story.
Science+Technology
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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PSEUDOSCI-NOTES: Trottier Symposium
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nake oil is of course the classic image of pseudoscience,” said Joe Schwarz, of the McGill Office for Science and Society, in his opening remarks at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium: Confronting Pseudoscience, on Monday, October 18. The invitations and posters for the event showed a corked bottle of “snake oil” on a lime green background. In the early 1800s, when snake oil got its start, it was said to be able to cure arthritis: snakes are curvy, slithery – not the sort of creature that suffers from joint pain. The explanation went, Schwarz explained, that something from their insides gave them this quality, oil that could be collected and sold as a treatment. It didn’t work. “This is the reason why we use the expression ‘snake oil’ for many of the remedies that we encounter today,” explained Schwarz. Pseudoscience is no longer just sold in corked glass bottles, though: today we have machines that are advertised to cure cancer, sensors with bells and whistles are connected to fancy terminals with empty insides. “Modern snake oil,” said Schwarz of these electrical devices, which are only a tiny fraction of the modern products whose packaging makes false promises, and the so-called-medical remedies which
absolve themselves from peerreviewed journals. “People look at pseudoscience, and think that they’ll recognize it when they see it,” explained Schwarz. “But it isn’t always easy to recognize.” The symposium, which sought to outline both the reasons why even smart people have trouble recognizing pseudoscientific claims, as well as highlight the very real costs of false medicine, drew a crowd of McGill students, faculty, members of the public, and a small flurry of press. The first evening consisted of speakers Michael Shermer, editorin-chief of Skeptic magazine among many other things, David Gorski, managing editor of the blog ScienceBased Medicine, and Ben Goldacre, author of the book Bad Science. The second evening featured James “The Amazing” Randi, investigator of paranormal phenomena. —Shannon Palus
Patternicity “Our brains are belief engines, we are pattern-seeking primates,” explained Shermer in his presentation. Shermer coined the term “patternicity” to describe “the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise.”
We can make out faces from just three well-placed data points, see a pair of eyes and a smile in martian photographs, and religious figures in our lunch. We can bend the laws of physics by looking at an Escher drawings. Have you ever gone on a road trip and stopped in a town or at a rest stop – you know, the ones with the picnic tables and vending machines next to the washrooms – and gotten the feeling that you’ve been there before? We pick out similarities, see some details and not others. Shermer showed slides of shoe ads, toes squished into flip-flops, meant to evoke the idea of butt cracks. He played part of “Stairway to Heaven” backwards twice, only the second time putting the words about Satan that the recording supposedly has hidden in it– with the prime, the suggestion of what we’re supposed to hear, the backwards music really does sound like lyrics about evil. This is why people believe weird things: we’re constantly trying to make sense of the world. Without a constant awareness of how to pick out claims that are right versus ones that are wrong, it is easy to look at a fancy machine, and false promises, and see more than just snake oil. —S.P.
Cancer Claims
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David Gorski’s presentation at the Trottier Symposium directly attacked both alternative methods for combating cancer and the oftpublished testimonials from cancer survivors that that exploit emotions and twist facts. “We [scientists] are limited by science in what we can claim,” Gorski said, “but quacks are not!” Gorski brought up Hulda Clark, after identifying her as one of his all-time favourite quacks. “First, she published The Cure for Advanced Cancers, ... [and] The Cure for All Cancers, but that wasn’t enough for her,” Gorski said as he read the title of her newest book: The Cure for All Diseases.
Grace Brooks for the McGill Daily
Believing in quick fixes like snake oil can be comforting. “Okay, well, what happened to Hulda Clark,” Gorski asked. “She died of cancer!” Gorski applied a framework for analyzing cancer testimonies developed by an Australian oncologist to three famous testimonies written by cancer survivors. In each case, the survivor blamed western medicine for their poor health and praised their alternative therapies for forcing the cancer into remission and prolonging their lives. Gorski warned that in nearly every case of miracle cancer remission, the patient first underwent surgery to remove the tumour and sometimes consented to chemo or radiation therapy before moving exclusively to alternative therapies. These cases, he said, should not be regarded as high quality data. Gorski said that surgery is the single most effective tool against cancer. All other treatments can be regarded as secondary, or adjuvant, therapies. Using a medical prognosis calculator, Gorski illustrated how surgery is so effective at improving patient longevity that we should not be surprised that there are examples of long term survival in patients given only a short amount of time to live with surgery as the only medical intervention.
Gorski said that even two per cent of women in the study were alive 12 years after their diagnosis. “These women exist,” he said, “and if she is lucky enough to be alive and doing alternative medicine, she will say alternative medicine is the reason why she’s alive.” Gorski illustrated an account of a patient who chose to end chemotherapy, which shrank her tumour, and replaced it with vitamin-therapy recommended by a German doctor who convinced her that internal conflict was the cause of illness. Her tumor grew exponentially and her chest and back began to rot, before she died in agony. “This is known as cancer en curasse, a horrible situation that we do not see anymore,” Gorski said as he concluded his presentation. “What you need to remember is that death from cancer is worse than chemotherapy and dead people do not give testimonials.” —Ethan Feldman Both evenings of the symposium are available at oss.mcgill.ca. Check The Daily next Monday, November 1, for Ethan Feldman’s longer story about speaker Ben Goldacre.
“Skeptics at the pub, skeptics on college campuses.” – Michael Shermer
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Skeptics at McGill, and beyond: read sci+tech, printed every Monday. scitech@mcgilldaily.com
Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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The right connections The possible return of the Québec Nordiques has complicated political implications The foul line Nader Fotouhi naderfotouhi@mcgilldaily.com
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any citizens of Quebec and Canada as a whole have shared the same aspiration: for hockey to return to Quebec City. Since the Nordiques left in 1995, there has been an uncomfortable void in the Quebec sports landscape, forcing many easterners to reluctantly root for the Canadiens, while others disengage entirely from NHL hockey. With recent reports of efforts to bring a team back to Quebec, the mere possibility of the league’s return to the city has many giddy with anticipation. Seemingly neglected, however, is Pierre Karl Péladeau – the potential beneficiary of a new franchise – whose political and moral background should give serious pause to Quebec residents and hockey fans as a whole. This issue brings up an important question in sports: as a fan, where is your money going? Franchise ownership for political purposes has begun to rear its head elsewhere, with Quebec’s candidacy making it the next target for this woeful practice. Péladeau, head of Quebecor Media (the parent company of Vidéotron), has made no secret about wanting to own a prospective Quebec City hockey franchise. According to Canadian Business, Péladeau’s net worth is in the vicinity of $415 million after taking over his father’s company. Yet Péladeau wishes to not only own a Quebec franchise, but to have the Harper government provide upwards of $175 million to build the arena. This does not include the estimated $175 million in provincial funds and $50 million in local city funds proposed for Quebec’s new $400-million arena. Indeed, on top of the modern standard of government-funded assistance, Péladeau’s potential coup strangely includes no funding of his own nearly half-billion dollar fortune. In essence, the Quebecor CEO’s proposal enables him to pocket the profits from a nearly guaranteed sellout crowd each game, all while repaying the province of Quebec nothing. Perhaps this is the going rate for the gra-
Lukas Thienhaus | The McGill Daily
Pierre Karl Péladeau is seeking public funds to finance a new arena and his political agenda. cious gesture of hands-off ownership of an NHL team while reaping its profits. These profits would undoubtedly be used in part to get Péladeau’s TV network brainchild, right-wing news outlet Sun TV News – colloquially known as Fox News North – off the ground. Not surprisingly, it is also widely assumed that (as with most owners) many of Péladeau’s expenses and assets related to the team would be deemed tax-free by the government of Quebec in exchange for “revitalizing” the economy of Quebec City; an economic practice that has not yet proven effective in the past. This blatantly unnecessary use of public funds reeks of right-wing, so-called “small government” hypocrisy. This is not the first time that sports owners’ tactics have coincided with political interests. In exchange for the potential media support, Harper has expressed an interest in funding Péladeau’s viability as an NHL owner with taxpayer money. Dick DeVos
of Xe (formerly Blackwater), owns the Orlando Magic. Every ticket stub used to see players like Dwight Howard also funds the mercenary organization whose presence in Iraq remains as substantial as DeVos’s enthusiasm for wealth disparity. DeVos is also an outspoken member of the extreme right-wing portion of the Republican Party in the U.S., having funded groups that, according to sports writer Dave Zirin in Dissident Voice, support and aid “reparative gay therapy, anti-evolution politics, and other ‘traditional’ family values.” Reality, it seems, continues to elude DeVos’s political and social beliefs. Other owners with controversial political ties include the Arizona Diamondbacks’ principal owner Ken Kendrick, who misled the public regarding his stance on the now infamous SB-1070 immigration-law in Arizona. Again according to Zirin, while stating that he was opposed to the borderline fascistic legislation, Kendrick hosted a fundraiser at
“You can observe a lot just by watching.” —Yogi Berra Observe. Watch. Write for Sports
the Diamondbacks’ ballpark, Chase Field, for Arizona state senator Jonathan Paton in his Congressional bid – Paton being one of SB-1070’s most outspoken supporters. Not surprisingly, Chase Field was built primarily (over 70 per cent) with public funds, giving Arizona taxpayers the privilege of hosting Paton’s fundraiser. Mercifully, Paton was defeated in the Arizona Republican primary a month ago. Nonetheless, given these precedents of sports team owners supporting social injustices, one shudders to imagine what Péladeau’s new arena and TV network would give him as far as political sway. Perhaps repeated blows to the head from his silver spoon resulted in a concussion; more likely, Péladeau’s greed simply has no capacity or sympathy for the cutand-dry economics of a publicallyfunded stadium. The onus now lies upon Stephen Harper to deny this blatant cash grab and prevent fur-
ther usurpation of public funds. In a CTV News report, Harper’s former top aid, Tom Flanagan, said the proposed funding of an arena in Quebec “has the potential to create backlash not just in the West, but all across the country.” Indeed, public dissent will need to rise to the surface to prevent a heist of this magnitude by both Péladeau and the enabling Harper. Sports are a funny thing. Blind hope normally has no consequences, serving only to either validate or ignore a fan’s faith. Though those desires may be granted, the outlook would worsen on a moral and economic level for Quebec. Under the current proposal, hockey’s return to Quebec would invoke much stronger emotions than nostalgia. If the public bears the brunt of the investment, should they not also reap the benefits? In the meantime, for those still in favor of a team relocating to Quebec under Péladeau, a simple word of caution: be careful what you wish for.
sports@mcgilldaily.com
Sports
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Out of the closet and onto the field The Gay Games are changing attitudes around the world The Xaverian Weekly (St. Francis Xavier University)
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NTIGONISH, N.S. (CUP) — While any athlete knows that early-morning practices, gruelling workouts, and timeconsuming competitions can at times be challenging, some may not consider the significant role that sexual orientation can play in sport. For many in the gay, lesbian, and transgender community, athletic participation and openness about sexual orientation are mutually exclusive. However, since Tom Waddell founded the Gay Games in 1982, those notions have been altered – in many ways for the better. Charlene Weaving, human kinetics professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., says the Gay Games are a momentous challenge to homophobia in sport.
“It provides an opportunity for open homosexuals to participate in sport at an elite level at a major international competition, and not have to face any type of homophobia,” Weaving said. Since the inaugural 1982 event in San Francisco, the Gay Games have been changing attitudes and giving power to thousands of people through the positive effects of sport and competition. “The Gay Games are not separatist, they are not exclusive, they are not oriented to victory, and they are not for commercial gain,” Waddell wrote in an article on the games website. “[The Games] are, however, intended to bring a global community together in friendship, to experience participation, to elevate consciousness and selfesteem, and to achieve a form of cultural and intellectual synergy.” Waddell wanted to bring people of all sexual orientations together in an unprecedented
effort and he wanted “to dispel the prevailing attitudes in sport regarding ageism, sexism, and racism.” Weaving agrees. “I think it’s important to understand the purpose of the Gay Games is not to showcase the top or the absolute best athletes in the world,” she explained. “It is to provide this amazing opportunity where many of the top elite athletes who may happen to be gay [or] bisexual are closeted at the Olympic level.” From July 31 to August 7, 2010, over 10,000 participants from more than 70 nations gathered in Cologne for Gay Games VIII. The motto of this year’s games was “Be part of it!” As an event that preaches non-exclusivity, the invitation was open for everyone to take part, whether heterosexual or homosexual, transgender or transsexual, and regardless of religion, ethnic heritage, political convictions or physical capabilities.
While open to everyone, those who promote the Gay Games, like any major sporting event, want participation from elite athletes in every discipline in order to help draw attention and interest. Weaving says that she believes that the Gay Games encourage elite athletes to come out, but there are still barriers at the professional level. “The problem,” she said, “is if they had any aspirations of moving up higher, there would still be some concern about coming out fully, in case of wanting to pursue a very elite career, because of the lack of sponsorship.” “It’s just that it is so homophobic at that level, especially in North America. You need that kind of positive media coverage in order to succeed as an athlete,” Weaving added. Setting professional sport and the homophobia within it aside, the Gay Games have changed the way the world views homosexuality and sport.
THE SPORTS BAR
Jami Parisien
W HAT ’S ON TAP Marlet Soccer vs Concordia October 29, 6:30 p.m., Molson Stadium Redmen Hockey vs Queen’s (Bus Trip) October 29, 8:30 p.m., Queen’s University, Kingston Swimming Dual with Toronto October 30, 12:00 p.m. Memorial Pool
S HOUTOUTS Martlets Field Hockey OUA Championship October 29, 12:00 p.m. York University, Toronto McGill Rowing OUA Championship October 30, 12:00 p.m. St. Catherines, ON
R ESULTS Women’s Rugby vs Ottawa W 28-12 October 20 McEwen Field
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Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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It ain’t over How kids are saving opera Naomi Endicott The McGill Daily
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pera has long been criticized as a luxury of the elite. More stereotypes surround it than any other theatrical genre: unintelligible languages, astronomical stage budgets, costly tickets, melodramatic storylines, prohibitive length, and the greatest divas this side of Mariah Carey’s winnebago. But opera is as much about music as it is theatricality. Take the continuous music of ballet and Broadway’s singing, and you get the bare bones of opera. The flesh, blood, and soul stems out of the merger of this dichotomy. Any indie buff will tell you that nothing compares to seeing a band live. If the presence of five skinny guys in skinnier jeans slamming away at Gibsons can exponentially improve that one album you just torrented, imagine the effect a 100piece philharmonic orchestra, ten feet away and filling a 3000-seat
16th century, operas were originally confined to court entertainment. But by 1637, Venice was publicly producing operas in an early Baroque style that was looked down on by the upper classes. Opera’s tragicomic crudity was the pop culture of the masses, but various reforms throughout the centuries – as well as changing attitudes towards music in general – refined the general reputation of the genre to what it is today: the view that opera is an outdated bourgeois pastime. According to Patrick Hansen, director of opera studies at McGill’s Schulich School of Music, this is a “terrible” stereotype. “[It] really is an oldfashioned thing put out by the media in the late 20th century,” he said over the phone. He pointed out that while ballet and symphony audiences are shrinking, opera audiences are growing. And the key demographic reflecting this growth is the 18 to 25 range: “One of the reasons for this,” Hansen explained, “is music videos. Once MTV came along and videos became popular all over the world,
“We need to dream, we know [opera is] spectacular and we want the spectacular to wow us” Pierre Vachon Communications, marketing and special events, Opéra de Montréal theatre with the swelling notes of a 19th century masterpiece of musical history will have on your vague memory of some Classical Hits CD in your grandparents’ car. From their origins in the late
they started telling stories through music. That’s what opera is, it’s very very visual; we’re telling a story.” With their transgenerational appeal, stories are the best way to introduce opera to a younger audi-
ence. This fall, Opera McGill started its educational outreach program in both French and English primary schools across the city. The workshops are comprised of nine presentations in both English and French schools centred around Hansel and Gretel – the opera composed in 1923 by Engelbert Humperdinck that will be staged by Opera McGill in November. But it’s not just primary schools that are being targeted; Hansen is planning to take abridged performances of January’s production of La Boheme into CEGEPs this coming spring. Opéra de Montréal, which has educational in-school outreach programs of its own, also performs ad-hoc in Berri-UQAM metro station at rush hour to promote every production they do – a strategy to “have first hand contact with the artists,” said Pierre Vachon, . “[It’s saying we’re] accessible, we’re urban, we’re like everybody else except we sing. [It helps] us to make it almost trivial. I want [opera to] be there, be everywhere…have fun with it.” Vachon highlighted how the company responds to the desires of young people regarding the opera experience. “We did a younger survey: would you like a more traditional or more modern view of the opera? Ninety per cent preferred traditional. [They said] ‘We want to go back in time and we like the 16th century sets and everything’… We need to dream, we know it’s spectacular and we want the spectacular to wow us.” Avenues are opening up to make ticket prices, long the biggest barrier to opera-loving youth, more affordable. Opéra de Montréal releases a
Grace Brooks for The McGill Daily
set number of tickets at $30 for 18 to 35 year olds, and Opera McGill’s performances are free. A few weeks ago, I received a ticket out of the blue to Opéra de Montréal’s current production, Rigoletto. A pitiful hunchback, jealous courtiers, a beautiful maiden, her royal lover, a hired assassin, his whore of a sister, mistaken identities, sacrifice, curses, revenge, murder, played out in a red velvet cavern to music that has moved audiences for decades. Nothing compares to seeing opera live, and this passion isn’t dying. McGill’s opera
program – while fiercely competitive, with only six currently in the master’s program – sends its graduates to opera programs all over the world. The focus of these outreach programs will ensure that these hopefuls will have an audience when they make it to the stage.
the setting from the characters’ costumes. The presence of high trousers, newsboy caps, and headscarves clearly locate the viewer in the 1920s. According to the playbill, the era was chosen specifically to parallel Medea’s exile with displacement felt by many ethnic Turkish residents of 1920s Greece. This historical reference, however, feels rather obscure. The connection is only really made when we hear the sorrowful rembetiko music, a folk genre that emerged from a fusion of the two cultures. In the end, the triumph of this production comes from the exceptional performances of both the chorus of singers and Rolland. The harmonic chorus of headscarved mothers sing beautifully of Medea’s hardship and the hardship of mother’s in general. When language ceases and fails in the play, these singers fill the gap. Rolland’s acting, however, is certainly the play’s most unforgettable feature.
Her strong movements and booming voice perfectly translate the Medea’s fierceness. Her physical likeness to how one might imagine Medea adds to this convincing portrayal. In one scene, Rolland takes off her 20s attire to reveal a classical Greek robe and gold necklace. The contrast of her muscular arms with this prestigious attire emphasize Medea’s impressive strength. The culmination of these elements make for an electric performance. While some may question the effectiveness of the play’s feminist message as well as its historical setting, Scapegoat Theatre’s ability to shock and engage viewers with this performance attests to the overall success of the production.
Opera McGill is performing Hansel and Gretel in Pollack Hall, November 11 to 13. This article is a reduced version of the original; find the full piece at mcgilldaily. com/culture.
Deadly drama Centaur Theatre makes violent Greek tragedy Medea accessible Christina Colizza Culture Writer
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ith the exception of classics students, most of today’s readers have great trouble finding ancient Greek tragedies readable or relatable. Written over 2,000 years ago with the intention of being performed over a full day, the plays now often seem too long and archaic to modern audiences. For those wishing to overcome these barriers, Scapegoat Carnivale’s 20th century adaptation of Euripides’s Medea presents a good solution. Often described as proto-feminist, Medea tells the story of the titular character’s tragic attempt to avenge herself after her husband leaves her for Glauce (offstage in the play), the young daughter of Creon (Alex Ivanovic), King of Corinth. Medea (Frances Rolland) and her
children are forced by Creon to leave his kingdom without any place to go. Begging him to remain in Corinth, he grants her one more day in the kingdom – a decision which proves for many to be fatal. Furious with her husband’s decision to leave her, Medea devises a plan to poison Glauce and Creon, and then to kill her own children. After much time spent in Hamlet-like indecision, Medea finally does both of these things: the climax occurring as an infuriated Jason returns to his ex-wife to find his children, new wife, and father-in-law dead. The bottom black wall smashes down as Medea appears illuminated above, her two dead sons next to her as red blood-like paint drips down into the set’s painted Greek sea. Jason squirms pathetically below her as Medea proclaims, “In return I have your heart forever.” The audience is enraptured. As the inside of the playbill
describes, Euripides “is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of Athenian tragedy by portraying strong female characters and intelligent slaves and by satirizing many heroes of Greek mythology.” Yet Medea hardly emerges as the heroic feminist figure that this claim might suggest. Instead, her rage positions her as the “mad woman” Jason accuses her of being. The harrowing screams of Medea’s children as she stabs them to death, as well as her delight in hearing the news of Creon and Glauce’s poisoning, makes it difficult at times for audiences members to sympathize with her character. In light of this, the potential feminism of the play is constantly being undermined. The play’s set design, lighting, and music all underscore Medea’s displacement. A two-storey black wall with simplistic square doors, the set offers no indication of time or place. Instead, we are left to infer
Medea is playing at the Centaur Theatre, 453 St. François-Xavier, until October 30, at 8:30 p.m. Student tickets are $16, see centaurtheatre.com for more details.
Culture
The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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All roads lead to... CCA exhibit “Journeys” puts architecture and migration in context Oliver Lurz Culture Writer
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he major problem with the study of Architecture (capital ‘A’) is elitism. In my experience, architectural history is very ivory tower-esque. This has always been the case; the great Gothic cathedrals that defined the architecture of the Middle Ages were utterly remote from the wattle and daub homes of the proletariat. The same can be said of 21st century architecture. It is characterized by expensive and complex structures of concrete, steel, and glass that those of us in major cities might use occasionally, but by and large most of the population has little do with, nor understands. These epoch-defining buildings commemorated in history books do not accurately represent the history of daily human life. It is for this reason that an exhibition exploring our built environment as it is experienced by a wide array of social
groups – not just a select few – is to be celebrated. “Architecture is a public concern,” stated Giovanna Borasi, the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s (CCA) curator of contemporary architecture. “Journeys: How travelling fruit, ideas, and buildings rearrange our environment,” recognizes just that. This wonderful new exhibition at the CCA analyses how various processes, such as migration and the influence of place, shape and change the architectural environment and in a broader sense, the physical world. The exhibition constitutes 15 interrelated “stories,” each connected with the idea of the “Journey,” which is the lens through which the analysis is focused. These stories are presented through mixed media – text accompanying objects and photos. A particularly striking story is entitled “Inheritance.” It looks at some 17,000 African American slaves, who in the early 19th century were freed under the proviso that they emigrate to
Liberia. This was perceived as some sort of a “return home,” although as they were born and raised in America (albeit against their will) this was not really the case. What is fascinating here is the houses they built upon arrival in West Africa. As the photos on display demonstrate, they were remarkably similar in likeness to the grand plantation mansions of the Southern states. However, there existed a certain uncanniness in the similarity; these houses were the same, and yet not the same. Somewhere along the journey from the U.S. to Liberia the image of these buildings became distorted in the memories of those who had witnessed them. What is produced is at once a strange hybrid of African and American architecture, and a powerful testament to the impression the buildings of one’s home can make. Another arresting piece is “Configuration.” Between 1954 and 1975 the government of Newfoundland encouraged 300 isolated communities to resettle in
more central areas. As buying a new house was unrealistically expensive, people towed their houses with them across the ice and sea. The marvellous photos on display illustrating this passage conjure the image of a snail carrying its home on its back. But it is not only people and ideas that migrate. The exhibition ends with the story of the humble coconut. It shows that coconuts too have migrations of their own, travelling great distances on ocean currents, and washing up ashore up to four months later to grow in distant lands. “Laws cannot curtail the movement of the coconut,” the wall panel reads. Migration is perpetual and unstoppable; it is a machine that moves only forward. “Forecasts for the coming decades indicate that migrations may eventually involve as many as a billion people”, said Mirko Zardini, CCA director and chief curator. If architecture is a public concern, so is immigration. As evidence of this Borasi sug-
gests we “look at Angela Merkel’s recent declaration that multikulti [the German policy of multiculturalism] has utterly failed, and the ensuing debates she has sparked.” If the exhibition is anything, it is timely. Understanding the impact of migrations past, present, and future is an essential aspect of understanding how the physical world around us is shaped, and shapes us. “Journeys” draws revealing parallels between architecture and migration to tell a human story of the built environment. I’m going to refrain from telling you to “make your own journey down to 1920 rue Baile to check out the exhibition,” but seriously, going to the CCA and seeing this for yourself is more than worthwhile.
theme, she “wanted to find very specific stories to try and do the opposite exercise. In conjunction with the exhibited works, this allows one to generalize from the very specific.” Borasi views the relationship between the book and exhibition “like that distinction between story and scene. The scene is the setting, the photos, documents, that explain how and where the story takes place.” One thing that stands out about the book project is that, unlike much of the literature that accompanies exhibitions in the world of art and architecture, it is not academic. It does not present arguments, viewpoints, or explicit political biases. Indeed, Borasi stated that the exhibition aims to be “dry” and that she wanted to do “the exact opposite of what one sees in migration museums.”
“I wanted to take out the emotional aspect of these kinds of stories, ” she continued. One can see this reflected in the dogma of the book’s stories, which, untitled and without illustrations, avoid the trappings of sentimentalism. Although providing an intensely individual perspective, Borasi was careful to organize the stories in Journeys to avoid advocating specific causes or peoples. “I didn’t want to connect the exhibition with any specific group or ethnicity, so I tried to establish a rule – no photos of people.” Although the source material that Borasi was drawing from necessitated that some pictures of people slipped into the exhibit, her point is clear – whatever political reading one might take away from the exhibit is not
obvious on the surface. Instead, Borasi emphasized, the book and exhibit look at migration as a whole, and specifically “the very positive changes that migration can bring about, and how different ideas can trigger certain things and result in a shift in another culture.” The variety of places and times represented in the exhibit and book points to migration as a universal experience, which enables the viewer to “connect pieces together in order to look at them differently in terms of how they reflect contemporary issues.” In this sense, Journeys presents its different stories of migration, and the mixing of cultures that results from it, as a positive experience: a stance that unfortunately remains controversial in many areas of society.
“Journeys” runs from October 20 to March 13 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1920 Baile. Entry is free for students. The accompanying book, Journeys is available at the CCA bookstore for $34.
Above: Max Belcher, photographer. The Tyler Mansion, ca. 1880, Arthington, Liberia. Canadian Centre for Architecture Collection, Montreal. © Max Belcher Left: Pulling a structure across the ice to Conche, Newfoundland. Resettlement Collection, Maritime History Archive, Memorial University, PF-317.488
Telling the stories of migration Tim Gentles The McGill Daily
J
ourneys and the global movement of people have always been a significant part of human experience. As a concept, however, the term “journeys” is incredibly broad. It simultaneously connotes the idea of exploration, immigration, and forced migration. The “Journeys” exhibition, which opened at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) last Wednesday, is accompanied by a book, also titled Journeys, that aims to concretize this polyvalent premise. The book adds a sense of specificity to the exhibition’s exploration of the manner in which human migration
has shaped the physical and cultural spaces we inhabit. The book consists of a series of narratives, rather than critical essays, that provide individual perspectives on the themes elaborated in the exhibition. In many ways it acts as a counterpoint to the somewhat abstract and depersonalized approach of the exhibition itself. The authors commissioned for the book were given a series of strict instructions, referred to as dogma. These requirements included the usage of the present tense, with no title, in any language, and with one main protagonist – loosely defined as “an individual, a family, a town, a building.” In a phone interview, curator Giovanna Borasi explained that since the exhibition covers such a broad
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The McGill Daily | Monday, October 25, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com
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Lies, half-truths, and paintings as photos as paintings
I hate that I have to be angry about this!!
Listen. I don’t think repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the States is that big a priority. It’s not that great to finally be allowed to die for your country as an openly queer person. In fact, it’s pretty shitty. But what the fuck, Obama? YOUR GOAL WAS ACCOMPLISHED IN ONE FELL SWOOP. Yeah, maybe you’re trying to “play to the centre” and “appeal to the middle American voter.” Can I just get one message across to you? It’s really simple: FUCK. THAT. Stop playing politics with our rights. Stop appealing rulings that accomplish the shit you’re too spineless and weak-willed to do. And honestly, filming a fucking YouTube video DOES NOT HELP.
Students: get your shit together
Campus Eye
Arch Café protest storms Leacock
Yesterday night, some of us decided to take the hugely onerous task of giving up (the start of) one evening to bother to turn up to the SSTEIRBBPPUSAMC (the organization formerly know as SSMU) General Assembly. In a university with an undergraduate class of TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND the necessary quorum is only 100 people. That’s 0.004 per cent of the student body to make decisions for an organization that represents ALL OF YOU. This is obscenely small, so it would seem a small order to find one or two people curious how SSTEIRBBPPUSAMC plans to use millions of our dollars. But NO, instead we had to scrounge around GERT’S to find twenty more people. If you bitch about the name change, or don’t like some events, or feel alienated from the campus community – SERVES YOU RIGHT. We have two of these a year; get out of your own arses. How can we be surprised that the administration dismisses student voices when we can’t even use the formalized systems we have in place to REPRESENT US? Fuck This! is an occasional therapeutic rant column. Send Fucks these (but I would prefer it if you sent fucks yeahs) to fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com.
Photo by Robespierre Maximilien The rally for the Arch Café and increased student consultation in campus institutions got buck wild last week and ended in the storming of infamous campus prison Leacock. Viceroy Meather Bunroe Hlum has called the estates-general to deal with student grievances in response.
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1. Full of helium, perhaps? 6. Cameos, e.g. 11. Dispatched 13. One who takes away 15. Not verily 16. Of “common gender” 17. Employs again 18. Pertaining to plants 19. ___ Minor 20. Ontario College Application Service 22. ___ your own horn 23. Sword handles 25. Acceptances 26. 100 cents 27. Aerodynamic 29. Kindred of sizeists and sexists 31. Drifting 33. Step above a viscountship 36. British glam rock band, performers of “Merry Xmas Everybody” 40. “Over” follower in the first line of “The Caissons Go Rolling Along” 41. Attired 43. Location of deposed leader, perhaps 45. Bothers 46. __ Dakota (Magnetic Fields song)
47. Nelly’s “Air Force ___ “ 48. Slips by 50. Specific vocabulary 53. Sri Lankan palm tree 54. Spanish execution method 55. Helixes 56. Signal exuder 57. Brouhaha 58. Cut, raked, and rolled
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24. Close, as an envelope 28. Backed up Barry Manilow on “Hey Mambo” 30. “Cast Away” setting 32. Annoys 33. Synonym of earlobes 34. Quality of battery acid? 35. Breathe 37. Real-life mudkip 38. Kitchen set 39. Chosen 40. Fare reductions 42. Artful move 44. Glyceride, e.g. 49. Attention ___ 51. Foot 52. “Tosca” tune
1. Opening 2. Formicidian fortress 3. Streaked 4. Bar order 5. Holiday log 6. Take back Solution to “It only happens once a year...” 7. Bypass 8. Finds L I R A S T E P S L A I D 9. Smooth E A R L Y A S C I O T I S 10. Possible victims D O I N P E D E S T R I A N of 29 Across E N C O D I N G S M E L T 11. Chapter of the L U A U E N E R G Y Qur’an B A K I N G P O W D E R 12. 1980’s-90’s ring E W E T A B O O S E L L S R E M U S D I E T E O N S champ A P N E A S A Y F L O U R 13. Rebrand a prodB I R T H D A Y C A K E uct S T A R C A S T L E 14. Odd-numbered R O U L E T T E H O M I E page R E C R O S S I N G U R G E 21. Glacier on Mount O A R E D B L O G E T A S Hood T A R T
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