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The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

McGill joins Blair initiative Former British prime minister speaks on eight-school Faith and Globalization program Mari Galloway The McGill Daily

peaking to a Montreal audience Friday, former British prime minister Tony Blair discussed the importance of interfaith dialogue as McGill formally launched its partnership with the Faith and Globalization Initiative. Established three years ago by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the initiative is aimed at creating an intellectual and academic framework for understanding the relationship between faith and globalization. In a discussion moderated by CBC host and McGill Religious Studies graduate Evan Solomon, Blair explained the ideology of the initiative, and fielded questions from the audience on the changing role of religion in society. For Blair, globalization is both an opportunity and an unstoppable force. He also believes it is a phenomenon that has exacerbated the need for greater religious understanding, and the inclusion of religion in the realm of politics, he said. “Does religious faith become a means of providing civilizing values to civilization and thereby be a force of progress, or does religious faith become a badge of identity in opposition to those who aren’t of the same faith?” asked Blair. “I think this is the dominant question of the 21st century.” According to Blair, distinctions

between left-right political ideologies are increasingly subordinate to the basic question of whether a society is open or closed to cultural and religious differences. Successful integration and public policy will rely on societies’ attitudes toward diversity, and their ability to find commonality irrelevant to one’s faith, or lack thereof, said the former prime minister. “If you want to be a leader today in politics, in business, in civic society, you can not be religiously ignorant. You may not agree with it, you may not even like it, but you’ve got to know about it,” said Blair. “Even if you don’t believe in someone’s faith, you can respect their right to believe, that it is an alternative path to salvation, and in respecting that you get quite close to respecting their spirituality.” Blair maintained that religiosity continues to grow despite predictions that it would decrease as countries became more prosperous. “Within debates about our society, religious faith is an issue, it is in the public space. So the question is not whether it is there; the question is what it is doing when it is there and what are the rules that guide proper debate.” McGill is currently the only Canadian university to be invited to participate in the initiative, which includes seven other universities such as Yale, Durham (U.K.), and the National University of Singapore. In August, five McGill students trav-

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

Blair spoke at the former Windsor hotel on Peel. elled to Singapore to discuss interuniversity collaboration within the initiative. Earlier Friday morning, Blair spoke to a 300-level special topics course on Religion and Globalization co-taught by professors Daniel Cere and Ellen Aitken. Cere explained that faculty members stepped back and the “whole class was run by the students.”

Students from a variety of disciplines conducted interviews with Blair on the intersections between religion, law, gender, and globalization. According to Cere, a member of Blair’s team, Drew Collins, said that this particular experience was one of the best exchanges with university students that Blair had had. Cere added that the course

methodology was fairly unique: each week, students write a 500word blog entry, and they are encouraged to interact with each other on the internet. “Some of these blogs will go up on a secure blog site that will allow these students to interact with students at Yale, Peking, other parts of the world – pretty appropriate given the theme: religion and globalization,” he said. Cere felt that the initiative signalled the beginning of a new program of research and study at McGill. “There are so many areas where religion interacts with culture – religion and law, religion and politics, religion and gender issues – these points of interaction will probably be future areas of research avenues for teaching and collaboration,” said Cere. Juliette Dupre, a U1 Arts student, was a member of the McGill contingent who participated in the Singapore conference. “Especially considering how important religion is to such a large number of people, not only in their private lives, but as an influence over the way that they think and act and how they choose to live, this is an extremely important initiative,” said Dupre. “I think this is a good start on an important problem, and I think it’s an ambitious start. Ultimately it is a very interesting initiative for McGill to be involved in.”

Council passes new SSMU equity policy Extensive debate centres around striking the word “inoffensive” Queen Arsem-O'Malley The McGill Daily

SMU Council voted Thursday to approve a new equity policy. The policy passed after significant debate over two amendments tacked on by Arts councillor and Conservative McGill member Spencer Burger. Equity Commissioner Emily Clare applauded Council’s final decision, saying, “I think the best policy went through today,” although the legislative process involved “a lot of give and take.” The new policy is the product of work done by the 2009-2010 Equity Committee and Rebecca Dooley, former VP University Affairs, who returned to Council to see the policy passed. “I’m ecstatic,” she said. “That policy is the result of a lot of time and energy put in by a lot of different people.” She added that the new policy is “far, far superior to the previous policy,” implemented in 2008,

partly because it is “easier to understand.” Approval was scheduled for the previous Council meeting, but was ruled out of order, since the Steering Committee had not read through the policy twice, as necessary. The document was endorsed by the Steering Committee during their report to Council on Thursday, however. The new policy outlines SSMU’s background, history, and development of equity policies, and lists SSMU groups and services that hold a “strong commitment to equity, safety, and the creation of safe(r) spaces for its membership.” An appendix also includes relevant sections from McGill’s Charter of Students’ Rights, and previous SSMU policies that “deal with varying aspects of discrimination and harassment.” The policy applies to all members and staff of SSMU, including all activities, events, and funding allocated by the Society. It seeks to provide a “functional anti-oppressive environment” and outline the

responsibilities of SSMU. Procedures for submitting complaints are outlined, which are investigated first by the four Equity Officers, who are the Equity Commissioner and three members of the Executive Committee. The committee can make recommendations to Council, which then has the option to discipline offenders, including a suspension of financial support from SSMU. Clare prefaced Council debate by explaining the strength of the policy. “We’re taking the equity policy as a signal of change of how equity will be run at McGill. We want it to be a lot more accessible to students, and we’re taking this as the starting point,” she said. Myles Gaulin, Policy and Equity Coordinator for Queer McGill, also spoke in favour of the policy, saying that despite advances in equity practices, “McGill can still be an oppressive, intimidating environment for many people.” Debate centred around Burger’s three proposed amend-

ments to the policy. The first, written in coordination with the Equity Committee, changed the policy’s definition of “oppression” to, “the exercise of power by a group of people over another group of people with specific consideration of cultural, historical, and living legacies.” Clare supported the change, arguing that it “highlights nuances dealt with in an equity complaint.” “It’s a simple amendment, but I think it really strengthens the equity policy,” she added. A second amendment, which required extensive negotiation amongst councillors, moved to strike the words “inoffensive,” “collegial,” and “respectful” from the description guiding acceptable discussion between students and student groups. Of the three terms, Council only struck “inoffensive,” from the passage in question. Burger said that the inclusion of his amendment is “a big step for freedom of speech on McGill campus and on university campuses in general.” He added, “SSMU does

not have the right to censor someone based on the perception that what someone says is offensive. This equity policy is still somewhat jumbled, but I hope the acceptance of my amendments will make freedom of speech a much more integral part of our campus.” A third amendment, which failed, sought to add a section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the equity policy. The section described the fundamental freedoms of Canadians. The policy was passed with a large majority of councellors voting in favor of adoption. Clare highlighted that the policy “situated equity in general in the context of the history of McGill,” and shows that “SSMU has been a leader in equity.” The amendments that passed “do not have a negative effect on the policy,” she said. “The discussion that happened was really useful for a lot of people on Council to understand what the equity policy means to our members and our organizations.

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The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Montrealers protest G20 summit Activists voice opposition to austerity measures in Quebec and worldwide Eduardo Doryan The McGill Daily

undreds gathered at the intersection of Ste. Catherine and Atwater Friday to protest the Group of 20 (G20) meetings taking place this week in Seoul, South Korea. Brandishing signs in French declaring “NO to the G20” and “the real terrorism is capitalism,” protesters marched east through downtown to denounce the summit of finance ministers and heads of government. The protest was organized by Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC, its French acronym), a coalition of self-declared anticapitalist and anarchist organizations in Montreal. CLAC has operated continuously since 2000, when it was formed to mobilize protesters for the third Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Its member groups include the Indigenous Solidarity Committee, the Regroupment Anti-G20 Étudiant (R AGE), No One is Illegal, and the Communist Libertarian Union. Sarita Ahooja, spokesperson for CLAC and a member of No One Is Illegal, spoke to the crowd before the march describing the event as one of hundreds of “protests around the world to denounce capitalism, misery, and poverty,” as

David Huehn | The McGill Daily

The protest was in solidarity with arrestees at the June G20 in Toronto. well as “the imposition of measures that contribute to impoverishment [and] only serve to fuel generalized social discontent.” Others at the march echoed her sentiments. Aaron, a local protester, voiced concern over recent “austerity measures which have real and terrible consequences in people’s lives,” and that he was happy with what

he described as “a loud display of resistance [to such measures] here in Montreal.” Aaron explained why he thought G20 members – including the governments of France, Germany, and Britain – were implementing austerity measures, saying, “Because [the G20] represents the interests of wealth. We live in a neoliberal age where

there’s a huge transfer of wealth from public coffers into private hands, even in Quebec.” Jean, another protestor, put it more bluntly: “It’s all about the money.” The summit this year focused on the looming specter of a currency war between the largest economies in the world. Relations between the U.S. and China have

been especially tense during the lead-up, in particular on the eve of a $600-billion injection into the U.S. economy by the Federal Reserve, which other nations have criticized due to the possibility of stimulating high inflation in the future by keeping the U.S. dollar artificially low. According to its website, the G20 nations account for ninety per cent of global gross national product, eighty per cent of international trade, and two thirds of the world’s population. The G20, and its predecessor the G8, have long drawn controversy due to the high-level security measures imposed on host cities. “This demonstration categorically denounces the repression experienced last June in Toronto,” said Ahooja in reference to the over one thousand arrests made during protests at this summer’s G20 summit in that city. In a phone interview after the event, she added that at least two attendees were arrested over the course of the evening’s protest. “They are bent on criminalizing people who are there to contest the order of things,” she said. Ahooja concluded with a major theme of the protest: “We think society should be organized in a horizontal way, so that people can have a decent living, with dignity, so that there’s justice for everyone, and not just for the few.”

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The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

First Nation struggles to maintain order State of emergency declared October 21 in isolated Ontario community Erin Hudson The McGill Daily

hief Lewis Nate of the Eabametoong First Nation (pronounced Yab-mAhtung) was tired during his interview with The Daily, because there had been another fire in his community the night before. On October 21, he declared the Eabametoong – which has a population of 1,200 and is one of 28 remote fly-in communities in northern Ontario – to be in a state of emergency. “It kind of escalated, the last two homicides that we had…also the amount of drugs that [are] coming into our community,” Nate said in describing the situation before October 21. “It’s compounding into one big problem. It’s not something that happened overnight…but it was just too much to handle – we’re a small community.” “Right now it’s pretty hard to work when you’re numb from all this stuff and it’s hard to get motivated,” Nate continued. “We didn’t only have these two homicides, we’ve had 13 deaths in the last eleven months. If you have one death…that’s hard, but when you’re having a lot of deaths, you know, that’s really, really hard… You’ll get numb.” According to Sergeant Jackie George of the Nishnawabe-Aski Police Services (NAPS), the problem of prescription drug abuse in Eabametoong has been noticeably increasing for the last five years. But in the view of Denise Fontaine, principal of John C. Yesno Education Centre – which teaches 336 Junior Kindergaten to Grade nine students and was the site of an arson in late September – the events prompting the declaration of emergency occurred suddenly. “In a very short time…[people] just started acting out, and I really do believe it was displaced anger [and] frustration – [there is] no safe outlet for expressing frustration and anger…[so] that expression of anger trickles down to others you didn’t intend,” said Fontaine.

State of emergency The arson of John C. Yesno resulted in the school’s closure for three and a half weeks along with $200,000 worth of smoke and water damage. The arson was bookended by two murders of local youth. Other recent incidents include the fire-bombing of a church minister’s house while five people were inside. “It seems to be the perfect storm...all of the conditions that already existed that are compelling, complex and dire are boiling over in this community,” said Nanda Casucci-Byrne, Chief of Staff in the Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Office.

Courtesy of Kevin Bykkonen

The grade nine class at the John C. Yesno Education Centre that has recently been the target of arson. Casucci-Byrne added that in her eight years at the Lieutenant Governor’s office she had never before heard of a community declaring a state of emergency. Nate explained the process behind his declaration: “We were having conference calls before that…to see how we could get help, but that wasn’t going anywhere, so that’s we decided…we had enough of talk we wanted to bring it to light- admit that we have a problem.” In response to the declaration of emergency, Eabametoong received two Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers to help the five currently policing the community. One OPP officer stayed for two days; the second officer is estimated to remain in the community for up to five weeks. “It’s short-term assistance for our police service,” said George. “The Nishnawabe-Aski Police Service, we have jurisdiction there. We have five members there but we need [to] double that. And we can’t double it because the federal and provincial bodies are not coming to the [negotiating] table.” “[The OPP officers] accompany local officers during their shifts, they just ride together and learn from each other,” said Band Administrator Andrew Yesno. Yesno also noted that the OPP officers help maintain 24-hour policing, “whereas before we had officers work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. And then there was always a gap between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. where there was no police.”

Response to the crisis After Eabametoong’s declaration prominent vistors flooded the community. Chris Bentley, Minister

of Aboriginal Affairs, was among them. So was Ruth Ann Onley, wife of Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor David Onley, who came with Sharon Johnston, Governor General David Johnston’s wife. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) and Health Canada officials visited the community on November 5, and Greg Rickford, MP for Kenora, the local riding, visited last week. Rickford acknowledged that structural issues were behind the recent violence. “It’s the underlying issues that give rise to [these acts] that we are ultimately interested in,” he said. “There’s been a lot of response from people in Canada to help,” Yesno said. “We want to be there on a personal basis...it means a great deal to express our support on a tangible basis,” Casucci-Byrne said. “[The visit was] trying to let them know that people care, that they’re not forgotten, that others are listening.” However, some are still pessimistic about Eabametoong’s position. Nate recalled seeing a headline in the Toronto Sun that read “Fort Hopeless” (Fort Hope is another name for Eabametoong First Nation). “Now what kind of message is that to the people? We’re not hopeless,” Nate said, “I’d rather be here than any place else in the world.” He is not taking the derision to heart, though. “You’ll always get that negativity no matter what,” he noted. “Anytime you want to make a change people will act negatively.” In an email to The Daily, INAC Communications Officer Peter Sero said the ministry was committed to investing $400,000 in Eabametoong.

“[Funds will] help because we don’t budget for crises like homicides,” Yesno explained. “We get a limited amount of funds every year and what we do is we create a budget and make sure that we still get …[all the] basic things to make a town run, but we don’t really budget for emergencies or for having to charter for counselors to come in or trauma units.”

Going forward Yesno said that money originally allocated for services such as water, sewage, and road clearing has been spent on combating various crises the community has faced. Nate said that up $174,000 of the band’s funds have been spent in order to deal with the recent string of emergencies. Some in the community are skeptical that the INAC funding will make a dent in Eabametoong’s problems. “Nobody believes in long-term plans – they say they do but they don’t supply funding for long-term projects,” Fontaine said. “There’s a fictional belief that Aboriginal communities get whatever they ask for.” “We’re not looking for the quick fix, we’re looking for sustainability… Our kids need opportunities that they don’t get, that are easily available outside of a fly-in community,” Fontaine continued, referring to benefits students could have from external professionals leading workshops. “We’re not just asking for money, we’re also asking for the resources … I think that’s one of the big misconceptions out there that we’re just asking for money but that’s not the reality,” added Yesno. “We want the professional help to come and help us, and to help us turn this around.”

Nate sees a bigger dilemma facing his community. “I think the number one [is] going back to the land. [There are] two things that we [have] lost: one is the connection to the Creator, and the second was the connection to our homeland, to the traditional area,” he said. Nate outlined a seven-point community development plan that has been forged through ongoing discussions between members of the council and community members. “We’re meeting with the people, especially our elders and youth because they’re the forgotten lot,” Nate said. “We haven’t really had contact with them over the years… we’re kind of losing touch with them. The engagement with the seven-point plan [and] the ownership will come from them. If it’s going to work, its going to have to come from them, not the chief and council.” Nate and Fontaine emphasized that internalized tension and emotions are a factor in the outbursts they have seen this year. “Things have been happening over the years and a lot of internal stuff too that needs to be dealt with,” Nate said. “There are some things maybe that are uncomfortable, things that will come out. So I’ve got to walk that fine line too, I’m offending some community members because of this…because you know the truth hurts: that is the bottom line.” “We have to start talking life into our community,” Nate continued. “All we’ve been talking about is this person’s dead or this prescription drug issue and so forth, we’ve got to start talking about other things – about the future that lies ahead.”

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The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Students pass referendum questions Voter turnout barely reaches quorum Anna Norris The McGill Daily

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he McGill student body voted to pass all three fall referendum questions, approving the renewal of the fee for SACOMSS (Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Student Society), the creation of a SSMU Charity Committee, and voting yes to the plebiscite question regarding a SSMU councillor for the Arts and Science faculty. The number of voters barely passed the 15 per cent quorum, with 15.2 per cent of students voting. The SACOMSS fee renewal, which takes place every three years, had the highest percentage of student support, with 79.5 per cent of voters choosing to renew the $0.75 fee. The creation of a SSMU Charity Committee, which passed with 75.8 per cent of the vote, was initially proposed by Max Luke, a student who sits on a Senate subcommittee on the environment. “It was an idea of mine in late August,” said Luke. “Initially I had the idea to create a charity week

or festival on campus that includes all faculties and departments and that’s the core thing: it’s about community building. ... It started as an idea to raise money strictly for international aid, but as I spoke to more and more departments and faculties in September and October, I realized that it’s best to open it up, because there are so many views on campus.” The concept has expanded to include both international and local aid, which will be supported by two different initiatives: the Charity Fund and Charity Week. The Fund will be directed mostly at international aid, and the Week aimed at work in Montreal. “For the the Charity Festival, I’ve also formed a partnership with a Masters’ student in the school of Social Work, who is doing his thesis on credible financial flows within the United Way Montreal. So they’re affiliated with 300-some local organizations. That’s going to be a big part of the charity festival,” explained Luke. The fee for the Charity Committee is $0.50 per semester and is opt-outable, although Luke

said that in the original concept it was not: “It started out as a nonopt-outable fee, and then through consultation with various people it devolved into an opt-outable fee.” Although the plebiscite question is not binding, the results showed support for a separate SSMU councillor for Arts and Science students, a faculty whose numbers are currently under the 2,000-minimum for a faculty to be represented at SSMU Council. Clubs and Services Representative Maggie Knight, one of the councillors who submitted the question to Council, said that the process of consultation taking place will now lead to another referendum question. Knight told The Daily, “We’re in the process of consulting with all the stakeholders very thoroughly... to make sure that if we take this to a referendum in the winter – which would be what we would have to do in order to amend the constitution to include a seat for Arts and Science students – that we would have a very strong plan, that everyone would have a good degree of certainty about what it would look like.”

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SSMU moves to honour veterans Controversial Afghanistan clause removed Maya Shoukri The McGill Daily

n honor of Remembrance Day, Council passed a resolution last Thursday that calls for SSMU to remember and appreciate the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers. The motion, which was amended several times, spurred significant debate amongst councillors because of its initial inclusion of the clause, “Whereas, 152 Canadians have died in the war in Afghanistan, and continue to fight in defense of Canada, liberty, democracy, and human rights.” Many Council members pointed out that the mention of the war in Afghanistan was divisive and took issue with the resolution’s implicit support for the war. Maggie Knight, a Clubs and Services Representative, explained her reasoning for supporting an amendment that would strike the second half of the controversial clause. “I’m in general support of remembering the sacrifice made by soldiers. However, whether or not the war in Afghanistan is in defense of Canada is highly up for debate,” she said. Radney Jean-Claude, the Social Work representative, echoed Knight’s sentiments, saying, “What’s important is to remember the sacrifice we made in the war, but including the words ‘and con-

tinue to fight in defense of Canada’ implies that SSMU supports the war in Afghanistan, and puts it in an ideological position.” Spencer Burger, an Arts representative and author of the motion, addressed concerns that his resolution was too divisive to be debated at Council, and explained his motivation for writing the resolution. “This isn’t meant to be a divisive issue,” he said. “I meant it purely as recognition of the sacrifices of Canadian men and women in uniform. It’s an important issue on campus and for students.” Anushay Khan, SSMU’s VP Clubs and Services, voiced her opposition to the resolution during Council, stating that as an entity that represents the McGill student body as a whole, SSMU does not have a right to take a stance on a political issue. “I don’t think that this body [Legislative Council] has the authority to represent one side’s point of view or the other, and that’s why our clubs exist. As long as [the resolution] continues to say that Canadians die fighting for defense of liberty, democracy, and human rights, there’s a problem, because it’s something a lot of people may not agree with,” she said. Eli Freedman, a Management representative, spoke in support of the un-amended motion, justifying his views in an emotional plea to council. “I’m deeply disturbed that we

would slight our veterans. I would be embarrassed if I told people that our student body did not just quickly approve this motion as I think any respectful Canadian would do. … I find it extremely insulting not to honour veterans.” In response to the amendment’s passage, Freedman suggested that “those who voted to strike [the clause mentioning the Afghanistan War] down should publicly record their vote so they can be held accountable,” in the view that supporting such an amendment was humiliating for SSMU. Cathal Rooney-Cespedes, the Speaker of Council, struck down this motion, deeming it out of order. The resolution passed by a large majority with an amendment that struck out the words, “and continue to fight in defense of Canada, liberty, democracy, and human rights.” Knight defended the removal of the clause in an interview with The Daily. “What we tried to do by arguing on behalf of an amendment to replace the controversial clause was to allow us to support the sacrifice of veterans without having a political aspect,” she said. “I think that many people would not unilaterally support the actions of the Canadian military, and I think that to truly value the sacrifices of our veterans, we need to disconnect their sacrifice from the politics of the particular conflict they’re involved in.”

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The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

SSMU supports Arch Café proposal Council upholds students’ right to govern their space Maya Shoukri The McGill Daily

SMU Council passed a resolution Thursday affirming the Soceity’s support for a proposal to reopen the Architecture Café. The motion was tabled by the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) and the Architecture Students Association (ASA). Under the plan, the Architecture Café would become an EUS-run service. Only three councillors abstained from voting on the measure: Nick Drew, Eli Freedman, and Spencer Burger, who admitted to being dis-

tracted while voting. The resolution further stipulated that SSMU would be required to submit a formal letter in support of the proposal to both the EUS and to the McGill administration. “The administration closed the Architecture Café due to financial reasons. It did not consult with students, and we now have Engineering and Architecture students who want to engage with the administration and try to solve this issue so that they won’t have to close the Arch Café,” said Gustavo Marquez, Engineering representative and coauthor of the motion. “I think it’s extremely important that we recog-

nize the effort and the time these students put into writing the report, and more importantly, to applaud their initiative.” The proposal, jointly authored by members of the EUS and ASA before the latter organization officially joined the EUS as a departmental association, contained an elaborate outline of how the Arch Café would function under EUS, citing other successful EUS endeavours, such as Frostbite and CopiEUS. The proposal was rejected by the administration on October 9 in a response from Deputy Provost Morton Mendelson, who explained that the University is shifting away

from student-run food services. Lauren Hudak, Science representative and co-author of the motion, addressed the administration’s rejection of the proposal, while maintaining that SSMU should support the student initiative. “Mendelson said that even though he liked the effort that had been put into [the motion], it was ultimately rejected because the McGill administration has moved away from student initiatives. However, we [the authors] still think it’s a very important endeavour, because instead of just saying we’re going to support something – both the EUS and the ASA took an

incredible amount of time to draft this document,” she said. Responding to questions about whether or not a declaration of support for the proposal would be effective in re-opening the Café, considering the administration’s apparent lack of approval for such a project, Hudak stressed that, “SSMU’s support is critical, because [it] has a great deal of power and influence.” SSMU President Zach Newburgh went on to note the symbolic nature of SSMU’s support for the proposal, saying “The motion exists simply to support the right [of student societies] to govern their own space.”

Jihad, frame by frame McGill PhD students study terrorist recruitment videos from Central Asia and East Africa

ast Friday, Christopher Anzalone and Aisha Ahmad hosted “Insurgent Media: Somalia & Afghanistan/Pakistan.” The screening featured three films produced by the media outlets of Somalia’s al-Shabab, and the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban. Anzalone is a PhD candidate in the institute of Islamic Studies and has collected and studied insurgent films from across the Muslim world. Ahmad is a Ph.D candidate in Political Science, and has extensive knowledge of the Somali and Afghan conflicts.

The McGill Daily: Why is it important to study insurgency propaganda as source documents? Christopher Anzalone: The reason I study them is because it’s important to know and to understand and to analyze how these movements and these groups basically – number one – define themselves, and – number two – how they interact with audiences which they are addressing. Both the people they are fighting and the people that are allied with them, and the people they hope will be allied but are not at the moment. The best way to do that is through primary source documents. I think it’s very important to look at them as much as possible without having them mediated in any way. Not to read an article about them – of which of course there are lots when Osama bin Laden or [Ayman] al-Zawahiri releases something – you’ll see dozens or hundreds of articles about that. They’re important, but just like any document you would look at, you’re not going to read just what somebody else has to say about it. If you have access to [the document] and can use it, you should really do that yourself, because it’s always going to be shaded. MD: Why do you think films like these aren’t studied as much? CA: The policy people [study them] a lot. There are academics who study them. It’s certainly a field which is starting to grow, and there’s much more room for growth in terms of the academic study. A lot of the policy people, not all of them, but many of them, don’t have as much background in either the regional or the religious topics to unpack some of the things [in the films]. I think there should be more of a conversation between the more traditional academic and the more policy-oriented kind of stuff. MD: How has the internet affected these types of propaganda films?

CA: [The films] exist before, for example in Afghanistan in the eighties, but they would be on video cassette or news channels playing the footage. The internet though, the really revolutionary thing about it, is the freedom it gives over the [process of] distribution. Before then, when Al-Qaeda Central [al-Qaeda’s media outlet] was delivering tapes to Al-Jazeera, they still do that for some things. A couple of bin Laden’s tapes were delivered first to al-Jazeera first through video tape or DVD-R, but the bulk of the stuff now doesn’t have to go through [these channels]. They know that the websites where you can get these videos are monitored either by governments – I’m sure the U.S. and the Canadian as well, and by academics and by analysts as well. But to reach their audience, their supporters now, they don’t have to rely on someone else to decide whether to show it or not. Distribution and how they can reach audiences is the most important change. MD: People in North America have probably seen bin Laden’s face thousands of times since 9/11. We now have a generation that has grown up with the War on Terror. But we never hear his voice. What kind of impact does that has? CA: Even comparing bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, they all have very different ways of speaking. Bin Laden is the most, in my opinion, conversational. Even when he’s speaking to you, it feels like he’s speaking in a conversation. When al-Zawahiri speaks, it feels like he’s speaking to you. On film, he does all these [aggressive] hand motions that reinforce that. But bin Laden has a much more calming voice. I think it’s really important to understand that, and that just can’t be captured by reading about bin Laden.

The McGill Daily: Why do you study these types of documents that are so rarely looked at? Aisha Ahmad: The information operations in insurgencies are an integral part of the battle for hearts and minds. Unless we look at both sides of the propaganda war in conflict, we’re not going to necessarily understand why populations living under insurgencies may shift their political opinions in favour of an insurgency rather than in favour of the government. Understanding domestic public opinion in civil wars means that we have to understand what people are talking about, how people are understanding the conflict. The competition for the narrative is really important, so essentially these films allow us to start to have a discussion about the competition that we’ve had over the narrative. NATO has certainly worked hard trying to present the conflict to the Afghan people in a certain way, to the Pakistani audience in a certain way. The African Union has tried to present the conflict in Somalia to the domestic audience in a certain way. But insurgents also have a response, and that response, at times, has been more effective and compelling in getting the support of the domestic audience, which is so coveted. It’s important to understand how they’re framing the conflict. [The videos] also give us an insight into what they might want to gain from the conflict; what their objectives are. It also gives us an insight into their recruitment and mobilization strategies. MD: Why do you think that these types of primary source documents aren’t more widely studied in North America? AA: I think that they ought to be studied by students of Political Science. I came up with the idea of doing this because I’m a TA for POLI 442, International Relations of Ethnic Conflict. In talking to my students, they were all really interested to know how narrative, imag-

Courtesy of Christopher Anzalone

Stills from a Pakistani Taliban propaganda film. ery, myth, symbol factor in developing the narrative around an insurgency, and building momentum for an insurgency, affecting domestic political opinion in a contested situation. So when the political contest on the battlefield is ongoing, it’s akin to an election campaign, in a way. Both sides are making their pitch. I think the reason, maybe, that we shy from watching things like this is, number one: to be quite frank, they are violent, and the violence is real, as opposed to Hollywood. We were very careful in the selection of films to make sure that we didn’t choose

anything that was actually just vile. I do know that people who study information operations do do this, but we as a community of scholars are still relatively new to the study of information operations. This is a new area for us, but we really need to invest more effort into doing this, especially given that – on the whole – Western or NATO information operations have not fared as well in the battle for hearts and minds as have counter-propaganda. —Compiled by Michael Lee-Murphy

Commentary

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Apple, Ikea, Motorola... The nefarious side of certain technologies The character of community Adrian Kaats adrian.kaats@mcgilldaily.com

t the risk of offending every white person, I’d like to express my frustration with the ubiquity in the student milieu of products from three companies: Apple, Ikea, and Motorola. With a bit of research, I think that most people who are troubled by either the “military-industrial-academic complex” or globalization would come to realize that these are companies to be avoided. Apple is no longer the benevolent underdog of the tech world that made superior products, but somehow couldn’t break into the average consumer market. Au contraire: in May, with a market capitalization of $227 billion USD, Apple took Microsoft’s crown as the queen of tech. This was accomplished in part by ditching its proprietary hardware, opting instead to equip its Macs with Intel guts. Not only is a great deal of Intel’s Pentium technology designed and manufactured in Israel, this hardware is also the exact same junk you find in PCs. Worse, Apple’s “brilliant” operating system (OS), adored by its consumers, is actually just a flavour of Unix, the proprietary counterpart of Linux. They are selling otherwise totally free, open-source, community-built and supported software at an exorbitant price. When you buy a Crapple computer, you are paying a massive premium for a con job: ultra-clever marketing and the slick aesthetics of a plastic casing house a computer

running essentially free software on hardware priced at about three times that of an equivalent PC. iPhones and iPods are even worse. The iPhone is the glitchiest piece of garbage you can piss away $700 for. It freezes regularly, doesn’t support standard stuff like Flash (wtf?), has abominable reception, and its battery can’t be changed unless you know how to solder. iPods are nothing more than offensively overpriced standalone versions of the media players that are usually integrated into the average smart phone. I can’t even begin to describe the ridiculousness of the iTouch’s mere existence in the marketplace. Finally, consider that Apple makes a great deal of these products at companies like China’s Foxconn. I’ll save you a search: Foxconn has a serious problem with employee suicide. Recent research from Chinese universities has indicated that Foxconn has really bad labour practices – working conditions are unsafe, it forces copious amounts of illegal overtime on its workers, and perpetrates several other forms of worker abuse, including violence. Although it is committed to a number of sustainability initiatives, we shouldn’t forget that Ikea is a monstrous multinational corporation selling mostly crap that breaks (particularly if any part of a product moves). If you’ve ever wondered where all that beautiful stuff comes from and where it goes to, the answer is every corner of the globe. In 2009, Ikea was operating 301 stores around the world, and had a revenue of about $37 billion USD. Again, labourers and the environment suffer as thousands of tons of cargo needlessly circle the

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

A lot of lefties buy from companies they probably wouldn’t like very much if they knew more. globe from pools of cheap material and labour, to markets that bear high consumer prices. Ikea is the face of a globalized economy, its products making their way into millions of homes, including those of “anti-capitalist” and “anti-globalization” activists. My favourite, though, is Motorola. The development of the Android OS has allowed several companies to produce smart phones competing with Apple’s iPhone. In some cases that’s a good thing, but not when it comes to Motorola, whose Milestone smart phone gave the company record-

breaking sales. The problem is, Motorola likely wouldn’t exist in the absence of military contracts. Tons of military and police telecommunication equipment is produced by Motorola; in fact, they invented the first portable telecomm device, the walkie-talkie, for the military. When we go to buy something that is highly visible in our day-today lives, it pays to do some homework. Not only are we easily fooled by beautiful marketing and package design, we may be contributing substantially to the corporate “ha-ha factor.” I often picture the “chiefs” of our economy laugh-

ing about people drafting boycott, divestment, and sanctions posters on their Macs, while sipping organic, fair-trade coffee brewed in their FÖRSTÅ, and “tweeting” the evils of the military-industrial-academic complex from their Milestone. What a farce. In particular, when I see “activists” of various kinds casually turn to these sorts of products, I barf in my mouth a bit. Five minutes of research into probably the most expensive consumer goods they own should have been enough to lead them elsewhere. Clearly, however, aesthetics, marketing, and sheer laziness win the day. !

“Not so!” argued the disciplinary officer for the faculty. “This was not just a case of sloppy citation work, but entirely unacceptable research methodology.” The student advocate built the case for a lack of intent to deceive by having the students relate how they had done their research. The Committee on Student Discipline was satisfied with the arguments that “nobody thought it was necessary to dig deeper than the Marquis de Sade,” and that “if the French hadn’t come up with it yet, nobody had.” Accordingly, they were justified in thinking that they had indeed come up with some innovative “moves.” Incredibly, Student Advocacy Director Daniel King stated that

this was just “another run-of-themill case” for their service, which won the SSMU award for campus group of the year in 2005. In a related matter, the McGill Legal Information Clinic is now being called upon by the same group of students to fend off allegations of intellectual property violations made by the Indian Consulate on behalf of the collective rights holders of the Hindu heritage.

Caught red-handed The perils of plagiarism, and who can help Kerwin Myler Hyde Park

hirty-two students enrolled in Physiology 320 – “Biomechanics of Human Sexuality” – were paraded before a Committee on Student Discipline this past Wednesday. The charge: reproducing sexual positions from the Kama Sutra, an ancient Hindu text on human sexuality, and sensuality without using proper references. Kerwin J. Myler, a third-year Law student and senior advocate at the Student Advocacy Service located in the Shatner building, defended the shocked students who couldn’t get over how their term project had landed them in hot water.

“All we wanted to do was create an attractive sex ed book for freshmen. I mean, they need it!” complained one visibly upset student. “How was I to know that my move wasn’t original? All my lovers had always told me I was like nothing else in bed!” lamented another student. While the course instructor admitted to having authorized group assignments, she said she had not given the green light to group sex, “no matter how tastefully presented.” Most importantly, the professor alleged that principles of academic integrity had been violated when the students failed to give credit where credit was due. Only 11 of the 97 positions depicted in the glossy full-colour guide could be said to be

original, stated the professor. Tellingly, two students were immediately vindicated because, by mere chance, ornately framed vintage paintings of quotation marks had been on the walls on either side of them as they posed in the “ripe mango plum” position. Considering the context, that was considered to be adequate acknowledgement of the non-originality of their contribution to the assignment. “All these students had the purest of intentions,” pleaded student advocate Myler. “They may have inadvertently replicated certain postures in the Kama Sutra, but the necessary intent to deceive, as required by §15(a) of the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures, was missing.

Kerwin Myler, Law III, is a senior advocate at the Student Advocacy Office. The views expressed here are his own. Write Kerwin at: kerwin.myler@mail.mcgill.ca. Ted Sprague’s taking a break this week. Catch him next Monday!

Letters

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Re: “Marketing democracy” | Commentary | November 8

Not only does your article criticize people less privileged than yourself for actively seeking information and expressing their political opinion, it ignores the larger social issues surrounding illiteracy. Camilla Grudova U3 Art History

Health Services has room for improvement Re: “Health Services does good work” | Commentary | November 4 McGill Health Services isn’t excellent. Since writing my Hyde Park, I’ve heard stories far worse than my own. The students I talked to had to take matters into their own hands and go to another health care centre. I would hope that the medical institution I pay for takes far better care of me than sending me home with a prescription and telling me to come back “if symptoms worsen.” When you have pneumonia, you can’t wake up at 7 a.m. to drag yourself to Health Services before everyone else gets there. You just can’t. To truly “err on the side of safety,” the doctor could’ve done a lot more. I will use this space to give PierrePaul Tellier two pieces of advice: 1. Allow for more specialized attention of specific cases, such as follow-up appointments, referrals, and information about each patient’s case. 2. Since my experience, I’ve been told by students that there are plenty of walk-in clinics all over Montreal that are covered by my health insurance. Why didn’t I know about this before? An institution that’s under-staffed and overworked should provide patients with the advice to go elsewhere. As it is, I have my Belgian health care to thank that I’m still alive, not Health Services. They don’t excel, and for me, they weren’t even adequate. The simple fact that the treatment I got elsewhere was far better than that which I got at McGill shows that there is quite a bit of room for improvement. And if there isn’t any room for improvement (Health Services is squished into a tiny townhouse, after all), then Health Services and its staff should inform students about their alternatives. Aaron Vansintjan U3 Philosophy & Environment (Joint Honours) McGill School of Environment Journalist Secretary, Daily Publications Society Board of Directors FormerProduction & Design editor

Unless it examines Arab role, NGO not very good

Dialy mistittles columm; lumberjacks

Re: Palestinian prisoners’ advocate speaks at McGill | News | November 8

Re: “It’s prob the full course load” | Letters | November 4

Last week, The Daily covered a visit by Ala Jaradat from ADDAMEER, an NGO fighting for human rights and prisoner support for Palestinian prisoners. According to its website, it strives to build a “free and democratic Palestinian society” and believes in the “respect of human dignity as a priority.” ADDAMEER’s stated adjectives are honourable and I would like to support them in achieving these goals. Whether it is the Middle East or Canada, the high principles of supporting human rights, right to free speech, political activity, and civil liberties are ones that every society should provide to its citizens. In light of these objectives, it’s interesting that ADDAMEER fails to recognize the degradation of Palestinian prisoners in Arab countries. Since 1948, Palestinians have been treated as inhuman subjects of Arab populations, rather than embraced by their so-called brother states. They have few political freedoms or civil liberties in these Arab states that have done nothing but attempt to quiet their demands for a Palestinian state. The leader of the pan-Arab nation, who promised the Palestinians a homeland, leader of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, signed a peace treaty with Israel without any consideration for the fate of the Palestinians. Jordan later followed suit – a country that took the most moderate position in the Arab-Israeli conflict out of fear that Palestinians might actually demand something from their government. If ADDAMEER works toward revealing these inequalities, I’m happy to support them. If they are just another NGO that ignores the role Arab states have played in the degradation of Palestinians, then I must believe that their motives are not honest.

Excited to dive into last week’s literary supplement, I eagerly opened a copy of The Daily only to be dismayed upon reading U4 Education student Jessica Patterson’s letter to the editor lambasting The Daily for, as she put it, being riddled with errors. Alas, Jessica Patterson is right: my monthly science column “The Split Brain” ran last Monday with the erroneous title “The Spilt Brain” – as if brains, which normally reside securely in the skull, were a liquid that could be sloshed around and/or spilt. I suspect that it was this error, and this error alone, that drove Jessica to ignore all the wonderfully-written articles in Monday’s issue and write her angry letter. Kudos to her for doing so! I do, however, take issue with her assertion (in postscript) that Canadians would never wander around the woods wearing skinny jeans. I can, in fact, provide photographic evidence (see the web version of this letter) of one Canadian doing just that from a Facebook album I created last spring titled “Lumberjacking.” Note the skinny jeans, boat shoes, and wooded setting.

Vicky Tobianah U3 Political Science and English Literature (Joint Honours) McGill Daily news writer McGill Tribune columnist

Privileged democracy Re: “Marketing democracy” | Commentary | November 8 By saying “real movements require intellectual foundations, which in turn, requires substantive communication,” do you mean the time, access and money to buy the New Yorker, read Malcolm Gladwell’s article on social media and democracy they published, and then write a column in The McGill Daily about social media and democracy? Not only does your article criticize people less privileged than yourself for actively seeking information and expressing their political opinion, it ignores the larger social issues surrounding illiteracy, such as lack of access to quality, affordable education in many parts of Canada and the United States. Intellectual elitism seems like a bigger threat to informed democracy than Facebook.

Erin Hale U3 Philosophy Former Coordinating News editor

P.S.: For someone writing about innumeracy, does it make sense to use data from 2003 to argue against a website (Facebook) established in 2004?

Friends in far-off places

It looks like another arc in the Israel-Palestine issue on campus. In my time at McGill I’ve felt a lot of tension about Israel, with accusations, justifications, and defenses flying everywhere. Who is right? Who cares? None of us are really experts on the case, yet we use phrases like “genocide” and “terrorist” loosely, as if we actually knew the reality on the ground – we really do not. I’m making a call-out for people to stop trying to create a stir, just for the sake of activism, and try something new for once: learning something with your mind unclouded. Articles and letters about this in the past have taught little about the actual issue, which needless to say is a complicated a dilemma. Israel cannot simply pull out of Palestinian territories in one day, which is what led to Cast Lead, but

Ahmed Jaber Received via e-mail

Dear Jonathan Cohen, I agree with you that The Daily shouldn’t run overly corporate ads. I’m getting a little annoyed with a persistent Bank of Montreal ad. However, you should redirect your attention to the Daily Publications Society Board of Directors (BoD). The editorial boards of The Daily and Le Délit don’t make ad policies. Members of both edboards have seats on the BoD, but it is also filled with members at large from the McGill community. So direct your comments to chair@dailypublications.org.

Camilla Grudova U3 Art History

More creativity in disputes

really good i have a very good friends in china, they sell all kinds of brand new original products we have do years business now i would like you to share my happyness just do it now , and go their site to choose your favorate products sure you will like it and earn more !! welcome to: <link-theworld.com> don’t miss the chance

Re: “What’s up with the corporate ads, Daily?” | Letters | November 4

Sincerely,

Daniel Lametti PhD IV Psychology

Re: “It’s prob the full course load” | Letters | November 4

It ain’t The Daily, it’s the DPS

Re: “Shame and confrontation” | Commentary | November 8

I feel advocacy often wears this position implicitly. At the same time, is Israel completely just? Hell no, and saying so is useless as well – Israel is certainly more humane in its counterinsurgency than almost any country in the world. At a school like McGill, protesting the presence of three soldiers just alienates the community. Maybe I can’t expect much more from campus politics, and I’ve avoided them for this exact reason but I have to agree with last week’s Hyde Park by Matthew Kassel. You preach to the choir when you use old, questionable terms which take as back to square one of right and wrong. Whatever side you stand on, let’s see some creativity, throw away your old notions, and find better venues for dialogue and insight, not just malcontent. Elan Spitzberg BA 2010 Geography Geography research assistant

The Daily publishes letters. Send them: letters@mcgilldaily.com. Three hundred words or less, from your McGill email account. Only rule: no hate, so keep the racism, misogyny, homophobia, et cetera, out of here.

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Critically assessing miraculous cures Why we should be cautious of bad science

en Goldacre is the author of the Guardian column Bad Science, and a book of the same name. He has studied medicine, philosophy, and science and still teaches to medical students and junior doctors at the University of Oxford. His focus is epidemiology, the study of patterns in health and illness. He spoke at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium on October 18. The McGill Daily: Your speech focused on how the mass media gravitates toward pseudoscience and on how pseudoscientists abuse the impoverished and uneducated in the name of profit. Why do you think the media and these charlatans have used each other so successfully to spread misinformation? Ben Goldacre: [The media] knows what the public wants. What’s so interesting about the whole situation with these claims being so seductive is that they reflect deeper needs in all of us, like easy answers to problems that don’t have easy answers. When I look at how quacks interact with patients, what I see is a very old fashioned version of medical paternalism. I see people firstly giving fake reassurance to patients and I see people exploiting power dynamics. I see people saying, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to get better because I’ve given you this treatment and here is a very elaborate, very technical explanation of why you’re going to get better.” It’s the kind of thing that doctors used to do about fifty years ago. Doctors would emphasize to patients that they have special access to special information by using deliberately exclusionary language. I just don’t think doctors do that anymore. In general, we teach medical students not to. I’m not sure there are many doctors around who wish to go back to the days where we misled our patients by using really exclusionary language, but it is interesting that there is a market for that. MD: Richard Dawkins has written that debunking is often seen as totally unsexy by the general public. Can you think of any ways that debunking pseudoscience could be sexed up to appeal to the masses? BG: I think he’s completely wrong, actually. When I set out, I wanted to find a way to write about that and I knew that also you had to be aware that journalists know that the public like things like personal stories, conflict, and controversy. So, to me, pointing out where people have got things wrong is a gimmick that allows me to write about how experiments work and

Ethan Feldman | The McGill Daily

what the strength and weaknesses of different experimental methods are by putting them in a real world context. To a certain extent, debunking is what I happen to end up doing when I write in that way about things, but I wouldn’t say that makes it less attractive. If anything, that is the hook that gets people interested. In the U.K., the book has done bizarrely well—it sold a quarter of a million copies and got to number one of the nonfiction charts—and it’s basically an epidemiology textbook! It uses human interest stories, it involves controversies, and involves showing people how things really work behind the often quiet, bland assertions that people make. It pricks authority. It narrativizes what science is all about: critically appraising the evidence for somebody’s claims, beliefs and practices. That’s what we do all day at academic conferences. Debunking is the form of popular science that is closest to the reality of what actual academic scientists do. MD: You, and your employer, the Guardian, were unsuccessfully sued for libel. You attacked Matthias Rath in print for his role in speeding AIDS denialism in South Africa and he retaliated with litigation. What are the major flaws with libel laws and why are they wholly inconsistent with science? BG: In the U.K., we have a problem in that our libel laws are particularly vicious for investigative journalists who want to write about somebody’s shifty activities. In medicine and science, you encourage people to try and pick holes in your ideas and evidence. Unfortunately, libel laws make it more difficult because often you

hear “the very fact that you’re daring to question my assertions is libelous and defamatory, and now I’m going to sue you.” For example, I was sued by this guy, Matthias Rath, and I would actively encourage people to read the story, it’s extraordinary. ... In the U.K., there have been more insidious examples, like a cardiologist named Peter Wilmshurst who is being sued by an American company called NMT Medical because he exposed their claims as false. The idea was that by closing a hole in the heart, you might be able to prevent some sufferers of migraines from having migraines. So, they ran a trial, which was obviously flawed. Peter was the lead investigator in that paper, but was sidelined after he raised concerns about the way things were being done and the way the results were being reported. He didn’t come out dramatically as a whistleblower, he just presented the results from that study as he honestly and faithfully believed them to be. That conflicted with the results that the company itself had and they’re now suing him in the U.K. I think that any doctor or academic who sees this will say, “Maybe I needn’t do the same thing, if I’m in the same situation.” Libel laws stop people from being able to raise concerns about the evidence for other people’s practices and ideas. When we’re deprived of accurate information, or alternate perspectives, people suffer or die and that’s really bad. I think libel laws have to exist somewhere along the line, but I think that you can make a very strong case that science and medicine deserve some sort of special treatment. There’s public interest when people discuss their cause for evidence.

MD: Now that you’ve successfully defended your libel case, could you please explain briefly why Matthias Rath is a real dirtbag? BG: That’s not a difficult question to answer. MD: I know you have a mansized pile of documents on him. BG: That’s true, I do! He’s a real interesting case. I am pretty relaxed about people peddling bullshit in the West. I think it’s more interesting than it is bad and wrong. But this guy, Matthias Rath, presents a kind of challenge to that kind of perspective, which is the to the kind of right-thinking, non-histrionic view that people have about alternative therapies because he took the basic principles of your typical vitamin-pill-peddler, or nutritionist, or naturopath in the West – in America, and Canada, and Europe – and took these ideas to an environment where things really matter. South Africa is a country that has been ruined by HIV/AIDS . One person dies of AIDS every two minutes in South Africa, and that’s such a huge number that it’s actually difficult to get your head around it. It seems to me that if you’re going to go somewhere making claims that you have a serious treatment for AIDS, then you had better make very sure you have extremely strong evidence for that, especially if you’re going to a country where the stakes are as high as South Africa. When Rath went there, he took out full-page adverts in national newspapers saying that anti-retroviral drugs are a conspiracy from the pharmaceutical industry to kill off black people. His answer to the AIDS epidemic, of course, was vitamin-pills. That’s a problem in itself, but at the time, South Africa was being led by Thabo Mbeki who was introduced to the central tenets of AIDS Denialism by Matthias Rath’s right hand man, a champ called Antony Brink. Between 2000 and 2005, the South African government made claims that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. They refused to roll out antiretroviral medication to those who needed it. It was a complete disaster. The fact that he was able to sue me in the U.K. and waste a lot of our time is pretty objectionable. The only real sensible response I could have to that was: after we won and after I had wasted so much time defending my case, now that I know so much about him, I felt morally obliged to put as much of it as I could in the public domain, which is why I’ve made the story available freely under creative-commons licence. I had to bully my publisher into letting me do that, so it’s all there and free to

download for anyone who wants to use it in any way. MD: There are many people who, in the name of anti-colonialism, will claim relativism to be fact and, in the same breath, liken science to religion. Why do the privileged class fear being racist to such an extent that they are reluctant to admit that any human society without penicillin, for example, is uneducated or ignorant? BG: I think a lot of it is about decadence. It’s about living in an environment where your kind of divorced or disconnected from the realities of the origins of technologies and ideas that have afforded you the cultural existence that you have. These aren’t entirely abstract things and they have real world applications all around us all of the time. That’s how we know how to make an airplane or drugs that work and anyone who attempts to theorize your self into your navel has to bear in mind that there is this proof right in front of you that these ideas are functional. As for how to talk people out of dumb ideas, I don’t think there is any one way to go about it. Everyone has their own silly ideas for their own silly reasons. People have to be disabused of them on a one-to-one basis. MD: I find an irony in that relativists will defend magical thinking in non-Western contexts, as if these cultures have access to some spiritual force that we’re are not privy to. In some sense, these people must be prejudiced. BG: Recently, one of the most interesting illustrations of that was a video on YouTube of a couple who had their marriage reblessed in the Maldives. The people who were supposed to bless them were actually hurling abuse at them with completely straight faces. It’s a strange fantasy that somebody else’s culture is somehow spiritually in touch with some earthy meaning that our lives lack. A lot of the time, when people profess to have an affection for the kind of approach that other cultures take toward spirituality, what they’re actually doing is pursuing a kind of paternal caricature of what they imagine other people’s cultures are really like. —Compiled by Ethan Feldman Goldacre’s book Bad Science has been republished with the addition of a chapter on Rath which was originally banned from publication in respect of the then unresolved libel case. The chapter is now freely available for at: www.badscience.net/files/TheDoctor-Will-Sue-You-Now.pdf

Science+Technology

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Practical fractals Alex Bratianu-Badea Science+Technology Writer

istory is a thousand teachers, and we would certainly do well to pay attention to lessons imparted to us by its prominent figures. One such figure is Benoit Mandelbrot who, on October 14, 2010, died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 85. Mandelbrot will be missed by many – but his impact will remain forever inscribed in history books. Throughout his lifetime, Mandelbrot made many contributions in fields ranging from fluid dynamics to information technology to economics and financial markets. His most significant achievement, however, was in mathematics where he defined the Mandelbrot set and coined the term “fractal.” Now, weeks after Mandelbrot has left us, his intriguing bequest warrants appreciation. A fractal is a geometric shape that is defined by the invariance of scale: if you look at a figure and then look at it again under a microscope and you see the same shape, you’ve got yourself a fractal. Fractals are regarded as infinitely complex and irregular to the point that they cannot be described in Euclidean geometry (the x, y, and

z-axes that we all dread as university students) – but they can be used to model commonplace things like clouds, coastlines, and even traffic. Consider Ste. Catherine on a crowded day. Look every other car, then every three cars, then every four, five, six and so on. If the traffic looks the same – namely, a line of cars, no matter how much you zoom out– then a fractal is present. Fractals are more than simply amusing: they have a rich breadth of applications that have gone a long way in numerous disciplines. Take Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia. In 1992, the disc version contained several thousand articles and photographs, as well as hundreds of animations and maps. Yet Microsoft managed to cram all of this into less than 600 megabytes of data. That’s the equivalent of a little over one hundred songs or one relatively lowquality movie. How did they achieve this? The data was compressed using the principles of fractals. Or how about medicine? To track esophageal pH, measurements can be made once every six seconds for 24 hours. But fluctuations in esophageal pH are consistent with fractal patterns. Instead of taking the pH every six seconds, measurement could be made, say,

First Last / The McGill Daily

every 36 seconds. The shape of the data would look the same, yet would be achieved with only one sixth of the measurements. As a final example, let’s look at the universe. It too is a fractal! Consider a planet with a moon revolving around it. Zoom out and you have a star system (ours is called the Solar

System). Go out further and you have a cluster of such systems. Even further, galaxies. Further again, clusters of galaxies. And finally, gigantic superclusters. Keep zooming out, and the picture remains roughly the same: clusters of celestial bodies, held together by gravity. There is no doubt that numer-

Grace Brooks with Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Looking back on Mandelbrot’s contributions to math and beyond

ous advancements in science and mathematics, as well as several other fields, can be attributed to the application of fractals. For this, we have Mandelbrot to thank. And although he will be dearly missed, he will be remembered for his inquisitive mind and his ingenious discoveries.

Is global warming good for Canada? Addressing misconceptions: the realities and the subtleties of climate change Jonathan Katz Science+Technology Writer

he average annual temperature on the Earth has incrementally increased since 1976. The emerging scientific consensus, based on computer modeling, is that this climate trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Despite many scientists’ prophecies of doom, the assumption that this bodes well for Canada and other northern countries still persists. According to Dave Sauchyn, a professor of Geography at the University of Regina, this logic is faulty and ignores the subtleties of

climate change. On November 11, Sauchyn gave a lecture titled “How Might Global Warming Affect the Variable Hydroclimate of Western Canada?” as part of the Cutting Edge lecture series at the Redpath Museum. At the beginning of the lecture, Sauchyn presented a comment made by Robert Mendelsohn, an economics professor at Yale: “If you add it all up, it’s a good thing for Canada,” meaning Canadians will weather global warming better than most other countries. Sauchyn spent the remainder of the lecture debunking Mendelsohn’s statement, presenting various studies and simulated weather models that suggest otherwise.

The top five worst natural disasters in Canadian history, when sorted by economic impact, are four droughts and the Great Ice Storm of 1998, according to Sauchyn. Canadian droughts are devastating because they blight the crops on the prairies, causing billions of dollars of losses over a single growing season. This is important to understand because computer modeling performed by Sauchyn’s collaborator, Elaine Barrow, an investigator at the Canadian Institute for Climate Studies, reveals that the future climate will not just be warmer with more precipitation, but will include an increase in extreme weather conditions. There will be more

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years of drought, and more floods. Drought has been a historic problem in the Canadian prairies – just look at the plant life. There are very few trees that grow in the prairies. A study conducted by Sauchyn examines trees in wet regions within the prairies. Measuring the thickness of the tree trunks’ annual rings, he was able to approximate how much rainfall there was each year dating back to 1063 CE. The record revealed that over the course of the past millennium the amount of precipitation per year swung between extremes: years of drought, and years of flood. Sauchyn explained that after several consecutive years of uncharacteristically high rainfall in the

late 19th century, the population in Saskatchwan thrived, blossoming from one hundred thousand to one million people in just thirty years. After this boom in population, there were years of drought. The population ceased to grow any further. Sauchyn concluded his talk by suggesting the need for more research dedicated to planning solutions for the future climate changes. He underscored the need to learn to adapt, and suggested diversifying and experimenting with new crops. He proposed stricter irrigation legislation and the increased use of alternative water resources, such as manmade lakes.

scitech@mcgilldaily.com

12Features

What it means to be a warrio Thomas Deer is Cultural Liason for the Kahnawake Cultural Centre, in Kahnawake, Quebec. He is also a former Secretary of the Kahnawake Warrior’s Society. “All Mohawk men are born warriors; it’s their choice whether they’ll fulfill that role in society,” said Deer. “It’s still my role and responsibility as a Mohawk man to be a warrior.” The Daily sat down with Deer in his office in the Cultural Centre, to talk about war, warriors, and Mohawk history. The McGill Daily: Historically, what role have Mohawk warriors played in the Nation’s culture? Thomas Deer: The role of the warriors in our communities has changed depending on the era. The whole idea of the Iroquois Confederacy was to unify people who wanted peace. So, by that token, the warriors were always a defensive force. Of course we’re using the English term “warrior,” but I don’t think that that term really does justice to this society of men who band together at times to help the community. In our language we call them Rotisken’rakéhte. In our language okenra means soil, and it’s a root word of Rotisken’rakéhte, and it’s almost saying that there’s a bag of soil slung on [the warrior’s] back, and the premise behind that is that in our culture the men aren’t as closely connected to the earth as women are. So, for example, they say that the men’s relationship is closer to that of the sun, and if you look at what we call our big brother the sun, he’s always travelling

from east to west, and that’s the same orientation of our Confederacy. So when we equate that with the movements of the sun, it also mimics the role of the men in the community. It’s really described when we have a naming ceremony today, in the longhouse. When a boy is named, he is walked across the length of the longhouse from the east to the west, and then back from the west to the east, and when they name women they don’t do that. I remember when I was younger I asked some of the elders why they walk boys and not women, and they said that the reason was it has to do with their relationships, and the different roles and responsibilities they have in a society. They say that the women are closely related to the earth, closer than men anyway, and where they place their feet on the ground there’s always this connection, and that’s why it’s the women’s inherent responsibility to be the caretakers of the earth, so anything that has to do with the land, it’s the domain of the women, including our economy, which is basically agriculture.

But in terms of the men’s responsibility and the warrior’s responsibility, we understand that because there’s not such a solid connection, they have to carry a token of their home on their back, which is the title we call Rotisken’rakéhte. It’s almost like we carry this piece of soil or this earth on our backs, so we always have a connection to our home. But it’s understood that the men are going to have to leave their homes at certain times, for certain roles and responsibilities. One is to be defenders or protectors of the Confederacy. So if at one time there is, for example, trouble in a neighbouring Iroquois community, or Haudenosaunee community, that we would dispatch men to support [them]. The second role is that as a provider for families. So at certain times of the year—especially in the fall and winter—it’s a time for hunting, so the men would go on hunting parties, and they would leave the community for a certain amount of time so they could bring back food for their families. And the third thing that would take us away from our homes is diplomacy. As spokesmen for the village, for the Nation, for the Confederacy, the men are expected to do acts of diplomacy. So these three things will take us away from our community, from our home. So when they’re walked from the east to the west, and back to the east again, in the ceremony, when they’re babies, small children, that’s the reason. It’s almost like we’re

acquainting these children from the crib that this is their duty and responsibility in the society. The actual term “warrior,” or “warrior society,” is I guess a more contemporary, prolific title that was self-applied at a time when we needed, I guess, a psychological advantage. MD: What role do Mohawk warriors play nowadays? Against what sort of threats do Mohawk warriors defend their communities? TD: Usually when someone asks me what is the role of the warrior society today, I’ll say it’s a voluntary vanguard of community men, made up of fathers, sons, uncles, brothers, everyday type people. But when there’s a threat to the community, to the Nation, or to the Confederacy, these men will band together and organize, and they’re going to protect and defend the territory of the Haudenosaunee. If we look at the Oka crisis, this community took action when we see our sister community of Kanasetake attacked. [As providers in] in contemporary times, we see that a lot of Mohawk men are ironworkers, and they go out to cities like New York or Detroit, and they’ll work high steel – buildings, skyscrapers – and the money they make they bring home to support their families. Today, in our fight to be recognized as a sovereign people, there’s constant attacks at our ability to perform as a sovereign nation. For example, in 1988 Canada dispatched an RCMP Swat team to shut down the tobacco industry in the community, an industry that the community believes is its inherent right. So at that time, when these foreigners

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Henry Gass | The McGill Daily

or came into our territory, the warriors banded together and repelled the assault. It led to a two-day occupation of the Mercier Bridge, and I remember really well, it was a constant threat of invasion. It ended up culminating into what became the Oka crisis, when our neighboring community of Kanasetake was protesting the expansion of a nine-hole golf course. When the attack was initially made, we had men that were there supporting the people in Kanesatake, but in this community, it was the warriors from this community, who decided that the best way to support them was to block the Mercier Bridge and all entrances into our territory, as a means to prevent a second assault, a violent assault, on the people who were occupying the forest at the time, the pines. So in terms of relevancy today, I do think there is a lingering threat of violence that could be directed toward our communities, because we maintain this position of sovereignty. We believe that we are a sovereign people; we don’t believe that we’re Canadians. MD: What significance does November 11 have in Mohawk culture? TD: Eleventh of November? The only thing I can think of is that the Treaty of Canadaigu was signed in 1794. There are a lot of veterans in this community. We had people from this community who fought as far back as the American Civil War. I have a great-great-great grandfather who was shanghaied into fighting for the North during the Civil War, and then I had an uncle who was in the U.S. Army, who just retired from the U.S. Army – I don’t think there are too many people who would join the Canadian Forces in this community. I

think that the community does have a proud military tradition, but I don’t think that we would associate people’s participation in, for lack of a better word, foreign militaries, with the duties and responsibilities of traditional warriors. I would make a distinction there. If people wanted to go join the Canadian Army or U.S. Army – most likely the U.S. forces – I think that they did so on their own free will, and I don’t think they did it out of any need to fulfill a traditional role and duty. MD: Are the Mohawks considered more war-like than other First Nations? Why is this? TD: I’ve often heard that. I think it’s a claim that a lot of different native Nations will say about themselves anyway, but I do tend to believe it’s true amongst Mohawks. I think that we’re very nationalistic, and I guess, for lack of a better word, we don’t take any crap. I think there’s no doubt about it. There’s a big ego connected to being a warrior, a Mohawk. There’s a flip side to that, which has had some very dangerous results for us in the past. The American Revolution crippled the Confederacy for a number of years, and the reason was our warriors wanted to fight in the war, but our Chiefs, our leadership, actually proclaimed neutrality during the conflict, and it was private – “renegades” I’ll call them – led by, for example, Joseph Brant [who fought for the British]. Each of our Nations ended up raising private fighting forces to engage in the battle. So it’s difficult because the [Chief ’s] leadership isn’t binding, to the extent that it’s up to the people whether they’re going to follow the rules or not, and during the American Revolution, the warriors chose not to follow

them. So it exposed an unfortunate flaw in our political organization. Ideally, even today, the warriors are supposed to be accountable to the leadership, supposed to be accountable to the longhouse – our traditional government – to the Chiefs, to the clan mothers. They’re supposed to take orders from these people, but at times I guess the warriors can get ahead of themselves, and this was true during the American Revolution. If we could learn from our mistakes we should have never got involved in the conflict, and we should have maintained what our constitution teaches: that we bury the weapons of war amongst ourselves, and we’re never supposed to raise them, and I think we lost this notion that we’re supposed to be a selfdefensive force, a defense force. So there’s a flip-side to being war like, or fierce. Sure, we might not take any crap, but it could be selfdestructive sometimes. MD: What are your personal thoughts on the War on Terror? How have you as a community been affected? TD: Well, the first thing I’ll say is how the community was affected. We have a lot of people who ended up fighting in Afghanistan – which to me is the War on Terror. I think the War on Terror is a noble effort, resulting from the devastating attack in New York on 9/11. New York City, it’s our traditional homeland too. We might be at odds with the Canadian government, the U.S. government, the fact is that we’re all co-existing in this territory. So when the War on Terror was committed to, I don’t think a lot of people had a problem with it. One way that it affects us today is we

have trouble crossing the border as native people. Our own traditional territory, which spans Canada and the United States, we’re expected to have a Canadian passport to travel back and forth. We never acquiesced to Canadian citizenship or U.S. citizenship. That’s a result of the War on Terror, to improve the safety of the borders, and stuff like that. So we live with those affects. But I think the idea that was behind the War on Terror, I don’t think anybody in our community’s really going to be opposed to something like that. I think people were opposed to Iraq though. I think a lot of people in the community think that the recent Iraq War was a waste of time, killing for nothing, another conflict that we shouldn’t have been involved in. So I would definitely make a distinction between the War on Terror and Iraq, and I think people in the community would make that same distinction. There’s a popular t-shirt that’s around the community, when this whole terrorism craze started, and it’s a picture of some native people, and it says: “Fighting Terrorism since 1492,” and that we’re the real Homeland Security, and that the Warrior’s society is the real Homeland Security. I’ll think in those terms too. I don’t think people in the community here don’t have a problem with the War on Terror because we believe that we’re under constant terror of Canada and the United States. Like I said, there’s a lingering threat that some armed force is going to come into this community. —Compiled by Henry Gass

Sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Deer factor Ben Makuch challenges the perception of hunting as a blood sport Paging Dr. Gonzo Ben Makuch benmakuch@mcgilldaily.com

here’s all this talk about early morning sunrises, but they aren’t nearly as impressive as an early morning moon. Sitting stoically in a dying night, fading slightly, with its phosphorous and blue glare still spreading over the ground. They can illuminate shadows in a way that nothing else can, while hewing every daylight detail just enough to make you think of them differently. You need a minute to understand this type of moon. I can’t say I’ve taken the time until about a week ago, when I went hunting in a small town just outside of the LaRose Forest, which is west of Hawkesbury if you’re familiar with Jean Leloup’s famous tune “I lost my baby.” Trust me when I say that there wasn’t anything sadistic about the whole thing. I wish I could recount to you a story a la Arnie in Predator or tell you how I capped Bambi’s mom and I didn’t even flinch, but either one of these stories would be a lie. No deer were harmed in the making of this article and it was rather one of the more peaceful experiences of my life that I can think of. Yes, I had to smear myself with deer urine and apply my torso with scent killer; and yes, if any of my other fellow hipsters had seen me in hunting attire that cold October morning, I may not ever find myself on St. Denis again without some seriously ironic stare-downs. But for me, this was the risk that needed to be taken in order to reconnect with my hometown. Driving along the deserted country road I noticed the late autumn fields had been harvested and a glaze of frost tinted the ground. A place where I had once noticed a lush forest over a rolling hill, now had housing developments and an ever-creeping barrage of construction crews closing in on the remaining forest. The scene reminded me what it would be like if Wil-E-Coyote had ever caught Road Runner for dinner. “I think I’ve been gone a year maybe and there are already new ’burbs. I mean, what the fuck man?” “Good for us though,” said Mathieu, my cousin and partner in crime for this little operation. “It was all the deer-land in there. Can tell by the buck marks on trees. Everybody thought they’d be scared off near LaRose where we’re going. Then again maybe not.”

“Maybe not?” “Not a lot of deer this year. These houses you know... It’s been throwing everything off.” In hunting deer you need to rise early in the morning before they wake (normally around 4 a.m.), to place yourself between them and their habitual highways that lead to grazing lands in hopes of a somewhat ambushed attack along these corridors. Key to all this is a whole lot of waiting. And we did just this, parking the car and inserting ourselves a half-kilometre from where they probably nested. The woods are so abandoned that early in the morning, you feel like an explorer. Wilting frames of pines, cedars, ash, and black spruce are all yours if you walk underneath them. My cousin and I, entirely scentless and completely undetected, slipped through the dead leaves and an increasingly autumnal forest until we found our position at a hunter’s hide. It’s a strange feeling to be perfectly blended into the terrain; noticeably more of an organic feature than usual. Most animals distinguish us by smell alone. Stripped of our fragrance by human cleverness, and given the right amount of stillness, we could be no different from a dead log. As we approached the hide, we were careful to be silent and sat slowly into a position we needed to maintain for upward of two hours. As any hunter knows, a slip of the hand can startle the prey. Mathieu was calm, scouring the cracks in between twigs and the slowly whimpering trees, already hunting the land, his cross-bow tightly squeezed in between his arms. He is a big man, my cousin, with a strong jaw-line and a steely pair of eyes engineered finely into his skull. I was not so calm. Picture the skinny wannabe-artiste in a camouflaged chair not really sure what to do. My breath is slowly entering the atmosphere, and I’m trying desperately to keep my neck screwed concretely into a single position while my bladder leaks driblets of piss. And believe me it’s easy to startle, every cracking leaf sets your heart racing, and in all the silence even a squirrel can seem like a buck trampling through his kingdom ready for a duel. After an hour Mathieu patted through his chest pocket and whispered, “smoke break.” I couldn’t have been happier to hear that and I wasn’t going to argue whether or not it would keep the deer away – he was far more the expert. Might I add that Mathieu isn’t a knuckle-dragger

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or a redneck either – he did an English literature degree writing an honours thesis paper on Gertrude Stein. Looking at him, the primal hunter holding the fate of an animal with his trigger finger, juxtaposed by, say, Stein’s Three Lives, is quite the contrast indeed. My point being that not all hunters are bloodthirsty hicks some are admittedly, but not the majority. Some, apparently, can be feminist literary-critics. It’s an eclectic group. It’s an oversimplification to label the sport of hunting savage and uncivilized. Not every time a hunter hunts is an animal killed. In fact it rarely ever happens once for most hunters in a season. Not only that, tag limits are regulated by governmental geologists who maintain and record data on the health of deer herds in the area, and by

correlating these statistics with hunting limits, deer populations can flourish. Because let’s be honest, like any circle of life you need a predator – and we’re just that. And how about the suburbs? Don’t let them off the hook that easily. Nobody is throwing red paint on any minivans or Timbits hockey players as far as I know. So think about it, one murderous shot of a crane can do more to the death of a deer than Jim-Bob from Lanark County. Just then, as we had fresh delicious cigarettes ready to fire up in our mouths, three wolves came so near I can’t imagine I’ll ever see anything this impressive again. I’m told this sort are “brush wolves,” a mixing of coyote-wolf that risks the utter extinction of the pure wolf. But who am I to be picky about what kind of wolves

I get to see? Apparently this variety of bad-ass dog have the loner stylings of a coyote, conflicting with the pack mentality of other wolves, equaling the potential end of wolf-packs. Whatever they were I can tell you the result is a beautiful creature mysteriously lost in it’s own design. They sniffed about, not noticing our scent, walking closer to the hide at an unnatural distance without there being black bars and an admission fee. Not being able to resist my curiosity any longer I moved my gaze for a stronger look. But the creaking of my neck gave me away and the jig was up. They ran away without a second thought. I’m not sure where they went, but they were probably brothers or cousins together on the hunt, searching for the same thing we were.

Sports

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Shoot and miss Score: A Hockey Musical attempts to address social issues in hockey, and fails The McGill Daily

“W

e’re proud Canadians / and we’ll always find a way / to play hockey / the greatest game in the land.” Score: a Hockey Musical never lets its viewers forget this. Best described as High School Musical on ice, Score is the story of Farley Gordon, a home-schooled teenager who has never played a game of organized hockey. After being discovered and called the next Sidney Crosby, Farley joins a league only to be bullied for refusing to fight. The movie centers on Farley’s struggle over whether to fight, and the conflicts that arise with his team, parents, and best friend. Score oozes with nationalistic pride and encourages a dialogue on fighting in hockey and masculinity, but in the end missed its mark by remaining wholly superficial. Although the movie was clearly intended to be as “Canadian” as possible, the excessive use of stereotypes is overwhelming. Songs include references to Tim Horton’s, Canadian hockey players, Kraft Dinner, and specific Canadian geographic features (like Red River floods). The filmmakers were obviously attempting to mock the existing stereotype, but they only succeed in exacerbating its portrayal in mainstream media. Whatever the use of stereotypes, the focus of the movie is fighting in hockey, and by extension masculinity. The debate serves as the major theme, and rightly calls into question the place of violence in

organized sports. Farley’s admitted pacifism became a problem early on in his hockey career – his scoring talents overshadowed by the frustration of his team and coach. After quitting and rejoining the team, Farley comes to the decision to “hug it out,” much to the homophobic disdain of his teammates and opposition. The team’s coach (in song) claims that, “hockey without fighting is like Kraft Dinner without cheese.” This theme is represented throughout the hockey community in the movie, with characters simply not understanding how hockey could exist without fighting, a common sentiment. Traditionalists of hockey believe in fighting as a way of settling scores in a fair face-toface way, instead of through an underhanded illegal hit later in the game. Score shows that a player can minimize their role in hockey fights. When Farley does end up in a fight, he soon realizes that he would prefer to be recognized for his skill alone. Although this does help the image of hockey as a sport of force, the rest of the hockey community in Score remains unchanged in its views on fighting and neglects the issue of masculinity. Farley’s pacifism is acknowledged as a rarity, and the traditions of hockey are upheld. This acceptance of fighting as a norm is the true pacifism in the movie, as the filmmakers unfortunately present no real questioning of the roots of the issue. Farley is warned that, “when someone challenges your manhood / you go toeto-go.” The suggestion that Farley needs to fight or “go lace up his toe-picks,” gives the movie a tone

Redmen hockey wins Photo by Victor Tangermann The McGill Redmen hockey team beat University of Toronto 9-2 on Friday, November 5 at McConnell Arena. They are currently at the top of their division with a 12-0 record. See the full photo album on The Daily’s flickr account at flickr.com/photos/mcgilldaily. —Eric Wen

Campus Eye

THE SPORTS BAR

Kady Paterson

W HAT ’S ON TAP Martlets Basketball vs Bishop’s November 19, 6 p.m. Bishop’s, Lennoxville, QC Redmen Basketball vs Bishop’s November 19, 8 p.m. Bishop’s, Lennoxville, QC Redmen Hockey vs York November 19, 7 p.m. York, Toronto, ON Marlets Hockey vs Saint Mary’s November 20, 3 p.m. McConnell Arena

R ESULTS Marlets Soccer vs UQAM Quebec Semifinal L 2-1 November 5 Molson Stadium Redmen Rugby vs Sherbrooke Quebec Semifinal W 69-10 November 5 Molson Stadium Redmen Soccer vs UQAM Quebec Semifinal L 3-1 November 5 Molson Stadium Marlets Basketball v Saint Mary’s L 46-60 November 7 Saint Mary’s, Colchester, VT

Talia Klein for The McGill Daily

of hetereonormativity that is notso-subtle and unsettling. The idea that certain sports or activities are categorized by gender is upheld by the movie. Characters that fail to live up to their gender roles are

ridiculed and little room is provided for more progressive attitudes. Score attempts to address important issues around sports, but in failing, simply upholds existing standards.

Marlets Hockey vs Carleton W 6-1 November 7 McConnell Arena McGill Women’s Rowing Canadian Rowing Championship 5th in Lightweight Coxed Four November 7 Victoria, BC

Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Playing a different role Gender-neutral casting is becoming common in McGill theatre, but not everyone is down Lyndon Entwhistle Culture Writer

ast November, Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Theatre’s restaging of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker starred Joy Ross-Jones, Amanda McQueen, and Melissa Keogh as two brothers and an elderly male vagabond who find themselves in close quarters. The three female actors embodied the male roles with style; The Daily’s own Johanu Botha declared director Laura Freitag’s cross-gendered casting decision “a success,” and the Tribune called the play “completely engaging.” Caretaker was not the only production last year to employ gender-neutral casting – TNC’s The Secretaries, The Bald Soprano, Players’ Henry VI: The Rise of York, and the Theatre Laboratory’s The Good Person of Sichuan also followed suit. While Freitag’s gender-neutral casting served to heighten the theme of muddled identity underlying Pinter’s work, in an interview with The Daily, she identified two primary factors in her decision: the predominance of male roles in theatre, and the abundance of female dramatic talent at McGill. “The best characters – the most complex, the most interesting – were always written for men,” said Freitag, commenting on a patriarchal practice that is only slowly beginning to fade. The dramatic arts, after all, are generally geared toward a male audience – it is uncommon for works to feature more than two female characters who not only speak to each other, but speak to each other about something other than the men in the play. Genderneutral casting offers girls the chance to try their hand at embodying a wider range of characters than they would otherwise be restricted to, often forcing them, and their audiences, to abandon their conceptions of the beautified actor. “I cast women [in The Caretaker]

CULTURE BRIEF Power play Like many Canadians this time of year, David Fennario is thinking about war. His vision, though, is more class politics than pomp and poppies, and he’s hoping Bolsheviki – his first play in five years – will leave audiences reconsidering Canada’s war legacy. Bolsheviki is the tale of Rosie Rollins (played by Robert King), a veteran of World War I and a native,

Edna Chan | The McGill Daily

Directors at McGill usually only opt for gender-neutral casting when it suits their vision of a play. who weren’t afraid to look ugly,” said Freitag. Not only does gender-neutral casting sit well with the student body’s general belief in the principle that students deserve equal rights and opportunities, but directors are loath to turn away skilled actors on account of their gender. Jordana Weiss, executive director of Players’ Theatre, said “gender-neutral casting begins with equity in the casting process. After auditioning talented female after talented female, directors are more willing to explore the artistic results [of cross-gendered casting] when faced with these numbers.” Freitag agreed, claiming “there

are slightly more female actors at McGill than males, and females tend to be quite a bit more talented.” James Thorton, TNC’s executive director, attributes this phenomenon to the fact that girls, on average, begin performing at a younger age than their male counterparts, resulting in a deeper talent pool of female actors. A quick survey through the play listings of recent McGill productions lends credence to Freitag’s view that “there is greater repetition in male casting at McGill.” This is not to say that genderneutral casting only runs one-way. Mr. Thorton played Mrs. Smith in TNC’s production of The Bald

Soprano last spring. Recounting his role in Eugene Ionesco’s surrealist masterpiece, which challenges the language and conformity ingrained within modern society, Thorton said there was “a deliberate ambiguity involved in casting me as a female. It called attention to the fact that ‘Mrs. Smith’ is merely two conjoined words that refer to something, which, in this case, was someone dressed as a man behaving with more effeminate gestures.” Cross-gendered acting does not necessarily entail dressing as a member of the opposite sex: Mrs. Smith was decked out in plaid slacks, a vest, and a tie. As Freitag put it, cross-gendered act-

like Fennario, of Point St. Charles. One evening, on Remembrance Day, 1977, Rollins begins to piece together his story for a Gazette reporter writing a piece on Vimy Ridge. What emerges is a darker retelling of the war, one which abandons the grand narratives of heroic nation-building for an account straight from the trenches. For Fennario, the battle at Vimy Ridge, which saw more than 3,500 Canadians killed, whitewashes the reality of a war motivated not by pride or honour but by economic interests. “The rank and file were there because they’d been told it was a fight for democracy,” he said,

“but it wasn’t. It was divided by class. The interests of the officers within the army were not the same as everyone else, because they were going to go home and join the elite.” Today, Fenarrio said, this same elite “celebrates and insists we celebrate with them the idea that they could make men fight for them, they could make people die for them. What did we get from it? We were promised a world of democracy, the war to end all wars, jobs when we got back. All we got, though, was two minutes of silence a year.” Fennario’s family arrived in Montreal a century ago, and his roots

stretch across the city’s anglophone working-class southwest. His sharp, often political plays have made him a central figure in Canadian theatre since his first piece, On the Job, premiered in 1975. That his latest work arrives at a time when thousands of Canadians are still in Afghanistan is no coincidence, and Fennario is quick to point out that the problems of the First World War haven’t disappeared. Afghanistan, like World War I, is backed by the rich and the powerful and fuelled by “the same drive for markets and profits.” Bolsheviki, then, serves as a warning. “They want bigger and better

ing is “an exploration of the ambiguities of gender rather than sexuality.” Despite broad support, however, the practice is definitely not ubiquitous in McGill theatre productions. Players’ production of 12 Angry Men, which runs until November 20, features an all-male cast. “I never knew that I wasn’t going to cast girls,” Natalie Gershtein, the play’s director, claimed. “It was ultimately a stylistic and logistical choice.” The play’s auditions attracted nearly fifty females, and roughly the same number of men, all reading for male parts. Although a handful made call backs, every female actor was eventually turned down (the entire crew, funnily enough, is female). “Unfortunately, few females could properly embody a man, with one exception,” said Gershtein, “So I considered the idea of one female and eleven males…but I realized that if I cast a woman, I would have to spend additional time helping her to fully embody a male, in addition to layering on the character, and I barely had enough time to work with the guys as it is.” Perhaps McGill theatre is not as blind to gender as many might wish. Directors appear, for the most part, to employ gender-neutral casting either when it leaves the main underlying themes of their plays untouched, or serves to enhance them. Freitag, for example, intends to have actors cross genders in the upcoming Attempts on Her Life, written by Martin Crimp, with which she intends “to criticize the social construction of a singular identity and the absurdity of it.” Gershtein was acutely aware that casting a lone female in 12 Angry Men was “a statement that I didn’t want to make…I didn’t want to pin women up against men.” Genderneutral casting remains a thematic, or even a political, commitment, and not always one that a director believes to be in their play’s best interests.

wars,” Fennario said, and the conflict in Afghanistan may just be the beginning. “That’s why it’s important to fight them when they’re small, when you can oppose them.” But despite the play’s heavy subject matter, Fennario says Bolsheviki is anything but humourless: “Essentially, Rosie takes a piss on Vimy Ridge, and people piss themselves laughing at it.” —Sheehan Moore Bolsheviki is playing until December 5 at the Bain St. Michel (5300 St. Dominique). Visit infinitheatre.com for more details.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

The truth about innocence Players’ 12 Angry Men reveals the frailty of evidence Ed Dodson Culture Writer

ade famous by Sidney Lumet’s 1957 film, 12 Angry Men was originally performed as a 1954 teleplay, scripted by the American film and television writer Reginald Rose. This enduring courtroom drama is now being revived once again by our very own Players’ Theatre. A fascinating exploration of one bastion of democracy – trial by jury – its subject is dramatically widened to incorporate the impossibly frail distinctions between fact and subjective emotions, transcending the confines of setting and plot. From beginning to end, the audience observes a 12-man jury trapped in a solitary room. We, like the jurors, cannot leave until a decision is made. The question: Is an unnamed young man to be found guilty or not guilty of murdering his father? Left to interpret, debate, and get suitably angry about the case, we follow the intricacies of colliding perspectives. One juror votes not guilty, opposing the others’ guilty verdicts. Thus unfolds the quest to unfold the truth and to consider the life-or-death implications of the term “considerable doubt.” Of course, the play is dated, for Canadian citizens at least, by the impending form of punishment: the death penalty. However, not only is this obscene punitive device still in place just south of the border, but life imprisonment, whilst not death per se, amounts to as much in many cases.

This system has survived for a reason – there is certainly a use for this legalistic form, even whilst it is fraught with so much danger. Politically, ideologically, socially, we still regard the gathering of evidence, the debate of this evidence, and the presentation of it in the form of a unified judgment as the process of producing truth. The fundamental problem of the play is how far empirical evidence can be a satisfactory basis of our society’s system of truth, especially as an electric chair buzzes in the background. This is our method – intrinsically linked to social institutions, none more so than universities, of course – for understanding the enigmatic world sprawling uncertainly before us. Whilst Rose’s script contains the play’s essential ideas, acting and production are vital to provoking personal reflection, through transforming linguistic profundity into dramatic tension. The arguments must be sincere and fearsome. Indeed, they are. Matthew Banks does an excellent job as (arguably) the angriest man around the table. Visibly wrapped up in personal turmoil regarding his son’s violent tendencies, his judgment is emotionally marred. We can see this anguish in his disturbingly contorted face and stubborn, yet ultimately vulnerable, swagger. The persuasiveness of the protagonist is vital, of course, in attempting to convince his eleven fellow jurors. Played subtly by Rowan Spencer, he slowly works his way around the table, using eloquence, not arrogance, to articulate the logic of “considerable doubt”,

constantly suggesting the significance of his perspective beyond the confines of this room, this case, this play. The old man, the first to be persuaded of potential innocence, is stunningly played by Gerard Westland. Complimented by effective make-up, he is transformed into the guise of a bodily weak, but intellectually precise, citizen, whose soft-spoken voice goes from being shouted down by the “loudmouths” to becoming a beacon of liberty and much-needed rationale. Music, lighting, and costuming are wisely kept minimal, so as to not distract from the intense drama. Everything looks authentic, especially the slick 50s haircuts which wonderfully emblematize respective characters. Anger equals wild bushy facial hair, just as smooth and neat cuts accompany the logicians on other side of the debate. Not trying to emulate the film’s portrayal, but working directly from the script, Natalie Gershtein has done a good job of revitalizing this important drama. Unfortunately, one can never escape the limitations of a thoroughly unambiguous, moralistic play. There is a clear didactic message and no question as to where the play positions the audience; we are led to vote not guilty. Whilst this restricts the play from what may be deemed “high art,” drama of this kind is still much needed (and appreciated). From McGill’s lower field, to London’s Conservative Party headquarters, to the streets of Greece, in this so-called age of austerity social justice debates and protests are in

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

constant circulation. This type of drama effectively contributes to an understanding of the wider (and perennial) significance of challenging power and seeking truth.

Twelve Angry Men is playing November 17 to 20, 8 p.m., on the third floor of Shatner, in Players’ Theatre. Tickets are $6 for students.

Power of the lens Wapikoni Mobile project enables aboriginal youth to make their own films Laura Pellicer The McGill Daily

or eight months of the year, two trailers equipped with state of the art audio and visual production gear tour aboriginal communities in rural Quebec, recruiting young aspiring filmmakers. The Wapikoni Mobile Project was initiated seven years ago by Quebec film-maker Manon Barbeau, and aims to provide an innovative means of self-expression for teens and young adults living in these isolated communities, while remaining a program that is “run by and for Quebec First Nations peoples.” The medium of film is an effective tool for this generation of aboriginal youth that are stuck straddling two worlds: adolescence, in all its own challenges, and life as a member of aboriginal communities rooted in tradition. Céline Brassard, an administrative assistant for Wapikoni Mobile,

explained to The Daily why she feels the program has been such a success. “Social workers are the first team members to arrive in the community,” Brassard said in French. “They circulate in the community, let people know the studio is coming, and recruit youth who are interested in making films.” Where social policies developed at the governmental level have failed, Wapikoni, with its innovative approach and use of contemporary media, seems to be an effective tool for reaching aboriginal youth. The youth gain technical knowledge while developing leadership skills and general self esteem. Some even return to the program as employees, working as assistant trainers to help younger generations on their projects. It is not just the social intervention aspect of the project that has contributed to its success. “The program has a double mandate,” said Brassard. “For Manon Barbeau...the artistic aspect is very

important as well.” In order to attain a high level of quality, the travelling studio is decked out with an impressive array of equipment including three Sony PD-170 cameras, two editing stations equipped with Final Cut Pro, and a musical recording studio. The young filmmakers who have participated over the years in the Wapikoni project have been the recipients of over forty local and international film awards. After the arrival of the Wapikoni social workers, a team of young professional filmmakers enter the community and stay for a four-week period. The professional cinematographers act as mentors and provide hands-on training that allows the youth to effectively produce their own films. The end result is an array of short films, music videos, and recordings that showcase the extraordinary talents of these burgeoning artists. The young filmmakers do not shy away from

addressing issues that contribute to the social marginalization of their communities. Some of the films produced in 2010 centred on the traumatic legacy of residential schools, the fight against addiction, and tributes to friends who had passed away. Others dealt with more lighthearted subject matter. “There are a lot of positive subjects like maternity, the joy of family, rediscovering identity,” said Brassard. These films work to combat aboriginal stereotypes by emphasizing the universal aspect of human experience. The short films and music are produced in a number of aboriginal languages, as well as French and English. As Karine Gravel, an on-site coordinator for the project, told The Daily, Wapikoni Mobile is a catalyst for communication. “At the end of the month we do a presentation where the elders can come and appreciate the work of the youth,” she said. This event brings together much

of the community and helps to get people talking about some of the serious subjects that are breached in the films. Despite the challenges that Wapikoni faces in creating an autonomous program run by aboriginals, the benefits of the program are apparent. The Wapikoni Mobile project has even been replicated by indigenous communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. “[The youth] have to stop and ask themselves what they have to say,” says Brassard. Although this process can be challenging, the result is well worth it. “They realize they are more proud than they thought of their communities.” Hopefully this renewed pride will empower the next generation of aboriginal leaders. Wapikoni Mobile is currently recruiting young social workers to act as on-site coordinators for the project. Visit their website for more information, wapikoni.ca.

18Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

!∀#∃%&∋()&∗+,∋)(−,∗(#%&( #&&∋./&(),01 Self-help literature gets personal for Anna Leocha

n the morning of November 7, 2009, my mother sat down with her coffee and wrote me an email from the kitchen table. It was not unlike the many emails she had sent me before: “GOOD MORNING MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER IN HER JUNIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE!!!!!” read the subject line. My mother is fond of capital letters, exclamation points, emoticons, and hyperbolic language of all kinds. She likes to send me lengthy emails because she knows I will read them, and she doesn’t keep a journal where one would otherwise filter these kinds of things. In these emails, my mother streams the various bits of wisdom and inspiration that she gathers throughout her week. Sometimes they include experiential knowledge, but often they include poignant excerpts from books she has read. These excerpts and her commentary on them always speak to an episode I happen to be going through at the time of their reception. They are what one would call “motivational,” or, dare I say, “selfhelp” emails. But my mother prefers to call them “Kitchen Sermons.” On this particular day in November, she is reading from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. “I decided to get up before the rest of the family this beautiful November morning,” she writes. “I wanted a little meditation time to drink my coffee and read the daily passage from my book.” Simple Abundance is a heavy thing with hard covers and an attached pink ribbon. It offers inspiration for every calendar day. On November 7, the headline is “Rising to the Occasion” and my mother lovingly transcribes the passage for me in her email. Apparently, at the time, I was struggling with insecurities that were preventing me from mobilizing myself. I cannot recall what about. College has inevitably been a series of crises spotted with good friends and a good bike. I haven’t read a self-help book since Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. I was twelve then, I also used a glitter stick on my eyelids every morning. To me, the self-help genre whistles to the tribe of Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club followers. It is the glossy cover; it is the oversized picture of the author in the forest; it is the complementary disc for the car; and it is usually read before or after yoga. The two books I was given to review for this article did nothing to challenge this stereotype. Dream Bigger by Julie Wise begins with the question, “Did you daydream as a child?” followed by, “Do you remember the magic of imagining you could fly like an eagle?” The book, which is about learning how to rekindle “the magic of dreaming”

Anna Foran for The McGill Daily

is full of questions and exercises that will reinvigorate your sleeping spirit and motivate you to pursue your dreams no matter how BIG or small. Her advice was nothing my elementary school guidance counselor hadn’t told me before and I stopped reading about twenty pages in. Boost: Powerful Tools to Re-energize and Re-engage You and Your Team in Crazy Times by Linda Edgecombe (author of Shift or Get Off the Pot) promises its readers improved health, wealth, and happiness. It too addresses the reader with a series of questions: “Do you need to give you and your organization an energy boost? Do you want to feel revitalized and positive? Have an emotional connection to your work and family? Be driven to be outstanding in your field?” If so, “Then read on!” I do everything I can not to think of infomercials

– magic bullets and UN-BE-LIEVABLE carpet cleaner – continuing on despite my revulsion. Five pages in, Edgecombe tries to hook us by suggesting that there is a steamy love story in her book to help the readers get “though [sic] it.” I read this paragraph to my roommate, complete with typo. “What a waste of time,” she declares, “writers, editors, publishers, readers...” I close Boost before she can finish. I do not claim to be exempt from needing “help” or “guidance” and I do not resent the existence of the genre that caters to these needs. The goal of self-help books is happiness, and if they work for you, I think that is a positive thing. Ted Baker, director of McGill Counselling Services, discussed the success of self-help books that use the cognitive behavioural approach to guide readers back to a positive

mental state. These books, such as David Burns’s Feeling Good, lay out interactive exercises that the reader is intended to follow in order to feel results. “These methods work best when they are done in conjunction with a professional who can do check-ups,” said Baker, “it’s difficult to do it alone.” For me, this is the salient point. I can search “self-help” on the internet and Google will deliver me 21,800,000 results. The selfimprovement section in Paragraphe bookstore contains enough volumes to fill the rest of my days. Despite the excessive availability of support out there, do we feel any less alone? How do we find advice that works for us in the ever-expanding market of self-help? I find the ubiquity of the self-help genre suffocating and insincere. I reject the neat, packaged solution that self-

help books like Edgecombe’s claim to provide. Our generation champions efficiency, stability, and the high-functioning individual. We are quick to diagnose ourselves when we feel that we are not operating to our full capacity or not exhibiting a positive mental attitude. These books become a panacea. But what is wrong with a good ol’ sulk? Does the sun always need to shine? And then there are people like my mother. A person for whom books like Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking have become cornerstones in her optimism, and dear friends in her library. To these people, I say: keep reading! As Baker asserted, “People need to do what works for them.” For me, that means continuing to turn to the Kitchen Sermons: those distilled, personalized labours of love.

Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

Imaging imagination Parisian Laundry exhibit revisits childhood in St. Henri Christina Colizza The McGill Daily

o appreciate Adrienne Spier’s Grade and Jennifer Lefort’s Make-Believe, exhibits at Parisian Laundry, one must view them with the imagination of a child and leave the cynicism of art criticism at home. Parisian Laundry celebrates this past October’s Women’s History Month with Spier’s foray into discarded materials and Lefort’s fluid abstraction. As Spier fascinates us with the artistic genius of mundane school desk scribbles, Lefort’s paintings feel something like cloud watching during recess. A mixture of found objects and photography, Spier’s Grade concerns itself with all that society has thrown into the trash. She revives value from what Western culture discards, creating meaning in the everyday wood objects that stockpile and organize pieces of our personality. Almost reaching the twenty-foot ceilings of the gallery, “Floorboard” recognizes the memories and marks made on what was once a kitchen or living room floor. By stacking floorboards on top of eachother, we can see the effect we have on the hard materials of our surrounding. Nicks, spilled wine, that time Dad dropped that heavy pan... Our subconscious runs free, remembering the events on our own floors and seeing in Spier’s work the detailed histories of every piece of wood. Spier continues this concept in

“3 Bedroom Apartment,” a tableau of deconstructed furniture. The individual pieces are a dresser and two night tables with varying sizes, shapes, and colours within them. A bedroom may just be a room, but “3 Bedroom Apartment” asks us to question how easily we disregard these pieces of furniture when we are done with them. Too often we overlook the beauty of a night table that has slept beside us for years, or a dresser faithfully holding our clothes through whatever style changes we make. The pieces have a dynamism closer to the socks, condoms, and late night reads of the people who use them than simple pieces of wood. As Spier points out, no one knows us better than the things we throw away. Her photography, too, continues this revival of our waste in her “Inside Desk Series.” Photographing the boards of school desks, Spier’s work sees the beauty in every “suck me,” or penis drawing, down to band doodles such as PANTERA in block letters. Upon a closer look, poetry emerges in the confessions of prepubescent love and woodcarvings claiming, “I got the key to Gramercy Park.” No message is left unimportant or abandoned, causing the viewer to unearth layers of adolescence with their own mental eraser. What appears from the crusted bubble gum, band-aids and strange animals with dicks is a distinctly Montreal student body. Graffiti letters spell out “Haiti #1,” we learn “Matusia is prettiest in the world,” and “Greece” appears alongside “Quebec.” One student described, this “Endroit cruel où enfants souffrent.” “A cruel place

Courtesy of Parisian Laundry

The works in Jennifer Lefort’s Make-Believe recall the easy fun of childhood. where children suffer,” becomes a contemplative place for adults to remember such naive suffering of long ago. Lefort’s paintings, on the other hand, recall the fun of “abstract” day in art class – only matured and perfected. In one room, her paintings hang from simple clips with the ripped edges of a spiral notebook still intact. Too casual? Shouldn’t she be taking her art more seriously? Lefort’s work answers for itself: you should be taking yourselves less seriously. With titles such as “Brown Cave with Many Different Cloud

Systems” and “Green Cave with Confetti Hailstorm” we see an imagination at work. She intermingles colours and textural styles with drips, swaths, and globs of paint creating these “make-believe” places. Lefort’s true talent lies in her ability to look at things with the eye of a child. One can imagine in “Peach Cave with Yellow Spots” the thrill of a child splitting a peach and discovering the universe of a pit for the first time. Despite many degrees, awards, and children of her own, Lefort is a kid at heart, thus producing a whimsical yet

ripe body of work. Spier and Lefort’s work brings a glowing vitality to the Montreal art scene this month at Parisian Laundry, indicative of the return to Neverland that this exhibition aims to induce. With sunshine pouring in through floor-to-ceiling windows from a St. Henri sky, Parisian Laundry is surely a place to let your imagination run wild.

between past and present. Citing heroes like Mayfield, Bill Withers, and Al Green, Blacc’s music is, in every respect, in dialogue with the past, but he insists that he still wants to “create something unique that has a quality of its own.” Blacc discussed his relationship with classic soul in an email to The Daily: “I am a disciple of great and classic soul artists and my goal with this new album is to carry on an important tradition in soul music of making songs with social and political commentary.” Aloe Blacc’s music videos, like “Femme Fatale” and “I Need a Dollar,” make musical references and aesthetic allusions to nostalgic black music, while simultaneously exploring a very current urban life. This is not to say that Blacc’s music is overtly militant or radical; instead his lyrics aim to prolong the tradition of slave music, as testament to its power in early Civil Rights movements.

However, Blacc’s political angle extends beyond a necessity to stay true to the idea that the “soul is political.” For Blacc, the responsibility to address social and political issues isn’t restricted to his music. “I think every adult with a conscience has a responsibility to address political and social issues. Whether you are a day labourer or a filmmaker, it’s important to be aware of the issues that affect your life,” said Blacc While the genre of modern soul, or neo-soul, or whatever you want to call it, may lack the politicization of days past, it could be argued that this was a natural consequence of having entered the mainstream. Even in its infancy, soul was entrenched in debates surrounding the effects of commercialization. Alongside the politicization of soul music for the Black Power Movement, soul was often considered to have made the commercialization of black

music (and black culture) possible, due to its “cross-over appeal.” The very song that has been hailed as the recession anthem, Blacc’s “I Need a Dollar,” was picked up by the HBO series How to Make It in America, bringing his music a far wider audience. “The soul artist is an archetype that exists and is well understood. Fortunately, a new music lover is born everyday and the tastes of music fans are broadening, so I imagine artists will not have to be so strict with genre-centrality,” said Blacc. Aloe Blacc’s music doesn’t simply resist classification, it exemplifies his self-determination in creating a space of brand-new-old-soul to call his own.

Grade and Make-Believe will be showing until November 27 at Parisian Laundry, 3550 St. Antoine O. Opening hours Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 5 p.m.

A brand-new old soul Aloe Blacc finds the political power in music Tiana Reid The McGill Daily

oul music, a sound that has its roots in the black experience, is a genre drenched in history. Soul grew out of the AfricanAmerican struggle, and at the same time invigorated black pride and racial awareness in the cultural imaginary of the Civil Rights era. Aloe Blacc, born Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III, is a musical artist signed to indie record label Stones Throw Records, whose music is wholly in conversation with the past. It’s not surprising that his sophomore album, Good Things, has been compared to the work of game-changers like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. Due somewhat in part to the proliferation of micro-genres on music blogs, artists are rarely assigned one genre these days, nor is it necessary that they should.

How do artists like Blacc, then, negotiate the newness of an old sound? In many ways, the emergence of the term “neo-soul” in the late nineties marked a striking commercialization of soul music. Coined by former Motown Records president Kedar Messenburg, neosoul didn’t present anything particularly new in terms of music, but rather, reflected new marketing strategies for artists like Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo, and Macy Gray. Simultaneously, however, neo-soul offered an “example of black self-determination in an industry that is still defiantly wedded to narrow definitions and images of black folks,” said writer Tyler Lewis in a PopMatters review of Bilal’s latest album Airtight’s Revenge. Interestingly, the USCeducated Blacc has coined a term of his own to describe his music: “brand-new-old-soul.” Brand-new-old-soul calls attention to soul’s never-ending dialectic

Aloe Blacc will be playing live with his band The Grand Scheme at Le Belmont, 4483 Saint Laurent Boulevard, on November 16. Visit lookoutpresents.com for more information.

20Culture

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

T!! a!! !f t!p!g!ap!y How letters can have a cultural impact, for better or for worse Oliver Lurz The McGill Daily

y the time you have finished reading this newspaper, you will have seen at least a dozen different typefaces, more if our Compendium! editor is in a good mood. Fonts are everywhere, capable of manipulating our response to the message they convey. Consider the same sentence in two different fonts. “Will you marry me?” (subtext: I am normal and serious and dependable) becomes “!∀##∃ %&∋∃ ()∗∗%∃ (+,” (subtext: Let’s elope and live in a theme park, don’t forget your clown shoes!). Type design is a language unto itself, and has implications far beyond aesthetics. Marshall McLuhan had it right: “The medium is the message.” The appearance of text has never been neutral. Different handwriting has existed since the birth of the written word, and it was not long after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439 that font styles began to diversify further. Fast-forward to the mid1980s and desktop publishing gives us the font menu. Now even the most basic word processing software has hundreds of varieties and styles of text to choose from. This ubiquity has led typographers to coin the phrase “Type is everywhere.” I’m not very good at estimations but I’d say that in your lifetime you’ll probably see tens of billions of typed letters. It’s impor-

proliferation of Comic Sans is worse than the spread of bedbugs. Indeed it is seen as an epidemic in some circles (read designers). Recently, the internet campaign “Ban Comic Sans Movement” has been very vocal on the subject. Created in 2003, this group has the explicit aim of “putting the Sans in Comic Sans.” Their manifesto states, “We believe in the sanctity of typography and that the traditions and established standards of this craft should be upheld throughout all time. From Gutenberg’s letterpress to the digital age, type in all forms is sacred and indispensable.” To the movement’s members – and there are many of them – Comic Sans is both unacceptably childlike and too often used inappropriately. One of the founders of the movement, Holly Combs, said, “Using the typeface Comic Sans is like turning up to a black-tie event in a clown costume.” The much maligned font was even included in Time magazine’s “50 Worst Inventions” list. Poor thing. I think people are perhaps getting overly worked up about this jaunty, informal typeface. Mike Lacher recently posted an impassioned and timely defence of Comic Sans on mcsweeneys.net which called for a much-needed sense of fun in the community of typeface enthusiasts. His firstperson monologue retorts, “You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans,

“I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg” Mike Lacher mcsweeneys.net

tant, then, that the right typeface is used, and woe betide anyone who should misuse one. A telling example of this is the story of −&(∀.∃ /)01. To some it is just a friendly, round-edged, and harmless typeface, yet to others the

and I’m the best thing to vhappen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.” Though the typeface is often used wildly inappropriately (I’ve even seen Comic Sans inscriptions on gravestones) I believe it has its place in the world,

Grace Brooks | The McGill Daily

perhaps if only for its sometimes incongruous absurdity. Next on this quick tour of the type world we move from the almost universally reviled to the overwhelmingly adored. Helvetica, designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann, is the paragon of international Swiss modernism. The aim was clarity, with no serifs or distracting decorative elements, just mathematically perfect characters. Essentially it’s everything Comic Sans is not and is used worldwide from companies like American Apparel and Apple to NASA and the U.S. government. The emblematic status of Helvetica was recently confirmed by an independent documentary film about the Swiss typeface directed by Gary Hustwit. Simply entitled Helvetica, it centres on

the history of the typeface, interspersed with interviews from various designers and a soundtrack by Fourtet, Battles, and Caribou amongst others. The film was released in 2007 in selected cinemas in New York, London, and San Francisco and has since become widely acclaimed. In the context of all this acclaim I find Helvetica powerfully underwhelming. For one thing it looks just the same as Arial: incongruous to the point of invisibility. American typeface designer Jonathan Hoefler reiterated this: “Helvetica is hard to evaluate. It’s like being asked what you think about white paint. It’s just... it’s just there.” This is by no means a bad thing; a good text font should be unassuming and facilitate ease of reading, as opposed to the attention-grabbing properties

of, say, a headline font. Ultimately, different designs serve different purposes and I don’t think this culture of socalled good and bad fonts creates an especially useful discourse. When the inventor of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare, was asked why it has become so popular, he replied rather succinctly, “Because it’s sometimes better than others, that’s why.” Comic Sans was as perfectly designed for its purpose (joviality et cetera) as Helvetica was for its purpose (clear legibility). And anyway, as Lacher’s Comic Sans persona states, “You think I’m pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don’t all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros.”

JOIN US! The Daily is electing a Culture Editor for winter semester. Email culture@mcgilldaily.com for more info, or drop by the

office on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. This is real so take a chance, and don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back

Art Essay

Ming Lin

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

!∀#∃%&∋()#∗ Lies, half-truths, and animals riding bicycles

The McGill Daily | Monday, November 15, 2010 | mcgilldaily.com

ASK STUART

A raunchy rusty ride frame will allow you to have many more years of rust-free riding. —Stuart

Dear Stuart: My partner’s bike has been breaking out in rust patches recently. I have been scared to leave my bike next to theirs in case it is contagious. How can I prevent my bike from contracting those ugly brown patches? —Ferris Oxide

Dear Stuart: My bike’s stem is too long, and it leaves me in pain every time I ride it. What should I do? —Size Matters

Dear Size: You need to adjust it or swap it for a smaller one. In this situation, communication is key. You don’t want to offend your bike or make it feel inadequate about the size of its stem. Make sure it knows that the changes you’re making are going to improve the ride and the relationship. —Stuart

Dear Ferris: In the mid-2000s, rusty frames started popping up everywhere, most notably in student ghettos and hipster circles. Luckily, there are a few ways to avoid getting “those ugly brown patches” on your bike. The first technique – as advocated for by many in the Midwest – is to abstain from riding. Simply place your rustless bike in a garage or attic, and it should stay that way. While this is a surefire way to keep rust off your bike, you miss out on all the fun that riding brings. If you are determined to ride, you can protect your bike from rust with candle wax or a fresh coat of paint, which both have a 97 per cent success rate. If you ride your bike in the rain or snow, dry it off after, and be sure to grease and lubricate all the important bits on a regular basis. Rust isn’t contagious; however, be aware that placing your bike next to your partner’s may damage your paint job and expose your frame to the dangers of the elements. You can counteract this by wrapping your frame in a shock-absorbent material like old inner tubes. Protecting your

Dear Stuart: Every time I see a mountain bike posted on Craigslist my palms get sweaty and my face flushes. I e-mail the seller and refresh my inbox constantly, anxiously awaiting a response. But when I go see a bike, all the flaws surface, and I can’t bring myself to take it home. Am I too judgmental? Will I ever find the one? —Luss T. Dear Luss: While it’s good to have certain standards, it’s important to realize that not every bike is perfect. Maybe you’ve built up a fantasy bike in your head that doesn’t exist. Think about what’s crucial for you to enjoy your potential relationship with a bike, and recognize that you can change decent bikes into awesome ones with the right parts and tools. The Flat has some great pointers on choosing that perfect match: theflat.wordpress.com/buying-aused-bike. —Stuart

More questions for Stuart? askstuart@mcgilldaily.com

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