The first space oligarch in human history

If you haven’t read about his StarLink project, you should. In short, Elon Musk is shooting 42,000 satellites into space to cover the entire Earth with ultra-fast, affordable wireless internet that would obliterate traditional telecom giants like Telus, T-Mobile, and Tele2. If our current situation of a duopoly or triopoly in the telecommunications sector in most countries is not bad enough, imagine one super-corporation monopolizing communications across the entire planet and beyond. If one corporation controls the market, consumers wouldn’t be able to call customer service and threaten to leave, because there would be no other company to turn to. “Starlink is targeting near-global coverage by 2021,” says their website.

If dominating the entire world’s communications is not enough, Musk’s SpaceX program is also the leading player in interplanetary transportation. To put this in perspective, SpaceX has 15 launches scheduled for just the next five weeks. The company is scheduled to launch its made-for-Mars “Spaceship” –  the first interplanetary passenger spacecraft in human history – once again for a high-altitude test on Tuesday, January 12. 

SpaceX is now the single most powerful space transportation provider in the entire Solar System. Furthermore, it is likely to become the first private company to colonize an extraterrestrial body: Mars.

The electric-car oligarch

Maybe he will never have enough. Despite his success in the space economy, Mr. Musk would also like to become the transportation oligarch of planet Earth, with his car & tunnel monopoly coming soon to a town near you.

To understand the absurdity of his ambition to dominate the entire planet’s transportation systems, Tesla was valued at over $800 billion US in early January, already surpassing the valuation of Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Honda, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, and Peugeot combined. Merely a month ago, the company’s stock valuation just raced past $500 billion US.

Tesla was valued at over $800 billion US in early January, surpassing the valuation of Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Honda, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, and Peugeot combined.

This is in addition to the fact that Tesla’s Model 3 is already the best-selling electric car of all time. Large conglomerates usually get larger and larger by eating up competitors and buying out start-up challengers. We can still celebrate Toyotathon for now, but it is only a matter of time before Tesla will merge with other major brands.

Quebec and California recently announced their timelines to ban gas-powered cars by 2035. Essentially, Premier François Legault and Governor Gavin Newsom want you to buy an electric vehicle, a market dominated by Tesla. Other jurisdictions are expected to follow suit. All-electric vehicles are an illusion of sustainability, as the electricity powering the vehicles is still generated by coal in many parts of the world. Not to mention that an all-electric gridlock is still gridlock. We’re buying into a future of congestion and faux sustainability by surrendering our freedom to move into the hands of one company, Tesla.

The Boring Company is another bold proposal of his to monopolize urban transportation on Earth. The plan? A system of underground tunnels for Tesla vehicles, even though many of us rely on a similar (and superior) mode of transport that is already in service, the metro. After years of hyping up the concept, his company built a bumpy tunnel with guided tracks for Teslas to drive through like a train and a pod that carries 2 people. Commentators may be laughing at him right now, but his Boring Company will soon become the world’s largest urban roadway operator.

To make things worse, the CEO of that particular company is also on a bizarre crusade, attacking public transit non-stop. He has the audacity to deride the masses of taking public transit and not “enjoying” the ride like he is. “The Boring Company exists […] to increase the happiness of both drivers and mass transit users,” says a company spokesperson. The entire premise of his Boring Company and Hyperloop proposal is to make transportation “fun” for rich people like him – egoistic and detached from average people. 

His plan to take over the transportation needs of all Earth residents is already in motion. On one hand, he is counting on Tesla’s unique hype to become the world’s largest automaker. On the other hand, he expects the Boring company and Hyperloop to divert funding away from publicly-owned transit systems so that everyone can pay him to use his Tesla tunnels.

North American politicians from Biden, Trudeau, and Newsom to Legault are biting the bait. Massive subsidies for electric cars are being rolled out across the continent while political support for public transit remains minimal. For working-class families relying on public transit to get around, this is humiliation.

Not your average celebrity

A lot of people idolize Elon. But your average celebrities don’t usually have an elaborate and ongoing plan to control the solar system for their own profit, at your expense. Nor do your typical celebrities spend millions fundraising for politicians to relax industry regulations. 

We also need to refresh our memory of Elon as a start-up guy with a new electric car thing. He is the richest person in the history of the world, and he wants to own our transportation and communications from now on.

The first thing we need to do is see Elon Musk as the interplanetary oligarch he is, including his spouse and McGill dropout Grimes, who recently received a $90,000 art grant from the Canadian government while residing in a billionaire’s mansion in California. 

To start taking the Musk family seriously, we need to tax them like we mean it. “Eighty-seven of [Canada’s] richest families together hold more wealth than the bottom twelve million Canadians combined,” per The Guardian. Elon Musk, Grimes, and X Æ A-Xii constitute one of those eighty-seven. 

In November 2020, the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) sought to pass a non-binding resolution on wealth tax, proposing a 1 per cent tax on accumulated family wealth over $20 million. The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) projects that this tax could generate $5.6 billion revenue in the fiscal year 2020 alone. The project was blocked by the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois. 

A wealth tax would have been a good start. But we must also enforce existing antitrust regulations. Countries like Canada have laws that nominally prohibit unfair monopolies, including The Competition Act. But if you look around at telecom providers, banks, airlines and media outlets, you’ll find that almost every major industry in Canada is controlled by a triopoly or duopoly of some sort. Three telecom giants, Telus, Bell, Rogers, and their subsidiary flank brands like Public Mobile and Virgin, control the entirety of Canada’s wireless market, for example. It’s a similar story in the airline industry, with Air Canada and WestJet splitting the share.

To genuinely support small and medium businesses and promote public interest, breaking up triopolies, duopolies, and monopolies is essential. To do that, we need to strengthen our antitrust regulation, arm the Competition Bureau of Canada with real teeth, and most importantly, place further restrictions on corporate lobbying of federal and provincial MPs.

Once we have a healthy antitrust system in place to safeguard the interests of Canadians, we wouldn’t have to worry about Elon Musk’s interplanetary monopoly as much. To date, none of our safeguards against corporate overpower are functioning as intended.

I wish I was wrong, but the statistics say otherwise. Remember the day, January 7, 2021, either as the day when the world slipped into the hands of one particular interplanetary oligarch hereinafter and forevermore, or as the beginning of a popular awakening to the political establishment that aids and abets super-oligarchs.

Interplanetary oligarch Mr. Musk is now the richest man on Earth, but that is a pointless title because his real aim is to solidify his standing as the most powerful man in the Solar System with his private fleets able to reach Mars and beyond. Space is the new frontier, and Mars is the new Earth waiting for developers and residents to move in. Elon Musk is a true visionary who envisions a world decades from now and the stock market agrees with him. He has wonderful plans for humanity, but we must ask ourselves, are his plans for himself and Grimes, or us the ordinary people? 

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In 2019, SPVM has contacted Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to inquire about immigration status over 3500 times, on average 10 times a day. That is a higher number than any other municipal police agency in Canada. In comparison, Ottawa only called the immigration enforcement body 149 times in the same year. Edmonton – 404 times; Vancouver – 460 times. 

In an interview with CBC’s French Service Radio-Canada, SPVM spokesperson Inspector André Durocher is quoted saying “It is very clear: as a municipal police force, enforcing immigration law is outside our mandate.” 

He goes on explaining. “If the police ask a person ‘what’s your status in Canada?’ just to report them to CBSA, that is not our job to do. It is unacceptable.” 

The SPVM officially is not in charge  of immigration checks, and yet their officers keep conducting them. 

There is a minimum of 50,000 non-status residents residing in Montreal, and this number is believed by many activists to be under-reported. As people without formal status, already their lives are extremely challenging. Everything from bank accounts, acquiring a driver’s license, attending schools, to job interviews requires formal identification of some sort.  They must also be extra cautious so as to stay off CBSA’s radar, which entails staying invisible to government databases and avoiding law enforcement interaction as much as possible.  But in Montreal where the local police service proactively collaborates with the federal border agency, they must also watch out for SPVM officers who are circulating the streets 24 hours a day. 

“90 per cent of [non-status immigrants in Montreal] live in poverty; 71 per cent limit their displacement in the city out of fear of being stopped by [SPVM] or immigration services; 29 per cent have children who can’t partake in extracurricular activities at their schools and libraries,” according to a Gazette Report.

In early October, SPVM launched a new initiative to formalize its communication procedure with the CBSA. But make no mistake, it will do little to protect non-status migrants.  All it does is now require all patrol officers to call a centralized desk at SPVM headquarters, which will then in turn contact CBSA for immigration status verification. 

According to advocacy group Solidarity Across Borders, calling CBSA on a centralized line does not change the fundamental fact that non-status folks can still face arrest and deportation if they interact with SPVM officers even as victims of crime or witnesses. People interact with police offices for a variety of reasons. Maybe a non-status person is randomly stopped or pulled over by SPVM officers while walking or driving to work, school, the grocery store or library, and then the officer asks them to prove their immigration status. Maybe they’re victims or witnesses of certain crimes where they must file a police report.

The idea that the Canadian immigration system is dignified and humane is a myth. There are people who risk their lives to flee to Canada for the promise of opportunities and protection, but Canada has failed them. Mamadou Konaté, a CHSLD worker who has fearlessly worked on the front line of the pandemic, and who later was infected by the coronavirus himself, was incarcerated at CBSA’s Migrant Detention Centre in Laval for the crime of being present in the country without papers. Only recently was he released on bond on 19 October with his deportation still pending. According to Huffington Post, following a military conflict in Ivory Coast, he was detained, beaten and mistreated by Forces nouvelles, then an opposition group. Despite his experience of violence in his home country, Canada rejected Konaté’s asylum claim. 

Another fact to keep in mind is that the SPVM has long worked alongside CBSA to execute immigration-based arrest warrants. In these cases, the SPVM acts at the request of CBSA to arrest and detain non-status individuals, then transfer them into custody of the CBSA. 

SPVM is a deportation machine despite being a municipal police force.

Many non-status people in Canada already have outstanding arrest warrants under their names, issued by CBSA. Whenever they interact with local police, as soon as the officers run their names, the warrant will come up and then they will be handcuffed and arrested on scene.

Montreal claims to be a progressive city run by a visionary mayor. But for non-status people, the city and its police force symbolize fear and terrorization against the most vulnerable group in our community. As the activists affiliated with Solidarity across Borders have stated, Montreal is not a sanctuary city. On the contrary, it is a hunting ground for SPVM and CBSA to identify, detain and deport undocumented immigrants. 

We can do better. Montreal needs to protect their non-status residents rather than terrorize them. First and foremost, the SPVM needs to formally cut ties with CBSA and issue an internal moratorium on immigration-based arrests. At the federal level, MPs and government officials need to look into a regularization program that keeps families together and brings undocumented persons out of the shadows with a path to legal residency. Visit Solidarity across Borders for more information.

This article was updated on November 24, 2020

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We’re all familiar with the narrative that universities rely on generous “donations” from philanthropists, businesspeople and billionaires to fund new projects or buildings. But the ugly truth is, these donations usually come in with their agenda. Private companies usually want the university to step up research in the same area they make products. Billionaires would want the university to fund a group of professors who happen to agree with their ideologies so they could go out and say “The academic community agrees with us, which proves that we’re right.” Universities now look at corporations and billionaires for directives as they beg for more “donations,” all while the public interest is falling into oblivion. 

Universities now look at corporations and billionaires for directives as they beg for more “donations,” all while the public interest is falling into oblivion. 

In his book Degrees of Failure, released in 2017 by independent publishing house Between the Lines, sociology professor emeritus of Lakehead University Randy Nelsen called out universities for what they actually are: a business that sucks up money from students while offering for-hire research to corporate patrons as professors go to great length to seek corporate grants, inadvertently influencing the outcome of research. To ensure a steady flow of tuition coming in, universities also rely on entertainment like college football or the party scene to attract and retain customers. Together with the promise of employment, a whole package of bright futures is ready to be sold to young people in the name of college education. 

This is a profit-driven farce masquerading as an ivory tower of academic pursuit. 

According to Professor Nelsen, the rise of modern universities in North America in the 19th century can be traced back to major industrialists of the time. Joseph Wharton – Wharton School of Business; Peter Redpath – McGill University; William McMaster – University of Toronto. These good folks “donated” to universities for their own interest. Wharton funded the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania because his mining empire required qualified employees to keep his business ongoing, and he needed scholars to help him lobby Washington for economic policies that favoured his mining company. 

Canadian liquor tycoon Samuel Bronfman was responsible for the foundations of the first co-operative system. In a similar vein, he based his co-op program at the University of Waterloo to ensure that his plant could have an uninterrupted flow of underpaid workers who would also be qualified and passionate to work. Bronfman believed that “the path between the campus and the plant should be open and unhindered.”

Since their inception in the 19th century, universities like McGill, Waterloo and UPenn have an unmistakable purpose – to prop up the corporate hegemony and supply them with pre-selected qualified employees, policy arguments and moral legitimacy. To make sure that universities don’t deviate from this expectation, those industrialists personally sat on the university’s decision-making bodies. And they still do today. 

In a video made by Divest McGill, the truth about this institution couldn’t be more clear. McGill is “PAID” by corporations, especially when we outright have senior executives from some of the world’s top conglomerates sitting on the school’s Board of Directors. 

Higher Education is often thought of as an opportunity and a chance for upward mobility. But we often tend to neglect the fact that colleges are designed to funnel the brightest talents of our society into serving the pre-existing corporate powers, thus maintaining their grip on society. A student from a low-income family can enter the business school and end up working for a multinational consultancy firm and become a millionaire, but that does not change the fundamental fact that outsized revenue accumulated by those firms still is based on the deprivation of the majority. 

To break down class barriers and reduce social inequality, universities would need to be systemically restructured. Making colleges more affordable and accessible to everyone is a start, but sooner or later we need to keep undue corporate influence in check. Academia belongs to the people, not corporations. We can start with removing those corporate executives from McGill’s Board of Directors or insulating their roles from any potential access to insider information. 

To do that, we as students have very limited options in our toolbox. Calling your principal or provost wouldn’t work, because “The Board of Governors has final authority over the conduct of all academic, business, and financial affairs of the University.” What we need is spreading awareness, and ultimately, we need to pressure our legislative bodies into amending laws to ensure that the final authority over our public universities doesn’t fall into the hands of CFOs and CEOs. 

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There’s a number of factors contributing to this sense of frustration: discussion posts bear little resemblance to the live conversations they are supposed to replace and seem more like a short essay in disguise. The upload of recordings in some classes is often irregular as technical difficulties sometimes prevent instructors from putting them up on-time, causing frustration to students and faculty alike. Talking to unfamiliar faces on a screen can also be a daunting experience– and yet, the university is not providing professors with the necessary tools to mitigate “Zoom anxiety.”  

But for many students new to McGill this year, online learning poses a special kind of challenge. Too many different types of assignments that take place on too many different websites become very easy to lose track of. They left high school well prepared for live classroom learning, but now they find themselves staring at computer screens feeling lost, upset and discouraged: seems like a bad start for college. 

Merely moving lectures onto Zoom and classroom participation onto discussion boards is no different from Google translating a 500-page document and magically hoping it will work out– online platforms rarely make good substitutes for human interaction. The internet is a chaotic place, full of distractions and technical difficulties. MyCourses and emails are great tools to supplement traditional in-person classes, but on their own they are terribly inadequate at keeping students engaged. 

McGill’s online learning has received overwhelming criticism on Reddit. 

Make no mistake– online learning is necessary to comply with COVID-19 preventative measures.  But among Canada’s top three universities, which are most commonly understood to be University of British Columbia (UBC), University of Toronto (UofT) and McGill, McGill is the only one to turn its back on students who are struggling with remote learning. University of Toronto (UofT) knows that online learning must be accompanied by co-curricular support, which is why they’re organizing “recognized study groups” to simulate the social aspects of in-person learning in an online environment. There are also learning strategists in each college ready to help should students experience difficulty with remote learning.  McGill offers none of these as of date.

McGill is the only one among Canada’s top three universities to turn its back on students who are struggling with remote learning.

Out west in Vancouver, UBC has set up an informative “Keep Learning UBC” to guide its students through the uncharted waters of Zoom university, with detailed instructions on seeking academic accommodation and on provided concessions. UBC refers to deferred exams, later deadlines and late withdrawals as concessions. 

At McGill, no such information is clearly provided on the university’s COVID-19 information page. 

To add insult to injury, according to CTV News, McGill has implemented a tuition hike of 35% for international students in certain graduate programs, all in the middle of a pandemic.  Most other students, both domestic and international, will find their tuition rates inflated from three to seven per cent. The tuition increase was indeed communicated before the pandemic, but it was clearly poorly executed as the surprise bill of $14,000 caught many graduate students off guard. 

A tuition hike in the middle of a pandemic is inexcusable, no matter how you look at it. College education is a popular path toward potential class mobility. By cutting off this possibility to students from marginalized backgrounds, McGill is pushing them down the social ladder while they’re climbing it.  There are 39% of post-secondary students on student loans today. There are also agents and banks overloading international students with predatory loans at unprecedented levels. Either by taking out loans or working on the side, students are still going to universities in pursuit of a common dream– a degree, and the promise of a better future. Then, COVID-19 hit, and with it came the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the highest unemployment in decades. But instead of offering compassion and support, McGill is moving forward with a tuition hike that ranges from anywhere between 3% and 35%.

Students have made repeated calls asking the university to put the price hike on hold, if not reverse it, and to stop treating international students as cash cows.  They did not listen. The fact that McGill can single-handedly destroy people’s hopes and dreams by raising the tuition however they like is devastating. Consider those international graduate students pursuing their dreams: some of them won’t be able to foot the bill this year and must leave their studies unfinished – it’s heartbreaking.

To them and to all those first-year and returning students struggling with online learning, it’s not your fault. McGill has failed you.

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A near-permanent state of gridlock, air pollution, urban heat island, lack of mobility options for low-income residents, and the non-descript suburbs homogenizing the landscape are all side effects of a car-dependent society. Montreal, despite its dense downtown core, is statistically no different than any other typical North American city in its loyalty to private cars. According to Statistics Canada, nearly 70% of commuters in Montreal drive to work – not much different than Los Angeles.

Currently, Canada has one of the highest per-capita carbon emissions in the world, and it’s not going down anytime soon. “Between 1990 and 2018, GHG [greenhouse gas emissions] from the transportation sector grew by 53%,” according to Environment Canada. A main contributing factor? The surging popularity of passenger light trucks or SUVs. 

“Between 1990 and 2018, part of the GHG emissions increase was due to a higher number of vehicles on the road,” Environment Canada reports.

Our urban layout dictates that the majority of residents in the Greater Montreal Area must drive around on a daily basis for anything. Whether it’s grocery shopping, going to work or weekend hangout, you need a car or good luck stranded at a bus stop for hours. Sadly, this is a pattern seen throughout Canada. But if we’re serious about combating climate change, we need to change this.

As we’re facing the deadline to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, incremental improvements are not enough. We need to move fast, faster than we could ever imagine. Free transit for all will do just that. Effective immediately once announced, and better yet, no additional infrastructure or personnel is required. 

Free access to public transit will not revolutionize service coverage or frequency, but it will help remove cars from congested roadways and alleviate the financial burden of commuting for working families, young people and low-income residents.

Our urban layout dictates that the majority of residents in the Greater Montreal Area must drive around on a daily basis for anything.

We’re at a time in history facing extraordinary challenges: a global pandemic and its economic fallout, a housing crisis, a widening gap of income inequality, and an ongoing climate emergency. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary solutions, and thus the time has come for Montreal to make public transit free for all in the metropolitan area.

Montreal is ready. Our mayor Valerié Plante famously campaigned on a pro-transit platform for her first term. This year, she is also advocating for bike lane projects all over the island during the COVID confinement. We have politicians that understand the value of public transit.

Montreal also has the funds to make public transit fareless. As of today, Montreal spends only 10.8% of its budget on public transit. Where does the extra budget money come from, if we are to implement fare-free transit? A myriad of provincial and federal subsidies and an anticipated increase in municipal tax revenue and savings from road construction and maintenance projects. The federal government has pledged to level up its climate response, and Quebec City is dedicating up to $6.7 B dollars to expand the green economy and bank on public transit throughout the province.

With the right amount of regional coordination, plus federal and provincial support, a system of free public transit in Greater Montreal is possible. But of course, just like anywhere else in the world, commencing a project of this scale would usually call for a task force to research the feasibility beforehand. 

As the COVID pandemic continues to wreak chaos and now the second wave on the horizon, more and more Montrealers are struggling to make ends meet. With the public transit going fareless, people will be able to put more food on the table and worry less about having a roof over their heads. More than just expanding mobility options, it’s also a testament to Montreal’s commitment to equity and solidarity. 

There are also existing concerns that free transit would lead to an influx of homeless people onto the system. Make no mistake, the fundamental cause of homelessness has nothing to do with transit fares or lack thereof. The scarcity of affordable housing, the inadequacy of mental and physical health resources is what’s forcing people to live on the streets, not the transit system. Homeless people deserve a roof over their heads. Until all levels of government finally start to provide social housing, people will have to take shelter somewhere else, with the place sometimes being public transit. 

Montreal, it’s time for you to join the growing list of global cities embracing free transit. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the article belong to the contributor and may not necessarily reflect those of The McGill Daily editorial board.

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For legal reasons, the server room must be located off-campus. Somewhere on the Cayman Islands, to be more exact. In order to keep out hackers, money launderers, and other uninvited guests from accessing the student-run entertainment venue, guests must log in using their McGill credentials and all transactions will go through McGill Student Accounts. 

“Your tuition account is the casino account. All transactions will be billed to your McGill account at the end of the month,” says the coordinator who requests anonymity. “For maximum flexibility, you can even bet with your financial aid grants or student loans. As long as it’s money sitting in your student account, you can use it.”

In a statement issued by the university accounting office, it says that the university supports expanding entertainment options for students, but refuses to comment further. 

OAC management team has pledged that all proceeds will be securely deposited into an offshore account in Jersey for yet-to-be-determined charitable purposes. “It is our tradition here at OAC to donate all proceeds, 100%, to a charity of our choice, which we will determine later. We have a team of lawyers working out the details,” says the coordinator. “We are also implementing industry-leading security measures to comply with all applicable international anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering regulations.”

However, not everyone welcomes the dramatic shift in OAP’s business model. Some students have accused the organization of conspiring to steal money from fellow classmates. “All the games are rigged. There is no regulation or oversight. My friend and I loaded like $3000 into the account and we lost it all in one day,” one student complaints on OAC’s Facebook page. Some others call it the latest proof of the “out-of-control FROSH scene.”

Open call for comments: Do you support or oppose Open Air Pub becoming a Casino? Talk to us at letters@mcgilldaily.com. Select comments will be published next week.

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The world is witnessing unprecedented protests in Belarus since the disputed election in early August. People young and old are out in the streets protesting nearly three decades of political repression and police brutality, and the overwhelming consensus from the top of the opposition leadership down to average college students is this: Belarusians are going to fight till the end, autonomously, freely, and peacefully.

However, with the political dynamic in Belarus now all but stalled, the outlook of the movement is complicated. The opposition against contested “President” Alexander Lukashenko has seemingly won the hearts and minds of many Belarusians, but the reality is that Lukashenko has continued to exert decisive control over the state apparatus with plenty of tanks and riot gear and thousands of trained security officials. He is not giving up his power easily. As many geopolitics experts have anticipated, at this point, an extended standstill between Lukashenko and the opposition is all but certain.

No one knows for certain what is going to happen to Belarus three months from now or three years from now. Will it be like Ukraine and enter into a prolonged geopolitical dispute? Will Russia intervene? Is it going on a path of irrevocable Europeanization? Will Lukashenko forfeit his power or will he carry on?

“A peaceful revolution is taking place […] It is neither a pro-Russian nor anti-Russian revolution. It is neither an anti-European Union nor a pro-European Union revolution,” said Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in her address to the European Parliament earlier this August.

For a better picture, I decided to hear from people who are living in Belarus directly.

One student who requested to appear under the name Lyubov makes it very clear that she is against Europeanization or Westernization, at least not through a brutal revolution. She then asks me, “Would you want to see a civil war happening in your country?”

Later, she goes to clarify that, “Personally, yes, shifting to Europe is much better than staying in a post-soviet country… For the younger generation it will be easy, but for boomers.. It will be kind of an insult.”

Another student who chooses to go by the name Kostya says that Lukashenko, with his autocracy, is leading the country in the wrong direction. “As far as I know, more than 80% of people I know want to change the government.”

When I asked about the public’s opinions on Tikhanovskaya, the opposition’s presidential candidate, he says “it depends on the person.”

Kostya is also against violent revolution. He believes that what young people like him really need, for the time being, are jobs and economic opportunities, not regime change through bloodshed.

“I want to see Tsepkalo (a Belarusian entrepreneur and diplomat) lead the country in creating a silicon valley right here in Belarus, bringing jobs and reviving the economy,” says Kostya in his text message.

For the anti-Lukashenko movement in Belarus, peaceful, non-violent actions as a strategy is not only necessary – most importantly, it can be effective. 

A similar sentiment is expressed by Tikhanovskaya in her address to the European Parliament earlier this August. “A peaceful revolution is taking place […] It is neither a pro-Russian nor anti-Russian revolution. It is neither an anti-European Union nor a pro-European Union revolution.”

Being sandwiched in between Russia and the European Union, Belarus is in a particularly precarious position.  On one hand, people want Lukashenko out; On the other, a violent regime change will likely open the door to uninvited foreign interventions.

For the anti-Lukashenko movement in Belarus, peaceful, non-violent actions as a strategy is not only necessary – most importantly, it can be effective.

Even though the sixth-term president is supported by Belarusian security forces as of now, some experts have predicted that in an optimistic scenario, the population continues to exert pressure on Lukashenko; then, some members of the law enforcement will defect, prompting his inner circle of security officials to crumble, leading to his eventual downfall.

Ideological turf wars do not lead to a free and prosperous future, but peaceful actions of today can. “The end is inherent in the means. Everything we do is infused with the consciousness with which we do it. Violence will only create more violence. Only peace will create more peace,” says Marianne Williamson, the first Belarusian-American U.S. presidential candidate, in a freestanding tweet.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the article belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect those of The McGill Daily editorial board.

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Can face masks stop the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19)? 

Yes, according to the Guardian. Studies have shown that wearing a face mask is five-times as effective in protecting you from the coronavirus than if you were not wearing any barrier at all. 

And yet, there has been a long-held stigma in our community that considers wearing face masks as an admission of guilt. This needs to stop.

Face masks are effective in preventing you from catching the virus, it can also spare others from your germs. Masks work, and doctors know that. For those who are immunocompromised, with underlying health conditions or senior citizens, masks are a necessity. For people who do not meet any of the aforementioned criteria, masks are not required, but still helpful.

For this reason, it is not only ableist, but also irresponsible to shame people for wearing face masks. When you see someone with a face mask walking on the streets or riding the bus, they’re doing a public favour by curbing potential transmissions of the virus. It is not expected to thank them, but please, at least don’t stare at them.

When you see someone with a face mask walking on the streets or riding the bus, they’re doing a public favour by curbing potential transmissions of the virus. It is not expected to thank them, but please, at least don’t stare at them.

Nevertheless, it’s a bad idea if everyone starts panic-buying face masks at the same time, which is why many politicians and doctors like Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University professor in Infectious Diseases, have been reminding us that “if there’s a general recommendation that people wear face masks, we won’t have enough supply for healthcare workers.” 

There is also a concern held by some experts that medical N95 respirators are not designed for average citizens who did not undergo fitting training, which could translate into a false sense of security when people are not wearing them the right way. Therefore, surgical masks, as opposed to N95 respirators, are considered more appropriate for civilian users. Also, as TIME points out, more studies are desperately needed on this subject before any expert can give out conclusive advice.

But that doesn’t explain how we got from “masks are not medically necessary” to “shaming or even assaulting people for wearing masks.” Such incidents have happened in London, New York, Milan, and even in Vancouver. All victims are Asian.

“I felt very humiliated and misunderstood,” says Man, a New Yorker who is ethnically Chinese. Man elaborates in an interview with TIME that whenever he uses the MTA while wearing a mask, other passengers stare at him as if he did something wrong. 

One commonly-cited excuse of many perpetrators of those anti-Asian hate crimes is that face masks are an indication of someone being sick, and therefore signify that the individual is “diseased” and needs to be “removed.”  

Wearing a mask is a preventive measure. If it is indicative of anything, it shows that whoever wearing a mask is a responsible citizen fulfilling their civic duty in protecting themselves from contracting the virus.

First of all, every part of that narrative is factually incorrect. Wearing a mask is a preventive measure. If it is indicative of anything, it shows that whoever wearing a mask is a responsible citizen fulfilling their civic duty in protecting themselves from contracting the virus.  Second of all, tacitly equating “foreign-looking individuals” with “contagious disease” is one of the oldest tricks in the xenophobic playbook, similar to how Donald Trump accused Mexican immigrants being the ones bringing in diseases to the United States, or suggesting that the border wall with Mexico can somehow stop the coronavirus (Mexico has far fewer cases reported than the United States at the time of publication). Associating COVID-19 with Chinese ethnicity is a thinly-veiled attempt at justifying anti-Asian racism. 

However, the real force responsible for the spike in attacks is not only a small percentage of our society that are racist individuals, but the entrenched stereotype perpetuated by the mainstream media, whether intentionally or not. According to Vox, the media tend to use racialized images when reporting on public health crises. When covering the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, media outlets almost exclusively use pictures of Asian-presenting individuals wearing masks, thus giving out a signal that “only Asians have the disease,” which is, in turn, a by-product of under-representation and misrepresentation of Asians in the developed world.  

“Chinese people eat bats,” is a perfect example showcasing why treating immigrant or international cultures as “exotic” is problematic and potentially hatred-generating. Had the developed world treated Chinese people as is, without infusing imaginative and inaccurate stereotypes, such a story would never gain traction. There is no excuse for the hate crime against Asian individuals whatsoever, but our community also needs to be better informed and must reexamine how it views Chinese culture and people. 

There is no excuse for the hate crime against Asian individuals whatsoever, but our community also needs to be better informed and must reexamine how it views Chinese culture and people.

For the record, it’s not medically recommended to wear a mask if you’re healthy and don’t frequently interact with people that might already be infected. However, if someone elects to go above and beyond in protecting themselves and those around them, they have every right to do so, especially if they’re doing it in a scientifically and statistically-proven method.

Also, be mindful that you’ll have to wear it correctly to give yourself any protection. Refer to the World Health Organization for more instructions on wearing face masks.

It’s similar to wearing a reflective vest when riding a bicycle at night, for sure extending an additional layer of safety to the cyclist, but is it mandatory by law? No. People shouldn’t blame a passer-by for wearing masks in the same way that no one would normally assault a cyclist for taking extra precaution.

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The post Police & Transit & People (Car-Free MTL Blog) appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Transportation is by all accounts, the single largest contributor to greenhouse gases in North America. In the United States, “the largest sources [of greenhouse gases] are passenger cars and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Uncle Sam’s undue obsession with heavy cars and trucks is having a real toll on the environment. 

As reported by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), Canada is not doing much better than its southern neighbour, with transportation “being the second-largest source of GHG emissions, accounting for 24% (174 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) of total national emissions in 2017,” only to be narrowly surpassed by Canada’s oil and gas sector. The report also points out that passenger vehicles and civil aviation are responsible for more than half of all transportation-related emissions in Canada.

What’s more concerning is that the sheer number of CO2 emissions equivalent generated by automobiles is surging in Canada, showing no hint of tuning down any time soon. “Between 1990 and 2017, [greenhouse gas] emissions from the transportation sector grew by 43%. The growth in emissions was mostly driven by increases from freight trucks and passenger light trucks,” said an ECCC report. 

It doesn’t take an expert to point out this alarming trend: People are driving way too much, and it’s becoming a problem. However, an average car-loving American or Canadian does not have any option in terms of transportation except by automobiles. In many parts of North America, the public transit system is in such a “sorry” state that it has become impossible to rely on it for daily commutes. The bus may either be 20 minutes late or operating on a 2-hour interval or even never showing up. More often than not, the bus route is either confusing or useless, sometimes both. Making things worse, on evenings and weekends, the schedule is usually reduced or out-of-service altogether, failing to recognize a basic fact that people need to be out and about on any day of the week. For people with decreased mobility, there are additional hurdles making public transit unusable, as exemplified by a $25,000 wheelchair accommodation fee that Amtrak recently attempted to charge two of its passengers for using wheelchairs.

A lot of passengers riding on many of North America’s transit feel disrespected by the way the system was designed. It was no accident. Transit, in the general consensus of American politics,  has long been considered a social welfare program, a “handout” for the poor. Oftentimes, it is designed poorly on purpose to force people into buying cars.

Dependency on automobiles translates into a carbon-intensive lifestyle that manifests itself through cul-de-sac neighbourhoods and out-of-control urban sprawl.  Still, in both D.C. and Ottawa, few politicians are willing to advocate for or recognize the crumbling state of transit, including the ones sitting on the progressive wing. 

The Green New Deal briefly mentions public transit or modern passenger rail infrastructure, without any details. California’s progressive new governor Gavin Newsom slashed the California High-Speed Rail Project first month into his inauguration. Of 2020’s U.S. Democratic primary candidates, Biden pledges to spend a jaw-dropping 1.3 trillion dollars on refurbishing highways, but when it comes to transit, he is only willing to commit 0.8% of that amount. Andrew Yang boasts about the potential of electric cars and upgrading public transit to everything electric, but no mention of improving or increasing actual service anywhere in his plan. Bernie Sanders also briefly name drops electric buses and affordable transportation; still, his climate plan is largely car-centric. Politicians are cautious in making promises they can’t keep, especially ones that would fundamentally change the way of life for their constituents.

One may say: look, let’s forget about transportation for a second, there is still the gas and oil industry out there, shouldn’t we go after them? The fact is, we cannot. When people are in their cars driving around, they and their cars are the ultimate patrons of the fossil-fuel industrial complex. The petroleum sector thrives on gas because people like us continue to hand them 7% of our income every year in gasoline expenses and that number is only increasing. 

Skipping gas station trips by taking transit is the most effective thing an average consumer could do to not support the fossil-fuel sector.

Usually, there is no “silver bullet” to our myriad of social problems, but in the context of climate change, there really is. Better public transit is the answer, or at least the main one.  While politicians in North America are still largely looking the other way, people from all walks of life and backgrounds are coming together to make a difference. Grassroots transit advocacy groups are popping up all over the continent, from Detroit’s Transit Riders United, Riders Alliance of New York, and Miami Riders Alliance to Louisiana’s Ride New Orleans. If you are dissatisfied with the transit system in your hometown, go look for a local advocacy group, and see how you can get involved. If you’re not into advocacy, that’s totally fine, there is something that you can do very easily – ride transit whenever you can. By doing that, you’re not only reducing carbon footprints, but you are also waving a giant middle finger to the face of fossil-fuel and automobile industries, all while showing your support and love for public transit. 

The post No One is Talking About Cars appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Some of AIESEC’s work has been unequivocally changing the world for the better. Using the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it’s a network of youths with a 70-year track record of changing the world. Unlike some of its competitors, who exclusively organize volunteering tours with a price tag, AIESEC also bolsters many paid internships and entrepreneurship training programs, which students apply for through AIESEC in the hope of landing internships hosted by a long list of multinational corporations like Microsoft, Apple, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Accenture. I have said it and I will say it again, AIESEC has long been a positive force that empowers global youths and builds student leadership. It is admirable and respectable that AIESEC and millions of its program participants worldwide have selflessly devoted their passion to something bigger than themselves.

However, it cannot go unaddressed that some of AIESEC’s purportedly “volunteering” opportunities are thinly-veiled voluntourism trips. It is an exceptionally questionable business practice to monetize charity at the cost of the communities being “helped,” while providing the paying participants with a false sense of being helpful.

On the information page of one of AIESEC’s volunteering trips to Kenya, titled “Healthy and Happy,” the introduction states that “we [AIESEC] realized that many kids in Kenya do not have access to proper healthcare, therefore suffer diseases that may have direct impact on their physical and intellectual growth.” Therefore, AIESEC is looking for high school graduates with first-aid training to pay $71,498 in Kenyan Shillings, which is about half the annual Gross Domestic Product of Kenya per capita, in administration and other miscellaneous fees to become a volunteer for this program.

Once arrived, program participants are expected to perform duties ranging from “physical examination, nutritional status assessment, visual acuity, heart and respiratory rate” to “[writing] reports on the data collected and make recommendations,”which would theoretically be used to improve the Kenyan public health system.

But none of the recommendations made by those first-aid trained high school graduates would be adopted by the Kenyan health system, because high schoolers aren’t trained professionals in public health or medicine. Most, if not all, of those volunteers who spend a couple thousand dollars to just be in this program, are not certified physicians or nurses. Therefore, those students are unable to and incapable of curing diseases or offering the local communities “proper healthcare,” to say it in the program’s own marketing language.

Dennis, a former AIESEC participant who chose to not disclose her real name, also expressed her concerns about AIESEC’s on-campus marketing practice. “AIESEC is run like a multilevel marketing scheme. At their workshops, they really do a lot of lectures and chants about how important [AIESEC’s work] is and how reasonable it is to pay to join their programs. But at the end of the day, they are just a resume- polishing service who is really good at glorifying their business model.”

Merely a few clicks away on AIESEC’s website, one may find themselves looking at another AIESEC “volunteering opportunity” that claims to be in congruence with a United Nations sustainable development goal of providing “quality education.” Its participants are expected to “train the teachers on innovative basic teaching methods” and “drive a sustainable project for the school that works to maximize the student’s potential,” all of which would be available to a paying customer who does not mind losing a few hundred dollars to enter the program. As for eligibility requirements, a Bachelor’s degree in Literature or Education would suffice. On the listing, this program has the earliest start date of January 5, 2020 and the latest end date of November 29, 2020, yet the program only lasts six weeks. Does that mean there will be one wave after another of college graduates, flocking to these Kenyan schools to give “professional” opinions on how to run a school, and coming up with a vaguely defined “sustainable project” to maximize student’s potential within six weeks? It does not take an education professional to point out how ludicrous it is to continuously have foreign students, one after another, giving “guidance” to local teachers, and at the same time revolutionizing the school within a mere six weeks, only to leave it to the next group of foreign volunteers to do all over. Those voluntourists may indeed make a difference here or there, but the whole thing is more about organizers collecting administration fees and participants polishing their resumes, rather than focusing on making any serious or long-term difference for the better in Kenyan informal schools.

After some digging, I also found out that AIESEC has been associated with an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya, which also used to be an international voluntourist destination called Faith With Action Children’s Home. The orphanage’s Facebook page stopped updating in 2014 and it’s unclear if it is still operational.

From the promotional video of this orphanage, one can easily identify the classic paradigm of “orphanage voluntourism.” A well-to-do foreigner flies in to volunteer at a school or an orphanage, where they teach children English and build a well, a ditch or a brick building. After a mere few days or weeks, they fly home and post on their social media, flaunting their charitable deeds with images of smiling children in the background.

This is far from being a singular example. On AIESEC’s website, if you filter a trip search by the keyword “orphan” or “orphanage,” there are an alarming amount of similar trips consistently offered by AIESEC in many locations around the globe. Most of those programs, if not all, charge the participant a fee that is far higher than the average wage required for hiring a full-time teacher in the local area. According to The Guardian, “two thousand dollars can pay for a week-long trip by an unskilled American volunteer – or it could pay the salary of a village teacher for four months.” It’s laudable that some college students aspire to make a difference in the world, but they have to recognize that no voluntourist would be as effective in helping the local communities as a full-time worker hired locally or a trained professional who is more suited to perform some of the tasks. Also, despite the diversity in AIESEC’s membership, it is still alarming that AIESEC tends to confuse colonialism with the lack of foreign volunteers as the reason why some countries might need assistance in the first place.

No, the lack of foreign volunteers willing to give out a helping hand is not why those crumbling schools exist in Kenya; it is colonialism in collaboration with multinational corporations that is responsible.

However, there are a variety of factors as to why those voluntourist destinations exist, and maybe they do serve positive purposes to a certain degree. This is not to say that all of AIESEC’s volunteering programs are pretentious and ego-filing voluntourism. To make such an unfounded and dramatic accusation would be nothing short of slander. But next time, you should definitely think twice before signing up for a costly international volunteering trip, whether that is with AIESEC or any other organization.

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