Two separate motions were put forth to change the club’s status. The first resolution called for the club’s status to be revoked. After being defeated 11 to 12, a motion to suspend followed.

The students who put forth the two motions claimed that Choose Life had disseminated false health information and exposed students to graphic images associated with abortion and fetal life. Additionally, the students felt that past events hosted by the club had threatened safe space for students on campus, and violated SSMU policy.

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

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

Fohl also stated that she did not feel that the club had contravened McGill’s equity policy, explaining that the club’s mandate is to promote respect for human life and human rights from conception, defined as the moment of fertilization. Fohl quoted SSMU’s constitution and went on to describe fetuses as victims of oppression.

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

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

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

During council, Rebecca Dooley, VP (University Affairs), indicated that four complaints against Choose Life have been brought to the attention of the Student Equity Committee since it was granted club status last year. The motion to suspend incorporated a clause which would send the club for evaluation by the Equity Committee.

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

Dooley explained that this would be a long-term process that would start as soon as possible. “We’ve been the ones who have been on the receiving end of most of the student concerns surrounding Choose Life,” she said. “We have been dealing with it on all levels, and I think we are the ones who have the most in-depth understanding of the policies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the student

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Miatello does have valid points, but takes on the role of an enlightened observer looking down at the misguided white bourgeois, slaves to their upbringing. She criticizes without analyzing the issue fully and ends up offering a rant that merely prods the surface of the argument.

What’s her solution? Is she arguing that those who are not white who engage in voluntourism have a more legitimate experience? Or is her argument more about privilege than race?
Bring something new to the discourse. Don’t rearticulate ideas that are already out there.

Emily Clare
U3 Political Science

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The 74-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner felt compelled to request a private audience with education students after he learned of the provincial government’s introduction of a controversial ethics and religious culture class to primary and secondary students throughout Quebec.

During both addresses, the Dalai Lama emphasized the need for a balance between intellectualized faith and secular ethics.

“His Holiness was interested in speaking with students involved to support the notion that human values, ethical issues, and respect for religious and secular traditions is a positive initiative,” said education professor Spencer Boudreau, McGill’s ombudsperson and the main organizer of the event. “[Religion] is part of our culture and history; it’s a powerful force in the world [that] we’ve neglected,” Boudreau said.

Due to the limited tickets available for the McGill talk, the McGill organizing committee decided to stream the two-hour event on learnquebec.org, where it is still available to site users.

During the McGill address, the Dalai Lama stressed to education students that instilling a positive religious tolerance in youth was critical for a compassionate society.

“Please carry your profession with sincere motivation and a sense of global responsibility,” the Dalai Lama said. “At least, with some aim or goal [that] out of this century, a more compassionate world [will come].”

Mitchell Miller, the president of the Education Undergraduate Society, had the opportunity to sit with the Dalai Lama. Miller was selected to thank His Holiness on behalf of the anglophone universities in Quebec.

“Sometimes it feels like there is a lot of unnecessary self-deprecation among students in this faculty. [The Dalai Lama’s visit] was a reaffirmation for us as educators of the power that we can have,” Miller said.

Heather Monroe-Blum served as the master of ceremonies.

Later that day, during his presentation at the Bell Centre, His Holiness asserted that he had no political or spiritual agenda. Instead, he hoped to articulate the need of shared links between humanity, to be compassionate, and work to make the world a better place.

“I am talking as a human being to another human being. Not as a monk, Buddhist, or Tibetan,” he said.

Nonetheless, the event took on a political tone as Chinese and Uyghur protesters assembled outside. Tibet has been administered and controlled by the People’s Republic of China since it occupied the territory in 1950. The Dalai Lama, recognized as the exiled political leader of Tibet, fled the territory in 1959 and is seen as a threat to the national identity and integrity of China.

“It’s our country. We love it,”one Chinese protester said, standing calmly with several others in objection to the Dalai Lama’s visit to Montreal. A couple of Tibetans yelled at them to leave Canada and go back to China.

Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority from Western China, also demonstrated in solidarity with the Tibetans. They called on China to recognize their human rights, stating that they were “the other Tibetans.”

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“Meditation isn’t about getting into a comfortable part of your mind but an uncomfortable one,” says Myoky, a Zen practitioner and Associate Buddhist Chaplain at McGill.

Meditation is not an easy thing to accomplish and requires a lifetime of learning. There is no specific moment of becoming a great meditator; it is a process of active inquiry. The goal isn’t to achieve a blank mind – this would be impossible – but to engage in mindfulness. A thought is simply a thought. The intent is to become aware of our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, and to challenge our misconceptions.

“There is a Western misunderstanding of the mind-body relationship. It takes a long time to sit still and be quiet,” says Myokyo. “When your mind isn’t still, your body isn’t, and vice versa.”

Scientists have been able to observe the mind-body relation and there are undeniable benefits. According to a November 2005 article in the New Scientist, meditation helps to reduce stress, increase attention span, and can alter ones mood. What’s more, a Boston-based study discovered that meditation enhances the brain’s cortex in areas responsible for attention and sensory processing. The lead researcher, Sara Lazar, is quoted as saying that this is evidence that those who meditate “aren’t just sitting there doing nothing.” They are in fact exercising their minds.

Joseph Emet, 70, is a Montreal meditation coach and founder of the Mindfulness Meditation Centre. He claims to have taken a majority of his life learning how to meditate because of the distinctly internal nature of the process. He notes that there is a physical technique, but that it is the part that is easy to master. Going through the physical process of meditation without a sense of mindfulness can reinforce negative habits instead of overcoming them.

“It is like a musician doing the formal action of playing scales. That isn’t the end of it – you have to tune yourself,” he says.

Emet and Myokyo are also proponents of the commonly held Buddhist belief that meditation should be guided by a teacher or a group and not in isolation. A group gives structure, and the others’ energy serves as feedback. In this, the group becomes a teacher that helps the individual from straying. What’s more, practicing in a group allows the individual to become a teacher to others as well; you practice for others as much as for yourself.

“My teacher would say, ‘sit in a quiet place with like-minded people in an upright and stable posture and your breath will become full and complete. With that, your mind will become full and complete,’” Myokyo says.

The physical act works to establish a bridge of continuous mindfulness between each practice.

One of the core beliefs of Buddhism is the capability of creating change in the world through the individual, in contrast to prayer, which emphasizes a higher power. Through meditation, we ourselves become more peaceful, and in turn, the world becomes a more peaceful place.

“We can say, ‘Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.’ This sets the stage for real transformation,” Emet says.

The techniques and insights achieved through meditation should not be divorced from everyday life, but integrated into whatever we are doing, whether it is driving or doing chores.

These ideas are not as archaic or alternative as they may appear; you do not have to be a practicing Buddhist to effect change in the world. To quote President Barack Obama, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

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Our external – i.e. racial – appearance is undeniably an influential force in where we see ourselves in the world as it is one of the easiest modes of categorization. But what happens when what is considered to be “in your blood” doesn’t match up with a set of clearly defined expectations?

“I don’t feel like I have an identity. It’s more confusion. I don’t feel like I have a race,” said Daniel Amin, an Arts student of half-caucasian, half-Pakistani descent, who was raised primarily by his Pakistani mother. “Once in awhile, I still realize that certain things aren’t common to white people. There are differences in parenting between white and brown parents; you slowly figure out what’s what.”

Interestingly, none of the people I interviewed defined themselves by their ambiguous ethnicity; it seems that cultural influences – aspects gleaned from parents and the society you’re brought up in – are more significantly formative than anything in your blood. Aaron Kurts is a half-Japanese and half-white U1 Arts student whose Japanese family has been in Canada for about three generations, and lived through the internment camps during WWII.

“I only feel Japanese because I have the blood,” he says, “[It’s not] in any linguistic or cultural way.” According to Ian Condry in Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization – a book that deals with issues of race, class, and subculture in contemporary Japanese society – ethnic belonging is traditionally conceived of along the blood lines, not based on external appearance or the environment in which you were raised.

Jason, however, feels differently; for him, living in North America, what’s in his blood isn’t enough to give him a strong sense of ethnic identity. “People see me as more Japanese than I feel,” he said. “I’d get to Japan and say, ‘What the hell? This is weird. I am not Japanese.’” He noted that one of the only particularly Japanese aspects of his life is that he uses chopsticks at home. “I’d like to say cultural loss through the generations is a bad thing. But it never really affected me, so I don’t know what I feel about it.”

Mona Matthews, a U1 Management student, is half-Lebanese and half-white. She said, “After awhile, it’s no longer, ‘I’m part Lebanese.’ But, ‘My grandmother was Lebanese.’” Matthews’s Lebanese heritage isn’t obvious when you first look at her. She felt that the Lebanese that she encountered didn’t recognize her as part of their culture. “I don’t identify with the first generation but with the food and traditions that I grew up with. I am attached to the culture and not the country.”

A friend of mine described race and culture as being part of a colour continuum; we wouldn’t understand what it means to be black or white without the context of the other races around us. The dominant North American culture is often misconstrued as being some kind of general “white culture” – and hence, bland and non-existent. But realistically, someone of mixed Latvian and Italian descent could be as culturally diverse as anyone with a more conspicuously mixed background. Each of us reflects a certain face of world history on a tightened scale; we carry the history of our ancestors in subtle ways that may not be immediately obvious to us.

“Even if I don’t identify with it, I still am Japanese,” Kurts acknowledged. “Maybe it has influenced me more than I realize.”

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“[The conference] affords the African side a platform to present our vision of development and to seek Canadian business partners who are able to understand our needs and can engage in mutually beneficial ventures,” said Saaka Minimaana, the vice-president of the African Diaspora Association of Canada (ADAC).

The seven important figures only drew in a small number of students, buisness persons, and guests. There was no overt security presence at the event, though there were several protestors outside from the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA).

The protestors questioned the legitimacy of the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, who spoke at the event. Compaoré was responsible for the violent 1987 coup and alledgedly the murder of the iconic president at the time, Thomas Sankara, and 12 other officials.

“[Sankara] wanted to go against the system and cut off imperialistic ties. He went against a system still going on today,” said Djbril Ndiaye, a member of GRILA.

Ndiaye added that Compaoré’s presence was representative of the lack of knowledge around trade in Africa. He felt that awareness was needed to change the current terms of trade with western investors and the African elite.

Aziz Fall, a member of GRILA and the coordinator of the international campaign Justice for Sankara at the United Nations, agreed.

“As with apartheid, you have to know where your money is going. The conference represents a neo-liberal agenda where Africa is easy access for investment. It is a continuation of the colonial legacy, but with a new disguise,” he said.

But while the conference touched momentarily on conflict resolution and issues surrounding development, the main focus was bilateral investment opportunities and the marketing of one’s country.

“You are selling a product. That is, your country as an investment destination, but also competing with your other African counterparts for investment dollars,” said Minimaana. He felt that businesses should be aware of different realities, but ultimately can either choose to take something into account or not.

In spite of the business-driven appeal of the conference, problems were also acknowledged.

Marc Ravalomana, the president of Madagascar, reiterated the importance of Canada and globalization. He profiled the improvements his country was currently undertaking to minimize corruption and improve infrastructure.

“We have a ferocious struggle against corruption,” said Jean Louis-Roy, the President of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development in his opening speech. “Corruption is one of the things we share most in our world today.”

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The article went relatively unnoticed for three weeks until a critique appeared in The National Post and a FOX newswoman called Mallick a “pig.”

“Mallick’s column is a classic piece of political invective. It is viciously personal…and intensely partisan,” said CBC publisher John Cruickshank in a public statement on the issue.

Mallick described Palin as having “a toned-down version of the porn actress look,” and claimed she would ensure “the white-trash vote.” She also accused Republican men of being “sexual inadeuqates” and criticized them for thinking “that women will vote for a woman just because she’s a woman.”

But the CBC has remained in the limelight even after their decision. Though Carlin has maintained his recommendation for retraction came from Mallick’s violation of the CBC handbook on journalism, bloggers have accused the CBC of folding to external pressure rather than to ethics.

Others have questioned the wisdom of removing such a controversial piece of journalism from circulation because of its potential for debate.

“They should have allowed a rebuttal to cast things in a different light. Shutting someone down only adds fuel to the fire. Why this article? Other people have a right to rebut it,” said McGill Sociology professor Elaine Weiner.

Palin, who has only been the governor of Alaska for two years, has been criticized in the media for a lack of experience and competency.

Her candidacy has been seen by some as a political manoeuvre for the women’s vote.

“Senator John McCain’s choice…is a cynical effort to appeal to disappointed Hillary Clinton voters and get them to vote, ultimately, against their own self-interest,” wrote the National Organization for Woman’s chair, Kim Gandy, in an online statement.

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While the Chinese Government claims only 19 people have died in clashes with Chinese police, the Tibetan government-in-exile puts the number at 99, and other groups purport it to be even greater.

Tenzin Yangdon, a Montreal-born Tibetan, said that focusing on the number of dead misses the greater political and social movement.

“China is focusing on the numbers and distracting from the real situation in Tibet,” said Yangdon. “Revolution has to come from within, and it has started.”

On Saturday, Yangdon participated in a vigil at Place des Arts with the approximately 100 Tibetans in the greater Montreal area, as well as other supporters. Many of these Tibetans have had trouble reaching friends and family in Tibet; Yangdon, for example, has repeatedly tried to phone her family, but the number goes directly to a Chinese operator.

China has rigidly controlled Tibet since invading the region in 1949. There is no access to postsecondary education in the Tibetan language, and it has been reported that up to 6,000 monasteries have been destroyed since the beginning of the occupation.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader-in-exile, has preached and practised a strict doctrine of non-violence since leaving Tibet in 1959, creating positive media exposure.

Lara Braitstein, a professor of the Tibetan language and Mahayana Buddhism at McGill, stressed the need to examine the situation from two perspectives.

“The Dalai Lama is of course very important for Tibetans inside Tibet, but perhaps in more of a symbolic way,” Braitstein said. “It is hard to have someone speaking for you who has been out of the country for 50 years.

“We have access to the voices of the diasporic community, but not as much to those within Tibet. They are very distinct voices,” she added.

With the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, a movement to boycott some or all of the games has received varying interest.

Dermod Travis, executive director of the Canada Tibet Committee (CTC), emphasized the importance of contacting Canadian Members of Parliament. The CTC sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Parliamentary House leaders that Canadian politicians attending the Olympics would be “inappropriate.”

The majority of international Tibetan groups want to send a clear international message without punishing the athletes.

“Boycotting the Olympics isn’t the main goal,” Yangdon agrees. “We want more concrete talks between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government.”

A Chinese student studying the Tibetan language at McGill who wished to remain anonymous said the games are shedding light on Tibet, yet the Chinese Government is not acting appropriately.

“The Olympics are too politicized. The issues have always been there and the games are pushing the government to deal with the problems,” she said.

“Still, the Chinese government is playing down the reality. The news reports talk about terrorists and extremists, but fail to mention the monks and citizens. They are taking an angle to make themselves look good.”

As the riots have taken the stage in Western media, international organizations are working to put international pressure on the Chinese President Hu Jintao. In seven days, avaaz.org gathered over 1,000,000 signatures for a petition calling for restraint in the Chinese response.

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