re: “Time For Frank Talk on Health Care,” Sept. 8
I picked up your first issue this year, as a new student at Concordia, and I thought it was solid. Your overviews of the boroughs, hot spots to eat, where to hang-out and live around Concordia was great. Your info for the upcoming Municipal election was definitely very light, but still good to see, it was an intro to the sorts of politics going on in Montreal recently. The only bewildering thing I encountered, was near the end.
I am wondering why the Opinions Editor found it necessary to devote an entire half-page of content to the question of health care reform in the United States. I fail completely in any attempt to divine why the most over talked subject of the last three months, needed a half page re-hashing in a canadian university paper’s first issue. I don’t mean to imply that the issue of health care reform is not of great importance, especially within the United States. However, it seems to me that there are probably more pressing issues happening, domestically and worldwide, with a much greater impact on us as Canadian citizens and university students.
This is the first issue of the Concordian I have read, and maybe I am unaware of the tradition of the opinions editor to just type up whatever irrelevant thing has piqued his interest for the week, but I feel like in such a small paper, a half page is a dreadful amount of content to waste on U.S. politics and background to a debate that doesn’t concern us, in a time when so much is at stake for Canadian citizens in our own country and politics.
It’d be nice to see Mr. Gravelle use his space and editorial voice to bring to light issues that might actually affect those reading his paper, instead of irrevelancies.
-Gene M.
Independent Student
re: “The Be-All and End-All Guide to Montreal,” Sept. 8
Congratulations, The Concordian. You published a “be-all, end-all” guide to Montreal and made mention of only four neighbourhoods. I’m glad there’s somebody out there working to actively encourage anglophone students’ absurdly abridged view of this city. Your Montreal guide is only second in usefulness to the reviews of last Fringe Fest’s programming also published in this issue. If you really want Concordia students to look to you for information, please, keep it relevant.
-Madeline Coleman
Fee Levy Paying Student
I feel a change coming on.
September 11 will always be a tragic anniversary. That goes without saying. However, Mama Maybelle Carter states, “there’s a dark and a troubled side of life, but there’s a bright and a sunny side too.”
Let us remember that on September 11 2001, we also saw a very positive contribution to music that was overshadowed by all the dust and death. This was the release of Love and Theft, one of Bob Dylan’s greatest studio albums. If you know how this man works, you will understand that Love and Theft was a new, gritty sound, where he finally began to work with his smoky voice and fabulous American band. If you know Dylan like I do, you will also know that he works in threes.
That is, he has been changing his sound every three or so albums for the past forty plus years. From his straight up folk albums, to his rock in the mid to late 60’s, to his three great spiritual accomplishments in the 80’s: Slow Train Coming, Shot of Love, and Saved.
We are on the brink of something great, Love and Theft was followed by Modern Times, and most recently, Together Through Life. All of these albums have a similar sound, so if we look at the patterns we can speculate that something great is in store for his Christmas Album set for release in December.
Yes, that’s right, a Christmas album, and its going to be like nothing we heard before. There are the typical naysayer, skeptical of Dylan’s change, but don’t let them get you down. They have been around since he went electric. I will end with a quote from “Together Through Life:” “I feel a change coming on, and the last part of the days already gone” I feel a change coming on to, and I’m open to it.
– Phillip Eisenhower
The following letter was was written by a group of filmmakers, writers and activists including filmmaker John Greyson and Naomi Klein.
Sent to the Toronto International Film Festival. It has been endorsed by notable filmmakers, musicians and activists including: Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, David Byrne, Judy Rebick, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Rawi Hage
An Open Letter to the Toronto International Film Festival:
As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.
In 2008, the Israeli government and Canadian partners Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation launched “Brand Israel,” a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel. Brand Israel would take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive wars, and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture. An article in the Canadian Jewish News quotes Israeli consul general Amir Gissin as saying that Toronto would be the test city for a promotion that could then be deployed around the world. According to Gissin, the culmination of the campaign would be a major Israeli presence at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. (Andy Levy-Alzenkopf, “Brand Israel set to launch in GTA,” Canadian Jewish News, August 28, 2008.)[sic]*
In 2009, TIFF announced that it would inaugurate its new City to City program with a focus on Tel Aviv. According to program notes by Festival co-director and City to City programmer Cameron Bailey, “The ten films in this year’s City to City programme will showcase the complex currents running through today’s Tel Aviv. Celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, Tel Aviv is a young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity.”
The emphasis on ‘diversity’ in City to City is empty given the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program. Furthermore, what this description does not say is that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.
We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.
*Editor’s note: The article cited in this letter was actually published Aug. 21, and written by Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf. In order to maintain the spirit of the letter, the Concordian has decided not to correct these errors.
