Category Archives: Global Politics
The Talon’s Statement in Support of BDS at UBC
The Talon Editorial Collective endorses the UBC chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights’ (SPHR UBC) call to implement the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement at UBC. As such, we endorse the following referendum question: “Do you support your student union (AMS) in boycotting products and divesting from companies that support Israeli war crimes, […]
Social Justice Synonyms #16: “Illegal Immigrant”
Welcome to the sixteenth segment of Social Justice Synonyms, a column at The Talon that discusses harmful and oppressive language embedded in our culture and provides ways to unlearn this language. This week’s term is illegal immigrant. This piece pulls from the work of Harsha Walia, a local South Asian activist, whose book Undoing Border […]
Why Gupta’s Casual Racism Should Worry You
Gupta has said the right things about UBC’s role in society, but his actions from the Band Aid video to his allocation of tens of millions in research funding at a time when the Board of Governors is hiking students fees and complaining about a lack of funding for the university, say far more about his plans.
University wake-up call: petition demands closure of mining institute
Originally published at Stop the Institute. VANCOUVER, BC – Over 1000 individuals and civil society organizations are signatories to a letter petitioning coalition universities to dissolve the mining, oil, and gas think-tank headquartered at UBC. Among the signatories are professors Glen Coulthard (UBC), David Suzuki (UBC, emeritus), Stephen Collis (SFU), Stephen Brown (U. of Ottawa), […]
President Gupta Accepts Racist Christmas Challenge
Every year at Christmas, a bunch of celebrities get together to ponder whether or not the predominantly Christian continent of Africa is aware that it is the annual celebration of Christ’s birth*. More accurately, they get together to question whether their stereotypical Africa – the hopeless, starving, disease-ridden continent of uneducated people suffering from malaria, […]
UBC-hosted mining institute a threat: an open communiqué for directly affected communities
Introduction Critical analysis of the limited information that’s been released over the last year and a half from the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI), hosted at UBC in coordination with Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the École Polytechnique de Montréal (EPDM), leads to some damning conclusions. CIRDI is a mining, oil, and gas […]
The Lift to Lima: A UBC Student’s Experiences at the UN Climate Talks
It seems counter intuitive to fly to South America to sit in a military installation to negotiate climate change action, but so it goes in the world of the United Nations Climate Change negotiation process. As a delegate of the Youth Arctic Coalition and Polar Bears International I am following the 198 parties into negotiations […]
Ayotzinapa Protest and the Importance of Solidarity
These atrocious acts of censorship and abuse of institutional and political power mirror the recent Burnaby Mountain protests and the acquittal of Darren Wilson. There are clearly many layers of injustice here; why has there been so little investigation on the whereabouts of these 43 students? Why is police brutality still so prevalent when they are meant to protect us? Why does the Canadian government still consider Mexico a “safe country” for refugees? Why have so few Vancouver publications reported on the protests that happened in the heart of Downtown?
A Note on Remembrance Day
Certain aspects of Remembrance Day make me uncomfortable, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. The white poppy (sometimes called the peace poppy) is worn as an alternative to the red poppy, and is meant to ensure that remembering past conflicts doesn’t involve glorifying or simplifying war. Traditional Remembrance Day ceremonies honour the victims […]
Jewishness in the age of Protective Edge
Trigger warning: graphic violence in the indented quotation that follows Every floor was covered with wounded patients. We were treating the injured in dental chairs, doing surgery on the ground, doing anything we could to save people.” In normal times, Kuwaiti Hospital serves two or three cases a day, usually older women. “Our colleagues weren’t […]
