Re: “Opting out of QPIRG” by Brendan Steven (26.01.10) In his article “Opting out of QPIRG,” Brendan Steven claims that “controversial groups” should go directly to students for their funding, instead of receiving it through the McGill chapter of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group.

Irony’s a funny thing. And whether it’s a minority-elected government preaching democracy to the global south or an American-educated, torture-supporting opposition leader speaking about returning Canada to its place of soft-power prominence in the world, Canadian politics is ripe with irony.

Although I’ve played team sports since I was old enough to don a pinny, I’m usually quite awkward in locker rooms. Part of it has to do with my upbringing. My family was never a particularly naked one – we didn’t do a lot of topless sunbathing in the backyard or play nude family Monopoly – so nakedness has always startled me.

There are few parts of the legislative process as controversial as the “rider.” Riders are unrelated provisos typically attached to bills that are politically impossible to veto or postpone, usually in order to pass unpopular legislation that would not get approval by itself.

From February 1-7, the McGill chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights staged Gaza Remembrance Week to mark the one-year anniversary of the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Earlier in January, SPHR organized a “Public Commemoration of the Gaza Massacre” in downtown Montreal.

Social organization, for all its clumsiness and evil, has accomplished far more and embodies more good than I do, for at least it sometimes gives justice. I am a mess, and talk about justice. I owe the powers that created me a human life. And where is it! Where is that human life which is my only excuse for surviving! – Saul Bellow, Herzog I live in the Global North.