Category: Voices

On September 26th and 27th, Héma-Québec is hosting a blood drive at Vanier, but you won’t see me, or anyone like me, in line to donate. It’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because we aren’t allowed to. Why? Because we’re gay men. Like many blood-collection organizations worldwide, Héma-Québec has a 12-month deferral policy for men who have had sex with men (MSM). The organization, along with its nationwide equivalent, the Canadian Blood Services, claims this policy is fairer than the five-year deferral it replaced in August this year….

Many people are concerned with pollution and recycling, as evidenced by the endless supply of recycling bins we can see these days. Signs asking people to recycle more and more things are put up just about everywhere. This concern largely comes from the fact that many people are increasingly worried about the gross amount of waste continuously produced by humans. However, efforts to socially pressure one another into recycling everything yield very underwhelming results because too many of us simply don’t see any immediate personal benefit by doing it. An…

While the human race began more than six million years ago, civilization and the development of cities have only existed for around six thousand years, and thenceforth humanity has created a series of group-level conflicts.  Regardless of small tribes and clan battles that have been in existence since humankind was born, the world has borne witness to at least 3000 wars in the last 3700 years, with roots often tied to ideological changes. Religions, nationalities, ethnicities, and many other categories could define the way of living of a whole society,…

I’ve always wondered why Algeria bears the official name, “People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria,” when the only democratic thing about the country is, well, its official appellation. In fact, the Democracy Index of 2014 classifies the regime as authoritarian, while the Freedom of the Press 2015 report assessed the country to be “Not Free.” Democratic? Yeah, right. It is not unknown either that corruption reeks from every rank of the country’s government and administration, nor that the laws are often—if not always—amended in a way to benefit a few, to…