There’s a recap of the recent incidents surrounding the Hasidic community from CP.
Updates from May, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Metro has a brief photo essay on several grand downtown churches.
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Spock
Nice… :)
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Student group leaders are said to be talking to Line Beauchamp again – although CLASSE has again been excluded. A fairly small turnout graced the 20th consecutive evening demo Sunday.
A splinter group is expected to demonstrate Monday as the smoke bomb four appear in court.
This weekend, a Facebook message from a retired STM worker made the rounds, in which he alleges that the whole metro need never have been shut down for two hours: the ventilation system should’ve made short work of the smoke in minutes.
The Journal went to Saint-Michel-de-Napierville to talk to the family of one of the suspects and collected sad quotes from them on the assumption their scion will serve 5 years for charges connected with inciting a fear of possible terrorism. Isn’t that kind of a meta-offense?
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Mark
“Meta-offense”–that’s almost exactly what I said this morning when I read one of those articles. I wonder if the news corps could be charged for inciting fear of fear of possible terrorism…
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David Tighe
That law should not be applied except in extreme cases. It is one of those Bush type panic-driven laws which should not be on the books
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cheese
With a law like “inciting a fear of possible terrorism” shouldn’t the editor (or someone) from each major media outlet be in jail already?
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Bill Binns
@David Tighe – “Extreme” as in someone has to die? I think throwing incendiary devices in tunnels full of people at rush hour is pretty extreme. There are many ways this stupid stunt could have resulted in death or injury. All over $300 a year. I am all for these people doing 5 years (although I seriously doubt they will). Hopefully they will also be banned from public transport for life as well.
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Kate
There are many ways this stupid stunt could have resulted in death or injury.
At any moment something bad can happen. You can’t charge people over something that might have happened BUT DID NOT.
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Bill Binns
Ok. Are you also in favor of decriminalizing drunk driving in cases where nobody was hurt? But fine, lets toss them in jail for what actually did happen, an attack on a mass transit system resulting in it’s complete shutdown and evacuation.
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ant6n
@Bill
Drunk drivers get charged with drunk driving, not potential manslaughter. -
Kevin
Think of it as being charged for yelling “fire” in a movie theatre.
http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120514/mtl_newsmaker_levy_120514/20120514/?hub=MontrealHome -
Mark
As far as I know, there hasn’t been any clarification as to what the “smoke bomb” was exactly, but it’s doubtful that it was “incendiary”, meaning to cause fires. A molotov cocktail would be an incendiary device.
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All today’s news is about protest, it seems. A march through Montreal Saturday denounced the presence of English in the city as several hundred people and a horse walked through downtown streets.
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Raoul
I think she prefers to be called by her name (pauline marois)
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Marc
Next thing you know they’ll be mounting a campaign to expunge any and all forms of non-French media. Just a matter of time.
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ProposMontréal
I am behind the separatist movement and will always want Quebec to be it’s own country. BUT even me think this march is completely stupid. MTL is a large north american city, English will be part of our daily live. Deal with, speak french the best you can and convince the non-francophone people to love the language.
Marching in the street is provocation on this subject is provocative and useless.
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Fred
Has anyone ever seen a person younger than 50 in those marches? Seems to me that it’s a crowd of hateful retirees – probably just looking for someone or something to put the blame on for the failures of their lives. Yeah, McGill is the reason.
P.S. The video embedded in one of the articles is painfully stupid, I couldn’t watch all the way through.
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Marc
@ Fred: At a PQ assembly last year, forget where it was, but you had a hard time spotting anyone in the crowd who didn’t have grey hair. You can assume the SSJB and such has a similar fanbase.
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qatzelok
Amazing to see so many comments claiming English makes Montreal’s economy better. Meanwhile, 100% francophone Quebec City has almost full employment and no ghettos.
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Spock
QC is a government town. There is an over bloated civil service in this province. That’s why there is good employment there.
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Ian
Exactly, same reason Ottawa is so clean and pretty and irrelevant. Plus of course Quebec City tries to fuck Montreal every chance it can, Montreal being merely a city of students & immigrants.
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Kevin
If you ever wanted to know what happens to old soldiers after they’ve won the war, look no further.
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mdblog
quatzelok: English may not make the economy better, but it sure doesn’t hurt! :)
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qatzelok
Mississippi, Detroit, and New Orleans are hurting for work and money. Maybe they speak too much French in those places?
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Dhomas
Come on, qatzelok. Now I know you’re trolling! First off, I don’t see anyone mentioning that English makes Montreal’s economy better, before you brought it up. Second, you’re telling me that you think that speaking the same language as the 300+ million other people on this continent is a bad thing?
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Spock
OK qatzelok, I’ll bite. What about Trois-Rivieres, Marseilles, Ile de la Reunion to name a few. Not exactly English places and neither are they bastions of employment…
So what’s your point qatzelok?
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qatzelok
My point is that Anglos have nothing but “MONEY!” to boast about, and it’s not even their own money. It’s the money Anglo bankers have that makes them “proud.” Anglo countries typically have the worst social programs and income equality. But they tell themselves that the non-stop Naziism of their constantly warring non-culture is “best in class” because “banker wealth.” Anglos say this in a vocabulary they have honed from watching media and following a PC vocabulary, of course. This just makes it more difficult to cure.
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Spock
You truely are all over the place… Most of your “facts” are also dead wrong:
Worst social programs – Afganistan, CIS countries, Africa, Desiland, SE Asia, etc. thats more people than in “anglo” countries
Income inequality – China, Russia, Desiland, Africa, etc. Thats more people than in “anglo” countries
Oh yeah, and Quebecers don’t claim to have a best in class culture while deriding other cultures and smothering the Native American/Canadian culture… Right…
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Some indignés are back occupying Victoria Square, this time as part of a more organized international movement. The local organization is called JAPPEL, for Journées d’Actions Populaires pour un Printemps Érable et globaL.
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Spock
What else to do on a nice sunny day but sit around smoking weed and taking over squares…
We are too nice a society.
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ant6n
So nice that we’ll have our police ticket a bunch of people 150$ a pop for hanging out at the square past midnight. Municipal curfews are more important than peaceful demonstrations in our too nice a society.
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Spock
Its important to control people who would love all too much to have anarchy.
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Tux
@Spock: Yeah, because anarchy (my definition of anarchy: decentralized leadership as opposed to top-down leadership) would definitely be much worse than than the current situation: A government riddled with corruption at all levels, corporate money buying policy decisions, violent crackdown on peaceful protests… yeah. Lets crush these idealist youths beneath police boots, we’ll teach ‘em to dream of a better tomorrow!
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Alex L
Funny to see so many people whining about anarchism without even knowing what it is. Just like a child that says it doesn’t like brocoli without ever having tried some.
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Spock
I didn’t like broccoli before tasting it. Then I tasted it.
Still don’t like it… :)
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Spock
Kate violence is violence. There are degrees of violence so when you see something that walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck; they, by God, its a DUCK!
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Kevin
@Tux
That’s not anarchy.Anarchy is thugs taking what they want and killing you if you don’t like it.
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Spock
Students that were banned from going to class yesterday got a taste of such anarchy from other “students”.
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ant6n
@Kevin
Spock can’t have used your definition of Anarchy when he brought the term initially, unless he’s completely out of touch.You guys create a funny rethoric device:
1) there’s some guys hanging out in a parc talking about the future of society
2) Spock comes along and calls them Anarchists
3) Kevin comes along and says Anarchists are thugs who kill you just like thatconclusion: The people hanging out in Victoria Square are thugs who want to kill people.
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Both pro- and anti-strike groups demonstrated around town Saturday.
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Fagstein collects the various obits and accolades for Neil McKenty, once a fixture on English radio in Montreal.
Spock 07:45 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
Only in racist Quebec would there be so much news on ethnic communities like this one. I am by no means Hasidic (the polar opposite *wink wink nudge nudge*) but I am exhausted from having them “reach out” only to be attacked again (verbally of course).
Same thing happens to Arabs, Blacks, Muslims, Pakistanis, etc. all the time.
Sux to be non-white in Quebec I say.
And I should know!
Kate 08:33 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
There’s news because there have been incidents, but also positive stories like the friendly meeting at the library. Anyway, if 25% of the residents of an area belong to a visually distinct sect, there will always be some fascination with it, misapprehensions about it, fear of it, news about it. Humans are endlessly curious but as a species we don’t handle the consequences of that curiosity very well sometimes.
qatzelok 09:02 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
With mass media and the banks on your side, you can do no wrong in the Anglo non-culture. Hollywood practically hands us our opinions. “You believe the following…” Seeing these “official opinions” regurgitated on the Internet is a bit depressing because it demonstrates no individual thought whatsoever.
Kate 09:08 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
qatzelok, I have no idea what culture you come from, but you are so wrong about “anglo non-culture”. I am from mixed Irish/English/Canadian anglo background and there is no less cultural content with us than there is with any culture on the planet. If you happen not to be familiar with it, fine, but don’t just state that it doesn’t exist.
Adam 09:28 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
“Anglo non-culture”
It’s like “ethnic” food – it’s only ethnic if it’s non-white, because as well all know, white isn’t an ethnicity, it’s just the default setting.
Yes, I’m being sarcastic. And I say this as a non-European myself.
Jack 10:06 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
@Spock have you read any of the Sun Newspapers in the rest of Canada,watched Global when the Aspers owned it? This type of “journalism” is a go to way to sell advertising.Target,judge by dominant culture tropes and you have a week of cheap yellow copy. Quebec is a racist society,just like everywhere else.
Kevin 10:41 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
People who think anglos don’t have culture are like fish who don’t believe in water.
marco 11:17 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
I don’t think they need to answer to anybody, pure laine or otherwise. People are allowed to live their lives freely in this country last I checked.
qatzelok 13:08 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
Kate, North American anglos get all their “culture” prepared for them by American corporations. This is why I call it a non-culture. I realize your ancestors had things like community and values, but these have been replaced by commercial slogans and driving to malls. This is a sad thing to accept, but there is no way to improve until you do. We need real culture, and this can only come about after we’ve rejected the freeze-dried substitute we were weaned on in the burbs.
Kevin 13:23 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
@qatzelok
Culture is not an industry, despite what french media tells you :P
Adam 14:11 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
What arrogance, to think that there is a difference between “real culture” and “fake culture”. Which is another way of saying, there’s “real culture” and then there’s the stuff that I don’t like. Everything is part of the cultural mosaic, even if you don’t personally approve. Get over yourself.
Kate 15:44 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
qatzelok, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
My first language is English. My mother was born here, and her father was born here, and his father came from Ireland. My maternal grandmother came from England. My dad was born in England but in a northern enclave of Irish Catholic working people: his father was a coal miner and his mother worked in a textile mill, utterly typical of that part of England at the time (see Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier – Dad was born about 15 km from Wigan, but due to death in his family he grew up in Hochelaga, where he very quickly learned to speak French too).
But I was born in Canada and have inherited threads of culture from Ireland-via-Canada and Ireland-via-England and U.S. culture filtered through a Canadian point of view, and the internet means I can listen to the BBC and the CBC and NPR and RTÉ and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) and don’t let yourself be fooled, English is a world language, and those of us who speak it are heirs to a vast, rich and constantly growing and cross-fertilizing culture. We are lucky, I don’t deny it.
Just because the anglos you know only talk and think about mainstream TV doesn’t mean we all do.
And I did NOT grow up in the suburbs.
MB 17:05 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
Kate, sounds like your reply was prepared by the brainwashed suburban corporate mainstream-media Hollywood banks.
(j/k)
Spock 20:09 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
Sheesh, qatzelok, relax.
Not everything is a conspiracy. I realize you hate Americans and their culture but spreading misinformation is quite unbecoming of a person. That’s what dictators do…
FYI, I think I will see The Dictator. Looks bloody hilarious… :)
Ian 22:11 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
I can only trace my anglo family back to 1739. Of course that’s not enough time to develop a real culture of their own as Canadians and they clearly had none they brought with them. I often wonder what they did for an approximation of culture before the American revolution. No doubt they were wallowing in mud pits while waiting for the French to finish colonizing la Nouvelle France so that they could wander in and ruin their culture for them.
Kate 22:15 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
Heh
Ian 22:26 on 2012/05/14 Permalink
Well let’s be fair, Kate, it’s not like Welsh/Irish Maritimers like my family have an authentic culture of their own, it’s all what the Hollywood Jews tell them to be like. …Naw, I can’t even joke about that without rolling my eyes so hard it hurts. Granted my bunch weren’t in Quebec, but anglos have been a major force in Quebec culture for just as long. Plains of Abraham was 1759 fer chrissake! I just don’t understand how anyone can claim that 300 years of anglos in Quebec somehow doesn’t count and that only French culture in North America (?) is somehow the only truly authentic one.
Raoul 07:09 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
“Only in racist Quebec” im getting a little tired of that line, there’s plenty of racism to go around in the world, and in Quebec it’s *hardly* unique to just white people, or french people. I know koreans who hate chinese, thai, japenese and jews. I know africans who hate established african-americans. etc. I am shit-tired of english media painting us as no better than the american south with their KKK.
Having lived in other provinces i can tell you people are just as racist, the only difference is political correctness makes them a little more picky about where and how they share their views.
Spock 08:40 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
Fact:
1. Calgary has a Muslim mayor – no city in Quebec will have one in the near future
2. Rogers is headed by a Muslim – Quebecor will never be headed by one
3. PEI used to have a Premier of Lebanese ancestry – in Quebec you need to be pure laine to make it to the head of a real party; let alone become premier (Quebec Solidaire doesn’t count with only one member and ZERO chance of ever governing)
So yes, Quebec is more racist.
The glass ceiling for non-francophone pure laine stock is quite visible here. I am trying to crack it but it is made more of transparent aluminium (go Star Trek) than glass so not an easy feat…
qatzelok 08:54 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
Yes, Spock, but English Canada supported helping the Americans slaughter Iraqis … while Quebec was strongly opposed. This is probably due to different media diets. Now how does Anglo support for Muslim slaughter measure up against all the tokenism you have listed?
Spock 11:23 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
Most Americans and Canadians are against the war in Iraq. Canada NEVER even participated in that, so I don’t know what you are talking about.
As for French massacres, need I discuss Algeria, Indo-Chine, New France, etc…
qatzelok 13:17 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
Spock, I’m talking about the opinion polls just before the war got started. English Canadians were even more supportive of the slaughter than Americans were, whereas Quebecois (who’ve never attacked Algeria) were about 90% against. Easy to forget this when it’s convenient. Likewise, it’s easy to forget that 30,000 Canadians VOLUNTARILY went to Vietnam to drop napalm on farmers. Garrison society is a non-culture.
Spock 14:24 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
You put anglos all in the same bucket so I do the same with francos. Seems only fair.
It is also easy to forget the thousands of Americans that fled to Canada to escape the war.
Also, lets not forget that Quebec always tries to one up Canada in the sense that oh you like red well I like blue. Or, wait a second, you want to blow up country X, well I oppose that…
Ian 20:37 on 2012/05/15 Permalink
@Raoul – I too have lived in other provinces, from BC to Ontario to Quebec to PEI. I can assure you that this is the only one where the racism is in the form of one dominant culture actively suppressing all others by legal means, replete with marches and rallies. Seriously, this kind of monoculturalist enforcement would be considered racist anywhere else in Canada and would be swiftly denounced by mainstream culture. Here, it’s not only tacit but actively promoted.