Montreal’s 35th night of demonstration was free of untoward incidents, but there were 84 arrests in Quebec City where people demonstrated at the building where the student leaders are meeting with Michelle Courchesne.
According to reports on Twitter, one of the people arrested was the BanAnarchiste, the guy in the banana costume.
This mostly-drawn piece called What is Harper Afraid Of? is making the rounds – note the extra details in the tooltips. By chance I also read this George Monbiot piece today about the UK government’s parallel abandonment of environmental conscience.
Are conservative governments working from the same playbook? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
And once again, I ask: What are they thinking? Do they expect human ingenuity to pull our asses out of the fire magically? Do they expect Jesus Christ to come back and render human effort null and void? These governments are acting EXACTLY like a human being on a manic episode maxing out their credit cards with no realistic idea how the debt will be paid off. And yet most of them are parents with kids – what are they thinking??
It’s Chicago / Austrian school economics, aka disaster capitalism. If you delve into which think tank advised whom, the lines become clear; they literally are the same people sometimes. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals
http://saltspringnews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=22175
From a review by William Saletan of Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: “To the question many people ask about politics — Why doesn’t the other side listen to reason? — Haidt replies: We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided.” …”The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.”
Following up on the quotes above, people shape their beliefs according to their identity: if they identify themselves as conservatives, their behaviours and actions will conform to the conservative playbook, and as Haidt shows they reach their conclusions before thinking through the arguments that support them. This applies to liberals as well as conservatives; everyone’s guilty of this process, except possibly a relatively small group of logicians, philosophers, and scientists.
That last paragraph makes it hard to take you seriously. You support the students even though Quebec’s in the red, but then you go and attack the conservatives for their deficit spending? You wanna talk about credit cards, what about the libs’ gold credit card: the sponsorship scandal (it came with free air miles on gov’t jets).
I dont like the cons either, but for me it’s just a distaste, not the kind of blind hatred that lets me forget the same trespasses by the other team.
Raoul, I attack the conservatives for their gutting of environmental laws and wanton pillaging of the planet. A sponsorship scandal is a fart in the wind by comparison.
We are pretty much the only species on Earth capable of preventing its own demise, but we can do so only by transcending our animal instincts that favour short-term self-interest over long-term public interest. If you accept that the evolution of society is about reaching our potential as humans, social conservatism generally acts as a brake on that process, keeping us mired in our animal past. I think there’s a powerful biological basis for social conservatism (I’m drawing a distinction between social and fiscal conservatism, since people can be both social liberals and fiscal conservatives), and that there may be a genetic component that determines the degree to which someone will be more open to conservative or liberal views. People may have no more “choice” about their political leanings than they have choice over their sexual preferences; much of it may be hard-wired. Attacking someone for being conservative or liberal is not that different from attacking someone for being gay. They can’t actually help what they believe; it’s not a matter of logic or reason.
There are elements of conservatism that are good for society and elements of conservatism that are highly destructive. My hope is that as society continues to evolve there will be a force akin to natural selection that preserves the useful attributes and suppresses the destructive ones. I’m just not very hopeful that this process will happen quickly enough.
Well said Brad…
I consider myself from the social liberal/fiscal conservative mode and this situation makes me feel like I am freaking Stephen Harper!!
@ Brad: “We are pretty much the only species on Earth capable of preventing its own demise, but we can do so only by transcending our animal instincts that favour short-term self-interest over long-term public interest.”
Amazing how many people still think humans need to suppress their own natures in order to survive. Hasn’t this strategy clearly failed? We are the only animal poised to snuff out all the other ones, including ourselves. And this has a lot to do with our many vainglorious attempts to “conquer” nature – human and otherwise.
Brad, we can’t improve on nature. When we try, we die.
@qatzelok: the process of ecological succession essentially involves species polluting their own environments to the extent that they can no longer survive in it or they create conditions favourable to competing species that then take over. Lichens to moss, moss to herbaceous ground plants, to shrubs, to pines, to hardwoods — it all happens because these species alter their environments until they are no longer suitable for them. We’re doing the same thing, but there’s a big difference between us and plants: we can see it happening and we can project the consequences. We absolutely have to transcend our natural instincts in order to avoid those consequences.
“Brad, we can’t improve on nature. When we try, we die.”
Which, of course, is why qatzelok lives in a cave and runs around naked, eating only berries that he picks and any small animals he can get his hands on.
Adam, this was a good discussion till you brought the ad hominem.
Brad, I never thought about conservatism as something people couldn’t help. Has nobody ever changed flags? I am aware myself of having had certain of my opinions changed for me by compelling arguments so I know this can and does happen.
Also, the fallacy of the excluded middle, Adam. Please look it up and stop using it.
Kate: that’s not what ad hominem means. Ad hominem means attacking the person. What I was doing was reduction ad absurdum, which isn’t a logical fallacy, it’s a way of pointing out the absurdity of someone’s position.
Walkerp: qatzelok is the one who was speaking in absolutes. I was trying to point out that we sure as hell can improve on nature, in ways that we enjoy every day.
Kate: yes, people have certainly changed flags (there’s the famous Winston Churchill “head/heart” quote that essentially presumes we should all start out as liberals during our younger years and end up as conservatives later in life), but I think there’s a difference between having your opinions changed and changing your fundamental ideology.
Sorry, I hit “reply” before I was finished typing. There have been some studies claiming to find biological differences between conservatives and liberals…I’m skeptical but haven’t looked at them very closely. But I do think there are likely to be psychological/temperament differences that could boil down (as most behavioural differences do) to a combination of nature and nurture. People’s ideology can clearly be shaped by those around them, which is most likely why there are large pockets of conservatism in some regions (such as the American South), but I suspect that genetic differences may also play a role. We are not blank slates at birth; we have innate temperaments that may cause us to be more sympathetic to one ideological point of view over another.
I can hear somebody nearby trying out kitchenware combos to get a good sound.
Sorry, think I have it figured out now.
Lots of roadwork is planned for this summer but there’s also a plan to coordinate projects and encourage transit use to try to avoid the gridlock we saw in parts of town last summer.
Not helpful for those off island. :(
The article mentions Longueuil being involved in the plans. Beyond that I can’t help you – this isn’t the Boisbriand or the Candiac City Weblog.
Linking here to a tweet with a photo of the togged-out law-talking guys demonstrating against Bill 78.
Yeah the same ones who wrote the law.
I don’t know enough about different lawyers’ and legislators’ roles to argue that. But wouldn’t the writers of the law be more likely to be in Quebec City?
There’s no solid link yet, but CBC radio news at 4:30 just mentioned that the Gazette has cut 23 jobs, and tweets confirm it.
Postmedia has cut Sunday papers in some cities and is making layoffs in other papers as well. It’s sad, but here’s a clue: I’m finding this news on Twitter.
Je comprends, Kate. Peut-être vous avez entendu ce qui est arrivé à Nouvelle Orléans avec le Times-Picayune. Nous sommes gâtée à Montréal avec nos quatre journaux quotidiens (sans en compter Métro), mais bientôt il sera comme ça partout, même ici.
Métro et 24h. En publiant 24h, le Journal soutient sa propre concurrence.
3,000 news reports in 77 countries have covered the student/social demo story in Quebec.
How embarrassing.
From the article:”…the student crisis generated 66 times more foreign news coverage in two months than Canada’s entire mission in Afghanistan.”
This really is our choice: kill foreigners for corporations, or bang pots and refuse to collaborate.
Spock, what you have written is certainly true about commercial media representation: commercial media represents non-white/non-rich in a negative way in order to sell products (including arms) to the lily white and the rich.
But to suggest that the entire globe responds to anglo-media is to lend too much credence to the power of the Elite liars who control commercial media, who fuel the fires of hatred worldwide for commercial gain.
Racism is NOT natural. It’s fabricated by MONEY.
@qatzelok
Thousands of years of history and pre-history prove you wrong. Racism is pretty normal.
Something to be stamped out, something to be educated against, something to be eradicated.
But it appears in every society. It’s pretty damn easy to point at someone who doesn’t resemble you that much and say “They are responsible for all my problems.”
Kristian on Coolopolis proposes an interesting idea: requiring observation decks on tall buildings would be a great policy – also good for tourism, certainly.
Thumbs up to observation decks.
Except that Montreal doesn’t have and never will have tall buildings (relatively speaking) because of the desire not to obstruct the view to the little bump called “Mount” Royal.
With a good observation deck people would have views of the mountain and the river, which would be fine.
Montreal has many sky scrapers. And the new zoning in downtown allows pretty high buildings, imho unnecessarily so. There’s no reason to engage in the tall skyscraper building penis contest, it creates more problems than it solves.
Aren’t we supposed to have one in the Oratory dome soon?
Marc: by 2013, I think. I haven’t seen any reports on progress, but I’m interested by that too, and will look into it.
Some thoughts from an Urbania writer about the current situation. He notes that GND’s role is as a spokesman, not a leader; I also liked this: “Jeunes, moins jeunes et moins moins jeunes se partagent la rue pour dire aux dirigeants que ça suffit. Qu’on ne veut pas vendre nos ressources pour quelques sous, qu’on ne veut pas d’élus qui courtisent la mafia, qu’on ne veut plus se faire avoir.”
Only a career journalist could have produced this OpenFile item on how Montreal’s protests have become boring. Only a journalist filing a report like Sunday night’s Concerts de casseroles… déclaré illégale… tolérée… une seule arrestation would regret the chance of filing a white-hot bulletin from the barricades of a city under siege.
This blog entry by U.S. activist Cindy Milstein has been making the rounds; a little wordy, it’s still interesting to hear the thoughts of an American Occupy militant on our casserole uprising.
Thank the maker Québec is a French province.
BEN OUAIS!
Forty-five years later, people who worked as young people at Expo 67 look back on their experiences and how that summer shaped their lives.
After a lengthy rejuvenation cure, the Ritz-Carlton reopens on Monday. I’ve had afternoon tea in the garden café, but it wasn’t something I’d make a habit of.
Splendide! Je ne bois pas le café, je préfère le thé et j’ai le goût pour rien que le meilleur. Donc, je prends toutes mes pauses-thés au Ritz…..
…dans mes rêves.
Serieusement, une autre bonne nouvelle pour Le Quartier du Musée.
Le Ritz a son propre mélange de thé, en sus.
Unfortunately the gardens aren’t open yet…
OpenFile has a useful list of the personages expected at the student strike talks starting Monday afternoon.
At the unproductive talks more than a month ago, there were also reps of the major unions present, although some asked why they were there. Now I’m wondering why they were there then, and why it seems they won’t be there this time.
Ian 05:00 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
$634 according to the ceeb. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/05/28/quebec-student-negotiations-resume-28-05-2012.html Arresting people at a peaceful demo is a pretty cheap shot. Worth noting, the QC cops have also applied bill 78 in the past – the SPVM have refused to.
Raoul 05:20 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
They’re asking for jail time for GND. Oddly enough, the lawyer representing jean francois morasse pro bono also happens to have contributed 1700$ to the PLQ
Ian 05:44 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Are you mixing stories, Raoul, or was the Morasse suit mentioned somewhere in there? Who’s asking for jail time for GND?
Raoul 05:51 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Im so sorry, how dare i presume that jailing a student leader would have anything to do with demonstrations, policing and arrests.
Carry on.
Raoul 06:02 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
here: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gabriel+nadeau+prison
Kate 06:29 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Raoul, cool your jets – fuck off using “let me google that for you” as a passive-aggressive move.
Unfortunately, he is correct. Those are deep waters, with lawyers that are big Liberal Party donors involved in the story.
If GND were to be jailed for something he said, the whole situation would become much bigger than anything we’ve seen so far.
Raoul 06:31 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
if he can dish the attitude he can fucking take it.
Kate 06:32 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Ian has been civil. You are not. Goodbye.
Bill_the_Bear 06:33 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
RDI was running tape of BanAnarchiste being arrested earlier this morning.
Hamza 06:36 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Just let them try it.
Ian 07:07 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
I was just asking a question, no need to get all huffy. Go have another cup of coffee, grumpypants.
erika 09:25 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Perhaps it is not the swearing that has been offensive?
qatzelok 10:00 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
As much as it would be unpopular in Quebec, GND might be just the scapegoat that Tea-Party Canadians need to look like they’re still “in control” of their polluted, small-minded little governments. A Louis Riel for the Internet age.
Only this time, the Anglo garrison society isn’t so strong or united, and that hegemonic and megalomaniac worldview is clearly flawed and suicidal. If only the Anglos who killed Riel could have seen this far into the future. If only they could have heard the pots and pans of Riel-Future.
Ian 10:18 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Morasse, Charest, Courchesne – these are Anglo names?