08:53 on 2012/08/27 Reply  

• Ephraim 14:55 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  Don’t have a problem with them striking…. do have a problem with preventing others who don’t want to strike from learning. Protest all you want, off campus.

• Bill Binns 15:48 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  Agreed Ephraim but you will get nowhere with that argument around here. Let me see if I can remember how it goes…. Student actions to prevent people from going to school are legitimate because they voted on them. There seems to be a belief that any group of people can get together and vote on something and then enforce the results of that vote with physical action. Oh, also, the people trying to go to school are scabs. Their problems can be dismissed out of hand.

• Kate 15:53 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  I am reporting these incidents because they are news. Ephraim, I know what you think about this. Bill Binns, don’t be a dick.

• marco 17:38 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  Oh Kate… please!

• ant6n 18:29 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  @Bill
  not sure what you’re talking about; I feel the anti-student voices have been a bit louder on this forum, even if readers are generally a bit more on the left.

• Adam 18:48 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  I don’t know whose voices have been louder, but Bill is simply describing the position of the red square movement: we can disrupt people’s lives because we’ve decided that we have the right to do whatever we want to whomever we want for whatever reason we like.

  Go watch the videos of what happened on the website of The Gazette or La Presse. The loathsome cowards who think that they have a right to prevent other people from learning, graduating and earning a living don’t even have the courage to show their faces and have no problem blocking the media from documenting their behaviour.

  There are a lot of things in Bill 78 that go too far, but it would be nice to see the police actually enforce the provisions that prevent people from blocking access to universities. In the name of access to education, no less.

  How anyone can defend this thuggery and intimidation is beyond me.

• Bill Binns 19:58 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  @ant6n – “the anti-student voices have been a bit louder on this forum” Are you serious?

  The discussion here (and a lot of the media coverage in town) regarding the student protests has reminded me of Fox New’s coverage of the Bush presidency. Nights when bonfires burned in the middle of St Denis, molatov cocktails were thrown at police and windows were smashed up and down Sherbrooke or St Catherine were described as “mostly peaceful”. The day of the metro smoke bombing, the most prevalent theory here was that it had been commited by “agents provocateurs” and then it was “fringe elements”. When the people caught were shown to be students heavily involved in the strike it was decided that it wasn’t a serious crime after all and they should be given a slap on the wrist and sent home.

  My comment above may have been delivered with some snark but everything there came from this forum. I remember several rather long threads where many people explained why students trying to go to school should be considered scabs for the first time anywhere on the planet. Several other threads where the justification for forcibly closing the schools was traced back to “but they voted!” again and again.

  This is all fine. There is no shortage of places online to speak to the “throw them all in jail” crowd but lets not pretend the anti-strike crowd had dominated the discourse here.

• Alex L 20:51 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  Bah. Anyway, red square wearers are violent terrorists, it’s a fact (even that old lady I saw at the market). The Gazette and La Presse said it.

• Kate 23:04 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

  Bill Binns, Adam, please calm down. I am simply reporting a news story here. You’re both trying to escalate this thread, and presumably debate on this blog, into hysteria. Do not try to bait me or anyone else. (I said “don’t be a dick” earlier and meant it. This is what I meant by it.)

  Language like “violence” and “loathsome” and “thuggery” is not helpful – it isn’t going to convince me or anyone else to espouse your position. I am not going to allow your smokescreen of emotional rhetoric to take over this topic.

• marco 00:13 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  @Kate
  You can cut the BS about “simply reporting a news story”.
  You freely offer your opinions and then call somone a dick when they don’t agree with you.

• Kate 00:45 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  Don’t be a dick, marco.

• Ian 05:58 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  And so it begins again, teh right-wingers painting a portrait of a society in collapse. As i recall a few years ago people were complaining that the kids today had just lost the spirit of radicalism of the 60s… well, it’s back, and it’s not over until it’s over. Worth noting, while there were people in the streets over months with up to 10s of thousands at a time, there were relatively few arrests, even fewer charges laid, and in the end, most of them weren’t even students. I recall one demo of 5000 people with, if I remember correctly, only 6 charges laid, only 2 of them were students. None against the cops who were beating up the kids, but hey, par for the course. The government seems to think students won’t vote and continues its merry plan to weaken access to education and illegalize legitimate protest. Why anyone isn’t on the side of the students is beyond me… but in any case, it ain’t over ’til it’s over, whether westmount and the west island like it or not.

• Bill Binns 06:36 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  @Kate – I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Your post was about masked students taking over parts of UQAM (again). “escalating the debate on this blog into hysteria? Where did I do that? I can only assume that “don’t be a dick” means “if you don’t have anything nice to say about the student protesters, than just shut up”.

• Alex L 07:19 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  I agree with Kate on that one. If I were to make a long emotional harangue talking about people against the red square movement and saying they were violent loathsome cowards and thugs intimidating people, you’d probably react fiercely. That’s exactly the kind of commentary that would normaly be moderated to prevent people from changing this blog into a place of personal attacks rather than discussion. Keep it cool.

• ant6n 07:28 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  @Bill
  That sarcasm (and strawman) there about how some readers here interpret the strike, that’s trying to pick a fight with people here; sounds like you want to discredit people who you don’t agree with. And I did say your voices are louder, not that you dominate the discourse; although in this thread both is true.

• dwgs 09:55 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  Am I the only one around here who is of a mixed mind on this topic? What’s a sociall progressive, fiscally conservative guy to do?

• Ephraim 10:29 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  It’s now the minority that is striking, not the majority. And at some of the schools, the votes are going through without even quorums.

• Josh 15:11 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  I don’t understand how it’s controversial to refer to the actions of the current strikers as “intimidation”. Are they not, factually speaking, trying to intimidate students away from school? “Thug” is a loaded word, so I understand the reaction to that, but what the strikers are up to right now is the very definition of intimidation!

• Adam 17:45 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  I am just calling a spade a spade, and I didn’t mention names. I’m talking about the people who are engaging in this kind of behaviour. I find the people who are disrupting the classes vile beyond belief. They are self-appointed, unaccountable and violent. They don’t give a damn about the people whose lives they are disrupting. They are acting in the name of some abstraction – The People, The Students – but actual people and actual students are just irritating pests to be bullied into submission. The words I used have meanings and I chose them deliberately. There’s nothing wrong with passion as long as it doesn’t interfere with reason.

  And Ian, there is nothing “right wing” about being against intimidation and violence. I don’t have a right-wring bone in my body. I just believe in the rights of people to live their lives in peace and I’m repulsed by those who grant themselves the power to impose their will on others through whatever means necessary and whatever the cost to their victims. Their mentality makes me ill. The kinds of people who cheerfully volunteered for the blackshirts weren’t some peculiar species that’s been stamped out. They exist here, too – they just don’t have the same opportunities for destruction that they did in other contexts. But they’ll jump on any opportunity they can get to do what they love most. And no one is claiming that society is collapsing. Is that the bar that needs to be cleared before someone expresses concern?

  “We voted against this boycott, we paid our tuition, but each time there is a new obstacle put in our place, a new vote, another blockage,” he said. “Some of the protesters, say ‘Who cares, we’re giving up this semester.’ I saved five years for this. I’ll lose six months. This is my life.”

  Doesn’t anyone care about him and those like him?

  http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Efficacy+Bill+depends+institutions/7157592/story.html

• Ian 19:11 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  Did you seriously just compare the student movement to Mussolini’s blackshirts? Pardon me while I point and laugh. You need to calm down “by whatever means necessary” if you want to be taken seriously.

• ant6n 21:06 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

  As I said, loud voices.

• MB 03:45 on 2012/08/29 Permalink

  Kate’s only re-asserted that she posted a news story (news it is) and not to be a dick. Am I missing some secret agenda between the lines? Or some place in this thread where she is “freely offering opinions on the story”? (Or why she should even be expected not to?) What rational person doesn’t look for food for thought, but why everyone being a dick about it I dunno. I’d hate to see comments closed and people banned for incivility, when so many interesting insights and opinions have been posted over time. Relax plz!

• Kate 07:50 on 2012/08/29 Permalink

  Thank you, MB.

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