They handcuffed my son for reasons unknown
Par Jack Locke le 4 novembre 2009
They handcuffed my son for reasons unknown
Forced him down onto stone-cold ground
The boy's still a boy, but boy, has he grown.
Pour en finir avec Falardeau
Par Pierre K. Malouf le 4 novembre 2009
Dans mon dernier Brasse-camarade, Les rues de la honte, je lançais, au terme d’une démonstration qui montrait l’absurdité du projet de changement de nom de la rue Amherst, un appel auquel manquait une phrase essentielle : « Mais je vous en conjure, débarrassez-nous d’abord du boulevard Maurice-Duplessis!» Cet oubli est d’autant plus déplorable que l’entête de l’article annonçait qu’il y serait question du CHEUF. Je reviendrai sur le sujet dans un prochain article ; aujourd’hui je veux régler le cas de Pierre Falardeau.
We dodged a bullet! Une lettre ouverte au Maire Tremblay
Par Beryl Wajsman le 4 novembre 2009
The composite picture above illustrates the bullet we dodged. It's a play on Projet Montreal's placards showing a Polaroid snapshot of something fixed over a picture. Of its current state of disrepair. Well, the election of either Bergeron or Harel could have led our city into the reverse. A prospering St-Catherine street boarded up if either Harel or Bergeron had a chance to institute either of their ideas about closing the street to traffic from Papineau to Atwater in Harel's case, and from Papineau to Guy in Bergeron's case.
Too earnest - An historical perspective on the election
Par Alan Hustak le 4 novembre 2009
Following a bizarre campaign, Gerald Tremblay won his third consecutive term Sunday, the first mayor to do so since Jean Drapeau in 1966. But the comparisons end there. Drapeau won with 95.4 per cent of the popular vote. A majority of those who did vote on Sunday split their ticket. The Mayor lost some of his most experienced right hand men, notably his brother, Marcel Tremblay in Villeray-St. Michel- Park Extension, Michael Prescott in the Plateau Mont-Royal district as well as André Lavallée, in Rosemont, and Diane Lemieux, the star candidate earmarked to run Tremblay’s executive committee, who also went down to defeat in Ahunstic.
Loi 104: l’obscurantisme nationaliste
Par Bernard Amyot le 4 novembre 2009
Si l’on se fie aux réactions empressées et émotives au Québec suite à la publication du jugement de la Cour suprême du Canada invalidant certaines dispositions de la Loi 104 en matière de droits linguistiques, on pourrait facilement se croire dans une société à la pensée unique où le nationalisme et la Loi 101 ont statut de religion dont l’infaillibilité ne peut être contestée que sous peine d’excommunication. Dire qu’on entend encore, dans Le Devoir par surcroît, la ligne de Duplessis, ce grand défenseur des droits et libertés, de la tour de Pise qui penche toujours du même bord… Désolant, surtout en 2009…
Freedom is indivisible: La tragédie de la décision 104
Par Beryl Wajsman le 4 novembre 2009
Chaque fois que l'indivisibilité de la liberté est violée, nous sommes obligés d’exprimer notre opposition. Particulièrement, quand cette violation se produit dans notre cours. Et précisément quand ce que nous défendons est la souveraineté du choix individuel. Parce que la liberté de choisir est au cœur d'une société libre. C'est la leçon objective dans la différence entre la liberté et la tyrannie.
Extending 101 is nonsensical
Par Dermod Travis le 4 novembre 2009
Zilch.
“Alex that would be: ‘what is the impact of extending Bill 101 to the CEGEP level on the quality and promotion of the French language?’ Correct for $200.” Recently, former Quebec premier Bernard Landry and a coalition of French language groups held a news conference to call on the Parti Quebecois to adopt a policy to restrict enrolment at English language CEGEPs.
Federal Court throws out prison smoking ban
Par Jessica Murphy le 4 novembre 2009
Hardened criminals enfeebled by severe nicotine fits have won their court battle against a sweeping prohibition on smoking in federal penitentiaries.
On Oct. 23, Federal Court Judge Luc Martineau overturned the total ban enacted by Corrections Canada in May, 2008.
Environmentalists still trying to kill the internal combustion engine
Par Mischa Popoff le 4 novembre 2009
Remember when global-warming activists screamed for the electric car? They weren’t bothered that it could only go 100 miles, or that it could only carry kids and golf clubs, or kids and groceries, but never all three. This new breed of green believers was willing to lead the way by vastly inconveniencing themselves in the hope the rest of us, overwrought with guilt, would follow suit.
LA PERFIDIE! The UN and the Goldstone libel
Par Beryl Wajsman le 4 novembre 2009
“Every day at the U.N., on every side, we are assailed because we are a democracy. In the U.N. today there are in the range of several dozen democracies left; totalitarian regimes and assorted ancient and modern despotisms make up all the rest. Nothing so unites these nations as the conviction that their success ultimately depends on our failure. Most of the new states have ended up as enemies of freedom." Those words were not expressed yesterday. They were spoken over thirty years ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan while serving as US Ambassador to the UN. They are as true today as they were then.
Election Day USA: Virginia and New Jersey
Par David T. Jones le 4 novembre 2009
On Tuesday, November 3, as a resident of Arlington Virginia, I voted. As I did so, I recalled that Canadian friends had voted earlier in the week in Montreal for mayor and council members. On my ballot were candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and a variety of state and county officials, e.g., school board. For a variety of personal and institutional reasons, this was the first time I’d ever voted in Arlington, having participated by absentee ballot for 45 years in my home town, Scranton, Pennsylvania. But now I was exercising my franchise where I live; it was a privilege to do so freely and one about which I am not blasé.
PArt 1 of 2 - Statist Islam: A continuing challenge to civilization
Par Thomas O. Hecht le 4 novembre 2009
It would have been unlike Prof. Samuel Huntington of Harvard University to say "I told you so" after 9/11. He is too austere and serious a thinker, with a legendary career as arguably the most influential and original political scientist of the last half of the 20th century – as always, swimming against the current of prevailing opinion.
Canada at the G20: power, but do we have a plan?
Par Robert Presser le 4 novembre 2009
In 1976, French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing decided that it would be a good idea to invite the leaders of the major western economic powers (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) to an informal summit at a chateau outside of Paris to discuss their current common economic problems, giving birth to the G7. Later expanded to include Russia (G8) this intimate grouping of world powers dominated the international economic and trade agenda until the Asian currency crisis of 1997 had ripple effects around the world, making a broader consultative forum a priority to encourage cooperation with the developing world. That body was christened the G20, and today it represents nearly 85% of worldwide economic output (GDP) though 90% of the world’s countries are not at the table.
Why is the Dalai Lama so popular?
Par Stephen Schettini le 4 novembre 2009
When I wanted to meet the Dalai Lama back in 1980, I went to his door in Dharamsala and knocked. “Sure,” his servant said. “Tomorrow afternoon okay?” That, of course, was before he became an international superstar.
Le Monde de Piperberg
Par Roy Piperberg le 4 novembre 2009
Still a man to watch; Pierre Trudeau
Par Alan Hustak le 4 novembre 2009
He infatuates us still.
At least a dozen biographies about Pierre Elliott Trudeau have been written, none of them as satisfying as Just Watch Me, (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 788 pp. $39.95) the second volume of John English’s dispassionate, intimate look at Canada’s most contradictory, perplexing and some say greatest Prime Minister.
Segal’s “Inherit the wind” succeeds
Par Alidor Aucoin le 4 novembre 2009
Inherit the Wind. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee’s dramatization of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, is a timely old chestnut of a play, especially now that the fossil skeleton of Ardi, a 4-foot tall female primate who died 4.4-million years ago, is making headlines.
Piazza San Domenico
Par Alidor Aucoin le 4 novembre 2009
A kiss is just a kiss but in Steve Galluccio’s overrated romantic farce, In Piazza San Domenico, a lip lock has toxic consequences. Galluccio’s play, held over at the Centaur until November 15, is a crowd pleaser in the same way that mindless B-movies have a following. The playwright claims Feydeau as an inspiration, but Feydeau enlarged human foibles; Galluccio combines the improbable with the predictable, then exploits human nature in crude and unrealistic fashion.
« Heureux sans dieu »: 14 voix pour l’athéisme
Par René Girard le 4 novembre 2009
L’ouvrage collectif Heureux sans Dieu, qui vient de paraître sous la direction de Daniel Baril et Normand Baillargeon, offre un kaléidoscope sur un thème fort peu abordé dans nos sociétés soi-disant modernes : l’athéisme. Pourtant, comme le rappelle Hervé Fischer dans sa communication les athées représentent 25% des Canadiens selon un sondage effectué en mai 2008.
