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Gérald Larose et les systématiseurs rigoureux - Partie 2 de 3
Par Pierre Brassard le 16 décembre 2011
Dans les années 70, à une époque qui n’est pas si lointaine, M. Larose participait à une petite mouvance de « catholique de gauche » comme prêtre rédemptoriste. Il était en effet membre du Réseau des Politisés Chrétiens et responsable d’une minuscule et pompeuse « commission de théologie ». Dans un article hautement significatif qui est une véritable pièce d’anthologie intitulé Des chrétiens ont choisi le marxisme, Larose exprimait des propos lourdement marxisants. Il constatait que beaucoup de chrétiens, dont lui-même, sont attirés par l'analyse marxiste.
Charles Dickens: The man who gave us Christmas
Par Alan Hustak le 16 décembre 2011
In the spring of 1842 Charles Dickens took a steamboat from Kingston, Ont. and sailed down the St. Lawrence intoMontreal with his wife, Catherine, and found the town “full of life and bustle.” Dickens was 30 and had already written six books, including Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. No other novelist has had such a spectacular success. Two hundred years after he was born in 1812, Dickens remains as immortal as Shakespeare. It is probably fair to say more people know of Oliver Twist, the artful dodger, Syndey Carton, Miss Havisham, Micawber, Scrooge and Tiny Tim from the endless television mini-series, movies and Broadway musicals based on his novels than they do from reading his books.
“Addio Pizzo" wine
Par Robert K. Stephen le 16 décembre 2011
You may have had organic wine. You may have had biodynamic wine. You may have had wine produced by sustainable agricultural methods. But have you had "pizzo" free wine? “Pizzo” in Italian means protection money paid to you know who. Fed up after assassinations and murders of members of the judiciary leading investigations into organized crime, a spontaneous movement erupted in 2004 in Palermo bearing the slogan “Addio Pizzo” meaning good-bye to protection money and let’s support those in the economy that are Pizzo free. Their slogan reads, “Un Intero Popolo Che Paga Il Pizzo É Un Popolo Senza Dignità” translated as such, “A Whole People Who Pays the Pizzo is a People Without Dignity”.
God of Carnage
Par Alidor Aucoin le 16 décembre 2011
God of Carnage, at the Centaur until December 4th, (and probably longer) is a clever and brutally funny farce that’s the hottest ticket in town. A perfect ensemble cast under Roy Surette’s disciplined and brilliant direction unleashes 90 minutes of domestic mayhem on an unsuspecting audience. The play explores that razor thin line between civility and savagery, love and hate. What we have here is reminiscent of Who is Afraid of Virgina Woolf without Albee’s bite.
THE DELIGHTS OF A DOUBLE ENTENDRE
Par Alidor Aucoin le 8 novembre 2011
The Play’s the Thing at the Segal Centre until Nov. 20 is a delightful revival of Ferenc Molnar’s 1920’s period piece, Play at The Castle, (Jatek a Kastelyban), a silly farce adapted by P.G. Wodehouse in which sexual hi-jinks inspire a word play-within- a-play. Set in a Mediterranean villa, the parlour comedy is based on a real life incident in which the Hungarian playwright arrived in his hotel suite with one of his friends and overheard his wife in the next room, apparently in the throes of passion, exclaiming, “I love you, I love you, I shall die of love for you!”
Le Monde a Changé - 9/11 - Ten Years Later
Par Éric Duhaime le 26 octobre 2011
Où étiez-vous à 10h38 le 11 septembre 2001? On s’en souvient tous. J’étais dans mon bureau dans l’édifice du Centre du Parlement canadien à Ottawa. Quelques minutes plus tard, la sécurité faisait évacuer le building. On courait sur la rue Wellington, en panique, devant la Tour de la Paix, comme si un avion allait nous tomber aussi sur la tête.
Ce n’est pas les deux tours du World Trade Center de New York qu’Al-Qaïda a attaquées ce jour-là, mais plutôt notre démocratie, nos valeurs et notre mode de vie occidental. Cette véritable déclaration de guerre bouleversera chacun de nos parcours.
Occupy What?
Par Beryl Wajsman le 26 octobre 2011
Ok, everybody gets it. Economic disparity between the wealthy and the workers is expanding at a faster rate than at any time in the post war period. We have seen the destruction of a free and fair market by rapacious corporate chieftains. But why occupy Wall St.? The problems do not lie in Wall St. or Bay St. and certainly not in Pace Victoria.
If these protestors really understood the markets, they would know that the stock exchanges are the great equalizers. No you can't beat the markets. But if you understand them, then a relatively small amount of money, properly invested, can produce a healthy supplementary income. People should pay as much attention to that as they do to sports.
The case against transparency: Public inquires may not be in the public interest
Par Dan Delmar le 26 octobre 2011
Building one kilometre of road in Quebec costs 37 per cent more than it does in the rest of Canada; in urban areas like Montreal, the gap is wider at 46 per cent, according to statistics from one particuarly troubling Transport Canada study. The numbers speak for themselves. 0 per cent of Quebecers believe that public money is being spent responsibly on infrastructure 100 per cent of the time. The question is: Where is our money going?
Tory Omnibus Crime Bill Will Produce More Crime and Less Justice
Par l'Hon. Irwin Cotler le 26 octobre 2011
The Conservative’s omnibus crime bill will result, sadly, in more crime, less justice. There are six principal problems with the legislation.
To revive our courage to loathe - 9/11 - Ten Years LAter
Par Beryl Wajsman le 26 octobre 2011
No, this is not another essay about the abomination of the modern theocratic kamikazes of the Middle East and why we must remember 9/11 because of them. Enough has been written about that. Legitimacy or condemnation, applause or denunciation, they seem to all assume a single phenomenon at issue: killing for a cause, strategic murder. However, they sadly miss the point. These are very different activities indeed. A new manifestation of an old evil was loosed upon the world that day 10 years ago.
9/11 - Ten Years Later
Par Sid Birns le 26 octobre 2011
Ex-New Yorker, now Montrealer, veteran of Omaha Beach, and postwar NY-based staff photographer for UPI, photojournalist Sid Birns shares his thoughts and images as we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the shock and tragedy that was 9/11.
‘I didn’t have to ask ‘why?’’ - Memories from a Times reporter - 9/11 - Ten Years After
Par Robert Frank le 26 octobre 2011
I had been covering terrorism in Canada for The New York Times for the past two years, part of a team around the world working for investigations editor Steve Engelberg. The New York Times was one of the last newspapers to invest heavily in investigative reporting. Its explanatory reporting on terrorism would eventually earn it another Pulitzer. The newspaper had already been building a file on would-be Algerian terrorists for a year before Ahmed Ressam tried to enter the United States with explosives to blow up Los Angeles airport in 1999. In the wake of Ressam’s bumbled bombing, no other news outlet in the world could match the depth of our coverage.
I wasn’t one of the millions whose first reaction was to ask “why?” I already knew the answer.
Remembering 9/11 - Ten Years After
Par David T. Jones le 26 octobre 2011
"Who You Are Is Where You Were When"
~ Morris Massey
The quotation refers to the events that define you and your generation—life and history altering episodes that are the benchmarks for memory and the iron pole around which your future swingsand conditions your thinking. For my parents, it was Pearl Harbor. For me, it was the JFK assassination. For my children (and for me again), it has been 9/11.
Ahmadinejad and Human Dignity
Par The Hon. David Kilgour le 26 octobre 2011
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s report expressed “serious concern” about Tehran’s record: “...increased executions, amputations, arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials, and possible torture and ill-treatment of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and opposition activists.” Ban deplored the persecution of Iranian minorities, including Arabs, Armenians, Azeris, Balochs, Christians, Jews, Kurds and Baha’is.
Witnessing the Egyptian revolution
Par Mourad Shalaby le 26 octobre 2011
It was nearing Christmas day, 2010. Feeling cold and gloomy in wintery Montreal, I decided to listen to my parents’ pleas and spend the holidays with them in Egypt, my country of origin. As a third-year Master’s student at McGill University, I had no more courses to attend, my only remaining academic duty being to finish my thesis. So I promptly booked a flight to Cairo, with the intention of spending a quiet and uneventful time with my family in Egypt. Little did I know that I was about to witness something historic and, well, revolutionary.
The Myth of Non-Intervention in Syria
Par Rouba al-Fattal le 26 octobre 2011
The crackdown on Syrian demonstrators continues, despite growing international condemnation of the Syrian government. More than 2000 civilians have been killed and approximately 3000 have been reported missing. But why is the international community not threatening military intervention as it did in the case of Libya?
Les «cavaliers d’Allah» au grand galop! - 9/11 - Ten Years After
Par Amb. Fred Eytan le 26 octobre 2011
Une décennie après les attentats spectaculaires du 11 septembre, la lassitude occidentale à l’égard des « cavaliers d’Allah » encourage le terrorisme et favorise la délégitimation de l’Etat juif. La dernière attaque contre l’ambassade d’Israël au Caire, première délégation diplomatique dans un pays arabe, est un signe grave et inquiétant dans les relations internationales.
The lingering costs of 9/11
Par Robert Presser le 26 octobre 2011
Looking back on the economic aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is a difficult process because so much of it involves speculation as to what might have been. How would the US have spent, or better yet, not spent, the one to two trillion dollars required to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? How much growth has been denied to the developing world because of curtailed investment out of the fear of continued attacks on first world assets abroad? What opportunities have been missed because of travel avoidance in our personal and professional lives? All of these hypothetical and theoretical alternative economic scenarios are challenging to quantify but are worth considering if we are to chart an economic course through what looks to become a decades-long war against international terrorism.
Looking for God in all the right places
Par Father John Walsh le 26 octobre 2011
I had never imagined a room filled with people who were so different from one another. There was a woman with a head scarf, a man with a chequered scarf around his neck, a woman with a beautiful sari and others with a variety of western clothing. One man with a yellow toga and a shaven head was, I surmised, a Buddhist. They were mingling with one another but they were distant from one another. I began to speak with a young man who declared immediately, “I am a Sikh,” and the Buddhist I had already recognized declared, “I am a Buddhist.”
Tax is not a four letter word
Par Alex Himelfarb le 26 octobre 2011
Ironically it is in the anti-tax U.S. that a conversation has erupted on taxes. Warren Buffett and a few other billionaires helped open the door, if only a crack, and President Obama has, finally, made taxing the rich a key means of funding his jobs plan. In the context of all that is happening now on Wall Street and beyond, these now seem like small and belated steps. Bigger things are in the air. But the conversation is now engaged and, judging from the reaction — accusations of class warfare, “no tax” pledges — tax is a proxy for these bigger things.
Gérald Larose: parcours d'un catholique de gauche - Partie 1 de 3
Par Pierre Brassard le 26 octobre 2011
Ce texte vise à décrire de manière critique un courant au sein de l'Église catholique au Québec : les « catholiques de gauche ». Il n'est pas à proprement parler une contribution à la recherche universitaire sur la petite histoire des « catholiques de gauche ». Il tenteplutôt de circonscrire certains épisodes qui paraissent significatifs sur l’un d’entre eux qui nous dirige immanquablement vers une réflexion sur l’antisémitisme, l’antijudaïsme chrétien et l’antisionisme absolu.
Of prizefighting and playwrighting
Par Byron Toben le 26 octobre 2011
On September 22, 1927, the most famous battle in boxing history took place in Chicago. Gene Tunney, the quiet, literary heavyweight, defended the world championship he had won one year before from Jack Dempsey, the “Manassa Mauler,” who had held it for 10 years. This was the fight with the famous “long count” controversy played over many times today on YouTube. It was the first over $2 million dollar gate in entertainment history ($22 million in today’s money), seen live by 125,000 people (no TV in those days).
Angst and Anning: an awry comedy.
Par Alidor Aucoin le 26 octobre 2011
Colleen Curran’s True Nature, which opened the Centaur ‘s Theatre season, is really an academic lecture about Mary Anning, the obscure 19th century fossil hunter, disguised as a play.
It is also a sophomoric variation on an increasingly familiar theme involving neurotic baby-boomers torn between romantic commitment and a career. True Nature appears to have grown out of a series of focus groups that came up with a cross-section of characters designed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
Both sides wrong
Par Beryl Wajsman le 10 octobre 2011
The excuse used by Mayor William Steinberg to justify the inclusion of the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur in existing Hampstead anti-noise by-laws was damaging and wrong-headed. Statutory holidays on which municipal workers don’t work is one thing. But to overlay that with a veneer of religion to satisfy specific groups is quite something else. Freedom of religion, in the words of James Madison, is also freedom from religion. The idea is to live and let live. Allow the broadest possible latitude in which everyone can fend for themselves. Religious strictures should never be imposed by any governmental authority.
ALLAH CAFÉTÉRIA!
Par Éric Duhaime le 26 août 2011
Ceux qui suivaient avec passion la comédie dramatique des accommodements raisonnables à l’affiche dans tous les médias québécois en 2006-2007, changez de poste ou lisez maintenant les journaux anglophones. Après avoir injustement accusé les Québécois de quasi-racisme, le Canada-anglais vient de lancer ce qui pourrait fort bien être un film s’intitulant « Les Accommodements 2″. La grande première se déroulait la semaine dernière à Toronto, à la Valley Park Middle School.
From subject to citizen: Keeping the promise of the authentic Canadian liberal revolution
Par Alfred Apps le 26 août 2011
On May 2, 2011, the Liberal Party of Canada suffered the most devastating election defeat of its long and storied history. There can be no doubt about that.
In terms of both elected members and voter support, Liberals swapped places with the NDP. And it all seemed to happen in one fell swoop over the last half of a very short campaign. No sooner had voters pronounced their judgment than the pundits were pontificating.
Canada and arrogance of Amnesty International
Par David T. Jones le 26 août 2011
Washington, DC - All human rights organizations are imperious; didactic; and self-righteous. They perceive their role as afflicting the comfortable and belaboring malefactors whose sins of omission as well as commission demand vitriolic criticism. Amnesty International (AI) is a human rights organization and by definition seeks to criticize: the mote in your eye gets the same intense condemnation as the beam in the eye of another offender.
Capitalism’s insurance not citizens’ ‘entitlements’
Par Beryl Wajsman le 26 août 2011
The global economic crisis has led many commentators and politicians to engage in heated debate over the appropriate balance between increasing government revenues and decreasing government spending. With sovereign debt in doubt throughout the west, the debate is sorely needed. But what is not needed is the hijacking of language and the misrepresentation of the issues that flow from that act by placing the vulnerable among us at the greatest risk.
Jack Layton, a happy warrior
Par Alan Hustak le 26 août 2011
There can be no argument that Jack Layton built a place in history. “Bon Jack”, was today’s NDP.
A cheerful political warrior, Layton’s always positive, often too sunny demeanour resonated with many. In the recent federal election Quebecers felt, because of Jack, that the NDP was a comfortable pace to park their votes and propelled him into the Opposition leader’s seat. And this year, many Ontario Liberals abandoned their leader to become, at least for one election, “Layton Liberals.”
Candles, tears and a song for Jack
Par P.A. Sévigny le 26 août 2011
Three generations after friends and supporters first raised the city’s monument to honor George Étienne Cartier, more than a thousand people came out to honor another great Canadian. As the sun was setting over the mountain, women dressed in black with nothing more than a bright orange scarf began walking down the street towards the monument. Others used the bus while some rode in on their bikes. There were lots of smiles and friendly greetings as everyone caught up on the news after they dropped out of sight after the last campaign. While some women were pushing baby buggies, others were helping their mother shuffle along with her walker. Some were happy to be with friends while others stood alone with their thoughts at the foot of the monument. Candles were lit as someone began to read the letter Jack Layton wrote only hours before he died.
Europe has known such violence before
Par George Jonas le 26 août 2011
The European Union is beginning to look eerily like Germany under the Weimar Republic. Comparisons are never exact, and anyone could come up with a string of obvious differences, but in the EU many groups of citizens are at odds with their society's principal values, just as they were in Weimar, and by now several have expressed it through acts of political terror, targeted or random, as their soul-mates did in Germany between 1919 and 1933.
L'indécent cirque médiatique des flottilles pour Gaza
Par Pierre Brassard le 26 août 2011
Ainsi donc un bateau canadien se prépare à briser le blocus naval et aérien qu'Israël impose à Gaza. Une coalition canadienne, comprenant entre autres Amir Khadir, Gérald Larose et l'abbé Raymond Gravel, appuie sans nuances ce bateau, contre l'avis du gouvernement canadien. Regardons la question de plus près.
To War or Not to War
Par Akil Alleyne le 26 août 2011
President Barack Obama has finally declared his intention tobegin a phased withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, in a gradual process to be completed by 2014. America is thus lowering the curtain on its long, bitter slog through a society that has already stymied more than one imperial interloper. Perhaps more significantly, the US pullout appears to be garnering something approaching bipartisan support. Even some Republican presidential candidates like Mitt Romney are now averring that the president is right to make America scarce in Central Asia. There are obviously countless ways to look at President Obama’s decision, and as many judgments to be made about it.
Teetering on the edge of the unknown
Par Robert Presser le 26 août 2011
As I write this article I cannot say with any degree of optimism that any of these struggles will produce a positive outcome. The unprecedented, multi-dimensional (military, social and economic) tumult we are currently experiencing is unprecedented in modern history outside of a major world war. Our collective ability to muddle through thus far is testament to the efficacy of modern international cooperation among developed and developing nations. Those who believe that our institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Bank, the G20 and others are compromised and ineffectual should pause and consider what would have happened since 2008 had these institutions not provided a forum for discussion and coordinated response.
Why “The Children's" is not just any institution
Par Brigitte Garceau le 26 août 2011
The Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation recently held its 12th annual ball at Windsor Station. This one, under the chairmanship of the indefatigable Mirella and Nadia Saputo, raised a record $900,000. Several years ago I had the privilege of co-chairing this important community event. I want to tell you why it’s not just another society ball.
