Author: Jason C. McLean

2011 Year-In-Review: News

With revolution in the streets from the Middle East to middle America, a major power shift in Ottawa and a smattering of other events that would have stolen the headlines in any other year, 2011 will be largely remembered as the year that got the ball rolling for the future, good or bad…

Some people never change: Tremblay evicts Occupy Montreal

You know when you dislike someone and then they go and do something really cool and you start thinking that maybe you’ve misjudged them? Inevitably, they go back to their old ways and you realize that nope, you were right about them all along and you kick yourself for doubting your preconceptions. That’s exactly how I feel right now about Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay and I doubt I’m the only one. For weeks, Tremblay kept a drastically different tone than the mayors of other major cities with an occupied public space. Following the 1am commando-style raid…

The Arab Spring meets fall in New York, but you won’t find #OccupyWallStreet on TV

BREAKING NEWS: New York City is under occupation and has been for a few days. You’d think that would be breaking news, wouldn’t you? Even if it’s not the whole city, just the financial quarter. And even if it’s not an invading army, but people upset with the way their own country is running things (in this case, the economy). After all, domestic upheaval in Egypt and people occupying a public square in Bahrain was headline news all around the world just a few months ago, wasn’t it? Come to think of it, the lack of media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest is just like the Arab Spring. State controlled media completely blocked the protesters’ side of the story…

Remember 9/11 but don’t forget the rest

Ten years ago I was working the night shift in a call centre. I had been up kind of late the night before and a phone call before 9am was not what I wanted, but it’s what I got. My initial reaction to news of a plane hitting the World Trade Center was blunt: “Yeah right, Jerry, I’m trying to sleep.” But he insisted that he wasn’t joking and that I turn on the TV…But he insisted that he wasn’t joking and that I turn on the TV. After a bit of groaning, I left my bed that I had only reached a few hours prior, went into the living room…

I want my TV for free, just like it used to be

We all know those people. The kind that proudly don’t own a TV, don’t need one and don’t want one. I know people like that and I sympathize. I agree that TV can be an intrusive presence and a real conversation stopper, not to mention it’s a medium dominated by corporate advertising which I despise.

Still, I never counted myself among those ranks because there is something mind-numbingly pleasing about watching a good show, even a cop show. Yes, this anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate activist likes him some CSI.

We also all know people who feel that owning a TV is…

Closing the window on Irene

As the remnants of Tropical Storm Irene pounded Montreal this past Sunday, I hunkered down in my apartment. Listening to the winds blow and the rain fall, I thought to myself: “I should really close the living room window, my roommate’s XBox is getting wet.” If you were expecting my rainy day thoughts to be something more profound or at the very least profound-ish sounding and dealing with the nature of nature and its relationship to our very unnatural culture, well, that’s not the case here. And why should it be? Yeah, I had been outside earlier in the day. I had felt slightly stronger-than-usual winds press up against me as I ran some errands. I witnessed the closest thing my neighbourhood got to destruction…

Like we’ve done one thousand times before: FTB’s 1000th post

I’d like to interrupt our regularly scheduled flow of news, arts and culture coverage and commentary to bring you an important announcement. Well, maybe not so important for you, to be honest, but for us here at FTB it’s kind of a mini-milestone. You see, the post which you are reading is the thousandth to appear on this site. Think about that for a second. We’re a small group. No one’s being paid, from administrators and editors to writers and photographers, we’re doing this because we love it. We’ve all got other things going on in our lives and have other ways to pay the bills. Despite this, in roughly two years’ time, we’ve managed to produce 1000 pieces of content…

Let’s play the CPCCA game, you only have to give up your freedom of speech

Well, the freedom to speak out, protest and criticize injustice just got a whole lot more complicated in Canada. The Canadian Parliamentary Commission to Combat Antisemitism released its report and to the surprise of almost no one, it opted to pretty much redefine criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, instead of proposing ways to deal with real instances of antisemitism…

Internet on the radio, FTB on CKUT’s Friday Morning After

This morning I woke up a little earlier than usual, had my coffee and took a walk through the already sweltering heat, arriving at the CKUT studios in the heart of the McGill Ghetto around 8am. I was there to talk about FTB on the Friday Morning After. Not to be confused with our very own sex column of the same name, CKUT’s Morning After is a local arts, news and culture radio show running Monday to Friday from 7-9am. The hosts change depending on the day as does the language they speak on air. The Friday edition…