In the 1942 classic Casablanca, a scene early in the film pits Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) against Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser in a test of Blaine’s cynical neutrality. Strasser asks Blaine if he can imagine the German army in New York, to which Blaine cooly answers: “Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” The same could now be said of Montreal, only instead of territorial New Yorkers, German Panzer divisions would have to navigate the Montreal’s rapidly eroding streets…
Category: Politics
On Queers Against Israeli Apartheid & Pinkwashing
A queer group that labels itself with a contentious term—apartheid—that then can’t explain to the general public why queer people have anything to do with it, is destined to fail. And this is unfortunate, because they do have important ideas—criticizing ‘pinkwashing’ being the most important
The Wrong Shade of Green
Earth Summit 2012: World powers are too preoccupied with austerity and corporate growth to care about environmental sustainability
Bombshells left and right at hearings into political corruption in Quebec
The picture pained by Duchesneau and his colleagues this week is of municipal and provincial political parties where corruption is not the exception, but the rule. They outlined a political system driven by illegal contributions, where corruption is known about and encouraged at the highest levels
June 22: Things are coming up Charest
With another day of action against tuition hikes planned for this afternoon – the sequel for similar actions on the 22nd of March and May – I spent the June 21 combing few some of the recent polls to try and get an idea of where all this madness has left us politically
South Africa’s transition to democracy could have served as a model for Egypt
There’s reason to believe that the fledgling democracy in the largest Arabic country in the world is in grave peril. Sadly, more than a year after the Egyptian people rose up in revolt and overthrew the kleptocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, in a relatively peaceful revolution, the remnants of the old deeply corrupt establishment are coming back to haunt them… Why the architects of the revolution didn’t look to the South African model for making the transition democracy with a strong set of checks and balances, is beyond me
Mixed feelings at Berlin’s gay memorial
Of all the feelings I thought I’d have at a memorial to gay Holocaust victims, shame was the furthest from my mind. Yet it’s exactly what I felt
The Fix is in
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”. Those words were spoken a couple years ago by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It was a sentiment that Republicans at the national and state level, along with corporations, business owners and Supreme Court Justices put into action even before those words were spoken.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights criticizes Quebec
In an opening address to be delivered today to the 47 member UN Human Rights Council, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay will express her “alarm” at ongoing attempts to restrict freedom of assembly in Quebec…
Khawaja case to put Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act on trial at Supreme Court
This definition of terrorist activity may not necessarily be a recipe for abuse of power or a threat to our most cherished basic freedoms. However, in the hands of this unscrupulous federal government, these powers will almost certainly result in the undermining of human rights in Canada, sooner or later