Category Archives: Political commentary

Guns and Roses – a brief history of violence

Gazette(?) photo from the 2010 Anti-Police Brutality Demo, our annual headbashing festival

Another week, another round of cops killing unarmed, though ostensibly dangerous people. Three incidents in three weeks in which Montréal police discharged their weapons, resulting in two deaths. First, January 26th in Rosemont, then on Feb. 7th, in Beaconsfield, and again on Feb. 16th in CDN (see the view from Toronto); just a reminder – today is the 21st. Underlying these recent incidents is a long history of Montréal police brutality and several high-profile cases of lethal-force under questionable circumstances. The Villanueva Case has cast a long shadow, and the SPVM’s participation in last June’s G20 Conference in Toronto hasn’t done much to improve their public image. What’s worse is the Québec law which has cops investigating other cops – which means the SQ investigates the SPVM almost exclusively. It may seem as though Montréal has a high crime rate; the recent series of arson attacks and the still unsolved murder of local artist (and I’m proud to say I met him, he was a decent guy) Bad News Brown will only add fuel to fire come election time. As our belligerent and autocratic dictator Stephen Harper warns the people crime is spiraling out of control, he may be able to dupe more people than just Gilles Duceppe to follow him on an bogus anti-crime crusade. It’s great fodder for the electorate, as the Willie Horton Scandal demonstrated so clearly.

What may not be immediately apparent is that Montréal’s homicide rate, as an example, is comparatively low for a major North American city, and its been dropping too, hovering around 35 per year for the last few years. Gang violence, by contrast is supposedly rising. ‘Gang violence’ seems like a meaningless term to me because its so vague, but it hits home – especially in the middle and upper class suburbs, where the very idea of gangs operating nearby may translate into lost property value. Note as well, it seems as though every ‘gang member’ arrested in this city is either from Montréal North or Little Burgundy. I didn’t realize the gangs were as territorial as Hipsters. That aside, come election time, whether Provincially or Federally, the conservative elements in our society are going to push for a tough-on-crime agenda. Harper’s made it clear, he wants more cops and more prisons, and the mayor’s of major cities will want to get in on the spending spree. More cops with more guns – a quantity over quality situation develops and suddenly our homicide and ‘gang-violence’ rates will both skyrocket. Why? The Gangs and the Police are locked in an interminable war, and when you break it down, there are roughly the same number of major police forces as major gangs and organized crime syndicates. The police ultimately have the advantage, not because they appeal to the people, but because they operate as a singular force.

The level of collusion, corruption and inherent indiscipline in the SPVM, coupled with the very real possibility of fear-vote driven police expansion, could lead to many more examples of excessive force here in Montréal. This in turn will only cause the gangs to swell their numbers and increase the total number of firearms in the city. Getting-tough-on-crime legislation never works, because it generally only leads to more violence and death. Consider the LAPD’s approach to crime fighting in the 1980s and 1990s, when the CRASH Unit was unleashed to combat LA’s street gangs, and the Rampart Scandal demonstrated how quickly such units degenerate into unscrupulous corruption and outrageous abuse. When the police are seen by the people to be as bad or worse than the people they’re tasked to control, society breaks down in a big way. This is what happens when a police force decides to take an almost universally aggressive approach to fighting crime – eventually, the chronic stress will cause the people to go crazy en masse. Think winning the quarter-final against Boston is bad, check this out:

Over the weekend my cousin proposed an interesting solution to the recent spate of cop-shootings. He suggested that the Montréal police adopt a system pairing a rookie cop with a veteran cop and divide the weapons between them, so that the elder, more experienced constable would have the use of a handgun. The rationale being that an inexperienced cop may be more inclined to panic and use excessive force. I concur with the point on youthful inexperience serving as root cause for panic leading to the deadly use of a firearm, as demonstrated not only recently, but in the case of the Villanueva Shooting as well. However, a key element in an experienced officer’s more prudent use of a firearm is almost entirely dependent on their years carrying one. I would hope that a retiring constable would take immense pride and satisfaction in knowing they had never once used their weapon, and that they would be appropriately recognized for doing so. My cousin suggested 35 as the age in which SPVM officers would be allowed to carry firearms, though I can’t help but think there would be an “initial-use giddiness” regardless of age.

What if we were to adopt a more British style of policing? Specifically, I’m referring to the limited use of police firearms in a society in which firearms are already highly restricted. Increasing the penalty related to firearms offenses within the metropolitan area, coupled with a new policy which disarmed the majority of local police and placed a new focus on community relations (ie, by re-introducing paired pedestrian patrols), could have dramatic effects on reducing violent gun deaths and excessive force. Ideally two fit police officers, trained in hand-to-hand combat and equipped with mace, batons and hand-cuffs could operate just as effectively as the armed patrols we have today; how often do they really need their weapons? Armed officers in the UK are in the minority when compared to the entire police apparatus, and they are trained to exercise extreme caution in the use of deadly force. The UK has one of the world’s lowest gun-homicide rates in the world.

Unfortunately for us locals, we have a history of gun violence that begs the question as to just how well trained the SPVM actually is. The 1987 police killing of Anthony Griffin is still fresh in the mind of Montréal’s black community, while the 1991 killing of Marcellus Francois re-enforced the perception that the SPVM was careless, incompetent, or both. Things haven’t gotten much better vis-a-vis the SPVM’s use of excessive force since then, as the “flics-assassins” watchdog blog attests. Consider as well this 1995 New York Times article on being young and black in Québec.

The SPVM isn’t aggressive with immigrants and minorities uniquely, though calls of racial profiling are regular. The generally aggressive attitude of our police force is best defined by the extent to which one officer went during his career as principle SPVM enforcer. This is the infamous case of “Shotgun” Bob Menard, a Montréal police constable and undercover officer who is rumoured to have killed between 10 and 15 people while on the job, at least once with an assault rifle of his own choosing. It should be noted that Menard was initially responsible for taking down bordellos, gambling dens and gangs, but then progressed to neutralizing a mafia don and then finishing his career blasting away at bank robbers. At around the same time, the SPVM ‘morality squad’ was responsible for the Sex Garage Raid and subsequent police brutality which ultimately culminated in the unit’s partial disbandment, firings and a new policy towards peaceful protests. Still though, seems like a constant two-steps forward, one-step back.

There are many, many more examples of extreme force used by the Montréal police, and after these recent events, we as a society need to ask whether policing is working locally. Can it be improved? Can disarming a portion of the force and integrating police back into the community they serve lower the rate of violent gun deaths and reverse this terrible trend? Is it wise to have a police force which seems to be increasingly racially, economically and psychologically separated from the people they are supposed to serve?

This is an issue for all citizens in a society, and it must be taken very seriously. I would personally advocate for significantly fewer armed officers and stricter control of illicit weapons, increased community presence, mandatory urbanisation and diversification of the force and a substantial investment in surveillance, communications and intelligence sharing between different levels of law-enforcement. But most of all, police must be accountable to a civilian oversight committee charged with determining whether lethal force was justified in a case by case basis, with stiff penalties, up to and including prosecution should such a panel rule in favour of the victim.

We must take control of crime by controlling our fear, controlling inequity – we must never live under the constant stress present in a society in which the line between criminals and law enforcement is blurred into non-existence. We can’t allow anything remotely resembling the 1992 Riots to happen here, and it scares me to think how the situations may be more comparable than most would think. Los Angeles re-bounded successfully – would we be as lucky? Or is ours a fate worse than Detroit, Baltimore or New Orleans?

A critique of the hyperbolic newspaper *updated*

Another example of this terrible paper: is the actual situation this cut and dry?

This is the letter I just fired off to David Johnston of the Gazette for the rather poor working of this particular article: Westmount Mini-war

Sir –

“Mini-war”? Really?

A bit hyperbolic don’t you think? I think what’s going on in Bahrain, Libya or Yemen right now qualifies as a ‘mini-war’. Ask an Iraqi or an Afghani what war is like and you’ll be surprised to learn there’s usually very little talk of burying hockey rinks or ameliorating community services.

From my experience, debates of this nature during war time are typically interrupted by massive explosions, choking via chemical gas and the constant, droning rhythms of machine gun fire.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you want to be taken seriously – and trust me when I say this applies to the Gazette as a whole – you can’t keep submitting ridiculous headlines and bylines like this. It’s not the first time I’ve written to complain about your paper’s poor (or exploitative) command of the English language, but I’ve typically been given the run-around. A lot of ‘it’s not my decision, pass the buck, I’m not responsible etc etc’.

The Gazette likes to think it is a Montréal institution, and it should be. But as long as it feeds the innate human desire for scandal and uses the worst kind of Fox News rhetoric to convey information, it will remain a joke. A bad joke, one which brings shame and humiliation to the entirety of the local Anglophone population.

We need a newspaper of record, one which is taken seriously. But more and more I see a scandal rag with an editorial board taking cues from Hearst’s portrayal of the Spanish-American War.

Try harder…

With utmost sincerity,

Taylor C. Noakes

_____________________________________

And here is Mr. Johnston’s response:

Hello Mr. Noakes:

Thank you for your letter. I couldn’t agree with you more. You might not know that writers don’t write their own headlines. That’s a job for copy editors and, like writers, they have good days and bad days, good habits and bad habits. I also think that war metaphors are greatly overused in our business – and as you say, they are particularly silly and inappropriate these days, given what we are seeing in the Middle East. I’m going to talk to the senior editors here and see if we can start making it a policy not to use the word war so loosely.
Thank you,

Dave Johnston

***

Frankly, I couldn’t be happier with this response. I think we have a friend on the inside!

The STM is planning on selling you out…

Hector Guimard's Métro entrance at Square Victoria - credit to Wally Gobetz for the great shot

The STM recently announced its intention to solicit corporate sponsorship for the Métro, something which has never been done before. This is not the same as posting advertisements; the new plan seeks sponsorship of the individual lines, with branding occurring pretty much everywhere, from the ubiquitous, landmark Métro signs to the ticket kiosks to the maps, branding, branding, branding everywhere.

Andy Riga has excellent coverage of this issue, which can be found here: Metropolitan News

I think Michael Fish really nailed it when he asks if the corporatist elements of our society have any shame left. No, clearly they don’t – the STM won’t make more than $155 million over ten years. When you compare that to the billions of dollars per year in the operations budget, you begin to get that queasy feeling the corporate branding will be going to line the pockets of city administrators and STM corporate governance. It certainly won’t speed up the deployment of our new trains, that much is certain.

As you can imagine, both Projet Montréal and Transport2000 have come out against this plan. I for one am also against it – our Métro was conceived as being sponsorship-free, or if you’d prefer, people-power is the sponsorship. Frankly it’s bad enough we have to contend with television, advertisements, scrolling-advertisements and the variety of people actually handing things over to you, do we really need to ‘ride the Bell line to switch at Monsanto Station?’ Moreover, do we really want the pride of Montréal’s public-transit network sponsored by, say, General Motors Corporation?

Enough is enough Рif the STM really wants to increase overall revenue, they should stick with the original plan, that is Рto gradually extend the M̩tro to cover the entire metropolitan region. Doing so would allow the STM to collect revenue from more than 3 million people, as opposed to half that number currently.

The system was designed to put art and architecture to the forefront, but gradually, we’ve let the STM remove artwork and alter the design of the stations without adequately consulting the artistic community which designed the stations in the first place. Initially the system was designed to act as a new kind of public art gallery, in which each station could be experienced for its own artistic merit. What happened to that?

Think about the lost artwork the next time you’re in McGill Métro station, where the stained glass mural has big gaping holes which never get fixed, yet the rest of the station can be covered in advertisements overnight.

I strongly encourage my fellow Montréalers to resist this invasion and manipulation of public space. I for one will deface any corporate sponsorship I see. Let’s see how much of that $15.5 million per annum they can save when they have to contend with rider dis-satisfaction and a population hell-bent on vandalizing corporate sponsorship.

The Ghettoization of Franco-Québecois Culture

Pauline doing her best Mussolini impression - clearly not the work of the author

If Pauline Marois truly believes she is protecting and promoting Franco-Québecois culture by proposing an initiative to force Francophone and Allophone students into French-language CEGEPs, than it necessarily implies that she also believes the future of Québec does not go further than our geographic borders, and that our youth need not be trained for the Global Village already in the works. In sum, through this proposed extension of Bill 101, Ms. Marois is setting us up to take a fall, one which will undoubtedly sever our people from fully participating in global initiatives, and will further result in a servile and dependent people. If this is her idea of increasing the individual sovereignty of the people of Québec, than we should prepare ourselves for the bondage-by-fear characteristic of the Duplessis Era. When it comes time for an election in this province, it will be a choice between an embattled neo-Liberal party and one who would have you believe that limiting the education choices of adults is a step towards national independence. That kind of thinking is reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s illogical gaffes and the Tea Party’s fear-based rhetoric than it is of cold, sober Canadian political philosophy. Let’s not go down that road of no return that has called like a Siren to so many befuddled Americans. Make no mistake – Pauline Marois is the bottom of the barrel, and no self-respecting, sovereign Québecois should ever want her to lead this province. It would be disastrous; here’s why.

Nationalism is dead. Pan-Nationalism is the future.

Nationalism has shown its dark side time and time again, a leading cause of world conflict for most of the twentieth century. Think of the Balkans in the 1990s; think of Italy’s mad dash for colonies in the 1930s; I hate to use this point as it’s cliché, but we can’t escape the reality that Nationalism drove the Nazi movement – indeed every fascist movement – and Nationalism can be found as a root cause of every genocide. So why do we, the sovereign people of Québec, pay any attention to a political party which uses Nationalism as its ideological foundation?

The people of Québec are part of a larger Franco-Canadian nation, but we are Pan-National by nature. Neither Québec nor Canada has ever been a homogeneous society – even as far back as our colonial period, French settlers, Canadiens and many Aboriginal nations shared our land, inter-married, learned each others ways, customs and languages. If the Voyageurs had not been accepted into Aboriginal nations and families, we never would have prospered, never would have survived. The ‘purest’ Pur-Laine Québecois has plenty of Aboriginal and Irish in them – our cultural reality is manifestly plural. The foundation of our current inter-cultural society can find its ideological base in the necessities of our people’s colonial experience. We became a new kind of people, one ideally suited for the centuries to come – a people in which adaptation, cosmopolitanism and multi-lingualism were necessary keys to survival.

The world is getting smaller every day. In order to survive and prosper in the decades to come, we, the people of Québec, will have to decide whether we have the collective will to participate in a global economy, a global network of governments, and all the global initiatives required to end war, hunger, disease and the destruction of our global environment. As communications and transportation networks develop, we find ourselves sharing the planet in a manner akin to a large village – and in the process, we are becoming more and more aware that we must collaborate and cooperate in order to achieve trans-national and trans-cultural goals. In essence, we are moving towards an increasingly inter-cultural world, and the future will belong to the people most capable of living a global existence

So when the leader of the Province’s once-respected sovereignist party proposes to limit the education opportunities of the people, of the youth in particular, this same leader is cutting us off from the world, and this will harm us gravely. Pauline Marois is proposing the ghettoization of Franco-Québecois culture, and by doing so seeks to reverse the trend set during the Quiet Revolution. Ms. Marois thinks the Quiet Revolution is over, passé. It isn’t, it is the heart and soul of Québec’s progressive movement. By attempting to extend Bill 101 into the CEGEPs, she is attempting to limit education opportunities for all communities, while further limiting the natural trend towards multi-lingualism in post-secondary education. What’s worse is the fact that Anglophone CEGEPs would have their funding cut in addition to restricted enrollment, while Francophone and Allophone students would go to unilingual CEGEPs and universities instead of the already multi-lingual ‘Anglophone’ institutions.

A better idea would be to ensure all the students of Québec are taught both English and French equally at the primary, secondary and CEGEP levels, so as to guarantee a fully bilingual workforce. This is not something from the pages of futurist science fiction; it could be accomplished easily within a couple generations, yet we lack the will to be daring, creative. This is manifest in the policies of Ms. Marois, who would rather own a little North American fiefdom, with the people of Québec as her dependent subjects, than realize our nation’s full potential. In her rhetoric, she prepares her followers not to lead, but to be held captive by fear – of the other, the Anglophone, of Canada, of the immigrant who learns both English and French. For all intents and purposes, she may as well sell you fear of the British Empire, of Loyalists or the Orange Order. She wants to induce a siege mentality in this province, despite the fact that there is no threat to the French language, culture or society. Each year there are more of us, and each year more immigrants learn French and adapt to our ways – more often of their own volition than through force and coercion.

If our dearly bewildered opposition leader is given carte-blanche, she will undeniably erase the progress made during the Quiet Revolution. She will provoke Québecois of all language and cultural groups to leave the province for better opportunities elsewhere, force a referendum no one wants, and jeopardize our economic stability. But what is worse is that she will turn this province into a ghetto, and our people will suffer the indignity of a ghetto mentality. Such an indignity will leave an indelible mark, and we will perish as a community, as a society, because of it.

The Ghettoization of Anglo-Québecois Culture

Anglo Gothic - work of the author, February 2009

Just found a fascinating NFB documentary entitled “The Rise and Fall of English Montréal“; four parts and worth watching, though for some reason I can’t find it on the NFB site.

Filmed around 1992, the 350th anniversary of the founding of Ville-Marie, this documentary presents a Montréal which, in many ways, no longer exists, though I’ll let you determine whether you think it’s for better or worse.

The day-to-day realities for young Anglophones living in Montréal back in 1992 were rather bleak:
Р300,000 Anglophone Qu̩becois emigrated out of the province, and by extension, the City of Montr̩al.
– At least 100 Anglophone schools were closed – this despite the fact that parents in various affected communities petitioned to share surplus space in Anglo schools with the over-crowded Francophone schools. Not much has changed here, as local School Boards continue demonstrating not only their incompetence, but their role in petty power politics as well. Guess who loses out here: poor people who need to learn both languages!
– At least 600 major corporations, industries and businesses: this includes Sun Life, Canadian Pacific, the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank to name but a few of the really big names. The countless smaller enterprises hurt the local and provincial economy just as much.
– At least three ‘anglophone hospitals’ (like they’d refuse anyone based on language) serving small Anglo enclaves in NDG, Verdun and Lachine were closed around this time as well.

In addition to these issues, the traditionally Anglophone western edge of the city had come on hard times and was badly neglected. Institutions were being renamed and lifelong residents, even multi-generational, established Montrealers were splitting for fears their rights would be gradually eroded until they were second-class citizens. I still feel those who left over-reacted, though this doc does a good job in contextualizing the multiple reasons why some Anglos felt threatened.

At the very least, 2011, unlike 1992, is faced with a separatist movement in steep decline, a recovering and stable local economy, and many major new development projects. Though Anglophones continue to emigrate out of the province for lack of opportunities (or at least the perception thereof), the local Anglo population is 93% bilingual, and the out-migration is now considerably less than it once was. Perhaps those who stayed truly discovered their identity as Québecois.

And the language laws aren’t nearly as enforced as they used to be either; perhaps its because the guy behind the counter can converse freely in several languages, perhaps because the OQLF has realized French is better appreciated and encouraged when not deliberately enforced.

As far as the documentary is concerned – check out the many panoramas of 1992 Montréal; for all the hype of the anniversary’s related re-development projects, there are still many regions which looked god-awful; consider the overhead shot focused on Guy and Boul. De Maisonneuve for instance.

Enjoy,

It’s shit like this Concordia…

Happy New Years etc – in case you haven’t heard, birds are dropping from the sky in the Bible Belt. I’m calling it now, God’s pissed and Moses is coming back. I guess this means Assange will lead North America’s progressives into Zion to escape the bondage of the evil GOP/Fox News consortia?

Ha! Boy it’s impossible not to sound like a complete lunatic these days isn’t it?

Found this gem at Con-U a while back:

New sign with braille – check!

Bilingualism – check (kinda).

Dropping the letter ‘g’ to make your institution of higher learning seem more ‘urban’ while simultaneously doing the complete opposite of what our language laws stipulate vis-a-vis the size and visibility of the French language – priceless, mind-blowingly priceless.

Oh, and our President either just got fired or quit. Can’t remember which it is, and what does it matter, either way she’s still going to make $700,000.

Over the break this was a topic I wanted to discuss with my elder relations, hoping to score some inkling as to whether they saw this as emblematic of a larger problem. They said no, and kept repeating how her severance would’ve been determined years ago, before she got the job.

‘I could give a shit’, was my uncouth response. The problem is that people are getting paid ostentatious sums whether they complete their job or not.  Whether Woodsworth was fired or not doesn’t actually matter. Con-U has dumped two presidents in the last three years, with many other VPs leaving for various unspecified reasons. All of them were offered corporate-style severance packages. None of these people deserved the money they received. In the real world, poor people must complete the job in order to be paid for it. If they’re fired, they get to sign-up for Employment Insurance. Woodsworth gets to go to Tremblant.

If the Boomers ever wonder why the youth of today has zero faith in them or the establishment they represent, here’s why.

At night, I curse the Fire God I pray to for gifting my generation with such an insurmountable mess to clean up.