2012/05/08

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  Avenue du Parc - Jour de la Terre /Earth Day - 2012.04.22
  La foule se dirigeant vers le Mont Royal - The crowd heading towards Mount Royal
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Niet!

  I turned off forced login on Sunday and in the matter of hours "Russian Federation" popped back again to nose around. Back to padlock. I've frequently had people (or robots) coming and then leaving no harm done, and it does not orverly bother me . This one however scoured and continue scouring my site from A to Z passing through everything there's in it which is not barred. This is the first time this happens and I don't see why I should put up with this. There is another personal reason also, which I may talk about another time. I'll just say that it's related to certain Russians I have met and not in a good way. It's pretty much a cocktail of mafia and far west over there these days.

  

  Putridness

  Conrad Black is a former Canadian, born in Montreal, and also a former international press magnate who has just been released from prison in Florida after having been sentenced for fraud in a much publicized trial at the time. I say former Canadian because Señor Black, who thinks very much of himself, renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2001 so as to become a British Lord. Now that he's in trouble within the States where he is more or less persona non grata, he'd like to come back to Canada. Of course, his having a posh estate in a posh district of Toronto is purely coincidental. The correct answer by the Canadian government should have been "We weren't good enough for you back then, well tough luck. Get lost". The answer from Stephen Harper was "Sure, come on in for a year. Then we'll see". Conrad Black was transported swiftly from Florida to Toronto in a private plane, then headed directly to his domain where he was greeted at the iron gate by his wife Barbara Amiel, who used to write columns in Black's papers and magazines, and who's a certified right wing bitch (my assessment). Oh yeah, the dog was there too. It was all very touching. You've got to give it to the rich and infamous. They sure can make you fall in tears over their terrible fate.

  Meanwhile, Omar Khadr is rotting in a cell in Guantánamo since 2002 because Harper's government keeps putting sticks in the wheels of his return to Canada. Khadr is that 15 year old (now 25) who is, him, very much Canadian, born in Toronto, and who had the bad luck of having had a Taliban-loving freak for father (now dead) who brought him to fight with him in Afghanistan against the Infidels. Khadr would have thrown a grenade which apparently killed an American soldier. It's all circumstancial evidence. No one saw him do it, he just happened to be one of only two alive after the Americans stormed the place he was in. Alive is a big word: lost an eye and shot twice in the back by Americans. And even then. War is war. Since when throwing a grenade in war time is a war crime? It was a "War" agains terror or was it not? By the way, shooting in the back is not a war crime? But even this put aside, 15 years old remains 15 years old. And a child remains a child. Khadr was never given the slightest chance of proving his innocence, if ever he was, which I don't know. From the start, he was considered guilty and in the wonderful extra-judicial paradise that Guantánamo is, he was also screwed by the Canadian government multiple times, who lied to him like there's no tomorrow. Americans have wanted him out of Gitmo for years because they know what a hot potato this case represents, and will make everything they can to prevent Khadr from being tried on American soil because then laws of justice would have to apply. An arrangement between the two governments came about last year to patriate Khadr back to Canada, one of which Khadr accepted the conditions, namely to plead guilty to a bunch of counts. Everybody knows it meant nothing as per his being guilty or not, that's its all a facade for both governments to save face, that he did it to get it over with, to get the hell out of Gitmo. Those who made up this arrangement know it also, but they pretend they don't, and say so publicly straight-faced, as if we were too stupid to know the difference. But even now, Harper keeps acting like he's the king of the world and plays hard to get, frigging around to delay Khadr's return. No such fuss for Conrad Black. The door is wide open. Not that we are surprised. Those hypocritical right-wingers find their mutual comfort in the same political sewers they make their home, and recognize themselves in the darknesses of hardships by their own smell.

  Meanwhile also, every week-end, tens of piss drunk teenagers who are way over fifteen years old, take their or their parent's car/truck/suv and go kill themselves but also many innocent people some of which who are in their own yard or just strolling on a sidewalk, other driving in the opposite direction unaware that these dummies are about to end their life, or leave them crippled forever. These cretins will never be hassled like Khadr's was. They'll never have 9 year prison terms in a no man's land, chained like animals. And those they killed this way in the last decade outnumber the 9/11 death toll by quite a number.

  Fifteen, he was. Peach fuzz still in the face.

  
  CONRAD BLACK WELCOME IN CANADA
  Cartoon © Serge Chapleau - La Presse (May 5, 2012)

  Trivia: That 'fuzzy face' link I provide above is from Toronto's National Post. «It was founded in 1998 by media magnate Conrad Black».

  

  Putridness - II

  I don't want to talk about the student strike situation which is getting worse by the day. Too much would have to be said. All I'll say is that the Quebec government is acting the same with its youth as Harper is with child-soldier Khadr. Total contempt. Bullying rather. That's it. Bullying. Like in the film. Like in the school yards. Like in so many places. The big guy making abuse of his force on the smaller one, with a bunch of cro-magnons applauding. Sickening and disgusting.

  

  An window opening

  The rest of the week will be the same as the former 'rests of the weeks' have been like for over a month now. After a few nice days, total crap for the remaining days. Since they forecast rain for the upcoming days (today [yesterday] was gorgeous by the way) maybe that would be a good window of opportunity to finally post a few pics from my last trip down there where they call their country Mexico. I'll have to make some other uploading tests about the videos. Xanga seems to be clueless as to how to treat videos put together by Windows Moviemaker and using [.MOV] videos in HD format. My former camera used the [.AVI] format and I didn't have any problem then. I hate posting a raw video with no title or anything, more so that at times they are better bunched up together in a single one. On the other hand, they have for most close-ups of people's faces, which is always ethically touchy.

  There is one good side about this year's weather. Contrary to last year when it was the exact opposite, the nice days are now always in the week-end, and the crap left for the working weekdays. This, for those who work from Monday to Friday, is nothing but a blessing and I am very happy for them.

  

  Da food section

  Live lobster was on special at a supermarket chain last week (5,99$/lb, I don't remember in Kg) which is a very good price for these here pastures. Usually it's more near 9$ to 11$ a pound. They were 1¼ pounders in average, which is about 600 grams. I had bought two which, with potato salad, is enough for two meals. I don't remember the last time I had lobster with only clarified garlic butter as an accompaniement. Next time maybe... I'm an Acadian so we eat them with fingers and tools, like a big knife to split and crack open the large claws ^[1] (the presence of a wooden board is exactly for that), and using the hand as a vise to crack open the tail section after having ripped it off from the body and then pushing it out of the tail carapace. The rest of the lobster is eating with similar "no frills" methods. It's a little messy, I convene, not really a restaurant-friendly way of eating lobster, but it's the traditional way for us who were for a very long time people living along the coast, many being fishermen.

  I kept the potato salad simple this time around: only potatoes, hard boiled egg, green pepper, celery, chopped green onion tails, salt, pepper, a whisper of cayenne pepper, mayonnaise and a dash of milk to loosen it up (the mayonnaise). Since I knew I had two meals on the lobster agenda, I bought a half-bottle of Bourgogne Aligoté to wash it down. I think a Muscadet would have been better, but that's only me.

  

  ^[1] - This is not as simple as it sounds. You must hold the claw upright then send the knife down on it with just the right force and at just the right place so as to not split the claw in two but to send it deep enough to be able to then twist the knife in a lever motion so as to make the carapace, and not the meat, crack in two. Usually, the little claw has been removed prior to this. If its meat did not come out by itself, it will also be split in the same way. In this case, there's an added degree of difficulty since that little thing is not very thick to start with. The prize in both cases being of course ending up with nice unbroken piece of claw meat. This is all part of the fun of eating lobster, along with, in the end, passing the eight little legs between your teeth in a swaying motion while pulling on them, so as to extract all the tender little meat they contain. Juicy karma. I feel stupid to add this, but the little legs will also have been ripped off from the body prior to this extatic activity, otherwise people seen sucking on them while still attached to the lobster may look awfully silly to anyone around and looking. Having a fancy tablecloth on the table is not traditional at all, it is rather even quite ill-advised. Cooking water lodged inside the carapace is known to spill everywhere eventually. To put it in simpler terms, I left it there solely for a nicer photo shoot, and also that I already had planned to wash it the next day, lobster or not. Let's say that it's a good thing the photo was taken 'before' because 'after', that tablecloth had lost a lot of its juvenile prime and was in a good need of a laundry facelift. When I was a kid, we used to make ourselves finger rings with sections of the antennas. They are empty inside (aka tubular) but profiled, so when a piece is cut, one end will fit inside the other end. I mention all this only for those who never had the chance to make themselves a lobster ring when they were kids, or who didn't see the point!

  BTW, we only eat lobster boiled or steamed in Acadia. We discover with amazement when we start to travel that some people cut them in two and put them on a gril. Some people are really weird, aren't they?

  This afternoon, I found in the freezer a 500 ml container of the sauce I make and use for spaghetti and lasagna. Since I don't have most of what I need for a lasagna, let alone not enough sauce, spaghetti will be on this evening's menu. It's been a while. I hope it still recognizes me. We used to be good friends a long time ago, but eventually our lives parted and we now only see each other once every second year or so.

  

  ADDENDUM

  About hens and eggs and veils and swings

  In French there's a saying about one of the greatest still unresolved dilemmas: What came first, the egg or the hen. Some days ago, I posted something about Salamworld, a new "reserved for Muslims" social network, mentioning that there are loads of Muslims who are not interested at all in that kind of self-isolation. Today, on the front page of my paper, there was an article about how veiled Muslim women are the exception, not the rule in Quebec, with a nice pic of two of these Muslim women taken on the Promenade des Artistes, near Place des Festivals in downtown Montreal. The way I see it, either I had a premonition that Le Devoir was to publish an article about this, or Le Devoir had a postmonition that I had. Anyways, we agree, which is all that counts. For remembrance, there is, because of language considerations, a large immigration from French-speaking North African countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, among others) in Montreal, and the vast majority of them are Muslims.

  
  Pic title: MUSLIM AND NOT VEILED
  Pic caption: Bochra Manaï and Leila Bdeir, two women part of the large majority of Quebec Muslim women not wearing the veil.
  Article's title: In Québec, more than elsewhere, wearing of the veil would be a matter of choice.
  Photo © Annik MH de Carufel, Le Devoir.
  

  The sky is not falling apart. It's been raining all night and my paper was all wet when I picked it up this morning, and the paper curled up when it dried.

  

  • 19:13
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