2012/05/18

• 
  2012.05.16
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  State of affairs

  We are now in the 14th week of the student uprising. It has turned into a major social crisis, in grand part because of the government. This is not only about tuition fees anymore. It's also about a head-on collision between two opposite visions of the way a society should function. First there is the individual rights vs collective rights clash. Between those whose sole interest is me, myself and I, and those whose interest also embraces, when it's not dominating, the fate of those from the generations to come. Second, there is the neo-con vision of government, one where between elections, the government needs to respond to no one, and those who believe that governments must listen to the people at all times, if only to prevent them from engaging into stupid gestures that have to eventually be corrected. What this government has created, irresponsibly, is an extreme polarization in the population. And that is never good news.

  For many days now, the situation has been evolving by the hour, and it still is. Yesterday evening, the government recalled the National Assembly to present a special law whose net effect is the curtailment of basic freedom of speech, reunion and protest rights and is the next best thing after a totalitarian or police state. The only difference being that here, elections are still not outlawed. The Assembly will sit round the clock until the bill is voted, which it will since the government holds a majority. This law also provides for fines totally out of proportion. Today, the Bar Association condemned this law saying it will leave a scar in the democratic tissue of Québec. The Bar is the lawyer's association, not some Marxist group. The last time such a charge against the People was enacted was the infamous October 70 Crisis. Civil disobedience and/or civil unrest may occur. There could also be a general peaceful uprising in the population, because Quebecers are anything but a violent people. Some people mention a general strike. I cannot explain here much more, because it would take pages and pages and I don't have either the time nor the urge to do so.

  Meanwhile every day continues to bring its load of demonstrations. For the last 23 days, there were nightly ones. Others are in the daytime, as in the pic above.

  All I want to say is that this happens at the same time as I am in the process of a major cleanup of my apartment, to be followed by a complete repainting of it. Between this and following the political situation, if not participating in it, simply put, for some time the length of which I cannot evaluate, I may but more likely I may not post. Unless I want to try escaping it all by making a cybertrip back to Mexico. I will however continue nosing around on other people's sites.

  State of affairs update - May 22

  Nightly demonstrations are still on, with more people participating since the voting of the Special Law (Law 78) on Friday, between 5 000 and 10 000 depending on the time and other factors. It was quite nasty in the weekend with fires lit in the street and some 300 arrests on one night, but last evening it was back to calm with virtually no arrest to be reported. Everyone knows that the violence is for most of it coming from people who are not students but marginal extremist groups, even lone individuals having a personal grudge of their own, who parasite more or less the peaceful demonstrations. There written press is antistudent except for my daily (Le Devoir) which is the only media that does not bash the students, but does bash the government, and rightly so. Then again it is the only one which is independent (aka does not belong to a conglomerate). Those, like La Presse, editorially bash the students, but has a few columnists on the students' side, to save face. At the Journal de Montréal, a tabloid in all the pejorative meaning of the word and belonging to a conglomerate (Quebecor Media) looking more and more like the Fox organisation, it's a continuous student-bashing party. Radio-Canada (tv) does its best but with the repetitive budget cuts coming from the Harper government, they can't give all the coverage they'd want. Electronic media are more objective. There is an independent outfit providing live coverage on the Net when events happen, so I suppose they will be broadcasting the (hopefully) large demonstration being held this afternoon and which I will attend. The site is www.cutvmontreal.ca. There are also a bunch of videos on Youtube, one can imagine. I found this one, linked on a site put up by the Teachers Against the Hike (tuition fees). It's an open letter to the students, and also an appeal to participate in today's march. It's in French of course. The text is by a university philosophy professor and is being read by two actors and television personalities. All three are well known. I wish I could have had the time to translate the text because it is really something else. The kind that elevates itself over the turmoil, and adresses the real issue at stake here: the core values so many of us are seeing being slowly destroyed by the rising right, these last years.

  I say "hopefully" above because, to start with, it's a working day, but also that it has been forcasted to rain all day today with possibilities of thunderstorms, not very inviting. This will be the only day of bad weather in the whole week and it had to fall today. Even the weather guru is siding with the bastards.

  Today is Day 100 since the start of the student strike, hence tdoay's march. 2000 1000 (memory failure , not that it changes much of anything) [update May 25 - it WAS 2000] people have been arrested since. How many beaten? How many pepper-sprayed at very close range?

  This other one below, about the March 22 demonstration and its 200 000 participants, is about the sound of boots, if you know what I mean. I post it for my own satisfaction. It ends with an excerpt from a poem by late Québec poet Roland Giguère, published in 1965 in "L'âge de la parole" and titled, in English, «The Hand Of The Tormentor (Tyrant) Always Ends Up in Rotting»

  From the video's audio:

  «Don't you hear them
  Loud as thunder
  Walking in goose-steps
  Crushing frontiers
  Bashing doors
  With their studded soles
  Pretexting the defence
  Of Rights and Liberties

  Don't you hear
  The wind that carries
  The sound of boots»

  Below, as read at the end of the video by Pauline Julien, a recording from the Nuit de la Poésie, on March 27, 1970, a marking event in Québec's history.

  «The large hand nailing us to the ground
  Will finish by rotting

  The knuckles will shatter like glasses of crystal
  The fingernails will fall

  The large hand will rot
  And we will be able to stand up and go elsewhere.»

  This may all seem surrealistic in these days and ages, and in North America. I'll just remind that I am old enough to remember when the boots entered Quebec and flushed rights and liberties in the toilet.

  Reporter: «How far would you be willing to go?»
  Trudeau: «Just watch me».

  We watched. And we saw. In some ways, we still see. That wasn't in FarAwayStan, that was in Ottawa, in Canada, in 1970. Yesterday, so to speak. Tomorrow?

  

  Why our British-style parliamentary and electoral system is rotten to the bone

  I'll come back here later to address this important topic, if I have the time.

  Later...

  I took the time. I needed to vent.

  Canada and Quebec, as well as all other Canadian provinces, have a parliamentary system based on the old British system, the main reason being that Canada was a British colony, and still is, watching Stephen Harper removing Canadian artists works from government buildings at home and abroad to replace them with photos of the Queen. Québec had another system but it ended after the British conquest of 1759. At the federal leval and in some provinces, there is a second legislative body, of which none are elected. Québec got rid of its second chamber in 1968. On the federal scene however, it is still very well alive (so to speak) and is called the Senate. Every bill passed in the House of Commons (which is elected) has to mandatorily be also passed in the Senate (which is not elected), before the Sovereign can sign it to become law. The unelected Senate can also initiate its own bills, without them having to have passed prior in the House of Commons.

  1) The Canadian Senate is the first rotten piece of Canadiana. As forementioned, its members are not elected but nominated by the government of the day, or 'recommended', as they suavely say in British style parliamentary systems, to the current sovereign, the Queen that is, via her local representative, the Governor-General (the Gee-Gee for shorts), also nominated, or 'recommended' by the government. In the provinces, a lower form of the sovereignism goes by under the name of Lieutenant-Governor. GGs and LGs are nominated on about the same basis as the Senators, although maybe slighlty less partisan. Nominations to the Senate are totally based on small politics and partisanry. Competence is not a criteria. One self-admitted analphabet hockey coach is a Senator. The overall idea is to stash the place with people from your political party or who are known to support your political agenda. You will therefore find in there lots of ex-politicians who were democratically defeated in elections and who are very undemocratically being let inside just the same, by the back door. Some have simply retired from the turmoil of active politics but are kept to good use by the government in the more quiet Senate dormitory. You will find a guy whose only competence resides in being a strong advocate of tougher stances on crime after having had his daughter killed by a maniac, a Harper obsession even if crime has been declining for decades in Canada, and who, although he is not elected and not even a member of the Cabinet, speaks for the federal government in Quebec because said government was massively rejected by Quebec voters and severely lacks Québec Members of Parliament. Others, for the same reasons, are precisely nominated for the sole purpose of becoming a Cabinet minister, someone who normally must come from the legislative body (House of Commons - you know... the elected ones). You will also find in there a youngster in his early thirties whose qualification is to be an Amerindian, to show our Natives how generous the Canadian government can be with them (while screwing them the rest of the time, namely for having tried in the past to culturally genocide them.). In the bag you'll also find prominent former news anchors or political show hosts, former Olympic athletes, and so on. The Senate is a Club Med that works like a lotto. If you draw the winning ticket, it's valid until you die or reach 75, whichever comes first. For example, that Amerindian, if he stays there until 75, will have won 9 265 000 $, which is not bad for just being a Conservative Amerindian at the same time that Harper was Prime-Minister. In 2009, Senators were paid a yearly 130 400 $, fully indexed. Simply put, the Canadian Senate has nothing to do with democracy. It's rather a humongous farce.

  2) The second bowl of Canadian crapola is filled with political perversion. The British parliamentary system has worked well for centuries. So did the associated judicial. Both are based on customs, also known as the unwritten law (among which parts of the Common Law), more than on strict legally written language. Like any political system, it is a reflection of the culture of the land. The major reason why this system worked, and it's no scoop mentioning it, is that the British are known worldwide for their phlegm when faced with adversity, but also and more importantly, their gentlemanry. I know it's not a word but it says what it says. I would also add to this fairplay. Mind you, it does not have to be real. In some cases it's only appearances, underneath knives may be flying low, but up front, you're being screwed by someone who lifts his hat and tells you "Good morning, Sir, if I may". On first glance, this may seem like hypocrisy. It is not, or not intended as such. It is a way to pursue conflicting views and agendas in a society, without getting at each others's throats. When you remove this "polish", the whole British parliamentary system crumbles.

  In Canada, since Harper got elected at the federal level, and Charest in Quebec, the gentleman has been tossed away to be replaced by the goon. No more fairplay in parliament. Both these governments make use and abuse of the "gag" procedure, one which permits a majority government to cut short debates and force a vote on a proposed law. This measure has always been considered , under the British 'approach' I mentioned above, to be one of absolute last resort, in front of a real and verifiable emergency brought about by weeks or months of systematic obstruction by the Opposition. Since 2003, the "gag" procedure is being used right and left for just about anything. In many cases, the proposed bill has been presented just days earlier, and only a few days from parliamentary recess, for vacations or whatever. A few weeks ago, the federal goverment tabled a 430-page bill bringing modifications to around 70 different laws covering a carload of different domains, but which for many have to do with curtailing any opposition by the people to their environment bashing policies. This bill dubbed by many as the Mammoth Bill, was to be only studied for five days, and in only the Finance House Committee which is not even concerned by most of it, instead of by the different other Committees from the departments which are concerned, and who hold the required expertise to discuss these different matters. This makes a mockery of the Parliamentary system, and turns our Parliament into a rubber-stamping tool for a dictatorial regime.

  3) The third piece of crapola is Parliament itself. They say that we have a representative system. That we vote every four or five years to elect people who talk in our name. Well they don't. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't. These two governments, maybe others also in Canada, have given to the Executive excessive powers over the Legislative, powers that shun the one that any individual member could have. And even in the Executive, the powers bestowed to the Prime-Ministers and Premiers over the Cabinet are absolute. Many Presidents have less powers, and on the opposite, many dictators share the same. A member of parliament from the sitting government and who is not in the Cabinet is a nobody. His role is to vote along party lines when asked to vote, and the rest of the time to shut up, especially if he or those who voted for him/her don't share the government's view. And when that member is from the Opposition, he may as well stay home and play darts. The Ministers being named solely by the Prime-Minister, they know where their job comes from. In Ottawa under the Harper government, they are told what to do by Harper, even in minute details. This situation can prevail because, I repeat, we have a British style system, based on fairplay. This system has not forecasted that one day this system could be used by people who wipe their ass with fairplay, and therefore they haven't thought of any provision to face this kind of situation. We don't have impeachment procedures like in the United States, for example. Worse, in most cases, there are no fixed election dates. It is the current Prime Minister (or Premier, its name in provinces), currently goons, remember, who chooses when it suits him to go to the polls, and this even if he is leading a minority government. The only exception to this is when all the opposition members vote against a 'budgetary' measure presented by a minority government. And then again, this is not written. It's a custom, which like the rest is in the waiting to be trampled upon by a goon government. So, all in all, when these people talk with a tear in the eye about the superb democracy we have here and how lucky we are, I'm not that sure I want to be THAT lucky. And when I was hearing about representation, for some reason I was thinking, silly me, that the 'represented' included more than media moguls, financial big brass, and organised crime. For all these reasons and most notably because there is no way to counteract abusive governments like it is the case right now in Québec, many start asking themselves about possible, but peaceful, civil disobedience.

  However this degeneration (dégénérescence) of the Canadian system is not new to post-2000 years. In 1982, one of the two founding peoples of this country was screwed like there's no tomorrow by Pierre Trudeau and his government, with the tacit approval of the rest of Canada, precisely because of the same reasons. This new Constitution and Charter of Rights based solely on individual rights, and which they wanted to ram down our throats even if the whole of Quebec was united as a block against it, had its day in court. The Supreme Court came out with a judgement saying it was illegitimate, but legal. In other words, under the unwritten laws and customs and how things had been done in this country from the start, this tampering with the fundamentals of the country without the concourse of one of its key founding members and furthermore the seat of French-language Canadians, was totally illegitimate. But since no written law prevented it, it was legal. By default, so to speak. In other words, what is not provided for can be done. Like Harper and Charest, Trudeau was a goon. He chose the goon way of doing things. Like all goons, he thought he had won. Thirty years later, Quebec has still never signed this new Constittution, and the idea of independence is anything but dead, contrary to what they think in English Canada. Being an independentist, as long as they continue to sleep on the switch, that's all fine and dandy with me. Charest also thought he had won. Yesterday evening, fires were set in the streets of Montreal. And according to an article published yesterday in La Presse, over 500 lawyers would have offered their help, free of charge, to the legal outfit taking care of the students' appeal in nullity to come this week, five hundred!, and an online petition for those wanting to add their voice to these court proceedings garnered 150 000 signatures in 36 hours, so much that their site (http://www.loi78.com/) couldn't handle it at times. Meanwhile cyber attacks on governmental and Liberal Party sites were undertaken by Anonymous and others, to the point that they had to close them for a few days, by their own initiative.

  To recap, our system works somewhat democratically, much less than in the United States ^[1], but in an acceptable way all things considered, provided that its actors abide by the unwritten rules that make it hold together. When these actors don't follow those custom-inherited rules, you end up with something that has many of the characteristics of a dictatorship.

  Some Canadians think that Canada is the shit-hottest country on this planet. I wouldn't venture on taking sides on this, but if indeed it is, then it would mean that the rest of this planet must be one gigantic hellhole.

  About civil disobedience:

  It was another war and another time (1954) but the theme of civil disobedience is universal. Who doesn't know about Rosa Parks? Who doesn't know a Viêt-Nam draft dodger? Who never heard about Gandhi? This song by Boris Vian, Le Déserteur (The Deserter) is very well known in the French-speaking world.

  Joan Baez in Europe, 1980

  Peter, Paul and Mary, in a version with slightly modified lyrics.

  Speaking of civil disobedience, my paper (Le Devoir), twice a month, «offers to passionates of philosophy, history and history of ideas, the challenge of decrypting a current affairs topic using the theses of a leading thinker». The whole page is titled "Le devoir de philo" (The Philosophy Assignment) as in a student's assignment, this title being of course a word play with the paper's name (which in its case means "Duty"). In the weekend edition of February 18 to 19, 2012, a college philosophy professor chose to address the issue of civil disobedience, in view of the Harper government's actions. He chose to do so by basing his argumentation on the writings (teachings?) of American Henry David Thoreau, back in the mid 19th century. I didn't have a clue who was Thoreau before reading about him on Neil's blog (if I'm not mistaken) some time ago. Just to show these blogs do serve a useful purpose and can be highly educative. In view of the special law that the Québec government voted this Friday and which is considered totally illegitimate by a myriad of people, talks of thinking about civil disobedience have sprouted, even by one of the members of the National Assembly. This morning, on a radio show adressing those current events, Thoreau was again mentioned. I cannot translate that article, but Google did not that bad of a job. Just keep in mind that the title should read The philosophy assignment, and that "stopped " should read "would stop", and near the end, «A wise man will leave [therefore] not justice to thank you the chance, he does not wish to see prevail through the power of the majority. » should read «The wise man will therefore not leave justice to the mercy of chance (fate), he will not want it to prevail by the power of the majority.»

  Here is the Google translation, in an image. Click on it (as with all my pics) to get a larger and readable image, twice for this one. The original French is linked below. Keep in mind that I don't necessarily make mine all of Thoreau's teachings.

  

  Version originale en français ici.

  Now, isn't venting great? It does smooth out nasty bouts of rage, and the best of all, it works even if no one read the rant in question.

  ^[1] Not that the American system has no faults. It's some times very heterogeneous and unduly complicated, and too litteral. Everyone except those with bad faith knows that the Second Amendment was to protect oneself and the country against invading forces, the country then being under British assaults coming from the north, and nothing to do with running around on the streets with concealed guns or having a basement full of machine guns, in 2012. On the other hand, it being geared on individualism is not a fault per se since it's a social value shared by most Americans, one which makes consensus. It would be a fault if like in Canada, a government elected by a fraction of registered voters would use its majority to ram down people's throats individualistic policies based on values that are not shared by the majority of the population, which is the case now in Canada, and which can happen with impunity because, again, of the system we have.

  

  About democracy and what it really means

  Tomorrow (Monday) is a holiday in Canada. For most Canadians, it's just another day off. Officially however, the day has a meaning. Two in fact. In Quebec, it's the Journée des Patriotes (Patriots' Day), a remembrance day for those who engaged in the 1837-1838 Rebellion whose purpose among others was to bring some kind of democracy to this patch of land, in the footsteps of what the Americans had done, but nothing even near independence however. It was dubbed a sedition and crushed in a blood bath by the British. The leaders of the Rebellion were for some (a dozen or so) hanged in front of the Pied-du-courant prison, to let it be known to the population who controlled this land. It still exists as an historical site and is located today right under the Jacques-Cartier bridge. Many more were forcibly exiled, a large contingent in Australia. I've posted many times about these events and this prison, so I won't linger on this subject. I will however mention that during those events, the British had a freshly churned new Queen, Queen Victoria. In the rest of Canada, tomorrow is Victoria Day. Just sayin'...

  Personally, I'm more comfortable celebrating people who fought for democracy than others who tried to crush it. But that's only me.

  I don't want to make a big fuss of it, the past is the past, but if the Patriots are still today considered by many Quebecers as a bunch of bad people equating to modern days definitions of terrorists, instead of the liberators they were, it's in grand part because of the Québec Catholic Church which from the start, after the Conquest in 1759, sided with the occupant (the British) so as to keep its privileges under the British rule, and constantly demonized those who participated in the Rebellion. It's not something specific to Quebec, the same has happened everywhere. Mass murderer Pinochet was kuddos with the Chilean cardinal and went to mass and received communion every day, and Pope John Paul II did all he could to sidetrack the priests in Latin America who were a little too political in fighting for a better life for exploited Latin Americans (the Liberation Theology). I suppose dining with Pinochet and others of his kind is not political. One of those who participated later on in this was Cardinal Marc Ouellet from Québec City, a retrograd reactionay who is currently prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (that's like number 2 in the organization) and concurrently president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America since his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI on 30 June 2010. He, Ratzinger, was in the first row, however, back then. It's not for nothing that he picked Ouellet to continue the job. I'm sure Marc Ouellet is at ease with the way the Rebellion was handled by the Brits, with the help of his former colleagues of the time. I'm also sure that he is the best insurance policy against the Catholic Church ever making a comeback in Quebec. I don't understand these people who are ruling the Catholic Church. There are a zillion Catholics out there who contraty to them have followed the paths of evolution, but these cro-magnons, Ratzinger, Ouellet and those like them, continue to torpedo the Catholic Church. It doesn't prevent me from sleeping, that's the least one can say, but I feel bad for some people, like my own mother who is very religious but who, at 88, pains to recognize herself in this Church of disconnected old farts.

  

  About the red square

  Last night, Montreal's Arcade Fire did a gig with Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live. The members of the group all wore the red square, in support of the students, and now, maybe, simply in support of democracy.

  A few days earlier, Xavier Nolan presented his third film at the Cannes Film Festival. On a photo shoot, he and the main actors and actresses, half of them are French (from France) all wore the red square.

  No, Mr Charest, it is not over.

  

  About Charles and wife

  Charles and Camilla just landed in Canada for a few days of royal fun. In view of where they will go and what they will do, I'll leave them their fun. No jealousy here. Some woman specialized on royalty was on Radio-Canada saying that they won't come to Quebec because tomorrow is Patriots' Day here and that the Rebellion was a fight by the French-speakers against the British. There was yes a linguistic component in the Rebellion, Québec (Lower Canada) being an occupied land where the overwhelming majority of the people was not British, if you know what I mean. But the responsible government component was a much larger one, so much that, hushed by these supposed experts, the Rebellion also happened in Ontario, the then Upper Canada where the population was anything but French speaking.

  People who read this blog know why Charles and wife won't come here. They already came and frankly, I put myself in their shoes, why in the hell would they want to be that masochistic, tell me?

  They will be going to Regina, in Saskatchewan. In the year of the Queen's Jubilee. I mean, how more subtle can you get? Those people organizing royal tours have as much imagination as a rock under a cloudy sky. Well, at least it brings me a smile. The Royals do have some utility after all. We were told, however, that there won't be any cattle stints wearing cowboy hats, like the royal youngsters engaged in last year in Calgary. Pfeeew! It was a close call.

  

  About roses

  The 27th nightly demonstration has started downtown. On tv, I saw that they were throwing white roses to the police advancing towards them on horses. Charles would have loved. It won't last. It will get nasty later on when those from the Black Bloc will step in. Yesterday also, they were mentioning that the police, who have had to handle almost two hundred demonstrations since February, are for most on the verge of massive burnouts. Yesterday, they called for the provincial police to come help them. These are not used to big city policing and this type of civil unrest, as they have shown in the botched intervention in Victoriaville a few weeks ago (when a student lost an eye and another one was badly injured on the head). Without any judgement for or against, it remains that the situation in Montreal these days is fascinating. Did you know that in Chili, there has been a student uprising for the past 19 months? I knew there was one, it was in the news that some Chilean student leaders would be visiting here in August, but I didn't know it was that old. It's a Chilean neighbor of mine who told me so this afternoon.

  

  • 13:33
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