2012/05/29

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  Rue St-Denis coin/corner Bélanger - 2012.05.26 21h35
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  St-Denis is a major north-south and south-north street. Above is looking south. Looking north from same location here.

  A Chinese encounter

  I went downtown last evening to watch the jurists' march. Like they say in the ads, come and get it while supplies last. I haven't been that much downtown these last months except for the major events of the 22s (22 March, 22 April, 22 May) or the 200,000+ ones as per their other common characteristic, and the current movement could be close to its end. Although we never know, since an agreement between the students and the government does not necessarily mean the end of everything, since the movement has, by the government's own fault, migrated into something embracing a whole bunch of related and not related at all issues, on the political spectrum.

  The jurists were about 300 maybe more, hard to tell. Some clerks and employees were in everyday clothes, but all lawyers and notaries were in their black robes. I followed them for parts of their march and all I can say is that they didn't choose the easy way out. They zigzaged in Old Montreal before heading north on St-Laurent then turned on Viger passing in front of the Palais des Congrès. Eventually they popped up on Jeanne-Mance and then turned on Ste-Catherine passing in front of Place-des-Arts. From there I figured they would just head straight east until their destination, Parc Émilie-Gamelin (I keep saying Place but I think it's Parc, whatever...) I was wrong. When they got to the level of St-Laurent again, they turned left and headed north on St-Laurent. I was in front of them and was heading east without realizing they had turned. After some time I looked back and saw that I had lost them. Much later, at Place/Parc/Whatever Émilie-Gamelin, I and others were wondering where they were since they were kind of late. After a while, we saw them way back in the distance passing on top of the Sherbrooke St overpass over Berri St and seemingly heading still farther east. We figured they would walk until St-Hubert, or even farther to Amherst, then turn south until Ste-Catherine (closed for the summer, we're in the Gay Village at this level - and the pink balls garlands are up again this year) and then walk back to Émilie-Gamelin. So a couple and me walked on De Maisonneuve up to these streets, but to no avail. They had disappeared. It then hit me (figure of style, I mean that I had an idea) that maybe just after they had passed on the overpass they would have turned north until Roy in some U-Turn manoeuver so as to pass under the overpass instead of using its bordering streets. those that we see in pics. That's exactly what they had done. When we (the couple and I) got back to the corner of De Maisonneuve and Berri, there they were on Berri, in the distance. Parc Émilie-Gamelin is bordered north and south by De Maisonneuve and Ste-Catherine, and west/east by Berri and St-Hubert. About 5 minutes later, maybe more, they finally arrived at destination, under the cheers and applause of those who were there. Their march was silent, in reference I think to the silence imposed on the people by the special law which they were protesting about. That, on the other hand, was crystal clear on the large banner those heading the march were holding.

  Yesterday's meeting between the students and the government lasted eight hours. It will resume today at 13h00, in what is called the 'make it or break it' ultimate try. We'll see what comes out of that. Meanwhile last evening the 'casseroles' were still hitting the streets.

  Yesterday also, I turned out into an improvised tourist booth. When I was at the corner of Notre-Dame and St-Laurent, opposite to where the jurists were congregating before their march, some tourists, among them a family of four, asked me what it was and I gladly gave them a crash explanation of the current events. They were from Philadelphia. I couldn't help but mentioning the bell and that they knew something about freedom. They replied that they knew even more since they were originally from India. I wished them well for their stay in Montreal and Quebec. Nice people. Most Americans, except those students who come here to get drunk and go to sex bars like they do in Cancun, are nice and generally open-minded people. Otherwise they'd go to Calgary I guess.

  Then there was this Asian woman who seemed a little lost. I asked her in French and in English if she wanted to know what was going on and she looked at me in a somewhat panicked way. Seconds after, a hord of other Asians crossed the street and joined her, cameras frantically clicking at the jurists, and then I saw a young Asian girl who obviously was some kind of guide and interpreter, pointing towards the jurists across the street. I realized that the older woman most certainly didn't understand a word of either French or English, and that it was probably the first time in her life that a total stranger was adressing her as one would his next door neighbor. She'll have more than the others to tell her friends back home on her return. Add-on: I didn't mention but that woman was obviously a tourist from an Asian country which I presumed to be China.

  Later on, when I was walking on Place Jacques-Cartier, separately from the march which had passed by me earlier, this guy on a bicycle stopped and asked me, in English, if I was an organizer or something, probably because of the red square I was wearing. I said no, only a regular but fed up citizen. He said he was from the Occupy movement and that he had been everywhere in the country (for the same I gathered) and wanted to know if I knew the whereabouts of the march. I told him where they had been going (Place Jacques-Cartier, then St-Paul St) and that they eventually had to resurface northbound somewhere, maybe on St-Laurent. He asked me if that's where I was going (I sensed he didn't know where that was, hence my deduction that he was not a Montrealer), I said yes and he asked if he could follow me. I said yes of course. When we reached Notre-Dame, we indeed saw them marching on St-Laurent, passing in front of where they had originally started. The Occupy guy thanked me heartily and fled towards the marchers on his bicycle. I didn't have time to ask him where he was from. He was a nice person. There are many nice people out there. You get to know this by talking to strangers, local or visitors.

  When things slowed down at Émilie-Gamelin, I went for a stint (and a glass of wine ) at Friend's place before heading back home in the metro, being too tired (and hungry) to use the Bixi. I got home at about 22h00 and started to make myself a "sauce rosée" (pink sauce) to use with meat-stuffed fresh tortellini I bought at Milano's last weekend (I usually buy cheese-filled). Walking from the metro to home, I heard and saw a march of 'casserolers' crossing at an intersection.

  It's amazing all the serious discussions we hear on radio and television about the Left and the Right and all the nuances in between, and neo-liberalism, and libertarism, and all the versions of capitalism from the savage to the more human-minded, and the historical contexts of them all, and how social issues and values are discussed not by a happy few in specialized magazines but by the people at large, including actors form all walks of life and/or from any of those "thought currents" just mentioned, and what have you. All this bathing in a parallel environment of some yellow journailism in some tabloids, and quick, raw, not very much thought about ideas spurred by the cyber world. I don't think there's any other place in North America where you can see such a thing. This probably has a lot to do with our French heritage, while the rest of the continent is having a British one. That why some make comparisons between this and Mai 68, but this is not Europe, not France, and not 1968. More than similarities, there are also a hefty number of major differences. Anyhow, no one knows if what's in that pot will overspill, but one thing is for sure, it's bubbling a lot.

  So it goes in Montréal.

  On St-Paul St, in Old Montreal.
  

  On Viger St. Autoroute 720 is passing under the Palais des Congrès and Old Montreal is on the other side of it (aka on the left here).
  

  On Ste-Catherine St passing in front of Place des Festivals and Place des Arts, a few minutes before I lost them.
  

  The jurists arriving at Émilie-Gamelin (corner Berri and De Maisonneuve). It was already 20h22, two hours after I first arrived at the Court House where the march started.
  

  Before their arrival. That is probably an art installation but I didn't have the time to check it out. On the lawn in the upper right corner, there were four young homeless trying to sleep in sleeping bags and who appeared quite annoyed by the noise when the casseroles started and by the jeering after the jurists arrival. Sorry guys, didn't mean to disturb. I was offered to buy some pot. Not the type you bang on, rather the kind you get banged out with, so to speak. I declined. I'm a boozer.
  

  Laterz...

  Found this tonight. For nice views of Montreal. One of the lawyers was holding a quote by Benjamin Franklin (2m10s) sayiing in French «A People ready to sacrifice a little liberty for a little security merits neither one and finishes by losing both.» I checked and although I was all around, I'm NOT in that video.

  

  Nasty southern winds?

  I don't have to go back to Mexico to be confronted with horrors, Mexican horrors are coming here. Today, a parcel was delivered to the Conservative Party's headquarters in Ottawa, by regular post apparently. This is the current governmental party (headed by Stephen Harper). The parcel contained a human foot.

  Meanwhile, an apartment building manager in the mid-western (so to speak) Montreal district of Côte-des-Neiges had noticed a luggage case deposited since a few days alongside the garbage bags near his building. Today, by curiosity, he opened it and found a human torso.

  For now, it is not known if the two parts belong to the same person nor, if it is the case, who that person would be (or have been I guess).

  Meanwhile I cannot not think about the current crackdown on immigrants by the federal government, coupled with a crackdown on unemployment benefits for seasonal Canadian workers which will have as a collateral effect to lower the salaries paid to migrant seasonal workers in the agricultural field, many of which are Mexicans. And this is not to mention the black record of Canadian mines in Mexico where there have been targeted assassinations against some union or other representatives of Mexican people's rights. Then again, I may be totally off track and there's no relation at all. I sure hope so for Harper's gang. When you make a specialty of bullying everyone around, you play a dangerous game these days. All I know for now is that there's too much smoke to my liking.

  

  Laterz... apparently there was a second parcel delivered. No information given by police yet about whom it was delivered to and what 'part' was in it. Doesn't smell good, figuratively I mean.

  

  Next day... it would be a hand. It was found in a Canada Post sorting office and would have been mailed at the same location as the first parcel. They don't say where that was, and they still don't say to whom it was addressed. Still does not smell good. Looks like a temporary cover-up attempt. Political intervention? With the current government's record, nothing is to be excluded.

  

  Laterz... the suspect would be a Torontonian living in Montreal since a few years and who's a failed porn star and cat killer. Up to now, it would appear I was off track. The police say they're not interested by who is the other addressee in Ottawa, not part of the equation they say (er...???) but on the CBC they say (from sources...) it's the Liberal Party's headquarters. The CBC has been caught dead wrong before so I'll wait and see. All the found parts belong to the same body so it's the Montreal police who's handling the case. As if they needed that these days!

  

  Laterz.... I mean so much laterz that wer'e now the 31st (which, and this not related to the case at all, also happens to be my mom's birthday ). The Montreal Police have asked Interpol for their help. The murderer has vanished and he even had posted a video or something in the past explaining how to do so. Ian Lafrenière, the same police media spokesman who yesterday said that they considered irrelevant who the second addressee was, adding "read between the lines", also said that the crime was horrible and that as a father he was highly disturbed by it. As a father? What the hell has this to do with the case? The victim was a child? The murderer was a child? If not, then WTF? Since when one would be less disturbed by such a crime if he's got no kids? Geezus... He also talks about an arm and a leg. The anchor in the video below and all others talk and have talked, from the start, of a hand and a foot. Now it's a hand or it's an arm? It's a foot or it's a leg? I mean it's not really the same thing, does it, if only for the size of the parcels. In the Radio-Canada video of this conference, the news anchor also wonders what the hell that "read between the lines" means. We're not psychics, Mr Lafrenière of the Montreal Police. When asked to confirm the address of the crime by a reporter who even gave the address in the question, he replied that "they keep that information for themselves" (again... er???). Meanwhile videos of the crime scene (the inside of the small apartment where it happened) could be seen everywhere on the net. The police are weird, if you want to know the bottom of my thoughts... The same Mr Lafrenière is a fixture here since we've seen him every single day on tv for the last three months explaining to the populace, with the same 'I know you're dumb but I'll make an effort to explain to you" attitude, how arresting peaceful protestors by the hundreds is for the general good of humanity. He is also very much the incarnation of the type of society we saw in the movie Fahrentheit 451 where everyone squealing on everyone is posed as a virtue. They don't say it that bluntly. They say, as in this video and many times since the student unrest started, something like the very first words of this press conference: «Thank you very much for your patience. We need the help of the population, the help of the public, we are looking for a suspect... ". A culture of delation they are slowly but surely instilling in the minds of people.

  http://www.radio-canada.ca/widgets/mediaconsole/medianet/5920140

  A few weeks ago, those three young girls who (presumably) are those who had thrown smoke bombs in the metro, had been photographed before the fact by someone with a portable phone, someone who rushed his pics to the police. Pierre Foglia, in his column (titled I Love You), had this to say a few days later:

  «[..] Speaking of smoke, here is another formidable reason to self-congratulate. The guilty ones were found in a record time. They hadn't fetched their bomb from their bag that they were already frontpage. Thanks to whom? Thanks to you. Thank you. The police was so happy about you. Me also.

  In 1984, the Orwell masterpiece that you should ABSOLUTELY read (even if it means reading less papers), in 1984, there are posters everywhere warning: Big Brother is watching you. Big Brother does not watch you anymore: he films you in the metro. When you stick a finger in your nose, you are filmed. All that's left is to film the one they've been sticking in your ass since so long that you don't even feel it anymore.

  I'm on a high. I feel so secure, with you! You know how the elderly get scared easily? [Foglia is 71] Thanks to you, I feel like nothing can happen to me, in the metro at least. Sure, I can still be robbed at the bank by my banker; I can still be poisoned by all the shit they put in the fields and which they feed the animals with; they can install an airport next door and all I have to do is shut up; they can dig day and night in my yard to find shales gas... but in the metro, peace, my friend. It's gotten to the point that I take the metro for nothing, simply because I feel good in it. And I don't hesitate to look at young girls straight in the eyes. Bring it out your smoke bomb, slut, you're filmed.

  Have I told you before I loved you?»

  Informants (délateurs) are people I can't stand. Especially when they are at the service, paid or not, of those who control our societies with solely in mind their own personal benefits and the benefits of their friends.

  Sure, the police can use any eyewitness information in a case like this sordid one. And it's reasonable to think that most anyone having such information will pass it on to whatever channel is concerned. It is totally superfuous to Big Brotherize it for that. Doing so is more a symptom than anything else of where we are heading as a society.

  On the other hand, when people call them without having been requested to do so, they are brushed away as lunatics. There has been for some time a video on the net on a site held by a person in Edmonton, Alberta, a so-called "gore" site, and which is thought to be the above murder, filimed by the murderer himself. One guy from Montana (a lawyer), in the States, says he tried to warn at least six police outfits, including the Toronto police, as early as last Friday, and he was told that this video was most certainly a fake and no further action was taken. Great! Not only is Big Brother looking at you, He also knows better than you. The last I heard, the Edmonton guy refuses to remove the video from his site, despite police and FBI pressures. I won't mention the reasons why he refuses because they are to puke for. And I certainly won't look for or supply the link to it. As a psychiatrist just mentioned on tv, watching this can leave scars and he highly recommends not doing so, not to mention that people watching his video is exactly what that deranged mind is up to in his sick power trip. The first part of his comment, I already knew and have tried to apply it to all similar cases in the past. I don't need to SEE IT to know what is horror. A popular columnist from La Presse saw it and now regrets it dearly. Well, I have little sympathy for him, he should have thought about it before and as far as I'm concerned, he showed a lack of judgement.

  The line between yellow and good journalism is a very fine one, at times. Like the large daily La Presse, supposedly a serious publication, which sent some reporter to knock on the door of the murderer's mother's homne, in Peterborough, Ontario, when it is already known that he had been estranged from his family for a long time. Cheap. Gutter level.

  

  • 14:26
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