2013/04/22

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  Hamburgers – Station de métro Laurier – Laurier metro station
  Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes
  

  Boston etc [more about]

  April 21 – morning

  So it seems that justice is an “à la carte” affair in the U.S. Well at least if those who want the so-called “enemy combattant” label to be used against an American cititizen living in the United States.

  There are a few things that I still can’t piece together. On our allnews French television (RDI), we saw a gentleman who apparently lives either in the house or is a neighbor to the house where the boat was parked (I don’t remember), and who apparently is the one who called the police to report having seen some suspicious activity in or around the boat. Anyways, that’s what those interviewing him were asking him questions about. This was about an hour after the 9,000-strong police squad had kind of missed finding the suspect when they first scooped the area (or at least that’s what I understand) and had lifted the ban on people circulating outside their houses, and also when we (reported by all networks I watched) started hearing gun shots and seeing an armada of police rushing back to the area. To my knowledge, no one expanded about those gun shots, that is where they came from and to whom they were destined. To my knowledge also, the police supplied no information whatsoever about that person, nor even about his mere existence. For them, the suspect “had been found”, period.

  I have two possible explanations for this discrepancy:

  1- I got this thing all wrong.
  or
  2- The police are trying to cover up one if not the worst police blunder in ages.

  April 21 – later in the day

  The stepson of the man who found the suspect in the boat told the real story to Piers Morgan of CNN in a phone interview. He claims his stepfather is a hero. Listening to what he had to say about how it went, I find it hard to disagree. What is extremely lame, though, is the police taking all the credit, the ‘heroes credits’, as if it was them who had found the suspect, all the while being those who has blundered in not finding him. It doesn’t surprise me the least bit. One thing is for sure, we’ll never know who among them were scooping that area. Police organisations are tightly knit and clapped shut like a fresh mussel. In matters of omerta, between them and the mob, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. And it’s pretty lame also that it had to be a family member of this man that had to reach the media, who for most ignored completely his role in unfolding the suspect search. Nobody wants a party pooper when it comes to glorifying the police, the troops, whatever…

  I found this column in my daily this morning, written by its specialist in international affairs. It says pretty much the same as I have said in my previous post, but more elaborately. As usual, Google-translated and fine tuned by me.

  MADNESS IN BOSTON
  April 22, 2013 | François Brousseau | International News | Le Devoir ©

  Why this madness? How do we come to prohibit any activity in a city as large as Montreal, to find one – and only one – bomber on the run, an almost adolescent, stalked and disoriented, finally plucked half-dead in a backyard, after making a city and a whole country crazy?

  How can big media, among those who set the tone of public debate, go wrong at this point, multiplying false information about the number of deaths (New York Post), the arrest of suspects (CNN) and ethnicity (Fox News)?

  ***

  There is this American “provincial” insularity, home of ignorance and prejudice, of which continuous news networks and major tabloids have long been the preferred expression. It is expressed today by bloggers and tweeters of all kinds, millions of improvised “experts” in the era of so-called social media.

  Designed somehow apart (and above) of the world, this country remains a psychological island. In the collective memory of the United States, the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington are the largest historical rape of this insularity. And a huge exception to the rule.

  In the decade that followed, this trauma resulted in paranoia, restriction of freedoms… and an incredible deployment of surveillance and counter-espionage in the country, and military interventions abroad. During the 2000s, the obsessive “war on terrorism” has coincided with the restoration of this beautiful island, scandalously violated one single morning in September 2001.

  Iraq and Afghanistan could well be drenched in fire and blood, Americans could well be fighting in those distant lands, and sometimes not coming back alive, Casablanca, London, Madrid could well be deafened by deadly explosions, the American sanctuary, it, had been reconstituted and was holding up.

  On April 15, 2013, in Boston, occurred the first successful terrorist attack in a public space in the United States in 11 years, seven months and four days. This crucial symbolic event woke up the trauma, and with it the overreacting: police deployment extravaganza, mediatic hyperbole and approximations, a large city that stops breathing for more than 24 hours. All this for two artisanal bombs of average power and a miserable commando behind. Ten regiments to swat a fly, a sign of power?

  But beyond the symbolism of the violated sanctuary (albeit an important one for the first interested), what does this new episode tell us on the state of terrorism in 2013? That bin Laden is still dead, and that in the wake of September 11, the anti-Western terrorism – even if it is indeed that – is but a shadow of what it was. That if this murderous act viciously killed three innocent persons and made about fifteen seriously injureds, it has little to do with the hypermurderous and highly professional attacks in New York, Madrid or London.

  (London, where timely reminded by Adam Gopnik on the website of The New Yorker, himself on location on July 7, 2005, “life had resumed its course, cars and public transit were circulating again,” just hours after the terrible explosions of King’s Cross and Tavistock Square.)

  ***

  In Iraq, the same April 15, 2013, ten bombs killed 55 people, including several schoolchildren, and hundreds were wounded in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Literally: at least TEN Boston tragedies in a single day and a single country, which only perpetuate a bloody litany having returned almost daily in this “liberated” country a decade ago by U.S. troops. On the preceding March 19: 12 explosions with 98 killed in Mosul and Baghdad. Similar statistics exist in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here, it will be bomb attacks. There, U.S. drones aiming a dangerous warlord, but accidentally killing ten civilians in the area.

  But those deads, those of Baghdad, Mosul or Quetta, have no media existence. They are just statistics, while those in Boston have a name, a history, the dignity of respectful treatment in death. And who knows? Maybe even a meaning can be found in their deaths. But keeping, if possible … a sense of proportion.

  

  Balls galore

  The pink balls will be reinstalled this summer over the stretch of Ste-Catherine St passing through the Gay Village. It would apparently have become an international trade mark. In case some stray newbie on this site would think I’m referring to representations of certain male attributes, I’ll supply this link which has a nice video about those balls, but also, choreographed, the Village itself. The pink-haired drag queen is Mado Lamotte, Montreal’s most famous and a token for more than 25 years. Oh, and those guys outside a gay bath house (sauna) don’t really go outside in real life.

  I read in a free gay magazine (Fugues/May 2013) that 40,000 pink garbage bags will be distributed free to merchants in the Gay Village. Their design is by New York artist Adrian Kondratowicz. The idea behind that design that you can’t miss is to remind people (passersby) about the volume of trash they discard, by making it unavoidingly obvious.

  

  On a side note, I’m glad I don’t live in Paris these days. All this homophobic hysteria, including gay beatings, about gay marriage is something hard to understand for us on this side of the big dip. It has been legal in Canada since 2005, 2002 in Quebec which had civil unions before that. To my knowledge nobody here gives a damn about gays marrying, or if some do, they sure are discreet about it. Besides, gays who want to marry are a very small minority amongst gays. At first observation, our civilization has not collapsed yet. We haven’t noticed either any rise in fucked-up kids raised in gay families. In fact, gay families are known to be very loving ones, which can’t be said of all heterosexual ones. More than that, it is kids who had gay parents who were the most instrumental in having Quebec move towards gay marriage. They came to testify at a parliamentary commission and the result was a unanimous vote in the National Assembly in favor of the move. In Ottawa, responsible for the marriage laws per se in Canada, it was members of parliament from Québec who spearheaded the move, and the Liberal government of the time had a bundle of MPs from Quebec, so that’s how history was made. Needless to say, if it would have been the current Conservative bunch of creationists and evangelistics, history probably would have taken a “French” slant, which would have been a good thing since these people choke on themselves over anything “French”.

  But the most damaging arguments against those opposing gay marriage are heterosexuals themselves. In Québec, between 35% and 40% of heterosexual couples are not even married. If not following the traditional marriage between a man and a women is detrimental to children, that would make one hell of a pile of screwed-up children, wouldn’t it? And we’re not even talking of monoparental families, where one of the two supposedly essential role models is not even there. Sheesh!

  

  Earth Day

  I wanted to participate, if only for a small stretch, to the Earth Day march held yesterday. For remembrance, last year in the turmoil of the “printemps érable”, we were about 250 000, give or take 50 000. Less were expected this year of course. Unfortunately, I woke (or got up rather) way too late and besides, even if it was sunny, it was still rather cold at 6˚C. So I decided to wait for next year.

  I saw on tv that they were a big crowd, several tens of thousands. I also saw that a lot of people appeared in those Radio-Canada news videos and suddenly it occured to me that if I had been seen in those videos, I would have been in trouble. Well, way of speaking. The thing is, the three-times-a-week bandage replacement in my back is still done by nurses coming to my place instead of me going to the local health community services center. The reason being that those trips to the center would tax my general rehab too much, if not my being not strong enough for that. I guess this is no longer really the case. But it would still be a pain in the ass for me, having to go to the center being a lot more consuming, not to mention that it is still winter-like as per temperatures go and all that dressing ups and undressings are a hassle. I’m supposed to have results in mid-May about how the liver intervention turned out and the other surgeon is waiting for that to decide on a quicker way to close that hole I have in the back, and that’s what I tell the nurses who are more and more inquiring. I guess that if one of them had seen me marching downtown, my dog would have been dead, as the French expression goes.

  

  You’ve got to start somewhere

  Read in the Metro free daily:
  Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Tafal indicated that he supports the idea of permitting women to drive a vehicle. According to Mr. Tafal, authorizing women to drive would preserve “500,000 jobs, besides bringing positive fallouts on the social and economic levels”.

  Nice initiative. Half a millenium after everyone else but still the same, nice move. Next week, if nothing, they’ll permit raped women to wear jewelry when being beheaded for this impurity.

  

  • 19:48
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