I’ll be curious to see how well the Miracle of September 13 goes off. In theory, everyone puts a non-perishable food item on their doorstep for noon on Sunday, from where they will be picked up by volunteers. Just passing this along.
Updates from September, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
You guys have got to see some of the flags Fabrice de Pierrebourg snapped at an anti-mask rally in Montreal Saturday. CBC says there were many signs of support for QAnon*.
I actually do not understand this. There is a serious illness circulating among us. How can people really think this is a realm in which protesting has any usefulness or validity?
*Note to CBC: “openly flaunted the distancing guidelines”? You mean “flouted”.
CharlesQ
It’s all beyond me. Some people are so starved for certainty, they’ll believe anything (really anything, Donald Trump as the second coming fighting the forces of evil… what?). That is what strikes me the most in those people, the level of certainty they have about all their “beliefs”. There is no questoning, it’s a cult. I don’t think it’s funny or quirky anymore. I try to convince myself that they are only a few people (and they are) but somehow it doesnt help.
walkerp
They are actively brainwashed via Facebook. It is very frightening.
Ephraim
Well, time to examine the ministry of education and the schools these people went to.
Tim S.
Based on a couple of well-educated people I know who have some interest/sympathy for these ideas, I’m not sure there’s much the schools can do. I think Charles is right that it’s a need for certainty, for easy yet seemingly logical and sophisticated answers, and a rejection of the ‘they,’ variously defined, who think they’re better. Some of the stuff kids learn at the knee of Grandpa Simpson, so to speak, can’t be easily unlearned.
Kate
Tim S., it’s hard not to get the occasional impression that many big decisions are made in places we don’t know about, and not by the people we think are supposed to be making those decisions, i.e. our democratically elected officials. I can see why people might be grasping for some sort of theory to explain their misgivings, but how it follows that Donald Trump is the person to fix it, I do not know.
MarcG
I got into conspiracy stuff in my 20s and agree with Charles and Tim’s explanations. Thankfully the internet hadn’t become “social” yet so I didn’t get sucked down a rabbit hole. I smoked a lot of weed, perhaps relevant.
bpmpost@yahoo.ca
“Several thousand people gathered… and at one point stretched more than six city blocks. It attracted people of all ages, and from a wide-variety of mindsets.”
That is scary. Even the educated can lack critical thinking. It’s proof of the power of the internet – it can support, amplify, distort whatever beliefs or baggage you have.
In the early aughts, I once read a pretty convincing article explaining that climate change is part of the natural cycle and how it was alarmist to think it was being caused by human activity. At the time, it made sense to believe that, but after being told I was wrong and I did the mature thing and wised up, read up on reputable scientific articles and admitted that I had a momentary lapse of reasoning.
MarcG
Regarding Trump being seen as anti-establishment, I recall after he won thinking “how the fuck did that happen?”, then looking up his ad campaigns and finding this amazing bit of agitprop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8.
MarcG
Something else attractive about conspiracy theories is they make the world seem more interesting than it is. Rather than a collection of greedy ex-fratboy pedophiles playing with numbers, there’s a cabal of satan-worshipping lizard people who want to enslave humanity for some mysterious intergalactic purpose (or whatever). It also makes you feel superior to other people because you know what’s really going on, so there’s an ego boost aspect as well.
Lockland Stepworthy
These “protestors” are the same ones who don’t believe Saddam had WMDs or that Libya didn’t need to be bombed. Some of them are probably Palestinians grasping at yet more straws.
Dhomas
@Lockland Stepworthy: dude, what are you on about? First of all, Iraq had no WMDs:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-intelligence-assessments-of-saddam-s-iraq-got-it-right-new-paper-says-1.5697028
Also, I’d love to hear more about your theories on Libya as well as what any of this has to do with Palestinians and anti-mask protesters.Am I replying to a bot?
Su
Russian Oligarch funded “media” brainwashees-dupes fighting for deregulation.
-
Kate
Le Devoir has a whole dossier this weekend on Montreal’s downtown and its future. The main piece, on the necessity of flexibility in business procedures, is followed by links to half a dozen other pieces on related subjects including the impact of the pandemic on public transit.
-
Kate
The two people targeted in Brossard this week were Asian, one killed and the other seriously injured in hit-and-run incidents by the same driver. A suspect has been arrested. CBC reports that Longueuil police are determined to deny that it was a hate crime, whereas the Asian community in the area has already experienced harassment because of Covid.
Chris
There’s zero evidence presented that race was a factor, only people’s hunches. The police caught the guy, so it’s entirely possible they have actual evidence we are not aware of. There aren’t a lot of pedestrians/cyclists in that area generally, and it was raining that evening, thus presumably even less than usual. Is it really so implausible that it happened to be a new immigrant (generally poorer, without car) that was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Were they hit from behind? If so, he may have not even known their race. But alas even such basic dynamics of the hits are not discussed in the articles.
Kate
Chris, did you read about the woman who was killed? She was hardly a poor, sad immigrant. She came here and started a business and ran half-marathons for kicks. The family had a car – her son called her to find out if she’d like him to pick her up, since she was (by choice, because she walked and ran a lot for training purposes) walking home in the rain. But there was no answer.
No, we don’t know that the suspect selected his victims because of their racial appearance, but he did select two people whose only other “sin” was that they were not in powered vehicles when he mowed them down.
Michael Black
So in order to claim an “evil car driver” you need to explain away racism?
It was 6:15. If there were fewer people out, doesn’t it make it easier to do this, and to target Asian people?
This isn’t something made up. There have been stories in recent months about Asian people being the target, specifically because of the of pandemic. The article even has a women at an organization saying she’s getting hate email.Whether or not someone is charged with a hate crime, people are feeling persecuted. And that is very real.
Chris
>The family had a car.
I stand corrected.
>No, we don’t know that the suspect selected his victims because of their racial appearance
This was my point. And further, the police are saying _exactly the opposite_.
>So in order to claim an “evil car driver” you need to explain away racism?
Uhhhh, what? Where am I explaining away racism?!? I’m saying there is no evidence for racism here. The burden of proof is on the people making the claim. What’s the evidence it was racially motivated? That other people are the victim of racism for other reasons (ex: your covid example; which I don’t dispute) is not evidence for anything in this particular case.
Kate
Chris, you’re suddenly believing the police on a racism matter?
When two people are mowed down in sequence by the same perpetrator, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to look at what the victims had in common – in this case, that they were both Asian. CBC says “nearly 12,000 residents of Brossard identified as Chinese in the 2016 census, out of a population of 85,721” so yes, it could be coincidence that both victims were Asian. However, Asians have been reporting harassment in Brossard as elsewhere because of Covid, so that puts a little more weight on the plausibility scale that this was a racist act.
No, we don’t know, and if the alleged perpetrator continues to deny it (and the police to credit him) then it may not figure in the already long list of charges against him.
Chris
>Chris, you’re suddenly believing the police on a racism matter?
It’s not the police being accused of racism here. What would the motivation be for the police to lie about whether a killer was racist or not?
>Asians have been reporting harassment in Brossard as elsewhere because of Covid
Many incidences of racism exist, therefore this incident was racist. It’s fallacious reasoning.
Remember the ‘clearly anti-Semitic desecration’ of a synagogue back in May? That was much more plausibly bigoted, but then turns out it wasn’t. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions about motivations when simple facts about the incident are not yet known. It was cold and rainy, were the victims bundled up and thus not very identifiable? Maybe their faces were also masked? Were they hit from behind or face-on? Was he driving at a speed where there was time to even see someone clearly? Can we not wait for such basic facts before jumping to conclusions?
Kate
Chris, there may not be discernible facts here, because the impulse that caused the perpetrator to mow two people down with his vehicle can only be known to him. He is, at least, facing enough charges to keep him locked up and off the road for a long time, which will have to suffice.
Chris
>there may not be discernible facts here
And yet the article puts their race in the headline, and devotes most of the article to the topic of race too. There seems to be an impulse these days to make everything always about race.
>the impulse that caused the perpetrator to mow two people down with his vehicle can only be known to him
Mostly agree, but there could be evidence to strongly suggest bigotry. A manifesto, a history on social media, a confession, etc. Just as there could be evidence to strongly suggest no bigotry. But we’ve got nothing (yet?) either way.
And just in case there is any confusion: I fully agree he should be locked up.
-
Kate
The Gazette’s René Bruemmer writes about how the pandemic changed Quebec, six months after the lockdown began. Do I believe that 96% of Montreal’s jobs are back? Not sure.
The new law mandating fines for not wearing a mask on transit and inside businesses is in effect now. I’ve already had a couple of dreams where I’ve forgotten my mask…
DeWolf
Good to know I’m not the only one having those dreams!
EmilyG
I keep having those dreams too.
-
Kate
Two men were shot Friday evening in a parking lot in Montreal North, but details on the situation are not yet forthcoming.
-
Kate
The woman knocked down in a hit-and-run in NDG on Thursday has died of her injuries. CTV reminds us that an even older man died similarly last year at the same corner, de Maisonneuve and Decarie; oddly, they illustrate their item with a photo of an unrelated part of Decarie.
The perpetrator in this week’s incident is still being sought, and all that’s mentioned is that they may have been driving a red van.
A relative of the victim commented on my earlier post. He has my sincere condolences for her loss.
MarcG 10:29 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
Thanks for the tip. We’ve had a bag full of canned stuff we inherited and don’t want in the garage but haven’t donated because it’s not, for us, an essential outing.
Kate 10:31 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
I’m going to feel a bit silly if I put a bag of lentils or a tin of tuna on my steps and nobody takes it.
I also feel inspired to do a cartoon of a Westmount/Outremont mansion with steps going down and a single tin of tuna at the bottom.
Michael Black 11:39 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
I’m not sure I’ve seen this mentioned in old media. The first place I saw it was at that local website that shouldn’t be mentioned, so the state of the project was unclear. Was it serious or just a half-baked idea that the website had picked up on? That map on their website shows density but it’s hard to judge. I didn’t see an easy way to check your neighborhood to make sure collectors were in place.
They obviously need people to put items out, but that won’t mean a thing if the stuff isn’t picked up.
The NDG Food Depot has long done this, in an area somewhat wider than NDG but still a contained area. Sometimes a brown bag has arrived with the flyers, as a reminder but also something to fill, the details printed on the bag. They seem pleased with results, but I wonder if some streets or areas are better than others, so maybe targetting makes more sense.
Then there’s a bigger issue. Food banks were temporary when they started decades ago, and collecting cans seemed like an easy way to get donations. Some canned stuff is great, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it. But I’ve seen at least two opinion pieces in recent years (definitely one last year) from people involved basically begging for no more food donations. They get expired stuff, or odd things that people had and “donate” to get rid of. They get basics, but often not a good variety. So people have to make do with a random assortment. But they also say it’s inefficient, that if people just gave money they could buy in bulk and get more for the money, and not have to deal with unwanted items. So I wonder how this project fits into that?
Kate 12:26 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
Michael Black, you make good points here. I remember being told in school to bring in some non-perishable food item, and my mother would scrounge up some odd tin from the back of the cupboard. It really does make more sense for food banks to ask for money so they can provide the most-used basic supplies rather than tins of smoked oysters somebody bought on a whim and never had the nerve to try.
Daniel 16:13 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
I’m glad you posted about this, Kate. Wouldn’t have known about it otherwise. Our donation has been picked up. I’m willing to believe this is not the ideal solution, but I’m hoping it’s better than nothing. (I’ve given money, too, because, yeah, how could food banks NOT need and use money.)
My thanks to those who collected on this rainy afternoon.