Another march was held Friday evening downtown in support of Gaza.
Updates from November, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
An apartment complex in Pointe‑aux‑Trembles has been acquired by an organization that will use some public money to protect tenants from rent increases.
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Kate
Phyllis Lambert thinks putting up a Hydro central cheek by jowl with the Grande Bibliothèque would be a disaster.
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Kate
A Université de Montréal lecturer caught on video (Instagram video link) shouting abuse at Jewish students at Concordia earlier this week is under investigation, and a Global headline even claims UdeM has cancelled his course.
Ian
I get passion, but wow, way to kill your academic trajectory and potential career before you even finish your doctorate.
The “go back to Poland” is pretty f’in racist, as it’s invoking Auschwitz (Oświęcim). Rubbing Jewish noses in nazi extermination is a sh*tty thing to do by any standard, this dude deserves all the hurt he has brought down on himself.
Chris
It is kinda interesting though, observing cancel culture now working against the Left instead of the Right.
Ian
You haven’t seen anyone more vicious than the left going after their own, especially in the context of identity politics.
Anyhow “cancel culture” was never real, it’s a conservative bogeyman. It’s just consequences for your words and deeds.
anton
Is this person part of “the Left”?
MarcG
I was going to ask the same question, but then figured that anti-war sentiment is generally associated with the Left and pro-war with the Right.
MarcG
Although if this particular person is anti-war that’s certainly not what they’re conveying in that video.
Kate
anton, good question. This doesn’t seem to partake of the left-right axis at all.
qatzelok
MarcG, while it’s true that anti-war demos are usually planned and attended by mostly left-identifying people, “anti-genocide” demos tend to be more universal. So the exact political leanings of the History prof are not revealed by this meme.
Chris
>You haven’t seen anyone more vicious than the left going after their own, especially in the context of identity politics.
Yeah, that’s certainly true.
>Is this person part of “the Left”?
I mean, I don’t know of course, I’m generalizing both him and his cause.
Blork
“Left” is a meaningless descriptor these days. The lecturer was apparently an “expert” on middle-east issues, and the class he taught was on “domination and resistance in the Arab world.” So you can be pretty sure he has opinions, and that they are firmly held.
Ephraim
Some of which should have made him inadmissible to Canada. Even as a student
Nice that he mentions Poland, but doesn’t mention all the Arab countries that expelled Jews in their own version of racial cleansing.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List.
Saturday is Remembrance Day. The ceremony takes place at the cenotaph in Place du Canada, starting at 10:30 am. Notes from CBC.
Notices of Christmas markets are starting to come in. I’ll be keeping a list in the sidebar.
Highways to heck this weekend.
SMD
There’s also an alternative Remembrance Day event happening tomorrow, details here.
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Kate
The data system at the MUHC crashed this week, making electronic patient files inaccessible, with all the inconvenience and delays that have followed. This was reported on reddit before I saw it mentioned on any mainstream news source.
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Kate
Everyone has their feelings about the Palestine conflict. Am I allowed to admit that mine are mostly resentment that it has stoked sectarian anger here?
24 heures summarizes recent antisemitic acts; Concordia is investigating online threats; Quebec is considering banning demonstrations about the issue (bad, but then any story featuring Bernard Drainville is never going to be good – the man has an unerring eye for the wrong move). The mayor is asking for peace – locally, that is. La Presse says that some Jews and Muslims are afraid of walking in the street.
Chris
>Am I allowed to admit that mine are mostly resentment that it has stoked sectarian anger here?
That view is shared by several of my Middle Eastern coworkers, one saying: “I came to Canada to leave that shit behind.”
Nathaniel
My feeling is that it’s not “the Palestine conflict.” It’s a war between Israel and Gaza that started, when Hamas invaded Israel. Hamas, as was always clear, is a Nazi organization and it’s destruction will be good for the world even though it will probably be replaced by a corrupt PLO-type regime.
Ian
Well it certainly detracts from the settler pogrom in the West Bank…
As in all conflicts my sympathies lie with the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. I’ve doubled my monthly function to MSF.
SMD
« La majorité de la population québécoise loge avec nous, dans le camp de la paix. » From today’s open letter by current and former elected officials in Québec.
bob
I resent what it has done to our own domestic politics. The issue has poisoned the left to such a degree that I think it is one of the main reasons there is effectively no left wing in Canadian politics (among other countries).
Kate
Exactly what happened to Labour in the UK under Jeremy Corbyn, bob.
Tim S.
I’ve been grumpy about this ever since I got to witness the Netanyahu riot (2002 ed) up close. At least my class that day got all the way to the end before the Hall building was evacuated.
The mainstream left is actually pretty united, I would say. The NDP released what I thought was a very balanced statement blaming both the Hamas and Netanyahu governments and sympathizing with civilian victims on both sides. But the 21st century media (social and legacy) landscape being what it is, individuals and small groups with extreme positions suck up all the oxygen.
DeWolf
Why does it feel so impossible to say that what’s happening in Gaza is genocide, that there needs to be an immediate ceasefire and an end to the occupation of the West Bank… while also condemning the Hamas massacre and anti-Semitic hate crimes? One shouldn’t preclude the other. Saying that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is wrong does not excuse the murder of Israeli civilians. And vice versa: saying what Hamas did is wrong does not equal support for a war criminal like Netanyahu.
Valérie Plante just posted something on Instagram calling for peace and condemning the attacks on the Jewish primary school and synagogue. And one of the responses, from someone with a Palestinian flag in their avatar, was: “Tant mieux si ça bouge à Montréal.” And when somebody asked them to clarify, they elaborated: “Ça a pris des coups de feux pour que Valérie Plante visite les communautés touchées.”
This is how warped certain people have become: they think it’s a good thing that people are shooting at Jewish schools because it makes people pay attention to what’s happening in Palestine. And I know it’s just one social media comment, but it certainly echoes a lot of what I have seen online from people who think that because Gaza is on fire, Montreal needs to be too.
Ian
I think we can all agree that there is a vast difference between Israel justifiably defending itself against terrorists and carpet-bombing an open-air refugee camp that they are intentionally keeping food and water from.
Even the Red Cross is getting fired on by by Israeli troops in Gaza. I guess they are Hamas too, now?
I don’t support any political entity that intentionally harms civilians. Hamas needs to be rooted out, the hostages need to be released, and a humanitarian ceasefire needs to happen so that the civilians of Gaza – half of whom are children under the age of 16 – stop getting killed in indiscriminate attacks that amount to collective punishment under international law.
walkerp
Totally with you DeWolf, it’s maddening.
People always struggle with holding two conflicting ideas in their head at the same (while reality doesn’t). Extremists take advantage of that to push their agenda, social media and mainstream media make it worse by pounding on the emotional so we constantly end up in a simplistic, erroneous right/wrong good/evil dichotomy that does not actually move us towards peace and solutions.Kevin
I find it puzzling that so many people living in Gaza are dual citizens.
I also think that if anyone’s starting and end position is “that other country has no right to exist,” then there isn’t much point negotiating with them.
Chris
>I also think that if anyone’s starting and end position is “that other country has no right to exist,”
Seems this applies to both Israel, which does not recognise Palestine as a country, and Hamas, which wants Israel destroyed. Were you referring to one, the other, or both? 🙂
>then there isn’t much point negotiating with them.
And so neither side wants to negotiate with the other, which I guess leaves only war, and so here we are. 🙁
Meezly
It’s easier to hold a neutral stance or contradictory beliefs if you’re emotionally removed from a conflict. This situation has been going on for many decades and the generational trauma keeps snowballing to the point where people personally know someone who has been impacted in some way. This is probably why it has gotten to this point. Extremists take advantage of trauma and violence. If I had a loved one who was killed by the other side, I’m not sure how I would feel. Many people who have lost entire families. So it’s amazing to hear of bereaved people pushing for a ceasefire, instead of retaliation. A wonderful example was the Shabbat service in solidarity with Gaza on Friday in the Mile End area.
But yes, it’s still maddening, esp. when I see people who have no specific ties to the conflict engage in whataboutism.
JP
@Kevin Not to sound dumb but what do you mean they’re dual citizens, what two places are they citizens of? (I am not being snarky I genuinely am not sure). I don’t know a lot of the context for this but I’m trying to learn more.
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Kate
I can’t tell how much of this was required by the OQLF and how much is performative passive aggression, but the owner of Ye Olde Orchard pub in NDG is changing its name to Maison Publique Orchard. I think Le Vieux Verger would’ve sounded nicer.
Ian
Boo hoo, a chain fake Irish pub is upset. At least McKibbins had the dignity to drop the apostrophe without making a big oergirmstive fuss.
If it were that big a deal they could have simply registered their name as a trademark like Chapters or Home Depot. Cheap angryphones, whatevs.
DeWolf
Yeah, Ian is right on the money with this one. They’re a chain pub, surely their name is trademarked. This is just attention seeking.
Some local bars, restaurants and cafés that have opened up in the past few years: Name’s On The Way, Don’t Yell At Me, Milky Way, One Punch Mickey’s, White Heron. That’s just off the top of my head.
MarcG
Man I wish oergirmstive was a real word.
Ian
It can be if you want it to be – and it’s technically not even English, so you can use it to name your pub 😀
GC
I had not heard of “Name’s On the Way”, but I like it.
Ian
If I ever open a bar it’s going to be called TBD.
Orr
How about Le Loup Phoque, or Le Phoque for short?
(channelling Plume Latraverse here, as those of you with a ethnomusicalogical background will have noticed)
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Kate
CBC talked to various people whose family urns were kept at the West Island funeral home that burned down this week. Some of them stored their family urns there, and one family was planning to “visit the urns” soon, which strikes me as odd, but then so do most of our death ceremonials.
Nobody knows yet how the fire started.
Ian
How often could one say “my father’s ashes were lost in a fire”?
Orr
Saw a group who dispersed someone’s ashes into the St-Lawrence recently at Parc de Dieppe (ex parc de la cité-du-Havre). That’s what I wanted but someone has veto power and exercised it.
Kate
What do you mean, Orr? Is it no longer allowed to disperse ashes in the river?
Faiz Imam 23:28 on 2023-11-11 Permalink
Sunday at 2pm is expected to be a large one
Kate 08:54 on 2023-11-12 Permalink
At Dorchester Square.