The metro system, with the exception of the blue line, will stay open late on New Year’s Eve, although not all night – and not free.
Updates from December, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Radio-Canada reports that Ensemble is losing permanent workers, four of nine having quit recently.
Nicholas
Lors de son premier congrès en juin 2024, Ensemble Montréal, fondé par Denis Coderre, avait affiché son ambition de devenir un “véritable parti” en se dotant d’une constitution et d’un comité de direction.
Imagine being 11 years old as a party and you’ve never had a board of directors, a party convention, a constitution. And this isn’t some minor party; they held power for four years. If there’s any better examples of some parties just being vessels for their leaders, rising and falling with the leader, I haven’t seen it.
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Kate
Le Devoir says it has cost the SPVM $9 million to police 430 protests held here this year over the war in Palestine.
Ephraim
It is like shouting at the ocean to calm its waves while standing on a distant mountaintop – your voice, lost to the wind, and the tides, indifferent.
The only thing it has changed is showing a lot of intolerance and well… at one person losing their entirely livelihood.
Ian
Arguably there has been some effect at least in terms of public policy – Although Housefather now has a special job, Trudeau expressed support for the ICC ruling in regards to Netanyahu and Gallant – I sincerely doubt that without the protests and other campaigns the Liberals would have made an official statement that didn’t automatically support Israel’s governemnt.
There is also much to be said for international solidarity and the “making visible” of dissent. Protest can serve many purposes, some symbolic by design and intent.
Ephraim
Two-thirds of Israelis do not support Netanyahu. While he leads the current coalition government, it is a coalition formed in a deeply divided political landscape. Israel has been so evenly split in elections that it has held five elections since 2019. The shortest gap between them was just 161 days, slightly above the 90-day minimum required to call an election. Meanwhile, in Gaza, it has been 18 years since the last election, which took place in 2006.
Protests against these political dynamics are largely symbolic and unlikely to bring any real change. This reflects a broader reality in international relations: no country has absolute control over another, and change often comes slowly, if at all.
Globally, there are numerous ongoing conflicts. These include the Russia-Ukraine war, the Myanmar civil war, the Sudanese civil war, the insurgency in the Sahel, and the Mexican drug war. Other significant conflicts include the Syrian war, the Ethiopian conflict, the Yemeni civil war (where the Houthis have been accused of human rights abuses, including trafficking women… where are these protests?), the Afghanistan conflict, violence involving Haitian gangs, and the Colombian conflict. These crises highlight the widespread instability and humanitarian challenges facing the world today and NOPE, nothing we do will really change any of them. That’s the nature of International Relations.
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Kate
Two prison stories from the weekend: a gang member was found dead in his cell in Rivère‑des‑Prairies jail on Sunday, judged to be a suspicious death, although jail homicides don’t figure on the city numbers.
An Indigenous inmate at Bordeaux Jail says his health was neglected to the point where he now has terminal cancer.
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Kate
A camp in Morgan Park along Notre-Dame East is being evicted Monday morning.
More news later: the campers may only have to move 50 metres, but their possessions may have been scooped up and thrown away by now.
Quebec is promising to build 500 emergency units for the unhoused. QS’s Guillaume Cliche‑Rivard says the need for social services in this project is being neglected.
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