Quebec

So, the conventional spin is that the Liberal lost all three by elections in Quebec today, including the "Liberal stronghold" of Outremont, and oh what a disaster for Stéphane Dion.

But the truth is, Outremont elected yet another Liberal in 2007... he just had orange campaign signs. Less than seven months ago, Thomas Mulcair was minister of the environment in Jean Charest's Liberal government. (Yes, that Jean Charest.)

The key challenge for the NDP will be to keep Mulcair from crossing the floor to the Liberals when they recover in the polls. That, or take the Liberal Party's place by becoming cynically opportunistic by running from the left and governing from the right.

Cynics will note that despite the fact that the anti-war vote contributed to Mulcair's victory, the fact that the Liberal Party is weak in Quebec is apparently likely to have the opposite effect on actual policy when it comes to Afghanistan.

Believers in party politics will tell you that Quebec now has a strong progressive voice in the house of commons, who will pressure the government to withdraw from Afghanistan and fulfill Kyoto obligations.

But he surely won't be to blame if troops remain in Afghanistan, and greenhouse gas emissions and the extractive industries that drive them remain undeterred.

A cultural benefit event for Tadamon! Montreal...

Friday, September 7th, 8pm
La Sala Rossa
4848 St. Laurent
Montreal.
Entrance: $5-15

Tadamon!

* Montreal Launch of the film ‘Roads Through Palestine’:

Screening / Launch of a film by Brett Story, with a piano score composed by Stefan Christoff. A cinematic journey through the roads of occupation and resistance in the West Bank of Palestine.

Including performances from.

[Andrea from People's Global Action picked up the CoC's petitions at the anti-SPP demonstration and decided to make a few points while offering to deliver them.]

Dear Maude and Staff at the Council of Canadians,

I just wanted to write to let you know that the 10,000 petitions you delivered with great fanfare to the gates of the Chateau Montebello last week are safe. You know, the ones in the three clear plastic bins with the blue lids. The ones featured in that photo on your website ( www.canadians.org).

Canadian Energy and Paperworkers Union leader David Cole physically outs a police provocateur dressed as a black bloc protestor in front of news cameras in Montebello. [Update: Canadian Press report here]

SQ and OPP police protect the dead from the living for 7 hours on Monday.

Photo: IMC Montebello

The tear gassing appears to have started around 5:30 PM. By that time, much of the corporate media had left Montebello, and many of the demonstrators had left for Ottawa and Montreal.

‘They’re going to wait for the media to leave before they start to clear the demonstrators,’ my friend Kabir had remarked 20 minutes before. It ended up being a dead-on prediction.

The Quebec election was characterized by a great deal of discontent with the traditional establishment parties, the PQ and the Liberals. The remarkable thing about this election was that this discontent was successfully shifted from the policies that ostensibly pissed people off in the first place, onto to Muslims living in Quebec. Turning anger at unrelated issues into anger at immigrants is hardly a new political technique, but watching it happen here in Montreal is pretty astounding.

It sounds far-fetched to me, too, but the media, led by Quebecor's Journal de Montreal was able to stir up a lot of discontent about basically nothing (even the Gazette didn't buy it). The ADQ's Mario Dumont had been pushing this for months, hoping to get a bump in the polls from latent racist discontent. The PQ's André Boisclair got in on it, late in the campaign (see below). With the media's help, a few isolated incidents (a kid wearing a dull ceremonial dagger to school, a girl playing soccer in a headscarf) were turned into a debate about what "accomodations" are reasonable for Quebeckers to extend to immigrants. (One assumes the Mohawk and Algonquin nations ask themselves the same question, with a bit more substance.)

Here's a letter I sent to the two corporate-owned alt-weeklies in Montreal. The Mirror didn't print it, and while I confess I haven't picked up the Hour yet, I'm not holding my breath.

* * *

Dear Hour,

During a visit to New York last week, I went to see the movie 300 on its opening day. The consensus among the New Yorkers I spoke to was that the timing of the movie was "septic," its appearance coinciding with the Bush administration building for an attack against Iran (with Harper and the Canadian media close behind). There, it seemed obvious that a movie that depicted pasty-white greeks slicing up their attackers--veiled and masked Africans and Arabs led by an eight-foot tall dark-skinned king wearing eyeliner, facial piercings, and sporting a throaty lisp--was politically and ethically problematic. The racism and homophobia permeating this movie were never in doubt.

There's a screening on Tuesday in Montreal's Mile End of what looks like a pretty interesting documentary about Hezbollah.

Police assaulted several marchers at an International Womens' Day demonstration last week. This thursday, a demonstration opposed to police brutality is being organized in Montreal as well.

CBC: "About 50 aboriginal demonstrators blocked a highway in western Quebec's Outaouais region Monday in a protest over logging and living conditions."