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Another Academic Shooting in Montreal (1)

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

This is the first of a two-part series on the Wednesday shootings in Montreal.

That title, above is a terrible way of putting it. The word academic, which can mean several things, doesn’t help either.

The fact remains that this is the third college/école-related mass shooting in Montreal in the last 17 years.

Most cities in Canada — indeed North America — have never had one.

Why Montreal? Is there something in the water? This post is going to sketch over forty-some years of history of Montreal, and of Quebec. I’ll draw some conclusions which I don’t find overly comforting. If you’re very familiar with this history, you’ll not find much new here other than the conclusions I draw. Indeed, you’ll notice I used the word “sketch” advisedly. If reading about something like that bores you, then, well, move on! I’ll have something else up in a day or two.

Long renowned as the world’s second largest French-speaking city, Montreal’s glory days started to die in the late 60’s and early 1970’s.

The most glaring symptom (and perhaps even a cause) of the decline of civil society was the rise of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). An urban terrorist group, much like the IRA, they were dedicated Marxists who wanted to destabilize Canada and create an independent socialist Republic of Québec, a veritable “worker’s society”. Their aim was low level terrorism. Bombs mostly. Armed robbery. The usual thuggery of the violent hard-left popular revolutionary, little changed between then and now.

In October 1970, they escalated the game to kidnapping. One FLQ cell snatched the British Trade Representative, James Cross, and another cell kidnapped acting Premier (Governor, for Americans) of Québec, Pierre Laporte. Right off his front lawn, playing with his children. More innocent times, definitely, for there was no fence, no police guard nor even thought of one.

Within 7 days, they’d murdered Laporte. The situation dragged on for many weeks. In December, police finally found the terrorists holding Cross, and the Canadian government negotiated for his release, allowing that terrorist cell safe passage to Cuba. Hardly an auspicious moment. The murderers of Laporte were caught near the end of December and subsequently tried, and jailed.

Officially, violent separatism died that day in late December. Thereafter, séparatistes, and indépendantistes generally grouped themselves under the umbrella of the Parti Québecois (PQ), and pushed politically for a variety of solutions ranging from independence of Canada to “sovereignty-association” with Canada. Whatever that last meant. Politically, they oscillated between state socialism and dirigiste capitalisme, but always with a very strong welfare state. Left-leaning social democrats, if you’re a European.

But ones who happen to want to break up the country they live in.

And the violence? Well it didn’t really die with the FLQ. Very low-level terror continued. If you were an english shop-keeper, you might well find your windows being smashed.

You’re the phone company and you’re stupid enough to put a bilingual French/English phone book in the phone booth (back in the day when they were booths and actually had phone books!)? Count on the booth being burned down.

You’re an english kid — doesn’t matter if your heritage is actually German, or American, or Irish, or Polish, or even Indian, Chinese or Nigerian. You were “anglo”. Preposterous, I know, but not in Quebec.

You were that anglo kid? Guess you’ll get roughed up on the way home from school, mon vieux. Hope you don’t mind a beatdown.

Oh this wasn’t universal. And the vast majority of French people living in Quebec were and are decent, honest, and peaceful. Kindly hosts. Very fine people.

But it didn’t have to be universal. The virus of violence, the technique of terror — it only had to touch perhaps one in 20. But many, many around that one would see it directly. And virtually everyone in the “anglo” community would be at most two degrees of separation.

The government could have spoken out against the violence, I guess.

But federally, the Liberal government was desperate for Quebec votes and willing to look the other way. Provincially, it was a ratchet effect — with the PQ in power, ratcheting towards separation for much of the 70’s and 80’s.

And the provincial government was too busy passing laws. Against STOP signs. Against English signs. Against English language phonebooks. Against, well, english kids attending school in english if their heritage wasn’t “correct”.

Yeah. Pretty much the same things the low-level thugs and bullies were menacing.

The government stirred the pot a bit by hiring “Language police”. Yes, I know, it sounds like something out of Orwell. It is like something out of Orwell.

I’m speculating here, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if some of the bullies that beat up anglo kids moved up to burning phonebooths and smashing windows, then graduated to being language police. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Add one more element into the mix: the embrace, nay, the fetishization of the modern. Quebec had been virtually a theocracy in the 50’s, with heavy Roman Catholic control. With the advent of the 60’s and 70’s most institutions were swept away, for good and ill.

So here we are, getting into the 1980’s, and we’ve a society that’s

- let a group of terrorists go unpunished

- tolerated low-level thuggery against a minority group in society

- institutionalized low-level constant governmental harrassment against that same minority group

- is actively seeking to break-up the country they are part of, and separate.

- has a government that’s pushing a heavy left-wing agenda and actually seeking to sweep away conservative institutions

    In a generation, Quebec went from massive church attendance, a high birthrate, with stable families to the highest divorce rate, lowest fertility, highest illegitimacy rate, highest abortion rate and lowest church attendance rate in Canada. And almost certainly amongst the highest illegitimacy, lowest fertility, and highest abortion rates in North America.

    Everything in that bullet-pointed list, above, is something that frays at the fabric of a civil society, as we in the West would understand the term.

    Some of it may be necessary fraying. Moving from a theocracy that didn’t let women vote until the 1940’s — that’s pretty much a no-brainer. Good improvement. Except one can’t be help left feeling that the baby has been repeatedly thrown out with the bathwater.

    So how did this lead us to so many shootings? And make no mistake — the shooters are responsible for shooting people. Societal conditions, however much of a mess, don’t alleviate people of the personal moral responsibilities for the decisions they make in life. Especially not ones so momentously evil.

    More to follow on this.

    -wolfe

    Posted in gender, history, news, politics, social | 2 Comments »

    The Long Day Wanes

    Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

    I’m sitting here. 9/11, as we say it in the U.S. I’ve trouble dealing with my thoughts on the matter.

    They are complex, and easily attacked.

    That doesn’t mean they are wrong. Far from it.

    This poem, by Tennyson (I thought Yeats — laugh at me for being a cultural ignoramus) is apt.

    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

    He uses punctuation almost as grossly and badly, though reluctantly accurately, as I do. Yet he writes magnificently.

    At moments of dark thought like this, I’m impelled to think of other poesy.

    Yeats, of course.

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Did you know that Falcons are, by definition, female? Tiercels are the male of the species. And two-thirds the size. Fascinating.

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all convictions, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

    ‘Mere anarchy’. Who but Yeats — an Irishman to be sure — would have such a view. “Mere Anarchy”, good grief.

    Fear not. Your host has not gotten all flaky. But there’s a nihilistic refrain that consumes much of what we feel about 9/11 — on all sides. I worry it’s a refrain that shall prevail…

    That said, yeah, smite the evil-doers, and to heck with you if you think that’s wrong.
    I’ll try and return to more thinking, and less poesy, and, even, less poetry.

    A bientot.
    -wolfe

    Posted in history, politics, social | 5 Comments »

    September 11, 2001. Never Forget.

    Monday, September 11th, 2006

    9-11 Cross
    James Nachtwey, Time Magazine.

    Like it or not, we’re at war. Yet, like the Cold War, it’s a rather strange war. It’s difficult to tell who’s the enemy until they strike. Very few are serving on the front lines. Most of us are ‘lucky’.
    Perhaps you think President Bush’s strategy is excellent; perhaps you think it’s stupid. Perhaps, like most Democratic Senators, you agree with the liberation/invasion of Iraq, but disagree with the management of things in Iraq since then. Perhaps you just plain think Iraq was the wrong war, at the wrong time. Perhaps you think Iran and North Korea were bigger threats.

    Perhaps you think the US’s actions represent imperial overreach. A lot of people do.

    If you’re like me, you perhaps think the neo-con concept of bringing Democracy to Iraq is a good and noble one. It’s not about War for Oil, it’s genuinely a War for Democracy in their minds. But if you’re like me, you also believe Democracy can be tough to transplant, and Mesopotamia has been less than green ground for millennia. That therefore this idea (and plan) is at best naive.

    You could even be someone who believes that any use of force against evil is wrong. Or even someone who believes there is no such thing as evil. Or someone who simply wants to chant “Bush Lied! People Died!”, “No Blood for Oil!”. If so, well, sorry, I don’t even want to know you. Go away, please.

    Or you believe it’s all a big Zionist conspiracy. If so, then get stuffed.

    It’s a war. Offhand, it’s very much a ‘long twilight struggle’, yet, like the Cold War, one carried out mostly by those other than the typical American.

    In the end, in the very long run, freedom will prevail over terror. For:

    There is more light than shadow;
    There are more smiles than cares;
    More grass grows on the meadow
    Than brambles, weeds, and tares.
    There is more song than weekpin;
    There is more sun than rain;
    There is more golden reaping
    Than lost and blighted grain.
    There is more peace than terror;
    There is more hope than fear;
    There is more truth than error;
    More rights than wrongs appear.
    On the long road to glory
    We climb more than we fall;
    And by and large the story
    Comes out right after all.

    –(”From a Prayer Book”)

    You may find this Time photo-essay striking. This brief photo-essay is also striking. (Hat-tip Kate McMillan at Small Dead Animals).

    Finally, this essay (no photos) by Robert Sibley is worth reading:

    I still see bodies falling. Standing at my hotel window, overlooking Ground Zero, it’s not hard to visualize the flaming towers and the bird-like figures of human bodies plummeting through the air. I especially remember a couple leaping hand in hand into emptiness. In their flapping clothes they looked like big clumsy birds, desperate to fly.

    I’ll have more commentary on this essay in a subsequent post. For now, trust me, it’s not a maudlin thing.

    Never Forget.

    Posted in history, military, news, politics, religion | 12 Comments »

    When ‘invest’ Means ’steal’

    Monday, August 21st, 2006

    Camaro speeds into Oshawa

    they say. Wonderful news. It’s so great that GM is reviving its “iconic muscle car”. Good news for jobs for those in Michigan (parts) and Ontario (assembly). Great news for anyone who likes driving an “iconic muscle car”.

    gmsmile

    The Chairman of GM is smiling. Wouldn’t you be, if you’d persuaded the Canadians to part with nearly half a billion and Americans for hundreds of millions more? That’s one expensive car, baby.

    GM executives, senior government officials and union leaders made the announcement at the No. 2 plant, where about 2,700 jobs are expected to be saved by the return of GM’s iconic muscle car.

    GM said it will invest about $740-million to turn the plant into a more flexible operation.

    The move came after the Canadian Auto Workers union agreed to 2,500 early retirements to reduce costs at the plant and win the job of making the new car. The plant had been scheduled to close in 2008.

    So, reading between the lines, they’ll be job cuts of nearly 50%, and no new people hired. Great news I guess if you are an older worker, unionized. OK.

    GM discontinued production of the car four years ago, putting 1,000 workers at a Ste-Therese, Que., plant out of work

    Hmmm. St-Therese. Where did I hear that before? Oh that’s right. They received C$250m in government subsidies back in the late 80’s and early 1990’s to keep the plant open. (Sorry, no link, it was pre-internet. But I’m looking at dead-tree notes on the matter).

    Looks like that was money well spent.

    I’m glad this is just GM money being “invested” in the Oshawa plant this time. I mean… how dumb would it be for governments to make the same mistake, and pour in more millions, just to keep some jobs afloat for a few years?

    Oh. Wait.

    Last year, the federal government joined with Ontario to invest $435-million in the company’s Ontario auto plants.

    What?

    “invest”?

    OK, look, when a company spends money to improve its own plants, that’s an investment. When a government takes money from you and me by the threat of force (that’s what taxation is), and gives it to a company without expecting goods and services in return… well I don’t know what the heck that is, but it sure as heck ain’t “investment”.

    Stealing might better characterize it.

    Let’s be clear, though. GM isn’t stealing. They’re doing nothing wrong, other than making crappy cars and bad business decision. It’s the government that’s at fault here. I don’t like what GM is doing, but greed is a sad part of the human makeup.

    Why in the name of all that’s holy (and unholy) would governments be stupid enough to keep throwing good stolen money after bad stolen money when they know what the outcome will be?

    They are subsidizing failure.

    The decision to build a car that harkens back to GM’s heyday comes as the company struggles in a market beset by foreign competitors.

    The company lost $3.2-billion (U.S.) in the second quarter alone, due mainly to employee buyouts and other restructuring costs.

    I’ll repeat it. They are subsidizing failure.

    And that which you subsidize, you get more of.

    Here’s a handy little chart (source: 2005 Harbour Report, via CBC):

    Average profit per North American-made vehicle (US$):

    Nissan: $1,603
    Toyota: $1,488
    Honda: $1,250
    Ford: $620
    DaimlerChrysler: $186
    General Motors: ($2,311)

    In case you’re new to accounting, those brackets are the way financial people like to denote a negative. The red ink kind of hints at that too.

    So. The taxpayers of Canada and Ontario are subsidizing gigantic failure and losses at General Motors in order to temporarily shore up a few thousand jobs.

    Let’s say all 12,000 jobs in Oshawa are being ’saved’ by that subsidy of $435m. Applying a little seat-of-the-pants math, and we see that we’re paying $36,250 per job.

    Cool. So, if you’re a young person, struggling to find work and pay off your student loans, you can be secure in the knowledge that you’re paying your share of 36 large to subsidize someone your parents’ age in an already 50% downsized environment to lose more money.

    Awesome. And I thought gambling was bad.

    Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an early French anarchist, once famously asserted “La propriété, c’est le vol!” [Property is theft].

    No.

    More accurately, Taxation is theft.

    And nothing proves it better than this asinine scheme to destructively redistribute wealth from students, the working poor, hardworking enterpreneurs, to aging and dwindling unionized employees, fat-cat GM management, and whoever’s still crazy enough to be holding GM stock.

    This is your money they’re taking from you.

    I chose the example of Canada because this is what popped up on my RSS news-feed today, and got my blood boiling over morning oatmeal.

    But every North American government does it, and the Europeans make the North Americans look like pikers, in every sense of the word. Google “Airbus subsidies” for a laugh sometime. (Hint: if you live in the EU, don’t. You might get annoyed at where your tax dollars are going, unless you love socialism. In fairness, the US federal government has often offended as well, by giving military arms of civilian firms extremely friendly ‘deals’. More subtle, but equally objectionable).

    Aus, NZ, and Asia are only partly OK on this. (NZ did end most of its subsidies; not so sure about Aus. And Asia? Two words: Structural mess.)

    What’s the solution? Well, long-term, corporate subsidies have to stop. Pernicious ear-marks have to stop. Granted, easier said than done.

    Now before you consider me a leftist-anti-corporate bleeding-heart, I also think income taxation of corporations should stop. Tax corporations on flow-through sales; tax their profits only when they are distributed to shareholders. Tax distributions that leave the country more highly than those that don’t but not much more highly. And have payroll taxes as you deem suitable to operate public services.

    Have as few taxes as possible; make them as simple as possible to administer.

    But end these corporate subsidies.

    Stop subsidizing failure.

    It’s great to see the Chairman of GM smile. But I’d like to see him smiling because his company actually started making good cars that people wanted to buy, and because GM started making a profit off of those cars.

    Posted in politics | 12 Comments »

    Books Worth Reading (1)

    Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

    From time to time I’ll simply slap up a micro-book-review here. (Maybe a longer one for more recent books).

    My tastes are eclectic; as a kid, I loved SF — ’speculative fiction’ — more commonly divided into fantasy and sci-fi. Sometimes adventure stories, too. These days, I tend to enjoy mysteries, techno-thrillers, history (especially with a political, economic or military bent).

    Maths, physics, and biology can also be fun, but I struggle more and more with each passing year with the latter two fields.

    In semi-jest, I’ll say that I think I have moved away from SF since I think my job has become too much like the science fiction I read as a kid.

    So, what am I reading right now? Two books from the late 1960’s.

    First, John Kennedy O’Toole’s “Confederacy of Dunces“. My girlfriend has recently discovered this and is loving it, so I’m rereading it. Perhaps one of the finest late 20th century authors of the United States, Toole wrote very little (this was his only novel) before committing suicide at a young age. In a story worthy of a novel itself, his mother took his book around (after his death) pushing it at everyone who’d read it and eventually persuaded a professor to help publish it. [I'm linking you to a review rather than an amazon link to buy the book; no scrabbling for affiliate fees here... yet!].

    An incredibly bizarre coming of age story written in the 1960’s, it resonates even today nearly 40 years later.

    What else? Well, Michael Crichton, father of the modern techno-thriller, initially wrote under two pseudonyms while in medical school. One of them was Jeffrey Hudson, under which name he wrote “A Case of Need” in the late 60’s.

    This is an interesting tale, narrated by a pathologist, of his attempts to prove the innocence of a colleague of performing a botched abortion upon the daughter of a famous and powerful physician.

    Replete with the politics (and religion) of 1960’s Boston, and pre-Roe vs Wade America, the novel seems out of date, yet the crisp and intelligent writing draws the reader in, even today.

    Covering everything from how to synthesize LSD [deleted in the latest edition] to 1960’s era moral arguments for and against abortion, the novel packs a great deal in.

    Perhaps that’s its one failing. The two wives of the main actors (the largely off-stage abortionist and the protagonist) are largely reactive. To be sure, Dick will view that as a plus, but they remain cardboard characters with only vague foreshadowing of divorce in one case. The denouement is a touch innocent and expectant of people to behave in predictable ways when confronted. Still, it remains an excellent early novel from a fine writer on a topic that will likely move to the forefront in the years ahead in America.

    What are you reading?

    Posted in books, politics | 6 Comments »

    Slobodan Milosevic Dies in Cell

    Saturday, March 11th, 2006

    An AP wire story states that Slobodan Milosevic, former leader of Serbia (and Yugoslavia) and on trial at the Hague for war crimes, was found dead in his cell earlier this morning.

    The US (and allied) intervention in the Balkans (with no UN sanction, unlike the 1991 and 2003 interventions in Iraq) has troubled many.

    We wound up supporting a group that the CIA had classified as terrorist — the Kosovo Liberation Army — against constitutional authorities.

    The West engaged in a 78-day bombing campaign that disrupted everything from hospitals to bombing embassies. Some suggest this bombing was illegal; certainly there’s far more evidence to support that belief than to support the charge that the Iraq war is “illegal”.

    To this day, soldiers are bogged down in the Balkans, “peacekeeping”. The eight year old quagmire continues, with UN personnel apparently involved in sexual trafficking and prostitution.

    In 2006, Kosovo edges towards war, with a leader convicted of war crimes. Ethnic cleansing continues apace; this time it’s by Muslims against Christians. I suppose that makes it ok.

    Why all those who are angry about Iraq have never uttered a peep about Bosnia and Kosovo is somewhat puzzling. Perhaps it’s ignorance; perhaps it’s blind partisanship — the former intervention took place under a Republican president; the latter under a Democrat. Perhaps it’s stupidity.

    In any event, the world is better for Milosevic being removed from power. He was certainly heavily involved in the bloodbaths that consumed the former Yugoslavia throughout the 1990’s, even if not the proximate cause.

    In the end, I hope Iraq will prove to be in better shape than Kosovo. It couldn’t turn out much worse.

    UPDATE: Austin Bay has a good post: “the man who moved from Red [communism] to Brown [fascism]“:

    Milosevic orchestrated the Serb-Croat war and crafted the Serb strategy of “creeping aggression.� He was also the bully behind “ethnic cleansing� in eastern Bosnia. He epitomized the move from “red to brown� in eastern Europe– moving from Communist to ultra-nationalist fascist as the Cold War ended. The Nazis and Communists both knew they were cut from the same hideous human mold. They both share a disdain for liberalism and a disregard for human life. They are also permanently anti-American. Hitler called the US cowboys– remember that next time you hear the US “cowboy� disparaged. You can see these traits displayed by the Stalinists still among us.

    Posted in news, politics | 5 Comments »

    Cardinal Zen

    Saturday, March 11th, 2006

    I’ve often thought that Cardinal Sin (Jaime, Cardinal Sin of the Phillipines) was the best name ever for a Roman Catholic Cardinal.

    Pope Benedict has done almost as well in nominating Joseph, Cardinal Zen, to be elevated 24 March 2006. As a Chinese cardinal from Hong Kong, what could be a more apt name?

    Interestingly, this week the “state-controlled” version of China’s church lashed out at the appointment:

    “Why would you appoint someone who doesn’t support communism as a cardinal?”

    Maybe because the Pope isn’t an athiestic communist? Just speculating.

    h/t: Jack Fowler

    Posted in news, politics, religion | 1 Comment »

    Misunderestimating

    Wednesday, March 8th, 2006

    Ah, the glories of Hollywood. Don’t you just love it when celebrities speak from on high to tell mere mortals what to believe? Using all of their incredible brain-power to speak out on environmental issues (with no scientific qualifications let alone sense), political issues (with 1970’s era neo-Marxist views) and everything else under the sun. Truly, how blessed we are.

    Our weekly nominee for hypocritical stupid idiot is Barbra Streisand. In a glorious on-line column she posted on Monday 6 March 2006, she castigated George Bush, “The arrogance of this C student…�

    Now that’s fair enough, I guess. The problem is she managed, in a page-long essay, to misspell words 13 times! In one sentence she managed four misspellings. Some errors were clearly typos – surely not even a Hollywood Democrat really thinks we’re fighting a war in “Irag� – but others are repeatedly misspelled the same way throughout the document.

    The glorious sentence:

    In the 1970’s, during the Nixon Adminstration [sic], serious political curruption [sic] arose and the Republican leadership stepped up and took responsibilty [sic] by holding hearings and subpoening [sic] administration officials

    Her essay is also riddled with basic errors of fact. She states the US went to war in “Irag” in 2001 rather than 2003, and that the US tried to do “national-building” there. We presume she meant “nation-building”. I’d link you to the embarrassment of an essay, but she not surprisingly had it taken down. Hopefully she can resubmit later in the term and get a grade higher than F.

    Of course, she claimed it was because an assistant had posted the essay for her. Great job on selecting assistants, I guess. And talk about being so disconnected you’re unable to post what you write.

    Since I’m not Dick Masterson, I’ll avoid the obvious and easy comment on her being a woman.

    Hint: when you’re trying to persuade people that your opponents are stupid and arrogant, it helps your cause if you can spell. Otherwise, well, it makes you look stupid and arrogant.

    The arrogance of this Holllywood F-student.

    (h/t: Drudge).

    Posted in gender, movies, politics | 2 Comments »

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