Lettres - Letters
By readers on April 9, 2009
Les apostats de la dernière pluie
By Pierre K. Malouf on April 9, 2009
Il existe pour un catholique deux façons de quitter l’Église : par une porte dérobée au fond de la sacristie, ou par la porte principale donnant sur le parvis. La manière discrète et la plus courante : on se désintéresse de la religion, on ne va plus à la messe, on ne reçoit plus les sacrements, on cesse de croire, mais sans le crier sur les toits ; la manière forte, c’est-à-dire l’apostasie...
“Arrogants, vulgaires et disgracieux!” - Downtown merchants fed up with green onions, parking rules
By Dan Delmar on April 9, 2009
Some downtown business-owners came out swinging on Wednesday, saying the Tremblay administration has lost control over its employees and is driving people out of the heart of the city with overbearing regulations...
Panicking in the sunlight
By Vincent Geloso on April 9, 2009
After reading the details of the stimulus bill in the United States, the federal deficit in Canada and the upcoming deficits in Quebec and other provinces, I began to wonder why I was the only one to see this as absolutely normal. After all I had grown like anybody familiar with economics and public choice theory to think that economic irrationality is highly reasonable in political markets. A nice way to summarize this is a saying from a former teacher of mine who used to say that governments always have crazy solutions ready that are only waiting for problems...
The Anglo exodus may be over
By Dan Delmar on April 9, 2009
Angryphone alarmists would have you believe that the hemorrhaging seen in that community following Bill 101 and the referendums has not ended; that Anglophones are still driving U-Hauls down the 401 in droves to escape our oppressive Francophone overlords. Unfortunately, pesky facts and statistics expose that argument as one that is misleading, exaggerated and rooted in paranoia. The fact is, the bleeding has stopped and some of the Anglo deserters of decades past are coming back...
L’histoire méconnue de nos libertés
By Francis Tourigny on April 9, 2009
À peu près tout le monde, dit-on, connaît l’histoire dont il est question dans le présent compte-rendu. Elle nous a d’ailleurs été répétée à maintes reprises dès l’école primaire : c’est l’histoire du clergé et de son emprise sur le Québec. On sait aussi que l’élite cléricale prônait une idéologie profondément réactionnaire, antihumaniste et antilibérale, qui se manifestait notamment par son opposition à l’éducation gratuite et obligatoire, par la haine de la liberté d’expression et de création et par un nationalisme identitaire et étroit qui confinait au culte de la « race »...
L’insensé a dit en son coeur…
By René Girard on April 9, 2009
La campagne publicitaire récemment affichée sur une dizaine d’autobus montréalais à l’initiative de l’Association humaniste du Québec (AHQ), a suscité réactions et débats. Chacun y est allé de son interprétation de la fameuse phrase traduite d’une publicité originellement anglophone : « Dieu n’existe probablement pas. Alors cessez de vous inquiéter et profitez de la vie. » Ont pu notamment s’exprimer les voix légitimes des athées, agnostiques, libres-penseurs et sans dieu, lesquelles sont trop rarement entendues dans notre société pourtant censée être laïque...
Canada and Afghanistan
By Jessica Murphy on April 9, 2009
Afghanistan is a mess - increasingly violent, facing major hurdles in development and a severe food shortage - but according to a panel of experts lined up by the Canadian International Council, NATO needs to see its engagement through...
Afghanistan: Women’s rights are human rights
By Beryl Wajsman on April 9, 2009
It was a mistake from the beginning to allow the recognition of state faith into Afghanistan’s constitution. It was an even greater error to allow the organization of faith-based political parties. Now the west’s encounter with Afghanistan will be put to an important test. And Canada has a profound role to play.
Fundamentalist Shia clerics in Afghanistan pushed for the primacy of Sharia law, and exclusivity of it in family law matters. Not satisfied with this, they recently demanded, and obtained passage of what has come to be pejoratively called Afghanistan’s “Rape Law”.
Star Wars Episode VII: Missile Defense
By Akil Alleyne on April 9, 2009
So President Barack Obama has delivered yet another stirring speech to a vast crowd of European well-wishers, this time in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 5th. This time, however, he threw his fans something of a curveball. President Obama made clear that he would not scrap the ongoing development of a nuclear missile defense shield. “As long as the threat from Iran persists,” he declared, “we will go forward with a missile-defense system that is cost-effective and proven.”..
The view from the top of Debt Mountain
By Robert Presser on April 9, 2009
After the conclusion of what is probably the most important G20 meeting ever held, one can be forgiven for feeling optimistic. While unemployment in the US is at a quarter-century high at 8.3% and first world economies continue to contract, G20 leaders looked past their local economic miseries, resulting in an remarkable level of international commitment expressed in London. This solidarity was truly exceptional given the divergent opinions held by many going into the meeting.
À contre-Coran
By Louise V. Labrecque on April 9, 2009
Comme on l’a vu durant les audiences de la commission Bouchard-Taylor, plusieurs bien-pensants considèrent que notre société démocratique devrait se plier à toutes les revendications faites au nom de l’Islam. C’en était trop pour Djemila Benhabib qui, dans l’éclairant ouvrage qu’elle vient de lancer, critique notamment le fait que, dans leur rapport, les commissaires Gérard Bouchard et Charles Taylor ont complètement négligé de faire la distinction entre « musulmans » et « islamistes », ces derniers étant de la graine de fanatiques et ne constituant, de ce fait, qu’une infime minorité parmi les immigrants de religion musulmane.
Le Monde de Piperberg
By Roy Piperberg on April 9, 2009
Following Mark Twain and the Mississippi River
By David T. Jones on April 9, 2009
It is a pity that political correctness has driven Mark Twain out of style. A generation ago, Samuel Clemens (whose nom de plume was “Mark Twain”) was both an iconic author of children’s stories (Tom Sawyer, Prince and the Pauper) and regarded as one of the “greats” in American literature for the classic Huckleberry Finn. Although “Tom” and “Huck” were often presented as a duality of “boys’ stories,” Huck was anything but a child’s tale with its sophisticated story of adult duplicity and mendacity along with Huck’s efforts to get a slave friend, “Jim” to safety...
Age of arousal
By Alidor Aucoin on April 9, 2009
Sexuality is turned up full throttle in The Centaur’s lavish production of Age of Arousal, a stylish, often outrageous and sometimes tedious take on how women relate to one another, and how a man can poison that relationship. Linda Griffith’s feminist play about a group of sexually repressed “new age” women in Victorian London, is inspired by George Gissing’s The Odd Woman, the 19th century novel which deals with the fate of emancipated women in a male-dominated society...
IMAGINE
By Jessica Murphy on April 9, 2009
John Lennon and Yoko Ono created a brand of fame 40 years ago that remains strikingly contemporary – shades of which can be seen in both the earnest activism of U2’s Bono to the self-obsessed flashbulb frenzy surrounding today’s vapid starlets...
Regurgitating the 60s
By Alidor Aucoin on April 9, 2009
It will be 40 years in May since John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their bed -in for peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. Apart from 60-something fans wrapped in the reassuring womb of nostalgia, why should anyone care? Lennon has been in his grave for almost 20 years and at the age of 75, his moody widow’s contribution to peace is to run around the world handing out pretentious little rubber stamps that bear the message, Imagine Peace...
The New Republic and the Mind Minus Imagination
By David Solway on April 9, 2009
I don’t know about The New Republic. Occasionally an excellent writer, say a Paul Berman or an Adam Hirsch, will embellish its pages and generate a certain positive impact. But its measured tones and prudential camber, giving the impression of considered good sense, is largely deceptive. A vital element seems lacking. Beneath the ostensible judiciousness and studied objectivity there is a curious feel of waffle, an haut goût of empty sophistication, of something not quite kosher...
