Quote of the week:

"It was meant in a joking way, in his colourful way of expressing himself." - Luc Lavoie, spokesman for Brian Mulroney, reacting to the off-colour remarks appearing in the book The Secret Mulroney Tapes, on Monday.

The year in sex work

Next Wednesday, Sept. 21, members of sex workers' rights group Stella will be meeting to plan for the coming year. The annual general assembly, says Stella representative Jenn Clamen, isn't very exciting, but it does give sex workers the opportunity to meet, greet, express concerns and present a list of priorities they feel need addressing.

"It's not really going to be an overview of the industry," Clamen says. "It's more about what we've done as an organization in the past year and what we want to see done in the future."

It will also be an opportunity for sex workers to become active Stella members, which, for a symbolic $1, gives them the right to vote in administrative council elections.

"We always want to increase our membership, and we're always looking for people who want to get implicated," says Clamen. And the more sex workers the better: Clamen says Stella wants to hear more people offering different perspectives. Whether they're members or not, she says, "everybody will be allowed to speak."

Call 285-8889 for more info. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Housing party

The Comité logement du Plateau thinks they've found room for hundreds of social housing units and want to tell our municipal representatives - actual and potential - about it. This Saturday, Sept. 17, the Comité will be holding a demonstration at Mont-Royal metro and throwing an outdoor awareness-raiser and party in Laurier Park to highlight the lack of social housing in the neighbourhood.

The Comité plans on making social housing an issue for this November's municipal elections. "The city announced that in the next 10 years they'll build 65,000 to 70,000 new lodgings," says Comité coordinator Simon Dumais. "We want 35,000 of those to be social housing."

Dumais doesn't believe the city when they say they have very little room to build, and that on a recent bus tour he identified enough spots to build 700 units.

Dumais says the gentrification of the Plateau over the past few years has had a "devastating" effect on low-income tenants, and that the existing population wants to reclaim what was theirs.

The demonstration begins at 2 p.m., the outdoor shindig at 4 p.m. » Patrick Lejtenyi

Gays and Nazis

Much of men-loving-men history remains too-little-known, but the sufferings of homosexuals targeted during the Holocaust particularly so. That's due largely to anti-sodomy Paragraph 175 of the old Prussian penal code, which was employed in the Third Reich and in both Germanys until the late 1960s.

"It was used by the Allies and German governments to persecute gay men, which is why many victims of the Nazis never came forward to talk," says Concordia religion professor Donald Boisvert. Between 10,000 and 15,000 gays were sent to concentration camps, Boisvert says, as a result "of the 19th-century view that homosexuality is a disease that could be cured."

He'll detail the subject in a speech organized by the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre on Thursday, Sept. 15 at 1590 Dr. Penfield, 7 p.m.

"People often don't know or forget that there were other groups within German society targeted by the Nazis: Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies and gays. The centre is trying to incorporate some of these dimensions into its outreach," he says.

On Monday, Sara Horowitz will speak about "Women and the Holocaust" at 7 p.m. at 855 Sherbrooke W. #232. » Kristian Gravenor

Durable talks

The city has a new plan for sustainable development, but just how much do John and Jane Q. Taxpayer know about it? Probably not that much. So the Urban Ecology Centre will be visiting various boroughs around town to explain it to them, and to discuss some important environmental issues between now and Sept. 22.

"It's a new plan, so these talks are new tools to facilitate citizens' involvement in actively protecting the environment," says Michele Bousquet, who's responsible for the project.

Three main themes will be discussed, with the topic varying from evening to evening: air quality, resource management and quality of residential environments. And while Bousquet says she doesn't want to make links between a specific neighbourhood and specific environmental problems they may face, talks have been prepared to reflect the issues borough residents may find especially pressing.

For more information on the talks and to see when you'll have the opportunity to participate, call the Centre at 281-8378 or visit www.urbanecology.net. To see the city's sustainable development plan, see www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/developpementdurable. » Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

18 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Sept. 18–Oct. 1, 1987

On the cover: Sun Ra, who, along with his Arkestra, will be appearing at the FIMAV Victoriaville festival. Interviewed, however, is string-instrument musician Fred Frith, who enjoys performing there. "When you come out of a gig in Victoriaville, there's nothing but trees and people to talk to," he says.

• In a letter to the editor, John McGraw, Concordia's Chair of the Department of Philosophy, points out that, contrary to a Mirror report, Concordia does indeed have a business ethics course. An Editor's note admits the error but states that "since none of the business program administrators were aware of this course, it appears unlikely that their students - for whom the course was intended - would have [been aware of it] either."

• In Motion Picture Purgatory, Rick Trembles reviews The Lost Boys, but frames the cartoon with naked, stern-faced women, three "See-Hear-Speak-no-evil" chimps and "Censored by Mirror" stamps. The previous issue, the editors had placed a Mirror logo over an image in MPP they considered offensive. MPP does not appear in the next issue.

Angel >> Investigating racism The provincial Liberals are going to try to address some pressing questions surrounding the situation of blacks in Quebec. Headed by Nelligan MNA Yolande James (pictured), the project will include task forces and public consultations aiming at increasing black participation in Quebec public life. The situation of Quebec's blacks, 92 per cent of whom live in Montreal, bears scrutiny: while slightly better educated than the rest of Quebecers, black unemployment, at 17 per cent, is more than twice the provincial average, and blacks who are employed earn significantly less. Other visible minorities may be the focus of future projects.
Insect >> First strikes Washington is reviewing its nuclear weapons policy, and it's getting more aggressive. A new draft policy paper, written by the Pentagon's Joint Staff, says that terrorist groups or states that are preparing for an attack on the U.S. or its allies could find themselves on the business end of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Presumably, that would mean countries like pre-2003 Iraq, if the Bush administration's intelligence was to be believed. The draft also calls for the use of nuclear weapons to ensure a swift and overwhelming victory for American forces. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is expected to approve the final document in the coming weeks.