Quote of the week:

“If you go to a municipal assembly you don’t expect to be part of a religious ceremony.” —Luc Alarie, lawyer for the Mouvement Laïque Québécois, who have issued a complaint to the Quebec Human Rights Commission over the Laval municipal council’s opening prayer before each meeting, in Tuesday’s Gazette. The hearing takes place later this week.

Junkies in print

Quebec injection-drug users now have a magazine of their own, thanks to the efforts of three Montreal needle-exchange centres. The first issue of L’Injecteur, a quarterly, was published earlier this month, with another set for publication in late May.

“This is a magazine by users for users,” says L’Injecteur’s coordinator and editor-in-chief Véronique Houle. Three reporters, aged between 21 and 29, write the bulk of the stories, although submissions from other users, such as drawings or poetry, can be accepted. A professional graphic designer helps with the layout in the office space of needle-exchange centre Cactus.

Houle says it is important to keep the tone of the paper honest, without drowning in self-pity. “We aren’t writing about these people as victims,” she says.

While the inaugural issue does tend to emphasize younger users, Houle says future issues will look at addiction from other perspectives. “We have a lot of links with jails, so we’ll be going inside to get work from prisoners.”

L’Injecteur is available province-wide at needle-exchange sites, clinics and elsewhere. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Mirabel killers

A prototype of Bell’s made-in-Mirabel Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) was tested in the U.S. last week, but the U.S. Army will have to wait a few years to receive all 368 of them.

The ARH, promoted as a “hunter, killer, survivor” on its Web site, can carry missiles and cannons and should be ready by 2008, says Bell director of business development Michel Legault. It will most likely be used to replace the ageing Kiowa helicopter in Iraq.

The robust description by Bell of the helicopter’s lethalness reflects the needs of the U.S. military, Legault says. “In the context of the U.S., the customer is looking for things that are fairly strong.”

Legault says the helicopters would not be used in human rights violations in Iraq because, “We trust that the U.S. citizen is an honest citizen doing things of a legal nature.”

Legault questions scrutiny of Bell supplying the U.S. military in Iraq. “Have you heard of Honda Civic?” he asks. “It’s used in car bombings in Iraq.”

A salesperson with a local Honda dealer shrilly denied links between Honda and the Iraqi insurgency. —Samer Elatrash

Village metro closer

Last Monday, March 27, Ville-Marie borough mayor Benoît Labonté presented a petition to city council requesting changing the name of Beaudry metro station to Beaudry-Village, serving as it does the Gay Village. This is the latest step in a campaign that began in February, when Labonté first proposed the idea. The 2006-name petition, with all signatures signed at the metro’s exit, shows that it’s an idea whose time has come, says Labonté.

“Ideally, we’d like to announce the name change before or during the Outgames,” he says, referring to the massive, gay-oriented athletic gathering this summer. “The changes may not be ready by then, but it would send an important signal.”

Labonté says he has consulted with various Village establishments and commercial bodies, and all were happy with the name-change, as were other non-gay agencies. The Montreal Transit Corp. does have a moratorium on changing station names, but, according to Labonté, that only applies to commercial interests. “I’m pretty hopeful this will go through,” he says. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Rad flicks

Here’s a perfect opportunity for all you armchair activists to promote anarchy without getting your hands dirty. This Saturday, April 1, at 5 p.m. in Concordia de Sève Cinema (1400 de Maisonneuve W.), there will be a screening of Ben Garry and Ryan McKenna’s excellent documentary Move, about the Philadelphia black radical movement of the ’70s of the same name, narrated by lefty U.S. historian Howard Zinn. Also screened will be Clarke Mackey’s flick Eyes in the Back of Your Head, a short film about Womyn 4 Justice, a group of Canadian prisoners and ex-prisoners currently organizing to build a transition house for women leaving prison.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of $3–$5, with all proceeds going to support the 7th annual Montreal Anarchist Bookfair and the Books to Prisoners Montreal organization. According to Poya Saffari of QPIRG-Concordia, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair and accompanying Festival of Anarchy is “the largest anarchist event in North America.”

The deadline to request a table for the the festival is Saturday, April 1. Visit http://salonanarchiste.taktic.org/vendors.html to grab one. —Chris Barry

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

16 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
March 29–April 5, 1990

On the cover: Martin Luther King Jr., as the Mirror investigates the Montreal connection to his murder. James Earl Ray spent time in Montreal after escaping from a Missouri prison and claims he was set up here by a mystery man named Raoul. He maintains his innocence, and “new evidence,” according to reporter Eleanor Brown, hints at a CIA/FBI/mafia plot.

• Rip Torn discusses his latest role as Walt Whitman in Beautiful Dreamers, about the American poet’s 1880 visit to London, Ontario. After he played Whitman in Song of Myself (1976), he says, he had to keep turning down Whitman roles. “It’s not that I don’t love Whitman and his work, but I didn’t want to end up playing the part for years.”

• “To be honest, yes, we love playing the pubs,” says Spirit of the West’s Geoffrey Kelly.

• Discussing his latest novel London Fields, about a luckless author who sets up a murder, Martin Amis says he “sees the failed artist as a very dangerous person.”

Angel >> The People’s Commission on Immigration “Security” Matters Despite the somewhat Stalinist name, this project, launched earlier this week, groups together various organizations working on immigration, anti-racism and human rights to speak in a united way about security issues, particularly as they apply to visible minorities. The commission casts a wide net, including in its ranks members from the Muslim Council of Montreal, the Black Coalition of Quebec, No One Is Illegal, Solidarity Across Borders and the Mohawk Nation. Their primary mandate is investigating uses of security certificates, detention, deportation and allegations of torture. Whether they will actually accomplish anything remains to be seen, but some cohesion among these groups will certainly amplify their generally worthy message.
Insect >> Harper muzzling the press Chubby Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s relationship with the jackals of the press took another turn towards the worse this week. With his almost manic insistence on staying “on-message,” as highlighted in last week’s Insect, the PM is now restricting reporters’ access to information of national importance, such as Cabinet meeting discussions and relations with other heads of state. Harper didn’t tell the press about a 20-minute phone call he had with U.S. President Bush about their upcoming meeting in Mexico, and it’s been suggested that in the future, Cabinet will meet in secret to avoid reporters, and pick which journalists can ask questions at press conferences.