Quote of the week:

“This is repugnant to Canadians, for their tax money to be spent on a company like that.” —Retired Kingston, Ontario, city councillor Don Rogers, of www.countmeout.ca, on StatsCan relying on software from U.S. weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin to process census results.

Outgames busted

“We’ve all been aware of the Outgames coming, and we know we’re about to see a massive commercial spectacle.” So says the pseudonymous Pomelo Grenade, a member of local media arts collective Volatile Works.

With this in mind, Volatile Works, with perennial radical-queer shit-disturbers the Pink Panthers and the Anti-Capitalist Ass Pirates, have mounted Busting Outgames, a “trans-lesbo-fag-anarcho-queer” event taking place Friday, May 19 at 9 p.m. at Café Esperanza (5490 St-Laurent). Cover is 52 cents—“One thousand times cheaper than the Outgames LGBT Human Rights Conference.

“The fact that it costs $525 to register raises the question about who exactly the human rights conference is meant for,” says Grenade. “Friday’s event aims to create a space to explore a more radical meaning of what queer used to signify, as opposed to how it’s been commodified through events like the Outgames.”

The soirée, DJed by the Ass Pirates, will serve as a combo DVD launch (the Panthers’ Politically Erect Vol. 2) and book launch for Fernwood Publishing’s anthology Sociology for Changing the World, with trash-porno video screenings and more. —Andrea Zanin

Concordia’s 9/11

The activist set is getting their response to the hand-wringing surrounding two recent movie accounts of United 93, the fourth plane to crash on Sept. 11, 2001. David Bernans’s novel North of 9/11 (Cumulus Press, $18) looks at the conflicting tensions between the powers that be and the anti-war movement in Montreal, particularly at Concordia.

Readers, however, be warned: the novel will likely appeal to few beyond the committed core anti-war activist crowd, as Bernans doesn’t shy away from hiding his decidedly left political leanings—the bad guys are conservatives, the good ones are mostly well-meaning, if naïve, student radicals.

While the central characters are fictional composites of real people Bernans met while a Concordia Student Union archivist and researcher, real locations are used, as are some real people. The novel spans between 9/11 and October 9, 2001, the day bombs start falling on Afghanistan.

“Those were the most intense days of overwhelming imagery” of the towers falling, the Pentagon in flames and the Stars and Stripes soaring, says Bernans.

North of 9/11 is in bookstores now. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Anarchy ready

Rabble-rousers take note: Montreal’s seventh annual Festival of Anarchy gets into full swing this week, with the opening event for the Anarchist Bookfair, If I Can’t Dance… Anarchist Cabaret, scheduled to go down at Club Lambi (4465 St-Laurent) this Friday, May 19, at 9:30 p.m. Featuring MC extraordinaire Xavier, circus artists, BC anarchist folk singer Joey Only and more, the cabaret launches what promises to be a fun-filled week of anarchist events.

The book fair, the largest of its kind in North America, gets underway this Saturday at CEDA (2515 Delisle) in St-Henri, and over the course of the weekend will be sponsoring workshops and various information sessions. Throughout the following week, a series of film screenings, plays and cabarets will be taking place at various locales throughout the city.

“The festival is all about bringing people together and, of course, promoting discussion and awareness of anarchist ideas through the literature,” says Norman Nawrocki, noted local activist and celebrated author of The Anarchist and the Devil Do Cabaret.

Go to http://anarchistbookfair.taktic.org/ for the complete schedule. —Chris Barry

Egypt’s thug justice

The Egyptian government bills itself as a democracy, but rule of the people and habeas corpus aren’t exactly synonymous with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. If you must compare, think Jabba the Hutt, surrounded by a praetorian guard of Keystone Cops.

During last November’s elections, Egyptian police shut down polls, shot dead nine protesters and enlisted machete-wielding thugs to intimidate would-be voters.

Now mark the sequel. Several independent judges who monitored the elections submitted sworn depositions to the effect that some of the election results were forged. The government hauled two judges before a court to face disciplinary charges, and in an ongoing crackdown arrested hundreds of demonstrators protesting in support of the judges.

“We’re revolted at the way the Egyptian government is handling peaceful protest,” says Rachad Antonius of Canadian Egyptians for Democracy. The group has started an online petition which you can sign at www.petitiononline.com/eg06judg/petition.html, and will gather outside the Egyptian consulate (1 Place Ville-Marie) at noon on Thursday, May 25. —Samer Elatrash

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

12 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
May 19–May 26, 1994

On the cover: Roy Lichtenstein, as a retrospective opens at the Museum of Fine Arts. In an article more essay than interview, Henry Lehmann discusses pop art’s aesthetic, history, meaning and other egg-headery, limiting Lichtenstein to a few quotes in which he “laughed” and “giggled” and was “entirely unboastful.”

• At least seven, and possibly eight, staff have been suspended from Tanguay prison since November, although authorities would not confirm the number or the reasons. A spokesperson for the Elizabeth Fry Institute believe they are the result of brutality within the prison.

• “Believe the hype on this one,” Chris Yurkiw writes about Johnny Cash’s American Recordings.

• “Pretension and self-promotion run through Cannes like a low-grade fever,” writes Joanne Latimer from the French Riviera. “The locals hate the film festival and its vulgar denizens. Most leave the city, but those saddled with a store just put on a smile, extend their hours and jack up the prices.”

• City columnist Jacob Richler publishes his debut column, about the Casino’s government funding.

Angel >> The federal long-gun registry Like many a Liberal project, the gun registry was incompetently executed, vastly over budget and unpopular in the West. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. Now that the federal Conservatives seem intent on following through with their campaign promise to strangle the life out of the registry altogether, some law enforcement officers are urging them to hold on to it. At least two top cops say the registry is checked up to 5,000 times a day, and has kept (legally acquired) guns out of dangerous hands. But the base must be appeased, so it looks like the gun registry is one more Liberal initiative that may eventually wind up in the scrap heap.
Insect >> Environment Minister Rona Ambrose Speaking of the scrap heap, it looks like Canada’s commitment to the Kyoto Protocol is on its way. Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, who was in Germany this week chairing an international conference on climate change, told the world Canada won’t meet its Kyoto commitments. Not that the Conservatives were keen on trying anyway, or that the Liberals were any more effective. But amid vague platitudes about a made-in-Canada approach to fighting global warming, the country will be losing out on important investments in green technology. At least one company that promotes greenhouse gas reduction methods in agriculture announced it was pulling out of Canada due to uncertainty over Kyoto, and taking an estimated $1-billion with it.