Quote of the week:

“Stéphane Dion is Celine Dion’s 10th cousin.” —Quebec genealogist Gérard Saint-Denis. All Dions in Canada are descended from master mason Jean du Buisson Guyon, who landed here in 1634, as revealed in Tuesday’s La Presse.

Amnesty writes

Picture yourself in a cell in some detention centre in some godforsaken part of the world where human rights and due process are but fantasy terms. You know, like somewhere the CIA might deliver you should you happen to share a name with any suspected terrorists. But then, after your daily waterboarding session, your jailers bring you your mail and you discover you’ve got a whole shitload full of letters from people around the world expressing solidarity and letting you know that you haven’t been entirely forgotten. It’s got to make you feel at least a little bit better, right?

This Saturday, Dec. 9, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., Amnesty International will be hosting their Write for Rights campaign in the Place des Arts metro corridor between the metro station and Place des Arts.

“The idea is to get as many people to write letters directly to prisoners on the same day as possible”, says Amnesty spokesperson Anne Sainte-Marie. “Just a simple card saying, ‘We’re thinking of you’ can bring enormous joy to someone who’s been wrongly imprisoned.”

Stamps will provided, as will live entertainment. For more info go to www.amnistie.ca. —Chris Barry

Poor tenants take hit

The city budget for 2007 announced late last week managed to avoid its anticipated $400-million deficit, mostly, say critics, by heaving the heaviest burden onto the suburbs and by raising taxes again. But François Saillant, of local housing advocate group FRAPRU, says low-income tenants are also going to be hit hard by this year’s budget.

“It’s clear we aren’t rejoicing,” he says. “There is no uniform increase throughout the city. It’s affecting mostly duplex and triplex owners, not single-dwelling units or condos.” The rise in taxes in the southwest, Montreal North, Villeray and Park Extension is another blow to already poor neighbourhoods, which were already hit earlier this year when their property valuation were updated.

“The only people who are going to benefit from this are people who buy and quickly sell property, the real estate speculators,” says Saillant. He says cities have to find new ways to pay for themselves other than by taxing its lowest earners.

The tax increases are likely to affect an estimated 75 per cent of all Montreal homeowners. The tax bill for an estimated one-third of commercial and industrial properties will drop next year. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Rock for Dawson

After they lost their daughter to a mad gunman in the Dawson shootings, Anastasia De Sousa’s parents supported establishing a memorial fund in their daughter’s name that would award scholarships to students. A benefit concert for the Anastasia De Sousa Memorial Fund and for a youth hotline will be held tonight, Thursday, Dec. 7, at the Metropolis (59 Ste-Catherine E., tickets $20; $15 for students, 7 p.m.).

“The name will be perpetuated for something positive to help students,” says Daniel Rafuse, who is organizing the In Concert Against Violence show. A variety of bands, ranging from the Stills to funk group Heavy Traffic, will perform at the benefit. “We’re trying to bring everyone together,” he says. “Hopefully, although we live in a culture that glorifies violence, the event will sensitize people that we have to be conscious of treating one another with love and civility.”

The proceeds will be split between the Anastasia De Sousa Memorial Fund and Kids Help Phone, which counsels troubled youth. Tickets can be bought from the Dawson Student Union, Concordia Student Union and Metropolis, and online at E-Biz and Ticketpro. For more info, see www.inconcertagainstviolence.com. —Samer Elatrash

Noisemaker’s African odyssey

Muslim and Ayesha Harji, the 2006 Mirror Noisemaker father-daughter team that biked from Cairo to Cape Town earlier this year to raise funds for the Aga Khan Foundation, have been back home in Montreal since May, but the experience will stay with them forever. This Friday, Dec. 8, Muslim, a 59-year-old former Parc Ave. grocer, will be sharing his thoughts on the continent at a talk at Concordia and, he says, he hopes to explode some myths.

“From the moment I landed in Cairo until the day I came home, there were 1001 acts of kindness—Africa is full of kindness,” he beams. He and his 23-year-old daughter were part of a group of 40 that biked the 12,000-kilometre journey. Harji is certainly familiar with the continent: “I was born in Tanzania, grew up in Kenya and was kicked out of Uganda” by despot Idi Amin, he says. But he’d never been to Egypt, Sudan or Ethiopia, and said that despite some very depressing encounters with poverty and drought, “everyone was always smiling, and always had hope for tomorrow.”

The presentation takes place on Friday, Dec. 8 (6–8 p.m., 1590 Dr. Penfield, room 301). —Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

10 years ago - Dec. 5–12, 1996

On the cover: Water-sport-loving fiddler Ashley MacIsaac, who was recently dropped from the Maclean’s Honour Roll when it was revealed that he liked peeing on his 16-year-old boyfriend. The article deals mostly with the widespread criticism directed at Maclean’s for its hypocrisy in being both “puritanical” and “prurient.”

• Angryphone Howard Galganov intends to serve notice to the Quebec government that he is going to take them to court “for, of all things, not taking him to court” as his Monkland store Presque Pure Laine flagrantly flaunts provincial language laws.

• Gavin McInnes writes glowingly about Pulley, fronted by MLB pitcher Scott Radinsky, and punk’s new jock rock movement. “People say this sports angle is blasphemy but they’re just bitter old punk guys who are pissed off because their bald spots make it impossible for them to have a mohawk ever again.”

• Johnson Cummins reviews Weekly World News columnist Ed Anger’s book Let’s Pave the Stupid Rainforest and Give School Teachers Stun Guns, and praises it for its “hilarious hostility.”

Angel >> The Moon base The U.S. space agency NASA announced this week that it will be studying the feasibility of a permanent manned settlement on the moon by 2024. Beyond the stuff of childhood dreams and sci-fi movies, the mission itself actually makes sense. NASA needs to justify its existence, as the shuttles are due for retirement, and the technology and know-how are in place. The base, which would be built at the moon’s south pole to take advantage of almost permanent sunlight, will also serve as the basis for future scientific and possibly commercial interests. With a planet of rapidly dwindling resources, it’s time, as Cambridge physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking said, to think about other sources of mankind’s needs.
Insect >> Closing jailhouse tattoo parlours Another good Liberal idea is about to get scrapped by the Conservatives. Citing cost-cutting measures, Public Security Minister Stockwell Day announced this week that the feds would be closing tattoo parlours in federal prisons. The cost of the project, an estimated $600,000, can be better spent, he said. Never mind that the pilot project’s idea, greenlighted for six prisons last year and implemented in August, was to stop illicit tattoos done by syringes or pens, which are excellent ways of transmitting HIV and hepatitis C, viruses prisoners are 10 and 30 times more likely to contract than the general population.