Mirror called
snide, asinine!

I wanted to draw your attention to Chris Barry’s brief “Aboriginal action” [Re: Front, June 28]. He begins “Just in case you didn’t know, and you probably didn’t, this Friday, June 29 marks A National Day of Action.”

I find this a surprisingly asinine remark to make given the extensive coverage the Day of Action received in the weeks and months leading up to June 29. Drop the snide comments about the inferior intelligence of your readers, and focus instead on delivering the news. And by news I mean actual reporting, not regurgitating press releases from the latest cause célèbre.

>> Jonathan Montpetit

Chris Barry replies: I wasn’t trying to be flippant about it. I just figured PRE-event, more people would be unfamiliar with the Day of Action than would know about it. That’s all. It certainly wasn’t intended as a slight with respect to the professional abilities of the publicists being paid to promote the Native American cause. Or the cause itself. And finally, I got almost all, if not all, of the info I used in the story from my interview subject. I think somebody is reading way too much into a simple Front item.

Do Muslims run Mirror?

I’m sick of opening the Mirror and seeing your Letters page filled with vulgar anti-Semitic rhetoric that is submitted by your readers week after week. They have no clue of history. To them, and to all that read the trash that’s continuously printed, educate yourselves before you go spouting lies and falsehoods. If this is what a university education has provided you with, I feel sorry for the state of our educational system.

Watch the video on this Web site. Absorb the facts. Educate yourselves. And to the Mirror and its editors, there are other countries in the world where conflict abounds, perhaps you should open your eyes or look at a world map. You make it seem as if Israel is the only nation in the world where trouble exists. Palestine never existed as a nation. Is the Muslim population in Montreal running the agenda of your newspaper? Educate yourselves! www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/
(Watch it NOW!)

>> Kenneth Solomon Weinstein

Idiot voices opinion

Dude seriously! The Best of Montreal is a joke and always has been. La Belle Province has the best poutine? This, among many, many other of the entries, leads me to believe that either Montrealers are pathetic no-taste losers, your reading audience is not representative of Montrealers’ tastes, or that perhaps there is a flaw in your researching process. I have a feeling that the problem might be that a large portion of your readers clearly have no taste. They’re probably reading your paper while wearing tacky ’80s clothes with their headbands on too tight and stuffing so much stuff up their noses that they’ve lost all sense of what passes for quality.

Just one idiot’s humble opinion.

>> Aaron Kagan

Don’t punish cyclists

We’re well into the summer season, which means more cyclists than ever have hit the roads. The Montreal police department has recently done their bit to further frustrate and alienate cyclists through a misguided crackdown on cyclists who fail to follow the rules of the road. First off, let me make it clear that I am fully in support of getting cyclists to safely use the roads—I have spent the last six years working with a not-for-profit community bicycle shop where one of our mandates is to help cyclists protect themselves, including encouraging helmet use as well as light and reflector use.

I was, however, livid when, recently, no less than three co-workers arrived at work with $37 fines for not having proper reflectors and lights on their bikes—at 9 in the morning. For the police to fine, and not give out warnings instead, along with some education on the subject, is bad PR and comes across as more of an income generator than a genuine effort to increase the safety of Montreal cyclists.

It’s all the more galling to punish cyclists when the sheer quantity of irresponsible and dangerous vehicle use is on the rise, with no clear plan to address it any time soon. Cars are becoming roaming phone booths with increasingly erratic behaviour—running red lights, rolling half-way into intersections before coming to a stop, indicating without turning. Marshall McLuhan said it best, “The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.” The police should focus on stripping these reckless people of their armour to make them responsible. I’m infinitely more fearful of these people than cyclists who don’t have reflectors on their bikes on a sunny Thursday morning.

>> Robin Black