What would
the aliens think?

[Re: The ongoing Middle East discussion in the Mirror’s letter section.] I’m trying to understand why the editorial leadership of the Mirror continues, on a weekly basis, to dedicate their entire “Letters to the Editor” section to extreme supporters on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

These letters serve no purpose except perhaps some entertainment for the Mirror’s editors and a few sick readers. They present unsubstantiated “facts” presented by both sides—let alone the fact that the Mirror’s contributors have zero credibility when reporting on this issue (unless you guys have a Mideast bureau and are witnessing events firsthand).

I feel that this weekly cat-and-mouse game is destructive. It doesn’t serve any positive purpose. The letters on both sides are pretty nasty and petty. They don’t offer any concrete advice on how the leadership of either side can achieve peace, how to solve the problems of Palestinian refugees, or how to put an end to suicide bombings.

Moreover, is this really the most important issue in the lives of most Montrealers? While I am no social activist, is the Mirror not receiving letters from readers about Darfur, Myanmar, local issues and other relevant topics? I’m not trying to minimize this issue, but it does take up a disproportionate amount of space in the “letters” section. If an alien were to land on Earth, and was to read the “letters” column of your paper, he would come to the conclusion that the two largest factions on earth are Israelis and Palestinians.

By continuously engaging guerrilla cause-supporters (Frankel and Dirlik) in this debate, you’re assisting in dividing our local community, in addition to not using your paper as a voice to help recommend resolutions that satisfy both sides of this debate. Doesn’t journalism have a greater responsibility than muckraking?

>> Jon Selig

I am fucking sick and tired of the intellectual diarrhoea being spouted back and forth in a Montreal weekly cultural newspaper between both sides in this debate. As if anything said in a free weekly newspaper 5,000 miles away is going to make the slightest fucking difference. Please get over yourselves.

If the issue is so important to you, why not do something about it on the ground rather than the incessant talking past each other, which has, and will continue, to get us nowhere.

Why doesn’t the Mirror pay attention to issues far more important, like the fact that we have a fascist CIA thug masquerading as our Prime Minister who’s bent on selling us down the river while building his drug war Gulags?

Canada has allowed a wolf into the henhouse by electing and legitimizing this branch plant manager for American tyranny and aggression.

>> Justin

Parting with plastic

[Re: “Plastax applauded,” Aug. 16] This Front article stated the Quebec government’s eventual willingness to impose a 20-cent-a-bag tax on all plastic bags. Ireland introduced such a tax in 2002, leading to a 95 per cent drop in the use of plastic bags in that nation.

Some grocery store chains have already introduced laudable, environmentally friendly policies. I shop at Maxi often, and I get a five-cent reduction in the grocery bill for each old plastic bag that I bring in and reuse. Because a number of people are beginning to bring in old plastic bags and reusing them for bagging groceries, it does help the environment and the pocketbook nominally.

People must be encouraged to take advantage of such environmentally friendly measures, and more stores need to adopt such policies. Why waste reusable, old plastic bags?

>> Manish Patwari

Eat shorts, critic critics

Anyone who has ever got their knickers in a twist because Johnson Cummins didn’t like their adolescent fartrock album, get over it.

When my band didn’t get a five star rating, I wasn’t upset. We critique the critics. How many times have we heard someone say, “I’d like to see how well they could do it.” So I say to the critics’ critics, “Untie your shorts and eat them.”

Cummins and Bionic set Café Campus on fire. They put out like us adolescent fartrockers can only dream of. If I ever manage to release another record, I hope he rakes it across the coals. I’ll be honoured.

>> Clank

Joe Martek: 1959–2007

A man of passion and conviction
Defender of the struggling artist
Elegant man yet so modest
Eloquent visionary of the future
Pillar and buoy for so many
Montreal artists
Having shared with you many
days of glory
Understandably God recruited
you as his manager
Rest in peace my dear friend, Joe
The future will remember you as
legend

>> Paul Etch

[Ed’s note: For more on the life and times of Joe Martek, click here]

WE WELCOME LETTERS TO THE EDITOR!