Quote of the week

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” —Albert Einstein, in a letter auctioned in London on Thursday, May 15.

Torch for freedom

Montrealers bummed our city wasn’t given a chance to wreak protest havoc along the Beijing 2008 Olympic torch relay route should not despair, another opportunity to let the Chinese government know just how dodgy you think they are comes into play this Friday, May 16, by way of the Montreal Tibetan Freedom Marathon.

As part of the Canada Tibet Committee’s national Tibetan Freedom Torch campaign, an alternative torch will be travelling our streets that day. Leaving at 11:30 a.m. from Parc Kelso in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, the Tibetan Freedom Torch will head downtown by bicycle where, after a series of stops including Westmount Park and the Old Port, the public is being invited to follow it along the final leg of its Montreal journey from Parc Lafontaine to the Olympic Stadium, where a rally is scheduled for 5 p.m.

“This is an opportunity for Montrealers to tell the Chinese government, among many things, that there’s no place for forced labour camps, for the suppression of free protests by Chinese citizens, or for the 4,500 illegal detainments and 250 deaths in the past 45 days of peaceful Tibetan protesters,” says Dermod Travis of the CTC.

For more details, go to tibetanfreedomtorch.org.

Big gay brunch

Just in case the date hasn’t been marked off on your calendar for several months now, this Saturday, May 17 marks the International Day Against Homophobia, and gay and gay-positive Montrealers are being invited to celebrate this historic occasion with a good old fashioned family-style brunch in Parc Lafontaine, which will be getting underway at 10:30 a.m.

“We want this to be a family affair,” notes Pierre Boucher of Groupe de recherche et d’intervention sociale gaies et lesbiennes, co-organizers of the event. “Among several invitees, we’ll be having parents of gay children and the children of gay parents speaking before the brunch and then, after we eat, well, it’s going to be a big family party in the park that’s going to be great, rain or shine. We want people to understand that there are many, many families out there that include homosexuals that just don’t have any problems with it.”

While the brunch is free of charge, Boucher is asking that people intending on partaking e-mail him at brunch17mai2008@

gmail.com “so we’ll know how much food to bring with us on Saturday.”

For more information on the International Day Against Homophobia, visit www.homophobiaday.org.

by CHRIS BARRY

Reading and anarchy

For the ninth year in a row, Montreal and Canadian anarchists will host a book fair on May 17, part of May’s annual Festival of Anarchy. The book fair allows anarchists—and those merely curious about anarchist ideas and customs—to socialize and stock up on anarchist literature.

The book fair, which will host the wares of roughly 100 booksellers and distributors, also includes a series of workshops, film screenings and presentations by various anarchists. A spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment, but a press release says “the book fair is organized in a spirit of openness towards the different traditions, visions and practices of anarchism.”

Festivities begin on May 16 with a benefit concert for the bookfair at Club Lambi (4465 St-Laurent, 8 p.m.), featuring Paul Cargnello, Team Rocket and Jack Drill, among other acts.

The book fair runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., as will an art exhibit of anarchist posters and militancy. Both will be held at 2515 Delisle, near Lionel-Groulx metro. The space is wheelchair friendly and there will be activities for children and a daycare.

For more information, and a list of vendors who will be attending, see www.anarchistbookfair.ca/en/node/58.

by SAMER ELATRASH

Docs to catch

As Israel marks its 60th anniversary, a collective of filmmakers presents the third annual Palestinian Perspectives mini-festival at Cinéma du Parc (3575 Parc) on Thursday, May 15, featuring three separate screenings of seven documentary films and videos made by directors of Palestinian origin. Screenings will be in English or Arabic with English subtitles (except Reste tranquille, which is subtitled in French), followed by a short discussion with the filmmakers, at 5 p.m., 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., for $10.regardspalestiniensmtl.blogspot.com.

On Thursday, May 22, Parc hosts the third edition of Docville 2008, featuring Peter Entell’s Shake the Devil Off, about the effect of Hurricane Katrina on the parish of New Orleans’ historic St. Augustine Church. Tickets cost $10/$7 students and seniors.

“We see that through the sadness of natural and man-made disasters, there is still joy and solidarity among people,” says RIDM executive director Marie-Anne Raulet.

And finally, Thursday, May 15, marks the final day of screening of Mary Ellen Davis’s Territories, about the work of Canadian photographer Larry Towell in Gaza and Mexico, shooting for the prestigious Magnum agency. At the Ex-Centris (3536 St-Laurent).

by STEVE ZYLBERGOLD

Rear-view mirror

11 YEARS AGO - MAY 15–22, 1997

On the cover: Dub/instrumental rock band Tortoise, playing at Victoriaville. John Herndon says the initial reason for creating the band “was that we wanted to play in a band that had no guitars, and we also wanted to pay tribute to some of our other influences.”
•A photo shows the bombed out shell of Bar Bain Douche on St-Laurent at Bernard, as “Montreal’s biker war extended into new geographical territory.”
•At Cannes, Joanne Latimer writes, “As if to distract everyone from a crappy line-up of films (The Fifth Element, Spice: The Movie), an exceptional number of rock stars, models, designers and famous jury members are before the flashbulbs.”
•The 1997 Beer Mundial will be held at the Old Port, and presided over by “Son Altesse Luitpold, Prince of Bavaria.”
•A letter-writer and McGill Ph.D psychology student attributes Harvey’s winning BOM Best Burger to the “availability heuristic” (“when people are asked to remember something they don’t know anything about, they fall back on whatever information comes most readily to mind”).

Angel >> The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic Thanks to a complaint filed by the Ottawa-based CIPPIC, the federal privacy commission is investigating just what Bell and Rogers get up to with Deep Packet Information technology. DPI allows big providers like Bell to collect the personal information not only of their own clients, but also that of smaller ISPs who lease parts of their network from them. CIPPIC calls the collection “unnecessary and non-consensual,” since users don’t know their communication and Web use is being monitored. Both Bell and Rogers are assuring the public they have nothing to worry about, and that they certainly aren’t transmitting any of the information they collect in order to create customer profiles for marketing campaigns.

Insect >> North Americans’ heavy footprint According to a new survey for the National Geographic Society, North American consumers are the world’s worst when it comes to unsustainable consumption habits. Large homes and single-car traffic are mostly to blame, but inefficient energy use, a lack of public transportation and a generally car-based culture didn’t help. Brazil and India scored highest, attributed to their small homes, relatively small use of energy and fewer appliances owned (crushing poverty often means you can’t afford to heat a big house with a fridge, stove and dishwasher). Canadians may be able to take some comfort in the fact that, as poorer countries develop, our relative wastefulness will decline. But not much.