Parizeau neither senile
nor rambling!

[Re: “Jacques Parizeau’s senile ramblings,” Insect, News Nov. 19] Last week, in the Mirror’s Angel and Insect “editorial,” it surprisingly noted that free speech is an Insect. How else should I interpret the fact that your paper doesn’t seem to believe that Jacques Parizeau is allowed to express his ideas in a book? It’s amazing the amount of ink and saliva that were wasted in the federalist media when his book came out.

Immediately, it was spitting on Parizeau, declaring him senile or drunk or irrelevant. No one even bothered to check out what he has to say! Reactions were hysterical and criticism totally unfounded. Reading the Mirror’s opinion, it’s obvious you never even bothered looking at the book. Or maybe you did, but since you didn’t find any “racist” quotes, you labelled the book irrelevant, the ranting of a senile old man.

Parizeau is an economist who knows what he’s talking about and his book expresses economic and political arguments for Quebec’s independence. He even gets into subjects like the huge discord between Ottawa and Quebec on the issue of the Kyoto Accord. His perspective is objective and his goal is to dispel the many myths that have been propagated in order to make Quebecers fear for their possible future as a sovereign nation. It’s quite tragic that federalists aren’t willing to discuss in a rational way instead of spitting out all this bile.

The “ethnic vote” comment was not racist, it was simply an ambiguous statement (with a hint of rancour, I agree). Get over it! During the Obama campaign, we heard non-stop references to the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Jewish vote etc. Did any accuse U.S. media of being racist or intolerant? No, because it’s all part of the analysis statisticians look for. In the Americas, the Portuguese have their own country with Brazil, so why shouldn’t the French of the Americas have theirs? And to all the Paranoid Angloids, there will be no need for language laws in an independent Quebec—removing your acquired rights would be political suicide, so stop scaring people with your nonsense. Your contempt for a legitimate political option is sickening.

And to the editors of the Mirror, your paper is a disgrace to the journalistic profession.

>>JEAN NASSÉ

Predictably enough, you trashed the former politician without even reading his latest book, because whatever a PQ member says, writes or does is crap anyways. By calling Mr. Parizeau a senile race-baiter, you once again narrowed down the whole life of this brilliant economist—once married to a Polish immigrant—to his 1995 “money and ethnic votes” drunken diatribe. This won’t fool anybody who has taken five minutes to read about him on Wikipedia or any other neutral source.

If you guys are so race tolerant, open-minded and forward thinking, who do you vote for? Amir Khadir? He’s a Muslim separatist. Richard Bergeron? He also happens to be a Muslim separatist! The Green Party or the NDP? This amounts to weakening the Liberals and voting for Stephen Harper. And if you’re interested in Canadian economics, have you ever read Jane Jacobs? Guess what: she was a separatist! In other words, she believed Quebec needed to become a sovereign country in order to control its own destiny and avoid the long, painful decline of Montreal.

I pity you. Life is so full of contradictions, it must be unbearable. Just to let you know, I’ve grabbed a copy of the Mirror every week for the last 15 years, because it used to provide plenty of information about progressive issues, fringe politics and the arts scene. But this time you’ve crossed a line and I call it quits. What is it that’s left to read anyways, apart from the usual PQ bashing? Raf Katigbak drooling about his Cap’n Crunch cereal? The Rant Line™’s vulgar babble? Ken Frankel’s endless Zionist tirades? Tidbits of what the Mirror published back in ’92 when it was still relevant?

So here’s my advice: the day PKP (another badass separatist) realizes that printing pimp and porn classifieds doesn’t turn a profit anymore and Quebecor pulls the plug on your pathetic weekly, you will need a little help from your progressive friends in order to re-qualify. You should thus educate yourselves and read Mr. Parizeau’s book. You could learn useful tips on how to build a better future with the people you’ve kept insulting for years, no matter the future constitutional status of Quebec.

In the meantime, the anybody-but-a-separatist attitude that’s plaguing this city is what’s keeping us from building a sustainable, democratically managed economy and society. If you dismiss Jacques Parizeau’s Keynesian theories, rest assured that the Fraser Institute, IEDM and other “unregulated free markets” advocates stand ready to fill the ideological gap. What will Quebec get in 2020? More corruption and shady public-private deals, while the Neocons pull all the important strings in Ottawa.

>>PIERRE-E. PARADIS

WE WELCOME LETTERS TO THE EDITOR!

Send your comments, compliments or criticisms to:

Letters to the Editor,

c/o Montreal Mirror,

465 McGill, 3rd Floor

Montreal, Quebec

H2Y 4B4

You may also fax us at (514) 393-3173, or reach us by e-mail at letters@mtl-mirror.com:

Letters to the Editor

All letters should include your name, address and daytime phone number.

If you wish to reach someone in particular, here's a list of people involved with the production of the newspaper and this site.