Quote of the week:

"Of course, Garou and Éric Lapointe were there, and I think I recognized a few artists from the series Watatow." - Star Académie's Élyse Robineault, on the Quebec celebs who turned up for Académie's gala last weekend at Medley, in Tuesday's Journal de Montréal

Eating for Afghan orphans

If your preferred method of aiding the less fortunate ideally involves indulging in culinary enjoyment, the place you want to be is at Berri and Duluth and the time you want to be there is Sunday, April 27, at 6 p.m. Those who show up to a benefit fund-raising dinner at the Khyber Pass restaurant that night will be contributing to the well-being of threadbare Afghan orphans living and studying in a topsy-turvy building in the most barren, bombed-out area of Kabul.

"The school is in a lamentable state, nothing there functions at all. That whole area of Kabul is lacking electricity and sewage and the building needs windows, the kids need food and medicine, so we're trying to raise money to send it to them," says Lisa Feldhahn, who, with the many good volk at the Goethe Institute, is organizing the benefit dinner. Cash raised from the chow-down will help out 70 parentless children aged six to 17 in the institution run by a certain Dr. Tutakehl, a former Olympic sprinter who has long taught boys and girls of Kabul and was formerly imprisoned for his efforts.

As well as enjoying the coriander salad and lamb stew, those who show up will get a slide show and a talking-to from Peter Roes, a Montrealer who has relocated to Kabul to set up a school. Contributions of $25 and up are appreciated and those who want to show up first gotta call 499-0159. » Kristian Gravenor

Hearing anti-pesticideniks

In the coming months the City of Montreal will be holding public hearings regarding its first by-law limiting the uses (and abuses) of pesticides on the island. While activists applaud the move, they still feel that there remains a need to monitor the by-law's implementation and enforcement. In that respect, the Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (CAP) will be holding a workshop on Monday, April 28, in order to better prep activists for the war on pesticides. The workshop will instruct groups on how to present a brief to city officials and encourage involvement so that folks are ready and present at the hearings (although their exact dates have yet to be announced).

CAP wants to "make sure that groups and individual citizens are prepared to stand together in order to be ready for the Montreal hearings," says Rohini Peris, one of the organizers from the coalition. The coalition wants to ensure that the new regulations are passed and hopes to have the by-law amended to make it more stringent.

CAP, a non-profit organization founded by people who have been affected by pesticide spraying, has been raising awareness about pesticide dangers since 1999. "It's about shifting public perception about what to accept. In the end, do we really want manicured spaces when they're poisonous?" says Peris.

The workshop is open to all and will be held at the Urban Ecology Centre (3516 Parc) from 7 to 9 p.m. For more info, call 282-8378. For more on CAP, go to www.cap-quebec.com. » Alexandra Spunt

Annual housing crisis returns

Welcome to springtime in Montreal: the first rays of sunshine, budding crocuses, and, with a rental vacancy rate of 0,7 per cent, the first sounds of tenants sweating bullets. More than two months before the July 1 lease date, the Comité des sans-emplois du Montréal-Centre is organizing a demonstration to garner government attention to the upcoming crisis.

François Saillant, media representative of housing activist group FRAPRU, says he will be attending the demonstration. His organization is already receiving frantic calls from desperate renters.

"This year is the worst we have seen so far," says Saillant. "Many are people who were left homeless last year and have been couch-surfing ever since with parents or friends."

For the people at the Comité, the rental battle is just another part of the war against the capitalist overlords. The 10-year-old, decidedly left-leaning organization has been agitating on the part of low-income tenants since 2001, having been involved in the Overdale Squat and protesting the construction of condominiums on the grounds of the east-end CBC building.

According to FRAPRU, to achieve a healthy vacancy rate in Montreal, the city would need to build 13,000 apartments. Saillant says the Tremblay administration's promise of 5,000 apartments by 2004 is looking very unlikely. "I hope there will be emergency measures ready this July," says Saillant. "Last year there were 750 people asking for help, this year it won't be less."

The demo takes place today, Thursday, April 24 at 2:30 p.m. at 1710 Beaudry. » Noemi Lopinto

Rear view

10 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

On the cover: Promoters Victor Shiffman and André Lawrence, as the Mirror explores the NYC-imported, music-dance craze New Jazz Swing gripping clubland. The music is described as "a return to an era when jazz wasn't the stuffy, heady music that you sit and listen to. It is a live, spontaneous and danceable form of Acid Jazz that uses the DJ as its beat."

• The Mirror files an Access to Information request to verify allegations that federal Tory leader hopeful Jean Charest "held a barbecue on Labour Day weekend in 1987 for 200 close political supporters, and brought in five ministerial employees to assist with the party," and billed the government for hotel and travel expenses.

• Porn star/filmmaker/activist/ performance artist Annie Sprinkle talks to Lucinda Catchlove and Cathleen Skidmore while touring her Post-Post Porn Modernist show. "I think it's very interesting to have women make their own sexually explicit stuff. We're seeing new voices, new ideas, and I think women are in the vanguard of pornography," she says.

Angel >> American municipalities defying the Patriot Act Finally, it seems some people are getting a bit fed up with John Ashcroft's speciously-named, intrusive and unconstitutional powers invoked a month after the 9/11 attacks. Leading the charge is the small, northern California town of Arcata, which recently passed an ordinance outlawing voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act. So far, 89 cities have passed resolutions condemning it, with a dozen more coming and a statewide resolution against it close to being passed in Hawaii. It's heartening to see Americans finally emerging from the shock and fear that allowed the Act to pass and reclaiming the spirit of their Bill of Rights.
Insect >> The Montreal Economic Institute Good news, folks: all that pollution and global warming and environmental doom and gloom is a lot of hooey - according to the Montreal Economic Institute, a right-wing think-tank similar to the obnoxious Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. Just in time for Earth Day (last Tuesday), they released a report thanking the steady and innovative progress of capitalism for our cleaner air, clearer water and flourishing forests. They also point to longer lifespans, higher agricultural yield and increasing use of plastics as proof that capitalism is the cure for what ails us. Environmentalists, for some reason, expressed some skepticism.