Pro-white rights

I was in attendance at the Hatefest concert in Laval that was written about in last week's issue ["Hate today, gone tomorrow," Aug 14]. I would like to point out, firstly, that the picture in the article is misleading because it's not from this event - there weren't ARA members standing outside the concert entrance.

In fact, there were no ARA members outside the concert at all. There were a few who drove past in a pickup truck, and were credited with calling in a laughable bomb threat. The police were on scene because of this bomb threat. After finding no bomb, and also no signs of illegal activity, they left and the show went on.

Having a skinhead show is not illegal in Canada. Selling T-shirts or patches is also not illegal. It is argued that the Criminal Code of Canada may be violated by a singer in a band communicating statements that incite hatred against any identifiable group. But if singing a song that may offend a particular group is not allowed in this country, certain performers, such as Ice-T or Ice Cube, will most certainly no longer be permitted to perform in Canada, with many of their lyrics advocating the murder of whites.

Nor will heavy metal bands that sing about the death of Christians, or bands like Chumbawumba, who sing that they won't rest until all the Nazis are dead, be allowed to perform in Canada.

Skinhead bands that play in Canada generally sing only pro-white songs about our heritage and culture, rather than songs that would incite hatred.

The concert went well and I look forward to attending more in the future.

» Jason Ouwendyk, London, Ontario

Capitalism cancerous

I perused two letters in the Mirror recently: one defending the WTO [July 31] and the other criticizing it [Aug. 7]. But the important debate must not be closed.

The incidence of forest fires in North America is at an all-time high, there are massive blackouts, and global warming causes 3,000 heat-related deaths in France (and the temperature in proverbially cool London has reached a shocking 38 degrees). There is ample reason right now to attack extreme capitalism.

Every SUV and gas-guzzling car that people buy, every forest that is chopped down to create cattle pastureland for cheap hamburgers or shopping malls, every piece of toxic junk that people dump into gigantic landfills has an adverse effect on the environment. And that ultimately speeds up the melting of the polar icecaps, thereby spelling doom for the whole human species.

The WTO does little to strengthen environmental regulations and does not solve the economic inequities created by capitalism. It blindly encourages free trade and hyper-consumerism, merely pretending to solve trade-related disputes, all the while creating policies that actually impede social justice and environmentally sound policies. One must never forget Edward Abbey's maxim: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Besides, free trade isn't all it's cracked up to be. In the last three years alone, more than two million manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the U.S., along with thousands in Canada. In Canada, the jobless rate artificially stands between eight to nine per cent, depending on the month. But if you consider how qualifying for unemployment insurance has become much tougher, the actual jobless rate is much higher. It is time to further question how free trade and the WTO are set up.

» Manish Patwari

So long, crackheads

I live in Mile-End, pretty close to the crackhouse that was written about in last week's Mirror ["Mile-End smack down," Aug. 21], and I must say I'm pretty relieved with how quiet it has become of late.

That the police claim the place was selling "mostly marijuana" is laughable - if that was the case I'd have been happy to have it around. Unlike the people who frequented this crackhouse, pot users don't follow you around begging for money, as one regular did, when he wasn't too high to speak. Nor do they steal or sell their bodies in public - which I heard about from several neighbours - to support their habit.

I take the typical attitude of just about anyone with junkies in their neighbourhood: get them the hell out of here. I realize that these people are victims of addiction and that kicking them out of one place only pushes the problem somewhere else - "repression achieves nothing in the long term," as the article rightly points out. So I hope people can find better solutions for this problem, but in the meantime, this is my home and I like feeling safe.

» Marc Boudreau

Defending Bizarro!

You seem to have gotten a lot of complaints about your Resto Bizarro columns by Alice and Yanka - most recently last week [Letters, Aug. 14] - and I just wanted to make sure they didn't cause you to stop running them.

I'm a big fan of the various experimental food columns you've run over the years (a particular favourite discussed the merits of hospital cafeteria hot dogs), and the two I've seen from Alice and Yanka so far have been funny, quirky and refreshing. The writing may be a bit elliptical, but it's fun, which most food columns tend not to be.

» Robert Squirrel

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