To start today’s JuicyLesson, here are some other pics relevant to the situation presently unfolding which revolves around Bill 3, the proposed piece of legislation which would basically strip police and fire-fighters of pensions negotiated years ago with the municipal governments of Montreal and Quebec City, among other municipalities in Quebec.
Above: This photo shows the results when hundreds of municipal employees descended on city hall Tuesday, June 17, 2014 to protest changes to their pension plans. At issue is the Liberal government’s proposal that municipal employees bear an equal share of pension payments and contribute to paying down the province’s pension plan deficits, estimated at $3.9 billion. Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier, The Gazette
Above: Posters of Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre wearing a Mickey Mouse hat placed on the door of a SIM firetruck in protest of the proposed Bill 3, as it’s parked on Réné-Levesque Boulevard in Montreal on Tuesday, August 5, 2014. Photograph by: Dario Ayala, The Gazette.
Above: Public sector workers light a bonfire as they protest against proposed pension changes in front of city hall Tuesday, June 17, 2014 in Montreal. Protests at city hall are nothing new, writes Linda Gyulai.
Next it’s similar treatment of what has been going on in Missouri, both in Ferguson and now, in St. Louis too, where two young Afro-American men – Michael Brown, an unarmed adolescent, and Kajieme Powell, 25, who was apparently carrying a knife – have been gunned down, shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson and, more recently, by two of the same in St. Louis.
The following images portray events which have transpired as a result of the above-mentioned shootings. Once darkness falls, rioting, looting, and demonstrations have taken centre stage.
Above: A demonstrator throws back a tear gas container after tactical officers try to break up a group of bystanders Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014 in West Florissant, Mo. Ferguson has been the site of nightly protests and unrest since 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed during a confrontation with an officer on Saturday. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Robert Cohen)
Above: Protesters raise their hands in front of police atop an armored vehicle in Ferguson, Mo. on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. On Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in the St. Louis suburb. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, J.B. Forbes)
Above: Kajieme Powell, 25, was shot Tuesday after moving toward officers with a knife while telling them, “Shoot me now. Kill me now.”
Above: A police officer watches over demonstrators protesting the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer on Saturday. Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, has experienced three days of violent protests since the killing. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Above: A protester takes shelter from smoke billowing around him Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014, in Freguson, Mo. Protests in the St. Louis suburb rocked by racial unrest since a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager to death turned violent Wednesday night, with some people lobbing Molotov cocktails and other objects at police who responded with smoke bombs and tear gas to disperse the crowd. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, David Carson)
Above: Protesters try unsuccessfully to light a Molotov cocktail, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. Protests in the St. Louis suburb rocked by racial unrest since a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager to death turned violent Wednesday night, with people lobbing molotov cocktails at police who responded with smoke bombs and tear gas to disperse the crowd. (AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chris Lee)
More on the Middle East and the recent beheading of American journalist Steve Foley by the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS). A truly horrible tragedy for the family and friends of Mr. Foley as well as for the civilized world in general.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday described a photograph of a Sydney-born 7-year-old boy (above) clutching the severed head of a Syrian soldier as “disturbing” and “grotesque”.
A digger removes the cement and debris Wednesday of a home destroyed the night before in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. The strike killed the wife and infant daughter of elusive Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, the Islamist group said.
What kind of people commit such violent and despicable acts? Desperate and completely ignorant religious fanatics, that’s who. The same type of people who sing Allah’s praises – “Allah Akbar” (God is great) with every bullet fired during the execution of an adulteress, and with every stroke of the knife as Syrian victims of ISIS, including little children, are having their heads severed from the rest of their bodies. Brutal.
Above: Relatives of 27-year-old Widad Deif, the wife of Hamas’s military commander, carry her body during her funeral procession at the Jabalia refugee camp Wednesday.
Moving on …
LUCIEN BOUCHARD SAYS THERE’S NO WAY TO REPAIR FRIENDSHIP WITH BRIAN MULRONEY, OUR ONE-TIME P.M. — Courtesy of the Montreal Gazette
MONTREAL – Although they were once close friends, Lucien Bouchard says there’s no way to repair his ruptured relationship with Brian Mulroney.
“We run into each other occasionally in Montreal or elsewhere and I think we have an agreement to not embarrass each other,” Bouchard said Wednesday.
“We’ll shake hands, but to sit down and have a coffee — no. I don’t think that’s possible. It’s not a matter of honour. There are wounds.”
Bouchard made the comments after the screening of a new documentary on his political career which will be broadcast Monday evening on the public Tele-Quebec network.
Mulroney, who became prime minister in 1984, named Bouchard as Canada’s ambassador to Paris in 1985 and then brought him into his cabinet as environment minister in 1988. They had known each other since law school.
But they fell out in 1990 when Mulroney was trying to salvage the floundering Meech Lake constitutional accord. It was during that time that Bouchard sent a telegram of support to the Parti Quebecois and declared he was a sovereigntist. An outraged Mulroney fired him from cabinet and the two men have never spoken again.
“Friends should not be in politics together when they disagree over principles,” Bouchard said Wednesday.
Bouchard went on to found the Bloc Quebecois with a handful of disgruntled Conservative and Liberal Quebec MPs in 1991. He would become leader of the Official Opposition when the Bloc took 54 seats in the 1993 election.
Bouchard said Wednesday he never saw the Bloc as anything more than something to prepare the ground for the 1995 election, seeing it as a “one-shot” deal.
While the Bloc remained a strong political presence for most of its existence, it was crushed in the 2011 federal election by a surging New Democratic Party and now has only three members in Parliament. Bouchard would not comment on his old party’s current woes.
Bouchard said he was convinced that his political career was over on the night the sovereigntists narrowly lost the Oct. 30, 1995, referendum.
“When we came home…I was going to finish the session in Ottawa and that was going to be it,” he said. “I was going to come back to Montreal and resume practising law.”
Instead, he was drafted by the PQ to take over from Jacques Parizeau, who stepped down after the referendum.
Bouchard said he believes the results of the 1995 referendum might have been different if it had been presented to Quebecers in a two-pronged format — one referendum to negotiate Quebec sovereignty from Canada with a political and economic partnership and then another to approve the results of the bargaining.
The problem is that whenever people are dissatisfied about something, they look for a convenient scapegoat. It’s human nature and its shown up all through history. Here in Quebec, the Anglophones are the scapegoats. Or, as former premier Jacques Parizeau put it in his ill-advised speech conceding defeat at the 1995 referendum, blame it on “money and the ethnic vote”.
Bouchard hopes he won’t see a third referendum in his lifetime because he says he thinks it will be unsuccessful.
“It’s clear. I hope I won’t see it because we’ll lose a third one. There’s no way we can expose ourselves to losing a third one.
“Later on, I don’t know.”
That’s it for today. I had planned an additional story on the “Prince of Pot” and his getting busted but this JuicyLesson is long enough. Stay tuned for this and more.
Have an excellent week-end.
Enjoy your mates and your kids.
Peace.