le piment rouge

Victorianator!

2011-08-25T19:22:00.004-04:00

Elocution Solution

If you wish your cellphone banter sounded less like something overheard on Jersey Shore and more like an evening with Ian McKellen, then a new iPhone app developed by a team of poets, graphic designers and computer scientists at Concordia University in Montreal could be just the thing to improve your oratory flair.

The Victorianator is a game in which players score points for how well they master the techniques of Victorian elocution, from giving words their proper inflection to accenting their delivery with appropriate gesticulation.

The game has two stages. First, players have to recite a famous Victorian poem in perfect monotone as a spindly needle flickers up and down measuring how accurate they are. Next, a steampunk robot instructs the player in a series of gestures that they’ll be adding to the poem.

As the player performs the gesture, the iPhone 4’s accelerometer tracks the movement of their arm and scores them on how well they emulate the robot. A successful gesture produces a synthetic effect on the poem just recorded. So if you hold your arm out to signal a prolongation, the sound of the word will be extended.

If you raise your hand skywards for emphasis, the pitch will rise on your recording. You soon find yourself madly gesticulating and shaking your phone as your own prerecorded voice quivers in response.

The project was put together by LudicVoice, a research group led by Jason Camlot, who teaches Victorian literature at Concordia.

“Rock Band was the initial model. We wanted to do Recitation Hero,” he jokes. The team collected hundreds of examples of oratory techniques from Victorian elocution manuals and it studied the diagrams and diacritical marks that authors invented as they attempted to systematize a language of voice and gesture.

The team wanted to make a historical game, but weren’t too concerned about verisimilitude. But it was important for Camlot that all the gestures used came straight from the Victorian source material. Likewise, the effects the movements have on the voice are meant to resemble the epic intonation found in early poetry recordings from the 1890s.

“That’s why it’s called Victorianator. Through the gestures you’re Victorianating a recording. You’re triggering these synthetic vocal actions that are supposed to be modelled after Victorian elocutionary actions and you’re turning a non-Victorian performance of the poem into a Victorian one.”

The Victorianator can be downloaded on iTunes.

Special to The Globe and Mail

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011 5:30PM EDT

Last updated Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011 6:00PM EDT

theblacklistcommittee's photostream

2011-08-18T16:50:00.001-04:00

theblacklistcommittee's photostream on Flickr.

Backstage at TSC

Campy students

2011-07-31T13:26:00.001-04:00

Broke camp

Spending the summer sleeping outsideis a different kind of activism for CEGEP students worried about fee hikes

by MATT JONES

July 28, 2011

TENTS AGAINST TUITION: Léo Bureau-Blouin
Photo by SHARON DAVIES

With tuition rising fast in Quebec, you might have to forget about that second degree in pornographic cyber-feminism. Or you could follow the example of some determined CEGEP students from the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) who, after a year of protesting and petitioning for lower tuition, have decided to spend the summer camping outside the Minister of Education’s office.

[read on...]

The Morning After interview

2011-07-29T14:04:00.000-04:00

Me talking about The Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist. Interviewed by Ken McMurray and Craig Sauvé for The Friday Morning After show on CKUT 90.3fm.

Flying Anarchist - Cast Photos

2011-07-17T19:13:00.001-04:00

Flying Anarchist - Cast Photos, a set on Flickr.

Video: Summer theatre preview: Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist

2011-07-17T11:24:00.001-04:00

Video: Summer theatre preview: Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist

Rob Ford loves gays and bicycles

2011-07-15T13:07:00.001-04:00

Rob Ford loves gays and bicycles, a set on Flickr.

Spider Pilots rock the Fringe beer tent

2011-07-15T13:06:00.001-04:00

Spider Pilots rock the Fringe beer tent, a set on Flickr.

Trailer: Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist

2011-07-01T11:31:00.000-04:00

More info at: http://blacklistcommittee.wordpress.com/rob-ford/

The Fruixi: good eats, good bikes and great potential slapstick

2011-06-30T12:29:00.001-04:00

Fresh food on the move

Montreal’s open air markets are blooming and going mobile

by MATT JONES

June 23, 2011

PEDAL-POWERED PRODUCE: Fruixi
Photo by GUILLAUME DARNAJOU

Bad eaters of Montreal beware! You may be running out of excuses to justify your diet of Pogos, poutine and 99-cent pizza. This summer, farmers’ markets selling locally grown fruit and veg will be popping up everywhere you turn. And if that’s not enough, meet the Fruixi. A bicycle-drawn mobile fruit stand, it’s everything you hated about smarmy Bixi riders and killjoy vegetable enthusiasts rolled into one. So if you’re reading this while dripping choucroute onto the pages from the three steamés you bought for a dollar and tried to consume in a single mouthful, maybe it’s time you put the dog down and paused to consider the merits of organic produce.

[read on...]

Where are they now? Jaggi Singh and Philippe Duhamel

2011-06-16T11:10:00.002-04:00

from le temps qui fuit

Ten years ago, in the lead-up to the protests at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Jaggi Singh and Philippe Duhamel represented polar opposites of the debate over protest tactics. While Duhamel's Operation SalAMI insisted on total non-violent civil disobedience, Jaggi and the CLAC argued for confrontation with the security perimeter using a "diversity of tactics." Some of us tried to have the best of both worlds: I marched with the Groupe opposé au mondialisation des marchés, who wanted to build the kind of broad-based movement against the summit that Duhamel had in mind, but also wanted to confront the fence like the CLAC, albeit it in a slightly less arrest-provoking way.

In a weird coincidence, I interviewed the two of them this week about campaigns they're working on. Kind of makes for an accidental where-are-they-now moment.

Jail time for Jaggi?

Jaggi Singh—consistently voted the city’s loudest activist in the Mirror’s Best of Montreal—may have directed his loudness at too sensitive a target this time. Singh will be in court this week in Toronto, where he’s facing a potential six-month jail sentence for his high profile verbal abuse of the G20 security fence in Toronto last year. “I’m here today to support those who want to take down the fence,” he told the media at the time.

Last April, Singh agreed to plead guilty to charges of counselling people to commit mischief over $5,000 (the fence was apparently worth $5.5-million) in exchange for the Crown dropping three counts of criminal conspiracy.

Singh still stands by what he said: “The fence for me was a potent symbol of how fences and walls are built virtually and literally to separate the dominant class from the rest of us who work to survive. It was a literal representation of the policies of austerity and global apartheid that the G20 is responsible for.”

Anti-G20 organizers are looking for support for Singh and 17 others who are facing conspiracy charges that threaten to literally fence them off with two-year prison sentences.

For information about the case, see: clac-montreal.net/en/jaggi.

—MATT JONES

No fracking way

An intrepid troupe of anti-shale gas campaigners have spent the last month marching along the shore of the St-Lawrence River from Rimouski to Montreal, covering much of the area proposed for future drilling in what could become Quebec’s contribution to the new generation of lucrative-though-environmentally-destructive solutions to the oil crisis.

The marchers of One Generation Moratorium are calling for a full moratorium on shale gas drilling. Although a partial moratorium is now in place, they see this as a publicity move.

“We don’t expect that the Quebec government will relent because it’s clearly aligned with interests of the shale gas industry,” says coordinator Philippe Duhamel. If the moratorium doesn’t hold, he says their next march might be less passive.

“In 2013 we might do this walk again, but have acts of non-violent civil disobedience all along the way.”

The marchers will meet up with a demo against shale gas on Saturday, June 18 at 2 p.m. at the offices of Hydro Quebec (René-Lévesque and St-Urbain). Enthusiastic anti-frackers can also meet the group at Longueuil metro station at 1 p.m. to join them as they cross the Cartier Bridge with a 100-metre banner signed by supporters they’ve met on the march. Visit rimouskimontreal.net for information or to follow their progress.

—MATT JONES

http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/2011/06/16/the-front-40/

cast pictures

2011-06-15T17:25:00.001-04:00

Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying , a set on Flickr.

First cast picture for Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist

Pyongyang

2011-06-10T11:24:00.000-04:00

Just read Guy Delisle's Pyongyang. Why is this piece of latter-day orientalism such a respected graphic novel? Delisle goes to North Korea, lives among ex-pats, doesn't get to know any Koreans and, not surprisingly, decides they're all crazy, naïve and decidedly unhip.

Delisle scores points by ridiculing the absurd dynasty of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, but he does so from such a smarmy privileged perspective that he comes off as an obnoxious tourist. He is not only irritated by the constant propaganda of the regime, but also with people’s bad taste. Their music is weird and they have never heard of Daft Punk. There aren’t enough shopping malls, clubs or good restaurants. Why aren’t they more like us? Their attempts at ostentation are undermined by their lack of cash: he is dismayed that the marble walls of a museum are adorned “with light switches in cheap plastic housing.” How uncivilized!

The book neatly demonstrates a point Slavoj Žižek makes about ideology. Delisle wants to show us that North Koreans are, in his not subtle terms, brainwashed by the ruling ideology. This form of ideology works like the phrase: “They don’t know they’re doing it, but they’re doing it.” If they would only listen to Delisle, they would wake up, realize what they are doing and stop it.

But Delisle himself is submerged in what Žižek would call postmodern ideology. Imagining himself to be beyond ideology, Delisle is even more submerged in normative Western liberal values. By then end of the book the Koreans are well aware that he won’t be convinced about the greatness of their country, but he becomes increasingly evangelical in his exhortations to them about the value of free speech, democracy and free market prosperity.

Delisle’s main flaw is that he caricatures North Koreans on the basis of the officials he interacts with, who are guides and translators, in other words, people trained to present the regime’s official face to the outside world. I’m sure it’s not easy to find dissidents in the country, especially when you don’t speak the language, but it’s strange to imagine they don’t exist.

Bloody Cars

2011-06-10T09:51:00.002-04:00

Car still king, daddy-o

The Turcot project’s foes claim the new plan for replacing the aging interchange is something straight out of the 1950s

by MATT JONES

June 2, 2011

THINKING AHEAD: Mobilisation Turcot’s Pierre Brisset (L) and Shannon Franssen
Photo by MICHEAL MEAULIEU

The 50s get a bad rap. Occasionally we remember the innovations that produced rock music, meat-and-Jell-O dishes and eerily un-self-conscious horror movies, but mostly the decade gets marched out as a metaphor for a naïve time when the sexes stuck to their own spheres, communists were intent on destroying our way of life and the automobile reigned supreme. Such is the criticism currently being levelled against the Quebec government and the Tremblay administration for their plans to reconstruct the Turcot interchange in St-Henri. “This whole project is based on principles that were maybe modern in the 1950s but are completely retro in 2011,” says Shannon Franssen, spokesperson for Mobilisation Turcot, a coalition of organizations that want to see a more environmentally friendly plan for the interchange.

[read on...]

The Conker

2010-12-06T22:17:00.001-05:00

The Conker: A film by Susanna & Matt Jones

Amnesty for artists

2010-12-06T22:06:00.001-05:00

Art for charity’s sake

A miserable market and laughable living wages bring Amnesty International and local artists together to generate some much-needed revenue

by MATT JONES

November 25, 2010

COLLECTORS WANTED: Eric Bolduc
Photo by MICHEAL BEAULIEU

Montreal: city of art, right? Although the city broadcasts its artistic prowess through high profile perpetual festivals and hazy late-night lite-brite displays at the Quartier des spectacles, Montreal can be a tough place for an artist to make ends meet. Alana Riley, who won the Pierre-Ayot Prize for her photography last week, has an idea of what the problem is: “There’s no market for art in Montreal,” she says. “I feel like we’re beggars. There’re only a handful of collectors in the city who deal in contemporary art. We need more collectors!”

[read on...]

Gorgeous George in Montreal

2010-11-15T12:15:00.002-05:00

Stomping into Canada

Formerly banned British politician George Galloway finally begins his cross-country speaking tour
November 11, 2010

SUCK ON IT, JASON KENNEY: Galloway

Adored by some for his firebrand polemics, reviled by others who see him as clowning his way towards superstardom, former British MP George Galloway is one of the most controversial polit
ical figures in the world today. Much to the dismay of the Harper government, who tried and failed to have him kept out of Canada as a security risk, Galloway rolls into Montreal on Wednesday, Nov. 17 as part of a cross-Canada tour to help launch the Canadian Boat to Gaza, delivering a cargo of humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered Palestinian territory next spring. The Mirror spoke to him on the phone from London.

[read on...]

Tim Miller

2010-11-11T11:54:00.000-05:00

Below is a blurb on performance artist Tim Miller from the Mirror, plus some pretty awesome highlights from the interview I did with him.

Virus talks

California-based performance artist, gay rights protester and frequent arrestee Tim Miller is no stranger to controversy. His semi-autobiographical works gained international attention in 1990 when he and three colleagues got their National Endowment for the Arts funding vetoed by a chairman who thought their work was too gay. Although an eight-year struggle that led to the Supreme Court finally got them their money back, Miller spent much of the ’80s and early ’90s, the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, engaging in direct action against a government that didn’t want to have anything to do with gay issues.

“I was making pieces in a country where our then-president Ronald Reagan did not say the word AIDS once until 80,000 Americans had died,” he says. “Civil disobedience was incredibly central. It is a transformative experience, especially for nice middle-class white kids, to be arrested and kept for 72 hours. I felt that on every level, the U.S. government was trying to destroy my community by doing nothing while tens of thousands died and trying to stop safe sex education in public schools.”

Miller performs his Sex/Body/Self/Virus piece as part of Concordia’s HIV/AIDS lecture series tonight, Thursday, Nov. 11 (1455 de Maisonneuve W., H-110), at 6 p.m., for free. For details, see aids.concordia.ca.

—MATT JONES

In 2002 you were thinking of leaving the US because your partner Alistair couldn’t get status here. Has that situation changed?

We actually started our process to immigrate to Canada a while ago, because we thought there was no future in the United States for a couple like us. The US is the only Western country not to allow same-sex citizens to sponsor their spouses for immigration purposes in the way that dozens of my friends have done for their partners. So Alistair can sponsor me to immigrate to the UK or Australia. Canada would be the most likely – it’s the perennial place where Americans go when they’re fleeing the insanity of the United States. He’s on a year-to-year visa. If he weren’t Australian he’d have had to leave years ago. Australians, as a reward for Iraq, get treated like Canadians now.I’m not dramatizing it. His visa’s running out in a few months and we don’t know what’ll happen. He hasn’t seen his family in thirteen years.

It seems strange that marriage is such a focus for activism. Here in Quebec, almost no one gets married unless they’re gay.

I know marriage makes people uneasy. But in the US, it’s clear to me that marriage is the main place where civil rights gets acted out. That’s why, until 1967, it was illegal for a heterosexual couple who weren’t of the same race to get married in 33 states. So Barack Obama: his marriage was a felony and he could have been taken into state custody. Looking deeper at it, slaves weren’t allowed to marry because marriage made you a human being and then you couldn’t be sold and your children as well.

Changing the definition of marriage is about who gets seen as a human being, so I think it’s actually really important, though I have to admit that my 19-year-old punk-rock, radical Marxist self would find this all very bourgeois.

In 1990, you had your federal funding stripped by a homophobe on the National Endowment for the Arts. Twenty years later, do you think the same thing could happen again?

Well, it wouldn’t happen again because now there’s no funding at all for individual artists in the United States. It was a giant constitutional eight-year battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court and we won back our grants, but the principle was lost there. I work with a lot of undergraduate and college-level kids comparable to me. None of them have any illusion that they’ll ever be supported by the federal government. You might get funding from the city or a particular state, but if you’re working on issues around politics or sexuality you simply won’t get money from the federal government.

You were involved in direct action protests in the eighties and nineties. Were those kind of performances an extension of your work as an artist?

AIDS activism really created this new template around guerrilla theatre, highly visual, telegenic media savvy protest strategies that were borrowed from other movements but then really set a new standard which then alterglobalists added to and built on. Post-9/11 it’s much more difficult: there’s more security, the terrorist label is thrown around. I still think whenever I have a19-year-old message me, “I was just protesting our Congressman’s office, I got arrested, I feel so empowered.” I think that’s really important and is real.”

The was a period in which civil disobedience was incredibly core and central. And it is a transformative experience, especially for nice middle-class white kids, to be arrested and kept for 12 hours or 72 hours. That doesn’t mean it’s an amusement park ride, but it has powerful changing affect on people. Especially at the time I felt that on every level the US government was trying to destroy my community by doing nothing while tens of thousands died and trying to stop safe sex education in public schools, which doomed any number to die. And the struggles around the AIDS stuff, the immigration struggles which are a poisonous alphabet soup of NEA, HIV. So myself and 200 artists in L.A. tried to arrest the federal government for crimes against humanity. There’s a fun performance which I’ll do at Concordia which ends in a gay orgy that overthrows the US government.

You’ve said that it’s easy to get depressed about homophobia but it’s also important to remember the wonders that gay life can bring. Do you think that, given the political situation in the US, there’s much to be hopeful about?

There’s been this horrible rash of queer suicides in the US. But today gay people are much more visible in this country, in some states. You can feel almost like you’re treated like a human being in Massachusetts, or California or New England. It’s just three fourths of the country where gay people have no rights under their state laws: they can be fired, they can be kicked out of their house. God forbid, I don’t want to have any kids, but it’s estimated that in the US there are more than 2 million being raised by gay people in this country. What does that do? Maybe they’re going to hate their gay parents so much! I don’t think so: they’ll have grown up knowing gay people and they’ll be huge change agents. I was doing a residency at a military university in Texas: a third of the students are in uniform. And to see queer students making visibility in their performances is so inspiring and exciting and moving. They’re these amazing secret weapons. It’s a national project and an international project.

What happened in Canada with marriage equality challenges the US to do better. When Argentina votes and signs full marriage equality, what an amazing achievement. Those are pretty inspiring examples of queer people transforming their country.

For more information about Tim Miller see: http://www.timmillerperformer.com/

Pictures of the crisis

2010-11-09T12:07:00.000-05:00

Recession in paradise

Montreal photographer Neal Rockwell documents the fickle financing of tourism and capitalism in a new exhibit

by MATT JONES

November 4, 2010

IT HAPPENED IN MONTERREY: Crossing the Rio Santa Catarina
Photo by NEAL ROCKWELL

Just before Christmas 2008, photographer Neal Rockwell was broke and eager to get out of the cold. On the Internet, he came across a remote part of Mexico where you could camp for free on the beach. On a whim, he and a friend packed up a tent, scraped together enough cash for bus tickets and set off on a low budget North American road trip. Riding Greyhound from Montreal to the Gulf of Mexico in the months following the economic crisis turned out to be not just a frivolous adventure, but gave him insight into the arbitrariness of borders and the way communities were living the recession. The result is a show called Frontier that features 30 photos and texts written by Rockwell documenting the Greyhound view of North America.

[read on...]

Revolution in the Library

2010-10-28T13:18:00.000-04:00

Your guide to lefty data

Radical Reference librarians unlock treasure troves of information for social justice seekers

by MATT JONES
October 21, 2010

STACKING POINTS: Megan Fitzgibbons and Robin Kelley
Photo by RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Radical Reference is a growing movement of librarians and other bookish radicals who want to use their various cataloguing skills to not only efficiently replace stacks of used hardbacks on the right shelves, but also make the world a more socially just place. If you’re an activist looking to poke a hole in the system, they’ll point you to the books, stats, databases, microform and esoteric library collections that can help you transform your manifesto from dismal diatribe to revelatory report. A Montreal chapter has been in the works since the summer and is set to be unveiled this weekend.

[read on...]

Trans without homes

2010-10-18T09:31:00.002-04:00

A room of their own

Transsexual and transgender homeless say they’re being turned away from sex-specific shelters

by MATT JONES

October 14, 2010

ROOF ACCESS DENIED: ASTT(e)Q’s Jackson Ezra and Bianca Aponte
Photo by RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Changes in health funding last February have made it easier to get sex reassignment surgery in Quebec, but transsexuals and transgender activists say trans people in the province continue to face discrimination that can make it difficult to hold down housing and employment. Even homeless shelters are not always a refuge, as their gender-segregated dorms don’t always know where to put trans people, say frontline workers at the Action Santé Travesti(e)s et Transsexuel(le)s du Québec (ASTT(e)Q, pronounced “aztec”). The group, run by and for trans people, is currently raising cash for an emergency housing fund that helps provide for trannies with nowhere to go.

[read on...]

Sweet Crude

2010-09-28T12:34:00.000-04:00

Black gold blues

Sandy Cioffi’s Sweet Crude documents the havoc wreaked by the oil industry in the Niger Delta

by MATT JONES

September 23, 2010

ANGER FLARING: Sweet Crude
Photo by KENDRA E. THORNBURY

In November of 2005, filmmaker Sandy Cioffi travelled to southern Nigeria to document the opening of a library intended as a friendship gesture in a region scarred by ethnic warfare. What she saw there made her switch her plans entirely and turn her focus to the oily elephant dripping in the corner of the room. The Niger Delta is Africa’s biggest producer of petroleum, a commodity behind most of the country’s wealth, pollution and violence. Her film Sweet Crude (sweetcrudemovie. com) is the product of four years of research and interviews that brought Cioffi into close contact with the resistance movement that’s fighting for a say in how the oil companies use their land.

[read on...]

Dave Zirin interview

2010-09-21T14:00:00.003-04:00

Fair ball and foul

Journalist Dave Zirin on the mendacious effects of publicly funded stadiums, corporate ownership and boring baseball

by MATT JONES

September 16, 2010

ALL FUNDING AND GAMES: Zirin

In the last year, pro sports have taken a hefty beating from the Left. It was hard to love the colonialist Olympics, painful to watch South African runner Caster Semenya’s gender identity interrogated by sports pundits, and to many World Cup watchers, vuvuzelas lost their charm pretty quickly. But if there’s one person who’s able to sift through the layers of spin that drown the artistry of great athletes in so much corporate paraphernalia, it’s Dave Zirin, a sportswriter for Sports Illustrated’s website and The Nation magazine, and author of Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love. The Mirror spoke to him on the phone from New York.

[read on...]

Cinema Politica 2010 Season

2010-09-16T17:25:00.004-04:00

From Bas: Beyond the Red Light

There’s only so much documenting of the world’s audacious political atrocities that can be done before filmmaking starts to feel morose, so to pull us out of that potential rut, Cinema Politica has chosen the theme of resilience and resolutions for their upcoming season.

“The documentary genre is very good at investigating and revealing the world’s problems but they don’t always offer up stories of solutions. There’s a more positive aspect to the political and social issues that are explored in those films,” says Ezra Winton, the organization’s founder and Director of Programming.

This year’s 16 films follow activists who have been able to produce concrete results, from Maude Barlow’s work on keeping water public to activists in the Niger Delta struggling against Shell Oil to the satirical prankstering of the Yes Men.

The season kicks off September 20 with Bas: Beyond the Red Light, a Quebec film about a rehabilitation arts project for 13 girls who were previously sold into the sex trade industry in Mumbai. Wendy Champagne, the film’s director, will be present at the screening which is also a fundraiser for project in Mumbai.

For the full program see: cinemapolitica.org

Open Data in Montreal?

2010-09-11T12:55:00.006-04:00

Hot data

Montréal Ouvert wants the city’s facts and figures in open format

by MATT JONES

September 1, 2010

DEMOCRATIZING NUMBERS: Jonathan Brun (L) and Michael Lenczner
Photo by WILL LEW

Over the past couple years, city administrations around the world have begun to take various types of public data they’ve been sitting on—the kind that’s usually on display in the basement filing cabinet of City Hall—and upload it onto the Internet in open format. The result is a software developer’s wet dream: pages and pages of unorganized data just waiting to be pieced together, measured, graphed, made into parabolas, sexed-up and put online as user-friendly applications to make our increasingly tech-heavy lives more convenient. That’s a fantasy the four founders of Montréal Ouvert hope to see realized in Montreal as soon as possible.

[read on...]

Street Kid Street Fest

2010-07-27T13:12:00.002-04:00

Back home to party

The 14th annual Festival d’expression de la
rue returns to its UQÀM campus digs for a
two-day celebration of street living

STREET CULTURAL AMBASSADORS: FER ’09

by MATT JONES

After a year of itinerancy, the Festival d’expression de la rue (FER) is back at Place Pasteur near the corner of St-Denis and de Maisonneuve this weekend for its 14th edition.

The festival features two days of punk, hip hop and reggae shows interspersed with circus acts, contests and workshops on harm reduction.

“We’re probably the only festival that would say no to Celine Dion,” says organizer Marc-André Savory. “We have to represent the culture from the street. We have bands that come from the street, guys that I know that have been on the street before but they’re still involved around that milieu, or people that have not been on the street but still play music that’s listened to by the street people.”

[read on...]

Strong arm of the law

2010-07-27T13:11:00.001-04:00

Strong arm of the law

Anti-capitalists take to Montreal’s streets to
protest so-called extreme policing and the
criminalization of dissent at the G20

WELCOMING A QUEBEC VISITOR? TO PD in action, June 26

by MATT JONES

Three weeks after a billion dollars’ worth of G20 security locked down Toronto, protesters are asking whether extreme policing is the extreme reaction to protesting in Stephen Harper’s Canada. Many groups, including everyone from Amnesty International to Toronto’s Deputy Police Chief, have endorsed a call for an independent public inquiry to find out who is responsible for the heavy-handed police tactics that ended in over 1,000 arrests. Meanwhile, a national day of protest is being held this Saturday, July 17.

[read on...]

Fringe thoughts

2010-06-19T12:26:00.000-04:00

Some quick notes about plays at this year's Fringe fest:

Wide Load

Kinda lecture-heavy for a burlesque show, this show features two dancing fatties (their term) who take the audience on an irony-laced walk through our fat-phobia. Worth seeing for the amazing postmodern dance number that actually held the audience in a state of shock for a few minutes: a rare feat in our badass more-controversial-than-thou entertainment culture. I was impressed by how the show perturbed and provoked discussion. My friends from California kept saying, "Having a good body image is fine, but what about the health risks??" As long as we're lecturing, I would have liked to hear about fat as a class issue, but that's maybe opening another kettle of fish.

Miss Sugarpuss Must Die!

Holly Gauthier-Frankel seduces with killer takes on cabaret blues classics and talented tit twirling in this coming-of-age story about surviving neglect and abuse and discovering herself as a burlesque dancer. At the end of the opening show, she was dizzy from success and almost couldn't bring herself to leave the stage: a sweet moment.

Wolf Me Talk

I enjoyed watching the wolf stand on its head and hang suspended from a rope. Apart from that, this play convinced me that wolves should stay out of the theatre, relegated to ironic t-shirts and unoriginal indie band names. Two actors in KISS-reminiscent wolf makeup blabber for 35 minutes in an over-enunciated deep-speak about whether it's a good idea to embrace death.

Shades of Grey

Black Box Montreal's production sees four actors decked out in stylish silver-screen greys and 1950s accents as they confront three Twilight Zone-inspired tales of the paranormal. The first two stories are tightly written, kitsch and funny. The third is a pointless rehearsal of a futuristic totalitarian vision in which a librarian, who is a perfect 21st century liberal, is to be executed for being obsolete. This story worked best when it seemed to be an ironic take on 1950s paranoia, but it seemed to be trying to make a genuine criticism of totalitarianism but without going beyond the fairly generally accepted notion that mechanical devotion to a violent state is not a good thing.

7 (x1) Samurai

Great clowning by David Gaines, who brings to life dozens of samurai by himself with enough colour that we're able to follow who's who even in the midst of hilarious, ultraviolent battle scenes. Watching a white guy doing caricatures of the Japanese would be squeamishly offensive if Gaines hadn't done such close research on the vocal style and affects of Kurasawa's characters (though occasionally when the characters speak English they lapse into stereotype, substituting Ls for Rs in a cheap joke that reminded me of some of the more embarrassing moments of Monty Python).

Alice As Bourgeois Revolutionary

2010-06-11T15:58:00.001-04:00

Alice As Bourgeois Revolutionary

by Matt Jones

Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton

By now it’s become a truism among film critics that Tim Burton’s misleadingly-titled Alice in Wonderland is the nadir of a decade the director spent making high-budget butcheries of deeply-loved classic films that usually get described as both “visual treats” and “pieces of shit.”

[read on...]

Ottawa Gun Show

2010-06-11T15:52:00.001-04:00

Spoken words and
explosive goods

Montreal’s Poets Against War get on
the bus against Ottawa’s weapons fair

There’s more to Ottawa than skating down the canal, chowing down on a beaver tail at the ByWard Market and brooding over the ominous lack of litter on the city’s streets. This June 2 and 3, you’ll also be able to stock up on laser-guided missile systems, as the world’s leading gun runners show off their wares at CANSEC, the country’s largest defence and security trade show. Over the two days, a six-foot fence will surround Lansdowne Park, on the banks of the Rideau Canal, as government representatives browse different firms’ diversely spectacular methods for blowing things up.

[read on...]

Oka reminiscences

2010-05-11T16:11:00.000-04:00

Twenty years later, a Kanesatake Mohawk recalls the infamous standoff against the SQ and the army

Almost 20 years ago, the serene hiking paths of Oka, just northwest of Montreal, were interrupted by a 78-day armed standoff between Mohawk warriors and a tag team of police and soldiers. The crisis was triggered when the town of Oka gave the green light to developers to expand a golf course onto pineland and burial grounds the Mohawk community of Kanesatake had been trying to reclaim for years. Clifton Nicholas was 17 when the Oka Crisis galvanized his community and marked a turning point in native struggles for self-determination in Canada.

“It injected some much needed courage to stand up and fight,” says Nicholas. “I was scared and proud the whole summer. Proud that my people were united standing up for a common cause but frightened that the police might come in and kill somebody.”

[read on...]

Ale and Absinthe

2010-05-03T22:07:00.003-04:00

This is no longer available on the Gazette's archives, so I'm reposting it here. Since it was published, more varieties of absinthe with a stronger tujone level have begun to appear at the SAQ.

Arbiter of ale and absinthe

After a long absence from the legitimate market, absinthe—the “green fairy”, once thought to be the cause of violent outbursts, temporary insanity and Romantic poetry—has been making a comeback in recent years. It can be found in a number of bohemian hangouts in hipper parts of town. Stéphane Ostiguy, co-owner of Mile End microbrewery Dieu du Ciel (29 Laurier W.), got the idea to import the beverage for sale in his bar after discovering it in Spain, one of few European countries never to ban the drink. It charmed him immediately.

“The taste is close to pastis but it’s more complex,” he says. “In fact, pastis is a derivative of absinthe, developed after absinthe was banned. With pastis I taste water and anis; absinthe has more spices and flowers in it. A regular absinthe will use 15 to 20 plants.”

His bar offers the whole ceremony. The gutsy can knock it back straight, while those who enjoy the ritual can pour cold water slowly over a sugar cube nestled on a silver spoon, creating a “louche” effect: the same cloudiness that appears when water is added to pastis or ouzo.

Absinthe spent the better part of the last century as an underground drug, clouded in mystique after it was banned in Europe and North America during the time of the temperance movement that brought Prohibition to Canada and the U.S.

“They would use people like Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh, who were already very heavy drinkers, as examples that absinthe could make you go crazy,” says Ostiguy.

What is controversial about absinthe is that it contains thujone, a controlled substance in Canada. At its worst, thujone consumption can provoke epileptic seizures, but recent tests have shown that absinthe, even what was produced a century ago, contains minute amounts of the substance. The effect of such a small dose is, according to Ostiguy, minimal. “It’s pretty close to caffeine,” he says. “Apart from the alcohol—and it is a very strong alcohol. I find it wakes me up, makes me more alert.”

The European Union currently allows 35 mg/L of thujone in bitter alcohols, while the US has allowed 10 mg/L since last year. In Canada, all products containing more than 1 mg/L are sent to Health Canada, where they are examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they are safe for consumption. Importers find this vagueness frustrating as it can lead to confusion: Ostiguy says bottles he’s tried to import at 10 mg/L have been sent back.

In 2005, Switzerland lifted its 100-year-old ban on absinthe. The first to apply for a licence was the Artemisia-Bugnon distillery for its appropriately named la Clandestine absinthe (rumour has it they’d been supplying the black market for years). Ostiguy tried their product and called them up to see if they could make it with less thujone. He says the lower thujone level makes little difference to the flavour.

“I contacted the private order department of the SAQ. They clearly told me the limit was 10 mg/L. So that’s what I ordered and when it arrived it was seized. It took them six months to figure out what to do with it, then we had to send it back at our expense,” he says. Artemisia-Bugnon developed a second product containing 4.9 mg/L. It passed. But all this makes it tough to find a good bottle in la Belle Province.

“You can find a few absinthes at the SAQ, but they tend to be lower quality because of the lower levels of thujone. The best I’ve tasted usually contain more thujone, but that’s not per se a sign of quality,” says Ostiguy. He says that connoisseurs are often looking for high thujone, so levels are raised to meet the demands of the market.

Dieu du Ciel doesn’t just sell straight absinthe. In September 2007, they fused it with their other speciality when they introduced Nevaine, their absinthe beer.

“We use the absinthe plant, not the liquor,” explains Ostiguy. But how do you make a beer with such a strong, bitter plant?

“It’s true that absinthe is very bitter. And it’s a harsh bitter, with no real flavour or aroma, so it was difficult to figure out the quantities we needed. JF (Jean-François Gravel, Master Brewer) and I did some experiments at my house, adding different ingredients together. The first batch was a mix of regular blond beer, absinthe plant, small absinthe and fennel. It was probably the bitterest thing I’d ever tasted,” he laughs. “I loved it but most people couldn’t drink it.”

Further experiments led to something more drinkable, at least for the beer nuts that patronize Dieu du Ciel.

As for the absinthe itself, it’s proven a huge success with Mile End hipsters, but Ostiguy hopes he’ll be able to branch out further in the future.

“I’d eventually like to be able to offer two or three good absinthes so people can compare,” he says. “And I’d like to submit our beer to one of the Extreme Beer festivals in the U.S., to see how the real beer geeks deal with it.”

-- A version of this text appeared in the Montreal Gazette: Mon, Feb 16 2009

Tariq Ramadan, Islamophobia and Islamolucides | rabble.ca

2010-04-16T15:14:00.011-04:00

Tariq Ramadan, Islamophobia and Islamolucides | rabble.ca

Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor of Islamic studies at Oxford University, gives a talk tonight in Montreal about how Islam is compatible with Western liberalism. If that sounds uncontroversial, banal even, take a look at today’s Gazette.

Coverage of the event is dominated by commentary by Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), an organization that also thinks Islam is compatible with “progressive, liberal, pluralistic, democratic and secular society.”

Fatah is given a full-page editorial in which he accuses Ramadan of a number of crimes by association: Ramadan’s failure to denounce other people’s reactionary interpretations of Islam makes him complicit with them. The language of Fatah’s editorial is vitriolic. Ramadan “camouflages his Islamist agenda under the niqab of ambivalent doublespeak.” Because he doesn’t actually say any of the things Fatah wants to accuse him of, Ramadan is able to shake off criticism “like a slippery eel.” But this is just a ruse, because “the new technique is to undermine the West from within, like parasites and termites, with the host society never knowing what hit it, until it is too late.” This is an urgent task, since European countries are already succumbing to the infestation: “UK is one example.” I wonder what he means.

On the front page, Fatah is given the first comment on the conference. He does not mince words: “Tariq Ramadan has come here to make sure our children become the fifth column against Western civilization,” he says. Fatah spoke at a press conference organized by his new group Pointe de Bascule featuring a motley group of Ramadan opponents assembled from around the world. Also present were Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), an organization that strives to be “an expression of American liberty and freedom in an attempt to take back the faith of Islam from the demagoguery of the Islamo-fascists” and Naser Khader, a Muslim member of the Conservative Party of Denmark who supports a complete ban on the “un-Danish” burqa.

So: what to make of this stand-off between two camps of Islam that claim to support the reconciliation of Islam and the West?

A clue might be in this National Post editorial by Barbara Kay. Irritated that her colleague Ezra Levant was called out for his Islamophobia by the Alberta Human Rights Commission, Kay is impressed with a term she finds on Pointe de Bascule’s website where the group describes itself as “Islamolucide.” Like Lucian Bouchard’s lucides, Islamolucides are able to see through the hype of political correctness and understand that the interests of the powerful are the only interests that matter. In other words, what they see so clearly is ideology itself.

Islamolucides have been appearing with greater frequency in Western countries since the War on Terror began. They are called upon to condone government attacks on the rights of Muslim citizens. Though not all of them openly support the War on Terror, they work to advance the main ideological justification for that war: Islamophobia.

But the Islamolucides are small players in a much bigger game. Ramadan was prevented from entering the

for six years because donations he made to a Palestinian charity were linked by the State Department to Hamas. What is wrong with Ramadan’s attempt to reconcile Islam and the West is that it does not propose the relationship of subservience to the West that is implied by the AIFD’s clinging to “American liberty” or the MCC’s claim to use “the Canadian constitution as our guiding principles.”

More about Ramadan:

Tariq Ramadan interviewed on Democracy Now

Tariq Ramadan on Nietzsche, Islam and Global Citizenship

Analysis of Ramadan’s politics by Sadri Khiari

Montreal’s fossil foolery

2010-04-16T15:11:00.000-04:00

Campaigners plan an East End bike excursion
to protest local refining of Albertan tar sands

by MATT JONES
Quebecers may be about to lose bragging rights when it comes to having Kyoto-friendly energy. If it goes ahead, the Enbridge Trailbreaker Pipeline could make Montreal an accomplice to the environmental catastrophe that is the Athabasca tar sands.

“It’s part of a general expansion of the Alberta tar sands,” says Cam Fenton of Climate Justice Montreal. “They’re sending pipelines coast-to-coast across Canada and down into the United States because they don’t have the refining capacity there.”

[read on...]

below: tailings pond in Fort McMurray (by Robin Jones)

Debating Avatar | Articles | Canadian Dimension

2010-03-05T20:41:00.001-05:00

Debating Avatar | Articles | Canadian Dimension

Debating Avatar

Matt Jones, Sam Gindin, Ed Janzen and Ben Powless

Avatar has been criticized for being unsophisticated, simplistic, New Age-y, anarcho-primitivist, a white man’s fantasy of redemption for the crimes of his race. Can this be overlooked considering the movie allows people to understand some of the elements of Indigenous struggles?

Keep reading…

Posted using ShareThis

IWD @ 100

2010-03-05T20:32:00.000-05:00

A struggle’s
centennial

International Women’s Day turns 100,
with lots left to achieve

LAST SEEN IN 2005: Local march of Women Against Poverty
and Violence Against Women

by MATT JONES
Women’s groups in Quebec get ready for action this Monday, March 8, as International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrates its centennial anniversary with a plethora of activities. In addition to the annual IWD demo, Sunday, March 7 will see the launch of the demands of the 2010 World March of Women Against Poverty and Violence Against Women. The pentennial event was launched in 2000 by the Fédération des Femmes du Québec (FFQ) and taken up by 6,000 groups in 161 countries. The second march took place in 2005 and this year’s will kick off 110 events planned to mark the occasion across Quebec. It’s not only a demonstration, but a series of demands that seek to remove obstacles to women’s equality.

[read on...]

Nursing in Haiti

2010-02-22T12:37:00.001-05:00

Trauma, troops
and recovery

Montreal nurse and veteran street activist
Scott Weinstein returns from Haiti and
reports that despite enormous challenges,
a resilient people are carrying on

TENTS AS WARDS: Weinstein (R) with volunteer nurse
Martha Lolangne (L), Dr. Fritz Lolangne and patient Jean-Pierre Paris

by MATT JONES

After two weeks toiling in the trauma tent of a makeshift emergency ward in Port-au-Prince, Montreal nurse and long-time activist Scott Weinstein heads home today, moved by the resilience of the Haitian people. The Mirror spoke to him over the phone from his lodgings in Haiti.

“They’re really tough,” Weinstein says. “All the Europeans and North Americans were shaking our heads at the lack of pain being expressed by the folks here and the lack of pain medication we’re being asked to give—I mean, we offer it and often people refuse. It’s just a different culture.”

Weinstein, who has lived in Montreal since 1965, travels frequently to his native Washington D.C. to work as a freelance nurse in the strained public health system. He had just arrived there on Jan. 12, when the 7.0 earthquake hit the Haitian capital. He got in touch with Partners in Health (pih.org) and bought himself a ticket on a flight to Port-au-Prince.

[read on...]

Facebook takes on Harper

2010-01-27T20:16:00.004-05:00

The full power of social networked fury
just might be unleashed at cross-country
anti-prorogue rallies this weekend

200,000 USERS CAN’T BE WRONG: Matthew Angelus

by MATT JONES
It may be surprising that the most controversial thing Stephen Harper’s government has done since it came to power in 2006 is to get out of our faces. But whether prorogation is really about taking in some slalom action at the Olympics or avoiding the heat that was nipping at Peter MacKay’s collar over the torture of Afghan detainees, it has proven unpopular enough to convince tens of thousands of angry social networkers to take a break from making insipid comments about the minutia of their daily lives and join en masse a Facebook group opposed to prorogation.
[read on]

A year of rubble

2010-01-17T23:52:00.002-05:00

A year of rubble
Photo exhibit puts a human face to the
victims of Israel's 2009 Gaza invasion

IN THE BREAD QUEUE, GAZA CITY:
Mohammed Abed, AFP/Getty Images

Just over a year ago, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pushed their way into Gaza on the hunt for Hamas militants. After three weeks of fighting that included 1,355 Palestinian deaths, the destruction of hundreds of buildings and alleged use of white phosphorus, the troops returned home January 18.

To mark one year since the invasion, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has put together an exhibition called Human Drama in Gaza that gathers together some of the most striking images of the conflict. The group sifted through tens of thousands of photos by Israeli, Palestinian and Western photojournalists to find 22 shots that capture a sense of life during the invasion.

Read on...

Hamlet 2 review

2009-12-23T03:31:00.006-05:00

Hamlet 2

(US 2008)

Starring Steve Coogan, written by Andrew Fleming and Pam Brady.

Hamlet 2 unceremoniously completes Steve Coogan’s slow vault into Hollywood, a path that has recently enriched many a British comedian, but as they have donned passable American accents they have also been stripped of the quirks that made them funny (think Eric Idle, Hugh Laurie and more recently Simon Pegg and Eddie Izzard).

The film turns out to be a mess, clearly the product of a tug-of-war between a cringe-humour parody of feel-good American teen musicals (Fame, Dangerous Minds and countless feebler clones) and exactly that kind of movie. This relationship marks many other aspects of the movie: characters begin as oddballs and end as clichés; the more absurd jokes get repeated until they become obvious. .

Coogan plays Dana Marschz, a failed actor-cum-suburban drama teacher, who finds himself teaching a class of disinterested slackers. As is wont to happen in these movies, they become inspired to put on a grandiose stage production and turn out to be fantastically talented. The joke that got you into the theatre, the audaciousness of writing a sequel to Shakespeare’s play, peters out. But since these movies turn on a moment of inspiration, it’s disappointing that we don’t really see why anyone would get excited about Hamlet 2.

There are some good throwaway lines: student Epiphany Sellars (Phoebe Strole) remarks “I still get nervous around ethnics” when she walks into a class of blacks and Latinos – worth a snicker, but it’s a feeble nod to The Office’s commentary on race. But the race jokes wear thin with ACLU lawyer Cricket Feldstein’s (Amy Poehler) chronic Jewish jokes. She begins likeable but ends up a crass stereotype threatening to sue everyone around her. A hilarious scene in which Dana Marschz inadvertently flashes his balls at his students is needlessly ruined when another character draws attention to it later in the film.

Coogan, meanwhile, attempts to cram an array cringe parodies into his character, from Richard Griffiths-like drama teachers to Ted Danson-esque sentimental Americans. Catherine Keener battles to make sense of her role as Marschz’s partner.

Mostly the film’s problem is that its makers are not comfortable with the cringe humour they are experimenting with and feel the need to end with a preposterously successful production Marschz’ Hamlet 2, without a doubt the least interesting, least funny conclusion imaginable.

Speaking truth to warlords

2009-11-23T08:56:00.003-05:00

Banned Afghan MP Malalai Joya on her country’s corruption, the bravery of women and being squashed between two powerful forces

The life of Afghan MP Malalai Joya has become an inconvenient truth about the war in Afghanistan. Rather than showing that Afghan women have been liberated since NATO tanks and troops rolled into the country, Joya has had to brave censorship, threats of violence and four assassination attempts under the new regime. In 2007, she received a three-year suspension from parliament for claiming it was “a stable” filled with warlords and drug barons. She is currently touring North America to promote her memoir A Woman Among Warlords, which she co-wrote with Vancouver journalist Derrick O’Keefe.

[read on...]

The Word Bookstore

2009-11-13T23:43:00.002-05:00

Honouring the Word

The Quebec Writers’ Federation tips its hat to the owners of the cramped, quirky McGill Ghetto bookstore

Stepping into the Word bookstore at 469 Milton is not like stepping into your average big chain bookstore. There’s no convenient Internet database, no oversized lattés, no mood music to lull you into a state of casual consumption and no perky staff in vests primed to sneak a copy of the DaVinci code onto your teetering pile of books. And unlike chain stores, with their mass quantities of bestsellers, pop psychology and yoga accessories, the Word prides itself on its meticulous collection of high quality books.

[read on...]

Eco justice

2009-09-17T12:32:00.002-04:00

Greenpeace Quebec’s director discusses the group’s small yet significant victories and ambitious yet attainable goals.

Melissa Filion is not worried about being bored on the job. Ever since she took over as Interim Director of Greenpeace Quebec last month, she’s divided her time between briefing gung-ho activists preparing to chain themselves to buildings and trying to calm down the inevitably flummoxed CEOs on the receiving end of the group’s sometimes forceful brand of eco-justice.

[read on...]

The Wrestler (review)

2009-08-14T16:24:00.002-04:00

The Wrestler (2008)

d. Darren Aronofsky

The Wrestler is Aronofsky’s most ambitious film to date, not because it induces squeamishness any more than his first two did, but because its ambiguous treatment of its subject is so unsettling.

Aronofsky gets much devilish glee out of showing us the decline of this wretched embodiment of lümpen American culture. Randy “The Ram” Robinson (wonderfully incarnated by Mickey Rooney) is everything intellectuals love to hate about the US. His arch-nemesis is The Ayatollah, a shaven-skulled black American who dons a turban and waves around a flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran until he gets some democratic sense knocked into him by the Ram while testosterone-high onlookers chant “USA! USA!” Robinson decorates his walls with playboy pinups, hangs out in strip joints drinking lite beer and listens to the kind of hair-rock power ballads that make you nostalgic for the days when heavy metal meant singing about Satan and narcotics.

“The Ram” represents the kind of America we love to caricature, and one that Aronofsky is only too happy to ridicule. But when we meet Robinson, this culture is already twenty years into its decline. Even today with the revival of Iron Maiden shirts, the (abortive) reappearance of Guns ’n’ Roses and the regrettable persistence of AC/DC, the culture of 80s hair metal is not likely to overcome the state of near-universal derision it finds itself in.

But Robinson’s lot is worse than that bad style. Unlike those of us who flirted with that culture as we hit the first pangs of adolescence, the victims of Robinson’s run are not just bad hair and bewildered parents.

He enters his autumn years unmarried, uneducated (when a fan asks for an autograph he asks how to spell “Evan”) and unqualified for anything but unskilled labour. He has sunk from superstar to underclass, abandoned by lovers, friends, even his daughter. As we watch him find solace in strip bars, or among the misfits of the wrestling community, or in the overzealous fist-in-the-air confidence of 80s pop-metal, we can’t help but feel something more than sympathy for Robinson. This ambiguity is what makes The Wrestler more unsettling than Requiem for a Dream. This man could not be entirely without value, you think. Perhaps there is something to that culture after all…

This is the film’s achievement, summed up in the final scene as The Ram prepares to pounce on the Ayatollah. At a time when Iran is once again sitting on the chopping block of imperial injustice, we would like nothing more than to revel in the humiliation of American arrogance. Yet somehow we need him to succeed. The Wrestler makes us feel that an ugly man in lycra underwear about to engage in an act of public racism to the soundtrack of the worst American cock rock might be human after all.

curtain call

2009-07-24T18:19:00.001-04:00

03.07.09.DM-5278, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

Renfield enthusiastic

2009-07-24T18:18:00.003-04:00

03.07.09.DM-5176, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

Mina reconsiders dating a vampire

2009-07-24T18:18:00.001-04:00

03.07.09.DM-5247, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

Flo returns

2009-07-24T18:17:00.005-04:00

03.07.09.DM-5236, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

backstage

2009-07-24T18:17:00.003-04:00

114, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

musicians

2009-07-24T18:17:00.001-04:00

03.07.09.DM-5216, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

cackling

2009-07-24T18:16:00.001-04:00

177, originally uploaded by theblacklistcommittee.

Dracula headed to Toronto

2009-06-24T18:03:00.008-04:00

SEX ° BLOOD ° EXISTENTIAL TORMENT ° VAMPIRE CRUNK

Dracula is headed to Toronto! July 3-12 at the Toronto Fringe Festival!

Reservations: 416-966-1062, www.fringetoronto.com

SHOWTIMES
Fri July 3 – 10pm
Sun July 5 – 6:30pm
Mon July 6 – 2pm
Tue July 7 – 4pm
Wed July 8 – 8pm
Fri July 10 – 12pm
Sat July 11 – 9:30pm

Glenn Morris Theatre (4 Glenn Morris Street – just east of Spadina, 3 streets south of Bloor)

Tickets: $10

Please note that latecomers are not permitted

Dracula in Gazette Top 10

2009-06-05T16:09:00.000-04:00

Dracula gets a mention in Montreal Gazette theatre critic Pat Donnelly's Top 10 shows to see at the Fringe.

Sleaze on St-Laurent

2009-06-04T13:21:00.001-04:00

Save our sin

Most of us know the lower Main as a good spot to grab a cheap poutine and take in a transvestite cabaret show. But the city’s plan to revitalize the area threatens to wipe away the neighbourhood’s reputable sleaze along with the buildings it intends to raze.

[read on...]

Dracula at Fringe For All

2009-06-03T23:46:00.003-04:00

This is our 2 min stunt at the Fringe For All last Monday June 1st at Café Campus. Too bad they mic it from the back 'cause some (lots) of the sound gets lost.

Fringe For All stunt

In the video: Sibel A., Scott Kettles, Caroline Fournier, Susanna Jones, Elana Gale, Cassandra Witteman, Chastity Castro. The voice that says "Go" when the music starts is played by me.

Dracula trailer

2009-05-29T20:51:00.005-04:00

Trailer credits:

Directed by Arshad Khan
Written by Matt Jones
Starring: Sibel A., Scott Kettles, Susanna Jones
Music & Sound Effects: David Jones, Robin Jones
Captions: David Jones
Make-up: Elana Dunkelman
Director's Assistant: Adam David
Editor: Arshad Khan

www.arshadfilms.com
blacklistcommittee.wordpress.com

cast pictures

2009-05-29T19:04:00.004-04:00

all photos by Susanna Jones

interview on CKUT

2009-05-28T13:54:00.004-04:00

Me talking in broken French with Sabine Friesinger for Le Lendemain de la veille (CKUT: 90.3 FM), May 28, 2009. Starts at 33:45, ends at 41.45.

Dracula

2009-05-20T19:01:00.010-04:00

FRINGE FESTIVAL 2009

With rivers rising, ice caps melting and blood becoming ever more toxic, Dracula is faced with a dilemma: if the humans he feeds on go extinct, what happens to vampires? A play about love, bloodsucking, the perils of activism and the end of the world.

A play by Matt Jones
Co-directed by Matt Jones and Scott Kettles
Live music by the Transylvanian Blooddrinking Orchestra
Videography by Arshad Khan
Photography by Susanna Jones

Featuring the Dead Doll Dancers!

Staring -
Scott Kettles
Chastity Castro
Elana Gale
Caroline Fournier
Sibel A.
Susanna Jones
Cassandra Witteman

MONTREAL SHOWTIMES
Fri June 12 - 11pm
Sun June 14 - 11:15pm
Mon June 15 - 9:30pm
Wed June 17 - 11:15pm
Fri June 19 - 8pm
Sun June 21 - 3:45pm
www.montrealfringe.ca

TORONTO SHOWTIMES
Fri July 3 - 10pm
Sun July 5 - 6:30
Mon July 6 - 2pm
Tue July 7 - 4pm
Wed July 8 - 8pm
Fri July 10 - 12pm
Sat July 11 - 9:30pm
www.fringetoronto.com

Reservations: 514.849.FEST and 416.966.1062
www.blacklistcommittee.wordpress.com
blacklistcommittee(at)gmail(dot)com

Dracula: full cast

2009-04-29T16:37:00.014-04:00

Announcing... the full cast of Dracula in a Time of Climate Change:

Chastity Castro
Elana Gale
Caroline Fournier
Sibel A.
Susanna Jones
Scott Kettles
Cassandra Witteman

co-directed by Matt Jones & Scott Kettles
publicity & random errands: Corinna Howard & Susanna Jones
drawings by: David Jones
live music by: Can't Get Enough of Your Blood
videography by: Arshad Khan

Showtimes:

FRINGE TOUR 2009:

Montreal June 11-21

MainLine Theatre (3997 St-Laurent)

FRI June 12, 23:00

SUN June 14, 23:15

MON June 15, 21:30

WED June 17, 23:15

FRI June 19, 20:00

SUN June 21, 15:45

Toronto July 1-12

Glenn Morris Theatre (4 Glen Morris St - one street east of Spadina, 3 streets south of Bloor)

showtimes TBA

Dracula in a Time of Climate Change: Fringe Tour 2009

2009-03-24T20:08:00.006-04:00

The Blacklist Committee for Unsafe Theatre presents:

a play by Matt Jones

directed by Scott Kettles

FRINGE TOUR 2009:

Montreal June 11-21
Wakefield June 28-30
Toronto July 1-12

blacklistcommittee(at)gmail.com
blacklistcommittee.wordpress.com

(art by David Jones)

A 'green fairy' tale

2009-02-20T16:12:00.001-05:00

A 'green fairy' tale

After a long absence from the legitimate market, absinthe - the "green fairy," once thought to be the cause of violent outbursts, temporary insanity and Romantic Poetry - has been making a comeback in recent years.

Read more...

Reclaiming reality: Oil sands reclamation projects are more talk than action

2009-01-16T15:46:00.003-05:00

Reclaiming reality

Oil sands reclamation projects are more talk than action

Matt Jones
Photography by Robin Jones

Amid the rampant industrial upheaval that surrounds Fort McMurray lies a slice of serenity where a young forest grows and wood bison frolic. Located just off Highway 63 are the Wood Bison Viewpoint and the Wood Bison Trails. The Viewpoint is home to 300 wood bison, the descendants of 32 animals initially brought there in 1993 by oil giant Syncrude. Across the street are the Trails. Also known as Gateway Hill, this is the 104-hectare former dumping site for excavated land that last March earned Syncrude Alberta’s first ever oil sands land reclamation certificate...

[continue reading...]

Vote Québec solidaire!

2008-12-06T13:06:00.003-05:00

25 reasons to vote for Québec Solidaire on Monday:

http://www.quebecsolidaire.net/files/QS-Commitments-2008.pdf

People’s present: an interview with Howard Zinn

2008-11-13T19:09:00.002-05:00

>>American historian and activist
Howard Zinn ponders President-Elect
Obama’s positions on peace and imperial power

CAUTIOUSLY HOPEFUL: Zinn

by MATT JONES

Few people are as unimpressed with the Bush presidency and the war in Iraq as American social historian, playwright and anti-war activist Howard Zinn. An opponent of U.S. military interventions since Vietnam, Zinn got his distaste for war after running high altitude bombing raids over Europe in World War II. Meeting survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later convinced him that the disconnect between military decisions and their consequences on the ground inevitably brought with it massive, unnecessary suffering and devastation. He would spend the ’60s and ’70s forging his academic career and agitating against the Vietnam War.

[continue reading]

I'm From Barcelona review

2008-10-28T19:52:00.003-04:00

A review of the new I'm From Barcelona CD on Amplifier Magazine:

I'M FROM BARCELONA

WHO KILLED HARRY HOUDINI?

MUTE (2008)

I'm From Barcelona's songs range in mood from sugar giddy to cherry-coke drunk. If their first full-length and E.P. sometimes overindulged in bouts of ironic cuteness, it's a relief to see that with Who Killed Harry Houdini the 29-piece band seem to have, well, not exactly grown up, but at least reached pre-adolescence. Remember when you got your first two pubic hairs but still wanted to watch cartoons and eat marshmallow cereal? This is the soundtrack to when the sugar wore off and you had to face the inevitable trudge towards adulthood. Good times.

Iron Man review

2008-08-15T00:08:00.004-04:00

Hailed as a subversive action flick for its portrayal of weapons industry corruption, Iron Man is a disappointing techno-imperialist fantasy, but its special effects will keep die-hard gadget fetishists on the edge of their seats.

Based on Marvel’s successful Cold War-era comic book, Iron Man tells the story of American überman Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), an arrogant child prodigy who built his first engine at the age of six and would go on to take over his father’s weapons manufacturing outfit not long after. In between feats of engineering, he spends his time cajoling women into bed with him – even a sharp-tongued progressive reporter for Vanity Fair cannot resist the charm behind comments like, “I’d be willing to lose a few hours sleep with you”. He abandons her to his projects the next morning, and she carries the grudge until the end of the film.

Like America on the world stage, Stark does what he wants when he wants with whom he wants because he can. His unmatchable technical know-how and wealth give him a market value so high as to let him wander the world at his leisure, selling his highly desired weapons with a bottomless whiskey on the rocks in hand (not totally unlike Julian from the Trailer Park Boys).

Stark travels to Afghanistan to show off his latest weapon to the boys in the field: the Jericho, a missile that fractures into countless highly potent mini-bombs that scatter the landscape with total imprecision. When his convoy is attacked by one of those roadside bombs

Afghanistan

is so famous for, Stark notices that it’s his own company’s weapons that are being used in the attack.

He finds himself captured by a terrorist organization called The Ten Rings. Though they take their name from the weapon of choice of Orientalist villain The Mandarin (apparently to be Iron Man’s foe in the 2009 sequel), this group turns out to be based faithfully on the principles of CNN-defined terrorism. Genghis Khan-inspired foreign jihadis, they have come to Afghanistan to kill as many women and children as possible, in a quest to rule the world. For cold-blooded villains, they come off looking quite cool in their green fatigues and kafias and, in a PC inversion of the James Bond trope, they are always seen smoking. This image is reinforced by the presence of rock stars in their ranks – Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello does a cameo as one of the many dispensable guerrilla fighters.

In the bomb attack, Stark is severely injured, with a piece of shrapnel coming dangerously close to entering his heart. Fortunately, he is imprisoned alongside the resourceful scientist Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub), who has created a shield for his heart using the electromagnet from a car battery. Meanwhile, the terrorists are anxious for Stark to make them a version of his Jericho missile. After a bout of water torture he agrees, but in fact sets out plotting his escape. Cumbersome as car batteries are to lug around, the imaginative Stark replaces his with a device powered on a miniature “arc reactor”, a kind of advanced nuclear energy device he has invented, which simultaneously solves the world’s energy crisis and his cardiac problem. In a feat that had previously eluded trapped POWs, Stark decides to build himself an indestructible flying robot suit to escape with. This makes Raza (Faran Tahir), the good-looking Ten Rings commander, understandably upset, and he sends in his footsoldiers and rock stars to show Stark what’s what. Most of them are mowed down as Stark escapes, including the Good Muslim, Dr. Yinsen, whose death is a model of Oriental subservience: all he ever wanted was to join his family in the afterlife, so if he can help an able-bodied American merchant of death escape in the process, so much the better.

Equipped with his new cyber-heart, Stark returns to

America

where he decides to get out of the arms business. Here the film’s criticism of the military-industrial complex is at its strongest: stock shares plummet, provoking a panic among the Board of Directors who try to remove him. But Stark hasn’t turned against the Empire. He has merely changed from egocentric war profiteer to humanitarian warrior. His next task will be to improve his robot costume and use it to fly to

Afghanistan

to deal with the terrorists in a Rumsfeldian wet dream of techno-war precision.

Throughout the film, American technical wizardry is contrasted with Afghan primitivism. The Good Muslims secretly aid Iron Man or wait in hope and awe for him to save them from evil. The Bad Muslims are jealous. Since they lack American smarts, the only way for them to keep up is to steal the technology using those tried and true methods of Oriental savagery: kidnapping, torture and blackmail.

As a modern American übermench, Tony Stark is an archetype of a successful American male. Witty, self-aggrandizing, sexually potent, brimming with brains and money, Stark also has a heart. He represents an America reengineering itself away from Kissinger-style what-we-say-goes foreign policy to the more moralistic territory of today’s humanitarian-coated imperialism.

Unsurprisingly for a comic book, Iron Man is an unabashedly male fantasy. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Pepper, his beautiful assistant whose job it is to “do just about anything Mr. Stark needs me to” (of course even she has a secret, unfulfilled crush on him). Other jobs that women have in the film include worrying about Mr. Stark, sleeping with Mr. Stark and, if they feel used by him, asking spiteful pointed questions during press conferences.

There is no doubt that the special effects and fast-paced action make for an extremely watchable film. Stellar performances by all the main actors, especially Jeff Bridges as bad-guy-on-the-inside Obadiah Stane, help to make this production one of the best made comic book series so far. And Downey Jr.’s deadpan expression and ironic wit makes his character human in a way that, for example, Christian Bale’s all-too-serious Batman wasn’t.

The original Iron Man was part of a wave of 1960s Cold War propaganda comics. The original villain in this film was supposed to be the Mandarin, a crude metaphor for Maoist communism, but director John Favreau felt, rightly, that this would be out of date. But in updating the comic, Favreau has successfully updated his propaganda as well, skilfully bringing to the screen the ideology of military humanitarianism that justifies the War on Terror.

Community theatre troupe not afraid to take on controversial political icon

2008-04-16T23:29:00.003-04:00

Community theatre troupe not afraid to take on controversial political icon

It’s been almost 25 years since David Fennario’s Black Rock Theatre brought a Karl Marx-waxing Joe Beef to the Pointe. Now PSC Community Theatre is picking up the torch. Don't expect to hear quotes from the Communist Manifesto, though. PSC’s next project is to be a production of ultraconservative Ayn Rand's first play, "Night of January 16th", the story of an individual's search for himself in a world of increasing moral decadence (http://www.psccommunity.com/Night-of/index.html).

Of course there are some truly great right-wing writers: Elliot, Pound, etc. Personally I’m quite a fan of the apocalyptic God-will-have-His-revenge-on-atheists-and-feminists novels of Flannery O'Connor.

But Ayn Rand? Failed screenwriter, second-rate novelist and theorist of objectivism, Rand is famous for her promotion of a utopian, ultra-laissez faire capitalism that was so extreme, it even turned off free marketeers. For the duration of her life Rand had almost no intellectual heirs and made no indent in academia.

That’s not to say that no one read her.

In the 1950s a group of graduate students began to dedicate themselves to the study of her work (at least one of them, Nathaniel Brandon, studied more than just her work, maintaining a rather morally decadent illicit affair with her). Though her accolades were few, they were from influential sources, including later Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. Brandon founded the Nathaniel Brandon Institute, which promoted Ayn Rand speaking tours, and later his colleague Leonard Peikoff founded the Ayn Rand Institute, which distributed Rand op-ed pieces to newspapers around the world. Over the last 20 years the ARI, as it is known, has found sympathetic ears in the corporate community and in right-wing politics. Rand believed in a totally free market and abolishing the state. She would, though, retain its repressive arms – the police and the judiciary – to protect us from moral decay. If this sounds like Stephen Harper’s electoral program don’t be surprised.

The growing number of institutions dedicated to the proliferation of Rand’s ideas have now amassed massive funds, created think tanks and embarked upon various projects that aim to make Rand’s views known, including the distribution of 700,000 copies of Rand’s books to high schools in the US (since 2005 a Canadian branch of the ARI has been doing the same here). Their success is palpable. A trip to any bookstore catering to a business crowd (a Reisman-owned megastore for example) will likely find a collection of Rand’s works ten times larger than the next most popular philosopher.

Rand thought that the United States was “the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.” She thought that

"the Arabs are one of the least developed cultures…Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent." She was disgusted by homosexuality because "there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality" since "it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises." Rand was opposed to racism, but was also opposed to government intervention to stop discrimination based on race or sex. In 1947 she appeared as a “friendly witness” (read eager witness) to the House Committee on Un-American Activities to denounce Hollywood artists who portrayed Russia in a sympathetic light.

So why is it that a community theatre in Pointe St-Charles has seen the need to promote someone who seemingly has so little to say to 2008? Is it because she’s considered a rebel, since she never gained formal credibility? Or perhaps it’s a just mark of our times, of community groups that have bought into the ideas of the dominant class, completely oblivious that those ideas have nothing to offer them.

Wildside Festival

2008-01-18T00:54:00.001-05:00

Wildside Festival 2008

Centaur Theatre, January 8-19^th 2008

Here’s a quick review of the first four plays I saw at the Wildside this year.

The Wildside Festival is the Centaur’s attempt to buy itself a stake in the Fringe™ festival. It chooses what it considers the five best plays, gives them a budget and stages them on its main stage for two weeks. Wild? Maybe not, but there was some good theatre on display.

…and stockings for the ladies

The Gesamtkunstwek Project

written by Attila Clemann
performed by Brendan McMurtry-Howlett

One of the better, if not entirely satisfying, moments of this year’s festival was Attila Clemann’s Frankie-Award winning …and stockings for the ladies, a carefully-crafted story of the experience of Clemann’s father’s step-father in the post-war Allied occupation of Germany. McMurtry-Howlett plays all the parts, showing himself capable of considerable theatrical gymnastics as he reconstructs dialogue between hardened officers and battle-hungry soldiers, impatient mothers and disobedient children.

Ted Aplin, an officer, and Daniel Friedman, a soldier, are stationed in Celle, Germany, near the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. When Aplin is taken to see the camp, he is shocked by the conditions he sees and decides to go over his supervisors’ heads and find a way to help nurture the survivors back to health. He recruits Friedman to help him and together they organize a secret system to allow soldiers’ families to donate supplies to the former interns. When the military brass finds out that the two have been breaking the rules, they are threatened with dishonourable discharge.

There is enough drama in this story for good theatre, but the problem I find with this kind of chronicle of parental heroism is that it tends by nature to try to avoid conflicts and contradictions that could tarnish the hero, though this could, in fact, lead to higher drama. Friedman and Aplin are nice guys motivated by a high sense of moral duty. Their adversaries are tough authoritarians who simply want the rules followed. The arguments between them should be a climactic moment of the play but it falls short because Clemann doesn’t give enough ammunition to his adversaries. If he allowed the officers more convincing arguments, the tension would be greater. He needn’t worry that his audience would side against helping holocaust victims.

The picture that Stockings gives of the Canadian military is equally without contradiction. Canadian soldiers are described as nice, generous, good-looking blue-eyed boys jumping to give out chocolate to camp survivors. As if that’s what armies are trained to do. This seems to me a uniquely Canadian view of Canadians, a kind of national narcissism that belongs more in Heritage Minute spots than in theatre.

The flip side of this myth is the portrayal of camp survivors. Represented—quite masterfully—by hand puppets, the victims relate stories about their torment at the hands of the Nazis. They recount their delight at eating chocolate for the first time in years, the carnal violence with which they act when they are thrown a former torturer. One victim glows with joy at being told that a new land called Israel is awaiting him. I was amazed this could be pulled off with no sense of how obscure the concept must have sounded in 1945, or the slightest irony that this dream might not work out quite as planned. In each case they are portrayed as passive victims awaiting their liberation by others, in this case British and Canadian forces. This seems to me to reflect one of the implicit tenants of Zionism: that its project of liberation is necessarily dependent on the favours of the Great Powers.

These oversights do not destroy the drama. The tension rises as we watch Aplin attempt to shake off the threats coming from above and Friedman, who is at first reticent to get involved, rising to meet the Aplin’s level of commitment. But oversights do mean that we don’t take what we see as seriously as we could. Aplin and Friedman’s story is worth telling: their choice to offer solidarity to suffering people even if it meant losing a comfortable military career certainly makes them small heroes. But it doesn’t add to their legacy to rely on cheap myths about Canada, Israel and WWII.

Teaching As You Like It

Written and performed by Keir Cutler

Directed by TJ Dawe

By all indications Teaching… should have been the highest point of Wildside this year. 2008 marks the fifth time Cutler has been invited to bring his Teaching series to the Centaur and the piece is directed by Fringe™ favourite TJ Dawe. But Teaching is insufferable from beginning to end.

The story follows a day in the classroom of “the inept Dr. Cutler” who, while ostensibly trying to teach Shakespeare to a high school English class, accidentally regales his students with a long confession of the romance he is undertaking with a student. “Inept” doesn’t begin to describe such a person.

If you don’t catch the idea that the doctor’s lust for Rosalind the student is very similar to Orlando’s lust for Rosalind in As You Like It, don’t worry because Cutler lets you know several dozen times over the course of the play, and with decreasing subtlety. “Isn’t it ironic that Rosalind isn’t here on the day we’re studying a play with a character of the same name?” he asks. Yes I suppose it is.

So why would any of this happen? Apparently, Dr. Cutler is nervous – that’s why he continues to spill incriminating details of his illicit affair long after the audience (and the presumably less patient students of his fictional class) has lost interest. Why would this happen? Is he mentally ill? Or is it part of his wacky ineptitude? The problem with the latter is that Cutler character is simply too dull to be wacky. I could be stretched to believe that a Ricky Gervais or a Steve Coogan could walk himself into such a trap, but then I imagine the journey would at least be amusing.

The Girl With No Hands

Talya Rubin and Jodi Essery

Between 1803 and 1812, the Grimm brothers went out to document oral storytelling traditions in the small villages of Germany for their book Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). Rubin and Essery’s Girl recounts their attempt to assemble the different versions of one particular story they gather into a coherent manuscript. The story begins and ends numerous times, details are changed, re-interpreted, and argued over as Wilhelm Grimm struggles with task he has been set. What makes Girl intriguing is how each re-telling affects the whole, and what it says about the nature of storytelling in the process.

The myth concerns a young girl who is accused of having exposed herself to the Devil. As punishment, her father cuts off her hands and she runs into the woods and dies. The story is weaved through the perspectives of a series of colourful characters. We hear from the gossipy women of the town, who use the story of the girl to advance their peculiar visions of morality. We meet the story’s protagonists: the axe-wielding father and the mother who is enjoying the peace and quiet and golden pears that appeared with the disappearance of her daughter. One character is the embittered raconteur of the “puppenspiel”: a hunch-backed old man whose stories all end with, “and so she died.” Rubin and Essery tease us by allowing some characters to reveal facts from the end of the story, while others return to tell them in greater detail.

Wilhelm Grimm doesn’t know what to do with the patched-together, morality-soaked story as it’s been told to him. It seems like so much gossip. Each person has used the facts of the story to prove a simple point: usually that girls should behave themselves. As such, they have cut out every detail that doesn’t fit their agenda and the story has become lifeless in their hands.

The play ends with the Brothers Grimm version of the Girl with no Hands. This version begins where the others conclude, leaving aside the punitive morality of the townswomen and turning it into a tale about how love can survive interference, even from the Devil. While the girl with no hands had been just an object in the townswomen’s stories, someone to whom a sentence was to be doled out, she becomes the subject of the Grimm version, someone who acts and responds to the challenges sent her by the Devil.

Stories expand and contract, develop and degenerate depending on who tells them and why. Stories exist differently for teller and listener and this affects how they change as they are passed on. Rubin and Essery show us the subjectivity inherent in storytelling but also the power of a story in the hands of a master. If you add to this the wit of the dialogue, the sparse gothic sets, Tanya Rubin’s fine acting, and the eerie live accordion music by Julia Kater, Girl is easily the pick of the bunch at this year’s festival.

Cyclops

Rabbit in a Hat Productions

Written by Paul Van Dyck

A lot of effort and imagination went into Van Dyck’s latest production. A four-piece ensemble act out characters inside and outside the imagination of its protagonist, Ballor, accompanied by a three-piece band who deliver a live score and sound effects. Impressive use is made of shadow puppetry, costumes, backlighting and set design.

The piece is a highly stylized voyage into the imaginary world of Ballor, a one-eyed delusional patient of a psychiatric ward. Ballor’s subconscious turns out to be a colourful fairground, populated by a devious clown, a bearded lady, a bloodthirsty minotaur and an African mystic, all of whom mirror either people Ballor meets in the hospital or manifest qualities of Ballor’s psychological makeup.

All of this makes for great opportunities for clowning, singing, dancing, delivered with flamboyantly by an excellent cast. The trouble is that you can’t help feeling that Ballor’s mind is too much of a perfect playground for such a gang of enthusiastic theatre artists. We have difficulty believing anyone could really fantasize such a world, and the play doesn’t offer up enough substance to suggest that this could all be a symbol for something else.

The story does not compel us primarily because the characters, though they are bold, are not rounded out with enough idiosyncrasies or contradictions that depart from the too-familiar archetypes they are based on. Though they fall in love, get in fights-to-the-death, and even kill each other, they evolve little as people over the course of the play.

Finally, with all the stylization, I wonder what makes this piece new. To what end does it use generic forms in new ways and what does it add to them? The music is well done, but ultimately conventional, the story ordinary, the characters archetypal, the theatrics derivative. Any one or two of these might be acceptable were the play to cover new ground elsewhere, but as it doesn’t it entertains but leaves us wanting.

Dracula in Toronto!

2007-09-21T16:10:00.000-04:00

Dracula in a Time of Climate Change (aka Don't Let the Sun Come Up on Me) will be performed in Toronto next Saturday, September 29th as part of a conference on Capitalism and Climate Change at the University of Toronto.

with live music by:
The Trans-Philharmonic Orchestra of Blood-Drinkers

reservations:
blacklistcommittee@gmail.com or 416-924-9042

Details:

Captialism & Climate Change

Workshops include:
• Why capitalism is destroying the planet
• Climate change and revolution
• Canada and the tar sands
• Greening or greenwashing?
• Climate change and global justice

Followed by dinner and threatre preformance:
DRACULA in an TIME of CLIMATE CHANGE by Matt Jones

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Time:
12:30pm - 8:30pm

Location:
International Student Centre, University of Toronto

Street:
33 St George Street

City:
Toronto, ON

New Logo Poll

2007-08-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

We need a logo for the Blacklist Committee. Please vote on which one you like best. Whichever one wins goes on the Blacklist site.

thanks!

Logo #1:

Logo #2:

pictures from Out West

2007-07-25T16:01:00.000-04:00

Links to selected pictures from our trip to B.C. and Alberta.

Part 1 (pictures by Sibel & I)
Part 2 (pictures by Dave & Robin)
Part 3 (pictures by Susanna)

Justify Your Existence: Matt Jones

2007-06-30T11:23:00.000-04:00

Here I am being interviewed in the Gazette. Funny, I remember myself sounding much more articulate...

Don’t Let the Sun Come Up on Me: Dracula in a Time of Climate Change

2007-06-11T11:52:00.000-04:00

NEW PROJECT!

The Blacklist Committee for Unsafe Theatre presents…

Don’t Let the Sun Come Up on Me:
Dracula in a Time of Climate Change

Vampires are rarely confronted with the question of their own mortality. But with rivers rising, ice caps melting and blood becoming ever more toxic, Dracula is faced with a dilemma: if the humans he feeds on go extinct, what happens to vampires? A play about bloodsucking, existential torment, the perils of activism and the end of the world.

a staged reading of the play is happening as part of the 2007 inFRINGEment festival

Friday June 22nd, 8:30pm
Saturday June 23rd, 9pm

at the CTRL Lab, 3634 St-Laurent

pay what you can

Credits:

Written by Matt Jones

Starring: Scott Kettles, Sibel Ataogul, Alan Heillig, Peggy Ferguson, Philippe Lapointe-Lévis, Paul Beaulieu

Live soundscape by Matt Jones and his Experimental Orchestra of One

Tech: James Douglas

RESERVATIONS:
514-237-2534 or blacklistcommittee@gmail.com
http://blacklistcommittee.wordpress.com/

Vimy : Est-il possible de se souvenir jusqu’au point où l’on oublie tout ?

2007-05-16T23:45:00.000-04:00

Vimy : Est-il possible de se souvenir jusqu’au point où l’on oublie tout ?

Après plusieurs semaines de ferveur nationaliste et d’hystérie médiatique, les célébrations du 90e anniversaire sont maintenant finies. Peut-être qu’on peut profiter de cette distance pour se demander pourquoi nous célébrons un événement dont a résulté la mort de 20 000 Allemands et 3500 Canadiens.

On appelait la Première Guerre mondiale « la der des ders », c’est-à-dire la guerre pour mettre fin à la guerre. Mais en fait, la fin de cette guerre a non seulement provoqué la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, mais aussi la division des territoires des pays vaincus (les Empires allemand, austro-hongrois et turque) a entraîné les lignes de fracture de nombreuses guerres ethniques jusqu’à nos jours. Cet anniversaire coïncidant avec six morts canadiens en Afghanistan, le Premier ministre Stephen Harper n’a pas pu s’empêcher de faire des parallèles entre la guerre de 1917 et sa propre aventure militariste d’aujourd’hui. Et peut-être les parallèles ne sont pas si incongrus qu’ils le semblent. On nous explique que la Première Guerre mondial était une « guerre pour la liberté », alors qu’il s’agissait d’une guerre entre des empires rivaux pour le partage de la richesse du monde. À notre époque, derrière la rhétorique de la « libération des femmes afghanes » on trouve la redivision de la carte du Moyen-Orient selon le pouvoir de l’empire

américain, ses alliées et ses rivaux. Et comme on ne mentionne pas les morts allemands de 1917, les morts afghans aujourd’hui ne sont même pas comptés; nous présumons que c’est seulement les guérillas talibanes qui font l’objet de notre fusillade.

On nous explique que la bataille de Vimy a changé la direction de la guerre et, même si la boucherie a continué pendant 18 mois de plus, les Allemands étaient, dès ce moment, en position de retraite. Mais cette rhétorique ignore l’événement le plus significatif de 1917 : le refus catégorique des troupes russes de continuer la boucherie. Ceci a ouvert les premières négociations de paix depuis le début de la guerre, la seule chose qui pouvait faire sortir l’Europe de l’impasse d’une guerre d’attrition.

Ce que nous entendons le plus cette année, c’est l’idée de la « naissance d’une nation » lors de la boucherie. Si la nation du Canada a été vraiment fondée à partir de là, on peut très bien demander pourquoi la preuve de sa supposée indépendance de l’Empire Britannique fut de faire la guerre pour les intérêts de cet empire.

Même en 1917, il n’y avait pas le consensus au Canada que M. Harper aimerait croire. Après le désastre de la Somme et même le « succès » à la crête de Vimy, il n’y avait pas beaucoup de soif pour la guerre dans la population. Une campagne visant la création d’un contingent de 40 000 hommes n’a engagé que 1858 personnes. Comme le carnage en Europe nécessitait toujours autant de vies de jeunes hommes, les meneurs de guerre auraient eu besoin d’une autre tactique pour se les procurer.

En juillet 1917, le gouvernement de Robert Borden a énoncé la Loi du service militaire, qui a forcé la conscription. Cette annoncé a été accueillie au Québec avec une série de manifestations et d’émeutes. Le 17 juillet, une manifestation à Montréal proclamait le refus de participer dans une guerre pour l’empire Britannique. Les manifestants ont comparé la relation du Québec et du Canada avec celle de l’Irlande et du Royaume-Uni, faisant référence à l’insurrection de Pâques en 1916.

En 1918, juste avant Pâques, l’arrêt d’un jeune homme de 23 ans dans une salle de quilles à Québec pour avoir négligé de se présenter pour son service militaire a provoqué quatre jours d’émeutes. Plusieurs figures publiques étaient pressées de condamner la violence (principalement contre la propriété) lors de ces manifs, dont le cardinal Louis-Nazaire Bégin qui s’est prononcé contre les « troubles ». Mais l’esprit anti-militariste était si présent dans la population que plusieurs prêtres ont condamné la police plutôt que les militants.

Borden envoya des renforts à Québec, menés par François-Louis Lessard, connu pour son rôle dans la répression d’une grève en 1878 et pour sa direction d’un contingent de l’armée qui s’est battu contre Louis Riel en 1885.

Le 1er avril, l’armée a commencé à patrouiller les rues, malgré la promesse antérieure qu’ils ne le feraient pas. Ce soir là, les troupes essayaient de disperser la foule autour de la Place Jacques-Cartier. Quand la foule a décidé de rester, Lessard a décidé de faire charger la cavalerie avec ordre de « shoot to kill ». Quatre personnes sont mortes et plus de 70 ont été blessées. Une enquête a révélé que ces quatre personnes n’avaient même pas pris part aux manifs. Leurs familles n’ont jamais été indemnisées.

Si on veut commémorer ceux qui ont péri dans une guerre, il faut se souvenir de la raison pour laquelle ils ont péri. Ne pas reconnaître la raison pour laquelle une personne meurt consiste à nier la signification de sa mort. Il y a 90 ans, 25 000 personnes ont perdu leurs vies pour s’emparer d’une crête en Belgique. Ceci s’ajoute aux 150 000 Français qui avaient déjà péri dans des vaines tentatives de faire la même chose. Comme les quatre personnes tuées à Québec, ils sont tous des victimes d’un impérialisme affamé de sang. Mais l’exemple des gens ordinaires au Québec, en Russie et en Irlande nous montre que le vrai courage, ce n’est pas de suivre les ordres de massacrer, mais d’y désobéir.

merci à Nancy Turgeon pour les corrections
publiée dans Résistance ! no 41 (mai 2007)

McCarthyism and Islamophobia: together at last!

2007-05-08T17:07:00.000-04:00

Check out this page for Barbara Kay's attempt to slander Françoise David for participating in Marxism 2007. Scroll down to read Sibel's response. Mine is below:

Thanks to Barbara Kay for reminding us all why the Quebec Press Council accused her of possessing a "lack of rigour", of having "deformed facts" and "establishing generalizations suitable to perpetuate... prejudices".

Now, you might say that bending the truth, defaming people and promoting intolerance is just part of a day's work at the National Post. But the real reason so many people don't take Kay seriously as a journalist is her total lack of style when doing so.

Someone should tell Kay that her preposterous insinuation that CFS's "Report on the Needs of Muslim Students" is "the thin end of the wedge in introducing sharia law on campus" makes the rest of her argument more than a little questionable.

I particularly enjoyed the phrase describing the Marxism 2007 conference as "a conference that is designed officially to unite Islamists with the radical Left". Kay misuses her words so much it makes me wonder if they have any meaning at all.

I searched throughout the conference website to find the "official" endorsement of Left-Islamist unity, but all I could find was a talk on "Building unity: Muslims and the Left". Now, is there a difference between Islamism and Islam? Most political commentators educated outside of the School of Anne Coulter will know that the first is a political movement associated with a series of theocratic dictatorships and terrorist groups while the other is one of the major world religions followed by nearly 1.4 billion people. Islamists may not be friends of women, but they're not at the conference, so the accusation is meaningless.

As for Mohammed Elmasry, who publicly and "categorically" apologized for his comments about the killing of innocent civilians, he has long been an important critic of treatment of Muslims in Canada. Perhaps not an important issue for Kay as she seems to think equal rights for Muslims is tantamount to their taking over the country, but for those who believe in multiculturalism it is. And if Kay thinks that individuals who say controversial things should be taken out of the public arena, then she should have handed in her resignation a long time ago.

Pictures from California

2007-05-07T21:39:00.000-04:00

Well, unfortunately for my pretty blogspot, Facebook has taken over the world and it is much easier to put up pictures there. So here are the links:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2188&l=38f44&id=507954004
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2187&l=a61b7&id=507954004
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2186&l=159be&id=507954004
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2184&l=d2b1d&id=507954004
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2183&l=48ef7&id=507954004
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2182&l=77d07&id=507954004

Comments & journal entries to come!

Boddel's Problem

2007-04-19T11:52:00.000-04:00

I've just finished a new draft of a 10-min screenplay called "Boddel's Problem". I'm looking to get it produced, so I would appreciate any feedback you may have. If you're interested, you can read it at the link above and send me your thoughts by email or as a comment on this blog. Thanks!

Campagne de Québec solidaire dans Mercier

2007-04-19T11:32:00.000-04:00

Campagne de Québec solidaire dans Mercier

À la veille des élections

À Montréal, après un long hiver, les premiers samedi ou dimanche où il fait beau, les Montréalaises sortent de leur longue hibernation et les terrasses sur Mont-Royal et Saint-Denis sont toujours pleines. Le dimanche 25 mars était un jour comme ça. C'était aussi le dernier jour de la première campagne électorale de Québec solidaire, et les militantEs du parti étaient visibles partout dans ce quartier. Le matin, j'avais rencontré quelques militantEs dans le Mile-End pour aller visiter les gens dans les cafés et plus j’ai fait du porte à porte avec un ami sur le plateau. On a croisé d'autres militants en chemin vers la Parc Lafontaine, d'autres qui parlaient aux gens faisant du magasinage sur Mont-Royal. Sur les balcons, à part de quelques affiches péquistes, Québec solidaire avait presque le monopole. Même si nous savions que tout le monde a déjà reçu trois ou quatre copies de nos dépliants, livrés de main propre par nos militantEs, le but était de parler avec tout ceux qui se considéraient comme indécis. Par contraste, les autres partis étaient invisibles. L'ADQ n'a jamais osé faire campagne dans Mercier, les verts n'avait pas assez de membres pour le faire et les libéraux se contentaient de l'appui qu'ils avaient toujours, seul le visage de Daniel Turp était visible, et cela par le moyen du Publisac.

Nous avons eu des arguments très intenses et fascinants avec les gens du quartier, surtout avec les péquistes progressistes et les anglophones fédéralistes mais progressistes. Le cas d'un couple dont la femme votait QS et son mari PQ m'a démontré jusqu'à quel point les gens était déchirés. « Je suis d'accord avec tout ce que vous dites et j'aimerais tellement voter pour M. Khadir, m'ont dit plusieurs, mais je ne veux pas que Charest ni Dumont gagnent. » Nous avions des arguments, des bons arguments, et peut-être que l'on a réussi à convaincre quelques personnes. Ce qui m'a frappé le plus était le fait que les gens étaient, pour la plupart, d'accord avec le programme de Québec solidaire. Le débat se déroulait presque toujours au sujet de la question du « vote stratégique ».

Le jour du vote, je travaillais comme surveillant pour le scrutin. À un moment donné, Amir est entré pour serrer les mains des gens dans la salle. Il avait l'air confiant, comme d'habitude, mais moi j'ai pu constaté qu'il était un peu nerveux. « C'est possible, il m'a dit. Je pense que c'est toujours possible. »

Quelques heures plus tard, au Théâtre Plaza dans Rosemont, les militantEs de QS ont regardé les résultats ensemble. Pendant cinq minutes, Amir était en avance. C’est demeuré serré jusqu'à la fin, mais finalement Turp a gagné par à peu près cinq pourcent. Le lendemain, l'hiver est revenu au Québec. Je me suis réveillé avec un coup de soleil, grâce à ces quelques minutes de soleil, un petit souvenir d'un moment où tout était possible.

(merci à Nancy Turgeon pour les corrections)

(photos pris par Michelle Robidoux)

Borat review

2007-04-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

I started writing this last fall when Scott & I saw it in the theatre. Now that it's out on DVD and no one's talking about it, here are my thoughts...

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (US/UK 2006)

Dir: Larry Charles

With Sacha Baron-Cohen

What to make of Borat, the prizewinning, law-suit generating, half-fiction half-vindictive journey-into-the-heart-of-darkness-of-America film that broke box office records around the world last winter?

The concept behind Borat is outwardly very simple: a naïve filmmaker from Kazakhstan arrives in New York to shoot a film about American culture and customs. On the way, he interviews people from diverse walks of life, embarrasses himself in countless ways and falls in love with Pamela Anderson.

If this sounds like some kind of racist Benny Hill skit, it’s worth looking again.

Borat’s character is a manifestation of Western fears of the Eastern foreigner. Culled from a variety of contradictory sources, the Kazak Borat lives in a Roma village in Romania, speaks Hebrew under his breath and spells his name BDRDT in the Cyrillic alphabet. He is everything a xenophobe fears: socially inept, culturally gauche, much too forward (he tries to kiss hello to strangers on the street), unintelligent, not properly toilet-trained and too oblivious to notice. More importantly, he is deeply anti-Semitic, misogynist and homophobic.

In one scene, Borat walks into a gun store and asks what, “What is best gun for kill a Jew?” The man behind the counter goes straight to the display and shows him a variety of handguns.

The problem Borat encounters is not his bigotry but that he doesn’t know how he is supposed to express it. What this reveals is an intricate set of social rules that have been developed over the past fifty years to manoeuvre these antiquated attitudes through a social reality affected by the gains of the civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements.

This is what makes the film so funny. Borat’s bumbling antics delve deep into the invisible rules of our society. His ultimate purpose is to lead people out of their public personas and get them to admit to what they really believe, beyond the veneer of public political correctness. After the film was released, three frat kids who were filmed bragging about the merits of “Russian bitches” filed lawsuits against the film for defamation, illustrating this point precisely.

Not all of what he unearths is political. For example, the fear of being caught naked in public is a common enough fear that often resurfaces in dreams. There have been innumerable films with characters getting locked naked outside their hotel rooms and having to hide themselves from the glances of strangers. Probably none of them will seem funny again after the sight of Sacha Barron-Cohen and Ken Davitian running naked through the halls of a New York hotel, winding up wrestling on the stage of a corporate dinner meeting before their inevitable arrest.

The satire is at its weakest when Cohen films Borat’s supposed village in Kazakhstan. Whereas in the US Cohen is able to let his subjects walk into his traps he sets up, here the stereotypes come straight from the horse’s mouth. All the village women are prostitutes, the children nurse AK-47s in the kindergarten, there is an annual “hunt the Jew” festival. Here there is no ironic distance between what is said and what is meant; it seems pretty clear that Cohen is just poking fun at a culture he doesn’t like much. This is also the case with Cohen’s ensuing in-character stand-off with the Kazakh government, in which Borat recycles the same stereotypes about Middle-Easterners.

Poetic justice

The stakes are raised by the possibility of being found out and the fear of potential violence. Borat shows up at a rodeo to sing the American national anthem. Before a crowd of 20,000 people, he announces Kazakhstan’s allegiance to George W. Bush’s “War of Terror”. How will the crowd react? At first there is loud, if uneasy, applause. He continues, “May George Bush drink the blood of every single man, woman, and child of Iraq!” The crowd begins to get restless. When Borat launches into his rendition of the Kazak national anthem to the tune of America’s national anthem the goodwill is over; apparently Cohen had to be escorted out by security.

The camera acts as a mirror to show the bigots for what they are. We don’t only laugh because the situation amuses us, but because of the satisfaction of watching the bigots get what they deserve. Even if, in the immediate situation, the bigot might feel they get the upper hand, the camera provides an ironic assurance that they will lose in the end.

Many commentators have worried that the irony of the film could be lost on college crowds. Certainly, the many accusations of anti-Semitism attest to that possibility. But the role of satire is not to make easy parody to make us feel good. Borat treads on all of our toes and, by disturbing us, reveals something about the absurdity of our time.

HD video footage from Fessenden's Follies

2007-04-19T11:03:00.000-04:00

A 4-minute video clip (apparently filmed in HD but who can tell on a computer monitor?) of the recording of David Fennario's Fessenden's Follies that Sibel & I were in is now up on their site, along with the whole radio play (as broadcast) and cast pictures.

W-Mart in Baghdad - edited pics

2007-04-19T10:24:00.000-04:00

Vote for Québec Solidaire!!!

2007-02-28T22:03:00.000-05:00

Sibel (that's the back of her head) introduces QS's star candidate Amir Khadir to a packed hall in the Plateau. We are all very hyped. Could the left actually succeed in winning a seat?

ce dimanche : journée Résistance !

2007-02-16T17:45:00.000-05:00

le journal Résistance ! présente :

12h00 Le Canada et la lutte au terrorisme

avec Claude Rioux (du journal À Bâbord !)

et Matt Jones (Socialisme international)

14h00 Le Vénézuela et le socialisme du 21 ^e siècle

avec Sibel Ataogul (Socialisme international)

16h00 Le mouvement anti-capitaliste et Québec solidaire

Débats entre les collectifs au sein de Québec solidaire

avec Benoit Renaud (Socialisme international), David Mandel (Gauche socialiste), Gordon Lefebvre (Masse Critique) et autres

dimanche le 18 février

de 14h à 18h

au local A-2780, pavillon Hubert-Aquin,

400 Sainte-Catherine est, UQÀM

contribution volontaire

pour savoir davantage :

www.socialiste.qc.ca, socialisme.montreal@gmail.com

photos de la Centre de Recherche Stanley Ryerson

2007-02-01T23:09:00.000-05:00

le piment rouge

Victorianator!

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011 5:30PM EDT

Last updated Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011 6:00PM EDT

theblacklistcommittee's photostream

Campy students

Broke camp

Spending the summer sleeping outsideis a different kind of activism for CEGEP students worried about fee hikes

by MATT JONES

July 28, 2011

The Morning After interview

Flying Anarchist - Cast Photos

Video: Summer theatre preview: Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist

Rob Ford loves gays and bicycles

Spider Pilots rock the Fringe beer tent

Trailer: Rob Ford and the Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist

The Fruixi: good eats, good bikes and great potential slapstick

Fresh food on the move

Montreal’s open air markets are blooming and going mobile

by MATT JONES

June 23, 2011

Where are they now? Jaggi Singh and Philippe Duhamel

No fracking way

cast pictures

Pyongyang

Bloody Cars

Car still king, daddy-o

The Conker

Amnesty for artists

Art for charity’s sake

A miserable market and laughable living wages bring Amnesty International and local artists together to generate some much-needed revenue

November 25, 2010

Gorgeous George in Montreal

Stomping into Canada

Formerly banned British politician George Galloway finally begins his cross-country speaking tourNovember 11, 2010

Tim Miller

Virus talks

Pictures of the crisis

Recession in paradise

Montreal photographer Neal Rockwell documents the fickle financing of tourism and capitalism in a new exhibit

November 4, 2010

Revolution in the Library

Your guide to lefty data

Radical Reference librarians unlock treasure troves of information for social justice seekers by MATT JONES October 21, 2010

October 21, 2010

Trans without homes

A room of their own

Transsexual and transgender homeless say they’re being turned away from sex-specific shelters

by MATT JONES

October 14, 2010

Sweet Crude

Black gold blues

Sandy Cioffi’s Sweet Crude documents the havoc wreaked by the oil industry in the Niger Delta

by MATT JONES

September 23, 2010

Dave Zirin interview

Fair ball and foul

Journalist Dave Zirin on the mendacious effects of publicly funded stadiums, corporate ownership and boring baseball

by MATT JONES

September 16, 2010

Cinema Politica 2010 Season

Open Data in Montreal?

Hot data

Montréal Ouvert wants the city’s facts and figures in open format

by MATT JONES

September 1, 2010

Street Kid Street Fest

Back home to party

The 14th annual Festival d’expression de larue returns to its UQÀM campus digs for atwo-day celebration of street living

Strong arm of the law

Strong arm of the law

Anti-capitalists take to Montreal’s streets toprotest so-called extreme policing and thecriminalization of dissent at the G20

Fringe thoughts

Alice As Bourgeois Revolutionary

Ottawa Gun Show

Spoken words andexplosive goods

Montreal’s Poets Against War get onthe bus against Ottawa’s weapons fair

Oka reminiscences

Twenty years later, a Kanesatake Mohawk recalls the infamous standoff against the SQ and the army

Formerly banned British politician George Galloway finally begins his cross-country speaking tour
November 11, 2010

Radical Reference librarians unlock treasure troves of information for social justice seekers

by MATT JONES
October 21, 2010

The 14th annual Festival d’expression de la
rue returns to its UQÀM campus digs for a
two-day celebration of street living

Anti-capitalists take to Montreal’s streets to
protest so-called extreme policing and the
criminalization of dissent at the G20

Spoken words and
explosive goods

Montreal’s Poets Against War get on
the bus against Ottawa’s weapons fair

Campaigners plan an East End bike excursion
to protest local refining of Albertan tar sands

A struggle’s
centennial

International Women’s Day turns 100,
with lots left to achieve

Trauma, troops
and recovery

Montreal nurse and veteran street activist
Scott Weinstein returns from Haiti and
reports that despite enormous challenges,
a resilient people are carrying on

The full power of social networked fury
just might be unleashed at cross-country
anti-prorogue rallies this weekend

SHOWTIMES
Fri July 3 – 10pm
Sun July 5 – 6:30pm
Mon July 6 – 2pm
Tue July 7 – 4pm
Wed July 8 – 8pm
Fri July 10 – 12pm
Sat July 11 – 9:30pm

Matt Jones
Photography by Robin Jones

>>American historian and activist
Howard Zinn ponders President-Elect
Obama’s positions on peace and imperial power