News roundup, 10 Nov 2025

- A Montreal high school student was suspended after she posted "Fuck Israel" on her Instagram account in response to Israel's latest round of bombings in Gaza. The suspension was based on the English Montreal School Board's policy on "bullying"; the board's definition refers to the targeting of an individual or group of people, not a country, but board chair Mike Cohen says that the policy is applied based on the complainant's subjective feelings, saying that it applies "any time a student feels threatened by something another student does", and moreover can be considered "violence". Interestingly, there's a school of thought among some anti-racism activists that endorses this; ironically many of them would probably be opposed to these definitions being applied here.

- Some progress has been made towards ending the government shutdown in the US, now the longest in the country's history, after a deal was made in the Senate. The House of Representatives has yet to vote in favour of the deal, however. Democrats are divided; some (notably Elizabeth Warren) see it as a capitulation while others say this is a necessary evil in order to restore SNAP benefits. Meanwhile, states that have fully covered SNAP with the intention of reclaiming the money from the feds once the shutdown ends are being threatened by the regime. Presumably the Republicans don't want to have to explain to their supporters why these mostly blue states are able to keep the food stamps coming while red states can't.

- A conference held in Vancouver this past summer by an organization called Exiles of the Golden Age called for the formation of "Männerbunds", described as "disciplined groups of men" who could rebuild the world following a crisis. The conference drew the usual kinds of far right extremists; it also drew quite a few mixed martial arts coaches and gym owners, adding to fears that MMA could serve as a recruiting tool for the far right.

- Winnipeg police officer Elston Bostock has pleaded guilty to numerous charges, ranging from such mundane matters as voiding tickets in return for bribes to sharing a photo of a dead woman with other officers. Some defense lawyers are now poring over cases in which Bostock was involved, hoping to call his testimony into question.

- Winnipeg bus manufacturer New Flyer has reported a $140.9 million loss for the third quarter of this year. This is attributable to the company being charged tariffs on buses being shipped to the US as well as tariffs on raw materials being imported by its American facilities.

- The Qantas business class lounge at Melbourne airport was evacuated after a portable power bank spontaneously caught fire in the pocket of a passenger. The passenger was taken to hospital for burns; the lounge has since reopened.

- Police in Davenport, Iowa arrested a woman who was found hiding between walls of a business. The business owner had reported hearing noises coming from the ceiling or attic, and police eventually located her and took her into custody.

News roundup, 14 Aug 2025

- RJ May, a Republican member of Congress from South Carolina, has resigned his seat after being charged with distributing child pornography. He is being held without bail pending his trial. 

- A 35 year old woman participating in Montreal's Pride parade was arrested after allegedly throwing a balloon full of a liquid that "smelled like urine" at members of a contingent from two Jewish organizations, Ga’ava and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. The participation of the organizations was highly controversial due to their rabidly pro-Israel stance (in fact the organization behind Pride had initially banned them from the event before being pressured into letting them participate). A member of Faction Against Genocide said in an interview that the liquid was actually nettle extract, and was intended to remind them of the smell of human corpses; that said, it does seem a bit over the top, even if the organizations are as odious as they sound.

- Speaking of Israel, temperatures of nearly 50°C were recorded in parts of the country on Wednesday. I suppose on the bright side, the Israel-Palestine conflict will be irrelevant if the land is no longer suited for habitation by Israelis. Palestinians, or anyone else.

- Air Canada is cancelling flights in anticipation of a strike by their flight attendants. I guess they prefer that to actually giving them raises that keep up with inflation.

- Police in Edmonton are looking for the driver of an SUV that apparently deliberately swerved towards a cyclist, causing significant injury to the victim. A video clip of the collision, apparently taken by a passenger, was posted to social media; evidently these people aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but a blunt instrument can unfortunately do a lot of harm as well.

- A researcher with a butterfly conservation organization in the Netherlands has received death threats after publishing a report outlining potential impacts of pesticides on butterflies.

- A man visiting Winnipeg brought his bike along. He stopped briefly, and locked the bike to the bike rack on the back of the car. He'd only left it 20 minutes, but when he returned the entire rack had been removed from the car, bike and all.

News roundup, 4 Nov 2024

- A new social media trend is calling on people to "cancel" the votes of more rightwing family members by voting for the Democrats. The Harris campaign, and others supporting them such as the Lincoln Project, are getting involved in the trend, with ads like this one that remind women that their husbands will never know who they actually voted for; not surprisingly rightwingers are having a conniption about this representing the "downfall of the American family".

- In response to last year's Supreme Court ruling which says that municipalities can't evict homeless encampments from public land if there's not enough shelter space for the people living there, the mayors of thirteen Ontario municipalities have called on Doug Ford to use the notwithstanding clause to override this decision.

- Even as a bill to limit cities' ability to build bike lanes works its way through the Ontario legislature, the Ford government is not waiting; they're moving forward with a regulation that specifically orders the removal of bike lanes from three major streets in Toronto; these YouTubers suggest that those streets might be the ones used by Doug Ford for his commute to Queen's Park from his home in Etobicoke. It won't actually solve congestion, of course, but at least Ford won't have to watch people on bikes whizz by as he steams in traffic.

- Winnipeg city councillor Vivian Santos, in her role as chair of the community services committee, questioned whether the city can afford the approximately $260,000 a year budgeted for picking up needles and other sharp objects in playgrounds. The fact that this is something they'd consider cutting is a sign of desperation. Talks are on with the province about possibly empowering the city to levy new taxes; certainly something has to be done. The city is studying the impact of some possible new taxes, including on such things as alcohol and online deliveries; curiously there is no mention of an income tax, gas tax, or sales tax among the proposals.

- A welcome sign in the lobby of Montreal's city hall will be removed following criticism of the inclusion of a picture of a woman in a hijab on the sign.

- Someone in Calgary's Bowness neighbourhood thought it would be cool to leave out a bowl of disposable razors for Halloween, with a sign saying that they couldn't afford apples "because of Trudeau".

Montreal introducing car tax based on number of cylinders

Good idea I think:

Resident Montreal motorists can expect to be hit next year with a vehicle tax based on the number of cylinders they have under the hood, and that charge will be capped at an “average maximum” of $50 annually, according to documents tabled at Montreal city hall this week.

From the Gazette. Predictably, a some people are up in arms about this, but one of their objections is interesting:

“It is inequitable and unfair that in 2011 a special $50 tax on (vehicle) registrations be imposed only on residents of the island of Montreal,” Vision Montreal leader Louise Harel said in a communiqué, noting that such a tax ought to be applied to all motorists in the Montreal Metropolitan Community, an affiliation of 82 Montreal-area municipalities extending from Mirabel in the north to Richelieu in the south and including the cities of Longueuil and Laval.

Setting aside the rather obvious point that Montreal doesn't have jurisdiction outside the island, it could be argued too that people on the island have less actual need for cars. The city has excellent public transit, and is reasonably friendly to pedestrians and cyclists.

One quibble, though; it would probably make more sense to base the tax on displacement, rather than cylinders per se. If the tax goes through as described above, a GM pickup truck with a 2.9 litre Vortec four will be cheaper to register than a VW with a 2.5 litre five, which seems rather at odds with the intent of the law.

Montreal

My brother's wedding was on Saturday. He and his fiancee (now wife) wanted to hold it in Montreal, partly because they really like the city and partly because they wanted to keep her relatives from taking over the whole process. So the whole family, and several of their friends, flew out there (I was there from Tuesday until yesterday). The ceremony itself was a nice, unpretentious affair, and everyone involved had a great time. I was also struck by what an amazing place Montreal is. I'd never been there for any great length of time before, and having done so now I was rather sorry to leave. I wish I was competent enough in French to make living there an option.

The Globe gets nasty

You probably all remember the furore that arose when Globe and Mail reporter Jan Wong wrote an article on the Dawson College shooting, suggesting that the shooter, as well as two other well known mass murderers in Quebec, had been rejected by Quebec society as not pure laine, and that the resulting alienation helped drive them to commit their crimes. I can't defend what Wong said, but the response has included racist caricatures and death threats. And, if this article in Toronto Life is accurate, it sounds like her editors knew in advance roughly what she was going to say and did nothing to discourage her- and then left her to take all the heat. If this is true, her employer has wronged her far more than she ever wronged anyone she had lunch with.