Reaction to Events in Holland

[August1991]

I would not expect many on this forum to know who Richard Martineau is, nor even to know the newspaper Voir.

Voir is a free distribution, French language Montreal weekly with mostly listings/reviews of cultural events. In Vancouver, the equivalent is Georgia Straight and in New York, Village Voice. (Does Calgary have such?)

Richard Martineau has been writing for ages and used to be young and alternative. Now he's, what's the current term, progressive? In fact, Martineau was always a bit of an iconoclast.

Anyway, I post this link for those who can read French. Other than defending liberty of expression, the article is interesting for Martineau's attempt to find out what is being said in Montreal mosques.

Ricahrd Martineau

[Bakunin]

I would not expect many on this forum to know who Richard Martineau is, nor even to know the newspaper Voir.

Voir is a free distribution, French language Montreal weekly with mostly listings/reviews of cultural events. In Vancouver, the equivalent is Georgia Straight and in New York, Village Voice. (Does Calgary have such?)

Richard Martineau has been writing for ages and used to be young and alternative. Now he's, what's the current term, progressive? In fact, Martineau was always a bit of an iconoclast.

Anyway, I post this link for those who can read French. Other than defending liberty of expression, the article is interesting for Martineau's attempt to find out what is being said in Montreal mosques.

Ricahrd Martineau

I had read it in the newspapers and yes, this was an interesting article.

[maplesyrup]

We wouldn't have to worry about what was being said if they had to speak in one of Canada's two official languages. We could hear it for ourselves.

[kimmy]

Anyway, I post this link for those who can read French. Other than defending liberty of expression, the article is interesting for Martineau's attempt to find out what is being said in Montreal mosques.

My French being as poor as it is, I relied on the Google translator, and hopefully I got the essense of what he was saying.

they said to us that there were Moslems, in Montreal, which would not be glad (but then, not content with the whole) to learn that one as of their had lent itself to this kind of exercise...  Odd, not?

I guess this is the flip-side of my post last week about Muslims bearing a responsibility to speak out against the extremists within their own community.

I remember during Gulf War v1.0 , even young as I was at that time, watching CNN with daddy. The whole experience fascinated me immensely. Particularly haunting was the footage of the Iraqi anti-aircraft weaponry firing tracer-bullets into the night sky in desperate, futile hope of hitting one of the ghosts that was raining explosives upon Baghdad. An analyst mentioned one phrase which I still remember.

In discussing the durability of the Coalition's relationship with Iraq's Arab neighbors, the analyst replied that an old Arab tradition is "With a brother agaisnt a cousin; with a cousin against a stranger." Meaning, even though there may be divisions within the Arab world, their tradition and sense of loyalty dictates that whatever those divisions might be, they stand together against an outsider.

In a sense, one can see the same attitude in the response to Mr Martineau's request.

-kimmy