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It's a bit ironic that I wrote what probably was my most unpopular post on Wednesday, a day that saw the greatest volume of traffic ever seen on this blog.
Perhaps it was the election but this last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, generated over 23,000 pageviews, which is at least three or four times more traffic than usual.
It is also makes it hard to keep up with the comments and if you are wondering why some "Anonymous' comments are allowed to be kept up, it is because they generated a lot of reaction and sub-comments attached, in the brief time they were up.
I cannot monitor the comments section in real time, 24/7 and so sometimes after a few hours of absence, 'Anon' comments take on a life of their own.
I know it's frustrating to have a good comment taken down, but you can imagine the mayhem that responding to
Anon@12:00 PM or
ANON@10:12AM would become with the amount of comments, coming through.
Yes, the screen names are silly, but they serve their purpose. I will re-iterate that I'd wish you would stick to one name, as jumping around and being whimsical really just adds to the confusion.
Also, I'd remind readers that sarcasm, doesn't translate well into print, trust me I've crashed and burned often enough.
At any rate this has been a heckuva week and much to my frustration, BLOGGER ate up the original of this post as it was ready to go.
This is the second time I'm writing it, which has sadly happened to me before, and the rebuild, I might add, are never as good as the first draft.
It is highly frustrating, but in the end you get what you pay for, so no use complaining.
We've certainly been through a lot with this election and it is unbelievable that on the day of
Pauline Marois' greatest triumph, somebody tried to kill her.
Talk about a buzzkill.
It's been reported that she is badly shaken up by the attempt on her life as you might well understand, it's quite a rude awakening and I imagine she'll be looking over her shoulder every time a car backfires. (Do cars still backfire?)
The shooting overshadowed her speech where it was plain that her intensive and secret English lessons are paying off, as she actually made coherent sentences and seemed a lot more comfortable in the language of the Gods. (private lessons...no English Cegep for her!)
Our shooter,
Richard Henry Bain was the garden variety nutbar, shooting at anything that came in his path. If his rifle didn't jam, we might have faced a Norwegian type tragedy.
But one senseless death is one too many,
Denis Blanchette, the poor fellow who was killed when he simply went out to complete a work shift, like any Joe Six Pack and ended up in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm offering my personal condolences and those of this blog community to his family. There is nothing really we can say that makes any sense of the tragic affair.
You can lay the blame for this murder squarely on our Keystone Kops who failed to guard a key backdoor and allowed an idiot in underwear and a bathrobe, armed with a huge CZ assault rifle, free entrance and access to the Metropolis club where Pauline Marois was holding her post-election celebration.
The pitiful performance of Montreal's doughnut eaters who were guarding the perimeter was only topped by Madame Marois' protection detail from the Sureté du Quebec, who actually escorted her from the stage directly towards the backdoor and into the path of the shooter.
I'm not making this up.
When another cop yelled at them to withdraw, they made their way back to the stage where Marois convinced them that it was okay to continue with her speech. Again, I'm not making this up.
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| Right this way Madame Marois! |
In political protection units around the world, this case will be the standard to measure poor planning and failure, it is likely Madame Marois would have been better off being guarded by mall cops.
The next day a police spokesman gave an interview where he told the audience that they had no indication that the shooter was dangerous, but that readers is a big, fat lie.
A man was interviewed on crime-reporter Claude Poirier's very reputable television show who said he warned both the Sureté du Quebec and the Montreal police that there would be an attack at the Metropolis.
He gave a completely detailed account of his interaction with the police and also furnished the names of the two policemen who interviewed him. He also had the business card of one of them.
It seems he had picked up the threat on the internet and informed the unenthusiastic police.
Shades of killer
Luka Rocco Magnotta who was also reported to the police only to have the warning ignored as well.
LinkIn a purely Quebec twist the shooter may have been sent off the deep end because of a ferocious bout of Quebec red tape.
After months and months of trying to expand his hunting and fishing lodge, held up due to red tape, he had just received that morning yet one more letter from the Ministry of Natural Resources requiring Bain to spend more money on an environmental impact study before his proposal could go forward
And nobody but nobody in the mainstream press picked up on the irony of the defiant message of Anglo resistance,
shouted in French;
"les Anglais se réveillent!" (the anglos are awakening!) And so our shooter seems to respect the precepts of Bill 101 and bilingualism if nothing else.
Of course the story went viral much to the chagrin of French language militants because the spin seemed to play over that statement of political persecution.
Newspapers from around the world characterized the shooting as political and outlined the PQs plan to further restrict Anglo rights and to seek independence.
In one fell swoop, the battle for French language supremacy or English language survival has been re-set as one that has become violent.
Somebody at the US State department just raised the flag on the QUEBEC FILE to a higher level and believe me when I tell you that there is very definitely such a file.
Now all our politicians from every political stripe have assured us that this is the work of a madman, a one-off that shouldn't concern us.
But I'm not so sure. Can it be a harbinger of things to come?
As Madame Marois and the PQ push their anti-English, anti-Allophone, anti-immigrant, anti-religion agenda could it provoke a violent reaction?
We've seen things escalate dangerously in the student strike, just this week we saw students using violent intimidation to interrupt classes, so to believe that we are immune from violence is perhaps a case of whistling past the graveyard.
At any rate, I'm not so sure I'd like to be one of those new language inspectors promised by all parties, hired to prowl through the West Island and downtown Montreal seeking out those felonious "
Dishwasher wanted" signs.
The reception they receive may just be decidedly rough.
The question for readers to address in the comments section is whether this assassination attempt was just a terrible one-off incident or the harbinger of language violence to come.
By the way, the usual suspects are blaming the Anglo press for promoting hate against Quebec that led to the shooting incident.
Blowhard
Mario Beaulieu sounds off
HERE{Fr} .
Someone signing Mr. Bealieus's name left the contents of his attack on the English media in the comments section yesterday and as is my custom I've left it up.
Richard LeHir over on vigile.net, included our blog as one of those described as a hate mongering website.
Oh, well I've been called worse by better men than he!
Link{Fr}To all readers, have a good weekend!
Looking at the final numbers it's plain to see that the Liberal's had a lot more strength than any of the pollsters gave them credit for, but that's generally always the case here in Quebec as the undecided usually vote massively Liberal come election day.
If there is another politician that deserves credit for the PQ victory, it is Prime Minister Harper who somehow forgot that he is Prime Minister of the whole country.