Segacs’s World I Know

La Presse is now reporting at least 4 6 deaths in the Ste-Foy Mosque shooting. It’s just sickening.

We’ll know more about the suspect who was taken into custody soon enough. But this isn’t merely on the shooter. This is on all of us. We can do more — we MUST do more — to stop racism in its tracks.

Fellow Quebecers: We know this is not who we are. But just saying that isn’t enough. We must demonstrate it through our actions. These are our neighbours, our friends. We can’t claim to live in an open, welcoming and tolerant society and yet allow shit like this to happen. Standing idly by isn’t an option.

Fellow members of the Quebec Jewish Community: We’ve endured racist attacks against our own institutions, so we, above all, must act when our fellow citizens are facing the same sorts of threats. Let’s step up and prove that we oppose ALL racism, not only racism directed at our particular group.

To our MNAs, MPs and elected officials: Leadership sets the tone. Values charters, debates about head coverings, and debates on who exactly is a Quebecois all throw fuel on the fire. You, above all, have the responsibility to do better. Change the rhetoric.

Ahhh, 2016. Has there ever been a year in our lifetime that has been filled with such clusterfuckery?

It’s normal, I guess, to be contemplative and reflective on New Year’s Eve about the year that was. I think back on the optimism I felt this time last year. Justin Trudeau had just been elected in Canada, ushering in a promised era of “sunny days” ahead. We were riding a wave of goodwill and compassion. The weather was perfect. And I ushered in the year by watching the Habs win the Winter Classic. It felt like it would be a fantastic year.

But then… well, we all know what happened next.

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WHAT. THE. FUCK. AMERICA???

Pardon my swearing. But if there’s ever a day that requires the bluest of language, it’s today.

I went to sleep last night a little worried on your behalf, Americans, but not overly so. Clinton had consistently led in the polls. The electoral math seemed to be in her favour. I was concerned that Trump was closing the gap, but, like many of you, I never really thought he’d win. I figured, okay, Hillary Clinton would edge him out, she’d make a fine and decent president, and life would go on.

I woke up this morning to three things: A lovely home-cooked breakfast by Sophie, the owner of the B&B, approximately fifty unread messages in my inbox, and the sinking news that I’d been wrong. Very, very wrong.

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My street in the Plateau Mont-Royal is being dug up again.

It’s the fifth time that this particular intersection has been dug up in the past three years. Or maybe it’s the sixth. In all honesty, I’ve lost count. The area has been under construction so constantly since I moved there in 2011 that I’ve taken it as the default for the area. Residents have gotten fed up, with endless road closures, random power and water shutoffs with no warning, and constant noise and dust from the ongoing construction. With all this construction, not once have I or other residents ever received any kind of notice.

Local businesses have closed in droves. My neighbourhood is a shell of its former self. Each time the road is filled back in and the construction crews remove the barriers and orange cones and clear out, I don’t even dare to hope that it’s really, truly, over. By now, I know better.

This time, it’s the installation of traffic lights — ostensibly a precursor to turning my street into a “velorue” — a pilot project that even the Projet Montreal borough government who invented the idea doesn’t seem quite clear on. (Despite being pressed repeatedly on the concept by the media and local residents, all Luc Ferrandez and his councilors will say on the subject is that it will be some sort of cycling paradise, but they remain stubbornly unable to provide any practical details on how exactly they will work. It’s like the Donald Trump version of city planning: We don’t know what it is, but it will be “good, great, the greatest, uuuuuuge.” I’m a cyclist and I am generally in favour of pro-cycling infrastructure projects, but this idea just seems so ill-conceived and poorly thought out that I can’t bring myself to get on board. But I digress.)

Anyway, back to the traffic lights. This begs the question of why they couldn’t installed the last time the road was dug up to widen the sidewalks. Or the time before that, to fix the broken water main. Or the time before that, to replace the pipes. Or the time before that, to tear down an abandoned building and put up condos. Or the time before that, to … well, who even remembers anymore? And so on, and so forth.

So this morning, I was leaving for work, trying to navigate around the construction as usual. Today was worse than usual, since even the pedestrian access was cut off. The construction worker out front of my apartment suggested that I ‘detour’ completely in the opposite direction of where I was going — doubling my 10-minute walk to a 20-minute walk.

The conversation went something like this (paraphrased and loosely translated from French):

Me: “Can I get through?”
Him: “By car?”
Me: “No, on foot.”
Him: “No, it’s blocked off. You will need to go around.”
Me: “Do you know when this will be done?”
Him: “We’re installing traffic lights. There weren’t any here before.”
Me: “Yes, I know. Any idea why they couldn’t have been installed the last time the intersection was dug up? This is the fifth or sixth time in the past three years, at least.”
Him: “We don’t have any visibility into those other projects. We only deal with traffic lights. There’s no coordination between departments, madame.”
Me: “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

And that, in a nutshell, sums up everything that’s wrong with the way we do construction in Montreal. The city doesn’t talk to the borough. The borough doesn’t talk to the city. The water department doesn’t talk to the electrical department, which doesn’t talk to the road paving department, which doesn’t talk to the pothole fixing department, which doesn’t talk to the traffic light department.

In one particularly egregious example, a city beautification crew came through and planted flowers along the median in the morning, only to have all their work dug up by another city crew in preparation for roadwork that very same afternoon. I’m not making this up. I wish I were.

Montreal has become so known for its endless construction, in fact, that Josh Freed has (semi-jokingly) proposed that we make the orange cone the official city symbol. At least one retailer, Main and Local, has taken him up on the idea.

The usual excuses all take the same form: Montreal is an old city with ageing infrastructure in urgent need of repair. Years of neglect have caused us to fall behind on these repairs, and we have to spend a lot of money making up for it. And yet, much older cities seem to manage just fine with far fewer construction nightmares. I’m sure most of Europe would laugh at the idea that Montreal is an “old” city. And yet, they manage to maintain and repair their centuries-old infrastructure with a minimum of headaches.

No, the problem isn’t one of age, it’s one of management. Namely, those four little words: “It’s not my job.”

Look, with a little bit of planning, we could blitz construction projects each year. Start one tenth the number of projects at a time, put crews on them to run them efficiently, manage the power and water and bike lanes and traffic lights and paving all together, finish them up within a couple of weeks, and move on to the next. There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to launch hundreds of construction sites simultaneously, and close every single autoroute, road, bridge, sidewalk and intersection at the same time and allow those projects to drag on for months and years.

No other city in the world does construction this way. They all think we’re insane.

Conspiracy theories abound as to why it happens this way in Montreal. The construction industry is controlled at least in part by organized crime. The construction companies are colluding. The politicians are taking kickbacks. And so on, and so forth. Most of those things are true, at least to some degree — just read the transcripts of the Charbonneau Commission if you’re not convinced. And there’s no easy way to stamp that out overnight.

But I’m also a proponent of the theory that you should never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to mere incompetence. And let’s face it: The level of incompetence in how construction is planned in this city is staggering.

Mayor Denis Coderre doesn’t seem too inclined to do anything about it, either. He flits around the city taking selfies and planning big vanity projects for Montreal’s 375th anniversary. Meanwhile, the official opposition Projet Montreal seems more concerned with punishing car owners and local businesses by closing more roads, adding more construction projects, and making it harder for anyone to live or work or visit the city — and the complains when businesses move out to suburban multiplexes like Dix-30.

And so, the orange cones aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. This problem affects all of us.

But when it comes to fixing it? “It’s not my job.”

Meanwhile in Quebec, the new PQ leader is none other than Jean-François Lisée:

I admit I’m actually a bit surprised that he won. He’s too intellectual, too mild-mannered, too unpopular with the PQ elite, too cautious for the hard-liners, too last-generation for the progressive youth.

But I admit that, as someone opposed to most of what the PQ stands for and in particular disgusted by the identity politics game that they have been playing over the past few years, I have a weird sort of respect for Lisée. It’s the sort of respect you give to a political opponent, sure. But it’s the kind of respect I was able to have for a Lucien Bouchard but not for a Pauline Marois, a Bernard Drainville or a Pierre-Karl Péladeau.

So, Donald Trump was caught on tape making disgusting comments about being able to grope women.

Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Hand up? You clearly haven’t been paying attention anytime this past, oh, say, decade.

Everyone from both parties is rushing to condemn Trump’s comments and distance themselves from him, and the media and political pundits are speculating that this might finally cost him the election once and for all. Some are even going so far as to speculate that he might withdraw from the race.

But here’s my cynical prediction: Trump’s campaign will get a boost from this.

His supporters will excuse it as “locker room talk” and decry the “overly politically correct elite” for expressing disgust. Trump has given his supporters license to express the most vile racist and misogynist thoughts in the recesses of their mind, and this is no different. Trump won’t apologize, not really. He’ll “apologize” (wink wink) while allowing Clinton to once again be seen as the spoilsport and disapproving schoolmarm. And he’ll pick up votes from people who secretly hate woman and believe that sexual assault is a man’s god-given right and that calling it a crime is an invention of feminists.

And one only has to look at how middle America (read: middle-aged white guys) feels victimized and put upon for no longer being able to freely express all the politically incorrect opinions they secretly hold. I mean, just look at All Lives Matter, Gamergate, and the Men’s Rights movement for examples. Racist, sexist white guys resent it when you point out that their views are racist and sexist. And they love Trump for giving voice to their anger and resentment.

If this is true, it could signal a major change for Uzbekistan:

Uzbekistan’s veteran dictator, Islam Karimov, has died, leaving central Asia’s most populous country in a state of turmoil and political uncertainty.

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There were few official clues as to how Uzbekistan’s new leader may be picked. All week the state media has refused to comment on rumours that Karimov – who had been in hospital since Sunday – had suffered a brain haemorrhage. His daughter Lola broke the news on Instagram.

Karimov has been in power for 27 years, and is “officially” loved by his entire population (because who could say otherwise in a regime with no free speech?) but I suspect also has many legitimate fans.

Weirdly enough, I flew out of Tashkent almost a year ago today. Last year, I left just as Uzbekistan was preparing to shut down for its annual National Day celebrations. This year, the celebrations were skipped by most senior officials due to Karimov’s illness.

Given the strategic importance of its location — and the degree of messed-up-ness of many of its neighbours — instability or a power vacuum could be really, really messy. Uzbekistan has managed to fend off Russia, China, Turkey, AND radical Islamism of the form that ISIL and the like are trying to spread. All of them, plus a few other players, might view a period of uncertainty as an opportunity to pounce.

It’s hard to know what will happen next. But I send best wishes to my friends in Uzbekistan.

I’m one of those Canadians who really, really likes the census. I completed it (alas, the short version) within minutes of receiving my card in the mail.

Apparently, I’m not the only one: This census reportedly had a 98% response rate, higher than the last two censuses. In fact, so many people were excited that the mandatory long-form census, along with evidence-based decision making is back, that they crashed the StatCan website within hours of its release.

Which is why I was so taken aback when a census enumerator rang my buzzer a few weeks later. I wasn’t just flustered that somehow they may have lost my response, but I was actively embarrassed that anyone might think of me as anything less than enthusiastic about completing it.

Turns out they were mistakenly looking for someone living in (nonexistent) apartment 7A. I live in apartment 7. I felt much better once we cleared that up.

It appears that there has been a military coup in Turkey. Developments are ongoing.

There are reports of troops being deployed to the streets of Ankara and Istanbul. The prime minister says a group within the military is trying to stage a coup.

Update: Vox tries to explain the situation in Turkey:

I hope that the coup will fail. Assuming that is what happens, it will clear the way for total domination of Turkish politics by Erdogan. It will make it easier for him to make the constitutional changes he wants to make himself essentially the one and only politician deciding everything in the country.

Either way, the chances for democracy have receded even further.

Update #2: The coup does indeed appear to have failed. And, as predicted, Erdogan is using it as an excuse to consolidate power and purge political dissidence. A state of emergency has been declared for 3 months, and so far, over 10,000 people have been rounded up and over 20,000 teachers and university professors have been fired. And there are fears that this is only the tip of the iceberg:

The president did not announce details, but the security measure could facilitate longer detentions for many of the nearly 10,000 people who have been rounded up since loyalist security forces and protesters quashed the rebellion that started Friday night and was over by Saturday.

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“As the commander in chief, I will also attend to it so that all the viruses within the armed forces will be cleansed,” Erdogan said.

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Rights group Amnesty International says the crackdown has extended to censoring media and journalists, including those critical of the government.

People living in democracies rarely believe that their political institutions are so fragile to the whims of an autocratic demagogue. But Erdogan, following in the footsteps of Putin, Chavez and so many others, is proving that democracy is indeed incredibly fragile. Even in Turkey, for a long time considered a stronghold of secular democracy in the middle east and a bridge to Europe. Not so much anymore, it looks like.

This is going to get worse before it gets better.