City
Quieter Junction Construction, Tamil Protest Reduction, Chrysler's Potential Salvation
Photo: "Recyclable Car" by batara, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
At precisely 8:00:01 am this morning, the pile driver's bang bang bang of the Junction rail work started again. It's only mildly annoying from where I sit, but I feel really bad for those that need to sleep (night shift workers, new parents, etc.). Just as I was ready to buy ear plugs and hone my extreme patience, it appears that GO is prepared to test quieter equipment that's less likely to create bad vibes [Star].
Things got a little heated on University Avenue yesterday evening [G&M], when Tamil protesters blocked the streetcar tracks at Dundas St. West. Police on horses and in riot gear ended up forcing the group off the road, there were scuffles, 15 people were arrested, and a woman was injured when a horse stepped on her foot. The protests are expected to continue today, but the northbound side of University Ave. has been re-opened to traffic.
Feel like going on an uber-geeky astronomical treasure hunt? There's a lost meteorite that scientists want to recover, and they're pretty sure that it landed somewhere in Newmarket, Ontario [NP]. Be sure to avoid the notorious "dog patch" and try not to contract Hep A if you go in search.
The provincial and federal governments may step in and take a stake in Chrysler [City] if the US division goes belly up and the Canadian component faces similar fate. Sounds like a terrible investment, but clearly it's the jobs that are being placed at higher value than actually profitability.
Those new Bombardier streetcars look great. But how will the TTC pay for them? After already committing some $9 billion for Transit City, the province doesn't have the additional funds to pitch for upgrading the current aging fleet [Sun].
Discussion
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Who knew Harper was such a Marxist? Nationalize the Means of Production!
Will the neighbourhood affected be getting any benefit when it's all done, like a new rail stop? If not, I have sympathy for the residents. If so, they should just plug their ears and bear it.
Around 8:05, there was a small group of protestors around University - Armoury rd.
Police came on the microphone and indicated that they need to move off the street and that they had about 20 minutes to do so.
The crowd started to go a little nuts at this point, with anti-police chants and what not..
Horses and more police came in and slowly inched everyone back on the south eastern side of that intersectio, on to the big sidewalk. Traffic was allowed to pass through almost instantly to discourage anyone from jumping back on the road..
A few minutes later the protest quieted down even though their numbers started to increase slowly (people were getting out at st patrick station and running down the street to join in).
Police have now essentially isolated the remaining protestors with more officers-barricades, etc.
Southbound Uni was still closed though, lots of police vehicles on that street still.
Also, feel free to call it "Roncy" -- no extraneous "e" or "village" -- but PLEASE avoid "Ronces".
Now if only they would stop bringing the LTTE flags...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTTE#Human_rights_violations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asenMOuH_RA
I can hear the pile drivers in the morning and I live near the south end of Roncesvalles. I can't even imagine living closer to the construction. As someone has already mentioned, I certainly hope the residents are going to benefit from this new construction somehow.
I can't believe that the only commentary BlogTO can afford is to discuss the traffic interruption this protest has caused. What? Because these people aren't hipsters like you all? A disgusting human rights crime is taking place and affecting the lives of some of your fellow citizens. Should you not stand shoulder to shoulder with them and show your support? Or are you all at this blog just to ignorant about international current affairs to voice your opinions? You sure have plenty of criticism about other things. You never were a traffic and weather blog, so stop talking about traffic interruptions and start talking about things that really matter to the citizens of this city. ALL of them, not just the hipster douches.
Anti-Muslim pogroms
Arms smuggling
Assassinations
Attacks on civilians
Child soldiers conscripted and used as cannon fodder
Credit card fraud
Ethnic cleansing
Holding other Tamils hostage as human shields
Human rights violations against women and children
Sea piracy
Suicide bombings (more than all other terrorist groups conbined!)
Supporting al-Qaeda, PLO and Islamic Jihad
Theft of tsunami relief charity funds
Torture of deserters
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/opinion/30thu3.html
No one's asking anyone to go wave an LTTE flag on University Ave., but at least recognize and understand the issue and speak intelligently about it. International governments DO need to interfere, even if they condemn the LTTE.
Untimately, the LTTE fighters will realize that they won't be given yet another ceasefire during which to regroup and rearm, and launch another offensive.
When that happens, they will slaughter a large group of the Tamil hostages with whom they have surrounded themselves, plant LTTE flags around the corpses to make the Sri Lankan Army believe it has killed the last of the rebels, and slink off into the forest to emerge later in the refugee camps as harmless villagers.
In a few years, the LTTE will have regained enough power and arms to attack the Sri Lanka government once again, and the Sri Lankan army will once again respond with maximum force, and you'll get another opportunity to wring your hands and tell us what fools we all are.
We would all wish for a better outcome, but that's extremely unlikely, and neither the Sri Lankan government nor the LTTE deserve one.
Kudos, Diane. One wishes our political leadership had the courage to say the same thing out loud. Honest political discourse is always a good thing, it's a shame it takes internet anonymity for the other side of Canada (in private, we're as ugly as Americans) to come to light.
I just outlined the reasons why neither side is likely to let that happen.
Nowhere did I remark on the "acceptable human cost for wiping out the LTTE". That was all you.
The LTTE are a despicable group of people, and everyone supporting them is guilty of crimes against humanity, but they aren't thugs. They're not members of the cult (though the veneration of the Tiger leader is cultish, it's a different murderous cult) and they aren't slaughtering travelers. They're slaughtering Sinhalese, moderate Tamils, and the Tamil civilian shields/hostages that they have. Precision is important when dealing with the enemies of civilization.
There is no price to high to eliminate an insurgency. Mao's partisans were on their last legs at the end of the Long March and yet they stormed back to force the Nationalists out of China and enacted the most successful genocide ever. Mao took Stalin's aphorism about tragedies and statistics and ran with it!
What we need to do is prosecute every single protester, funder, and any other person who has done anything to aid and abet the crimes of the LTTE. This includes nearly all of the Liberal Party, especially its activists and supporters in Toronto. The Sri Lankan government needs our support, financial, strategic, and material. The LTTE has aided and abetted our enemies (if only through demonstration of effective techniques), has abused our solicitude and hospitality, has attacked our friends and allies (the murder of Rajiv Gandhi, for one), and has engaged in various criminal activity in Canada (the mass extortion of regular Tamils, terrorist fundraising, smuggling military equipment and expertise...).
The Geneva Conventions have rules against using human shields. They also place the entire burden of guilt on those who shelter behind them. Just as the police are not responsible for the deaths of hostages, the Sri Lankan government should be held responsible for what happens to hostages nor pressured to ease up on the Tigers due to the crimes of the Tigers. To do so is to empower all terrorists and barbarians, which I grant is the main precept of the Left and the Media in the West irrespective of who the terrorists are as long as they fight for the cause of nihilism.