Once again, the brown fecal matter is impacting the rotary cooling device in Pakistan. In case you haven’t heard the news yet, Gen. Pervez Musharraf has declared emergency rule and the government is clamping down on television and radio stations.

This highlights the importance of sites such as Metroblogging Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad as independent sources of information and discussion.

The “Suggest a Story” links can be used to send us information and steps are being taken to protect the identity of our contributors.

The Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner, will be making its first landing at Trudeau Airport on November 12. Although this is considered a route verification flight, the plane won’t be empty as more than 500 guests will be aboard. The Air France behemoth will return to Charles de Gaulle on November 15th.

You know where I’ll be.

It was revealed in the French Canadian newspaper La Presse that the Canadian government has informally proposed to the United Nations that they move their headquarters to the Montreal Old Port. The new site would essentially occupy a cluster of artificial islands between the downtown core and Habitat 67.

Detailed architectural plans have already been developed as shown in these images. These new installations would cost almost the same as the proposed $1.9 billion renovation of the Manhattan complex. They would also expect to save $790 millions per year in maintenance and the 65 acres site would be much bigger than the 7 acres currently occupied in Manhattan and would thus provide space for many of the UN-associated NGOs that are scattered all over the New York City area.

Finally, there is the additional advantage of improved security since the access to this new UN-city would be much easier to control.

The political consequence of such a move have not been covered in the article. I think that it is safe to assume that they would be quite significant.

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

–Nelson Mandela

Today is the United Nations Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which is being marked by a global day of action sponsored by a coalition of anti-poverty groups working under the name Make Poverty History. The coalition is calling on Canadians to “STAND UP and SPEAK OUT” at events being held across the country, the purpose of which is to demand trade justice, increased international aid, debt cancellation for poor countries, and an end to child poverty in Canada.

Click here for a list of events happening in and around Montreal, and here to endorse the campaign.

From yesterday’s Montreal Gazette:

If the city says it is coming to your street to beautify it - you know what to do. Organize your neighbours in an all-night vigil, armed with shotguns. Hire security forces, then set up a street blockade to keep the city out. It is not coming to help you - it is coming to bury you.

Last Friday morning, at 9:30 a man, wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying a case of some sort, was intercepted in the McGill University Strathcona building.

The individual was known to be a former McGill student, he subsequently left the campus and was apprehended by the police on Prince Arthur Street. The University has been advised that he was not armed and that he has subsequently been released by the police as they were unable to find any reason to hold him.

In the early afternoon, some members of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology and security received some threatening emails. McGill Security and the Montreal Police will continue to monitor the situation.

Please keep your eyes and ears open and advise McGill Security of any threats, strange activities, suspicious circumstances, or peculiar patterns of behaviour.

Approximately once per century, the federal Liberal bastion of Outremont falls to another political party. In the twentieth century it was the Progressive Conservative Party, which broke a 71-year Liberal winning streak when they scooped the seat in 1988. In the twenty-first century, the victors are the New Democratic Party, which won the riding by an impressively wide margin last night. Of course, the NDP candidate was himself a Quebec Liberal not too long ago, which actually makes him something akin to an old-school Conservative, but that would be splitting hairs, wouldn’t it? In any case, enjoy the intermission while you can.

This entry first started out as a comment on Andre’s reposting of my “Day at the Office” story from last year, but I apparently had more to say than I first thought.

So far today the college is very, very quiet. I haven’t been this bored at work since early Summer, just after classes and exams had finished. What this tells me is that teachers are taking it easy in their classes today (they had no or little printing and/or handouts to give out - I work in the print shop). Some teachers even canceled classes altogether or are cutting them short.

I’ve spoken to a few co-workers and teachers and they all seemed just fine, like it’s a normal day. I haven’t personally seen any press people yet, but they’re mostly being kept at bay by the police, who have most of the streets surrounding the building blocked off. I might try to nab a few pictures of them, just for kicks.

Here’s the itinerary for the day’s events. It was brought up that, if it “felt right”, I could take some pictures of these activities (I’m typically the college’s designated photographer for events), but it seems that it’s a sensitive issue so there will be no photographs taken by this shutterbug of anything happening from withing the college. There’s a strict ‘no camera’ policy in place for today.

I will hopefully be able to attend everything that’s been planned for the day (it’s tough to leave the office when we’re short staffed with one person on vacation and another that wasn’t comfortable with coming to work today), but I’ll attempt to write another post later on or tomorrow and give a report sorts of how the day went overall.

Whether we are covering monster hurricanes, terrorist bombings or political upheaval, the many servers and writers of the Metroblogging network have often proven useful when an entire city (or country) is having a really really bad day. One year ago myself and some of the other city captains were setting up a series of procedures for what we call “crisis mode”. I never expected these to be useful.

Turns out it was Jason, one of our own writer. Once he got his emotions in check, he was able to post what was, for a time, the only first hand account of the tragedy that was available online. Needless to say, it was read by tens of thousands of visitors. I am reposting it today to help us remember how we all felt on that terrible day.

Well, where do I begin?

First, my apologies for not posting a little sooner. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon outside near de Maisonneuve/Atwater, making and receiving countless phone calls, checking voicemail, talking to people and trying to help out by getting people pushed back farther away toward Lambert Closse. I finally decided it was time to go home around 3:15PM and walked to the Lionel Groulx Metro station where it was thankfully working in my direction. Once home, I fielded even more phone calls and tried to catch up on what the news was saying.

Trying to gather my thoughts over the last couple of hours, I’ve decided that I’m not going to bother with posting hourly updates. I don’t know anything more than what the news reports are saying. I’ll leave that sort of thing to my fellow Metbloggers, unless I have something of value to add.

My intention is to relay what I saw/heard and what I know as fact. I will also hopefully be posting, over the next couple of days, stories of some of my colleagues and other people that I will be talking to… if they are willing to share.

My story after the jump. (Be warned, it’s a little lengthy)
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Selon une étude rendue publique, Montréal se fait damer le pion par Toronto dans la couverture des médias internationaux. Cette étude qui a passé au peigne fin les pages de 50 journaux de par le monde pendant une période d’un an est arrivée avec des chiffres où Toronto est citée environ deux fois plus que Montréal.
Les seuls journaux où ‘Mounrial’ est plus présente ce sont les quotidiens français.
Quelles conclusions devons nous en tirer ? Je n’en sais rien mais ce n’est sûrement pas celle que Toronto est plus intéressante que Montréal !