New York times

[Xcalibur]

If you can have access to it, go read page A-4, it got a whole page or article about our big scandal.

What's worse about it, it's... sometimes you need some exterior opinions to see if you're in the right or wrong track.

Clifford Krauss says we have racial, political and social TENTION, and that our fondator, Champlain, would be really shameful about it...


If someone can post the whole article, I'd be glad to read it all, by the way.

[Czeska]

Forgive me my changing pace.. but X, what is that image, it's gorgeous...

[Xcalibur]

It's one of our MANY prides here...
hehe

I worked there, live like 4 minutes from it...
Ah it's Chateau Frontenac.

here's an other pic, check on the right, you see some kind of wood street, just around it there's the "Fleuve saint-lorent"

You see the big umbrella? just to the right, there'S a door, yesterday, i kissed my girlfriend there, cool huh? hehe

Pity we're so fucked up now...

[Edited on 22-12-03 by Xcalibur]

[Czeska]

Makes me want to go home and look at pics of the cathedrals and castles in the town in Germany where I was born.

[Wezas]

It looks like my summer house, but with cannons and no pool.

[Xcalibur]

There's likes 3 pools inside, you fool :D

No one got the damn new york times?

[Jack]

Here you go X. I would just link it, but to read articles from their site you have to sign up and all that, and it's a pain.

-Jack


QUEBEC, Dec. 18 — Samuel de Champlain, the fervently religious explorer who aspired to make this pleasant little city of stone churches and narrow cobblestone streets a beacon of Roman Catholic righteousness, would surely cringe.

A scandal involving a teenage prostitution ring and some of Quebec's most influential citizens has thrown this quiet provincial colonial-era city into the eye of a storm — one that is uncovering deep cynicism about how the power elite functions and creating a mostly blue-collar movement seething with race and class resentment.

Frenetic news coverage over the last year has displayed a Quebec City that few wanted to see: one with strip clubs that employ juveniles, young girls, from 14 to 17, lured from shopping malls with jewelry and fancy clothes into a life of prostitution, and Caribbean street gangsters affiliated with the Hells Angels prowling the industrial zone below the old walled city. All are images once thought to be a part of life in cosmopolitan Montreal, but not here.

"Quebec City is not exactly what it used to be," the Quebec City daily newspaper Le Soleil reported in a front-page article this week. "While the horrified people of Quebec City became aware of the fact that some children were prostituting themselves in their own backyards, the popular cries ring high and loud that this is intolerable."

Since the scandal began a year ago this week, the police have arrested 44 people suspected as pimps and clients. The trials are now looming. Those arrested as suspected clients include Quebec City's once most popular radio announcer, a former president of the city's winter carnival, a real estate magnate, an owner of a large chain of pharmacies and a former aide to former Premier Lucien Bouchard.

Feeding the city's anxiety, the police repeatedly hinted early on that other powerful personalities and politicians would be implicated. So far, other big names have not been charged, but the scandal and the suggestion that it deserves to grow wider have fed the well of anger.

Drivers are flying flags from the antennas of their cars depicting a black scorpion on a blood-red background, demanding that the police reinvigorate an investigation that many believe would bring to justice some of the city's most powerful people — including cabinet members in the last Parti Québécois provincial government — for patronizing female prostitutes as young as 14.

Just two weeks ago, a conservative opposition lawmaker submitted to the provincial assembly a petition with 80,000 names demanding that the investigation — dubbed Operation Scorpion by the police — cast a wider net beyond the 44 arrests of suspected pimps and clients since last December.

The protesters have a song (called "Carry On"), a Web site, posters and T-shirts to promote their cause. One baker has designed a loaf of bread in the shape of the scorpion. Mobs jeering defendants at court hearings became so disruptive that the Quebec Superior Court has decided to move the trial of nine suspects to Montreal.

André Arthur, a popular local radio talk show host, has fueled the movement with harangues of oblique charges that the police are covering up evidence to keep high-placed closets closed. One of his favorite charges is that "a certain mayor" — whom everyone knows to be the Quebec City mayor, Jean-Paul L'Allier — has interfered in the investigation, although he has not offered any solid evidence.

"The stink of manure hangs over the city," an angry Mr. L'Allier said at a news conference earlier this year. "If you're not in the crowd who wants to string people up from the strongest branch in the village, you're guilty by association."

The frenzy has stretched as far away as Montreal, where demonstrators have now turned up to protest public statements by the defense lawyer for one of the suspected pimps, who said prostitution was a natural part of Haitian culture — apparently an excuse for some of the suspected members of the ring.

The brouhaha began in earnest soon after the police broke up the ring one year ago this week. "Since the beginning, we have said well-known persons could be implicated," Constable Jean-François Vézina, the Quebec City police spokesman, was quoted as saying in February.

After a court hearing in September, Roger Ferland, a police detective, said investigators had heard about provincial cabinet members who were clients of the ring but did not have the time and witnesses to build cases against them.

"There were ministers among her clients," Detective Ferland said in court while paraphrasing the words of one defendant heard on a wiretap of a conversation she had with her twin sister.

But the sister has disputed his account of the conversation, and police officials say their evidence does not lead them to establish the involvement of any past or current cabinet minister. The Quebec Justice Department has come to the same conclusion following an inquiry.

Still, the rumors fly.

"This is an `X-Files' syndrome; pure paranoia," said Tommy Chouinard, a political reporter based here for the Montreal daily Le Devoir. He noted that the scandal had filled a void in the public debate once occupied by the issue of sovereignty, which has cooled in recent years. "This scandal shows what the polls say, that politicians are as popular as used-car salesmen," he added.

[The Cat In The Hat]

OMG X that place is beautiful! You should buy it for me and we'll run away to Frenchieland together. But instead of cannons I want horses! thanks! Call me when you have the deed!


Cat

[Xcalibur]

Hmm.. pitiful, as they said.. it's really a pity that they'll be freed..

Cat: Frenchieland... ehhehehe



there just for you

[The Cat In The Hat]

My room!

*Edited to add I photoshopped it to point out my room but It wont attach!

Cat

[Edited on 12-22-2003 by The Cat In The Hat]

[Xcalibur]

Too big!

[The Cat In The Hat]

What do you mean too big? We need to have a GS gathering there and play hide and go seek!

Cat

[Xcalibur]

I was speaking of your attachement, if it doesn't attach, it's cause it's too big.

Yeah, let's do it here :D

[Latrinsorm]

Are people really that outraged over there, X? I mean, whoop de shit, NINE people were naughty. Or did I read the article wrong?

[Xcalibur]

One day, when my gf was pregnant, there was really big noise outside of our appartement. Some black people (very rare here) were laughing/yelling outside and there was a girl with those high-heel shoes that was running. it was 2 am and my gf was awaken by them, she awakes me and tell me what's going on.

I stand up, go outside in boxer and tell em to SHUT UP and stop the noise. They were 5, shorter but some really bigger than me and they listened, went in their appart and finaly stop.

They were thrown out 2 months later, the proprietor was making some renovation and found 2 guns (which are VERY rare here) Was I lucky to not be shot or threated? ...

Forgot to add that they were part of the wolf pack in question and the girl was a prostitute...

Those arrested as suspected clients include Quebec City's once most popular radio announcer...

that guy, Robert Gillet, harassed one of my aunt before.. Man, it's been 1year now since it's out, and it's still one of the major talk in the town (beside gay marriage)

People are pissed, our mayor is protecting people, we cannot, as a population take charge against him and ask his firing, we cannot do anything, people are outraged and pissed (beside those saying that 14 years old girls know what they do and they are little whore)

[Edited on 22-12-03 by Xcalibur]

[Caiylania]

I think people who pay children for sex deserve what they get. That is more than being naughty, these weren't 25 year old hookers, they are children.

It is sick.