[URBAN NOTE] The Tamil protest at Queen's Park last night

Walking home from the AMC Yonge & Dundas movie theatre last night, I saw the last bit of the most recent Tamil protest at Queen's Park. There were perhaps a bit more than a hundred people in total, some holding signs to face the northcoming traffic on University Avenue, others clustered around CP24 news reporter who was standing in front of some young Tamil women, concluding her piece by Omar.

The chanting protesters were just outside the provincial legislature, and no, I don't know if anyone of import was at home. The chants followed a standard call-and-response slogans led by the guys with the megaphones.

"Stop the
genocide"

or

"We want a
permanent ceasefire
When do we want it?
Right now"

(My post about Sunday's protest will be up tomorrow; I just need to find something to replace my camera's UPS cable.)

[PHOTO] Yorkminster Park Baptist Church

The monumental Yorkminster Park Baptist Church (1585 Yonge Street) is located just north of St. Clair Street and the St. Clair TTC station. The picture below shows the church from the south.

Yorkminster Baptist Church from the south
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Here, the church is seen from the north.

Yorkminster Baptist Church from the north
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

[MUSIC] Primitive Radio Gods, "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand"

Primitive Radio Gods' 1996 international hit "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand" is one of those one-hit wonder songs that I can listen to again and again.

"Mireille Mathieu sings La marseillaise" (Watch on YouTube)

I haven't heard any of the band's other songs, and I'm frankly not interested in it. It's an dreamy atmospheric song with good vocals and a nice B.B. King sample that nearly made me by the song's album when it came out. (I still might get it at a second-hand store, if I find it, one of these days.) What interests me about the song's wider import, now that I think about it, is the way that the song's music and the sampling of an old-school blues singer prefigures quite tellingly Moby's later CD Play. Coincidence?

[LINK] "Dhalla controversy takes twist with accounts from advocate, lawyer"

The CBC reports that the ongoing Ruby Dhalla controversy has just become more complex. Surprise!

Agatha Mason, the executive director of Intercede, a non-profit group that helps immigrant women in Toronto, told a parliamentary committee she got a call about a year ago from Richelyn Tongson, who was working in the Dhalla home.

Tongson, 37, and Magdalene Gordo, 31, say they were hired in early 2008 to work in Dhalla's family home in Mississauga, Ont., to care for her mother, Tavinder. They claim Dhalla paid them only a fraction of the minimum wage and made them work long hours doing household chores, allegations the MP denies.

Mason testified Tongson was sobbing because she said Dhalla had her passport and birth certificate and refused to give them back.

Mason said she first phoned Neil Dhalla, Ruby Dhalla's brother, because it was a local number. He told her to call his sister in Ottawa.

Mason, who said she remembered hesitating before making the long-distance call because of Intercede's small budget, recalled that conversation on Thursday for the committee.

[. . .]

The story took another strange twist Thursday when lawyer Shawn Philbert, who attended the news conference with Levitt, said he represents a Toronto-area man who originally sponsored one of the caregivers.

Philbert wouldn't identify his client, saying only he lives in the Greater Toronto Area and represents "the average person who needs a nanny."

He said the man sponsored Magdalene Gordo to come to Canada from the Philippines in December 2007 to care for his four children, but that she told him she was sick and left after three weeks.

Philbert said Gordo made similar allegations of mistreatment against his client to the nanny agency that brought her to Canada. However, Philbert didn't offer any evidence of the complaint to the agency or documents of employment, saying the news conference happened on such short notice he didn't have time to gather the papers.

[LINK] On the continuing decline of the Ontario automobile industry

And the Canadian automobile industry slips that much more.

The final vehicle rolled off the assembly line Thursday at the GM truck plant in Oshawa, marking the end of 44 years of production and the elimination of 2,600 jobs.

The closure is part of company-wide cuts, with General Motors Canada planning to reduce its workforce by more than half by 2014.

After 45 years with GM — the majority of that time at the truck plant — Bob Nesbitt is retiring Thursday, and hopes he doesn't see the end of General Motors.

He noted that the company and the Canadian Auto Workers are in negotiations on a labour deal that will include concessions that must match an earlier agreement between Chrysler and the union.

"The company's holding the gun to the CAW's head and they either match it or they're gone, Nesbitt said.

"It's as simple as that."

There is some positive news for the company and its workers, as GM plans to launch three of six new products at its Oshawa car plant.

Various writers at The Globe and Mail go on about the very unfortunate long-term trends.

Some time this morning, Bob Nesbitt, 67, will drive a black GMC Sierra crew cab off the assembly line at the General Motors of Canada Ltd.'s Oshawa Truck Plant. The final pickup truck rolling out of the plant will mark not only the end of an era in the city where GM Canada was born, but also the end of GM's decades-long run as the largest auto manufacturer in the country.

The Oshawa plant's closing is a key factor in the drop of GM Canada's vehicle production, taking it to considerably less than 17- to 20-per-cent level of overall General Motors production in North America - the threshold that Ottawa and Ontario have insisted GM Canada must meet in return for loans of $6-billion (U.S.) or more.

The plant closing also means the elimination of 2,600 jobs, which when added to next year's shutdown of a transmission plant that employs 1,500 people in Windsor will push the company's head count well below 16,000.

"I've seen this before but that was always model change," said Mr. Nesbitt, who has worked at GM in Oshawa since 1964 and in the truck plant since 1971. "But that truck I take off [today], there won't be another one behind it." He has one of the plum jobs of the operation. For 20 years, he has been driving finished vehicles off the assembly line and to a holding area where they wait for delivery.

[. . .]

From 2004 through 2007, GM Canada cranked out more than 20 per cent of all the vehicles the auto maker produced in North America. In 2008, that fell to 17 per cent and is forecast to drop again this year to 14 per cent, says an analysis done by consulting firm AutomotiveCompass LLC.

"We see no way Canada can get to 20 per cent," said AutomotiveCompass president Bill Pochiluk. "We don't see them even reaching 15 per cent."

The forecast calls into question the federal and Ontario governments' commitment to lend GM Canada up to 20 per cent of the amount the U.S. government provides to its parent company. The most recent GM request is for about $30-billion in loans from Washington.

The federal and Ontario governments have argued since the restructuring talks first began that Canada must retain its share of GM's North American auto production in return for any loans. They have used the 20-per-cent threshold, saying Canada's share of the bailout would be proportional to GM's production here, and have little appetite for lending money that exceeds that level.

[LINK] "Bondage Gear, Straight from Karachi"

I found this startling Willa Paskin-authored item via Slate.

Ever wonder where S&M bondage gear—whips, straps, masks, assless pants—is made? No? Well, you should have. The Times has a fascinating video piece about a company in Karachi, Pakistan that manufactures fetish wear and exports it to the West.

[. . .]

Two brothers from a poor family started the company, AQTH, in 2001. It now makes a million dollars a year, employs dozens, and only rarely runs into trouble with the devout Muslims who live next door. Though AQTH is flourishing, manufacturing "the famous spanking skirt" in Karachi ("it has all the back open for the spanking, while lovemaking," one of the brothers explains) is a little more complicated than manufacturing other less outré leather goods might be. The owner's wives haven't been told what the company produces and many of the employees don't know—or don't want to know—what they're making. One man thinks the sex swing he's crafting is actually a black-leather, silver-studded beach chair.

That said, the brothers are refreshingly unembarrassed about their product line, equating the items to the "spices of sex." One of their sales executives, a 25-year-old woman, refuses to pick a favorite piece, admonishing sternly that she has several. "I have a desire to wear some of the items," she goes on to say, "but not all of them."

The New York Times video piece referred to in the article is here, and the company's website is here.

The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times both go into more detail.