Condom flak

To the ivory tower elitist critics at NOW: your readers continually pick Condom Shack as the best sex supply store in a free and democratic process (NOW, October 29-November 4). 

Yet NOW’s critics decide unilaterally and in dictatorial fashion to choose another store as their pick. 

This is morally reprehensible, elitist and just plain wrong.

In effect, you are ignoring your readers and calling them stupid.

Frank Marafiotti
Condom Shack,
Toronto

Miller filler

Best politician: Mayor Miller? it is to laugh! I seriously believe that David Miller was an absolutely horrible mayor. He ran on a platform of transparency, yet everything was done his way. 

His intelligence makes him exceptionally arrogant and dictatorial. 

Fortunately for him, he had his minions to keep him in power. But he was the antithesis of a good politician who can compromise, “cross the floor” and work with the opposition. 

Sadly, his wilful blindness about our finances will have severe and lasting repercussions. 

Conor D. O’Hare
Toronto 

All that jazz

Hi there. Just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks for naming Drumheller the best jazz group in the city for 2009! I really appreciate it.

Nick Fraser
Drumheller

Harper’s free-trade hunting 

Regarding Harper’s Colombia cover-up (NOW, October 29-November 4). I’m a Latin American Canadian who has visited Colombia as a guest of C.U.T. (that nation’s largest trade union confederation) and Amnesty International.  When Alvaro Uribe was governor of Antioquia, the murder of trade unionists and opposition members by paramilitaries there was very high.  When Uribe became president, this pattern of murder of the opposition, native people, peasants and trade unionists, primarily by the paramilitaries, continued. 

Hundreds of thousands of hectares violently stolen by paramilitaries from small farmers, Afro-Colombians and indigenous Colombians, are now being cultivated for biofuel for export. 

Other areas from which indigenous Colombians have been displaced are now being mined by multinationals. The free trade deal with Canada will legitimize profits from the violent displacement of small farmers.

Jorge Sorger
Toronto

Colombia casualty

It’s laughable that Canada would sign a free trade agreement with Colombia and ignore our own House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade’s human rights concerns. 

I guess we only support democracy where convenient. Now, with the Liberals again waving the “free” trade banner, we have not only the Colombia FTA, but many more to worry about. 

So while our government sits back and watches the horrible atrocities in Colombia, it comforts us with the reminder that freeing up the economy (i.e., putting corporations’ interests before protecting people and the planet) will help “develop” the country. What bullshit.

Lisa Mantia
Toronto

Red scare tactics

Regarding the letter to the editor The Shame Of Communism (NOW, October 22-28).

My heart goes out to all who have suffered under oppressive regimes. 

But seriously, “communism” must be the most misused word of the past 100 years (with “democracy” a close second). The overtly capitalist Chinese Communist party is a prime example. Anyone with even a superficial understanding of communism knows that the term “totalitarian communism” is an oxymoron. 

Uber-rightists like Tribute to Liberty and Open Book Group (who are behind this bizarre monument to the victims of totalitarian communism) are more concerned with smearing critics of the monster that is capitalism and propagating their neo-liberal agendas than they are with the victims of brutal governments. 

Score one for McCarthy and false flag tactics. 

Patrick Clohessy
Toronto

Climate change game

It’s fascinating to compare the city of Toronto to the federal government when it comes to the environment.

While Ottawa continues its appallingly inadequate policies – we’re now 33 per cent above our Kyoto targets – local government is urging us to “think more, about using less.”

Much of Ottawa’s response to climate change focuses on adaptation, learning to make do in a degraded world. Toronto, by contrast, urges us to fight this degradation, to look at the underlying problem (over-consumption) and make changes that will help the planet recover.

Gideon Forman
Physicians for the Environment,
Toronto

Train plan is missing link

Regarding diesel fuming (NOW, October 22-28). Metrolinx could clear the air on exactly why $1 billion (probably more) is being spent to facilitate a for-profit airport link by SNC-Lavalin when GO Trains already run past the airport. 

SNC-Lavalin has been lurking around this expansion plan since the early 1990s. It’s time for the provincial Liberal government to shed some light on what its relationship with SNC-Lavalin is and state clearly what details are being negotiated (currently in secret). 

Why isn’t Bombardier, with facilities in Ontario, being offered the chance to build this project using electrification, just as it has in Vancouver? 

As an update to the story, Liberal MP Mario Silva has jumped off the fence and clearly come out in favour of electrification.

Now, if Gerard Kennedy and Silva could only talk some sense into Tony Ruprecht.

Scott Dobson
Toronto