“I would welcome the opportunity to introduce President Putin to some Russians who deserve to be heard, and who deserve to be treated in their own country with the same respect and warm welcome that I received on my last visit.”
– Elton John

So, will Russian President Vladimir Putin accept Elton John’s offer? After all, the prez said recently that he digs Elton’s music.

As many media outlets are reporting today, Elton has offered to introduce Mr. Putin to members of Russia’s gay community to show the impact of ” deeply divisive” anti-gay legislation there.

By impact, Elton means this, according to a report on the Belfast Telegraph site:

Sir Elton said he had wanted to hear “first hand” on a visit last month what differences the legislation had made to people.

“What I heard reinforced all the media stories that have been circling since the propaganda Bill became federal law: that vicious homophobia has been legitimised by this legislation and given extremists the cover to abuse people’s basic human rights,” he said.

“The people I met in Moscow – gay men and lesbians in their 20s, 30s and 40s – told me stories about receiving threats from vigilante groups who would ‘cure’ them of homosexuality by dousing them with urine or beating them up. One young man was stalked outside a gay club by someone posing as a taxi driver who tried to garrotte him with a guitar string because he was a ‘sodomite’.

“Everyone shared stories of verbal and physical abuse – at work, in bars and restaurants or in the street – since the legislation came into force last June. And some of the vital work providing HIV prevention information to the gay community has been labelled ‘homosexual propaganda’ and shut down.”

God, I love Elton. I’m listening to his song Daniel as I write this . . . just sayin’ . . .

Way to go, Elton. We love you . . .

C’mon, Mr. Putin. Accept Elton’s invitation. Show the world that you’ve got the music of love in your soul . . . because Elton does. That’s why you love his music so much . . .

– Jillian

Here is Elton John performing Daniel in Moscow in 1979

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Drawing Conclusions featuring The Gazette’s Terry Mosher, aka Aislin. Terry’s been chronicling Olympic Games for nearly 40 years, and whether wandering through the streets of Montreal in 1976 or marveling with the rest of us over a kid named Crosby in Vancouver in 2010, his sometimes jaundiced view of the games has also been tempered with a certain hope if not downright optimism over an event designed (in theory, at least)  to bring all of us closer together. What have the years taught him? And what does he expect to say about next week’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, deep in the heart of Vladimir Putin’s Russia? Click on the grey icon below to hear what Terry had to say. And remember, you can listen to all of our podcasts at montrealgazette.com/montreal@themoment and on iTunes . And don’t forget to check out our gallery of Aislin’s Olympic cartoons at montrealgazette.com

It seems we are hearing more and more reports about vicious attacks against LGBTQ people in Russia these days, after the country passed it controversial anti-gay-propaganda bill last year. Reports Human Rights Watch:

The Russian authorities need to address a deteriorating situation of widespread and concerted abuse against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and activists. The authorities’ failure to act and some officials’ homophobic comments expose LGBT people to further harassment and violence and embolden the attackers, Human Rights Watch research found.

And this:

“The Russian authorities have the power to protect the rights of LGBT people, but instead they are ignoring their responsibility to do so,” said Tanya Cooper, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “By turning a blind eye to hateful homophobic rhetoric and violence, Russian authorities are sending a dangerous message as the world is about to arrive on its doorstep for the Olympics that there is nothing wrong with attacks on gay people.”

So, what gives? Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he has nothing against gay people, that Russia is simply trying to keep that sexual orientation issueaway from kids. So why isn’t he speaking out against  homophobic and transphobic attacks in his country? Why aren’t the authorities doing something about it?

Jillian

Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

The United States has announced new sanctions against Russian individuals and companies in an effort to force that country to de-escalate tensions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. The sanctions target seven Russian government officials linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin plus 17 companies benefiting from U.S. technology exports. The U.S. claims that Russia has not lived up to its commitments made at a meeting in Geneva April 14 with Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union. “Since April 17, Russia has done nothing to meet its Geneva commitments and in fact has further escalated the crisis,” a White House official said in a briefing. “Russia’s involvement in the recent violence in eastern Ukraine is indisputable.” The U.S. is imposing a new set of sanctions on seven Russian government officials including a Russian general involved in the Crimea takeover, Putin’s official envoy to the Crimea and the deputy prime minister of the Russia Federation. Their assets will be frozen and they are banned from obtaining U.S. visas. Putin has not been sanctioned.

The federal government is poised to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that will overhaul Canada’s prostitution laws — possibly targeting the pimps and johns as criminals while leaving the prostitutes themselves free from criminal prosecution. Justice Minister Peter MacKay has been exploring various options since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s prostitution laws last December, giving the government a year to come up with a new law. Among the alternatives being examined is a Canadian version of the “Nordic model” — an approach first used in Sweden which then spread to Norway and Iceland — in which police target prostitutes’ customers, pimps and sex-trade traffickers. Earlier this month, MacKay said his bill will be drafted to find the “right balance” to a “complex” issue.

The Canadiens had a new focus as they gathered for practice Sunday morning at the Bell Sports Complex in Brossard. After two days of generic practices, the Canadiens were able to begin preparations to face the Boston Bruins in the second round of the playoffs. The Bruins advanced Saturday when they eliminated the Detroit Red Wings in five games. Nobody in the Canadiens’ room had to be told about the playoff rivalry which is, well, unrivalled in North American pro sports. The teams are meeting for a record 34th time in a rivalry that dates back to 1929. While the Canadiens had a 3-1 record against the Bruins in the regular season and have won six of their last seven regular-season meetings, defenceman Josh Gorges said those results don’t mean anything in the post-season.

The heat is on these days in Canadian grocery stores as the battle for food dollars intensifies. “It’s a war in the trenches,” said Yvan Ouellet, vice-president of procurement and merchandising in Quebec for Sobeys, which operates here under the IGA banner. Starting Thursday, May 1, IGA will have a new weapon in its arsenal: Moishes steaks. An exclusive agreement between Sobeys and the famed St-Laurent Blvd. steak house will see two cuts of steak bearing the Moishes brand — New York strip sirloin and boneless rib steak — sold at almost 300 IGA locations in the province.

And finally,Paul Simon and his wife, Edie Brickell, were arrested on disorderly conduct charges by officers investigating a family dispute, but the couple held hands in court Monday and said they did not feel threatened by the other. Simon told a Norwalk Superior Court judge that he had a rare argument with his wife Saturday night at their home in New Canaan. The arrest struck a discordant note for the couple. Simon burst onto the national stage with his former partner Art Garfunkel in the 1960s, adding a gentle voice to the growing chorus of opposition to the Vietnam War. Brickell, meanwhile, gained fame for her songs that blend rock, folk, blues and jazz. A caller from the singers’ home dialed 911 Saturday night and hung up, police chief Leon Krolikowski said at a news conference Monday. Officers who responded found minor injuries and believed it was a case of domestic violence, he said. Simon and Brickell, who have been married for more than two decades, were each given a misdemeanour summons and one of them agreed to leave and go to another location, Krolikowski said.

Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

A father who killed his daughter by slapping her when he wasn’t satisfied with how she was doing her chores has been sentenced to a sixty-day prison term. Moussa Sidime, 73, was emotional before the sentence was read out by a judge at the Longueuil courthouse on Wednesday morning. The judge who heard sentencing arguments earlier this year agreed with the prosecution that a prison term would be appropriate to denounce and dissuade the way Sidime treated his 13-year-old daughter Noutene when he slapped her. Quebec Court Judge Richard Marleau sentenced Sidime to a prison term he was likely to be able to serve on weekends. This will be followed by two years of probation.

It will take three months for Pierre Karl Péladeau to heal but he could be in the National Assembly before that time, albeit in a wheelchair. Péladeau fractured his pelvis, right shoulder blade, collarbone and scapula, and broke five ribs when he fell off his bike on Sunday in the Eastern Townships. The fractured pelvis means he cannot walk for at least three months and will require a wheelchair to attend sessions in the National Assembly, Bernard Larue, an orthopedic doctor at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke, told reporters Wednesday morning. The media magnate, who was elected MNA of St-Jérôme on April 7, could remain in the hospital for up to a week due to the severity of his injuries.

The former head of the McGill University Health Centre was a calculating and persuasive businessman who managed to cheat the system using sheer guts and guile, said the latest witness at the Charbonneau Commission on Tuesday. Far from the crass schoolyard “tough guy” described by previous witnesses, Normand Bergeron testified that Arthur Porter was a subtle manipulator — and that he never raised any suspicion during the period when Quebec was selecting a construction consortium to build Montreal’s new MUHC superhospital. “No one, to my knowledge, questioned the integrity of Dr. Porter,” said Bergeron, who headed up the government agency responsible to overseeing public-private partnership (PPP) projects. That agency is now known as Infrastructure Quebec. Porter is now languishing in a Panamanian jail, facing numerous fraud charges.

Quebecers will get a better idea this afternoon of how their new Liberal government intends to rein in the province’s deficit. Premier Philippe Couillard will deliver his inaugural address to the legislature laying out the broad lines of his government’s plans for the next four years. He has said his main priority will be wrestling Quebec’s deficit under control before it gets any bigger. Couillard’s speech will be followed by a budget in early June. He has said tough decisions need to be made because Quebecers are living beyond their means. He will be targeting spending in all government departments and has insisted no one will be spared. The government will also address legislation dealing with physician-assisted death for some terminally ill patients as well a law giving Montreal an inspector-general to help root out municipal corruption.

And finally, the royal visit to Canada has made headlines in Britain’s Daily Mail for what the tabloid reported was a remark in which Prince Charles likened Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler when talking to a woman who lost relatives in the Holocaust. The Daily Mail says Charles made the comment during a visit Monday to the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax. The newspaper reports museum volunteer Marienne Ferguson as saying her Jewish family fled to Canada from Poland when she was 13, but that other relatives failed to flee before the German army arrived in Gdansk in 1939. It quotes Ferguson as saying she told Charles about her family background and how she came to Canada, and that Charles then said to her: “And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”

Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

Montreal Sept 8 Kiss-In organizer Christian S. Généreux (Photo by Paul A. Larocque, courtesy Christian S. Généreux)

Over 50 cities will participate in a Global Kiss-In on Sept 8 to protest Russia’s anti-gay laws in the lead-up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Montreal will take part in the global protest along with such cities as Athens, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Dublin, Geneva, Istanbul, London, Paris, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Tokyo and Vienna.

Local organizers hope their Montreal kiss-in at the Russian Consulate on Rue de Musee will draw as many as the Aug. 13 candlelight vigil organized by Fierte Montreal Pride,  which drew over 1,000 peaceful protestors.

“After seeing the organization of the Global Kiss-In on the Internet, I decided to organize one in Montreal as I truly believe we have to be part of this worldwide mobilization,” says local kiss-in organizer Christian S. Généreux. “In Montreal particularly, we are really lucky and the vigil during the city’s Gay Pride festivities was a huge success. But we must continue to pressure the International Olympic Committee and our governments to demand that Vladimir Putin stop the violations of human rights of gay people in Russia.”

U.K. news outlet Gay Star News is reporting this week that 24-year-old gay rights activist Dmitry Isakov is set to become the first person convicted under Russia’s new anti-gay “propaganda law” after Isakov was attacked and arrested by his own parents at a solo protest in July. A week before Isakov’s arrest, four Dutch tourists became the first foreigners to be charged under the ‘gay propaganda’ law.

Activists fear what could happen to pro-gay protestors in Russia during and after the Sochi Olympics.

“The Olympic Charter has several articles concerning the respect of human rights but unfortunately,” Généreux says, “the IOC have decided instead to hide behind article 50 of this charter to avoid this question.”

Fierté Montréal Pride president Eric Pineault says, “We salute and support this [Kiss-In] initiative, because we must continue to put pressure on the Russian government in support of our Russian brothers and sisters so that they may one day be able to live as they are without fear of persecution.”

Click here for photos and video footage of Fierté Montréal Pride’s Aug 13 candlelight vigil in front of the Russian Consulate in Montreal.

As for the upcoming Global Kiss-In on Sept 8, it too is open to all participants regardless of sexual orientation.

“I was thinking of a few comments friends made about being shy to come – you know, just in case they don’t have someone to kiss,” says Montreal PR consultant and activist Kat Coric. “I see the Kiss-In as a symbolic thing, less sexual even. You can even kiss your friend on the cheek or a Mom can bring her kid and kiss him or her on the cheek. I think some of us will end up giving each other the traditional ‘Montreal two-kisses-on-the-cheek’ too ! I’m really looking forward to it and I hope we get a lot more people to come, in addition to Montreal’s huge LGBT network.”

The Global Kiss-In will take place in front of the Russian Consulate in Montreal (3655 Avenue du Musée) on Sept 8 at 3 p.m.

Click here for the Montreal Kiss-In Facebook event page, and here for Global Kiss-In “To Russia With Love” Facebook page.

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Hello and welcome back to Drawing Conclusions with The Gazette’s Terry Mosher, aka Aislin. This week Terry shares his thoughts on how many cartoon ideas the Parti Quebecois gave him with its controversial charter of Quebec values, why he needed to get Vladimir Putin into the paper and how he went about producing his most popular cartoon this week. You can take a look at a part of that process below.

First, there’s a sketch…

Then there’s the actual cartoon…

And then there’s the process of colouring…

But which came first? The drawing or the punchline? To find out the answer to that question and the rest of what Terry had to say, click on the grey icon below. And remember, you can listen to all of our podcasts at montrealgazette.com/montreal@themoment and on iTunes .

U.K. activist Peter Tatchell (Photo courtesy Fierte Montreal Pride)

Legendary British activist Peter Tatchell has been a thorn in the side of countless homophobes over the decades, everybody from the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

But arguably some of the biggest-name homophobes who despise him most are notorious anti-gay Jamaican reggae dancehall superstars such as Sizzla, who wrote the 2005 hit song Nah Apologize about LGBT activists.

Tatchell’s international Stop Murder Music campaign successfully targeted Sizzla who then told me in a 2004 Hour magazine cover story that went global, “Once we stoop to sodomites and homosexuals, it is wrong! Wherever I go it is the same thing – burn sodomite, burn battyman … We must get rid of Sodom and Gomorrah right now.”

That sensational interview made international news, including on the pages of Jamaica’s national newspaper The Jamaica Gleaner where I was also trashed in an op-ed. Then in his song Nah Apologize, Sizzla repeats in the chorus, “Rastaman nah apologize to no batty bwoy!”

Tatchell – who will be an International Grand Marshall at Montreal’s Gay Pride parade on August 17 – clearly remembers that turbulent era when many dancehall stars were targeted by the Stop Murder Music campaign.

“It took a huge amount of effort and I personally faced many death threats, even had police protection at certain times when they informed me a hit man had been sent from Jamaica to kill me,” Tatchell says. “The upshot is today the prevalence of murder music is much less than it was. We hit them where it hurts them most – in their wallets, when all those concerts got cancelled around the world.”

You might not know it from his in-your-face political tactics, but Tatchell’s political inspirations are Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankhurst and Martin Luther King. But there is no question that Tatchell – who staged the first-ever LGBT rights protest in a communist country, East Germany, in 1973 – is also inspired by the likes of Malcolm X.

“I’ve taken part in roughly 3,000 protests over the past 50 years,” says Tatchell. “You need the positive, constructive strategies of Dr King, but you also need the anger of Malcolm X to put pressure on people in power. Then you need to articulate solutions.”

At his first LGBT protest, at the World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin in 1973, Tatchell was the only openly-gay delegate at the conference and staged the first ever LGBT rights protest in a communist country.

Sizzla’s infamous HOUR magazine cover story

“I was only 21, but I’ve always seen queer freedom as a global battle and I hoped that [foreign] passport would protect me from any draconian punishment,” Tatchell says. “I thought it was important to highlight the struggle of LGBT people in the Soviet bloc, although I was widely criticized for it at the time by the America delegation for ‘undermining’ the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. I was even denounced at a mass rally by Angela Davis who is now an out lesbian.”

If Tatchell’s youthful exuberance convinced him his passport would get him out of a jam in East Berlin in 1973, what did an older and wiser Tatchel think when he was bashed by neo-Nazis and arrested at the Moscow Gay Pride parade in 2007?

“I had the same optimism I had in 1973, but with a British passport it was unlikely that I would be badly treated,” Tatchell says. “Still I knew I might get arrested and beaten up, because it happens to Russian LGBT activists all the time. They don’t have the protection I do.”

That is why Tatchell criticizes gay and straight athletes who attended the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. “I didn’t support a boycott because they rarely work. It would be far better for spectators and athletes to go there and protest. Disappointingly none did – apart from Russian activists. Lots of promises were made by [foreigners] but no one really delivered.”

In 1988, Tatchell set up the UK AIDS Vigil Organisation to campaign for the human rights of people with HIV, co-founded ACT UP London in 1989, as well as the queer rights direct-action group OutRage! the following year. He outed 10 closeted Anglican bishops in 1994 because they publicly supported their church’s homophobic stance, and kickstarted the global Stop Murder Music campaign that successfully targeted virulently anti-gay dancehall-reggae performers such as Beenie Man, Bounty Killer and Sizzla.

He also made international news when he outed the late soul singer Whitney Houston in a February 2012 Daily Mail newspaper essay, alleging her longtime lover was Robyn Crawford.

U.K. human-rights activist Peter Tatchell (Photo courtesy Fierte Montreal Pride)

“I wrote that because I was so angry how [Crawford] was written out of the obituaries – this was a blatant act of self-censorship,” Tatchell says. “I had met both Whitney and Robyn in London in the early 1990s and it was obvious they were in a relationship. It wasn’t just my conclusion, it was everyone’s. One of the greatest tragedies of Whitney’s life is the way her family and church pressured her to give up that relationship. That truth needed to be told. I think it is highly probable that Whitney married Bobby Brown to dispel the lesbian rumours, and that began the downward spiral that led to her death. This is evidence that homophobia kills.”

Tatchell is, however, arguably most famous for ambushing the motorcade of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe in London in 1999, in an attempt to make a legal citizen’s arrest on charges of torture. Unbelievably, Mugabe’s limo door wasn’t locked. “Mugabe recoiled in the back seat, holding up his hands,” Tatchell recalls. “His eyes popped and his jaw dropped. He looked terrified. I thought, ‘He thinks he’s going to be killed.’ Then I thought, ‘Now you know what your victims feel like.’”

London police did not allow Tatchell and his colleagues to arrest Mugabe, instead arresting the activists. This did not hinder Tatchell, who would attempt a second citizen’s arrest of Mugabe in Brussels in 2001. That time Tatchell was beaten unconscious by Mugabe’s bodyguards.

But Tatchell – a draft-dodger who moved to Britain from Australia in 1971 because he opposed Australia’s role in the Vietnam War – remains steadfast all these years later. Now 62, he says, “I’m still motivated by the same 1960s commitment to idealism. It still fires me up!”

He is also “humbled” to be named International Grand Marshall of Fierté Montréal Pride’s 2014 parade.

“I’m just one of many hundreds of thousands of LGBT activists worldwide who are fighting for queer freedom,” Tatchell insists. “It is our cumulative action that makes change. I don’t feel comfortable with the adulation, but I am profoundly appreciative of this honour.”

Peter Tatchell will be an International Grand Marshall at Fierté Montréal Pride’s 2014 Gay Pride parade on Aug. 17. Read more about Tatchell on his official website: www.petertatchell.net

Fierté Montréal Pride celebrations run from Aug 11-17. Click here for the official Fierté Montréal Pride website: http://www.fiertemontrealpride.com/en/

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So there was Russian president Vladimir Putin talking to young people at a summer camp on Friday about Ukraine, and reminding them — and the rest of the world — that Russia is one of the world’s leading nuclear powers, and “it’s best not to mess with us.” (See National Post report.)

According to one TV report, the young people asked scripted questions, so no one asked the rather obvious one, i.e.: “Mr. Putin, are you saying you would be prepared to set off World War III, and have hundreds of millions of people die — including all of the young people in this camp — over Ukraine?”

The Russian president had prefaced his comments with this: “Thank God, I think no one is thinking of unleashing a large-scale conflict with Russia.”

And I doubt anyone is. But one has to wonder about Mr. Putin. Was he just rattling a sabre? Or is he so irresponsible that he would destroy civilization and the human race as we currently know it if he can’t have his way?

It also has to make you wonder why we, the human race, still allow individuals like Mr. Putin to have the ability to plunge the world into the abyss.

As that old song by Sting goes . . .

“I hope the Russians love their children, too.”

– Jillian

Taylor Swift sang and wore some slinky outfits during last year’s ridiculous televised Victoria’s Secret Christmas underwear-a-thon show.

A model called Jessica Hart was puzzled, and said so afterward: “God bless her heart. I think she’s great,” Hart said of Swift. “But I don’t know, to me, she didn’t fit. I don’t know if I should say that.”

She got the last part right, at least. Tuesday night Swift and countless models were in London to tape the 2014 show, for broadcast next week. Guess who wasn’t there?

Hart was not dumped outright by VS after her little shot at the superstar, but the N.Y. Daily News says – and nobody has denied – that Swift asked the producers to keep Hart out of this year’s show.

They complied, because there’s only one Taylor Swift whereas, as Leonardo DiCaprio will tell you, there are lots of models.

***

Once a year I run a mushy feel-good item. Enjoy 2014’s:

Actress Rosario Dawson, who was herself adopted, has chosen a child of her own, a 12-year-old girl.

Dawson never knew her father, she says; her mother and adoptive dad began dating a month before Rosario was born; he adopted her legally and today, “I love my father, he is amazing to me.” She’s 35.

***

Model Alyssa Miller dumped Jake Gyllenhaal because he spent too much time at the gym, his director in the boxing movie Southpaw told Deadline.com.

“Literally, I think he broke up with his girlfriend because he was just in the gym every day,” Antoine Fuqua told the site. Jake played a boxer, duh, and recent photos show that he really bulked up for the role.

Gyllenhaal “was training like a fighter,” Fuqua said. “I had him sparring, really getting hit. I put him in situations where I wanted to see what he was made of. No one but fighters understand the sacrifice it takes to be a fighter.”

***

I’ve never much liked Oliver Stone, so I enjoyed Craig Ferguson’s line about him the other night:

“Director Oliver Stone says he’s going to make a movie about Vladimir Putin. I can’t believe anyone would want to work with that insane communist. And Putin is a little crazy as well.”

***

It’s a girl, no name yet, for Armie Hammer – you loved him as the Winkelvoss twins (“Winkelvi”) in The Social Network – and his wife Elizabeth Chambers. The child was born Monday, says the L.A. Times, and all are well.

Hammer’s next movie is the Man from U.N.C.L.E. remake due next summer, also starring Henry Cavill, Hugh Grant and Alicia Vikander. He plays the David McCallum role.

He’s 28.

***

Worthy of an eye-roll: Model Behati Prinsloo, now Mrs. Adam Levine, explains the little tattoo, just three dots, on her ring finger:

“The three dots mean being one with the earth. I wanted it on my wedding finger so if I take my rings off … I wanted something to be like I’m taken.”

tellcamilli@gmail.com

Hello and welcome to montrealgazette.com and welcome to Midday. Here’s the rundown on some of the stories we’re following for you today.

A man stabbed to death last night in Ville-Marie is Montreal’s 10th murder victim of 2015. Two men and one woman who were in the apartment where the victim was found have been questioned by police as important witnesses. At 6:55 p.m. Wednesday, a man stopped a police officer to report that a man might have been stabbed inside an apartment building on Robillard St. near Saint-André St. The officer found the 54-year-old victim, who had been wounded in the upper body. He was taken to hospital, where his death was confirmed.

If given a second chance, would Montrealers embrace Major League Baseball? When the curtain finally came down on the Expos’ 35-year roller-coaster ride, few lamented their departure to Washington D.C. other than baseball diehards and those in the stadium roofing business. But in recent years, a renewed interest in big-league ball has been sparked by the Montreal Baseball Project, headed by former Expo Warren Cromartie, and other grassroots groups. The dream of a baseball renaissance gained a measure of credibility in 2013 after a feasibility study by Ernst & Young found Montreal could not only support a major-league team, but was the biggest North American market without one. The study also pegged the cost of a new open-air 36,000-seat stadium at $500 million. A new franchise would cost approximately $525 million, putting the final estimate at $1.025 billion, to be shared by private investors and government. Mayor-turned-slugger Denis Coderre is so convinced Montreal is a bona-fide baseball town, he is meeting MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Thursday in New York City in an attempt to revive the city’s sagging profile by luring back a big-league franchise.

Business owners in St-Henri are calling on the city of Montreal to take action to stop what some are calling an organized campaign of anti-gentrification “terrorism” in the Sud-Ouest borough neighbourhood. For several months now, graffiti denouncing gentrification has been appearing on walls and windows of businesses along a stretch of Notre-Dame St. W., a formerly rundown area that has been attracting business catering to higher income residents in recent years. Last Friday evening, several masked individuals dressed all in black threw a smoke bomb into a crowd celebrating the opening of a high-end juice bar on Notre-Dame St. W. near St-Philippe St. One member of the group also pepper-sprayed the owner of that business, Corey Shapiro, in the face. And early Sunday, a similarly dressed group was seen breaking windows of several businesses along Notre-Dame St. W. with crowbars and billiard balls. The vandalism was witnessed by many, as it happened shortly after midnight, when bar and restaurant patrons were still out in numbers.

And finally, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of meddling in the affairs of soccer’s governing body and hinted that its corruption investigation is part of an attempt to take the 2018 World Cup away from his country. Putin said in televised comments Thursday that he found it “odd” that the FIFA probe was launched at the request of U.S. officials for crimes which do not involve its citizens and did not happen in the United States. Corruption charges in the U.S. were announced Wednesday against 14 people, at least two of whom have American citizenship. Seven of the 14 were arrested Wednesday morning in Zurich ahead of a FIFA meeting and Friday’s presidential election in which Sepp Blatter is expected to win a fifth term. Much of the money that allegedly changed hands went through U.S. banks, which is why U.S. officials were able to bring charges.

Stay with us for more on these stories and breaking news as it happens at montrealgazette.com

With the Women’s World Cup set to kick off in Canada on Saturday, the timing could hardly have been worse: Mass arrests of FIFA officials in Switzerland and the U.S. with more sure to follow, the revelation of bribery and kickbacks on an epic scale.

It is already the biggest scandal in sports history, with FIFA president Sepp Blatter still to be questioned by Swiss authorities. Unless you have been following FIFA for a long time, you may wonder how it is possible Blatter could be re-elected to serve his fifth term as president the same week so many of his allies and lieutenants were carted off to jail.

If Blatter had a shred of decency, he would have stepped down the day of the arrests. But then, a decent man would never have allowed this to happen on his watch.

It was disappointing to see how few FIFA officials were willing to follow the lead of Britain’s David Gill, who resigned his vice-presidency and his seat on FIFA’s executive committee in the wake of the arrests, drawing a predictably outraged response from Blatter, who treats any opposition as treachery.

Corruption at FIFA is so deeply entrenched we have to wonder whether it can ever be rooted out. As the comedian John Oliver said: “FIFA is a comically grotesque organization.”

It is — but the comedy gets less funny by the year. It was former FIFA boss João Havelange, Blatter’s predecessor, who created the template for the current corruption. In 2012, a Swiss prosecutor showed Havelange and Richard Teixeira, a member of FIFA’s executive committee who was for a time Havelange’s son-in-law, had taken as much as $23 million in bribes from a single sports marketing firm.

It was Havelange who brought soccer federations in Asia and Africa into the FIFA umbrella — a commendable step with an ulterior motive. Those federations were beholden to Havelange, as they are to Blatter today, and they remain the source of Blatter’s apparently unbreakable power. In Switzerland last week, UEFA, the European federation, was unable to break their hold, drawing only Blatter’s scorn for backing his opponent, Jordanian prince Ali bin al-Hussein.

None of this is really a surprise. In the shadowy world of FIFA, only the arrests are new. The corruption, the disregard for human rights, have been a part of the organization since before Havelange took power in 1974.

At the core of the latest and greatest FIFA scandal is a cynicism so vast, so brazen, so without apparent limits, that we are left wondering whether the organization is really a sports federation at all — or a global criminal conspiracy using the world’s most popular sport as a smokescreen.

The people who run FIFA, beginning with Blatter, clearly believe they are bulletproof, that they can get away with anything. They can change the rules to award two World Cups at once rather than one at a time — and hand the first to the criminal gang that runs the Kremlin in Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy, and the second to Qatar, an absolute monarchy ruled by sharia law, with searing heat, medieval attitudes toward wine and women, Nepalese slave labour to build its facilities and no earthly reason whatsoever to be hosting one of the world’s two premier sports events.

Qatar should have been the end of the line. Brazil should have been the end of the line, after FIFA scooped up $5 billion in profit off the 2014 World Cup and left the debt to the host nation. The current arrests should be the end of the line.

But the end of the line for this mob is going to come only if the sponsors see their brands tainted and decide, belatedly, to act. If Coca-Cola and Visa no longer back the corrupt nightmare that is FIFA, Blatter might be forced to resign and the soccer equivalent of a Kenesaw Mountain Landis brought in to cleanse the stables.

That’s why the only panicky thing Blatter did this past week was to schedule meetings to pacify the sponsors. He didn’t care what the media had to say. He didn’t care about the arrests, beyond putting himself forward, astonishingly, as the man who would clean up the corrupt enterprise over which he has presided since 1998 — and blaming the U.S. and Europe for prosecuting the thieves around him.

But Blatter worries about the sponsors. They control the money spigot, along with the television networks that shovel billions into the FIFA coffers through their contracts.

The sponsors are essentially amoral, as opposed to immoral. They don’t care about human rights or corruption issues as long as their banners are prominently on display at every World Cup venue. It was not until the mass arrests became actively embarrassing that they pronounced themselves “disappointed” about pervasive corruption that has been public knowledge for decades.

Meanwhile, the women who will compete in Canada for the next month deserve our full attention and support. They are in no way to blame for the continuing scandal. Their valid concerns about a major soccer tournament held on artificial turf were simply brushed aside. They deserve better.

It’s a tricky feat for Canadian soccer fans, to cheer Canada’s excellent national team (and all the women who are here to compete) while making it clear we do not accept or approve of FIFA and its venal double-dealing.

Applaud the soccer. Boo the federation. And pray that, at some point in the future, enough pressure can be brought to bear to fundamentally alter the most unscrupulous sports organization on the planet.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

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