You Know His Name...

The New Bond Video is a Scream!

EUROPE THREATENS PRIVACY

An astonishing little piece appeared in the New York Times this morning. It regards plans to monitor every phone call and internet usage in the European union. Read the story here.

THE FRONT PAGE

The three stories featured on the front page of the morning Vancouver Sun have curious and circuitous links.

1)Some parents are angry about the new gay-friendly material that will appear in public schools.

2)An Iranian refugee was arrested in a local church sanctuary.

3)Former Chief Justice Antonio Lamer is advising the Prime Minister to stop trying to influence judges.

What makes these stories so interesting, and what at the same time, connects them is that they are again about Your Rights vs. My Rights in the context of a self-advertised multi-cultural society, and that all sides of all the arguments are reasonably defensible.

1)In a perfect world, toward which we may continually strive, people wouldn't hate or discriminate against gays, blacks, whites, Jews, Christians, Haitians and Rosicrucians. On the other hand (as Tevye, the Milkman, would say), if I am a parent, I have a right to take my child out of classes that I think are inappropriate for or offensive to me or my child.

2)Illegal refugee claimants who are hiding should and can be arrested. On the other hand, while it is not written into law, the notion of church sanctuary has long been an accepted practice, and, frankly, there is something disturbing to me about the police "invading" the quiet of a church to arrest someone.

3)The process of appointing people to the Supreme Court is deeply flawed and needs a modern overhaul. On the other hand, the Prime Minister, although he may be a bit wooden-clogged in his approach, is right to say what so many other and reasonable Canadians are saying. "Let's think a little more about the safety of the community in sentencing and not quite so much about the alleged rehabilitation of the convicted criminal."

Each of these stories id worthy of lengthy debate. The commentary below is OPEN and will have to do until places for discussion of public policy - once at the core of radio, television and print media -are returned.

LEMONADE STAND EXPLODES!

If you ran a little neighbourhood coffee house - well, you couldn't, of course, because the taxes and red tape would kill you - and your expenses went up 40%, what would you do? I mean, besides fold your tent and get a job with the post office?

Well, if your little coffee shop is a government flagship and it's timed for unveiling at the famous Olympics, then hang the cost! Hey, it's only the hard-earned money of teachers and postal workers and doctors and street cleaners known otherwise and so cavalierly as TAXPAYERS.

So the Trade & Convention Centre expansion, tagged originally at a mere $565 Million is now going to cost tree pruners and dog trimmers and history professors and hospital cafeteria staff more like $800 Million. "Big deal," says Victoria.

And you can bet your SUV or your hybrid that the real cost will easily exceed a Billion Dollars when all is said and done.

Welcome to the ancient honorable world of Politics and Public Spending. And we've learned from history...exactly, what?

FRIENDLY SKIES?

There are some headlines you need to read 5 or 6 times, and even then you're not quite sure you are dreaming or reading the morning paper. Here's one of the best and the latest: "AIR CANADA TO HALT ALL FLIGHTS TO INDIA."

Huh?

Canada's official airline claims it needs all its aircraft now for service to China.

This is an "either/or" proposition?

Let me see if I understand this. I don't; but let's try.

Every flight I have taken in recent years from Europe back to Canada, whether through Heathrow or Frankfurt has been more than 50% occupied by Indians from India. My October 2006 flight was at least 80% so occupied.

So...people from India only want to come here? And people from here don't want to go to India? No. I don't think so.

India is the second most populous country in the world - second, of course, to China. It's very nice that Air Canada has woken up and realized that it should provide steady service to the major centres of China. But to do that by cutting off service to India??? What part of mismanagement do I not understand?

The aircraft pictured herein is for hire. Call me at 1-800-I-FLY-INDIA.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Dr. Strangelove is calling his latest madness a "Treatment " program. He is raising private money and hiring various unemployed political sycophants to promote the doomed notion of giving addicts substitute pills.

He is phoning people at home in the evenings (Did he once have a job as a telemarketer for Telus or Mastercard?) to argue the divine inspiration of his new cause. The imbalance of the City's tax system, the growing impossibility of running a small business, the grid-lock and inefficiencies of our transit system, these are of little concern to S.S. He's got a bone and he's damn well gonna chew it. Stand back, Unbelievers.

You need only remind S.S. that the Conspiracy of Get Nowhere, known as the Four Pillars Coalition, trumpets around the world Harm Reduction, Treatment, Enforcement and Prevention and he will tell you that giving substitute drugs to drug addicts is a "Treatment Program."

What's in a name?

Call it treatment and therefore, it's treatment.

Of course, this pathetic, ill-conceived and headed-straight-for-the-wastebasket day dream is clearly a Harm Reduction strategy. The formula is rock solid, if you'll pardon the pun. We give, they take - harm is reduced. So goes the theory and the model. Watch: We give needles, they take - HIV is reduced. Nice theory; indications are the opposite. We give "safe" injection site, they take - shooting in the alley and stealing are reduced. Not.

So now we are to give addicts pills, they will take - no stealing. Dream on, S.S.

What is so comical, so tragic, so downright smelly is the arrogance, the lack of understanding of human nature, the desire to be held aloft as the Saviour of Vancouver. Not having the practical wisdom to understand that human progress is made in tiny steps - a little here, a little there - Dr. Strangelove (Look at the hair across the forehead. All he needs is a leather glove and a moustache.) believes he will make one grand sweeping gesture and Vancouver will become drug-free, crime-free, homeless-free, not-nice-free.

Make no mistake, Taxpayers, this is an obsession.

He calls meetings to order, spends three minutes on other business and then pontificates for half an hour on this silliness while the gathered stare in silent disbelief and embarrassment.

He openly tells people that he doesn't want the police involved in drug matters, that prevention programs don't work and that abstinence treatment is an expensive failure. In other words, he doesn't support the Four Pillars strategy at all. He wants only harm reduction and to sell it to the suckers he calls it treatment.

But that's the Way of the Emperor, isn't it? If I say it is so, then it is so.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY

Health and prosperity to all.

HELL is an UNHINGED Mayor

What follows is 2 versions of the same report. The first is very personal and subjective. I scrubbed it in favor of the second, which I submitted to The Vancouver Sun Op Ed page for publication. As I haven't heard from them, I've decided to publish these pieces herein.

What you have to understand is that the Mayor is now phoning people and telling them that he wants to hand out pills to addicts on street corners. He always argues that if you disagree with him - as so many of us decidedly do, you just don't understand. Apparently the Mayor has been gifted a form of intelligence not known to most of us.

I URGE YOU TO WRITE OR E-MAIL PRIME MINISTER HARPER TO TRUST HIS BEST INSTINCTS AND REFUSE TO ALLOW THE EXEMPTION THAT WOULD BE REQUIRED FOR THIS DANGEROUS AND ANTI-HUMAN, ANTI-HOPE NOTION TO PROCEED.

FIRST VERSION

The most pernicious and misguided program in recent memory is now flowing like alluvial sludge from the office of Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan.

On the afternoon of Thursday, February 8, Mayor Sullivan called my home. He identified himself as “the guy in the wheel chair.” How weird is that?

He asked me to attend a discussion he was having with 20 or so people on Friday morning about his new drug initiative. I wondered aloud why he would want me there, as he is well aware that I think his ideas on this subject are batty and dangerous. He gave me some over-flattering excuse and I said I would be there.

Coffee, tea, croissants and apples were served. At each seat, there was a short agenda and a 6-page document on City of Vancouver letterhead titled, CAST, or Chronic Addiction Substitution Treatment, which took about 15 seconds to read and comprehend. It was delivered in bullet and comic book fashion, meant clearly for the kindergarten class that the Mayor and his stooges took us to be.

Stooge One is Don MacPherson, the head of the city’s drug directorate, during whose tenure of the last several years not one known addict has moved on in life, not one treatment bed has opened. Mr. MacPherson introduced Mayor Sam who spoke for about 10 minutes.

Stooge Two is David Holztman, who is now the City Authority on all matters relating to addictions, medicine and law and order. Mr. H. is steering CAST. He spent 20 minutes giving us a power point rendition of the comic book we had already absorbed in the first 15 seconds at the table.

The gist of this “exciting and progressive new” initiative is that we will give coke and meth heads free pills as substitutes for their poisons of choice. This stroke of genius is coming from a man – Mr. H. – who also praised the “alcohol maintenance” program now being run in Ottawa. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, “alcohol maintenance” means that you give an old sot a free shot of scotch every morning.

You think that we are making these things up, but we are not. This is how your tax dollars are being spent.

When the floor was opened for discussion, a man sitting next to me asked a very good question. “If we give these pills to all these addicts, how long will we be doing that?” I answered loudly, “Forever, of course. Don’t you get it?” (Later that day, Mr. H. appeared on a CBC radio program and admitted fully that “some people need to be on maintenance for life.) Then the mayor tried to deflect the question by talking about his Civil Society.

At that point I spoke up and this is what I said.


“This detestable concept reveals a fundamental refusal or inability to understand the most basic mechanics of addictions. What do addicts want? They want more. Not more children, more love, affection, books, opera or hockey tickets, housing or cars. They want more drugs. That is their singular focus. So you can give them free substitute pills at 9 in the morning all you want. But I guarantee you that by 2:15, they’ll be on the street stealing and hustling and breaking and entering just like they did yesterday. Most of you here are part of a bureaucratic agreement to accomplish nothing real, but you will spend a lot of taxpayers’ money doing it.”

At that point, I stood up, picked up my raincoat, pointed my finger at His Worship and said, “And Sam, don’t ever call me again.”

Sam smiled. He loves to get people upset. It’s just about his favourite thing on earth. That, and talking to junkies and hookers.

SECOND VERSION

The most pernicious and misguided program in recent memory is now flowing like alluvial sludge from the office of Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan.

The program is called CAST, or Chronic Addiction Substitution Treatment.

The gist of this “exciting and progressive new” initiative is that we will give coke and meth heads free pills as substitutes for their poisons of choice. David Holtzman has been employed by His Worship to promote this and other grand ideas. In a meeting I attended recently, Holtzman also praised the “alcohol maintenance” program now being run in Ottawa. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, “alcohol maintenance” means that you give an old sot a free shot of scotch every morning.

You think that we are making these things up, but we are not. This is how your tax dollars are being spent.

When I suggested to Mayor Sam, Holtzman and a room full of devotees that there was a fundamental flaw in this notion, Holtzman replied that people didn’t understand Rick Hansen when he set out as well. I answered that I understood their idea perfectly, I just didn’t agree with it. But that’s how the bureaucratic, arrogant mind works – if you don’t agree with their hot box of the day, certainly you must not understand it. And to compare giving addicts free pills with the work of Rick Hansen?

Here’s why this dreadful notion cannot work.

What do addicts want? They want more. More what? Not more children, diapers, food, homes, cars, books, affection, love, fame, opera or hockey tickets. No. They want more drugs. Period. End of story.

So, give them substitute pills at 9 am. At 2:15, they’ll be in the back alley stealing and breaking and entering and hustling just like they were yesterday. All the trumped up bar graphs and statistics will not prove otherwise. The program cannot and will not work.

Can you be proud of yourself knowing that you would willingly help a human being to remain stupid and entrapped and limited and less than human? Wouldn’t you want to try to help someone escape the cycle? Even if you don’t always succeed?

The Mayor and friends, who actively dislike and attempt to debunk, treatment programs will tell you that 75% of treatment doesn’t work. They are right. But 25% succeed and those are real people who live and breathe and raise children and pay taxes and contribute to a community they used to drain. Batting 250 will get you into Cooperstown, Sam.

And how does the Mayor explain the millions of alcoholics who “manage” their disability by staying clean and sober and attending a meeting once or twice a week? He doesn’t, because it doesn’t fit his plan.

Please stay out of the addictions business, Mr. Mayor. You and your bureaucrats don’t understand the fundamentals and all you can possibly do is add to the harm.

Civil Disobedience is Always Unfashionable

When in 1849, Henry David Thoreau published his landmark essay on Civil Disobedience, he could hardly have envisioned a tiny set-to on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery. And what would the man who wrote, "I heartily accept the motto - That government is best which governs least," have made of governments spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars for Greco-Roman competitions and revelry?

I wasn't there the other morning when various protesters interrupted the launching of the Olympic Clock, so I'll have to take everyone's word for it, that some got out of hand and downright unruly. Various of these frightening hooligans - for this is the designation given them by the press - have now been charged with mischief. (Imagine the real list of offenders who should be charged with "mischief": Sam Sullivan, Henry Kissinger, Montel.)

What is so unsettling is how quickly the press has rushed to condemn the few who have opposed the Games and how quick the press has been to enumerate the many marvels of compassion for the poor and homeless emanating from Victoria and City Hall.

I am a life long Contrarian. There is little in the majority opinion that has ever appealed to me, and much that offends.

So I am almost always delighted to see a healthy minority opposition to the Myth of the Day. Of course, rocks and pushing and storming the barricades are unnecessary and inappropriate and counter-productive in a milieu as sleepy and disconnected from the human heart as Vancouver, Canada.

Nevertheless, you have to wonder why the police and the press react so swiftly and so over-the-top themselves to what is a necessary and essential part of the democratic soup - small voices shouting loudly against the pleasant bleeting and mooing of the herd.

Carole, We Hardly Knew Ya...

Provincial NDP leader, Carole James, moments after criticizing the Liberal government's new Green Plan, admitted that she drove a honking great SUV. With a straight face, she claimed, "Well, my family and I go off road in the summer."

Is this the height of hypocrisy?

Mr. Campbells' Global Warming initiatives may or may not, in time, prove to be legitimate or effective.

But if we can't be responsible for our own contributions, should the world have to accept our foul air?

Carole, you shame yourself.

We Know How You Feel, Harry

But be not deceived.

Harry, a Dandie Dinmont Terrier, shown here at New York's annual Westminster Dog Show, won 56 Best-in-Shows last year.

GREAT COMMENT

Please check out the contribution from Eric Lee, a local engineer who is actively involved in alternate energy systems, to my blog of Saturday, February 3, 2007 on Global Warming and Climate Change.

Scroll down to the 4th Comment, folks; it's well worth your time.

This is one of the best commentaries we've received to date. Many thanks, Eric.

PRIORITIES

The Sun and the province - that is The Vancouver Sun newspaper and the Province of British Columbia - have like priorities.

Today, The Sun ran a story at the bottom of Page B2 headed, "Cuts will Force Victoria Child Care Program to Close." The gist, quoting directly form the paper, is this: "Less than 3 weeks ago, the Victoria Child Care Resource and Referral Program celebrated the grand opening of its new downtown storefront facility. By September, the program will be closed. Cuts - from the current $14 Million a year to $9 Million starting April 1 and to $3 million by September 1 - mean 46 such programs across B.C. will be shutting down."

While that important story was relatively obscured by its location and short word count, the Front Page trumpeted, with a foto and red headlines, the Olympic Countdown.

On page B2, above the quiet, little piece about $11 Million being cut from Child Care funding - lunch money by Provincial Budget standards - was a double page spread about all the wondrous and sundry Olympic venues and their progress and preparations for the Big Event.

Some examples:

Athletes' Village, Original cost, $167 Million, Update, $315 Million, or double

Vancouver Training Venues, Orig, $5M, update, $27 M, or X 5

Richmond Speedskating Oval, Orig. $60 M, update $200 M +, or X 3.

So, let's make this simple, kids.

Hundreds of millions of taxpayers' hard earned dollars are assigned and re-assigned and re-assessed and increased with nary a blink of the politicians' eye or public's outcry for 2 weeks of sport.

Child Care Funding - pennies compared to the Big Party - is slashed and goes unnoticed.

We are poor little sheep who have lost our way...

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Pow! You're dead.

Mikhail Kalishnikov invented the AK-47 combat submachine gun. In some countries this wonderfully cheap and effective killing machine can be bought for less than the price of a chicken...make that a live chicken.

Mr. Kalishinkov is now 85 years old. In 2002, he told the Guardian newspaper, "I wish I had invented a lawnmower."

GIFTED HEALER: A TESTIMONIAL

Was it 2 or 3 years ago that I first met Dr. Manon Bolliger?

I had walked into her Fourth Avenue offices crying. Sciatic pain, brought on by overly vigorous tennis playing, had kept me from sleep for 3 nights, and the pain, which usually visited most intensely in the wee, small hours, had now lodged permanently through my bum, hip, right leg, knee and foot.

A friend had recommended Dr. Bolliger and her mysterious "Bowen Technique," and I was obviously ready for anything - blood-letting, leeches, voodoo dolls, conga lines.

The first thing to say about the good Doctor is that she is beautiful. It's not just that she is so easy on the eye - which she is - but that she radiates some kind of healthy, positive glow. In a lifetime filled with parades of human beings of every stripe, I have been fortunate to meet a handful of people about whom it can be truly said, "He/she has an aura." Well, Dr. B. has an aura and it's sunlight.

The treatment couldn't have been more simple. Lie on a table, have a few muscles moved about. Not manipulations like a chiropractor, vigorous, sometimes difficult or painful. But quiet, non-invasive, subtle touching. A kind of laying on of hands.

I didn't notice any immediate change. I slept not much better that night.

But the next morning, I was in the kitchen, when I suddenly turned around in shock, as I realized the pain was gone. THE PAIN IS GONE! THE PAIN IS GONE!

I've been back to Dr. Bolliger's practice half a dozen times since that first visit. Each occasion is the same. I walk in hurting, she does her magic, I go home, the next day THE PAIN IS GONE!

This is a bald-faced testimonial. Try it; you'll like it.

Talkin' About...

Lest we ever be accused of single-mindedness, here is a list, moving chronologically from today back to very first post on December 29, 2006, of subjects considered:

Olympics & The Net
Homosexuality & Tolerance
Garth Turner, Gushy Modern Politician
Needle Exchange Program
Bush’s Budget
Little Mountain Care Home Dinner
Scorsese, The Desperate
Global Warming
Guest Rant: Victor
Michael Jackson
Your Rights, My Rights, Our Rights
Immigrants Obstacles to Jobs
Cheapskates
Hospital Funding
Bank Fees
Corn
Health Care Ailing
Pharmaceuticals Profits
The Federal Liberals
The Premier
Die Mannequin’s New Video
Enabling
The Cellar Jazz Club
Penelope Cruz
Pickton Trial Coverage
Delusional Mayor Sullivan
Brownback Mountain
James Brown
Addictions, Parts I, II & III
Serena Williams
Martin Luther King
Love
Lawrence of Arabia
Separating Elderly Couples
Fox News
Professional Colleges
CEO Theft
Rabbi Kisses The Devil
Michael Richards & Jesse Jackson
Saddam Hanged
Parole Boards

OLYMPICS STUCK

EARTH TO INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE! EARTH CALLING IOC!

The world is not flat, and...wait for it...BLOGGING HAS JUST BEGUN!!!

News emerges today from that centre of all things modern, Lausanne, Switzerland, (Perhaps the mountain trails have been impassable these last several years.), that Olympic athletes may be allowed to blog for the first time at the 2008 summer games to be held in Beijing.

The IOC in their ever-forward momentum is considering this revolution in personal freedoms. At the moment, athletes and others (coaches and similar sweaty riff-raff) are barred from pretending toward journalism. The apparent reasoning - if reasoning is what it can be called - is the protection of "accredited media."

Hello?

As we write, there are approximately 2,000,000 bloggers alive and posting. Those numbers increase geometrically overnight.

Almost everyone I know turns daily to the net for alternates to the abandoned franchises of "accredited media." The mainstream press has by and large lost its way in committees, polls and double entry bookkeeping. Instinct and street smarts are unknown in the boardrooms of CBS and Corus and Time-Warner.

The IOC has offered that athletes might be allowed to blog the 2008 Summer Games as long as they don't use photos, video or audio.

Perhaps the IOC - trapped as they are by the winter snows in the Chocolate and Cuckoo Clock Factory high in the Alps - has failed to notice that Google just bought YouTube for $1.2Billion. YouTube is a kind of visual community blog.

The net and blogging and whatever comes tomorrow morning is The Tsunami of Modern Communications. Get it or fall behind.

The Olympics folk are still hanging about the agora in Athens waiting for the lemon stand to open.

GAY ALERT! SOUND THE HORNS!

More than 17% of 2000 Canadians recently polled "said they would not want a gay person living next door."

Hahahahahahahahahaha...

What exactly is the nature of this fear? Your nose will fall off? The trees will no longer bear...may I say it, fruit? Icicles will become permanent adornments...in colors yet? Your sons and daughters will switch teams? Your husband will? Your husband HAS?

Dear 17 percenters: Try to get a life.

TURNCOAT GUSHES

Garth Turner is a maverick. He was also, until yesterday, an Independent Member of Parliament. He was elected as a Conservative for the district of Halton, Ontario. However, he was thrown out of caucus by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Yesterday, he joined the Liberals. None of this should be of much surprise or even note, especially to those of us here on the Wet Coast, who continue to live with the shame of David Emerson, elected as a Liberal, sitting from Day One as a Conservative.

What makes Mr. Turnercoat's actions so pitiable was this quote, "I have found a home."

How squishy, how yukkie, how terribly 70's sensitive!

Will someone please explain to the modern politician that it is not about YOU, nobody cares about HOW YOU FEEL. It's about the citizens. It's about health care and law and order and immigration and jobs and global warming and the well-being of the community.

You self-centred, self-absorbed, selfish fools - please get day jobs and leave governance to those rare few who might be able to handle it.

** IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH **

HIV incidence was 75 percent higher among daily users of Vancouver’s needle exchange program (NEP) than among drug abusers that did not use the program, according to a new study published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Medicine. Vancouver, Canada boasts the largest NEP in the Western Hemisphere.

Why has this not been reported in the local news?