The Killing Fields of Politics

Politics has been interfering with and dismantling reality for as long as people have been gathering in the town square.

But this latest from America is really unbearable.

The Democrats proposed that troops in Iraq, who are widely acknowledged to be overworked in combat, be given home leave commensurate with their tours of duty.

This motion was defeated yesterday by Republicans.

Thus, for the sake of partisan politics, men and women, who are putting their lives on the line too many hours of the day and too many days and months in a row, will continue to be put in harm's way. Many will die.

These bastard polticians should hang their heads in shame.

Dan Rather Sues the Company that Made him Rich & Famous

For the whole pathetic mess, read this NY Times story.

What a turkey. Always was.

Anatomy of a SCAM - Canada Line Bamboozle

FIRST: The media notice:

Lunch on the Line week from Sept 24 - 28

Media are invited to join Jane Bird, CEO, Canada Line Rapid Transit, Henry Lee, Chairman, The Vancouver Board of Trade and Co-Chair, Spirit of Vancouver and Darcy Rezac, Managing Director, The Vancouver Board of Trade as they announce “Lunch on the Line” week, 11:00 am, Wednesday, September 19 at Tokyo John Sushi in the Cambie Village.

From September 24 – 28, business people are being encouraged to take a client to lunch or treat their staff at a restaurant in the Cambie Village that has been affected by the Canada Line construction.

SECOND: The reply from a Cambie businesswoman:

Attn: Greg Johnson - The Pace Group

I have just been forwarded this press release by several members of our media, looking for comment on this proposal from CLCo and the Board of Trade. As usual, none of the businesses knew anything about it, and have not been consulted about the details.

We, the struggling businesses in the Cambie Village are delighted with this latest initiative from Canada Line.....simply if it finally brings to the neighbourhood the very people that have strongly supported this project, and to see for themselves the level of devastation it has caused in the Cambie Village. The conclusion they will come to is that all the project-promoting attempts at mitigation have obviously failed.

They will see that compensation should have been factored in, and was not, and is most certainly the right thing to immediately implement now.

They will see all the empty shops that were once the sole source of income for the families that operated them, who have now been forced out by this project. This token gesture, so late in the game, is irrelevant as a way to save us from bankruptcy, but may demonstrate to those who take the time to come here, a needed awareness of the level of harm this government driven project has caused. And by the way - I don't think that executives at the TD bank or Best Buy have had to re-mortgage their homes to keep their "small businesses" alive as have many merchants in the village. Our losses are life changing, and businesses unsustainable without financial compensation.

This is a Provincial project. The government's precedent being set here is that small businesses are expendable. Look out, businesses on Broadway. You could be next. We were promised a bored tunnel, too.

The right thing to do is compensate this community for the unjust financial burden we have been forced to bear.

It's much more than "lunch" that we all have on the line.

Susan Heyes
Hazel&Co

THIRD: My email to Susan Heyes:

Susan,

I will gladly publish this on my blog...but certainly you must realize that anything that comes from The Pace Group is an utterly insincere, snow job. The Pace Group is the very worst kind of Public Relations firm, famous for creating exactly these kinds of meaningless public demonstrations that are transparent in their cynicism.

I wish it were otherwise.

David

Kiss Me Once

Love at first bite is a research study at a university.

Well, I guess it keeps these professors off the street where they could do real harm.

CSIS should be sued by the Air India Families

CSIS erased surveillance tapes.

The Justice investigating the Air India case called CSIS and its actions and its refusal to share information "inconceivable, incomprehensible, indefensible incompetence."

I'm sure there's a Sinatra song in there somewhere.

But in the face of this level of bungling and stupidity, what else can you do but laugh.

Or cry.

329 people murdered. $50 Million wasted on a trial with no result.

RCMP is Lost and Defeated

Do the RCMP have no pride?

Two idiot cops get drunk and run around the street looking for people to beat up.

Result?

Lose 10 days pay.

If the RCMP has any sense of justice, or their own worth, or real values or even PR, these two hooligans would be fired on the spot.

How are we supposed to approve and trust the force when it doesn't take itself seriously?

Take a Deep Breath Now...

An 81-year old man in Gordon Head (an appelation soon to take on new meaning) has been living with a catheter in his dick for 85 days now.

Seems there is no urologist around to take this tube out.

Like a nurse in ER couldn't do this.

So much for my occasional day dream about retiring to Victoria.

City Profligate Spenders of Your Money

A few days ago, I wrote about the $23 Million that will be spent to provide 2 so-called Live Sites during the Olympics. I suppose there will be giant TV screens erected on otherwise quiet David Lam Park.

Today we learn that the $5 Million that will come from City Hall is supposed to be drawn from the "Olympic Reserve Fund."

Turns out that this reserve has no money in it.

And you and I are being chastised for spending money we don't have.

A World Full of Justice

While the Nazis were busy gassing women and children at Auschwitz, their senior officers and families were sunning themsleves and enjoying blueberries.

A new series of astonishing photographs have surfaced after all these years. You can see the slide show and read the entire story here.

Note that Karl Hocker, the camp's second in command, was not gassed on his arrival or beaten or even slapped.

He was convicted of war crimes and served seven years before his release in 1970, after which he was rehired by the bank. Höcker died in 2000 at 89.

Come OFF the Bench, Y'r Honor, and Try Reality

In the case cited in the post below (College Continues in Darkness), Dr. Mark Walter Stewart faced 78 counts of sexual assault.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce has declared that ""In my view, the petitioner [Dr. Sex Fiend] is not the type of person Parliament had in mind when it created the Sex Offender Information Registry Act."

This is an interesting comment from a Justice.

What type of person DID Parliament have in mind, You Honour?

Someone who is charged with 79 counts?

Dr. Sex Fiend still denies any culpability and continues to insist that all 64 of the women he assaulted "misinterpreted" his behaviour.

I'm sure that all the women of B.C. feel so much safer with Justice Catherine Bruce on the bench.

Doctors' College gets to Continue in Darkness

BC College of Physicians & Surgeons can breathe easier. But we have been robbed as a citizenry of learning more about the arcane workings of this cabal.

Twenty-two women courageously sued the College for its alleged failure to protect them from the sexual assaults of a Doctor.

Unfortunately, the women have now accepted an out of court settlement, which allows the College to continue to operate in the shadows, often protecting their own at public expense.

The good news is that, when this case first arose some years ago, the College attempted to have it squashed, claiming it (the College) had no legal duty to the care of patients of its members.

The court disagreed and that was what allowed the case to continue.

Now, if we can only get someone to sue Corrections Canada and the National Parole Board for so many of its dreadful, often lethal, bad decisions.

The Runaway Co$t$ of City Hall

Don Cayo rightly reveals the ugly numbers at City Hall:

Vancouver spends $137 per taxpayer each year compared to Surrey's $40 in the cost of general government; $20 in policing compared to $200 in Surrey, Burnaby & Coquitlam; $108 in planning & development compared to less than $50 in Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond & Coquitlam.

He then goes on to point out (blame?) the high cost of unionized workers.

Good info - bad conclusion.

The high cost of City Government is all about very highly paid middle management sitting in meetings all day gabbing about nothing. Like all institutions, City hall is a self-perpetuating organism that grows daily in exactly inverse proportion to any use or common sense. We have entire departments that are questionable in their very existence. We are convinced that we must do everything for everybody.

So far, what that kind of thinking has achieved is bloated non-governance and over-taxed citizens.

Ecodensity Challenged by Guest Blogger Baker

The following article is reproduced in its entirety from a website called "EcoPreservation." You can access that site and its other components here.

The author, Jonathan Baker, is a former City Councillor, a lawyer, a musician and an old friend.

WHY VANCOUVER’S ECO-DENSITY POLICY IS A FRAUD.By Jonathan Baker

Vancouver's Planner, Mayor and Council – the drum majors for the Development Industry are trying to persuade us that if we only let that Industry do their thing in single family neighbourhoods we will save the Pandas and spotted owls and all the glaciers will come galloping back.

Eco-Density is a copyrighted fraud.It is contrary to the GVRD's Livable Region Plan (LRP) and against common sense.

Environmental Preservation is a primary goal of the LRP which was in preparation for years and adopted in about 1996. One of the four major strategies to achieve this purpose is “to build complete communities.”

The central concept is to build a series of complete town centres. Vancouver is one of those centres. The other others are Coquitlam Town Centre, Downtown New Westminster, Langley Town Centre, Lonsdale (North Vancouver), Maple Ridge Town Centre, Metrotown (Burnaby), Richmond Town Centre and Surrey City Centre. Each of these town centres is expected to supply the housing diversity required so that people who wish to choose a particular housing type near to where they live have it available to them.

It was never a policy that people who want to live within the geographic boundaries of Vancouver ought to be immune from the law of supply and demand. To the contrary the strategy seeks to encourage people to live where they work so as to reduce commuting times. The Demand for housing was intended to be a function of jobs i.e. being able to live close to where you work.

An article by Trevor Boddy in the Vancouver Sun published on August 11, 2005 pointed out that the expansion of housing in Vancouver is at the expense of jobs. In this respect he says that it is becoming a “resort”. Much of the new housing demand results from the fact that people want to live here not to be close to work but because it is cool to do so. That is all very well but it turns the commuting policy on its head if people expect to live in Vancouver and work somewhere else.

Stephen Rees made the following comments about Boddy's article. Boddy's article is in quotes.
"...because of short sighted urban planning, downtown Vancouver may be becoming a fool's paradise. This is because people are coming to live and play here, but not to work.

Director of central area planning Larry Beasley confirmed in a recent interview that no new office tower has started construction or even been proposed for our downtown core in the new century. None. ..."

"According to condo and live-work tower developer Ian Gillespie, there is now a five to one ratio between the economic rate of return per square metre of new condominium apartment built in downtown Vancouver, versus a square metre of new office. ... I mentioned this five to one ratio to a May 26 symposium at New York's Institute of Urban Design, and the assembled developers, realtors, planners and architects could not name another city, anywhere, where the economic return from building condos so eclipses offices."

Boddy blames this on both land use policy - the lack of "dedicated office tower sites where business actually wants them - west of Granvillle" - and municipal taxes - businesses pay five times as much per square metre as residential compared to Toronto at 3.3 and Calgary at 2.7.
Boddy goes on to examine the impact on transportation - noting that the Skytrain plus RAV is essentially radial from downtown, "ridership projections for this latest line predict more people leaving downtown to work in Richmond than coming into the centre". He compares the peninsular of San Francisco (population 788,000) and Vancouver (580,000) "Nearly 900,000 people travel into downtown San Francisco daily, but only one third of this number enter our core (and our figures are essentially flat, growing at a mere one per cent annually ...)"

These comments are right. What the City needs to do is create more places to work in the down town core. Instead it is turning the city over to developers who are only to happy to buy land in single family neighbourhoods and build higher density housing thus eroding the required single family stock, and creating an imbalance in the commuting patterns.

Brain Theft at McGill - Give Coke to Coke Heads

The headline says it all:

"USERS GIVEN FREE COCAINE IN McGILL STUDY"

Academic research is a holy grail and may rarely be discredited. If you question one research project, you are apparently against freedom of thought.

This, of course, is the faultiest misuse of logic.

Nevertheless, the immoral, irresponsible eggheads of the world must do what they can to defend their dreadful acts and their detestable spending of public money on "experiments" that cannot possibly have any meaningful outcomes.

In this case, the study will last 10 years. Which, let's face it is a nice sinecure for some otherwise useless hallway gasbag.

The news report says the cost is $120,000 annually for this.

Even I don't have to grab my handy desk calculator to point out that this travesty costs you and me $1,200,000.

To add outrage to insult, this hocus-pocus was chosen as the BEST among 50 applicants applying for grants related to brain function.

I'd like to apply for a grant to study a) how the brains of people who give coke to coke heads function, if at all; and b) how the brains of people who award grants to people who give coke to coke heads function, if at all.

This alleged study hopes to cast light on addictions.

We already know just about everything we need to know about addictions. More importantly, we know how to treat addictions.

All we have to do know is have the courage to fund treatment.

Tiger is Amazing

A question for all the benighted, misguided fans of Phil Mickelson:

When has Phil ever won 2 events in a row?

No doubt, Phil has talent. And Phil has soft hands, great touch.

But he is among the streakiest players in history, relatively undisciplined and subject to colossal mental meltdowns that result in flat dumb golf decisions.

In contrast:

Tiger has won 4 of his last 5 tournaments, and, in winning the Fedex event this weekend by 8 strokes, he became the first player in history to win 7 or more events in a season 4 times in his young playing life.

Why do fans and broadcasters mention these two men in the same breath?

Who is O.J. Simpson?

O.J. Simpson is being held without bail in a local jail in Las Vegas.

This latest fiasco has something to do with sports memorabilia, hotel rooms, guns, gangs and so on.

But amidst all that has been written and all the hours of CNN and Larry King devoted to Simpson in recent years, there is one thing I have yet to hear:

What kind of a shnuck is this guy actually? Is he a major pain in the ass? Is he pleasant? Funny? Volatile? Vengeful? Respectful? Even-handed? Under-handed? Was he a good teammate in his football years?

We are all convinced that Simpson is innocent or guilty of murder. But what do we really know about this guy?

Church and State

Hallelujah!

The Republicans are having trouble finding a candidate who goes to church.

Which means, among other things, that the Bush era, of a country run by fundamentalist zealots,will be pushed aside for a while.

Imagine a major power that is not run by TV evangelists. I can hardly wait to see what this is like.

Civil Liberties and The Net

The police chiefs are right to wonder about Stockwell Day's refusal to let them get quick access to your personal computer information. Just as Day is right to be cautious about this issue.

Privacy and individual liberties are hard won and we need be ever vigilant in their maintenance.

But there are relatively simple practicalities involved here.

If a maniac is using the net for criminal purposes, the police should not have to struggle to trace the bad guy through his isp. And that can be done without bothering with which porno sites you cruised last night or whose spouse you chatted up.

I received the ugliest threatening e-mail a few years ago at the radio station.

The VPD traced the sender to a fool in North Vancouver. The did a little "meet and greet." The man apologized and I have never heard from him again.

Civil liberties are complex. We must hold tightly to these ideals and catch the bad guys at the same time.

Ferry Ride

The Campbell government pulled one of the oldest gags in the book when it "privatized" the BC Ferries.

Of course, we the taxpayers still shovel millions of dollars into this wet road system (which is, after all, the slithery end of the Trans-Canada Highway), but now Victoria can put up their arm's distance and claim innocence whenever anything goes wrong (like, daily) and whenever the fares are hiked higher than a Powell Street hooker's skirts.

David Hahn, the American airline executive from the East Coast, who now runs this system, has been raising the rates consistently since he came aboard. In return, we are given posters, murals and video games.

What he has never considered is the obvious reduction in fares for resident daily and regular users such as exists in almost every public transportation system around the world.

Tourists pay 6 Euros a ticket for Venice's water bus, the vaparetto. But anyone with a Venice ID card (I have one.) can buy 10 tix for 9 Euros.

My last trip to Victoria cost $53 each way for me and my tiny Mazda. In addition, I paid $15 for a reservation on the return trip.

Now, that reservation system has been a huge income booster for Mr. Hahn. To avoid 3 hour waits, more and more British Columbians are paying the surcharge.

But more and more British Columbians, knowing that a car and a carload of family will cost them $200 Plus for a little getaway are staying home.

Can you say, "Highway Robbery, Boys and Girls?"

Confessions/Reflections

This afternoon, I began reading "All Quiet on the Western Front; this evening, "Tender is the Night."

The first is a most famous book about German soldiers in the First World War, the second, F. Scott Fitzgerald's invention of The Jazz Age.

People of long passed eras were lucky - they died within their own generation. They weren't presented with the enormous psychological challenge - or Gift - of facing Change with a capital "C."

I am coming at this ripe old age to recognize how "of another era" I truly am.

I love these two new books I've started today. I love the memories and the lore and myths of the early and mid-twentieth century. I am a nostalgic fool. Yes, I like Sting or even Bono or Elvis Costello, but not the way I positively swoon and come unglued over Gershwin or Rogers and Hart or Jerome Kern. Astaire and Brando are still my greatest movie heroes, even while I recognize the talents of Edward Norton and Nicole Kidman.

The kids in their early adulthood are largely strangers to me. I see them now at the college where I work and I notice their goodness and their seriousness towards their studies and towards each other. Yet I cling to the (fictive?) narrative that "we" were sharper, more attuned to Literature and mathematics and the affairs of the world. None of this may be true in any objective sense, but my belief system is an ontological raft bobbing in this ocean of change.

Was cruelty more overt have a century ago?

Two Great Awful Wars allowed for a release of savagery on massive scales. We have little explosions around the globe like this today. But mostly, the crudeness and violence seem to come in small and local doses. Families and neighbours and lovers kill each other. What are 3,000 troops compared to Hiroshima, Dresden, London, Auschwitz?

So much of the differences are simply style. I must forgive the world its bare midriff, pierced lip and i-plugged ears.

The trick is to cherish was has been...and to revel in the new that is good and exciting and hopeful.