They just killed a man and drove away

You might think this is quote from Chicago in the '20s or Vancouver in '07.

But no, it's another saver from Bush's war in Iraq, where, once again, a private American "security" company has killed an Iraqi citizen - a cab driver - with no provocation.

How is it possible that so many millions of Americans - and Canadians for that matter - cannot see the fundamental corruption that lies at the core of this dreadful battle?

Merchants & Musqueam - 2 Different Worlds

This is an excellent piece by Michael Smyth in today's Province.

But he could have gone even farther.

The point about the Musqueam deal is that it was entirely a story of 2 Campbell's - the Preem and the Musqueam Chief, Ernie Campbell.

Almost no other human being was in on this agreement, and few would have signed on if they were asked - including the Musqueam people.

As for the Cambie Merchant's plight, how many times can we point out this civic atrocity?

Libs' priorities: My, how they have changed
The 'new' premier fights small biz, courts Musqueam
Â
Michael Smyth
The Province
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Any politician's priorities can turn upside down to suit the times and circumstances.
But when it comes to Premier Gordon Campbell's agenda, two days last week showed just how dramatically things can change.
On Wednesday, the Campbell government's lawyers lost their attempt to quash a compensation lawsuit by one of the dozens of Cambie Street merchants whose businesses have been devastated by Canada Line construction.
On Friday, Campbell announced a land deal to give the Musqueam Indian Band the UBC Golf Club and part of Pacific Spirit Park in a "reconciliation agreement."
If you'd told me a few years ago these would be Campbell's priorities today, I'd have wondered what your were smoking.
Consider the irony of Campbell fighting small businesses impacted by a public megaproject. Cambie Street merchants have lost an average of $112,000 each because of Canada Line construction chaos and the Campbell government has refused to compensate them.
It was a different story when the Liberals were in Opposition.
When the NDP government built the Millennium Line SkyTrain extension, many impacted businesses complained -- and the Liberals stood up for them.
"These people have invested their life's dreams and all their money in these places," said then-Liberal-MLA Christy Clark.
But the NDP refused to compensate the Millennium Line businesses -- something Liberal Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon wasn't afraid to point out on Thursday.
"They did nothing when they were in government," Falcon lectured.
So two wrongs make a right, eh? Now the Liberals spend your tax dollars on lawyers to fight the very businesses they supported in the past.
At least Clark hasn't betrayed her principles, and now supports compensating the Cambie merchants. Campbell should take a look in the mirror and do the same.
The premier's change is even more stark on the First Nations file.
In 2002, Campbell held a "legally binding" referendum in which 95 per cent of voters said public parks should not be ceded to First Nations in treaty settlements.
Now he's given portions of Pacific Spirit Park to the Musqueam -- a First Nation Campbell fought fiercely when they imposed 7,000-per-cent rent hikes on non-native leaseholders in the 1990s.
"Here the Musqueam have gone ahead and done something without any representation from any of the people," Campbell fumed back then.
Now the same criticism could be levelled at his surrender of the golf course and parkland without public input -- decisions, like the betrayal of the Cambie businesses, the "old Campbell" would have scorned.
© The Vancouver Province 2007

Feminist Agenda or Higher Principals?

A Reform Synagogue in St. Louis has offered its sanctuary to two women who wish to be ordained into the Catholic Church as priests.

The local Archdiocese is angry.

The Rabbi of the Synagogue is a woman.

Read the whole story here, and then tell me where your sympathies fall.

A good argument in favor of this action might be that this is a kind and loving and open and accepting thing for the schul to do. That sanctuary is sanctuary.

And I will understand that argument.

But I don't accept it.

I think instead that this is meddling of the silliest order. That this is looking for a fight and finding it with delight. That Synagogues need not have much interest in the afffairs of Catholic Churches and vice versa. That this is Feminism gone mental.

Will I be surprised to learn that Lesbianism is it at the core of this story and that there is considerable winking and chortling behind the altars and that none of this will ever emerge lest it be called politically incorrect and various abominations and discriminatory and witch hunting? No.

You Want an Elected Senate. Be careful What You Wish For

I must tell you honestly that I have been surprised by my survey on the question of The Canadian Senate.

The largest majority of respondents have said that the senate should be elected, rather than abolished.

I have believed for may years the Senate should be abolished. It is expensive and redundant.

We have an elected body of governors in Parliament.

If the Senate truly represented a serious body of "sober second thought," it might be worth salvation. But it is nothing remotely like that. It is a sinecure for party loyalists. A major salary, secretary, expenses, privileges and pension for doing absolutely nothing of redeeming value.

For example, take Larry Campbell, please!

Do you really believe that more elected officials will bring breaths of fresh air to a political scene that for many years now has been peopled by charlatans, fools and the chronically inept?

Money spent on this charade, elected or appointed, is money taken from health care, education, housing, agriculture, research and infrastructure.

Cambie St. Law Suit Update - More Good Citizenship

Court fight brewing over Cambie Street
By DHARM MAKWANA, 24 HOURS




A group of Cambie Street small-business owners are building momentum, on the back of a B.C. Supreme Court ruling, to launch a class-action lawsuit against the province for financial losses caused by Canada Line construction.

Susan Heyes, maternity clothes designer and head of Hazel & Co., is leading the litigation charge after the province's attorneys failed to quash her case for compensation before the court Wednesday.

"I'm appalled that I even have to be talking about suing my own government for damage caused by a project that they insisted on building," she said.

Vancouver-Fairview MLA Gregor Robertson, a staunch small-business supporter, took the fight to Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon yesterday in the Legislature, only to be told the province will not comment on the Cambie Street quagmire until a judge rules on Heyes' complaint.

"They've already destroyed these small businesses and now they're going to fight them in court," Robertson said. "It's abominable."

Heyes, who claims to have lost $400,000 in net revenue since November 2005, said a year-long wait for her case to be heard should do nothing to diminish her cause.

Suing the Bad Guys

A huge congratulations and a badge of courage to Laurie Tinga, who is suing the 6 criminals who shot her.

The criminals are known to have shot her, but, as usual, the police and the courts can't prove it, so, as usual, they are at large.

But, Tinga, a completely innocent bystander, who has survived being shot in the head, has launched a civil suit against these crooks.

I have long advocated exactly this kind of action from aggrieved citizens. Sue the National Parole Board for their refusal to see danger and releasing madmen back into the community. Sue anybody in a position of authority who costs you loss of life or limb or property by their inadequate performance of their duties.

Tinga is a brave woman and a true citizen.

Watch the Vancouver Sun video interview with her here.

Calling Something GOOD doesn't Make it So

There is a demented leap of logic that has pervaded what passes for thinking in North America in recent years.

People ripe for stupidity have noticed the phenomenon of "owning" you true self/happiness/affliction.character/disease, etc.

Blacks claimed "black power" and chanted "Black is beautiful," and helped for good reason to change the mindset of an entire generation.

Gays took up the challenge, embraced their reality, chanted "Gay Pride," and did the same for their subset of citizens.

Now, every dog wants his day. And often, it is not even the "maligned" group itself that is trumpeting its worth, but some sympathetic booby-hatched do-gooder.

VANDU is the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. This gang of crazies has convinced the mandarins of Officialdumb that being a dope fiend is a legitimate "lifestyle," when we all know it is a life of misery, hopelessness, degradation of no accomplishment (without which man cannot survive.)

Now, I learn today, reading Daphne Bramham's excellent column ("2010 will make city a magnet for human trafficking") in the Sun , that Libby Davies wants to open a brothel in vancouver in time for the Olympics and that this wonderful addition to our cultural landscape will be run as a cooperative by the women.

I must pause to laugh long...hahahahahaha....or I will collapse in tears of despair.

Davies is a Member of Parliament. People keep electing her to govern.

The completely rogue BC Teachers' Federation also believes in prostitution.

What part of misery, degradation, self-hatred, hopelessness, violence, disrespect and danger do these fools not understand?

For those are but some of the handmaidens of prostitution.

I spent 10 years working with addicts. Every one of the female addicts had been a prostitute. Evey single last one of these women were drowning in misery, degradation, self-hatred, hopelessness, violence, disrespect and danger.

Sullivan wants to further enslave young girls by giving them drugs so they can continue to be human sex slaves.

Davies wants to "legitimize" prostitution.

Vandu claims legitimacy for being a dope fiend.

These vile mistaken fools confuse these vile mistaken ideas with black power and gay rights and other small triumphs of "ownership."

And in doing so they diminish the real accomplishments of legitimate achievement.

Norman Mailer Dead at 84

There is a an appropriately thorough biography and tribute to this modern titan in this morning's NY Times.

Please read it and cherish the memory of a noisy, bold man, full of faults and blessings, who lived passionately to the full.

Remembrance Day - Billy Joel/Leningrad

It's another war; it's another place.

It's the same story of sons and fathers, mothers and daughters, lovers, sweethearts, and madness, madness...

BIrthday Suits in Surrey - Or, The Surrey with the Fringe on Top

Now, I've been doing this blog since last December, and I discovered Surveys about 5 or 6 months ago.

But I've got to tell you that nobody made me laugh so hard as the wag who answered today's survey on THE SENATE with this "other" contribution:

The senate should .......swim nude in Surrey!

Murder on 5th Avenue - New York. that is

You can't write material like this.

If the writers for "Law and Order" were still at work, they would be screaming for the rights to this story.

What makes it perfect is the coda that Elton John is preparing a memorial for the victim.

Transclunk Crashes Again

It must have been about ten years ago that I returned from a visit to Washington, DC and reported on the efficiencies of the subway system there.

You pay according to the distance you will travel to get into the system.

You hold onto your ticket.

You punch the ticket to get out.

If you haven't paid enough (because you have travelled farther than you said you would) the turn style tells you to go pay more money before it will let you out.

You turn 10 feet to your left, pay another 50 cents or whatever, and the turn style lets you go visit the Smithsonian.

BUT Transclunk in all its accumulated wisdom went with the "honor" system. Hahahahaha...

Now that genius of all geniuses, Malcolm Brodie announces a retrofit for fare gates - but no turn styles.

Of course, it will cost hundreds of millions of your dollars. Of course, the fares will rise.

ICBC Too Successful

How happy can we be to learn that ICBC has turned a half BILLION dollar profit?

It's nice that it's not losing money.

But a HALF BILLION profit?

Maybe my famous Roadstar rate could be cut in half?

Nakedness. Nudity, Yech! Not here you don't, you perv

Nudity seems to be an important issue for British Columbians.

The Sun reports that the altogether ("in their altogethers") calm and harmless book, "Wreck Beach," is just too much for the crude, rude travellers on BC Ferries, so it's been ditched.

But yesterday, my friend Jonathan Baker tells me that his junior law partner just triumphed over the burghers of Surrey, who couldn't stand the idea of nude swimming in one of their local pools. Late at night with closed windows for a nudist group. Shocking.

Read the whole SkinnyDipper decision here.

Funny, I seem to remember swimming nude at the YMHA in Winnipeg regularly when I was a boy...but that was the enlightened '50s in Winnipeg.

And while we're on the subject of "swimming pools in Surrey," how about the City of Surrey changing its policy such that an 80-year old man who has been swimming and using the gym for free, now has to pay?

How stupid, how petty, how without vision are these people?

If an 80-year old man uses the gym and pool every day, he is staying healthy and thus saving the community thousands of dollars in health care costs.

But some mandarin, mad with power, decides we should charge this veteran.

They should pay him!

James Taylor Sings Paul Simon

CBC - Chinese Broadcorping Castration

"Reprehensible" is indeed a good description for the CBC's action of pulling a documentary on the Falun Gong Tuesday night.

They've had many months to review this piece, which they commissioned and paid for. But when the Chinese Embassy called, the Mother Corp folded its bloomers and disappeared.

Shame on these people.

Democracy? Journalism?

How about cowardice? Creepiness?

This is a tried, old brand. It has been a has been for about 30 years now.

Try radical surgery.

Les Changes His Tiny Mind

What a difference a day makes.

Only yesterday, I published an item called "Les is Much, Much Less."

Today, out Top Cop has decided that maybe Kash Heed wasn't so out of line by calling for a discussion on a regional police force. Today, he says, "it's a valid discussion.'

What did they put in his grapefruit juice?

To make matters worse, the Kim CapriPants runner-up, Pam Goldsmith-Jones, the Mayor of West Vancouver, hadn't even read Kash Heed's Sun editorial when Les called her to whine about her new Chief of Police.

Pammy doesn't read the paper?

It is now official - between Vancouver City hall, Richmond, and the provincial Legislature, we have hands-down the worst politicians in the history of British Columbia.

Kim CapriPants is Excited

Kim CapriPants is excited. How wonderful.

We may spend more tax money on "ambassadors" for the downtown cesspool. Tose are those scared, frightened, embarrased looking souls in funny shirts and hats that mingle with the dealers, addicts, thieves, Korean students and Japanese tourists who think that Robson and Granville somehow is Vancouver.

Kimmy feels this is helping with the nutty mayor's Civil City initiative.

Hahahahaha...I'm laughing till I'm crying.

The Police have rightly pointed out that this is money wasted that ahould be spent on more police.

Congratulations, Cambie Merchant!

Susan Heyes, whose fight with the Canada Line has been well-documented on this blog, has won the right to continue her lawsuit against the LIne, the City, the Province, the feds and Transclunk for compensation.

This is true citizenship.

Notice how all the "officials went to court to try to stop her.

"All official stories are lies."

What is "Entertaining" About Granville Street?

The police want more money to patrol the Granville so-called "entertainment" district.

This hell hole should be called the Granville Get Stupid Drunk on Cheap Beer district. What is it exactly that is entertaining about Granville Street downtown?

If it needs more policing - and it does - that cost should be borne entirely by the millionaires who own all the beer parlors.

Why should I pay taxes to make one or two creeps millionaires on beer and misery?