Adios...for a day or two
On Monday morning, I will be heading into the woods for a few days.
I'll be reading....books! Remember those?
The news will have to survive without my take.
See you all on Thursday morning.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Wallace Craig exposes the Meddling
"Set in a sterile and disused pre-trial jail behind the Criminal Court at 222 Main Street, the DCC will be a revolving-door court for drug addicts, a finger-in-the-dyke experiment that lacks the critical support of detoxification and residential treatment premises."
This is the second paragraph is what is perhaps Justice Wallace Craig's best piece ever in the North Shore News.
Read it and understand that the community court is a good idea, amateurishly executed.
Pop the Corks!
"Celebrate?"
What are you doing today to celebrate Insite's fifth anniversary?
Take a junkie to brunch.
Break into a Lexus.
Drag a political candidate screaming through the DTES back alleys.
Light up with Elizabeth May.
SEx, Lies & Injection Sites
HERE IS RAW POLITICS.
TOTAL SPIN AND FABRICATIONS.
WHAT IS WORSE IS THAT
ITS AUTHORS ACTUALLY
BELIEVE WHAT THEY ARE SAYING.
THE TRUTH IS THAT
THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THIS
DISASTER THAT "WORKS."
AND DEMONIZING THE PRIME MINISTER WON'T CHANGE THAT.
Vancouver's supervised injection site celebrates fifth anniversary
Cheryl Chan The Province
Sunday, September 21, 2008
When Insite, North America's first supervised drug-injection site marks its fifth anniversary in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside Sunday, the celebration will be tempered with disappointment.
Despite research that shows Insite works, the federal government has refused to support it, say members of PHS Community Services, which runs the facility along with Vancouver Coastal Health.
"Old arguments against Insite just don't stand up against real research," executive director Liz Evans told The Province. "It's time to accept that supervised-injection sites are a necessary part of the comprehensive plan needed to seriously address drug addiction." "It's time for Stephen Harper to listen to the evidence and put public health before politics," said Mark Townsend, Evans' partner and a fellow PHS executive.
Insite has been the subject of more than 30 peer-reviewed studies and several government-commissioned reports that show it has a positive impact in the community, has taken more than a million injections off city streets, has intervened in more than 850 overdoses, has reduced transmission of HIV and hepatitis C and does not attract new drug users. Townsend said it is "disappointing" to be constantly fighting the battle against Ottawa, despite support from the municipal and provincial governments and nearly 80 per cent of doctors in the Canadian Medical Association. "The sad part of it is, there's lots more to do," said Townsend. "We've opened detox beds, we're trying to establish therapeutic [services] with horse therapy. We run a dental clinic and a medical clinic, but our time gets sucked up trying to keep [Insite] on the table." In addition to Insite, PHS Community Services also operates Onsite's 12 detox beds, several transitional beds for patients waiting to get into a long-term treatment facility and a raft of other services in the Downtown Eastside. PHS has assets of $12 million and revenues of almost $11 million a year. Insite, which sees about 600 to 1,100 users daily, has operated in the Downtown Eastside since 2003 under an exemption from the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The permit had already been extended twice when in May, the B.C. Supreme Court granted it a constitutional exemption. The federal government is appealing the decision, with the case scheduled to be heard in April 2009. Meanwhile, federal candidates on the campaign trail have offered words of support. The Liberals have promised to renew Insite's federal licence as part of their made-in-B.C. platform. Green Party leader Elizabeth May has also pledged support. Townsend said it shouldn't matter who is in power. "We don't see it as a political issue," he said. "No matter who's in power, you need to know a health issue like this isn't politically interfered with." Invited speakers at tomorrow's news conference include Dr. Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society, and Prof. Neil Boyd of Simon Fraser University.
Journals from the Past
I don't know what I did to deserve this largess.
I must have renewed my telephone or cable subscription. Something.
Now I am receiving in the mail each week Maclean's magazine.
I can understand a document like this in 1957.
But today?
It is chocker-block full of earnest good work.
And utterly unreadable.
I think this "gift" has a finite time line. I expect it to move on to one of my unsuspecting neighbours in a few weeks.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Bailout
The bailout.
One Trillion Dollars.
Socialism.
Capitalism.
Nice cocktail.
The illusion of American Capitalism and it's revulsion with the very word "socialism" is exposed.
Necessary? The world markets might collapse.
Hideous? You and I won't get bailed out of our puny mistakes in judgement.
You tell me. This is a huge subject requiring days of discussion and enquiry.
Good luck to us all.
Leadership & Hospitality - BC's Finest
The news that a museum in sunny downtown enlightened Prince Rupert has barred an American visitor and his motorized wheelchair is way beyond appalling.
The museum has its excuses and reasons and they are all shoddy beyond understanding.
Please tell me these ghouls will be fired.
Please let us citizens of BC fly this fellow back and give him a personal tour of the museum and fotos of the previous administration in jail or living on the streets.
What were they thinking?
I have been looking in vain for over a week now for lawn signs advising me of whom my NDP candidate might be.
They must have all gone up in smoke.
Turns out he's the second pothead the party has had to ditch.
Nice. Thorough. Thoughtful.
This is the best we can do?
All the Honorable Gentlemen
"You have feces and urine and blood on walls, you have garbage that piles up, you have mattresses, people are living there," said Greater Victoria board of education trustee Peg Orcherton.She said discarded needles at Victoria high school are also a big concern. Orcherton said the problem has existed since she was first elected six years ago, but was never as bad as it is now."
Story about Victoria schools in this morning's Sun.
The raging success of Harm Seduction continues at a steady pace.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Liz . has a different Take on the Dr-Pharmacist Issue
David:
Your interpretation may be correct.
George Abbott's protestations to the contrary, however, I read the proposal differently. I think it was a back-handed attempt by the Liberals to take doctors' visits off the healthcare system and load the fee on at the drug store.
The Minister says not, but drug stores are not into losing money. So if Abbott is successful in squashing the fee, the pharmacy will just build the cost into the price of the prescription.
I support doctors on this, and here's why...
The current system, as you point out, requires a patient to visit the doctor to have a prescription renewed beyond the number of repeats indicated on the first label. A costly, unnecessary nuisance? Maybe - but only if an innocuous med is being prescribed.
For anything more, the BCMA has a valid point - even if it does provide income for the prescribing physician.
Today's medications are hi-tech stuff. Almost daily, we hear of newly-discovered, sometimes life-threatening side effects of meds that have been on the market for years. In some cases, that unnecessary visit to the doctor can save your life...
Conflicts with diet or other meds; doubling-up by patient visits to more than one pharmacy; undesired side-effects, drugs not achieving the relief for which they were prescribed, embarrassing results a patient will not discuss in a busy drug store. There are endless reasons why that doctor's visit would be a better way to go.
All of that said, there's a far more important aspect to the Pharmacare problem that is never really thrashed out...
IF GOVERNMENTS WANT TO SAVE MONEY IN THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, WHY ARE THEY SO UNWILLING TO TACKLE THE CORE PROBLEM - THE COST OF THE DRUGS IMPOSED BY THE MACHINATIONS OF THE MANUFACTURERS AT THE TOP OF THE CHAIN? To illustrate...
Following a bout of food-poisoning about five years ago, a patient was left with a chronic case of gastro-esophageal reflux - GERD. Left untreated, a GERD patient is not only very uncomfortable, the condition can lead to cancer.
The modern, very expensive, blitz-advertised remedy is what, for legal reasons, I'll call the sexy-pill. The sexy-pill was initially prescribed to our patient.
It did not effect a cure within the "usual" eight weeks. A visit to the doctor suggested other, less expensive, options. The patient demurred, reluctant to change from said sexy-pill, which had given great relief, despite no cure.
Incredibly, the doctor explained thusly: "This alternative, in all ways that matter, has the same ingredients. What you need to know is that the manufacturer of the sexy-pill initially produced a similar med, same medicinal ingredients...but the patent-protection period was coming to an end. Had that happened, any company would have been free to produce it, and the price would have dropped dramatically. So the manufacturer added a few mean-nothing ingredients, changed its appearance, re-patented it for another ten years, and Presto! the sexy-pill was born. And it is now sold at an even higher price."
When our patient expressed surprise and disgust, the doctor replied, "It happens all the time -all throughout the pharmaceutical industry, and the legal rights of the patent are costing us bigtime. How else do you think they can afford to give me this box of sexy-pill samples."
When I heard about this, David, I began to do some research which, sadly became overwhelmed by other projects. Suffice it to say - other countries, many of them poor countries, have found ways to combat this...ways that, if duplicated in North America, would save patients and governments alike BILLIONS of dollars.
Likely to happen? Don't hold your breath.
Liz J.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Please, be Quiet
Opaque is an idiot.
Worse, he's irresponsible and dangerous.
Worse, he's the province's top cop.
The man says on the radio that the police make too many mistakes.
He says this, of course, in a knee-jerk defense of the courts.
It is no accident that most of the citizens of this sovereign state have lost all confidence in our courts.
Today, three cases illustrate.
In two of the, Hell's Angels have been acquitted of various criminal charges. Oops.
In another, a man fired eight shots at his mother, striking her with three, killed her, then buried her in the woods nearby.
Sentence? Four years.
So, in a time when the police need more support, not less, our top cop babbles shamelessly on the airwaves that the police make too many mistakes.
No doubt the police, like you and me, make their share of mistakes.
No doubt their mistakes are costlier than most of our failures to put the top back on the marmalade jar.
But their mistakes pale to insignificance compared to the atrocities doled out by our courts on a daily basis. Criminal justice is but a ghost in this town these days and most of us feel it viscerally.
Opaque is a shame.
Dr. Proctor
Pharmacists will now be able to renew prescriptions without your visit to the family doctor.
Clearly this means the world is coming to an end.
At least, that's what it means if you are the BC Medical Association, to whit, a doctor.
Raise the drawbridge! Alert the crocs! The peasants are revolting!
Stealing Drunk
An employee steals.
He is caught and he is fired.
OK?
Apparently not.
Not if you are a member of the BCGEU, who have now involved the Human Rights Tribunal and several court systems in their defense of the indefensible.
It is true that we have come a long way to understanding and helping alcoholics.
Today, an addict will get opportunities from his or her employer to clean up long before the pink slip option emerges.
But what's that got to do with stealing?
Being a drunk has long since been removed from our court systems as an excuse for criminal behaviour.
The BCGEU needs find more worthy fights to fight.
Sulu's a Fag!?!?!
The wedding pictures of actor George Takei and his partner that flashed around the world the other day got me thinking.
And not in the right direction.
Takei played Sulu on Star Trek for 947 light years, or thereabouts.
My first concern was all those Trekkies.
Many of them will be happy for their Sulu Man, of course.
But equally many will probably foresake their protein shakes for several days in mourning.
Willing and able to accept the most fanciful notions - people with pizza faces, William Shatner is a great actor, a guy with pointy ears and no emotions could be anything other than president of the United States for eight years - these same loyals will struggle with the idea that one of their favorites wants to snuggle with a similarly gendered humanoid.
Yikes!
Then my thoughts - if you can call these thoughts, more like LED blinks on a mottled wallboard - wandered to that lovely gal who has replaced Branjolina as The Headliner. You know, the one who knows everything about Russia because she can see it from her front porch.
Her defenders ( a nation unto itself, Palinistan) will be quick to tell you that she is not against gays. Or at least, not too close to them. That she thinks gays should have all the usual equal rights. Just that "marriage" is a word, apparently so holy, so suffused with godliness that it cannot be squandered on any other than a righteous man and a righteous woman.
First and last is the word, don't you know?
So I'm looking at these pics of George and Brad and I'm wondering once again how the marriage of these two souls can in one catclysmic moment upset all that has come before and all that will follow.
How many millions of men and women have married and will marry? But two guys in California dare to marry and the world is coming to an end.
The tolerance and acceptance and love that comes with these holy vows has gone where?
Closer to home, we learn today that abortion and gay marriage are still issues in the upcoming federal election.
We are on the precipice of a total world economic collapse and there are people still kvetching about abortion and gay marriage.
Well...
Enough.
Mazel Tov, congrats, tanti auguri to Mr. Sulu.
Some aliens do come home.
CFL Legend Dies at 69
I was sorry to learn this morning of the death of Ron Lancaster.
Lancaster was one of the great football quarterbacks, both sides of the border.
He was a gritty, scrappy player and a pleasure to watch on the field.
P's & Q's
Headlines like "International Students Take Priority," are not helpful.
The real story is that the West Vancouver school system is so hide-bound and frozen that it can't handle 2 more students who would like to walk to school.
The headline plays unnecessarily into the hands of anti-immigration folk, who wait, drooling, just for moments like this to emerge from their bunkers.
David talks...and talks...and talks...
Joseph Planta interviewed me the other day on his website, thecommentary.ca.
You can listen to this enlightening silliness here.
Terribly Cruel, Terribly Biased and Oh So Funny
The Age ~~ Melbourne ~~ Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Welcome to this year's blockbuster
By Catherine Deveny
I'M OBSESSED with Sarah Palin. She's the first thing I think about
when I wake and the last thing I think of before I go to sleep. I
google her a dozen times a day and manage to bring her up in every
conversation I have.
"You have hair. Sarah Palin has hair. What a coincidence! She has big
hair and it's brown. Her kids have hair too. Their names are Track,
Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. Would you like to see a photo of
Sarah's hair? Or her kids' hair? Or her husband the First Dude's hair?
She's a great mother, she went back to work three days after giving
birth to a disabled child. Of course, she didn't have to. She chose
to. She and the First Dude had little Trig's best interests at heart.
Never too early to instil independence. It toughens 'em up. Next stop?
A bloody good war."
I found myself checking out Palin Facebook groups last night. The ones
that amused me included: Excuse Me, But Has Anyone Else Noticed That
Sarah Palin Is Insane? My Dog Is More Qualified To Be Vice-President
Than Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin Is A Bona Fide Whack Job. Librarians
Against Sarah Palin. I Would Have Sex With, But Not Vote For, Sarah
Palin. And: I Would Rather Have A Mentally Challenged Goat As VP Than
Sarah Palin.
I'd been thinking the US election campaign was dragging on endlessly
until I read the headline "McCain chooses woman for running mate." I
loved that, "woman". Sums the whole thing up. She's the closest thing
Republican strategists could find to a man with a vagina. No political
party in the world would have had the genius to dream up Sarah Palin.
She's a social experiment with lipstick.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd likened the Sarah Palin story to
the chick flick Miss Congeniality. I think of it more as an in-flight
movie. Like Dumb and Dumber. If you're after a laugh, check out the
campaign poster for McCain and Palin. The slogan is "The Ticket For
America". The running mates look like an old rich bloke with erectile
dysfunction and his white trash trophy wife wearing glasses so she
looks intellectual and that.
McCain strikes me as "a bit of a fall" away from stewed prunes and
dribbling, and she looks as hungry and deranged as Anna Nicole Smith.
"Hey, Johnny, why don't y'all take up smoking! It's not too late. Have
another spoon of cholesterol. Where's that special button you done
talked about that blows up countries? Bristol's boyfriend's Xbox isn't
working and he's bored."
I'm not proud of it but to be honest, the comedy writer in me really,
really hopes Palin gets in. Shooting, hunting, God-fearing,
anti-abortion, book-banning, homophobic, white trash moron. I'd love
to see the White House lawn covered in cars up on blocks. Male,
female, goat or goldfish, Palin is a writer's dream. I wish I had the
imagination to invent her.
And the hits just keep on coming. Each day there's another titbit that
draws me in. "She what? Not only believes that abstinence should be
the only form of contraception taught in schools and she slashed
funding to a program for teenage mothers but she charged victims of
sexual assault for their own rape kits. I don't even know what rape
kits are but I sure as hell know you don't charge people for them."
And how does that whole guns and God thing work? "Say a prayer and the
merciful Lord will protect us. And if he doesn't, pass me the Uzi."
The only problem with Sarah Palin is that she's real. And, like it or
not, she'll be used as an example of a female politician. Regardless
of the fact she should be filed under dangerous white trash fuelled by
fear, propelled by power and supported by halfwits.
I have two long-held beliefs. First, people should have to pass an
intelligence test before they're allowed to vote and second, that the
rest of the world should be able to vote in the US elections because
the outcome affects us as much as them. If not more.
Like most people, I believe in democracy. As long as everybody else
votes the same way I do. The problems with democracy are that a) not
everyone makes an informed choice and b) if they do, what informs that
choice. We're at the mercy of the morons. People who vote for race,
gender, class and politicians who massage people's prejudices and
reinforce beliefs fertilised by fear.
Sarah Palin personifies the cockiness of ignorance. Bertrand Russell
said: "Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but
wiser people so full of doubts." Pass me the popcorn, I can't wait to
see how this movie ends.
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