We Are Not Alone

REAL Women of Canada

"Women Building a Better Society"

NGO in SPECIAL consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations

M E D I A R E L E A S E

Ottawa, Ontario January 18, 2010

Rule by Judicial Fiat

Vancouver Drug Injection Site

The liberal-minded B.C. Court of Appeal, in order to maintain the operation of the Vancouver Drug Injection site, has had to forsake common sense by describing the site as a “hospital” which provides a “health care program”. Supervising the injection of a harmful illicit drug by an addict is by no reasonable standard, “health care”. It is a recipe for disaster since its effect is to deepen the addict’s addiction, which leads to his/her inevitable, painful death.

According to the report of the Expert Advisory Committee released in April 2008, only 5% of drug addicts in the Vancouver area actually use the site, with 95% of drug injections in the area taking place outside the site. Only 3% of addicts using this site are actually referred for treatment. Treatment is the only way in which the addict can be genuinely helped.

In addition, the addict has to obtain the drugs injected on site from illegal sources, costing approximately $350,000 annually – money invariably obtained from criminal activity. Do these politically correct judges grasp these implications?

This decision by the B.C. Court has arbitrarily relaxed Canada’s drug laws by intruding on federal criminal law jurisdiction – the purpose of which is to protect society and individual addicts, not destroy them.

Canadians deserve better than the opinion of these liberal judges who choose to rule by judicial fiat, rather than by common sense and respect for Parliament.

Please contact:

Diane Watts

Researcher

(613) 236-4001

Vancouver B.C. January 18, 2009

BC Court of Appeal’s Decision on

Vancouver’s Drug Injection Site

Canada’s drug policy of prevention, treatment and enforcement is the only proven way for illicit drug use to be controlled.

However, two judges on the B.C. Court of Appeal have chosen to change this effective policy which was validly enacted by Parliament, by concluding that drug addicts supposedly “benefit” from the injection of illicit harmful drugs providing only that the injection is “supervised”. In no way can this be construed as “treatment” or “medical care” as the judges euphemistically call it, but rather this policy is a death warrant for the addict.

Under this policy upheld by the court, the addict has nowhere to go but downwards in that he/she will only require larger and ever more frequent injections of the illicit drug. It also leaves the addicts without treatment, the only genuine way to help them, because according to the report of the Expert Advisory Committee, April 2008, only 3% of addicts using the site are actually referred for treatment.

Moreover, this trendy court, by its decision, has eviscerated the federal government’s attempt to control illicit drugs in Canada. It allows the obtaining and use of illicit drugs with money inevitably obtained by the addicts’ criminal activity, and permits them to use illicit drugs with police protection. This is unacceptable.

The Drug Prevention Network of Canada strongly urges the federal government to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Good Idea - Wrong PLay

Right on, Kash.

At least the general goals are headed in the right direction.

When BC Solicitor-General announced today that he was going to do something about the unacceptably high incidence of domestic violence and deaths thereof, I am sure he won himself some new friends.

Deservedly so.

But Kash.

The exact way to not achieve anything new or useful is to ask senior bureaucrats what to do.

Remember that the old favorite definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect new results.

Well, Kash, if senior bureaucrats had something to contribute to anything, let alone a subject as specific and horrific as domestic violence, perhaps they would have already done so.

Instead, ask a panel of police, mothers, parents, children, teachers, and ordinary citizens with a splattering of common sense.

Leave the bureaucrats alone to mess up property assessments and things they truly (mis)understand.

Announcement

I will be posting my blog all through the next week (except tomorrow, Jan. 18th, whicj will be difficult bordering on impossible) but, because I will not have my computer hooked up to my Shaw cable, I cannot email each day as usual.

For those of you who cannot get through a day without A Little Berner in the Night (And you are legion! Both of you!), please bookmark the url and check in:

http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/

The email version should resume next Saturday, January 23d, if my psychiatrist decides that am ready again for human contact.

It'll be touch and go, for sure.

The Force Barks Back

Al Arsenault is a film director/producer with Odd Squad Productions Society and was a 27-year veteran with the V.P.D., upon his retirement in May 2006. He does not share the popular views on addiction and crime issues and he does not suffer fools gladly.

Hi David,

This news re the continuing status of the SIS is very distressing indeed. As I say, the rich get treatment and the poor get harm reduction. Why cannot all these learned researchers from the “Center of Excrements” come up with just even one single simple graph from the late ‘80’s to present showing the rate of change of OD deaths or drug-related infections that would prove their point of the efficacy of the SIS? Because that plotted line would skyrocket from a few % to the current astronomical levels. And yet they call it a success and the public is again mislead. This is nothing but shameful idealism leaning towards legalization passing itself off as legitimate research under a false banner of compassion. David you are so right on this issue of delivering real treatment instead of this sham of so-called Harm Reduction. All of the addicts in recovery know this. The active users do know what’s best for them- shooting galleries and free drugs leading to legalization. As you so well know, that is how the fiendish drug addict mind works. Some of the Harm Reductionists who know little about the dope simple brain, do not know that they are being mislead by the likes of drug users such as Dean Wilson, while the others are no doubt in the legalization camp, so they are merely letting the drug users suck in the public by making them believe that it is the right thing to do for them. As kind and compassionate parents, we shouldn’t give kids what they want (candy), rather we should provide them what they need (nutritious food). These addicts are being Band-Aided to death. Thank you for speaking out against this travesty.

Al

Guest Blogger, Beth McArthur

Friday, January 15, 2010

Team Jeff or Team Colin?

For those of you waking up in cold sweats, madly humming "Somebody Else", and driving your friends buggy with obsessive musings on the Jeff Bridges versus Colin Firth Best Actor of 2009 dilemma, take heart. You are not alone. The bags under my eyes are heavier than Mariah Carey's weekend totes. For days, I've agonized over this predicament at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 am. Call me a kook. That's just how I am. I embrace movies and fairness with equal fervour. The outcome of this thespian horse race matters to me.

The trouble is, both men are excellent. Both performances raise the status of the men's films to "Ooooh, baby!" from merely "Oh yeah."

I saw Firth's movie, A Single Man, first. Throughout, my heart bled buckets at his repressed, anguished performance as a grieving gay college professor. Afterwards, I sobbed for 45 minutes until globs of black mascara dotted my ultra suede loveseat. With hand on heart, I declared to friends, family, co-workers and complete strangers in movie line-ups that Firth would surely win the Oscar. But then, it struck me. Doesn't Firth always seem stricken in his movie and television roles? He was stricken in Pride and Prejudice. He was stricken in Bridget Jones's Diary. Was his performance here that great a stretch, acting-wise, after all? Maybe he looks stricken when he's buying toilet paper.

Then I saw Crazy Heart, a riveting character study about a drunken, brilliant, sensitive country singer played by an irrepressible Bridges. I chortled, held my breath, gasped, tapped my toes, wanted to run my fingers through his character's Kris Kristofferson-y hair as much as I wanted to flee from his puke spittle. I now felt 100% certain that Bridges was the guy to beat. He sang the songs himself, man. His character felt more real than Firth's somehow. His lovable loser was more recognizable, more tangible. You could sense his flabby, physical heft. You could smell this dude. Firth, on the other hand, seemed pristine: a Ken doll slowly crumbling.

The Golden Globe is one award that might go to Colin instead of Jeff at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's big wing ding this Sunday, January 17. That's because the 49-year-old Firth's a Brit and foreign journalists are voters. But the Oscar will likely go to Jeff in March. The guy's as American as apple pie.

It was after almost a week of angst that I finally realized for me it all boils down to: who will most appreciate an Oscar? Which man will be happier, and look happier, to win an Academy Award? And which man's win will delight the gleaming audience to the rafters? The answer to all these questions is, of course, Jeff Bridges.

I want to see Jeff Bridges's big handsome, 60-year-old face light up, his cheeks dimple, and those crinkly baby blues sparkle. I want to see an extreme close-up of beautiful Susan Geston, Bridges's wife of over 30 years, crying in the audience, followed by a slow pan to brother Beau, also weeping. I want Jeff to thank his late father Lloyd Bridges in his Oscar acceptance speech. I want Jeff to say "far out" or "right on" for the boomers watching. I want the entire Kodak Theater audience to rise as one to celebrate this American son, a man who's given and given and given, goddamnit, to movie goers and TV audiences for over 40 years without once donning a reindeer sweater.

TEAM JEFF!

Update as of January 16th: Jeff Bridges won the Critics Choice Award for Best Actor the evening of January 15th. He will host the Grammys 2010 on January 31st.

Of course, the lovely irony is that Robert Duvall, who won a much-deserved Oscar for his role as a broken, alcoholic country singer in the great Horton Foote story, Tender Mercies, is co-starring in Bridges' new film.

We Can Dream, Can't We?

Very Important Post from a Real Expert

Gerry writes:

Here's an interesting tidbit of anecdotal information.

In a class of about 30 people attending an addictions seminar I teach, I asked how many of the participants knew someone who was currently or in the past involved with a methadone program.

9 people raised their hands.

I asked of those 9 people if they knew whether or not those people who were on methadone were abusing other drugs at the same time.

All 9 people raised their hands.

I then asked of those 9 people if any of those folks they knew to be on methadone were breaking the law to be able to buy the drugs they were abusing.

Guess what?

All 9 raised their hands.

Why is this slice of reality not the same slice of reality presented by the harm reductionists? I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

Humpty Dumpty at the Helm

I was wondering this morning...

What if my children were still little?

How could I explain to them - without causing nightmares - that the world is quite mad, that much is upside down and hanging by a thread from the ceiling, that illusion rules the day, the official story is almost always a lie.

Not a great world vision is it?

But listen to today's evidence.

“I think what the Conservatives ought to be doing now is funding harm-reduction strategies instead of paying for more lawyers. They should accept that harm-reduction strategies are an essential part of any substance-abuse strategy and should not appeal this further.”

Michael Ignatieff.

“With this second consecutive decision in favour of Insite, I hope the federal government will drop its legal efforts so that we can go back to focusing on Insite for what it is – a harm reduction facility that saves lives and improves health outcomes for those living with addictions."

Gregor Robertson.

Here's the problem.

These two great Canadian leaders actually believe what they are saying.

They are wrong and mistaken and all the real evidence completely contradicts their sentiments, but this is now hook, line and sinker, the official story.

This is what everyone is being badgered into believing.

Yes, here's the good news, kinder.

98% of all the people with whom I have ever spoken on the radio, in print, on the Internet and in public know that this story is a sham, an emperor's new clothes if there ever was one.

The photo says it all.

This is our enlightened strategy.

A kit to keep stupid.

Show me the lives saved.

You can't.

Did I mention that our leaders actually believe this myth?

Certainly we have learned over the ages that if you mutter a phrase long enough and often enough, it does have a hypnotic effect and, over time, seems to bring on its own meaning.

Well, Michael and Gregor and all the clever people in charge of things, try this little mantra on for size....

real treatment real treatment real treatment real treatment real treatment real treatment real treatment real treatment

Sleep Well

The RCMP, the army and the police will all be here.

This invasion alone will number over 15,000 real people.

And speaking of numbers...almost one Billion Dollars to pay for these good folks.

And when it's all tallied up, will we be assured of the illusive goal called 'security.'

No.

Meanwhile back in Quebec and other places east of here, what fun the crooks will behaving.

Oh, well.

Maybe this will all be a good exercise in preparation for something more dreadful than the U.S. winning the hockey.

Victor Loves Tessio

Old friend and occasional guest blogger has a thing for Abe Vigoda. But, Victor, Tessio sold out to the Barzini family!


The older I get, the more wisdom I mine from one of the great
exchanges between Fish and Barney on the Barney Miller Show. The fact
that I retain this perhaps says too much about my sense of humour. I
think the exchange is one of the priceless gems of American comedy.
Here it is.

Barney: So Fish, when you retire are you thinking of getting a job in
one of small town police departments in Florida"?

Abe: " Nah, a friend of mine did that and he died of boredom".

Barney: " Nothing for him to do, right"?

Abe: "Nah, an old bored guy walked in and shot him".

Ok, you don't get the depth here. Florida? Blue hair state? Chasing
career dreams at 70? The lurking horror of boredom at the bottom of
the false teeth jar? Fine. You don't get it.

But I think that Fish is the seniors' version of the Big Lebowski and
I think Abe Vigoda was 20 years ahead of his time in that respect.

I think that with the huge grey wave facing society, Abe's portrayal
of Fish was prescient. He was the Grey Lebowski. A big character in
future.

What do I know?

More About Heroes

A friend has forwarded this piece from an unknown auhtor published recently in the Montreal Gazette.


First of all, let me say quite clearly that I am NOT a
fan of Tiger Woods. Never have been, never will be.
I recognize that he can hit a golf ball quite well, for what
that's worth. Lance Armstrong can ride a bike. Barry Bonds can
hit a baseball. LeBron James can dunk a basketball. That doesn't
make any of them heroes. Matter of fact, they're all about as
far from being heroes as you can get.

Tiger Woods is a man whose life is built around greed and a
ruthless, monomaniacal obsession with winning. No wonder he's
obsessed with acquiring mistresses. The man has always had
everything he ever wanted. Who is going to tell him no? When I
read about Woods, all I see is stories about when he's going to
return to the PGA Tour, how he's going to rehab his image (as
though it's all about image and nothing else) why he's likely to
come back better than ever. No one mentions that this was one
twisted, greedy human being from the get-go. Tiger Woods is what
happens when you turn your child into a machine.

Pity his father, Earl Woods, is no longer around to see the
destruction he has wrought. The infant who was on television
putting against Bob Hope when he was 2 years old, the 3-year-old
who shot 48 for nine holes, the teenager who stepped into a
multi-million-dollar Nike contract before he won his first pro
tournament, has finally broken out of the carefully constructed
shell. Predictably.

What Tiger Woods, his father, his handlers and his sponsors
failed to understand was the simplest of all truths: we are
human. We are not robots. The human Woods kept trying to break
through the robot. We caught glimpses and they weren't pleasant:
The petulant child hurling his clubs and swearing when a shot
goes awry. The swearing. The dirty, leering jokes. The arrogant
brat who does his famous drive-by every time he passes the
autograph hounds waiting after round, refusing to do a Phil
Mickelson and spend 15 minutes signing autographs for the
adoring gallery.

The greedy walking corporation who made it eminently clear from
the beginning that he didn't care about the Asian sweatshop
workers who were turning him into the wealthiest athlete on the
planet. The American of mixed racial heritage who couldn't care
less about politics at home, where people of colour have
suffered and bled for 300 years.

The most outrageous thing I have heard said of Woods came from
his father. Earl Woods predicted that Tiger would turn out to be
one of the great men on the planet, like Gandhi or Nelson
Mandela. Woods is a great golfer, whatever that is worth. He is
not a great man, by any stretch of the imagination. Woods
doesn't begin to measure up to the athletes who were also great
humans: Jackie Robinson, Jim Thorpe, Bill Russell, Babe
Didrickson, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, Rocket Richard. They had
to fight real hatred and prejudice. They suffered real hurt.

Woods is a shill, nothing more or less. He works for anyone who
will pay him. He'll peddle watches, golf balls, automobiles,
consulting companies. And Woods will not trouble himself for one
instant if he learns that a good part of his fortune is because
of the labours of Asian workers making a few dollars a day.
That's not his problem, as long as he can afford to cruise off
into the sunset on a $20-million yacht named Privacy - a middle
finger flipped at all the suckers who pay the bills.
The nearest parallel we have to Woods is Michael Jordan. Jordan
was the first athlete to go global as a brand rather than as an
iconic sports hero. He was the first anti-Muhammad Ali, the
athlete who didn't give a damn about anything but himself.
Jordan refused to take a stand against people like the racist
South Carolina senator Jesse Helms because racists buy Nikes,
too. Now Woods has picked up where Jordan left off - and therein
lies a cautionary tale. What was left of Jordan after his career
was over was seen in his disgraceful speech when he was inducted
into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Jordan is now a bitter, angry,
vengeful, vindictive man who used his Hall of Fame speech to
slander all of his rivals and most of his one-time friends and
teammates.

Someone wrote to me yesterday to say that "we" have torn down
the icon that is Tiger Woods. Nothing could be more wrong. "We"
might have built Tiger Woods into the monster of ego and greed
he has become, but "we" had nothing to do with tearing him down.
Woods did that himself, with his insatiable greed, his roving,
relentless sexual appetite, his cynical use of his beautiful
family as props to distract attention from what he was really
doing.

In two or three years (if not sooner) most of this will be
forgotten. Woods will be divorced, he'll have as many mistresses
as he wants, he'll go back to winning majors, raking in millions
and endorsing half the products on the planet. Why will he get
away with it? Because sports fans want someone to worship, and
the bottom line is that they don't care if the man inside is
worse than Tony Soprano.

If you want to help your children find heroes in the world of
sport, stick to figures like Tony Dungy, Marc Trestman, Anthony
Calvillo, Ben Cahoon, Jean Béliveau, Otis Grant, Clara Hughes.
Remind your children that when Hughes won her gold medal in
Turin in 2006, she immediately donated $10,000 to Right to Play,
the charity that attempts to help African children through
sport. If Tiger Woods was to donate a comparable portion of his
personal fortune, it would come to $200 million or more. But he
won't do it. That is one reason he's not a hero. Never has been,
never will be.

Because for openers, if you're not a hero to your own family,
you're nothing.

Lovely Song

Mystery Challenge of the Day

"We need to need to find out exactly what led to this child ingesting methadone."

One would laugh at this idiocy if it weren't so pathetic and tragic.

A 23-month old girl has died in a Nova Scotia hospital about a week after swallowing the synthetic narcotic methadone in her rural New Brunswick home.

Methadone is the deadly six-times-more-addictive-than-heroin drug used and misused and abused by doctors and pharmacists and city councils and ultimately heroin addicts.

These mistaken sorry folks believe, as children believe in Santa, that using methadone will somehow improve the life of a heroin addict.

Hahahaha...

I'm laughing and crying.

I've been laughing and crying at this monstrosity of perverted public thinking for 40 years now.

So how did that poor innocent child get hold of the poison that killed her?

I'll tell you how.

Her mother or father or more likely grandparent or court-assigned guardian is a heroin user/abuser.

The child's primary care giver is a dope fiend.

Calling people dope fiends these days is considered disrespectful.

Forget that that is what dope fiends call themselves and forget that dope fiends respect no one, least of all themselves, let alone, god protect them, their helpless children.

So the child's dope fiend primary care giver has whined and kvetched to his or her "case worker" that he or she can't quit using and abusing.

No prob.

We just happen to have handy this nifty supply of government sanctioned dope substitute.

We call it methadone.

(Psst...Secretly we believe that if these idiot users will just swallow this other drub, then they'll stop breaking into our homes and cars and stealing all our good stuff, like our blue tooth and blue ray and blue balls.)

(Of course, that really works.

'Cause the numbers of dope fiends breaking into our homes and cars has really bottomed out...NOT!)

The only thing is we're supposed to give out the methadone at a clinic or hospital or even at the local pharmacy, but sometimes the timing is not convenient, eh, or we're closed on the weekend, right, so like we just have to trust our dope fiend customers that they'll be like responsible with this shit when they take it home, ok?

Right.

Like that's going to happen.

Mystery solved.

Everyone in the chain is to blame.

The local government and provincial government and federal government who have sanctioned this horror show are to blame.

The doctors, nurse and pharmacists who play with this dynamite are to blame.

The addict is to blame.

The addict is a stoned junkie.

What's everyone else's excuse?

Who gets charged with murder?

Over-Comp

The news that Wall Street has exceeded even its most outrageous past misdemeanours this year by handing out about $145 Billion in bonuses to its best crooks and shysters if old hat.

It fits neatly into the category or why dogs lick themselves...because they can.

First, Take. Then, Give Only politics could be this backwards

Perhaps this is an old political trick.

Or maybe it really is a case of a political team waking up (somewaht) to present realities.

In any case, B.C. Finance Minister has removed a bit of the HST sting today, announcing about $235 Million in relief rebates for schools and hospitals.

Hey, it's a start...

The Photos of Hawaiin Clark Little Speak for Themselves

R.I.P.

Afternoon Blog

I must dash out of the house first thing this morning for two meetings.

Thus, I will post today's blog in the early afternoon.

Stay tuned...

Wrong Investments

No story more clearly illustrates the Campbell government than the one I meant to post yesterday.

Being a 2000-year old man, I got caught up in other matters (The Lady and the Library really had me going...) and I plain forgot.

Here is the story.

Victoria promised money to build a maritime centre in North Vancouver. This would replace the hopelessly inadequate Maritime Museum currently languishing on Kits Point.

For those who continue to live in the Popsicle delusion that this is a city fueled by latter and real estate, surprise.

We are a port.

Potash and compact cars, that's who we are, kids.

So, a multi-purpose centre on the waterfront that celebrates our very nature and offers educational, historical, archival, entertainment, shopping and dining opportunities is a no-brainer.

uh...

That is if you're not putting all of your eggs into a 12 day event in one February, and anything that's left over into a new Teflon roof for your stadium.

With much fanfare, including a 2008 announcement by Premier Gordon Campbell, the province put up $9-million in funding, and was expected to contribute an additional $20-million to $25-million in capital costs for the 110,000-square-foot centre.

The federal government pledged $20-million in funding, contingent on provincial support.

Kiss that goodbye.

“I was afraid something like this would happen, given that it had been taking so long,” said James Delgado, president and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology based in Bodrum, Turkey.

“[I'm] heartsick, absolutely heartsick.”

Delgado, who was one of the best people we have ever had plying these local waters, left because he saw the handwriting on the wall years ago.

Jim was Executive Director of the Maritime Museum. He was also a wonderful writer, world-famous deep sea diver and relentless booster for Vancouver.

We lost his terrific energy because of this kind of short-sightedness.

Did you know that in the basement of the current Museum are actual relics from the Titanic?

I've seen them, but that's because I've bothered to go down there.

Me and 12 other people in the last 20 years.

So...back to Gorgeous Gord.

The priorities are clear and unmistakable.

Billions for the Big O, which used to mean something else altogether.

But when it comes to the relative lunch money for something that truly speaks of Vancouver and British Columbia heritage, the cupboard is bare.

Let's just rename the fellow Short Stick Gord.

Long-Term Solutions for Haiti

The Haiti disaster is horrifying and the rescue and relief responses are encouraging.

But Haiti has long been a hideous nightmare.

Will the Have Nations now truly do what they can to help lift these poor souls into a new life?

I cannot write any more clearly about this necessity than the editorial writers have today in the Globe, or the guest columnists have in their piece.

Please read both. They are important and spot on.