"DEMOCRACY" in action

THE INTERPRETERS

The public statements of men and women and parties who win elections are always the same - "The people have spoken!"

That's understandable.

They are giddy with triumph. Our team scored all the touchdowns and I am a winner. Yeah!

But what can we say about the media who are supposed to have some perception outside the ring of battle?

This morning's Sun and Province writers seem as intoxicated as the Vision supporters in Vancouver.

"Clearly," the tell us, as if we haven't just heard this from the re-elected Mayor, "the people have spoken!"

Good grief. Is there a brain left there at the foot of Granville Street?

Look.

The "people spoke" and they elected Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brian Mulroney, and Silvio Berlusconi, among others.

Today, the pundits and political "reporters" are telling us that the people of Vancouver are solidly and completely behind the fabulous vision and programs of the incumbent party.

The people of Vancouver by and large don't vote.

And 90% of those people who do vote think His Honor is cute and wouldn't know a public strategy if they fell in a bog full of them.

What this election result tells us is not what the press is telling us.

It tells us that the elected party was tremendously organized and well-heeled and that they did all the phone calling, polling and door knocking that was necessary and that money could buy to get re-elected.

Good for them.

Now lower your head, square your shoulders and thrust yourself sharp into the wind and try not to notice the irrelevant silliness that will emanate from 12th and Cambie for another three years.

Post script: Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight has shared with me his very similar reaction to the municipal elections. To my knowledge, his is the only piece not covered in bunting.

THE MINISTRY OF CALLOUSNESS

"The only agency in Vancouver dedicated to helping women leave prostitution will be forced to close its doors this spring as a result of the “Wal-Martization” of the B.C. government’s employment programs, says the executive director of PEERS Vancouver."

There's your first paragraph from a Globe and Mail story by Robert Matas published on Tuesday morning.

The hideous gist is this.

The provincial government has created a template for how social service projects and agencies should operate.

This, of course, is madness, an impossibility. Maybe it looks good on a flow chart to some office-bound geeks, but it has no connection whatsoever to the real world.

PEERS gets women and men out of prostitution.

They've been doing this work successfully for ten years now.

Everyone else is trying to make "sex work" safe and acceptable. Everyone else wants to give sex trade workers legal brothels, brochures, and in the case, of former Mayor of Vancouver Sam Sullivan, drugs and pills to keep them happy. That flash of genius would have made Sam the city's biggest pimp. Lucky for him and us and the prositutes nothing came of his inspiration.

PEERS, for all its good work and low cost, is now toast.

But listen to the Minister of Callousness:

Stephanie Cadieux, B.C. Minister of Social Development, said she was not concerned about PEERS decision to close. If PEERS does not want to participate, another group will provide the services, she said.

“The focus of the [employment] program is to help people, and provide the support and services they need, including specialized needs, to get back into the workforce, and to do that as quickly as possible,” Ms. Cadieux said.

“For women who want to change what they are doing and get assistance from the government in doing that, that service will be provided,” she said, adding that the ministry will monitor the changes to ensure those who need the services will receive them.

This is the Minister of Social development???

She has no idea. Not one lonely clue.

Social service programs like PEERS do not spring full blown from the sand. They crawl out of the grass-roots where they are spawned and they grow and fall back, grow and fall back and then grow inch by labored inch through blood, sweat and tears. They take work and talk and community and heartbreak and joy.

This insistence from governments that social programs all fit the same tunic is idiocy and out of touch with reality. The further insistence that social service programs all have balanced budgets is an ironic farce. There is no government jurisdiction on earth that has a balanced budget. Every hamlet and mega-city in the USA and Canada is running massive annual deficits, forget Greece, Italy and Ottawa. So the Little Hen Day Care and Women's' Shelter should be running perfect books on a beggar's budget? Get serious.

Ms. Cadieux needs to get out more...or just get out.

Meanwhile, will some titan of industry please step up to the plate and fund PEERS.

I've worked over the years with hundreds of women who were renting out their body parts by the half-hour. Not one of them wanted this life. Not one wanted to stay in it. Most left.

If PEERS is doing that for our communities, they deserve a medal, not an order to conform or quit to satisfy some poo-bah's dream of getting all her pencils lined up in a row on her glass-covered mahogany desk.

And you thought the Occupy Movement was about tents...

ON TURNING 69

Thanks to the several readers who have asked where the blog has gone. What happened is that I moved. I sold my house and bought a beautiful apartment and moved from A to B at the end of October. That took a major concentration of physical and mental energy, so the blog writing ended up with the packing boxes. Aside from loving my new home (as much as I loved the old one as well), I am now freed from ever having the slightest interest in the Vancouver obsession called Real Estate. I will never again care about who is selling what and for how much above asking.

Friday is my sixty-ninth birthday. My son is taking me out for brunch and my dear friend, Yan Min, is taking me out for dinner. Life is pretty good.

I have never been so happy and so miserable.

Every single day for some months now, I experience moments of great clarity and bounce and self-satisfaction and good cheer. I feel myself striding, youthful and energetic, tall, fit and overflowing with narcissism and ego, certain that I look great. Who could resist me? Why would they?

On the same day, the sheer relentless idiocy, stupidity, greed, profligacy and rudeness of the human pool engulfs me. I feel I am drowning in a sludge pond of ignorance and unkindness.

Crossing the street is a terror. Trying to read in a cafe one might as well be sentenced to life in a Boeing hangar. Everyone on the street is texting or talking or both. The bumptious noise is piteous and unceasing. I don’t need to hear your most private thoughts. I don’t want to.

Sartre said, “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” But it’s not just them; it’s also me.

I have been cruel and self-regarding, often in the cheapest ways. Today, I am more impatient and intolerant than ever and that is saying something. I am generous one moment and leap to self-righteous indignation the next.

With my son, I was demanding and unforgiving, angry and overbearing, with the result that today he is thoughtful and kind and loyal.

To my daughter, I was the doting serving placating Jewish father. Today, thanks to all my attentions, she is largely absent from my life.

I have left some friends behind, closing doors on them. Others have done the same with me. Yet, I make new friends almost every day. They will stay in the corral as long as they stay.

My interest in the schemes of politics is waning. I believe very little of what comes from the mouths of the elected or the want-to-be-elected. The fictive lives of “celebrities” shriek past me at the supermarket line leaving no imprint whatsoever. Who are these people? Look, they are having babies or not, conjoinings or not, charities or projects or not.

I still like information. Tell me about history or birds or oceans or where the mothers and children of Africa are hiding tonight. Show me the latest, greatest, biggest, fastest air transport. Clarify for me what prompted Haydn to write that symphony, Joyce to choose Trieste of all cities in which to roost or George Blanda to play football for Al Davis for all those years. My encyclopaedic knowledge of The Movies drops right off the cliff around the turn of this last century. There are some great movies being made here and there, but I see fewer and fewer of them, and rarely in large dark rooms with hundreds of other people. “Moneyball” was amusing, the main kick being the opportunity to watch Brad Pitt, who is that rare gem – both a genuine movie star and a fine actor. “J. Edgar” was fascinating, if badly told. So talky, a peculiar choice for director Clint Eastwood, who, as an actor, was almost mute. Nevertheless, the tale is saved by terrific actors, not the least of whom is Leonardo DiCaprio, dazzling in the title role.

Little children are still a delight, as are dogs - somebody else’s children or dogs. And for a few moments at best. I cannot be a pooper scooper at this age, if ever I could.

My energy has changed.

Of course, I cannot play tennis for two hours or more, not without hurting myself, which I have managed to do nicely twice in the last two years. Both my doctor and I are hoping these lessons might register and take hold.

I cherish many ancient pleasures, music topping the list. Gershwin to this day makes me weak at the knees, joyful, teary. The Rhapsody is still a rhapsody. But so are Rogers & Hart, Ella, Tony, the Bach fugues, Mahler symphonies, the Beatles, Pete Seeger and The Weavers, Carousel (The waltz and the soliloquy), and a library of concerti, arias, folk tunes, and most of the American Songbook.

Swimming, cycling and eating are high on the same list. Not too many days after my last heart “episode,” I was frogging along the bottom of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre pool on a quiet summer morning. There may have been all of eight people in the whole building, only half in the gigantic Olympic pool. The light was streaming through the roof windows and bending into the deepest reaches of the water. For a brief ecstatic moment, I felt I was in an earthly watery heaven. I marvelled at the astonishing efficiencies and modernisms of our local medical wizards and then simply reverted to that old familiar tadpole sense of squirming joyously through this other medium so scantily understood. When will we be fish again?

I don’t bicycle as much as I once did, and now only on designated paths that will not, do not intersect with the lunatics of car traffic. And I don’t career down craggy paths on nearby mountains. I cycle, and pause always at the turn-around point for a well-drawn cappuccino. Nevertheless, I cannot get on my fabulous bike (Hey, Dave. Your bike is like BMW!) without thinking I am again 6 years old. The way the sun catches the pavement in intermittent flashes!

I eat less and often can`t believe how delicious every bite is. One raspberry can make me crazy with happiness. This is one of my ``comfort foods,`` because my grandfather grew these tiny treasures in our back yard on St. John`s Avenue in Winnipeg when I was a boy. Every second year, he set fire to the entire scrub to add carbon to the soil – then watch out the next summer.

I had a Caesar salad at a restaurant the other night and except for the glass of cold water I am drinking right now, I thought it was just about the best thing I ever experienced. Jack Benny used to play cards with his celebrated friends at the Hillcrest Golf and Country Club in Los Angeles and when he would have a cool drink, he would exclaim, `This water is wonderful!``

I have been a dedicated Astaire man my whole life, believing as did Balanchine, that Astaire was the greatest dancer of the 20^th Century. The man could do anything and he could do it twice. I never much cared for the Other Guy, but you have to admit that Kelly`s Singing in the Rain number is one of the single sweetest things ever put on film.

Of course, I am not rich, and, given the state of things, I not really poor either. My basic needs and comforts are pretty much accounted for. I can`t claim to want much.

Other than kindness and affection and another hundred years or so of good health. Failing that, a reasonably quick exit, sans hospital and tubes and Nurse Ratched.

I was saying my energy has changed.

I do one or two things of a day and I`ve had the biscuit. I just don`t want to do anything else. A couple of phone calls, tape a half hour TV show, maybe a therapy session, something resembling work and then I just really don`t want to do anything besides drink an espresso, read a book, talk to friends, check out the news on my android, see if there`s a fun new app.

Friends are going, crossing over, leaving the mortal coil, dying.

My three favourite people in Venice, Evania, Meg and Susan, are now on the other side, Susan last week. I read the Gmail on my android sitting in a room at the Harrison Hotel between meals, cribbage and the hot springs pools. I, the most emotional person you know, haven`t even cried yet. Am I in shock? Have I become inured or accepting of the inevitable?

While I continue to carp pointlessly about every minor annoyance, the two heart shocks in the last six years have brought about a kind of calm, a going with the moment. It is what it is.

I hate modern life and, like my mother before me, I love every tiny bump and grind along the way.

I do everything slower and I won`t understand why anybody is rushing anywhere, except that little girl or boy over there who skips along the street to some internal tune.

A Thing of Beauty

Important Piece of Jourrnalism found, NOT in your local press, but in a Comment to our Blog

This came in today as a comment, which I have published, to our post of Monday, called "The Polite Pushers." I am posting it here as a stand alone piece because I think it is important and revealing and because I feel a number of personal connections with the material. I have more than a passing interest in places that are ironically called "care homes," and while there are some good people doing some good work, the systemic abuses to the elderly continue to be horrifying. As for the Sharon Home in Winnipeg, my mother - may she rest in peace - had the last word on that fine institution. When she was encouraged to move in to the Sharon Home and wisely refused, I asked her what she thought of the place. Here is her unforgettable reply (I am but a pale imitation of an original.): "The Sharon Home, David? It's a coffin with a kitchen."

The following is from Stan W.

Do people know that Allan Seckel (former head of the BC Public Service, and former deputy Attorney General) was just appointed as CEO of the BC Medical Association?

Seckel comes from the same law firm as Geoff Plant and Bill Bernardino (Russell & Dumoulin, later known as Fasken Martineau). Seckel worked with Bernardino on the Basi-Virk/BC Rail scandal, to decide what documents could be revealed. Old boys club indeed.

Seckel is also "noted" for having denied Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the BC Children's & Youth Commissioner, access to documents in 2010 which Ms. Turpel-Lafond successfully fought in the courts. Nice going BCMA, you sure know how to pick the guy to head your organization.

If anyone mistakes the BCMA for anything but an industry lobby group, here's the blurb from the BCMA announcement in the Globe and Mail from Oct 12th:

"The mission of the BCMA is to promote a social, economic and political climate in which members can provide the citizens of British Columbia with the highest standard of health care while achieving maximum professional satisfaction and fair economic reward."

That BCMA mission statement sure is revealing, and now we can anticipate even closer ties between the medical-legal dominions -- to the public's detriment.

By the way, hands up, how many people know that doctors' medical malpractice insurance in BC is heavily subsidized by taxpayers? That would be the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA). Yes indeed, we pay for the lawyers hired by the CMPA that doctors and health authorities use to pummel ordinary citizens, patients and families, into submission and silence whenever the health care system screws up, accidentally or deliberately, even in criminal matters. Yup, that's ensuring the "highest standard of health care" alright.

Meanwhile have a look at these two stories where the health “care” system and the justice (sic) system intersect:

From Victoria, BC:

http://www.focusonline.ca/?q=node/249
and
http://ctwatchdog.com/2011/03/30/granny-snatching-narcotic-poisoning-a-bitter-prescription

From Winnipeg, Manitoba:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Charges-laid-against-Sharon-Home-over-residents-death-132267883.html?device=mobile&c=y
and
http://www.winnipegjewishreview.com/article_detail.cfm?id=1639&sec=2&title=EDITOR’S_SPECIAL_

REPORT:WHAT_IS_HARVEY_BERKAL’S_STRATEGY_IN_INITIATING_PRIVATE_CRIMINAL_CHARGES_AGAINST_THE_SIMKIN_CENTRE__ANALYSIS

This is the highest standard of health care??? This is a justice system???

What has Canada become? Especially BC, jailing and drugging elderly people on a whim - for fun? for profit? Because they can?

Meanwhile Harper's ordering fighter jets, battle ships and armoured vehicles???

WHERE HAS ALL THE MUSIC GONE?

"OCCUPY" our own back yards

Some still don't get the message of the"Occupy" phenomenon. The movement may or may not ever bring any real solutions or actions to the table, but the story line is clear and it is important. Justice and equality is missing in societies in which the disparities between rich and poor are obscene and ever increasing. We need go no further than our own backyard for a glaring, familiar and infuriating example - Susan Heyes versus the Big Guys and the Supreme Court of Canada. Here is Susan's latest dispatch. Read it and weep for your own country.
Please also note that if this story appeared in our local press, I could not find it. Apparently, our rights are not news worthy.

Today, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed my application for leave to appeal (see attached)

This is a dark day for democracy in Canada. By refusing to hear this case, Canada’s highest court has decided that corporations have more rights than small businesses and citizens.

Small businesses are the economic backbone of our country and are the heart of our communities. The Supreme Court of Canada has decided that we don’t matter.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court has given corporations a blank cheque. It has ruled that corporations undertaking megaprojects in Canada are not legally compelled to tell the truth, even when the consequences for citizens and small businesses are as severe as they were with the Canada Line project.

This decision allows corporations to profit at the expense of citizens and small businesses.

The ruling calls into question the integrity of our judicial system including the ruling of the BC Appeals Court. Cut and cover construction for the Canada Line had been ruled out in the Cambie Village in all the materials made available to the public. Yet the case was overturned, with the project claiming that even though they caused a nuisance, they were authorized by statute to do so.

Under the law, this defence of Statutory Authority can only be used when no other less disruptive option is available, and cost cannot be a factor.

We all know that not only was there a less disruptive option, that of a bored underground tunnel, but it was the project, until the secret switch to cut and cover. A bored underground tunnel was the only option presented to the public for the Cambie Village area.

Corporations should be compelled to tell the whole truth, but the Supreme Court of Canada has determined that small businesses and citizens have no legal right to expect truthful information that would allow them to take measures to protect themselves from harm.

For 6 years, rectifying this colossal injustice has been my priority, in the public domain and through the courts.

The legal system has let us down. This is not the Canada I know and love.

This case personifies the worldwide outrage at corporate greed, and abuse of government power.

We as citizens, must continue to demand that our rights are upheld, against all odds.

Susan Heyes

Email: hazelmay@shaw.ca

THE POLITE PUSHERS

Drug pushers are everywhere.

They don't all bare fangs or wear funny clothes.

Some are fine upstanding people and leaders of our community.

Take the American Academy of Pediatrics...please.

Now, you might think that folks who put the word "pediatrics" in front of their name would have as their primary interest the health and safety of children.

Wrong again, Bunkie.

Not when you have such a close working relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.

You see, the American Academy of Pediatrics has just released its latest decree from on high (HA!) that you are now free to give Ritalin to children as young as 4.

This is for the ever--increasing population of (mostly) boys who have Attention Deficit Disorder.

Now, I went to school for far too many years and I cannot recall even one kid in any of our classes who might have had ADHD.

Of course, this "disease" is a modern construct - created almost simultaneously with the "discovery" of Ritalin, but even so, I don't remember one kid in our school who would have fit the description.

Only a few years ago, "science" announced that, lo, there were now adults who suffered from ADHD and they they too should be blessed with a steady supply of Ritalin.

But I carry on needlessly, because unless you yourself are suffering from some peculiar form of attention disorder, I am sure you are getting the picture.

Drug pushers push drugs.

More and more of them these days wear striped shirts and bow-ties.

"Occupy" explained in plain English

In case the "Occupy" movement is somehow escaping either your attention or understanding, this piece from Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times should help clarify the issues.

It was sent to us from our friend Susan Heyes who knows a thing or two about inequalities. Susan successfully sued the eco-criminals who dug up Cambie Street, only to have that decision reversed.

BRUNO MARS RULES! This kid can do anything...Thanks MO!

This Kid is some kind of GENIUS

IMPORTANT SPEECH

ideacity on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Or This Version

Only 100,000, 000 hits so far

The City - Take Another Look

HAPPENING

Occupy Vancouver.

Occupy Seattle.

Wall Street protests.

HST.

Smart Meters.

Something's happening over here.

Everybody in the western world could readily understand the riots and revolutions in Cairo and Tehran, but many of the same people are mystified by the wave of discontent spreading across North American communities.

I am not an anti-capitalist or anti-materialist. I appreciate the crucial role of business and I love my stupid toys as much as the next sucker. (These days I am obsessive about my Android phone. I love it. I can't live without it. I want to marry it and have its children.)

But.

The unemployment rate in the USA is not 9.7% - which would be alarming enough.

The true unemployment rate in the country self-announced to be the greatest in the world is 20%.

Productivity and jobs are the urgent priorities in both America and Canada, and except for Obama, who is getting nowhere fast on these issues, no known political leaders on ether sides of the border is even talking about these essentials, let alone doing anything remotely useful or encouraging.

Meanwhile, back at the 500,000 acre ranch and the Park Avenue penthouse, hedge fund managers, whose products are losing 45% of their value, are stealing billions in personal bonuses yearly.

The iniquities have always been here before our eyes. But rarely before have these economic divides been so stark, so disparate and so ugly.

Bank foreclosures on private dwelling places called HOMES are practically sinful. Where was the oversight? Where were the rules?

When people are simply walking out the front door and heading into the scrub, you know something is terribly wrong with the status quo.

The protestors are making an important point, whether you like it or not.

They cannot be easily dismissed. The message is significant.

Government and business that turns away, orders another drink and laughs does so not only at its own peril, but at mine and yours.

Attention must be paid.

PLAIN TALK

Cameron Ward may or may not be your favorite Vancouver lawyer, but he certainly got it right in his comments at the dreadful Opaque Inquiry into the Missing Women.

Representing the families of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton, Ward blasted police Tuesday for their failures to catch the killer sooner.

Here are a just a few of his clear bald statements:

Ward suggested the Vancouver police gave families the "brush off" when they tried to report their loved ones missing.

He said the VPD, and later the RCMP, treated the missing-women case with indifference and incompetence by failing to assign enough resources.

That was because the missing women were poverty-stricken, poorly educated and largely were drug-addicted sex-trade workers, with a large proportion being first-nations women, Ward said.

Police "couldn't have cared less what happened to these women," Ward told the inquiry.

"The pervasive problem was the Vancouver police department and the RCMP simply had a bad attitude," said the lawyer.

Ward pointed out that the RCMP, tipped that Pickton was a possible suspect, failed to conduct surveillance on the serial killer before he was caught in 2002.

And the Mounties failed to act on Pickton's offer to police in 2000 that they could search his farm.

"Mr. Commissioner, the facts in the public domain are shocking, and led our clients to the conclusion that both the Vancouver police department and the RCMP completely botched the handling of the missing-women investigation," Ward said during his opening address at the start of the inquiry Tuesday.

"The conduct of both police forces was inexcusable and egregious," the lawyer added.

"They [the families of Pickton's victims] believe that the authorities are culpable in the deaths of over a dozen women because the authorities enabled Pickton to literally get away with murder for five more years," Ward said.

"Our clients believe the VPD, the RCMP and the Criminal Justice Branch have the blood of their loved ones on their hands," he said.

* * *

Add to these simple truths, the ongoing insult and outrage of the government's unwillingness to fund a number of important groups who have since walked away in disgust.

What a sorry mess.

REEL RECOVERY FILM FEST - A CANADIAN FIRST

Doors 7pm, Friday October 21st @ District 319

Join us at stylish District 319 for an evening of gourmet cuisine, comedy and cinema,
as we kick-off an exciting three days of enlightening and entertaining films
about addiction and recovery. Opening the festival is the 2010 documentary
I Am Comic, a revealing look at the serious side of hilarity,
PLUS a performance by our special guest, comic Pat Dixon.

Tickets $75, call the Orchard at 604-947-0420 or purchase online at orchardrecovery.com/filmfest

Gala Location: District 319 319 Main Street, Vancouver, BC
filmfest@orchardrecovery.com

Please note: venue's regulations require minimum age of 19. Dress is semi-formal.

One of the two or three greatest songs ever written played by a Master