WIRED TO LOSE

A comprehensive examination of How to make the problems of Addictions Even Worse
PART THREE


In the first installment of this series I showed you how the Mayor of Vancouver reached his conclusions about the nature of addictions and how we should respond to them. In the second, I described my own positions and how I came by them. Today, in the final installment, we look at current efforts to provide Treatment and the roadblocks that prevent any real progress.


People have tried. But governments, one after another, year after year, have resisted. Drug treatment just isn’t sexy.

I’ll show you.

The Vancouver Sun newspaper reported recently that the City of Victoria has one treatment bed for young crystal meth addicts. One.

A parents group called “From Grief to Action” has cried out publicly for several years now that there are no facilities for their addicted children. The home base of this group is Kerrisdale. For those who can afford it, the children are often sent to centres in America.

We are told repeatedly by the politicians and the Poverty Pimps that we enjoy in this province “Four Pillars” of response to the problem: Harm Reduction, Enforcement, Prevention and Treatment. But it is abundantly clear to even the most rosy-eyed believer among us that what we have is One Pillar and Three MatchSticks. Harm Reduction, in the form of safe injection sights, needle exchanges, and free heroin programs, rule. Enforcement, prevention and treatment are given short shrift and even less money.

Thank God then for the entrepreneurial spirit.

Three very wealthy people have, in recent years, tried to launch treatment programs for young addicts in this province. They have put their own considerable financial resources behind their goals. They have put their money where their mouths are and where your mouth is and where the mouths of citizens are.

That’s the Good News.

Here’s the Bad News. Two have walked away, frustrated and empty-handed. The third has folded his tent and moved to another, more accommodating district.

The first man is a multi-millionaire. His project for a Vancouver-based treatment centre for upwards of one hundred addicted youth was taken off the table after several years of impossible negotiations with Vancouver City Hall. Now, I happen to know this fellow and this plan very well. While it’s true that his project had some planning problems and inconsistencies in its original design, it was more than salvageable. Had City Hall been a little more flexible, this program would be up and running today and serving Vancouver youth in an important way. Instead, the program is slowly finding its feet in Surrey.

The second man is the Mayor of Maple Ridge. His name is Gord Robson. He promised that, if he were elected, he would open, with his own money, a treatment program for five meth-addicted youth. On November 19, 2005, Mr. Robson became Mayor and, true to his election promise (How rare is this?), the very next day he opened a small house in Maple Ridge staffed with a Clinical Psychologist and 4 staff members. All paid for by Mr. Robson.

But before they could admit a single client, the Letter arrived.

The Letter came from the Fraser Health Authority, and it advised all concerned that their little house was not licensed as a “Community Care Facility.” The hallways were too narrow; the doors weren’t equipped with emergency push bars.

Not wishing to begin his term in public office as a criminal, Mr. Robson closed the doors of his little house.

The third individual who tried to help is a woman. A very smart and a very rich woman. She examined the landscape thoroughly before she made her move. After considerable travel, research and study, she settled on a treatment model that has proven, over 40 years now, to be effective and affordable.

She went to City Hall. And then she went to City Hall again. Then she went again. And again. She was putting her own money on the table, her own persuasive energies.

When I had coffee with her a few weeks ago, she sighed and told me that it is over. She has moved on. The irritations of dealing with petty mandarins have driven her to seek bigger, greener pastures. Vancouver’s young addicts lose again.

Now in these tales lie several issues. The first is how narrow is the view of regional health authorities and municipal planning committees that they cannot see past their petty rule books and see that their communities are drowning in the tears of parents begging for treatment options. They cannot or will not grasp the larger picture. We have an epidemic of drug problems. Someone is willing to help. What can we do to help the helper? Instead they reach for the tape measures and building code bibles. Blindness.

You think this is theory or cant? A recovered addict has been running two recovery homes in South Vancouver. All of his resident clients are clean and sober. You might think he’d be given the Key to the City. Instead, he had one of his homes shut down last year because it had an extra sink in the basement. He put ten people back on the street. Blindness.

The second issue is that the Circle has been locked. At this point in our collective history, all of the social agencies, all of the levels of government, all of the hospitals, all of the invested parties have joined hands. They want mastery over these issues, they want control and they have it. After all, what if something goes wrong? The only problem is they are not doing anything recognizably useful. The City of Victoria, the capital city of the province of British Columbia, has one bed for young meth addicts, one! The document known as The Vancouver Agreement, which every politico and his cousin will praise as if it is Holy Writ, has bound every bureaucrat in a dance of liasing, interfacing, conferencing and god know what social intercourse to no known end.

The treatment programs that I created 40 years ago right here in Vancouver could easily be repeated, but they could never be built in the same way. In those days, before the Noose of Inaction tightened, we simply opened houses, began businesses and started programs without asking permission. We did the Right Thing and dealt with the fallout afterwards. The result is a legacy of reversed lives, lives lived clean and sober and drug free.

Today, we argue pointlessly about the merits of Harm Reduction initiatives like the safe injection site. Some believe this is enabling addicts to remain addicts. Others believe this is a reasonable first step, while we prepare the addict for treatment. But it is a dead argument, because there is no treatment.

Some contend that treatment is the most expensive of the four pillars and that it is, quite simply, too expensive. And they are right if you believe in the Medical Model, if you believe that treatment centres are mini-hospitals staffed by doctors and nurses. Yet anyone who knows the slightest thing about addiction recovery can show you over and over again that the best, the most effective treatment centres are those run by recovering addicts themselves! And these programs are cheap and affordable at any level of government. The very same moneys that go into welfare and similar payments can be utilized, per person, to pay for this kind of meaningful and lasting recovery.

If, like the Mayor of Vancouver, you believe that addicts and prostitutes are hopeless, then give them more drugs and keep them oppressed and stupid. Wrap yourself in flags, and, in an almost perverse form of passive-aggressive behavior, chain the addicted to their chemical wheelchairs.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that addicts are your children, your brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts, then, please, write your MLA, write your MP, write your City Council member and demand Treatment. Demand a New Beginning, demand some political courage, and demand hard-nosed compassion and old-fashioned common sense.

THE SPORTS METAPHOR

It's me! It's me! It's me!

Sports as metaphor for life so often demonstrates the most tired and trite abandonment of the imagination. But every once in a blue moon, the obvious becomes the extraordinary.

This evening, we were priveleged to watch one of those moments on tape delay from The Australian Open, the first of the annual four Grand Slams of professional tennis.

Serena Williams, one of the best of the best, has been barely herself in recent years. After an amazing run, in which she and her older sister, Venus, dominated women's tennis, playing each other, as their father, Richard, had predicted, in one final after another, Serena has been plagued with injury upon injury. Here she was, an unseeded player, being dominated by the Russian, Nadia Petrova, who took the first set, 6-1.

In the second set, Williams ran off the first three games handily. Then, Petrova, a streaky and moody performer at best, charged back with 5 straight games herself, creating what looked to all like the end of the road for Ms. Williams.

Then came the moment.

One could almost see Serena turn away and ask herself the question, "Who am I? Am I not the girl from California with 6, SIX, Grand Slam titles, not to mention the Serena Slam of all 4 grand slams in one successive 12-month period?" "I mean, who are you, girl?"

And you could almost see the answer above the scoreboard at Rod Laver Arena:

"It's me! It's me! It's me!"

Serena went on to win the match 1-6, 7-5, 6-3. She had effectively raised her performance and destroyed the opponent's confidence by an act of sheer will and focus.

I mention all this because it is truly the second time I have witnessed this extraordinary phenomenon. An athlete, clearly on the losing slope of some terrible psychic slide, draws mysteriously and magically from the hidden resources of the internal well, and - presto-change-o - The game is turned.

The first time I witnessed this was Boris Becker, doing exactly the same thing in Rome at the Italian Open some 8 years ago against a barely ranked local hero named Gaudenzi. Boris, sucked it up - on red clay, his least favorite surface - blew the poor felow out 7-1 in the first set tie-breaker and went on to demolish him 6-0 in the second for the match.

Sports are a much-overworked poem for real life. But every so often...

HOW I LEARNED ABOUT ADDICTIONS

AS PROMISED YESTERDAY, HERE IS THE 2ND OF A 3-PARTER, PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY ON APRIL 17, 2006 ON www.thetyee.ca. THIS ONE EXPLAINS WHY I CLAIM TO HAVE OR BE AN "AUTHORITY" ON THE SUBJECT OF ADDICTIONS.


WIRED TO LOSE

A comprehensive examination of How to make the problems of Addictions Even Worse
PART TWO



Last week I showed you the Mayor of Vancouver’s central beliefs about drugs, alcohol, prostitution and addiction. Now I’ll show you mine.

In 1967, by a series of comic accidents, I became the founder and executive director of a residential treatment centre for addicts, alcoholics, ex-cons and others. I was 24 years old. I was playing the saxophone, writing poetry, playing tennis and driving a taxi.

Lester Pearson was the Prime Minister of Canada. Mr. Pearson created a kind of domestic Peace Corps, modeled after Vista in America. The idea was to engage educated urban youth in the pressing social issues of the day – poverty, crime, the elderly, native problems. The program was called The Company of Young Canadians, and I was steered in its direction by my late friend, Bob Hunter, who only a few years later would become one of the original founders of Greenpeace.

I began by meeting a group of Native Indians in the B.C. Pen. The recidivism rate at that time for aboriginals was around 97%, and these fellows said they wanted to get out and stay out. They believed the answer lay in having their own halfway house, one that was entirely self-governing and self-financed.

On January 5, 1967, I met a native inmate named Richard, who had served his time and was being released from the Pen. He was a killer, and I was an underachieving Russian-Jewish Canadian from the North End of Winnipeg. Together we set out to change the world. Ha!

A year later, and with the help of Vancouver City Savings and the Lions’ Club, about a dozen of us moved into a house in Fairview Slopes. There were both men and women and most were native, although we had already admitted a few non-native heroin addicts.

The program was simple. Two rules: No chemicals of any kind at any time, and No violence or threats of violence. Break the rules and say goodbye. Yes, you could try again tomorrow, but there was no discussion about today; if you broke one of these cardinal rules, you were gone.

The following year we bought a mansion in Lower Shaughnessy. Now there were 20 and 30 and 40 people, men, women and children. And, although the Two Rules were still inviolate, the program was no longer simple.

We owned and operated a Shell Gas Station, a women’s Beauty Salon, a Pizza restaurant and a specialties advertising company. Resident members were engaged in almost hectic activity 24 hours a day, 9 days a week: seminars, schooling, group therapy, individual counselling, cooking, music making, football, billiards, softball, concerts. Every weekday, recovering addicts spoke openly and passionately about their lives to school kids, churches, business and community groups.

Within four years from our beginnings, the program had grown to over 125 people in residence and a budget in excess of $1Million. The fifth year, we duplicated the program in Winnipeg. That program continues to thrive today in a modified and much expanded version, serving courts, aboriginals, women, children and the original target group of alcoholics, addicts and ex-convicts.

I spent 10 years at this work and I saw hundreds of addicts – let me say it again, hundreds – stop using, change their behavior, never return to jail and live significantly new and different lives. The work was, literally, self-help. No doctors, no shrinks, no social workers. In fact, when we were asked about these kinds of professionals, we used to say, “Oh, we help them too!”

I never saw a heroin addict take more than 48 hours to kick a habit. I never saw anyone have a fit, swallow their own tongue, or walk through walls.

Were we able to help everyone? Of course not. Our success rate remained constant at around 25%. But there are three important things to remember about that number: 1) According to basic Judeo-Christian belief, “If you save one human soul, you save the world!” 2) A batting average of 250 will get you into Cooperstown (Baseball hall of Fame) and a return of 25 cents on the dollar will make you Canada’s next billionaire. 3) Our per bed costs were comically low, less than $20,000 per annum, because this was not a “Medical Model.”

This program used the same basic tenets as Alcoholics Anonymous and all of the subsequent 12-Step Programs. The tone was always Tough Love. The message was, “You’re not sick. You’re stupid. Get smart. Make some new and better choices. We know that’s easier said than done; but we’ve done it and we’re right here beside you.”

My primary interest in the endless Addiction Debates is Treatment, Treatment and more Treatment. I know from personal experience that Treatment is possible and affordable. I have known every Mayor of Vancouver and Premier of British Columbia for the past 40 years. Even though Treatment is touted as one of the Four Famous Pillars, I have yet to meet one Mayor or Premier who is prepared to invest in Treatment.

Gordon Campbell’s highly promoted $8Million for meth treatment is a cruel illusion. Once the money is divided amongst the many Health Authorities, once the administrators therein are covered, and once the advertising and Public Relations initiatives are paid for, this stunt amounts to a spit in the ocean.

Parents in B.C. are in tears.


In the third and final installment in this series, I will introduce you to some people who have tried to create Treatment options for addicted youth. I will also demonstrate how they have been discouraged and defeated by unwieldy bureaucracies and wrongly invested politicians, who mouth “Treatment,” but who are clearly unwilling to pay for it.

THIS, THE FIRST OF 3 ARTICLES, WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS "MAYOR WIMPS OUT ON DRUG TREATMENT" ON APRIL 16, 2006 ON www.thetyee.ca. THE NEXT DAY, AND THE DAY AFTER THAT, 2 MORE ARTICLES FOLLOWED EXPLAINING FIRST, HOW I CAME TO MY POSITION ON THESE MATTERS, AND FINALLY, ON WHAT TO DO ABOUT ADDICTIONS IN OUR COMMUNITIES.

I AM RE-RUNNING THESE PIECES TODAY, TOMORROW AND FRIDAY A) BECAUSE THE PROBLEMS ARE STILL OVERWHELMINGLY BEFORE US; AND B) THE MAYOR IS ABOUT TO UNLEASH YET ANOTHER NUTTY PLAN.

YOUR COMMENTS WILL BE APPRECIATED. LEAVE YOUR URL AFTER YOUR SIGNATURE.


WIRED TO LOSE

A comprehensive examination of How to make the problems of Addictions Even Worse
The first in a three-part series.



Love the guy. Helped get him elected. But, let’s be honest. On this subject, at least, he’s on the other side of the moon. He’s so far out that one day they’ll name a new planet after him.

I speak of the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan. And I speak of Addictions. Drugs and alcohol. Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, booze. Even his handlers have told him to be quiet on this topic. How do I know this? I know because they have told me so.

Nobody in the known world shares the good mayor’s unique perspective. How could they? No one else is in a wheelchair. No one else believes that the wheelchair is the best metaphor for understanding addictions.

And how do I know this? Because I have had this exact discussion with His Honor many times over many years. The last time was on the phone recently when I was verifying my notes taken in his office on the third floor of City hall just before Torino. The first time was in an annoyingly pretentious and mediocre restaurant on West 10th Avenue about five years ago. On that first occasion, I became so angry that I actually jumped up at the table and started hollering. Sam loved this. There is the perennial teenager about him that just gets such a kick out of seeing grown men turn stupid. These days I am calm in the face of his nuttiness. I love the guy. I tell him he’s wrong. And he tells me that one day I will see that he’s right.

Here’s what the Mayor of Vancouver believes about addictions.

“I am in a wheelchair. When I was 19, I did something stupid on the ski slopes and I broke my neck. For quite a while I lay in a hospital bed and bemoaned the fact that now I was a quadriplegic. Eventually, I tired of that. I asked myself “What can I do now?” Here I am years later, the Mayor of Vancouver. It would have been unbearably cruel for someone to suggest that one day I would walk again. I had to face up to my reality and deal with it. And I have.

Now, addicts are like me. They have a disability. And they will always have this disability. It is a waste of time and money to pretend to them and to ourselves that they will ever change. So what we should do is make them more comfortable! Remove the criminality, give them their drugs and let them choose what they do want to do next.”

I told him about The Sobels. Of course, he hadn’t heard of them. But anyone with an even passing interest in the subject of addictions should know the story of Dr. and Mrs. Sobel.

The Sobels were a husband-and-wife team of clinical psychologists practicing at the University of Toronto in the 1980’s. The wanted to prove that they could teach alcoholics how to become “social drinkers.” Their dedication and passion convinced the University to build a “bar” in the department, in spite of the fact that the U of T is smack in the middle of one of the liveliest downtown neighbourhoods in the western world, replete with many a lively joint.

The Sobels spent two years teaching hundreds of drunks to “sip.” Finally they were on the cover of Time Magazine. But not for any of the reasons that they or you or Mayor Sam may have predicted. After two years of work, hundreds of thousands of Canadian tax dollars spent, and much wringing of hands, the Sobels confessed that their work was 1) a complete failure, 2) misguided from the beginning, and finally, amoral!

They said, in effect, “We were wrong to do this. We hurt people. We’re sorry.”

The Mayor was unmoved.

The gist of my discussions with the mayor is this. I want to know if we, in the City of Vancouver, are actively and rigorously working to create Treatment for drug addicts. The Mayor, who clearly believes that Treatment is usually expensive and most often ineffective, dodges and weaves in his answers. What becomes clear is that he has a bias and No Plan.

“I believe we should ask the addict what he needs from Society. The cocaine addict will tell you that if he could chew cocoa leaves, he would get just enough of a fix to keep him from stealing.” This is what the Mayor of Vancouver told me.

When you ask the Mayor to get away from theory and abstractions and tell you in plain English if he is committed to Treatment, if he supports Treatment, if the City has plans for Treatment, if Treatment is high on his agenda, he says the following.

“There are several types of addictions. Some are emotional, some are physical. For some people, this problem will heal itself. In time. Meanwhile, we should keep them healthy, so that when they’re ready they can get back to life.”

So you ask the Mayor again to please be specific and tell us if he has any real plans for treatment. He says, “Give people the tools to manage. Some can do it with abstinence and counselling. Others seem to require a low maintenance amount of drugs.”

You try again to get a comment on Public Policy. Is Treatment high on your agenda as Mayor of Vancouver?

“Yes, but it shouldn’t be paid for by property tax-payers. Drug treatment is not for tax payers.” Huh?

“There are long term problems you can manage,” the Mayor continues, “and problems you can fix.”

But are you putting money into Treatment? How much treatment? What kind of treatment?

“Oh, we’re moving with Coastal health to get more beds, but this is clearly a provincial responsibility.”

Are you vigorously pursuing Gordon Campbell to create Treatment in Vancouver?

“Well, there are many options we should look at.”

In David Lean’s epic movie, “Lawrence of Arabia,” there is this wonderful exchange between Arthur Kennedy playing a journalist and Omar Sharif as a Saudi Prince:

“Did I answer well,” asks the warrior prince.
“You answered without saying anything – that’s politics,” says the writer.

Before leaving for the Winter Games in Torino, the Mayor was heading downtown to meet with five prostitutes. He wants to give them free heroin. Well, nothing’s free, is it? You’ll pay for this, and your grandmother who has to pay for her own needles to inject her insulin will pay for this.

So I say to the Mayor, “Let’s say I agree with this scheme – which, as you know, I decidedly do not – but, let’s say I do. Then what? You’ll give the girls dope, and that will lead to breaking the whole cycle of their street whore culture, jobs, schools, what?”

“Not my concern,” he says. “People gave me the wheelchair. What I did with my life was my problem.”

The Mayor knows that in his case, the notion of “Hope” would be an ugly illusion. He has now projected this idea onto all people with addictions, and for them, he abandons Hope. He offers instead what he considers a comfort.

Cold comfort, indeed.

The Mayor believes that prostitutes’ problems and addict’s problems are insoluble and that these problems should be managed. The Mayor is enshrining slavery.

In the next installment in this series, I will explain how I came to my own position on these issues. In the third and concluding piece, I will outline how some people are trying to help, and how they are hindered at every turn by unwieldy bureaucracies and plain, flat ignorance.

Martin Luther King

Here's the whole story...

I have a Dream Speech

REVISIT THE ONE GREAT AND TRUE HERO OF THE RECENT AMERICAN REPUBLIC...AND THEN PONDER THE INTRACTABLE STUPIDITY OF THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF UTAH, WHICH DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THIS DAY.

MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

As you can see above, the "I have a Dream" videos have been now been posted not once, but twice. Enjoy, and Remember to Remeember.

I thought I had up-loaded Dr. King's unforgettable "I have A Dream" speech. But, such is the learning curve for the novice blogster. Apologies. These kinks will in time iron themselves out.

What is more important is to remember to remember one of the great Heroes of the Last Century. In spite of the FBI compiling rooms full of specious "evidence" to damn this great man, and in spite of the murderous piece of irrelevance who killed him, Dr. King remains for many of us an astonishing beacon of Light and Hope. How urgently we are need of more of him. How desperately do we all need to pull ourselves up to his level of commitment and humanity.

And great Shame on the soveriegn state of Utah, who in their whiteness, have chosen NOT to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. With straight, pale faces, their legislators went to work today. And these are people who boast of their religious integrity.

What if they had stayed home and talked to their children about the drama and thrust of Dr. King's work?

We were all blesssed that he lived within our time. Our sadness at his passing and at what he might still have accomplished continues undiminished.

BEATING THE VALENTINE'S DAY RUSH

LOVE IS ... an early Valentine's consideration


“Love is funny or it’s sad,
It’s a good thing or it’s bad.
It’s a heartache or it’s mad,
But beautiful…”

Really?

What do I know of love?

I am mean and selfish. Many of my friends and family want little to do with me. I am vain, argumentative, arrogant, small-minded, petty, impatient, intolerant, increasingly agoraphobic and utterly self-serving.

I can’t and won’t wait in line to collect a $24Million Lotto prize let alone to pay for a loaf of bread, register at a resort hotel or pay my property taxes.

I’m the guy who yells at people in the cinema and at the Orpheum to “Shut Up!”

I cut off old friends like some people cut toenails. My son has a list of “People Who Are Not Welcome at my Funeral.” If you’re reading this, you’re probably at the top of this list.

I don’t love myself. I disappoint me. I’m not a movie star, James Joyce or a great singer. What the hell have I been doing all these years?

I know for sure what love isn’t.

It isn’t a gushy, mushy feeling of relentless goo. It isn’t Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman on the silver screen. Rock was gay, and, by all reports, Ms. Wyman, the first of Ronald Reagan’s wives, was a tough customer who could easily go a few rounds with Mike Tyson. Love isn’t all us lucky souls in the anonymous millions who have been told, “I love you,” by Michael Jackson and the last 125 Oscar winners. It isn’t puppy dog tails, although it may possibly be carrying small plastic bags in your pocket to pick up their lovely steaming leavings. That could be some form of love, for sure.

It isn’t the plans of politicians to conquer homelessness, spread democracy or discover new sources of energy. If anyone has a lock on being prime residents outside the Mist of Love, it’s politicians.

Love isn’t the revelations shared by actors, musicians or athletes on their amazing, mysterious processes that allow them to do those things that no one else can do and that they, themselves, surely don’t comprehend.



The only people I know personally who lay claim to the Truth About Love are clergy. Whether pastors or rabbis, celibate or resplendent with progeny, gay or straight, bearded or apple-cheeked, these guys can go on for weeks about Love. Jesus’ love, God’s love, man’s love for woman, love of humankind, you name it. And lest I sound even more cynical than you in your worst moments, understand that often these sermons and lectures bring sentimental, sloppy me to tears. (For the record, I don’t know any Imams or leaders in any other, no doubt worthy, disciplines. And being the hate-based, fear-based jerk that I am, and so far along in Life’s glorious path, I am not really open to meeting any.)

Wait. There is another category of person who claims expertise on the subject of Love, and that is the psychiatrists and psychologists. The only problem is that, from my personal experience with this bowling team, they are almost all universally certifiable. Show me shrink and I’ll show you a major wacko.

That leaves the poets.

And the songwriters and lyricists. These are the guys who truly get it, whatever it is. They can’t explain it or paint it or skate it or climb it, but somehow in skirting round and round the glow of the issue, they get us close to it. And that may be the best we can hope for.

Now, Bob Dylan, America’s Great Troubadour, is not someone to whom I customarily turn for solace or wisdom or even reduced rent. But he did say something a few years back that has stayed with me, or at least returned from the shores of the subconscious, somewhat dripping in seaweed and with definite sand in its pants.

Two or three love affairs back, I began to get this tiny shard of an iota of a hint of a shadow of an inkling about Love. “You gotta serve somebody!”

This is what Dylan told us, and you know what? He’s right.

If Love is anything comprehensible it is that willingness to help the other, to want to make the other person’s burden a little less today, to ring forth some small shard of kindness on the ones we claim to love, or even, on some days, a total stranger.

Two or three lovers back, I actually started to cotton on to this notion. Heck, I was only in my fifties by then. It’s never too late. What if I inconvenienced myself today and did some small unasked for thing for this dear person, something that would ease the afternoon or make the night a more inviting place? I could make the dinner or pick you up after work or take the garbage out or check to see when the swimming pool is open. Imagine that.

Imagine the ten thousand tiny ways we can say, “I love you,” in deeds remembered or forgotten. That doesn’t matter. What is important in Love is that they are done.

ADVICE TO BUSH - WATCH MORE MOVIES

Mr. Idiotpants has ordered a fresh round of American death flesh, 21,000 young men to be exact. In addition, many thousands of soldiers scheduled to leave Iraq for the home shores have been told to forget it, suck it up and die a little more.

It now seems clearly impossible to impress on this dangerous fool what most of us have known for a long time - THIS IS THE WRONG WAR BEING FOUGHT THE WRONG WAY.

Every good student of insurgency and counter-insurgency - and that includes no end of dirt-in-the-crotch military experts as well as academics and think-tankers - has stressed that this is a war of hearts and minds. Never has the adage KNOW THY ENEMY been more salient.

For Mr. Bushleague, we prescribe a steady diet of David Lean's great epic movie, "Lawrence of Arabia." Of course, it's a great film, but that's hardly the point.

Perhaps, if Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice and their deranged, misguided lot, were to watch this entertainment, say, a biblical seven days and seven nights, they might latch on to one of the story's central themes: While the British military in Cairo built squash courts and shot billiards in the officers' mess, T. E. Lawrence went into the desert, met the dazzling array of Arab tribes, ate their food, rode the camels and, in time, led the Arab revolt against the conquering Turks.

The American embassy in Baghdad, one thousand strong we are told, has precisely 6 people who speak the local language.

All the guns and grenades in the world will not do the trick in Iraq. More boys from Iowa dying in the dust will not speed the peace.

God help us all.

Lawrence of Arabia Photos

Lawrence of Arabia Photos

Fred and Alex Kreklau have been married for 60 years. They are devoted to each other.

Now, the compassionate geniuses at British Columbia's Interior Health Authority have separated this loving couple. The official story is that there is "No Room at the Inn." The mandarins claim they cannot find an accomodation for the two elderly people in one tiny suite in the care homes to which they have now been sent.

This is pathetic bullshit.

It demonstrates the cruelty and incompetence that makes one question the country and time in which we are living.

To make matters worse, this is an exact repeat of an identical situation that took place right here in B.C. 2 years ago. After the media rose an unholy stink about that circumstance, the premier intervened and promised this would never happen again.

Hello?

We cannot find a double bed or a set of twin beds for an elderly couple, but you can bet your ski boots that every perk and luxury will be on full display for the Olympics.

Write your MLA and your Premier. Demand a better British Columbia.

A MILLION SHADES OF GREY - HOW FOXNEWS IS WILLFULLY COLOR BLIND

What solace it must be to the management, writers and broadcasters at FOX NEWS (www.foxnews.com) that the world appears only in the stark and reassuring hues of black and white. No reds (especially)and greens (abhorrently)for these ghouls. That would only complicate matters. When life is simple, why Guss it up with the daily details the rest of know as a reality?

DENNIS MILLER, one of the great Public Ranters of our time - comedian, actor, monologist and, for a time, part of the legendary Monday Night Football Holy Three - was featured on FOX recently cheering on the Saddam hanging. He smiled, he laughed, he howled. He called those of us who questioned the fact or the method pussies...or equivalents. No consideration in Mr. Miller's 4 minutes that one American state after another continues to wrestle mightily with its own conscience over the issue of capital punishment. No thought about international bodies, such as they are, and the role they might have held in the Hussein trial and execution. No idea how America has never in its history been held in such low regard outside its borders.

I'm not sure when gloating over death is ever on point, but the execution of even the worst amongst us continues to miss my happy button. Good for Dennis Miller that his pleasure centre is so easily aroused.

BILL O'REILLY, the home run hitter for FOX News, is equally confident about his President's position on Iraq. The new Congess and House are self-evidently pussies. Witness the speaker! (Bringing children to the opening day! Sheesh! What next?) Asking for a new direction in Iraq or a timetable of withdrawal is to Mr. O'Reilly and his fans, tantamount to sedition. The war in Iraq is simple to Simple Bill. It's like that great American metaphor, the football game. You win or you lose. Any problem with that, Bunkie?

Well, actually, yes. A thousand and one problems. You see, this so-called war on terrorism IS THE WRONG WAR BEING FOUGHT IN THE WRONG WAY. FAILURE IS GUARANTEED.

Terrorism is not a universal club. It is local. Village to village, family to family, my uncle, your cousin. The sad fools who tie bombs to their belts may be married to Allah, but they are first the brother and nephew of someone with whom they have had a thousand dinners.

The American embassy in Baghdad currently pays about one thousand visiting Americans for their services. Six speak Arabic. Six.

Apparently, there were another 25 or so who could speak the local language and might therefore help America understand the people with whom they deal every day, but they were gay, so they were "de-commissioned."

But, you see this is the same Bush government, committed to some fundamentalist religious fantasy of "abstinence," who are letting women die of cervical cancer rather than vaccinate young girls.

Bill and Dennis, like George and the George before him, live in a comfortable world. Complex issues, once reduced to White Hat and Black Hat, are easily understood.

I think it was Chuck Knoll, the long-time coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who after winning his 4th Super Bowl, said, "Football is a comfortable thing. There's a measurable outcome; a score. Someone wins, someone loses. It's nice. It just doesn;t have anything to do with real life."

When FOX stops calling Politics and Life and International Affairs as a College Bowl game, they might have some claim to being a news organization.

Over to you, Chet...

MISSING IN ACTION: CANADA, THE "B" MOVIE

WHAT KIND OF "COLLEGE" GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO KEEP PEOPLE OUT?

WHY "PROFESSIONAL COLLEGES," OF COURSE.

Currently there is a fight making the front pages in Vancouver between the professional veterinarians' association and an Indo-Canadian group of vets. While that melodrama has its moments, what is much more interesting is how this struggle highlights an on-going problem in the workforce these days across Canada.

Every province in the country is crying for more doctors, nurses, teachers and other highly skilled and crucial workers.

Yet, there are thousands of apparently qualified doctors, nurses, teachers and others sorting vegetables, waiting tables and driving cabs in Vancouver, Toronto and every other Canadian population centre. You see, these people are immigrants. They come mostly from Asia - China, India, the Philippines.

One friend of mine comes from Shanghai. He is an oncologist and a practitioner of Chinese medicine. He has been here for several years and is now a proud, if underemployed, Canadian citizen. You see, he still hasn't qualified to be a doctor in Canada. And believe me, he has tried. He has jumped through all the known hoops.

Tell me something. In this age of DNA, the Internet, the fax machine, YouTube, MySpace, and the universal telephone number, how long should it take to determine if Alex Chang (fictitious name)is or is not really a doctor? One day? One hour?

What is keeping us from adding these wonderful human resources to our professional rosters? The College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Nurses, the College of Teachers, that's what. Each of these moribund institutions claims that it exists for the benefit of the public. "We are here to guard and guarantee public safety," is their mantra.

The truth is that they exist entirely to guard the status quo, that they are a sure impediment to progress, and that governments across the land should either regulate them or disband them.

Either these "Colleges" will find creative ways to expedite the integration of highly skilled immigrants into the Canadian workforce or they should go the way of the Dodo Bird.

Your thoughts?

Our rant today is entirely numerical.

1. Robert R. Nardelli, pictured right, has walked from his reign as CEO of Home Depot with a loathsome severance package of $210Million. We dare to call this atrocity by its names at a time when America languishes with 45 Million citizens uninsured for health care, schools and roads crumbling and the American reputation and good will at its lowest ebb world-wide in living memory. Mr. Nardelli follows in the footsteps of the American capitalist hero, Jack Welch, of G.E. fame, who found his form firing hundreds of thousands of ordinary working folks, increasing profit margins short term and moving on to his next odious score.

2. Cameron Ward, a Vancouver lawyer, has been awarded a $10,000 judgement against the City of Vancouver and the B.C. government. In 2002, Mr. Ward got in a scuffle with Vancouver police when they thought he was going to "cream" then Prime Minister Jean Chretien with a pie. Mr. Ward was stripped, skin searched and briefly jailed. The world is blowing itself to pieces, but in Canada we have the luxury of being on high "Pie Alert!"

3. Penny Ballem, the former Deputy Health Minister of the Province of British Columbia, quit 6 months ago. She now reveals that she had encouraged Premier Gordon Campbell to institute a "best practices" regimine with B.C. doctors, such that they might be accountable for their work. Ms. Ballem, herself a physician, pushed for this initiative because she estimated that 60% of diabetics are not getting their proper drugs and 80% of heart patients are getting the wrong drugs. Dr. Ballem still believes that "the system is killing people." The premier turned down her suggestion and she walked.

4. The usual suspects are getting their dandelion in a knot over a recent Ontario court decision naming 3 people as parents of a young boy. The three people are the boy's biological father - a sperm donor, who doesn't live with the child but sees him very regularly - and the two lesbian women who are his live-in parents and have been since day one. Clearly the world is coming to an ignominious end...or at least, so The Hysterics would have you believe.

It's All in the Numbers

LUNACY

But the most astonishing and unforgettable photo of 2006 is this one of a New York Rabbi shaking hands with, and smiling enthusiastically, at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran.

The date was December 11th, and the occasion was a Holocaust Denial Conference. This was an ongoing part of the Good President's campaign to rid the world of the "lice and rats who are Jews."

I have only one question about this picture.

Why not kiss Hitler?

THE JESSE AND MICHAEL SHOW

To the right, you will find a photo of The Reverend Jesse Jackson (a man who never met a spotlight to which he didn't hurry) and Michael Richards, Kosmo Kramer to you and you and you.

This is one of my favorite pictures from 2006.

Mr. Richards had just caused some kind of national scandal and personal disgrace by falling into a heated argument with a heckler at a Los Angeles comedy club. Mr. Richards now famously resorted repeatedly to using the "N" word.

Wearing his hairshirt very much in public over the ensuing weeks, the actor, who has been blessed and saddled with a defining, once-in-a-lifetime role as Kramer on "Seinfeld," Mr. Richards turned to guidance and appeasement and forgiveness from Jesse Jackson.

Why is this one of my favorite moments from the year past?

Please never forget that The Reverend Jesse Jackson used to call New York City, HYMIETOWN.

Who will counsel the counsellors?

BUON ANNO! HAIL 2007!

May we all find health and prosperity in the New Year.

For the rest , I wish that:

- All the bureaucrats, mandarins, public officials and elected poseurs do considerably less harm than they did this past year and the year before that and the year before that.That would be real HARM REDUCTION!
- India finds water and China food for their slaked and starving masses.
- Someone (the UN, Bono, Stephen Lewis) is allowed to deliver medicines to all the HIV/AIDS expectant mothers in Africa.
- The United Nations become a real and vital force in our world, instead of the costly and anaemic eunuch that it is now.
- India seeks water before it seeks more nuclear power.
- North Korea feeds its women and children before its army.
- Our consumerism and materialism is offset each day by some modest acts of humanism and kindness.
- The religion of Capitalism is tempered on occasion by humanism and kindness and parity and equal wages for equal work.
- Religions the world over abandon hate - hate of each other, hate of The Other.
- Israel is allowed to live in peace and prosperity.
- Arabs and Palistinians are allowed to live in peace and prosperity.
- Scorsese and Tarintino find other hobbies.
- Someone writes a Broadway musical or a movie with a tuneful song in it.
- Television reality shows are replaced post haste by comedies and dramas, written by writers and acted by actors.
- THE CIVIL SOCIETY descends on us all.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

David in The Movies, Radio & TV

A Life in ENGAGEMENT! The story of the Master Story teller in 2 minutes.

HE'S DEAD. ARE YOU SLEEPING BETTER?

Saddam was hanged a few hours ago. No doubt he was one nasty piece of work and he deserved a bitter end. But has this particular end served anyone? Has it served your idea of Justice?

Saddam was officially charged with the killing of 148 Shiites, men and boys, in the village of Dujail in 1982. This was clearly the least of his crimes. He was a man who reveled in his own atrocities and had an enormous, and apparently accurate, reputation for bloodlust. There can be little argument about the brutality he visited both on enemies and his own people.

But when capital punishment is on the table, the same question is always before us: "Shall we sink to the level of the murderer? Can we call ourselves civilized if we continue the bloody trail ?"

Of course, we all have within us, often not far at all from the polished surface, the instinct for revenge. We are outraged at the Clifford Olsons and Pol Pots. We are offended at a level so deep, so basic, so truly human, that we are astonished at its inherent beauty and power. Our reflex is to strike back.

But instincts and reflexes aren't necessarily the mechanisms that will lead us forward to a just and civil society.

Listen to the opposing twins as they reacted to this morning's news.

"The execution of Saddam represents a big happiness for Iraqis," says a young Bagdad Shiite.

"The president is a martyr. He has died the death of a Holy Warrior," answers a Sunni in Tikrit.

In what century are we?

The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, with perfectly crafted two-headedness adds that while Saddam has been "held to account," her country remains opposed to the death penalty.

Saddam's trial was a kangaroo court of the oldest and shabbiest order. The trial should have been held in Europe, delivering the very highest standards of international justice. Saddam should have been kept alone in prison for as long as he lived, and the intelligence community should have mined him for every tidbit of information they could possible find about the realities of the middle east.

A hanging is a hanging is a hanging. Saddam Hussein may have been a murderous sonofabitch, but there is no special joy in my heart tonight.

THE FRONT PAGE

Until we learn the secret of uploading audio files, we'll have to stick with the written word. Remember that all things in life are temporary.

The first woman he raped was 69. His next victim was 89. He's a Prince. And he's been paroled.

This, in short, is the first of 2 unrelated - but mysteriously linked - stories on the front page of this morning's newspaper.

In this first story, Mr. Creepypants has misspent most of his so-called adult life dashing in and out of jail. When he's not bursting into the homes of the elderly and infirm, tying bedsheets around their heads and sexually assaulting them, he's simply robbing and causing general mayhem.

Enter the British Columbia Parole Board. The Board uses or tries to use or pretends to use a computer system, comically named CORNET, to track their darling charges. And, gosh, if some clerk approaching coffee break, manages to miss an entry (say, WARNING: THIS MISCREANT IS A HUGE PUBLIC DANGER!), the Board is just at a loss. They don't know that the lunatic in front of them rapes elderly women. They think he just break into houses and steals doilies.

As always, the Parole People have a thousand and one excuses. They've learned well from the prisoners who sit in front of them. After all, these guys are the experts at excusing lousy behaviour and sooner or later, their wisdom is bound to rub off.

There is good news and bad news at the end of this tale. The good news is that the Solicitor-General, John Les, has promised to abolish the B.C. Parole Board and transfer all decisions on provincial inmates to the National Parole Board. The bad news is that John Les, the Solicitor-General, has promised to transfer...etc, blah, blah, yadda, yadda...

In the second front page story this morning, we learn that anger may be a mental disorder. Psychologists and other helpers are yearning to include anger in the DSM, The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The DSM is the Torah and Koran of psychiatry. It is also one of the most dangerous texts in print. Until very recently, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder. But more than that, examine the consequences of listing a human behavious as a disease. If, in fact, anger is a mental disorder, or at the very least, we call it a mental disorder, than Mr. Creepypants, the rapist of old women, is sick and he cannot be held legally liable for his behaviour. And only qualified psychiatrists will be able to help him. Punishment and containment will not be appropriate; they will be cruel acts cast upon the helpless.

The front page is enough to make a guy angry. But the page made me do it, and only me shrink can save me.