Victor on Lib-Speak

Hey mensche:

In a world of much larger problems, I manage to fret about the tiniest things. It keeps me healthy.

This week's annoyance concerns two language conceits of Gordon Campbell (Gordo Carbo) that have been picked up by the tiny portion of his Cabinet Ministers who are allowed to address the media. Here they are with headlines:

#1 THE TOOTHLESS RABBI MUMBLE

Gordo Carbo refers to British Columbia as BRISHHH Clumbia. There used to be a "t" in the middle of British. Columbia had an "o". But Carbo pronounces it like a toothless Rabbi, as in " Are you here for the brishhh." Or maybe a drunk who wondered into a circumcision rite and asked, " Wasss a brisshh anyway? burp!"

If you listen to Carbo's designated hit men ( Kevin Flopman, Wally Opaque etc.) they all raise a glass to Brishh Clumbia.

#2: MUMMY SAYS I CAN TALK

This refers to Carbo's tendency to start every third sentence with " I can tell you." What the bleeding hell does that mean? Has his grandmother finally released him from a vow and allowed him to tell us some long dead secret? Has he finally learned to pronounce the two syllable words in the proclamation he is about to orate? Flopman loves this one. He uses it without any accompanying sentence. Opaque uses it, but then again, Opaque proves that in order to be a Stepford wife, you do not have to be a wife, white, or stupid.

Stupid is enough.

So, I can tell you that here in Brishhhh Clumbia, ish a bewfull day.

I'm on m way to a brisssh and I have the rabbi's teeth in my pocket. Somewhere. Ouch!!!!!

v

Frances Bula Moving On

Frances Bula, for many years Vancouver Sun's City Hall senior reporter, is departing the Sun to work as Contributing Editor at Vancouver Magazine. She will also be a key member of Langara College's Journalism Faculty.

Here is her last entry on her Sun's "City States" blog from this morning:

A short goodbye

Dear all of my blog-readers,

This will be my last post on this Vancouver Sun blog, as I have resigned from the paper.

I wanted to tell all of you, as I go, how much I have enjoyed this new form of telling you the news and how great it has been to interact in a completely different way with a crowd of intelligent, engaged and well-informed people. I don’t want to say “readers,” because that implies you are passive and the thing I love about the blog is that you’re not – you post comments and email and phone and let me know in person about other information I should have or your critiques of what I’ve written – so it’s more like a conversation where you learn from me and I learn from you.

What this blog has really proven to me, as well, is that there is a significant group of people out there who really care about content and about issues beyond the boundaries of your house and yard. That’s something that we in the newspaper business are frequently told is not the case. But the growth of this blog, which went from 1,000 to 30,000 page views a month in the course of only six months, tells me people are hungry for information.

That’s encouraging to me and to everyone who works in this funny business of scooping up and distributing words and facts and observations for a living. It makes me feel good about the future of journalism, which is a cause I really believe in. In spite of all the many criticisms we can all make about objectivity and corporate ownership and bias and sensationalism and all the other terrible faults of contemporary media, there is still something exciting about the fundamental concept of having people whose “work” is to go out and ask weird questions, dig up strange and unknown stuff from files, or hang out and observe the doings of everyone from street people to premiers – all on behalf of the public.

People often talk about the new power of “citizen journalism,” seeming to forget that the thing about paid journalists is that they are the original form of citizen journalism. Journalists, through their professional organizations, have always rejected the idea that anyone should have to be certified or have to have a required level of education to work in the business. That’s because of a fundamental belief that all citizens have the capacity to observe and report on the world, not just some elite class. So I encourage all of you to support the good parts of the mainstream media that’s produced by us citizen journalists who happen to be paid.

As for me, I will be continuing with other forms of journalism, including blogging, but, unless there’s an unforeseeable turn in my life in the next few years, I won’t be embedded in a daily-news operation any more as I have been for the last 25 years of my life.

Thank you so much for being a great audience and I’ll see you elsewhere.

Frances

Awards

Philip Owen has been named to the Order of Canada.

No, that's debasement. Or...de basement.

Because he has travelled the world promoting the Four Pillars Delusion?

It's never been about four programs. It's always been about Harm Seduction, which has caused more harm than good.

On the other hand...

Dr. Henry Morgentaler was also named to the order and that has brought out the religious leaders in outrage.

I applaud Morgentaler and his courage and his belief in women.

Doctor Shortage Before Our Noses

We've got good news and we've got bad news.

The good news: 12 new doctors from 10 countries were made Canadian citizens yesterday.

The bad: there are somewhere between 400 and 800 foreign-trained doctors living in B.C. who would like to work as doctors, but have yet to be licensed to practice.

Will any government ever act on this continuing scandal?

NIMBYISM at its Worst

Turning Point Recovery Society has had to abandon its plans for another facility in Richmond to help addicts. The Society has been quietly and effectively doing its job for 25 years.

We can expect ignorance and fear mongering from neighbours. That's a given.

But where has Richmond City Council been through all of this? Where is their vision and courage?

I'll tell you where.

It's been in the laminated wood panels on the roof of the Olympic Skating Oval, an ego project never discussed with the citizens.

Do they actually think that they have no addicts in their jurisdiction?

Do they actually think?

A classic case of fiddling while Rome burns.

Canadiana Sweet

Arar Abandoned by US Court in Absurd Technicality

Court Dismisses Rendition Suit

By ALAN FEUER

Published: July 1, 2008

A federal appeals court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Syrian-born Canadian man who had accused the United States of violating the law and his civil rights after he was detained at Kennedy Airport and sent to Syria under what he claims was an act of “extraordinary rendition.”

The man, Maher Arar, tried to win civil damages from United States officials in his suit, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that because he was never technically inside the United States, his claims could not be heard in the federal courts.

While stating that “threats to the nation’s security do not allow us to jettison principles of ‘simple justice and fair dealing,’ ” the majority opinion ruled nonetheless that Mr. Arar, who had been seized as he tried to change planes at Kennedy Airport while flying back to Canada from Switzerland, had no federal standing in his case and that the government did not violate the Torture Victim Protection Act by sending him abroad.

Mr. Arar, a telecommunications engineer, was detained at the airport in September 2002 when immigration officers found his name on a terrorist watch list. After being held for several days in New York, he was sent to Jordan by immigration officers and turned over to Syrian intelligence, which, he claims, tortured him.

In an occasionally scathing dissent, one judge, Robert D. Sack, said Mr. Arar’s suit should have been able to proceed because the argument that he was never really in the United States was “a legal fiction.”

“Arar was, in effect, abducted while attempting to transit at J.F.K. Airport,” Judge Sack wrote.

The Unfriendly Skies

Airplane travel has become an unhappy experience.

Even flight attendants and ticket agents in terminals will admit that.

Now, to add to the nightmare, more cellphone use will soon be permitted.

Let's face it, whether you are sitting in dining class or steerage, the only way to survive 10 and 13 hour flights is to have some small measure of quiet. Watch a movie, read, sleep, walk about, stretch.

But now have dimwit #973 yelling about his business deal or her argument with her mom.

HELP!!!

The Gift that Never Stops Giving

I love headlines like, "Dion ready to sell his Carbon Tax to the West."

Don't even have to read the item.

Tells you all you need to know.

A year or two and you'll never hear of this fool again.

As Janis Joplin would say, "Bye, bye, baby, bye bye..."

Revelations 3:10

Venus and Serena are Jehovah's Witnesses?

Jehovah's witnesses don't permit voting?

Where have I been? You learn something or two every day.

You can be fashion model wanna-bes, but you can't participate in your community's most solemn responsibility?

OK...just asking...

Janis Joplin - Summertime Just Only Simply Amazing

RUNNING FOR COUNCIL

Dear Bloggists,

Thank you for making the "Running for Council" survey the best yet.

In total there were 88 responses and "you should run" in some form or another was heavily favored - 52/88.

But I will not run. This term or any other.

I put the survey on the site because I have been tossing this idea about for last two terms. Now, having giving it way too much thought and taking up friend and colleague's time with their advice, I have concluded that running for office and sitting in office is simply not for me.

Especially at this time.

I am 65, and although I am blessed still with terrific energy, I have have the blast I had even five years ago.

I have always been entirely selfish and self-centered, but now I am even more so. I want to do only what I want to do and I resent mightily having to do anything I don't like - waiting in line at the bank, driving Cambie Street, listening to boring people talk.

In the evening, after a day of work and a bit of exercise, I simply LOVE to come home to my beautiful hide-away and eat and read and make popcorn and watch TV.

The running for office would be fun. I could make speeches and perform and carry on in public and have a ball being a general nuisance.

But what about actually being elected?

The idea of people phoning me at 9:30 at night to complain that their garbage wasn't picked up fills me with the willies. I would certainly tell the third caller to practice an ancient form of self-satisfaction.

The idea of sitting through council meetings until 2 am is simply unthinkable. I would get up and leave at 9:45, because that would still give me time to get home, make the popcorn, get into my sweats and turn on "Law and Order."

There were only two reasons for my considering this folly in the first place.

The first is sheer vanity. One can't help being tickled by the image of a sign carved on an oak door at City Hall that reads, "Councillor David Berner."

But vanity is rarely a good reason to do anything. Even performing - acting, singing - requires that the vanity is massaged by knowledge and ideas and preparation and care for the audience.

The second is that a few good men have encouraged me to run. One former councillor, who was a first-rate councillor - Jonathan Baker - has said repeatedly that we need good people in office and at this moment we have few.

He is right. I have written often about how dreadful and shallow the pool is at the moment.

Michael Geller is running and he will make a terrific contribution.

Better him than me.

Finally, I cherish my role as a satirist, critic, kvetcher, complainer and general annoyance.

Can I abandon all the fun of that for a few chicken gosht dinners?

These days, Life is being particularly kind to me.

I have wonderful work, excellent health, a kind and loving sweetheart, friends, family and hearth.

I mutter quietly my gratitude every day.

May we have a much better city council than we've had. You know who is gone, so that's already guaranteed. May some common sense and verve and wit be heard occasionally from the New Gang. May they fire half the staff, plant more flowers, have fewer planning meetings and cut taxes.

Amen, Brothers and Sisters.

Alice Russell

A Glory Day for Free Speech

A marvelous bonus day for Free Speech in Canerder yesterday.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the hate charges against Maclean's magazine.

Of course, the BC Chamber of Silliness has yet to decide.

And the Supreme Court ruled that Rafe Mair was not liable for expressing his thoughts on Kari Simpson and her anti-gay crusade in Surrey schools.

Now, if someone can just get the BC Kangeroos to Yuk Yuks and heckle them for an hour or so...

Rare Good Move

We welcome the news that Stockwell Day is changing prison policy to make it more difficult for dangerous offenders to be moved to medium and minimum security jails.

Corrections Canada has been an irresponsible ass for far too long.

This small measure might help.

Alex on Sentencing, from 24 Hours

LET'S GET SERIOUS ABOUT SENTENCING

There is no way Michael Levy could have seen them coming. No way.

Cornered at a side exit of Tynehead Hall in Surrey, on a brisk October night in 2006, three thugs, in concert, beat him mercilessly. Two of them alternated punching and breaking a bottle over him. The third hoodlum took an axe to Michael Levy’s spine.

Four times.

There wasn’t much holding his head to the rest of his body. He lost almost two litres of blood and were it not for his then exceptional physical conditioning, he would have surely perished in the unearthly attack. He was training to go off with the Canadian Forces as an infantryman. A strapping lad, who always exuded goodness and kindness, his life was set in permanent intercession between his dreams and stark reality.

Crippled, perhaps, but not in spirit.

Much has changed since that fateful night. Michael Levy is a quadriplegic, resigned to his fate, but nobly soldiers on, sometimes even trading jokes with his stoic mother and adoring sister, while the three louts, who attacked him, will see punishment meted out to them that most certainly does not fit the crime.

I will not mention their names, even though they were raised to adult court, because they are not worthy of having their fifteen minutes of overtime fame attached to such a brazen act of comprehensive evil. But there is something very wrong with all this…

There is something very wrong with a criminal justice system that hails a just society as it’s mantra, but cannot do more than hand out sentences that amount to laughable reprimand for the three cowards, who randomly ambushed Michael Levy and effectively sentenced him to wheelchair.

For life.

There is something very wrong with an Attorney General of this Province, who chastises the police for speaking out on the light nature of sentencing for repeat offenders, for serious offenders, and any violent offenders—period.

Have we not had enough of this rank insanity?

How many more people, I wonder aloud, have to die or be maimed before we’re really outraged? When will sentencing in this country fall into line with being fair to the victims? To their families?

The axe-wielding lout was sentenced to ten years, reduced to eight for time already served. Eight years for taking an axe to someone’s spine??? Four times?? And remember the horse’s ass who along with his idiotic friends, post sentencing, decided to laugh all the way down the elevator of the Law Courts, with cameras in tow? He has to spend seven months of his original twenty month sentence in a detention center country club. Lovely.

Michael Levy received a life sentence at the hands of these bastards. There should have been a law to make them rot in jail for the rest of their lives, even the ones who facilitated the axe man. No parole, no reprieve. Not ever.

If the Conservative Government are want to show us, in sincerity, that they are going to renew our faith in the justice system, then change the damn laws so that they fit the crimes committed. Punish someone who takes someone else’s life from them.

Michael Levy’s mother, Deborah, as kind a soul as you could ever meet tells me that her son has good days and bad. “Some days are tougher than others”, she says. “For all of us, but mostly for Michael…but he’s tough and he understands what he needs to do to get through”

“I try not to cry”, she says bravely. And then her voice breaks.

“Michael really wanted to go into the Canadian Forces, it was his dream. I would have been so proud, but I’m still so proud of him. They didn’t kill his spirit. Sometimes I think he’s stronger than all of us”

Of course they didn’t break his spirit.

Because you don’t have to have a pile of shiny medals on your chest to be a hero.

Ernistine Anderson

FRIDAY PROVINCE COLUMN

	Friday » June 27 » 2008
It's time to free our roads from the dangers of drugged driving David Berner The Province Friday, June 27, 2008 Driving while stoned on drugs is going out of fashion. Just after Canada Day, police across the country will be empowered to pull you over and question your clear-headedness. If you don't agree to a roadside test, like walking a straight line, you may be required to go to a police station and possibly have to donate a blood, urine or saliva sample. As soon as this new federal legislation came to light all the usual suspects raised the familiar hullabaloo about privacy and civil rights. There are kinks to be worked out, no doubt. But the bottom line here is that anything that helps reduce our senseless road carnage should be welcomed. Remember it was not politicians, but citizen groups like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and SADD (originally Students Against Driving Drunk, and now, Students Against Destructive Decisions) who, through relentless lobbying, changed the laws and public perception. Before these pioneers, we all winked at the dimwit who downed fists full of martinis after work and hopped in the Chevy to drive home. Don't you recognize how much our attitudes have changed? Now we need one more shift -- tackling the problem of motorists driving under the influence of prescription drugs. I don't have the figures to prove it, but I reckon at least half the people driving while impaired by chemicals are doing so with the aid of their friendly neighbourhood doctor, psychiatrist or pharmacist. Prozac and Ritalin, for example, are among the world's most widely prescribed "medicines." Then there's diazepam, amitriptyline, chlorpromazine and a thousand psychotropic drugs found in the alphabet soup of modern pharmacology. Google any one of these modern miracle workers and you will find pages of helpful descriptions and analyses. In almost every case, in the tiniest print on the second or third page, you will find this modest instruction: "Use caution when driving or operating machinery." This, of course, is after the customary warnings about possible side-effects like nausea, headaches, dizziness, drowsiness and fainting. But the last time your doctor prescribed a little blue or pink "helper" to get you through the travails of life, did he or she happen to mention that maybe driving under their influence wasn't the best idea? Does anyone remember the last time the B.C. Medical Association or the Canadian Psychiatric Association ran a public-information forum on the problems and responsibilities involved in taking powerful mood-changing chemicals and driving the Ford Exploder? Probably not. The death and destruction on our roads is due to speed, alcohol, illegal drugs -- and both prescription and over-the-counter medicines. It is time for each of us, as responsible patients, consumers and citizens, to be aware of the dangers involved. And it is time for the professionals to show the same care and concern. david@davidberner.com © The Vancouver Province 2008

Canadian Moment

No foto ops, no flag waving.

Just a true and beautiful little encounter.

Last night, we squeezed in a short hit of tennis balls at a small public park near the Oak Street Bridge.

After, as we were heading for the car and some dinner at one of our favorite little Chinese restaurants (delicious, inexpensive, consistent and wonderful, friendly service), a little boy caught our attention.

Turns out his name is Nick, as in Nokolai or Nikolas. He was born here in Vancouver. He looks a little less than two. His mother is Russian and she is from a village near Odessa.

Sitting on the same bench were two ladies in their sixties, both from mainland China.

Soon, three languages were being tossed about - English, Russian and Mandarin.

I am a Canadian born Jew whose mother was born in Russia. My friend is from Guangzhou.

This entire episode lasted all of four minutes, tops.

And we got in the car and looked at each other and almost simultaneously said, "This is Canada at its best."

Justice on its Head

A federal court struck down "parts of" the Gomery enquiry, claiming that Justice G. was biased in his investigation of the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

Appalling.

Read the small print.

No one has yet accounted for the $40 Million of taxpayer money that Chretien and Pelletier filtered through various ad companies back to their own coffers.

Talk about Shoot the Messenger!