How do we get some immediate reforms to the criminal justice system that will quickly bring an end to the current gang warfare that has killed way too many people?
We start fundraising here in
One more thing-- let's get an
The cost -- about $1,380,000 -- way less then the cost of running the BC Integrated Gang Task Force.
We would see Criminal Code changes probably within 45 days.
Psychiatry continues to lend a great disservice to jurisprudence in Canada.
Vince Li beheaded and then mutilated and cannibalized a man on a Greyhound Bus.
But psychiatrist Stanley Yaren has testified that Li is Not Criminally Responsible and should therefore be confined to a mental institution - not prison - "possibly for his entire life."
Possibly???
This raises the very possible spectre - given the track record of Corrections Canada and the National Parole Disservice - that Li will one day be walking amongst us.
Will someone please make an effort to get shrinks out of the court room?
Last night I actually saw some of the Dziekanski inquiry on the TV news.
What was truly terrifying was the calm, placid robot performance of RCMP Constable Kwesi Millington as he lied over and over again while under oath.
Every little detail he provided of this sorry incident was contradicted by the video of same.
He says he had to taser Dziekansky three times to bring him down and then have all four officer/thugs wrestle the poor guy to the ground.
The video shows that the man fell down screaming in agaony after one taser blast.
Five lawyers are billing taxpayers at large rates to defend these quick-draw Stasi jackboots.
And prosecutors announced long ago that there will be no charges laid against them.
O.K.
So will the RCMP keep Millington and his fellow Tin Men around in uniform?
How safe will you feel if these Nervous Nellies stop you one night on a routine drive?
This is a dark time for Law and Order in this country.
It's to be known officially as the Homelessness Intervention Project - HIP.
And Provincial Housing Minister Rich Coleman, that noted humanitarian, will be the head cheese.
Coleman doesn't agree with the auditor-general's tough assessment of his government's accomplishments to date.
"I think there has been significant leadership on this file," says Coleman the Kind.
Hahahaha...
News for you, Bud.
It's not a file.
It's many human beings who are cold and hungry, you putz.
Now, let's follow the money and get to the bottom line of this spurious announcement.
In the recently tabled provincial budget, Mr. Coleman's allotment for housing was cut by $70 Million.
End of story, Kids.
The gall, the transparency, the dark, dark comedy of these fools.
CTV will fire 118 people from their newsrooms. They will cut several morning shows from their "A" channels.
And Glow-Ball wants the CRTC to ease back on Canadian content regs.
What passes for "Canadian broadcasting" is a cruel comedy.
Canadian broadcasting executives have made many millions of dollars for many years by buying and airing L.A. content that we could happily watch or ignore on American channels any time.
Instead, with the Simulcast license to print money, we the viewer continue to endure always missing the first tee shot or the first down of the game or the first clue on the quiz show because CTV or Global or the CBC can't get back to the program on time.
Imagine, just imagine, if Canadian broadcasters were told you can show no programs other than those you produce here in Canada.
Hahahahahaha...
We may or more likely may not ever have a broadcast industry again, but at least we could watch ABC or CBS just as they are broadcast.
Three shootings, two dead, two injured, East Van, Burnaby, Surrey.
That story just in at the Sun this morning.
But don't worry.
The police are arresting many gang people for many things and the leaders in Victoria are busy helping out the situation.
For Immediate Release
Vancouver, BC (March 03, 2009):
Adrian Mastracci, Portfolio Manager
KCM Wealth Management Inc.
"Fee-Only" Portfolio Managers & Financial Advisors
Suite 1500, Box 1078, 885 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 3E8
Tel: (604) 739-4500 Fax: (604) 739-0234
Website:
You know Money Mart, and similar places?
They are called "the pay-loan industry." They even have associations and no doubt have national conferences.
They are what we used to call loan sharks.
BC's Solicitor-General has capped their loan rates to only 600% per annum.
This is Van Donkey's idea of being a Good Cop.
This is what we used to call USURY.
Here is an industry that takes miserable advantage of the poor (and sometimes ignorant) and it is given license by the government to keep up the good work.
Yesterday, the Globe & Mail continued their series on the DTES called "The Fix."
In what we must suppose is part of their "expert" revelations, the focus was on Jim Green.
The article by Robert Matas gives us a fine mini-biography at the top.
And what do we learn about the Man Who Would Be Mayor - but Wasn't?
We learn that since coming here from New York City, Green has been taking government funds, handouts and employment cheques. As a friend of mine in the development business says, "He's never had a real job." And the fact that Green now lists himself as land development consultant is uproariously funny to my development friend.
What is most amazing about Green's pronouncements about the DTES is that he says that much of the government money spent "has done a fabulous job." "Look at Insite...it is so absolutely successful." Green began Insite.
Later in the piece, Green says that people in the DTES have to get out of chemical dependency.
How, may I ask, will they do that when they are given free needles to shoot up with and a clean well-lit place to shoot up in? How about having a registered nurse doing the injection?
By the time you finish reading this piece, what you are left to understand is that amidst poverty and misery, Mr. Green stands alone in his ability to wear a stylish coat and an adorable fedora.
The poverty and the misery have done Green well.
FOLLOW-UP: Today, the Mayor, talking about his work on homelessness, says, "We're getting a lot of people with addictions and its demonstrating real progress in supporting addicts."
Huh?
Giving people a room is admirable. But giving addicts a room and thinking you are "making real progress" speaks to living in a delusion. What, if anything, does Robertson know about addictions?
The Canadian Arab Federation gets public money to call public officials, like Immigration Minister Jason Kenny, whores.
They have called Harper and Ignatieff whores and accused Bob Rae of being a racist Zionist, pointing out that Rae's wife is, hold your nose, a Jew.
Here are some of the details taken directly from Margaret Wente's Saturday Globe column:
With a budget of more than $1-million a year, the Canadian Arab Federation depends heavily for its existence on taxpayers' money. It claims this funding is used entirely for programs that help newcomers adjust to Canadian society, and to fight racism and Islamophobia. "Our activity as an advocacy group has nothing to do with our political activity," Mr. Boudjenane says.
But the CAF's website tells another story. The home page urges people to join protests against the "massacre on Gaza." It links to dozens of anti-Israel articles, and gives prominent play to the winners of a recent essay contest on "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." The website was developed with a grant of $60,000 from the federal Department of Heritage.
The CAF is a prominent sponsor of anti-Israel demonstrations, which feature people waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and people calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the planet. One video shows a woman pointing toward the camera and declaring: "Jewish child, you're going to f------ die. Hamas is coming for you."
For the record, the Muslim Canadian Congress doesn't get any public money. Neither does the Canadian Jewish Congress, the country's largest Jewish advocacy group.
Wente's argument is in the title of the piece:
Eleven municipal forces and 126 RCMP detachments.
This is the single glaring reason that Pickton avoided even the most cursory attention while he was busy killing women.
This is the single glaring reason that Olson was able to continue killing young girls and boys for so long.
And it is the single glaring reason that criminal subcultures called gangs are able to flourish here in the greatest place on earth (unless you get hit with a stray bullet.)
Yet, the mayors of every little burg and whistle stop in the region firmly and stubbornly resist the idea that Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu and former Chief Bob Stewart all champion - One Metro Police Force.
The argument from the Village Idiots is that they will lose that homey hoody personal touch that folks in Tsawwassen and Port Moody now currently enjoy. Or so we are told by the officials.
Maybe.
Former Vancouver Police Chief asks in this morning's Globe, "Can you think of any private business that would embrace such a self-evident dysfunctional structure?"
Here, for the record, are the sticks-in-the-mud on this issue: the mayors of Delta (Lois Jackson), Port Moody (Joe Trasolini) ans Surrey (Dianne Watts) to name just a few.
It's good to cover your ass...until it gets shot off while you're hunting for better yogurt.
Even Scare Canada hasn't sunk this low.
Yet.
Ryanair, Britain's lo lo lo cost flyer, is now talking publicly about charging passengers a one pound coin to get into and use the on board in flight bathrooms.
Ryanair's irrepressible CEO Michael O'Leary is known for getting lots of free publicity by airing these kinds of ideas, so we can't really be sure if he's serious.
But I have a better idea.
For every man and woman who has dreamed of in air assignations, how about a coin operated boudoir?
And in keeping with the rising sales of hand held video recorders, for an extra coin get the video memento of your moment over France.
"Fly me to the moon,
And let me live beneath the stars..."
Barack Obama's stimulus budget may or may not be the answers to the world's ills.
Who, beside the Republicans, are smart enough to say?
But his speech to Congress the other night was once again magnificent and inspiring. It was so refreshing to see a North American leader encourage citizens to do well and to be well and to aspire to something useful. Some serious and welcome change from the previous eight years.
Now, some of you may be right. Obama may turn out in the long run to be merely a great speaker. We shall see.
But Bobby Jindal as the Republican's best hope for the Presidency?
You must be joking.
It is a sign of how lost and foresaken the party is that it would take seriously Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.
The CBC is crying the blues again.
Now, in the face of low cash reserves (What world did it think it was living in?) it threatens to buy and show even more American programming.
Brilliant.
The CBC has long been a corrupt and rudderless organization.
When I worked in the building on West Georgia in the late '70s, the place was hopping.
Music, variety, comedy, drama and news were employing thousands of people and every part of the building was busy. Even so, management was a dick less disaster.
Now, the building is empty. What used to be a vibrant cafeteria had many times over been remade into a news room even though there are enormous now empty studio spaces underground that were perfectly good news rooms for decades.
The CBC should NOT be disbanded, but it should be fiscally responsible (It is NOT.) and it should cut at least half its administrative staff and it should be exclusively in the business of Canadian programming.
CBC Newsworld is very often excellent, first-rate. Give us more of that and no Jeopardy and Wheel.
The current vogue in campuses across Canada is pro-Palestinian rallies.
Signs proclaiming the "Israeli Apartheid" are as commonplace as bank machines and Tim Hortons. The virus of anti-Israel sentiment is very much alive and well in our halls.
Of course, I hate these signs and I cry for the sheer blind stupidity of decent young people who want to show their concern for the world by hitching their outrage to a wildly mistaken and misinformed ideal.
However...
Until they yell at me something hateful - and they haven't yet, even though I have argued with them at the college where I work - I support, through gritteed teeth, their right to free expression.
On the other hand...
If you want to read a really positive story about reducing crime, read Jeffrey Simpson in today's Globe about the Winnipeg community of Point Douglas.
Here's a community that turned itself around from drug dealers and crack houses and street violence by the courage of first one man, then others, and a zero tolerance for bad behaviour.
Imagine such a thing in the DTES.
