Overheated, perhaps, but Important and Real, Nevertheless

Warning Signs

Don Cayo has written a compelling piece in today's Sun.

Social and environmental ills worry world's CEOs

Book by Harvard professors sheds light on what the top business leaders of the world think are our biggest concerns

By Don Cayo, Vancouver SunOctober 8, 2011

Mike Segar-Reut Growing inequality can breed discontent and threaten our financial system and trade, a new book warns. In New York City, people are taking to the streets during the Occupy Wall Street series of protests.

Photograph by: Mike Segar, Reuters, Vancouver Sun

Leaders of some of the world's most successful companies say the whole system of capitalism is at risk and only capitalists themselves can save it, according to a new book by three faculty members at Harvard Business School.

And many of the threats on their list - fast-growing global inequality looming large among them - could be copied straight from a social activists' handbook.

Inequality breeds discontent, as any CEO with a window overlooking Wall Street might notice these days. It invites a backlash from those who don't share in capitalism's benefits. Sooner or later, some politicians will come on board with policies aimed at short-term popularity, though not necessarily coherence or effectiveness.

Other kinds of threats like global pandemics or natural disasters, can decimate the human capital needed to make the system run, and/or disrupt both markets and the institutional checks and balances that capitalism relies on.

The book, Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business, is written by Harvard profs Joseph L. Bower, Herman B. Leonard and Lynn S. Paine. It draws on discussions by major business leaders at forums that, using the clout of Harvard Business School, they were able to convene in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. This format gives the book added depth and substance - as well as, at times, diversity, as the participants don't always agree. Yet it can also be an irritation for readers as the authors keep the speakers' names confidential, so we never know who's saying what.

But there does seem to be consensus on what the big problems are. In addition to the broad threat of growing inequality and the populist - and often business-hostile - political movements it leads to, threats to the financial system and to healthy global trade include:

. Unrestrained migration - whether within developing countries or from the poor world to the rich - in numbers that overwhelm capacity to productively absorb the newcomers.

. Environmental degradation of food and water supplies, and many other aspects of quality of life.

. Failure of the rule of law, which is an essential underpinning for a successful market economy.

. Low levels of education, which limit worker productivity.

. The rise of state capitalism in response to free market shortcomings, real or perceived.

. Radical movements, terrorism and war which destroy the stability that markets need.

. Pandemics that disrupt trade and decimate labour.

. Inadequacy of existing institutions - just a matter of resources and competence, but also jurisdictions as nation-based institutions face global issues.

Some of these concerns sound as if they have less to do with North Americans and are of more concern in the parts of the world affected by movements like the Arab Spring or the class warfare burgeoning in Latin America. And this may well be true.

But it's hard to look at this year's riots in the U.K., the growing desperation of people falling out of the middle class in the U.S., or rising child poverty in B.C., and then say, "It can never happen here."

Still, the business leaders are less united on what they should do about these threats.

A significant minority - the authors don't tell us the number, but I take it to be well under a third - worry, yet are still content to be bystanders. They say finding solutions is "beyond their pay grade" and should be left to government.

A smaller group think they can also stand by and wait it out - that existing institutions and practices will work things out over time.

The rest are either activists who want to shape and promote solutions, or innovators who want to address the challenges directly.

This article appears on the same day as an item about a Wall Street-type protest on its way to Vancouver.

IMMIGRATION, DIVERSITY & LANGUAGE

GUEST EDITORIAL - INSITE

Gerry Verrier is a friend. He is former addict, who for 25 years now has been involved with the Behavioural Health Foundation in Manitoba. He is currently the Program Director.

This piece is also posted as a comment on my blog item of several days ago, called "Stranger in a Strange Land," but it is so darn good and so important, I wanted you to read it as a stand-alone editorial.


I am a former addict that will stand up and say that I do not support Insite or needle exchange programs. If there had been safe injection sites back in the 70s, I would be dead. All the brick walls I ran into that said "Gerry, you need to stop using drugs or you will kill yourself, Gerry you need to stop committing crimes to feed your addiction because you are hurting a lot of people and you will rot in jail, Gerry you contribute nothing to your own community and are a free loader" made me think about who I was, what I was doing and where I was heading in life. It caused cognitive dissonance for me. It made me consider whether my mother brought me into this world to shame her and become a drug-addled train wreck. It made me consider that my new condo would in fact be a prison cell in Stony Mountain Penitentiary and that my "better half" was probably going to be called Bubba. I was judged and I was deemed to be deficient in appropriate and anti-addiction social and coping skills by a group of former addicts. I was expected to change and I was expected to contribute to this beautiful country in a meaningful way. I was also consequenced for my bad behaviour. I actually welcomed the criticism. I welcomed the idea that I could stop using life destroying drugs. I needed to hear that so badly. I welcomed the idea that people thought enough of me to expect me to start to be a positive member of society. I felt good and I felt accepted. I felt like I could accomplish something meaningful and could enjoy some success in my life.
Had Insite existed, I would have heard something like "Here, Gerry, now now, it's okay that you're addicted to morphine, here let me help you stick that needle in your vein and don't worry about overdosing because I won't let you. Don't you worry about me telling you to quit IV drugs, because you can quit whenever you want. I don't expect you to though, because you have a sickness just like cancer and diabetes and you're an addict for life, you poor hapless misunderstood defenseless creature. And don't worry about the big bad police, they can't come in here and they can't bother you outside either while you go on the nod on the sidewalk. In fact, we have doctors who want to give you free heroin. Isn't that wonderful news? You see, the people who want you to quit don't understand you like we do. We know that if we give you a free rig and a place to shoot up and make sure you don't overdose, you won't go out and have unsafe sex and we know for sure that you won't use or share dirty needles."
I would have moved into that clinic. I would have laughed all the way to my dealer's corner and back. No consequences for bad, harmful and antisocial behaviour? No consequence for spreading fatal and life threatening disease? Drug injecting paraphernalia that I don't have to pay for? No expectation to contribute to my community to balance out my constant freeloading? No consideration given to the fact that I stole 15 purses and robbed an old lady for her grocery money so I could score on the way to Insite? An addicts heaven. I would have happily cranked so much junk, my eyes would have bulged. Malnutrition? No biggie. I'll get free and expensive Boost supplements from my doctor. Organ failure after a dozen years of injecting poison into my body? No problem in our free medicare system. Heck, I bet I could get a nurse to come inject my heroin while I wait for an organ transplant. Work for a living and pay taxes? I have a disease, I can't work. In fact, I'll take some disability cash over and above my regular welfare payments. I'll also need some taxi chits so I can get to Insite. I have a disease, don't you know. And be quick about it, or else I will sic the harm reduction people on you.

And with all that, do you really think I'm going to start wearing condoms? Do you really think that at 3 in the morning, when I need a fix, I'm going to wait until the clinic opens at 10 am so I can shoot up with a clean rig? I AM going to have sex with this person and I am not going to wear a condom and we are going to share this rig because we don't give a fuck about nothing but getting off. I don't need to care because, really no one else does. No one expects any better of me, no one believes in my potential ability to contribute in a meaningful way and no one seems to care that I'm slowly killing myself. After all, I have a disease and I will always be an addict so I might as well be a really good addict. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go steal so I can buy more heroin. I sure wish they would hurry up with that free heroin program....

I know some addicts and homeless people are struggling with mental health issues. I know some addicts are messed up because of trauma in their life. They need medical treatment. They need support. They need the right kind of medication. Heroin is a painkiller, and a mind number. It and other addictive illicit drugs exasperate mental health issues and certainly does nothing for trauma victims. Addiction does not promote self esteem or self confidence. There is no success or accomplishment or education in a needle filled with junk. Addiction does not provide hope. Addiction kills, Addiction sucks the life out of our communities. Addiction shortchanges our children. Addiction enslaves our brothers and our sisters and our grandchildren. Addiction adds costs to our already expensive health care system that need not be.

Providing for addicts to continue to be addicted is anti-social. Not expecting our addicted brothers and sisters to contribute to the betterment of our society and community is anti-social. Helping an addict stick a needle in his or her arm is anti social. Harm Reduction as it is applied to addiction is anti social.

I had to laugh but felt like crying when I read on the International Harm Reduction Association website how the Reductionists were upset that abstention-based treatment programs were using the term "Harm Reduction" and that expecting addicts to quit using is not Harm Reduction. The Reductionists wanted to reiterate that Harm Reduction means working with people who do not want to change. How twisted is that?

GUEST EDITORIAL - BC POLICE FORCE

Doug Mac-Kay Dunn is a retired Vancouver Police Inspector. He is currently a District of North Vancouver Councillor

During my career with the Vancouver Police Department, I was in charge of the Internal Audit Unit. Under the direction of the Attorney-General, I also worked with multi-force audit teams to conduct INDEPENDENT Value for Money audits of police departments.

Although subject to their own internal review, RCMP detachments were and are not subject to such independent, external examinations. Without those audits, how can taxpayers know if they’re receiving value for money?

Even more important is the issue of accountability and transparency. Remember the handling of the Dziekanski tragedy. Remember the first press release. Remember the investigators sent to Poland to dig up dirt on their victim. Remember the attempt to control the video. Remember the senior management emails and the “Spin Doctoring".

Contrast that with how the VPD handled the “Stanley Park Six.” Chief Constable Jamie Graham not only answered the media’s questions, he released all of the files and held nothing back – no spinning, just the truth.

So here is my point: in the unlikely event the RCMP opened their books and savings were achieved through improved cost controls, if the Force remains accountable to Ottawa first and the community second, then our police taxes are wasted - because without direct community accountability, we have nothing more than private security.

Sir Robert Peel said it best: "Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence”.

A British Columbia Provincial Police force should meet that standard.

If the RCMP refuses to be subordinate to the Solicitor General as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the province, and be accountable through that office to the community it serves, then it’s time for a change.

President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs: "He changed the way each of us sees the world." | The White House

President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs: "He changed the way each of us sees the world." | The White House

You think LADY GAGA is a fake? Can't sing? You think Tony is finished at 85? Check out this glorious take from his new DUETS2 Album

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND - The Pod People are mulifplying and they are winning...

I woke up at 6 am on Friday to visit the little room not far from where I sleep. My land line phones at home have a wonderful feature. There is a pre-set that turns off the ringers from 11:30 at night until 8 in the morning. I noticed in the dark, the phone light blinking. Oh, a message. No, two messages.

I knew what they would be.

The Supreme Court decision had come down delivering Insite unto the masses, Whooppee.

Sho ‘nuff, two media giants from the Mystic East had called at 5:45 and 5:49 requesting my extremely important reactions to this news. The 11-year old girl producer for one of these broadcasters ended her voice mail with “I hope you’re having a nice day.”

I yelled at the towels, “I AM having a nice day, thanks. I’m FUCKING SLEEPING!”

At 8:30, when I was already hunkering before the computer and reading about the pro-Insite decision, Nice Day Lady called again.

I asked her if, anywhere in her school life, she had been taught time zones. After a pause long enough for me to think of calling 911 to revive her, she said that she thought this was a business number.

“Besides the need to grow alfalfa, why would I be at work at 5:45 in the morning?” I asked ever so pleasantly.

Well, you get the picture.

The nice kid from local CBC-TV came over with his cameraman.

We filmed about 12 minutes in my dining room and then went upstairs to my study to film “B Roll” of me looking at the CBCTV website on this computer.

I watched the piece on the supper hour cast.

The Embalmed One was anchoring, but someone else was fronting this story.

They showed 3-5 minutes of raucous overjoyed crowds of believers cheering in triumph in front of the “safe” injection place. Then 8 seconds of my miserable out-of-step-with-the-times disagreement.

This is how the “journalists” at the Mother Corp operate. Five minutes of Hooray and 8 seconds of Just You Wait a Minute, Now.

At 8:30 that evening, the phone operator for a Radio talk show host in Alberta called and informed me that his host would be speaking to me soon. The host came on line and asked for my thoughts; then he argued vehemently with me. I asked him why he had invited me on the program. I asked him if he would ever knowingly cross the street to give a drunk a clean shot glass, or, if he knew that his daughter was self-mutilating, he might sharpen her razor blades for her.

He reckoned that he would do neither of those things, but felt it necessary to point out that I was in the minority. Translation – you are wrong, David. I asked him if he understood democracy.

He kept yelling at me, so I thanked him for calling and told him this wasn’t the kind of conversation I wanted to have with anyone, let alone him.

Later that evening, I caught about half an hour of a movie starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. The movie is called “The Invasion,” and it’s about the fourth remake of the great 1950’s black and white sci-fi flick, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It’s about human beings being overtaken and replaced by the Pod People who look just like them but who are robotic and without humanity.

(The only true oddity in this version is that Daniel Craig is such a good actor and so charismatic that when he has to convey that he has gone over to the Pod People, he is not convincing because his eyes continue to shine with some mysterious Star’s inner light.)

In the penultimate scene, Kidman and her son, pursued by the crazies, dash madly out of a building, but when they get onto the street, they must slow down and walk like zombies to fit in with the creeps around them.

I couldn’t watch because this all played perfectly into the disassociation I was experiencing all day.

There have now been at least four distinct times in my life when I felt that perhaps I had entered an alien universe or perhaps all the creatures around me where of a different and peculiar species.

The first time was watching hundreds of thousands of lunatics cheering on that creepy self-evident crook, Richard Nixon, at the Republican national Convention. They were wearing pants and dresses and they certainly looked like examples of the human species, but one could only wonder.

The second time was when the clock radio came on next to my bed in 1974/5 in Edmonton with the news that Bill Hawrelak had been re-elected Mayor of that fine Northern city. Bill had been found guilty of crimes on three occasions, but that didn’t stop the good people of Edmonton from choosing him to be mayor one last time. In 1992, I went cross-country skiing in Hawrelak Park. But that morning when the happy Hawrelak news broke, I felt like my shoulders had been pinned to the mattress by some extra-terrestrial force.

The third time was much like the first time, only instead of the true believers raising their banners on high for the oily Nixon, we had The Dumbest Person of Earth, George Bush.

But nothing in my experience prepared me for the sight of that crowd crowing with happiness for the brilliant decision of the Supreme Court, supporting the shooting gallery.

There were dope fiends and party hacks and pseudo-scientists and elected officials and doctors and so many people of holy good will cheering.

One friend of mine, a retired DTES police man, said he wanted to leave the province, leave the country. I was thinking gallactically. Maybe on Mars or Uranus there are creatures with clearer minds.

Last week, I had the joyful experience of attending the 40^th anniversary of the Manitoba chapter of the abstinence based therapeutic community treatment centre that I started here in Vancouver in 1967.

There are 136 people in residence at any given moment and a 6-month waiting list to get in. Every day, clients are getting their matriculation and University degrees and reuniting with their families and moving to transition houses and back into the world as clean and sober citizens.

Support your local prevention and treatment programs. Unlike the other nightmares-posing-as-social policy, these real places are about hope and human dignity. Anything less is unworthy of our attention.

Pardon me while I toot my own horn shamelessly, but this may be the best show we've done this year - thanks entirely to our guest, Mark Hasiuk

SWEET CANDY

"I have no doubt she'll be a success in adapting to community life as an adult."

This is the mark of brilliance from Justice Scott Brooker in Alberta.

Mmmmm.

Let's have a look-see, shall we?

"She," now 18, was 12 when she and her 23-year old boyfriend stabbed to death her parents and her eight-year old brother and then went partying.

They were both found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder.

Boyfriend got life with no parole for 25 years.

Now, this girl, whose identity may never be divulged, has a phalanx of shrinks and social workers working on her rehab and they are all very jolly and optimistic.

The headline alone is a heartwarmer.

Rehab successful for girl who killed family, says judge

Convict, now 18, prepares for re-integration

Enough.

Let's get down, kids.

This young woman is a psychopath. She is not redeemable. She has crossed a break boundary. "People with problems" do not murder their families and then get better and go back into communities posing no danger to others. People who murder their families are crazed deranged lunatic nut jobs who are wired differently than most of us. They do not change or get better. They must be kept away from the rest of us.

Psychopaths are often very smart and charming and high verbal and highly skilled at manipulating the world around them.

And they are completely and totally integrated personalities. They are who they are.

Why do we watch Hannibal Lecter over and over again?

Of course, it's a great movie and run by great actors and director.

But it is the essential unapologetic madness of the good Doctor that draws us back in morbid fascination.

In the case of this adorable little murderer, all the king's horses and all the king's men have been duped once again.

They are paid to help.

So they must believe in their hearts that they are helping or why get up in the morning?

And then they announce to the judge that they have done fine work and their star pupil is now a good girl.

And the judge wants also to believe in the goodness of people and the power of good work.

That's fine.

But he also has to have a hold on reality, doesn't he? Wouldn't that be helpful to us all?

The girl has played them all like a three dollar fiddle.

My House or Yours?

Last night at 6 o'clock I was flicking between NBC News with Brian Williams and the BBC.

"Two different worlds, we live in two different worlds..."

The BBC News was appropriately giving major and thorough coverage to the Euro and debt crisis in Greece, Spain and Italy.

A few nights ago, BBC staged a fantastic panel on this matter in the atrium of one of their main buildings. The speakers and guests in the front row of the audience were all highly placed and knowledgeable (and often brilliant) people from government and finance at the highest levels.

Make no mistake, this is a dire situation. If leadership in the Euro Zone stumbles, we will all suffer mightily.

But, hey, let that not be an impediment to American inward turned sensibilities.

NBC News would have none of this.

Never mentioned.

If their news coverage is an indicator of how the country pretends to think or what they think is thinking, they and we are in deep doo.

PUBLIC ENEMY

It gave me great cheer last night to see protesters creating healthy civil disobedience in front of the Vancouver Club.

Their issue?

Some other Vancouverites had paid $500 each to hear Dick Cheney promote his new book.

Why would anyone do that?

Ghouls and suck holes with no moral compass.

Cheney is one of the most detestable thugs to ever work the corridors of power. He was always about money and power and Dick Cheney.

The protesters rightly called him a War Criminal.

He is that and more.

His favorite company - Halliburton - made billions of dollars on buttons, shoes, tanks, bullets, coffee, gas and oil and most of the other physical products one requires to operate a war theatre in say...Iraq.

Manthorpe's scathing review of Cheney's entirely self-serving book is worth the read.

Daphne Bramham's Best Column Ever

Opinion: City plan does little to support those put at risk by prostitution

If nine out of 10 fishermen got hurt at work, policy-makers would likely question whether the job isn’t so inherently dangerous that even regulating the industry might never keep them safe. If four of every 10 nurses were violently attacked every year, regulation alone might not be the solution either.

Yet those are the statistics for street and indoor prostitution respectively, and still most policy-makers simply shrug.

In 2005, 90 per cent of street prostitutes in Vancouver had been physically assaulted, 78 per cent had been raped and 72 per cent met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a report in the peer-reviewed journal Transcultural Psychiatry.

Those working from home, in massage parlours or escort agencies fare better. Still, 37 per cent of them experienced some sort of violence, according to research done in 2007 by a graduate student at Simon Fraser University.

Citing municipalities’ limited powers over the Criminal Code, education, health and social services, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and all of the city’s councillors are the latest to shrug.

They passed a plan based on a 30-page staff report, which gave only a cursory nod to the 12-year-old Nordic model pioneered in Sweden, which outlaws all aspects of the sex trade but provides generous social supports to at-risk youth and women exiting prostitution.

They didn’t ask for more information about that model or anything else, even though the Aboriginal Women’s Action Network and others among the 50 speakers at a public hearing urged them to at least consider that prostitution is a form of violence against women that ought to be stopped, not regulated.

In the end, Robertson and the others (including Suzanne Anton, the NPA’s mayoral candidate in the November election) bought into the excuse given in the staff report. Municipalities can do nothing about criminal law and little about education, health and social services, it said.

Of course, council didn’t use that excuse when it came to endorsing safe-injection sites for illegal drugs.

They didn’t balk last year from endorsing Will to Intervene, an international report that recommended Canada and the United States take leadership roles in preventing mass atrocities.

Which is odd since some people consider that 720 missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada or that more than 100 women missing and murdered from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are slow-moving forms of genocide.

This council approved the report’s sanitized language (sex work, not prostitution) and never asked why the report neglected to describe just what such work entails.

They didn’t want to hear it. When 19-year-old Rachelle Rovner tried to read a graphic and disturbing description of the services that a Vancouver man bragged online about having purchased, she was told to stop.

Children might be watching the proceedings on TV, Coun. Andrea Reimer told her.

Rovner shot back. “If it’s not appropriate for our city council, then maybe it’s not appropriate for our city.”

Nothing in the city’s plan even hints at trying to lessen demand for prostitution in any of its guises.

Educational programs aren’t aimed at the men who harm prostituted persons. The only recommended educational programs would be aimed at teaching children, vulnerable youth and women how to better identify pimps and predators.

“Stop putting the responsibility on us to survive,” Trisha Baptie, a former prostitute, urged council. “Instead of abandoning us in the name of safety, health and verbal nonsense, you need to identify the problem: Men can pay for access to women’s and children’s bodies.”

Council paid no attention.

Child prostitution was deliberately omitted from the report and recommendations. It’s “strictly prohibited,” the report’s author Mary Clare Zak said at the meeting.

Yet, she also referenced a report that found 37 per cent of youth living on Vancouver’s streets say they have exchanged sex for food or shelter.

Regulating where sexual services are delivered is part of the plan. The city’s licensing department is urged to contact other cities to see how their bylaws differentiate registered massage therapists from massage and health-enhancement businesses that front for prostitution

Renfrew-Collingwood will get improved street lighting under council’s plan. But whether it’s in a car or alley, brothel or home, prostitution will never be safe.

There are hopes for housing, detox and rehab for at-risk youth, prostitutes and those exiting prostitution. But there’s no money.

There’s also no direction to end the long-standing practice of concentrating those services in the Downtown Eastside.

Bureaucratic not brave, it’s hard to see how this plan will prevent anyone from entering prostitution or make it safer for anyone regardless of whether they’re providing sexual services by choice, coercion, or out of desperation.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

THE COST OF GREEN?

UNKINDEST CUT

A felon with a considerable history of public and private violence (and very little jail time) is swearing at two young women.

Another man intervenes and suggests to the offender that he cool his heels.

Maniac walks away, retrieves his box-cutters, and slashes the throat ear-to-ear of the man who asked him to calm down.

Punch line?

In our ever-vigilant injustice system?

Two years.

Thank you Provincial Court judge Frances Howard.

The criminal is deeply imbedded in his criminal life-style and his drug-dealing business.

But hey?

Why consider the community?

Let's continue to be nice to the crazies in the ignorant and desparate hope that they might one day by nice back.

Judge Howard should be removed from the bench for flagrant disregard of the citizens who pay her salary and expect some measure of protection and reasonableness from her decisions.

COLD LIGHT OF DAY

City Council is studying the sex trade.

Lord help us.

Thankfully, people who actually know what they are talking about have appeared and made valiant efforts to cut through the muck.

Rachelle Rovner was one of several speakers who took issue with some of the language in the report, pointing out the term "sex workers" implies prostitution is a legitimate form of work, when it is not at all.

Jonathan Livingston, a front line worker who deals with vulnerable youth in the Downtown Eastside, said there is an inherent flaw in aiming to make sex work "safer."

"I don't think you can make it safe," he said, adding that both prostitution and the procuring of sex need to be wholly condemned.

MacDougall said the trade is "inherently unsafe."

MacDougall also noted she hears from countless women who are abused by men while "supplementing their income in some form of sale of sex for money through inside work," but would never identify as being in the sex trade.

"They would never say, 'I am a sex worker' because they don't want to identify with that label," she said.

"This is not a career path for them; this is a survival mechanism."

Many speakers, including 19-year-old Sharlene Petigara, pointed out the report failed to adequately address the demand from johns.

"Prostitution is violence against women and there are people inflicting this violence," she said. "So why are they not addressed in this report?" Janessa Greening, director of resource development at Union Gospel Mission, called on staff to rewrite the report to include more emphasis on the issue.

"The most notable gap is the lack of reference to who is abusing the power imbalance - those who are violating these women, those whose actions are initiating and exacerbating the long-term, devastating impact these women will experience."

This is a classic example of a local authority working from the failed and morally reprehensible platform of Harm Seduction.

It is also an example of people who truly understand the issues stepping forward and casting some real light.

Officials everywhere are tragically obsessed with making self-destructive and harmful behaviour "safe" or "safer," while front line workers and ordinary citizens know that shooting heroin, smoking crack or renting out your body parts by the half hour can never be safe.

WHO DOESN'T LOVE A GOOD TUNE?

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything so beautiful as this. It had me in tears of happiness in just a few moments...

The most outrageous of all time

You must read Courier columnist Mark Hasiuk's piece posted yesterday.

He explains in chilling detail how the Vancouver Coastal Health will give children crack pipe kits, because "health is health, regardless of age."

The world has gone completely mad.

RICH!