Wrong Again, Canada

The only good thing about the Commons vote to keep Canadian soldiers dying in the drug economy called Afghanistan is that the NDP voted against it.

My Dog Would Like to Leave a Deposit

Dobell gets an "absolute discharge?"

I have an absolute discharge for him. But it's a bit messy.

And for all his apologists and for the court that absolved him utterly.

How can the man closest to the Premier and the Mayor claim ignorance of the rules?

And I say again...if he is such a stalwart citizen, what is he doing charging the taxpayers $250/hour to consult on matters of homelessness?

Say, Ken, now that you've been a well-compensated snivel servant all your life, when does the giving back kick in?

Amazing Day - Two Good News Stories

It's not often that we get good news. What a rarity then is today. Two good news stories, Two!

1. Great recommendation from Parks Board Commissioner Spencer Herbert that the city save the Mount Pleasant Community Centre building at 16th & Ontario and let it be used by theatre companies for teaching and rehearsal space.

Congratulations to Spencer for this simple and practical and welcome idea. The cost is minimal and the rewards are enormous for the artistic community as well as for the neighbourhood.

Further consideration is being given to maintaining the outdoor pool for 4 months each year, and that cost is a mere $70,000. Why wouldn't we do that?

I think these are both marvelous uses of existing facilities and we should endorse these notions fully.

2. Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts should also be given high praise for her decision to move Surrey City Hall from its current unreachable outpost to a more central location to spur on the beginnings of a real downtown core.

I mis-spent about an hour last month at the corner of 152 and 110 or was it 110 and 152? What a wasteland! Huge multi-laned streets, boring strip malls, no people walking, nothing to walk to...a classic California suburb. Possibly the worst living space ever devised by man on earth.

This is a bold and much needed initiative and Watts is to be commended for grabbing hold of this necessity and running with it. Maybe one day soon, Surrey will actually be a place worthy of working in and visiting.

Susan's Got Outrage

To the EditorWhere's the outrage? - Province March 13/08I'll show you outrage.Count the number of letters I and many others have written, published ornot - the number of times I and many others have have been on the radio,written articles, spoken to neighbourhood groups, over the continuing abusesof power that have become business as usual in BC; Over the unthinkableinjustice of having our life's work demolished by these arrogant thugscurrently at the helm of our Province.Cambully and Dobell have a lot in common with the two who were responsiblefor the sinking of the Queen of the North. They too, have been derelict intheir duty while driving BC, the Queen of the West. They have failed touphold democracy and be accountable to the people they have a mandate toserve. Only by the time the facts come out about this administration, theFOI requests are received (if ever) and the stories finally, maybe, make itto press and ultimately to court - the loyal members of this elite club willbe on a beach in Maui reaping the rewards of a lifetime of abusing thepublic trust. Cheers, Gord.Dobell didn't know he was in a conflict of interest? (Oh, look - there'sgnomes in the garden again)....Cambully running an "open and accountable' government? He's a ghost in thelegislature at best.Jessica McDonald "not aware of any evidence" that Dobell was breaking thelaw? Good grief.Basi Virk, TransLink, and so on, and so on...(fill in abuse of power here).The problem is, for all of us who still have some fight left in us afterbeing attacked, and ignored by those who hold all the power - our hardfought protests need to come with a photo op for the media, like all thosemulti-million dollar taxpayer funded best Place on Earth electionads for the Liberals. If we had that kind of coin behind us - BRACEYOURSELVES for a storm of outrage.Until then, we continue to be marginalized by our government spin machine,and remain controversial choices for the editorial pages of the dailynewspapers. Thankfully, there are some excellent reporters out there who arewilling to sink their teeth in to get to the truth, and not just print thegovernment press releases.As for all of us on the brink of bancruptcy along the Canada Line, being theacknowledged victims of this pre-meditated crime doesn't in and of itselfseem to be enough reason for this government to do the right thing. Theyhave effectively controlled our protest with relentless, costly spin, andforced us to engage in the biggest of all possible fights with every levelof government and billion dollar corporations instead of acting withintegrity from the beginning. What has happened here is wrong on everylevel.Well - having been crushed into this corner, I'm mad as hell, and I'm notstopping this fight for justice and compensation until it is achieved forall of us.Susan HeyesHazel&CoCambie Street604 687-0721

Shifting Sands

The headline doesn't say, "City Hires 96 more Police."

It says, "Mayor want to hire 96 more Police."

Quite an about-face from The Nutty One who has openly hated the police for several years and who has fought them tooth and nail of more hires at every turn.

It is clear that he is in desparation election mode and will change any opinion at will to curry public favor.

This is Sam at His Most Transparent.

"I'm lookin' through you,

Where did you go?

I thought I knew you,

What did I know?"

The Ken Dobell Affair

If ever there was a case of "there is justice for some and justice of another kind for others," this seems to be it.

For breaking the laws, Mr. Dobell, who by such close, personal and consistent association with the Premier over many years, was himself practically a sheriff in this province, has been asked to write an essay for his wrongs.

Write an essay???

And just in case you missed it, the Vancouver Sun has printed the thing in its entirety.

He might easily have been convicted of influence peddling as well, but I guess one detention after class and one good essay will do.

In the follow-up you may have missed, the thief who stole the rings from the fingers of the 91-year old woman in the hospital has agreed to avoid being charged if he washes some windows and also writes an essay which the Georgia Straight will print right next to a beer ad and a review of someone playing the blues at a Gastown bar.

As for the string of outraged epithets that the government, including the Premier, is throwing at the opposition, we think the ladies doth protest too much. Guilty or what?

Motion Demoted

To all who voted against the following Motion - you are all out of order.

We would remind Sam and Peter particularly, that the RAV/Canada Line was approved BY THEM in the previous council, under some specific conditions that have not been met. Firstly, what was conditionally approved was a bored tunnel project, and secondly, adequate mitigation was to be provided to the community and businesses.

There has been a betrayal of the public trust.

It's interesting to hear Peter state how different he is from Mayor Sam , yet votes lock-step with him on every issue. They have both offered hollow words of assurance to the Broadway businesses that they will not suffer the same fate as we are enduring. Yet, this is just political spin when the ultimate construction decisions rest with the unaccountable Transink dictatorship. Also noted is BC Lee voting against this motion, all the while expressing to the Asian community along Cambie that he is very concerned, and working on our behalf.

Working on our behalf means stepping in to see that justice and compensation actually happens, and hopefully out of court.

We have endured unprecedented hardship for the past 2 years that was entirely preventable. Shame on you NPA Councillors, for turning your backs on all the small businesses, and watching us drown in debt.

It's time to make this right with immediate financial relief. Our hard earned dollars are bursting from the Provincial tax surplus - we would like it back, so we can continue with our livelihoods.

On behalf of thousands of voters along the Canada Line,
Susan Heyes
Hazel&Co

Motion: Redress for Merchants Affected by Canada Line Construction
Mover : Councillor George ChowSeconder:
WHEREAS Mayor Sullivan and Clr Ladner have expressed concerns publicly about the negative impacts on businesses and residents arising from the cut-and-cover method of construction; and

WHEREAS the method and schedule of construction on the Canada Line have not proceeded as initially described, particularly along Cambie Street where the cut-and-cover mehod of construction was used; and

WHEREAS the construction has caused severe financial hardship on businesses along the line due to uncertainty and duration of street closure and limited access, as well as dust, noise, and parking problems;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT: Vancouver City Council support the merchants in their negotiations with TransLink for proper redress for the damages suffered by them during the construction of the Canada Line.

Expectations

Constable Todd Sweet may or may not have an "anger management" problem.

And the parents of a dead teenager are understandably upset about losing their son.

But let me see if this picture is clear.

The young man who was killed was a passanger in a stolen SUV that had led police through a chase and then rammed a police roadbloack.

Here is a portion of the Sun's report this morning:

"Sweet's lawyer, David Butcher, agreed, arguing Sweet fired the fatal shot, but the person responsible was Ian Campbell, the 18-year-old driver of the stolen sport utility vehicle that ran a police roadblock and, when blocked by police vehicles after a short chase, rammed the police car containing Sweet and his partner.

He said Sweet, after his car was pushed 20 metres by Campbell's ramming, got out of the car, aimed at Campbell and ordered him to show his hands. Instead, Campbell again rammed the police car.

Sweet fired three shots at the SUV, hitting Campbell in the hand and killing Tait, who was in the front passenger seat.

Butcher read portions of the trial judge's findings in the trial of Campbell, who was sentenced to six years in prison."

It's strange how terrible things can happen when you steal a car and fight with armed police.

Al Arsenault Puts It on The Line

I walked the beat down in Vancouver's Skid Road as a police officer for decades and I watched a series of failed social experiments kill and infect thousands of people desperately in need of treatment in a place I now call the 'chemical gulag'.

The drug legalizers would like you to believe that the Needle Exchange Program (NEP) and the Supervised Injection Sites (SIS) were huge successes. They were utter and abject failures, driving up the Hep C rate to saturation levels (95%) and the HIV rate to the highest in the developed world (from a starting point of 3% and 2% respectively in 1988 when the NEP opened up). Read the Dr. Garth Davies' article: 'A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities' in Volume 1, Issue 3 of The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, and Dr. Colin Mangham's 'A Critique of Canada's INSITE Injection Site and its Parent Philosophy' in this same journal (http://www.globaldrugpolicy.org/) for some real insight on this matter.

Campbell should hang his head in shame for what he has put this community through by carrying on with this SIS nonsense.

Do you know what twenty years of so-called Harm Reduction will bring? Perhaps a live addict who will use up more precious health resources because he/ she will most likely be a sick addict on top of still having their habit, which you will also be paying for.

They say that you can't detox a dead addict. NO ONE has ever died nor gotten a drug-induced infectious illness in a good treatment program, because the addict is separated from the poison.

It is not the dirty needle or the crack pipe lacking a rubber mouthpiece that is the problem: it is the relationship between the addict and the drug. Period.

Coerced treatment works as good as voluntary treatment. At the end two decades of treatment, you will most likely have a healthy, productive and contributing member of society.

The poor get Harm Reduction and the rich get treatment.

You don't give an addict what they want. True compassion lies in giving them what they need. It's your choice to make but thousands of lives depend on running these snake oil salesmen out of town.

Al ArsenaultMemberOdd Squad Productions Society (http://www.oddsquad.com/)Drug Prevention Network of Canada (http://www.dpnoc.com/)International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy (http://www.itfsdp.org/)

Drug expert recommends heroin \'shooting galleries\'By Kate FosterA LEADING drugs expert will this week recommend that \'shooting galleries\' are set up in Scotland to allow heroin addicts to inject drugs safely.Larry Campbell, a Canadian senator, believes a similar scheme in Vancouver has saved many drug addicts\' lives and cut the risk of infections from dirty needles.At one state-funded clinic in Vancouver, addicts bring their own drugs and are given clean needles to inject, overseen by nurses who can monitor them for signs of an overdose.The injecting rooms allow addicts to take illegal hard drugs without fear of arrest.Campbell plans to lay out his idea on Wednesday at a meeting of the Scottish Parliament\'s Futures Forum, which is preparing a report on new ways of tackling Scotland\'s drug and alcohol problems.He said last night: \"We have set up a supervised injection site. Our approach has meant we have 7,000 drug-users registered and 400 overdoses have taken place at the site but not a single person has died. People can be treated by medical staff in the clinic. It\'s not without its controversy in Canada but it\'s a health clinic.\"This was set up to prevent the spread of disease through dirty needles. The fact that no-one has died is an amazing record. I can state unequivocally that people are alive as a result of this clinic. We have also made referrals to addiction counselling and treatment. Drug-users can register under a false name and they are given a dish that contains a swab, syringe and antiseptic wipe. \"It\'s something that should be considered in Scotland alongside prevention, treatment and enforcement. It lessens public disorder.\"Similar clinics exist in Switzerland, Australia and the Netherlands, and there are growing calls for the introduction of them in Scotland.The full article contains 303 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.Last Updated: 08 March 2008 7:38 PM

A Man of Integrity

Of course, they had been saying that about Eliot Spitzer until yesterday too.

But when Premier Gordon Campbell says it...well, then!

Ken Dobell was hired by Sam Sullivan directly and purposely to gain access to the Premier. That simple.

That may make political good sense, but that's just one of the many, many reasons political life is now seen as the lowest form of humanity on the ladder.

Here are some considerations not being aired, and the empty fools who pose as broadcasters won't ask these questions, we can be assured:

If Mr. Dobell was such a wonderful citizen, how could he in any conscience take $250/hour to consult on issues of housing and homelessness?

If Mr. Dobell was such an exemplary citizen, why didn't he DONATE HIS TIME to work on issues of homelessness and housing?

Jimmy Pattison moved his entire office to the Expo site to run the fair for $1. That's citizenship.

How could a man of Mr. Dobell's extraordinary expertise not know that he was violating the rules by not registering as a lobbyist?

Yesterday, I came to an intersection with a clearly marked traffic signal: NO right turn on red light.

Three cars in a row promptly turned right against the red light.

Nobody feels compelled to play by the rules.

Why should Mr. Fixer?

You're Beautiful, Babe. No, I really Mean That

In recent weeks, I have seen the symbol of the International Sikh Youth Federation adorning the back of a taxi cab and dangling from the rear view mirror of a car with four young men in it.

In the latter case, the men were looking around excitedly at...what? The police? Girls? A rival group?

Isn't the ISYF an outlawed terrorist organization in Canada?

The front-page headline story in today's Sun (Sikh separatist threat on rise in Canada) should not be a surprise.

Never forget the Canadian National Anthem: "Everybody's beautiful in their own way-ay-ay-ay..."

Martha & the Vandellas

Victor Sails The Salish Sea

Come with me while we connect the dots.

What prompted the BC Liberals to propose changing the name of the Georgia Strait to the Salish Sea and how does this connect to Geoff Plant?

It stems from a dangerous expectation created among First Nations leaders by Gordon Campbell. He somehow hinted that he would introduce legislation permitting First Nations to vet and approve every law and regulation touching on Aboriginal Rights and Title. They took him seriously and had their lawyers draft the proposed law called the Indigenous Nations Reconciliation Act. It would effectively make First Nations an unelected senate with the power to revise or reject virtually any law coming out of Victoria. That is not an overstatement in the sense that it is easily possible to make a connection, however tenuous, between any law and the rights of some band, somewhere in BC.

Perhaps sensing the folly of his vain quest to be the Abraham Lincoln of BC, Campbell pulled back and didn't introduce the Bill.

Talk about shoe in the poo.

First Nations leaders are seething and in response, have held widely reported meetings this past week to develop a strategy to shame the province internationally. Can you say Olympic Games?
So Geoff Plant has been hired by the government to soothe feelings and seek a compromise. How Plant will squeeze this in between his duties as Civil City Commissioner (3 days a week at $160,000 a year) hasn't been explained.

As for the Salish Sea gambit, it's a trembling attempt to mollify the Aboriginal political power elite. Translation, "We'll tinker with place names if you back off on your proposed law." It won't work. They have been promised a legislative hammer and they won't settle for a pom-pom.

The renaming suggestion for the Georgia Strait is interesting from a couple of other perspectives. First, it is curious that an anglicized term was chosen when the trend among BC First Nations is to revert to their historic names, phonetically reproduced with the help of consultants. Check the government web sites for lists of First Nations in BC.

Second, will Prince George, Prince Rupert and Williams Lake, to name a few, retain their colonial place names? How will Civil Geoff rationalize that?

Stay tuned for a hot summer.

Liz Rights the Media

10 March 2008


'Morning, Bill:

In your interview this morning with Mayor Sullivan, you asked a question the Mayor could not (did not want to) answer. In response to the Mayor's airy claim that the system he was advocating had "been successful in other jurisdictions", you asked, "Where?"

Well turns out that "Victoria has just opened one" - no time there for results to be reported one way or another. And "Toronto is considering the idea". I forget where he said the other 'consideration' is taking place. Then he went on to talk of zoning and planning for beds and buildings that, as yet, are barely a light in someone's eye. More talk, more studies, more award-winning architects - and more dollars. Still nothing tangible. This has gone on for decades.

It has become increasingly obvious that Mayor Sullivan shares an unfortunate trait with Premier Campbell - or buys his supply of napkins from the same retail outlet. They each go to bed at night - or sit on a beach, take the weekend off, whatever - and wake up to scribble down their latest dream.

Problem is, of course, those dreams have a habit of becoming expensive nightmares for taxpayers. More to the point, many millions of dollars are spent - or levied - only to mark political time on our societal problems -- or for us to find years down the road the problems are worse than before.

If Mayor Sullivan is sincere in his suggestions for the DTES, he should pay attention to those who have real expertise in the subject matter, people who have worked very hard under miserable conditions - and very successfully - to turn addicts around one tragic person at a time.

What we need to do is invite the Mayor to a private viewing of Tears For April: Beyond the Blue Lens. The only others in the audience would be Al Arsenault, David Berner, former Judge Wallace Craig - and Margret Kopala if she's in town. Now - if the Mayor would do only that, he would find out in very short order what system needs to be put in place, how to do it and what it would - and would not - cost. But don't hold your breath, people like Mayor Sullivan and the Premier are allergic to the facts as they are; they prefer to float in the clouds, it's less work that way.


REVOKE THIS LICENCE TO ENABLE ADDICTION

December 2007 – MARGRET KOPALA – in the Ottawa Citizen

THE first step to cleaning up Canada's worst neighbourhood is to scrap its abhorrent safe injection site.

Don’t call Al Arsenault unless you are prepared to interrupt an awards ceremony. I recently tried but the retired constable was in Victoria receiving two meritorious service awards from British Columbia’s lieutenant governor.

The first was awarded to Sgt. Toby Hinton, Sgt. Tim Shields (RCMP) and Arsenault for a short documentary about car theft. The second recognized Arsenault’s work as a decoy in capturing thugs beating up the elderly and helpless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Barely a month earlier, their company, Odd Squad Productions, had won the Excellence in Cinema for a Feature Film award at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival, this time for their most recent production, Tears For April: Beyond the Blue Lens.

For Al Arsenault, these awards are the culmination of 26 years being a beat cop in Canada’s poorest, most drug-infested neighbourhood. The 10 most recent years have been focused on making educational films about its squalid underside. Like other Odd Squad productions, Tears for April is a matter-of-fact yet deeply affecting feature documentary about the lives of several addicts on Vancouver’s Skid Row, with April Reoch as its tragic heroine writ large.

The young, part-native addict is already a mother and into drugs when she arrives on the skids at the age of 17. Despite efforts at recovery, she remains there in a downward spiral of prostitution and drug addiction for the rest of her brief life.

Beyond the foul language, weeping sores, broken teeth and needle marked body, the film reveals the addict’s few shreds of dignity. April could have been your sister or mine.
The documentary was snubbed by the Vancouver Film Festival because, according to Arsenault, “They prefer ideology over art.”

New York picked it up but then, unlike Vancouver where decriminalization and harm reduction are the prevailing orthodoxies, New York gets it. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health published in September, illicit drug use in the United States among 12- to 17-year-olds has declined. Notably, use of the initiator drug marijuana by adolescent boys is down by 25 per cent. This is good news for the United States because, as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, John P. Walters reminds us, “We know that if people don’t start using drugs during their teen years, they are very unlikely to go on to develop drug problems later in life.”

America is getting the message and so too is Britain where new laws allowing police to seize drugs and issue warnings have expedited case disposal and, according to BBC News, brought drug use to its “lowest in a decade.” Then there’s Sweden whose successes toward the goal of a drug-free society have been achieved in part by controversial policies such as compulsory treatment.

In Canada where marijuana use among youth is highest in the industrial world and consumption of other drugs isn’t far behind, the Harper government’s recently announced National Anti Drug Strategy is a promising start toward getting Canada back on the road to prevention, treatment and enforcement.

If the anti-drug budget is augmented by clearly articulated goals and a strategy for achieving them, results could soon appear. As these unfold, mandatory minimum sentences and drug courts will affirm that possession and dealing are against the law, something even judges like Justice John Gomery seem to have forgotten.

Canada’s National Anti-Drug Strategy makes no concessions to harm reduction or decriminalization measures. Nonetheless, its biggest problem will be the decriminalizers and harm reduction crowd who have bogged the country down in controversial practices involving needle exchanges, crack pipes and safe injections even though consultation with an experienced organization like Alcoholics Anonymous would have quickly revealed that such practices merely enable the addict.

The epicentre of this approach to drug addiction is Vancouver. Here, opposition to harm reduction practices and safe injection facilities like the Downtown Eastside’s Insite is routinely squashed, ignored or lambasted, though an observation that Insite seemed tantamount to “state assisted suicide” did manage to make it into the local press — not least because it was made by American broadcaster Dan Rather who was in town scouting out a TV special on the Vancouver Olympics.

The drug-addled stink that will rise from this issue during the 2010 Winter Olympics should alone give pause to reconsider Insite though, to thoroughly mix the metaphor, fur has already flown over its future. Contrary to the findings of University of British Columbia studies extolling Insite’s benefits, a paper published earlier this year by the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice challenges the harm reduction approach to drug addiction on both theoretical and practical grounds.

“A Critique of Canada’s INSITE Injection Site and its Parent Philosophy” by Colin Mangham argues the facility has achieved few or no reductions in the transmission of blood-borne diseases, no impact on overdose deaths, and that the facility is used only sporadically. Any reduction in public disorder, says the 20-year veteran in the drug prevention field, resulted from the injection of 60 police officers into the area when the facility opened, not safe injections at Insite.

Moreover, while the harm reduction lobby takes us on wild goose chases, the really important stuff — the need to reduce drug use through prevention, help addicts through treatment, and reduce drug availability through law enforcement — is marginalized even though in the cases of tobacco and alcohol, such approaches have had considerable impact.

Mangham’s analysis of the harm reduction phenomenon is particularly important. As manifest in the agencies, bureaucracies and the many politicians that surround all levels of government today, he says it is “a (libertarian) ideology viewing drug use not only as inevitable, but as simply a lifestyle option, a pleasure to be pursued, even a human right … (it believes) others should only be there to help reduce the consequences of your choice until if or when you choose to choose differently.”

Or, as Al Arsenault recently told the Province, “… a person can have one foot in the ditch and another in the grave and they go, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be judgmental, here’s your box of needles.’”

Yet few seem to have considered that others might have something to say about an ideology that relieves the user of any personal responsibility, destroys families and communities, costs taxpayers money, and is now spilling into other formerly taboo “lifestyle” choices. Think prostitution, for instance, where the term “sex-trade worker” is a step toward its normalization and ultimate legalization. Similarly, harm reduction is also a first step toward full legalization of drugs.

Even so, Mangham was pilloried in the west coast press though for anyone concerned about this issue, his paper is required reading. Presumably exhausted by this battle of the experts versus front line workers like Mangham and Arsenault, few now are challenging Simon Fraser’s Garth Davies whose paper “A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities” gathers data about safe injection sites from around the world and concludes “none of the (positive) impacts attributed … can be unambiguously verified.”

And, certainly, no safe injection facility could have saved April Reoch, whose violent, banal and senseless death arrived not at the end of a needle or even at the hand of a john, but as a bit of refuse on the garbage heap of humanity’s lifestyle choices – literally.

Whether it is an academy award for Tears for April or the 2010 Olympics, the world will soon have a wide open window on Vancouver. What will it see? The festering eyesore of degraded humanity ripe for exploitation by the latest serial killer called the Downtown Eastside? Or a city where pushers and users are in treatment or in jail and whose youth are hip to the dangers of drugs?

Insite’s licence to enable has been on life support since Canada’s minister of health extended it last year but as a first step to cleaning up Al Arsenault’s old beat, it’s time to pull the plug. It’s about the 14-year-olds, Minister Clement.

The memory of April Reoch deserves better.
* * * *
Note to visitors of http://www.realjustice.ca/: This is one of Margret Kopala’s finest western perspectives. We in Vancouver are indebted to Margret. I hope you recommend her writings to your contacts.
Wallace Craig

Sshhh...The Nutty One Has a New Plan

How does Sun City Hall reporter Francis Bulemic sleep at night?

For three years she followed Senator Silly around like a fawning puppy dog, worshiping every ounce of spit that flew from his cherry round face.

Now, she repeats every inane lie and misrepresentation of the truth that the current mayor utters.

She gets front page coverage today in a non-story about Sam's latest drivel.

He's going to have a new drug strategy.

Right.

Bulemic carefully refers to "the $10 million Sullivan says he has been promised..."

Right.

"Says he has been promised." Well, she's right about that. He has been promised nothing by nobody. This is pure unadulterated spin.

He also wants to develop a new research centre at UBC for his buddy-in-arms, Dr. Michael Krausz, the lunatic behind the drug substitution ideas.

That's what we need is more research. Right?

I don't think so.

We need treatment.

Have I ever mentioned that before?

American Gangster

Ever since Francis Ford Coppola made "The Godfather, Parts I and II" (Part III was obviously the work of pod people who had stolen the souls of Coppola, Pacino, Keaton and others), the envious and less talented have tried to match or top him with crime movies as operatic family dramas.

Give it up, kids. It can't be done.

I don't care how many awards Scorsese gets, "The Departed" is a reckless disgrace.

And Ridley Scott, the director of "American Gangster," is an incredibly gifted craftsman, but he is not an artist, not by a long shot.

"Gangster" is tedious and drawn out and repetitive and boring. Did I mention that it's too long?

We quit after one hour. The DVD counter indicated we had another 1:56 to go.

I don't think so.

I'm as willing as the next sucker to waste my precious time away on a Saturday night, but puleeese...

Nobody is faulting all the first-rate actors, and there are many aboard this train to nowheresville.

Ella...Mozart...Whazza Diff?

What's a Day Without a Little Mo (zart) ?

This is Not a Movie

NPA Meeting Leftovers