The Justice Train Wreck continues on its merry path here in La-la-land.
A mother and son, both with priors, both get off being caught red-handed with a lot of drugs at YVR.
The mother, blames the son for wrapping the presents and claiming she had no idea.
Then, the crown drops the proceedings against the son.
Read the entire comic book story in this morning's Province here.
I responded at length to this posting by Los Angeles based columnist, Amy Alkon. I thought it worthy to repost here.
Illegal drug use is the #1 issue in Vancouver, BC where I live. A major swath of the city has been infested with lost souls who are high on one or more of: Heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth, and a variety of others.
The consumption of these drugs costs money. It is estimated that 80% of all property crime (cars, homes, businesses) is directly related to drug use. With a 10:1 ratio of selling stolen property, $10,000 worth of stuff is stolen for every $1,000 worth of drugs. Not only has this driven insurance rates sky high, but it has also resulted in disruptions of phone and electrical service, as the drug addicts have ripped out wires in search of copper to sell for scrap metal.
Metro Vancouver was recently named as the organized crime capital of the world, with literally tens of thousands of homes being converted over to drug growing dens or drug manufacturing labs. Just the other week, an apartment complex in the supposedly good neighbourhood where I live (Kitsilano) had to be evacuated for a few days because some nutbar decided to turn his apartment into a crystal meth manufacturing facility. He killed himself with the fumes and potentially risked the lives of everyone else in the building from exposure to the fumes or an explosion.
From time to time we have gangstas (generally Asian or South Asian) roaming around the streets, firing automatic weapons into the cars & homes of their enemies. However, their bullets don't suddenly fall to the ground before hitting innocent people.
"BC Bud" is the high potency marijuana that others have mentioned. It is primarily shipped down to the U.S. in exchange for guns, cocaine, and heroin coming up here. Those items coming to us are not blessings on our society in any way, shape, or form.
The police have pretty much given up on arresting drug addicts and often drug dealers because our over lenient judges have continuously released these people back onto the street before the arresting cop starts his next shift.
Over in Switzerland, where they've had a pretty open "live and let live" policy about drug use, even they are rethinking it because of what it is doing to their society.
I don't precisely know what the ultimate solution to this Modern Day Plague is but its presence in my community has turned me from a pure Libertarian into a Pragmatic Libertarian.
One proposed policy I'm in growing support of is to forcibly incarcerate drug addicts into treatment facilities far away from the source of their misery. Many recovered drug addicts agree with this approach, saying that until a person hits rock bottom, they'll never go willingly. But it often takes many years of misery to reach that point. By then, many are dead.
Of course, there are significant forces against such a policy. They speak of "human rights" but I strongly believe what's really at the heart of their objections is that many, many people are now gainfully employed by the Poverty Industry. These are the folks who are supposedly employed to help these lost souls. They're very adept at applying band-aids but actually curing the drug addictions doesn't seem to be of much interest to them.
Am I cynical? I prefer the term "realistic and saddened observer"!
An academic wants to witness assisted suicide. A fight is brewing over his right to do that.
So goes the front page headline.
The key words here are "want" and "right."
As we have all learned by repeated lashes on irrationality, "want" and "right" have now become equivalents in Canadian culture.
I want to bash people's heads in; therefor I must have that right.
I want to kick or shoot or main Jews, blacks, Scots, dogs or sales clerks; therefore I must have the right.
I want to talk loudly on my cell phone during violin concertos, libraries, restaurants, buses; therefore I have the right.
So...
I want to see people end their lives. This will make a good paper.
Therefore...
Now, don't leap to misunderstand me.
Academic research and academic freedoms are important. They are often frivolous, ridiculous, entirely self-serving, a complete waste of taxpayers money and human energy, but they must be maintained and upheld because one of those investigations out of a thousand might actually yield some shard of information that will actually be of some use to humankind sooner or later.
Still, that leaves many questions.
I want to witness the raping of babies for my academic research and therefore I should be allowed to stage such and watch and take notes?
This is not as outrageous and far-fetched as you may think.
In the 70's, a husband and wife team of psychologists, called the Sobels, actually had a bar built in a classroom at the U of T so that they could teach drunks to sip.
I am not making that up.
Several years later, they made the cover of Time magazine, by confessing that they finally realized that what they were doing (trying to teach drunks to "manage" alcohol) was destructive and immoral.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has formed a brassy committee to investigate the death-watcher's concerns. Perhaps CAUT should be CAUGHT.
The committee is a panel of blue ribbon...wait for it...academics.
This is akin to the police investigating themselves, and we all know how well that works.
If CAUGHT really wants to study this issue - and it should because it is a deeply moral and philosophical matter - it should add to the committee housewives, house husbands, doctors, rabbis, priests, CEOs and school children, among others.
Excuse me, I have to go watch a gang of teens swarm a harmless old man at a bus stop and kick him to death. We're set to go at eleven.
" I doubt that many people in Metro Vancouver of aware of Translink's wordwide reputation."
Hahahaha...
I doubt that Thomas Prendergast, the new CEO of Transclunk, recently imported from NYC, has ever waited 20 minutes for the #20 bus at the Broadway station at 8 pm, surrounded by drug deals.
I doubt that Mr. P. is aware of how arrogantly he has begun his reign telling us poor little Metro Vancouverites how little is our awareness.
I doubt P. has taken his communications and diplomacy pills this week.
Hertz is deducting 20 minutes pay per week from en employee for his time spent praying.
This is the poster boy action for stupid, counter-productive and old-fashioned management.
In today's marketplace, any employer who time cards his wage earners is working backwards.
The name of the game is responsibility. Get the job done, whether it takes 5 minutes or 9 hours.
And praying?
They should be happy they have an employee with some values.
War fraud - badly made and faulty equipment, overbilling - is costing the American taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars today.
Unfortunately, or cleverly, depending on how you vote, there is nothing to be done, to be done, because neither the Iraq nor Afghanistan missions was declared "a war."
Read the NY Times editorial here, and remember, for truth in journalism, always follow the money.
Hey mensche:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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!!!
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..."
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...
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.
