Another Tax to be Axed

Cudos to Don Cayo, writing today in the Sun about the heinous property transfer tax.

Read it and cringe.

No, Say It Isn't So

O.K.

You may have trouble believing this.

But it is reported in the Province and we have no reason to doubt it.

It's just that it points to a stupidity and selfishness so craven and hideous, one sputters.

Dad shuts son, 2, inside car to go see Batman movie

That's the headline.

Here is the story.

Fire the Customs People Who Disgrace Us

Six aboriginal dancers from Papua New Guinea were detained and questioned by Canada Customs at YVR for 6 hours and then flown back to their home.

This group was here on a cultural exchange.

They don't speak or understand English.

But two idiot bureaucrats treated them like criminals and deported them on the spot.

I think this is sickening.

Why are these two destructive fools still employed by this country?

Why has Ottawa not responded to the complaints in this case?

Why are known criminals and thugs happily sipping lattes in our sunshine when these perfectly innocent guests are treated so shabbily, so inhumanely?

Will no one take responsibility?

Next !

"It's not city council's business to make specific decisions about specific marketing initiatives by Tourism Vancouver," said Ladner.

This is Peter ladner, who is running for mayor.

And he is absolutely right in this case, responding to the frivolous and irrlevant recommendation of Vision Counsilor Tim Stevenson that the city should be spending more money to attract lesbian tourists.

This "idea" is as potent as Free range eggs and beautified dumpsters.

New Law Gets My Vote

The Province reports that both drivers in a two car collision were drunk.

I think that's a good program and should be written into law.

All drunk drivers must crash into each other and no one else.

Earth to Ford Motor...

Never thought I'd see it.

DEARBORN, Mich. — The Ford Motor Company, which devoted itself for nearly 20 years to putting millions of Americans into big pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, is about to drastically alter its focus to building more small cars.

The company that brought you the Exploder and that lost only $15 Billion in the last two years is finally getting brilliant.

Duh?

No doubt their execs pull in HUGE compensations, when, in fact, they should be put on trial for being polluters.

Read the blessed news here.

Killer Poetry

"PARIS — Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt."

So reads the NY Times first paragraph.

My favorite part of this story is that Mr. K. did not waste his time hiding in barn lofts.

No. The man who had thousands raped and terrorized and placed in extermination camps published a book of children's poetry in 2002.

Who was the enlightened publisher?

K. is charged now with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Come on...he writes poetry for kids. He can't be that bad, can he?

I'd like to add Wally Oppal and the B.C. Human Rights Commission and the National parole Board to this scenario and see what we get.

Summertime

Advances in dentistry.

This is the news?

Reno Resolution, and other Zen Experiences

Now that I've definitely decided NOT to renovate the bathroom off my bedroom, I have quickly come to love this room that I had begun to hate.

I'm accepting where I am and what I have.

Renovating the bathroom was just a diversion, a way to avoid other, more urgent tasks, like writing a new draft of a book I've been working on.

All hail my beautiful OLD bathroom!

(That's not it. I should be so lucky.)

The High Cost of BioFuels

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis > Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive > Aditya Chakrabortty > Friday July 4 2008 > The Guardian > > > Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. > > The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body. > > The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil. > > Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. > > "It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday. > > The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels. > > It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released. > > "Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat." > > Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation". > > President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases." > > Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices. > > Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher. > > "Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period. > > It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher. > > Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply. > > The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact. > > Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants. > > "It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change." > > Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008

Donald O'Connor & Vera Ellen, from "Call Me Madam"

Zoom, zoom, zoom...NOT!

The news, announced in today's Province, that Oak Bay will be the first city in Canada to allow electric cars on its streets is both welcome and puzzling.

Didn't I just read that Quebec was making the same announcement, the immediate result of which is that the Zenn is stepping up production in its Quebec plant?

And while I welcome electric cars and look forward to seeing more of those then the behemoths we now have on the cit streets, I will look forward to seeing LRT trains running along street tracks on time and every two minutes in rush hour and every six minutes otherwise, just like in many cities in the world.

Our city driving has now become an unmitigated horror.

The only thing worse is the pathetic excuse for public transit. Daily, I am told of twenty and twenty-five minutes waits. Puleeeeeese!

Johnny Mathis - West Side Story

The Rules of Dis-Engagement

Would one of you smart people please explain to me how CBC makes its judgments and determinations when it comes to obscenity and pornography?

Last night, I watched the first hour of Quentin Tarantino's one great movie, "Pulp Fiction." This was before he went completely insane and decided that slashing up a mother in front of her 5-year old somehow constituted entertainment. Before he declared publicly that filming violence made him hard, and he wasn't talking about endurance.

We might ask why the government funded network is showing American movies or any other American thing in the first place, but that's a whole other debate.

Here's my puzzlement.

Every time one of the characters in "Pulp Fiction" said "f___" or some derivation thereof - and they said it every fifth f______ word - the sound track bleeped. So there was a symphonic proliferation of bleeping this and bleep that.

But these words came through, sans censor, loud and clear: pussy, shit.

So can you explain to me the mind set or the Book of Kells that CBC mis-management is using for a doorstop?

Come on, you f______ pussies, explain this shit to me.

p.s. BY the way, it has taken me all these years to notice that Steve Buscemi played "Buddy Holly," the waiter who serves John Travolta and Uma Thurman.

The Good Judge

Judging "Ivory Tower Avoidance" and other follies

LET’S REMIND GOVERNMENT THAT JUDGES AND POLICE WORK FOR US July 16, 2008 SUNDAY July 12, another in a series of blue-sky days; but here I am, hunkered down struggling to meet a Monday morning deadline for this column. Shuttering out uplifting blue skies, I peck away at the keyboard under a couple of dark clouds that hover ominously over our criminal justice system. One is the disturbing release on bail of alleged perjurer Inderjit Singh Reyat, the bomb-maker implicated in the 1985 Air India in-flight explosion. Some time ago Justice Patrick Dohm denied bail for Reyat in a multi-count perjury case arising out of the Air India trial. Dohm based his decision partly on the ground that it was necessary to deny bail in order to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice. I think Dohm reacted appropriately to Reyat’s involvement as a bomb maker in two terrorist attacks in which 331 unsuspecting innocents were killed. The appeal court over-ruled Dohm and released Reyat stating in part that “An informed member of the public would recognize that Mr. Reyat is entitled to the presumption of innocence in relation to the perjury charge, regardless of his past criminal misconduct for which he has already been punished by serving sentences totalling the equivalent of 25 years.” That statement is ivory-tower avoidance of harsh realities. Surely an informed member of the public would disagree with the appeal court judge and say that Reyat is still a dedicated terrorist and would point out that the trial judge characterized Reyat as an “unmitigated liar under oath” concerning the plot to blow up two aircraft. An informed person would surely say that time spent in jail does not in any sense amount to repayment of a debt to society; that there is no such principle in the law; and that it is merely a metaphorical wiping clean of the punishment slate. Reyat will never mingle among us as a rehabilitated citizen of virtue for he can never shed his participation in this massacre. Judges need frequent reminding that as a branch of government they must always be a force in maintaining peace and order in our communities. It is not within their mandate to mollycoddle a self-admitted killer terrorist. After the appeal judge granted bail, she somehow concluded that her judgement, including bail conditions should not be made public, on the basis that an earlier order banning publication of the initial bail hearing precluded publication of the details of her judgement. Wrong, wrong, wrong: Once pronounced a judgment belongs to the public and not to the judge who rendered it. The second dark cloud is the slapstick-like behaviour of a dysfunctional integrated squad of RCMP and municipal police, a mob squad actually. Clouseau-like infighting forced federal prosecutors to short-circuit the mob squads multimillion-dollar investigation of several high-ranking members of the Hell’s Angels. This integrated squad working under the apt name Project Phoenix was part of the Organized Crime Agency of B.C. Its target: some leading Hell’s Angels. However the targets faded away as the first order of business became internal matters. The dominant RCMP squad members turned against the designated lead investigator, a municipal police officer and he was fired. A civil law suit arose from the ashes of Project Phoenix with former lead investigator Allen Dalstrom bringing a wrongful dismissal claim against David Douglas, the former chief officer of OCABC, who fired him; and Kevin Begg, head of the provincial government’s police services division. At present the RCMP seems to have regained its stranglehold on mob investigation with the OCABC being supplanted by a new Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, an integrated team of RCMP and municipal police officers. It is the same game under a different name: the unmanageable RCMP in charge, its operation beyond the reach of our Police Act and law ministers, and worst of all no civilian oversight and no accountability. I am certain that when the Dalstrom suit gets to court it will expose the “we-know-best” RCMP as incapable of working on a true partnership basis with municipal police forces. Hopefully there will be testimony concerning the Police Services Branch of the ministry of the Solicitor General and whether it is stacked with RCMP retirees. In her report of November 2, 2007, The RCMP Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Dr. Linda Duxbury included the following assessment in her “key conclusions”: “RCMP culture is not one that supports change. Nor is it one that promotes workplace health or provides competitive advantage. “Words that describe the general culture include: paramilitary; hierarchical; … overcommitted; one that declares victory before achievement; overstretched; one that shoots the messenger; risk adverse; defensive; low trust; one of winners and losers; one that gives preference to dealing with issues rather than people; one that under values human resources; cash managed; non aligned; siloed; focused on process and face time not commonsense and output; change fatigued; exploitive …” This ailing organization has de facto control over the future of policing in British Columbia and with the seeming acquiescence of the premier and his law ministers they are preparing to accept another 20-year fiefdom in British Columbia. We must always remind ourselves that we live together under a constitution that proclaims our right to “peace, order and good government.” Yet awareness of our constitutional rights without action will result in our democratic society being turned upside down. Then our coalescence as a law-abiding people will be fruitless as our executive, legislative and judicial branches of government – together with their bureaucratic agents and police – imperiously anticipate our obedience. Soon it will be time to cast our ballot with a vengeance. wallace-gilby-craig@shaw.ca; www.realjustice.ca. Published July 16, 2008 in the North Shore News

Let the Light in, Gordon

Bravo to the Vancouver Sun's very strong editorial this morning calling for even the lowest level of transparency and decency from the Campbell goverment.

This administration has been making secrecy its watchword for far too long.

STOP THAT CHILDISH FUN, YOU HEAR!

You know why nothing can get done at City Hall?

You know why improvements to city life and health are less than zero?

Because 3 city employees and various departments and managers and clerks have been caught up in The Great Kerrisdale Tree Fort Initiative!

Thank god, we have these stellar guardians of The Right, and the nice neighbours to help them along.

Jack and Sam, you may NOT have a tree fort in your own yard. So there!

And don't mind about the homeless and the drug addicted living near by. We'll get to them in the next millenium sometime.

Just after we stop this guy from selling alternate newspapers or flowers near the bank.

Parole Board is Unbelievable

These idiots have struck again.

Will no one stop them?

A guy enticed hundreds of young girls on the internet to have sex with him. He managed to get at least two to comply.

He was sentenced to nine years.

Against the advice of his case management team, the irresponsible crew of misfits in the Parole Board has released him after less than one year in prison.

They say he has shown insight and understanding about his crime.

Hahahahahahahaha...I'm crying already.

The man is not allowed access to the internet while on parole.

Hahahahahahaha...I'm crying again.

The internet is like ants, locusts, cockroaches and mice. There are more of them than there are human creatures.

The internet is EVERYWHERE. You can't escape it.

How are these geniuses planning to patrol this injunction?

PLease, please, please ask Stephen Harper to totally revise the National Parole Board. It is a bigger danger to the community than drug cartels.

Flushing Meadow, Two

A group in San Fransisco wants to renames the local sewage plant in honor of President Bush.

You can join their petition at this site.

We miss this kind of citizen satire.

Do you remember Yokum Foikus, the Town Fool?

I was standing in front of our second rehab house back in the late 60's on a lovely summer day and I suddenly did a double take.

A man wearing a medieval jester's costume, complete with dangling bells, walked pass me with an ass. Yes, a real live grey beast of burden.

Foikus was active during the upcoming civic election.

We need him again. Soon.

Margaret Wente's Fourth Column on Drugs

Wente is the first and only journalist in Canada to completely and totally "get it." She has embraced the painful truths of this story utterly. In focusing on Billy W., she has perfectly illustrated the beauty and the bureaucratic madness. Bravissima!


VANCOUVER — Billy Weselowski has seen it all, and he hates what he sees on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. “You can't go a block without a bicycle pulling up and giving you all the syringes you want,” he growls. Mr. Weselowski knows this world all too well. He grew up here. His childhood was a nightmare of violence and abuse. At 13, he blacked out from booze for the first time, and quickly wound up on the streets. He injected, snorted, stole, pimped women, stabbed men and became an accomplished felon. He was the hardest of the hard core. Today, he runs rehab programs for drug addicts that borrow from the tough-love model of AA. He has successfully treated thousands of people, using an approach that emphasizes structure, personal responsibility and abstinence. But this approach to addiction is deeply out of fashion. The experts who make drug policy, allocate public money, dispense research funds, advise politicians and push for reform aren't interested in hearing from people like him. Instead, they're interested in “harm reduction” – which, among other things, means giving people all the syringes they want. [Photo] Bethany Jeal a nurse with the Downtown East Side Clinical Housing Team, holds a typical tray with an injection kit that will be handed out to drug users at Insite. (John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)
In Mr. Weselowski's view, harm reduction is a farce. “They're killing people by the truckload,” he says. Canada's official drug policy is known as the Four Pillars approach: prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement. In practice, prevention and treatment have been neglected, while harm-reduction measures have steadily gained ground. Free needle and methadone programs are now widespread. (The term “needle exchange” is obsolete; needles are now handed out by the boxful.) Hundreds of addicts a day visit Vancouver's supervised injection site, which has become ground zero in an angry war of words. Yet, harm reduction remains the orthodoxy of the day. “The supervised injection site is beyond questioning,” says one Vancouver resident. “You are branded unprogressive, unfeeling and everything else ‘un' if you criticize it.” David Marsh, the Vancouver region's medical director for addictions, says harm-reduction policies are often misunderstood. “Essentially, harm reductions are interventions that help reduce the harms associated with drug use, without necessarily requiring that drug use be decreased or stopped.” They are a compassionate way to help the most addicted and marginalized of them all, to tide them over until they're able and willing to seek help. “It's part of Canadian tradition not to turn our backs to people at their lowest.” Harm-reduction advocates now rule the drug policy establishment. They dominate Health Canada, addiction research centres, drug policy groups, and the public health services of local governments. Nowhere is this more true than B.C., where social attitudes toward drugs are the most liberal in Canada. Public officials have fought tenaciously for the supervised injection site. For some, it represents a crucial step toward a far more sweeping form of harm reduction – legalization. Many harm-reduction advocates believe the real harms are done by drug laws, not drugs. Prohibition is impossible, prevention is futile, and abstinence is unattainable for many. Therefore, if we stop criminalizing drugs, we'll get rid of most of the drug problems – the international gangs, the billions wasted on interdiction and enforcement, the crimes committed by addicts who need drug money, the imprisonment for petty drug crimes, and so on. It's an attractive theory, at least on paper. Drug-law reformers have ideological allies around the world, in think tanks and at major universities. Among them is financier George Soros. Because of his deep pockets, he's been called the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization. All of this is spicy stuff. Harm reduction is a hot research field that attracts major money and offers major career opportunities. At Vancouver's international drug conference last year, no one was interested in reactionary things like 12-step programs, rehab or recovery. The noisy marijuana lobby provides a lot of fuel for this crusade, despite the fact that pot is not the issue. Marijuana use is not what creates the lion's share of crime, public disorder, massive costs to the health system, and ruined lives. The real problem is hard drugs, especially cocaine. Vancouver's last three mayors have been outspoken advocates for legalizing marijuana (and the source of a certain civic pride for Vancouverites). The current one, Sam Sullivan, has called for medical versions of hard drugs to be available to addicts. The city's official drug policy calls for the federal government to legalize marijuana, and also to review its prohibition policies for other illegal drugs. Three years ago, B.C.'s public health officers – the same ones who've cracked down on smoking – released a detailed report calling for “government controlled supply” for formerly illegal drugs. “Harm-reduction strategies have not been as effective as possible due to their implementation within the prohibition model.” It laid out an ambitious model for “post-prohibition harm reduction,” where the government, guided by its wise public health officers, would supervise the production and distribution of legal heroin and crack. Cuckoo? Not so much. Top health officials in B.C. already endorse the use of medical heroin, and a trial program has just wound up. Some of them belong to groups lobbying for legalization, and least one influential official is a vocal advocate for the benefits of psychedelic drug use. Not surprisingly, the group that runs Insite, Vancouver's safe-injection site, stridently opposes current drug laws, as does the publicly funded drug users' lobby, VANDU. These two groups are notorious for the noisy lengths they go to in order to silence their critics. They're also good at high-profile PR stunts, such as the recent demonstration on Parliament Hill where they planted 868 wooden crosses to symbolize the 868 people who overdosed at Insite. “Insite was about people dying – friends and neighbours!” spokesman Mark Townsend told me in an interview. In fact, the research found that Insite averts around one overdose death a year, not 868. When asked about this discrepancy, Mr. Townsend brushed it off as irrelevant. Given the current government in Ottawa, it's unlikely that the push for legalization will make headway any time soon. There's also another obstacle: the public. Health officials have faced citizen revolts in cities where people don't want free needles passed out in their neighbourhoods. Sadly, all this theatre has deprived Canadians of a genuine debate over drug policy. The question isn't whether Insite is good or bad. The question is what steps we can take that really will reduce the harm drugs do. Despite the shouting, it's not too hard to guess where the moderate majority stands on drugs. They don't want people prosecuted for smoking a little weed. (After all, plenty of them do it, too.) But hard drugs are different. We don't want to decriminalize them. But we also don't want to punish addicts by throwing them in jail. We want a humane drug policy that will help them get better – and if that means giving them a choice between rehab or jail, then maybe that's okay. So maybe what we need is not more Insites but more Billy Weselowskis – people who can give drug addicts a shot at dignity and a life. Mr. Weselowski knows that even hard-core junkies can recover. After all, he did. “We help get them connected to a spark of hope inside their souls."