LOVE MATCH

Last week it was the Untied Arab Emirates, that bastion of progress and democracy, banning Shahar Peer, an Israeli female tennis player from their tournament. None of the wealthy beyond anyone's possible imagination players boycotted. It's amazing what a little oil money can do.

Arab country, good. They got gold.
Israel bad. They defend their country from rockets.

This week it's Sweden and Israel playing Davis Cup in secret. The matches will be played not in Stockholm but in sunny, downtown Malmo without fans or observers. Now that should be a lot of fun.

The reason given - security. The Organizers, the bravest among the brave, fear anti-Israeli demonstrations.

Between Federer's disgraceful meltdown Down Under and this pathetic spineless behaviour of the part of the administrators of the sport, I may have to switch to curling.

Or are there seal hunt loonies or great white bear lovers screwing that up too?

The photo is of Ms. Peer, demonstrating at the US OPen, her famous world-controlling, bank-owning, media-dominating evil backhand.

IS THAT A GUB?

Laila Yuile, who regularly livens up these pages with marvelous, detailed comments, has unearthed a little gem of reporting.

It has to do with a gun being seized by the police at the rate of one a day in Surrey.

You can read the whole story of Laila's blog here.

LBJ and The Jews - A History Lesson

A few weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson's White House office showed LBJ's "personal and often emotional connection to Israel." The news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), "the United States became Israel 's chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier." But the news report does little to reveal the full historical extent of Johnson's actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel . Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the American president during the 1967 war. But few know about his active efforts to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews during the Holocaust - actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of "Righteous Gentile" is certainly appropriate in

the case of the Texan whose centennial year is being commemorated this year.

Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem Conference announced this week that it will honor Johnson in February 2009.

Historians have revealed that Johnson, while serving as a young Democratic congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to be supplied to Jews in Warsaw , and oversaw the apparently illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews through the port of Galveston , Texas .

A key resource for uncovering LBJ's pro-Jewish activity is the unpublished 1989 doctoral thesis by
University of Texas student Louis Gomolak , "Prologue: LBJ's Foreign Affairs Background, 1908-1948."

Johnson's activities were confirmed by other historians in interviews with his wife, family members and political associates.

Research into Johnson's personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for Jewish people
from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America . According to Gomolak, Aunt Jessie had nurtured LBJ's commitment to befriending Jews for 50 years. As a young boy, Lyndon watched his politically active grandfather "Big Sam" and father "Little Sam" seek clemency for Leo Frank, the Jewish victim of a blood libel in Atlanta . Frank was lynched by a mob in 1915, and the Ku Klux Klan in Texas threatened to kill the Johnsons. The Johnsons later told friends that Lyndon's family hid in their cellar while his father and uncles stood guard with shotguns on their porch in case of KKK attack.

Johnson's speechwriter later stated, "Johnson often cited Leo Frank's lynching as the source of his
opposition to both anti-Semitism and isolationism."

Already in 1934 - four years before Chamberlain's Munich sellout to Hitler - Johnson was keenly alert to the dangers of Nazism and presented a book of essays, Nazism: An Assault on Civilization, to the 21-year-old woman he was courting, Claudia Taylor - later known as "Lady Bird" Johnson. It was an incredible engagement present.

FIVE DAYS after taking office in 1937, LBJ broke with the "Dixiecrats" and supported an immigration bill that would naturalize illegal aliens, mostly Jews from Lithuania and Poland . In
1938, Johnson was told of a young Austrian Jewish musician who was about to be deported
from the United States . With an element of subterfuge, LBJ sent him to the US Consulate in Havana to obtain a residency permit. Erich Leinsdorf, the world famous musician and
conductor, credited LBJ with saving his life.

That same year , LBJ warned a Jewish friend, Jim Novy, that European Jews faced annihilation. "Get as many Jewish people as possible out [of Germany and Poland ]," were Johnson's instructions. Somehow, Johnson provided him with a pile of signed immigration papers that were used to get 42 Jews out of Warsaw . But that wasn't enough. According to historian James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle "hundreds of Jews into Texas , using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba , Mexico and other Latin American countries.... Johnson
smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas . He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration... Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more."

During World War II Johnson joined Novy at a small Austin gathering to sell $65,000 in war bonds. According to Gomolak, Novy and Johnson then raised a very "substantial sum for arms for Jewish underground fighters in Palestine ." One source cited by the historian reports that "Novy and Johnson had been secretly shipping heavy crates labeled 'Texas Grapefruit' - but containing arms - to Jewish underground 'freedom fighters' in Palestine."

ON JUNE 4, 1945, Johnson visited Dachau . According to Smallwood, Lady Bird later recalled that when her husband returned home, "he was still shaken, stunned, terrorized and bursting with an overpowering revulsion and incredulous horror at what he had seen."

A decade later while serving in the Senate, Johnson blocked the Eisenhower administration's attempts to apply sanctions against Israel following the 1956 Sinai Campaign. "The indefatigable Johnson had never ceased pressure on the administration," wrote I.L. "Si" Kenen, the head of AIPAC at the time.

As Senate majority leader, Johnson consistently blocked the anti-Israel initiatives of his fellow Democrat, William Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Among Johnson's closest advisers during this period were several strong pro-Israel advocates, including Benjamin Cohen (who 30 years earlier was the liaison between Supreme Court justice Louis
Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann) and Abe Fortas, the legendary Washington "insider."

Johnson's concern for the Jewish people continued through his presidency. Soon after taking office in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, "You have lost a friend, but you have found a better one."

Just one month after succeeding Kennedy, LBJ attended the December 1963 dedication of the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Austin . Novy opened the ceremony by saying to Johnson, "We can't thank him enough for all those Jews he got out of Germany during the days of Hitler."

Lady Bird would later describe the day, according to Gomolak: "Person after person plucked at my sleeve and said, 'I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him. He helped me get out.'" Lady Bird elaborated, "Jews had been woven into the warp and woof of all [Lyndon's] years."

THE PRELUDE to the 1967 war was a terrifying period for Israel , with the US State Department led by the historically unfriendly Dean Rusk urging an evenhanded policy despite Arab threats and acts of aggression. Johnson held no such illusions. After the war he placed the blame firmly on Egypt : "If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision [by Egypt ] that the Strait of Tiran would be closed [to Israeli ships and Israeli-bound cargo]."

Kennedy was the first president to approve the sale of defensive US weapons to Israel, specifically Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. But Johnson approved tanks and fighter jets, all vital after the 1967 war when France imposed a freeze on sales to Israel . Yehuda Avner recently described on these pages prime minister Levi Eshkol's successful appeal for these weapons on a visit to the LBJ ranch.

Israel won the 1967 war, and Johnson worked to make sure it also won the peace. "I sure a s hell want to be careful and not run out on little Israel," Johnson said in a March 1968 conversation with his ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, according to White House tapes recently released.

Soon after the 1967 war, Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin asked Johnson at the Glassboro Summit why the US supported Israel when there were 80 million Arabs and only three million Israelis. "Because it is right," responded the straight-shooting Texan.

The crafting of UN Resolution 242 in November 1967 was done under Johnson's scrutiny. The call for "secure and recognized boundaries" was critical. The American and British drafters of the resolution opposed Israel returning all the territories captured in the war. In September 1968, Johnson explained, "We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between
them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders. Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved."

Goldberg later noted, "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem , and this omission was
deliberate." This historic diplomacy was conducted under Johnson's stewardship, as Goldberg related in oral history to the Johnson Library. "I must say for Johnson," Goldberg stated. "He gave me great personal support."

Robert David Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College, recently wrote in The New York Sun, "Johnson's policies stemmed more from personal concerns - his friendship with leading Zionists, his belief that America had a moral obligation to bolster Israeli security and his conception of Israel as a frontier land much like his home state of Texas . His personal concern s
led him to intervene when he felt that the State or Defense departments had insufficiently appreciated Israel 's diplomatic or military needs."

President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel direction. In a historical context, the American emergency airlift to Israel in 1973, the constant diplomatic support, the economic and military assistanceand the strategic bonds between the two countries can all be credited to the seeds planted by LBJ.

Who amongst us is Innocent?

Children have been killed by Canadian firepower in Afghanistan.

Of course, this is horrible.

Just as it is horrible in Gaza. Just as it is horrible in Israel. And Darfur and wherever men toss explosives about for one "honorable" reason or another.

But what of those Canadians who call Israel an apartheid and Nazis?

What do they say now about the deaths of innocents by our own hands?

The personal costs of Justice

Families must pay their own way to Pickton hearing.

This was the message from the provincial government in a classic example of thoughtless penny-pinching.

But don't be fooled by the headline.

This is also a classic example of Business as Usual.

Talk to any Victim of Crime or family member whose son or daughter has been murdered by a maniac.

Not only must they repeatedly relive their anguish by being called to parole hearings and the like, but invariably they must cover their own costs of travel, food and accommodation.

Priorities. Plain and simple.

Hello, I Must be Going

Kash Heed has resigned as Police Chief in West Vancouver.

That's a pity for West Vancouver.

Only a year and a half into his job, Heed, passed over for the Vancouver Police Chief position, is not saying why he is leaving so soon.

But rumors already swirl about a run at Wally Opaque's provincial seat in Vancouver-Fraserview.

I don't think Kash or anyone else can accomplish as much in the legislature - unless he makes it to Premier in a term or two, and he is quite capable of that - as he can in a real job.

But if he is serious about removing The Embarrassment known as The Opaque One, I may sell the house and move to Fraserview just to vote.

Opaque, by the way, says he'll run again.

Shades of Hedy.

I DON'T HATE JEWS, BUT I KNOW THEY STARTED WORLD WAR TWO

That's your recently acquitted David Ahenekew for you, folks.

An ignorant human being.

One without knowledge.

Stupid and sad.

Harvey Oberfeld on CUPE's Disgrace

CUPE Ontario Shames Canada’s Union Movement

February 22nd, 2009 · 2 Comments

No surprise! The Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Ontario members voted in favour of supporting a boycott of contact with virtually all Israeli universities.

Resolution 50, which was passed at CUPE’s convention in Windsor Sunday protested the continued Israeli ”occupation” of Gaza (Huh????) … and called for its members to boycott working with Israeli institutions that do any research beneficial to the Israeli military. But in my view, this resolution, and the myopic view it reflects, is so totally one-sided as to be more of a disgrace to Canada’s union movement than Israeli universities.

Why just Israel? Why not any institutions anywhere doing research that helps their country’s military apparatus? Because that could open a whole can of worms in lots of places … like Iran, China, Russia, the U.S. and even Canada!!!

No, no … just single out Israel! That, in my view, is pathetic discrimination.

This wasn’t the first time that CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan has focussed his attack and railled against Israel. In 2006, during Israel’s war with Hesbollah, Ryan reportedly hastily called a CUPE Ont. meeting on a Saturday, when observant Jewish members could not attend, and had a motion condemning Israel passed then too.

I do not object to anyone criticizing any country, organization or collective group for positions or actions taken. But, as anyone who reads this blog knows, I absolutely hate one-sidedness and bigotry … and I believe Sid Ryan … and CUPE … are GUILTY on both accounts.

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when Israel was promised peace if it withdrew from the buffer zone it had created in southern Lebanon to protect northern Israeli villages .. but was totally lied to?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE after Israel withdrew and once more exposed its citizens to potential shelling .. when Hesbollah moved in … not with farmers and ploughshares, but with THOUSANDS of rockets, and it started firing into Israel almost daily?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when two Israeli soldiers, in their own land, patrolling on their own side of the border with Lebanon, were kidnapped and murdered by Hesbollah?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE as thousands of Israeli’s … including THEIR women and children … cowered in bomb shelters as Hesbollah rockets rained down .. totally unprovoked?

Where was Sid Ryan when Hesbollah turned its guns, mortars, rockets on the Lebanese people themselves and killed hundreds of civilians in an abortive attempt to seize control of the entire country?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when Hamas, after winning the Gaza election, soon after turned its fury and weapons on Fatah, its political opposition, murdering hundreds of them (including throwing some of them to their deaths from atop buildings) to eliminate any dissident voices and terrorize the ordinary Gazans into submission? No boycott there!

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when, with the greatest heartache and pain, Israel forcibly removed 45,000 of its own settlers from Gaza, turning the entire area over to the Palestinians in yet another move aimed at promoting the promised peace?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when Israel and Egypt re-opened Gaza’s borders in a gesture of good will …. and Hamas imported hundreds of rockets (from Iran) hidden in food and commercial supplies?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when Hamas, instead of promoting farming, businesses and beach resorts in its regained Gaza, moved rocket-launchers into its new Gaza territories and started firing almost DAILY at Israeli towns nearby?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when, in retaliation Israel and Egypt placed severe checks on goods flowing across the border, so Hamas built illegal underground smuggling tunnels to import THOUSANDS more rockets to fire into Israel?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when Hamas and Hesbollah DELIBERATELY AIMED their rockets at CIVILIAN targets in Israel?

Where was Sid Ryan and CUPE when Israel warned Hamas and the world that if the Hamas rockets did not stop (after HUNDREDS had fallen inside Israel ..terrifying, injuring and killing) it would have to act?

And apart from Israel, where have Sid Ryan and CUPE been in all the suffering that has gone on in Darfur, Sudan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Cambodia etc etc etc over the years? Where were there resolutions calling for boycotts of institutions in those killing fields?

And where are Sid Ryan and CUPE as human suffering goes on and human rights are regularly trampled in countries like China, Cuba, Iran, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and almost all the Arab countries of the world?

In fact, ironically, Israel is the ONLY country in the Middle East with a free and democratic union movement, an actual political LABOUR party, and human rights levels (for all its citizens ..including Arab Israelis) that residents in ALL its neighboring states could only dream about.

Ryan’s and CUPE’s anti-Israel motion disgraces them more than Israel.

How ironic: it will be celebrated ONLY by those who support terrorist groups and dictatorial regimes where almost EVERYTHING Canadian unions claim they stand for are punishable by harrassment, imprisonment or death.

The Canadian union movement has only been further tainted by this addition to the public’s perception that it is full of far-left, one-sided radicals who support terrorist groups, dictatorial regimes … almost anyone anti-Israeli and anti-American … while staying so silent about the real tyrannies that imprison their own people and threaten our freedoms.

Other Canadian unions should repudiate CUPE Ont.’s stand … or share the shame.

Harv Oberfeld

REGULATION? HOW MUCH?

Here's an interesting debate.

The EU wants major bank reforms.

They want standards set, tax havens exposed and closed down, more cash on hand for gloomy days and more transparency.

Well, not so fast there.

Canada and the U.S. do not agree.

The fear is that too much regulation will stifle the economy.

Hahahahahaha...

Of course, our "free enterprise system" our open market Eden has done so well for us all.

Little glitches like shuttered homes, businesses and banks? No problem. The taxpayers can always bail them out.

Couldn't Obama and Harper consider for a moment a little more oversight on lenders and financial institutions have been running riot these past few years with universally disastrous results?

LOST

CUPE delegates in a conference in Windsor the other day voted to boycott Israeli Universities.

Speechless.

SAVE US FROM THE EXPERTS

The Globe is continuing its series on the DTES called "The Fix."

It began well, but it is now in the "experts" phase.

We knew there would be trouble ahead.

Today an academic tells us what we already know and then fails to tell us what is behind what we know.

No doubt he is a good man.

Here is what he tells us:

"The root of the problems plaguing DTES is the concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, poor housing, prostitution, petty crime, and mental illness in the area."

Really?

And this honorable man has some good suggestions about housing mixes.

But he doesn't dare address why we have our famous "concentration of poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, poor housing, prostitution, petty crime, and mental illness in the area."

Can you say, "Values," boys and girls?

We are a do-as-you-will culture that dare not impose any acts of citizenship on one another.

So drug addiction or mental illness are no longer problems or conditions to be unhappy about, they are a right and a life style to be defended at all costs.

On an average day, driving my car the short distances it takes me to go about my quiet life, I must deal with at least three outrageous misbehaviours by drivers around me. Anything goes. Signals are a waste of time.

Addicts are patients and the homeless like living outdoors; they choose this lifestyle.

Uh-huh.

The DTES will remain the city's great social sewer and shame until the day we decide as a community that we'd like addicts to live clean and sober lives and we'd like the mentally ill and the homeless to find something resembling homes.

MR. BIG NEEDS A BAILOUT...boo hoo

He owes the tax department a Billion Dollars.

Or so CRA claims.

And the debt isn't his personally, but if you know Canada Revenue, you'll realize that they can make things very personal.

Don't worry.

His name is REID BIGLAND.

Deepen your voice to full announcer level and say that again.
"Hi! I'm Reid Bigland. And you're not."

Reid is the President of Chrysler Canada.

You know, that other company whose cars and trucks no one buys.

Reid and his good friend, The Other Guy who runs GM Canada, are shopping in the Parliament window for a little $10 Billion hand-out.

"Hi! I'm Reid Bigland!"

Of course, if we don't give Reid and his friends more of our tax money so they can keep building really shitty big cars that no one wants, coffee shops and bridal boutiques in Oshawa will go tits up.

Like they weren't going there anyway. Like times don't change. Tell that to the village smithy.

Of course, as we are a mere branch plant of Washington and Detroit, we will give these tax dollars to these deluded leading failures.

We will blind ourselves to the fact that GM Saab just filed for bankruptcy in Sweden, that GM Germany and South Korea have just cried for givernment (that's not a typo) money and that GM is trading just barely above the penny stock level.

The auto and transportation industries are going through seismic, cataclysmic change.

Some things are dying and some new things will be born - green cars, shared cars, no cars, autobikes, rubber buses, your guess is better than mine.

But propping up the locked-in-step machinery that belches forth Ford Exploders and 12 passenger Dodge Caravans is hardly the most useful thing we could do with our tax dollars.

Does that mean cut them all off at the knees and watch people hurl themselves into the St. Lawrence?

No.

But it does mean saying to the arrogant, airhead BIGLAND's of the world, "O.K. Mr. Smarty Pants, show me The New, 'splain me your re-tooling plan, and tell me who else you're talking to about all those pensions and health plans because We the People are not in the business of supporting dying aardvarks and dodos."

The photo, by the way, is REID BIGLAND his own true fabulous suited self, showing off why he needs your money.

Like lots of Canadians are going to be buying that thing.

FROM THE DRUG PREVENTION NETWORK OF CANADA

BC Health Officers Failure to Protect Drug Addicts

It’s troubling that BC’s medical officers passed a resolution at their biannual meeting in Prince Rupert that drug injection sites should be integrated into communities everywhere in BC.

Medical Health Officers are supposed to protect the health of citizens. They know or should know that drug injection sites will not protect the health of addicts, but instead allows their addictions to deepen, leading to their inevitable and unenviable deaths. Only 3% of addicts using Vancouver’s drug injection site are referred for treatment.

According to Ben Jenkins, President of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada,

“It is a concern to our organization that a professional such as an airline pilot, doctor or lawyer can obtain treatment for their addiction but that the poor are only shuffled off to the injection sites which only allows their addiction to continue. There is something palatably wrong with such a policy. It is also disturbing that 65 Vancouver policemen are stationed within a five-block area of the Insite to try to control the criminal element and also to escort the addict into the clinic. This can only mean to the addict that he has an entitlement to use the drugs.”

It’s unfortunate that BC’s Medical Officers of Health choose to ignore the deep-rooted problems of drug addicts who need treatment, and instead, ignore their needs by recommending only the political expedient solution of providing facilities to allow these addicts to continue with their addictions.

-30-

Contact:

Ben Jenkins, President C. Gwendolyn Landolt, Vice President

877 222-6105 (905) 787-0348, (905) 889-1993

SUNNY SURREY SEEN AGAIN

Laila has left a new comment on your post "METRO POLICE":

David,I urge you to visit Surrey, so you can see what the press does not show about Dianne Watts and her methods.
Come walk around my neighbourhood.

Come see the still not done and past due Olympic Volunteer centre that was approved by council -without her revealing to all of them that she had actually signed away the legal rights of the city and its taxpayers in the event of a dispute in the project- which could happen.

People worried about what happened to the Millenium project in Vancouver, and yet here in Surrey this project has missed one deadline and they are already planning for what they are going to do if it is not done by the next one - and possibly having to rent other community facilities out to VANOC to cover their failure.

The money spent on all of this would have paid for quite a few new cops here, but running the Olympic flag was more important.

Dianne Watts has never wanted a regional force- this is nothing new for those of us who live here.She thinks we have different policing needs because "we have more children in Surrey" - this reason and a host of others that make no sense to anyone but her.

One should be questioning not only why she refuses to consider this solution,but also questioning the flawed statistics and plans in her entire crime prevention plan.

It simply does not work.Given much more time with this situation left unchecked, Whally and Newton will be just as bad as the DTES - and this was just recently mentioned to me by an RCMP officer stationed here.

We have just as many, if not more, social agencies as the DTES, and yet the homeless,addicted and mentally ill are everywhere.Just as the DTES continues to decline, as do we.

The police shuffle all of them from one area to another in " Crime sweeps"- which is what has happened several times in Whalley. Crack down there, they all move to my neighbourhood -or the next one. Nothing is fixed, just moved temporarily.

I speak for many when I talk about frustration in getting her to address the real issues.
This latest move is only the most public of them all that is getting noticed by people not actually living here in Surrey.

Her insistance of a community court without all the resources to back it up properly will be the next in a long line of decisions that will do little to solve the rampant crime that makes Surrey it's home.

SUPERSTAR

BUCK PASSING - THE ART

This is not good news.

The federal government and Vancouver have turned to the province to co-ordinate government services for drug addicts, the mentally ill, the homeless and the poor in the city's Downtown Eastside, Canada's most notorious slum.

If anyone at any level has shown the greatest resistance to doing anything meaningful or substantive about these plagues it has been the provincial government.

The Vancouver Mayor is looking to Rich Coleman or some other wise man in Victoria to lead the charge.

This could not be described as clear thinking based on past evidence.

At what point has the Campbell government shown an interest in these issues?

Was I out of town that nano-second?

Oh, I know.

During my surgery on Jan. 23d, I was in an anesthetic-induced white-out for 105 minutes. That must have been the time when Victoria took charge of Our Shame and invested million in treatment and so on.

METRO POLICE

I am surprised at and disappointed by Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, who convened a meeting of Metro mayors the other day to discuss a regional police force.

"What we have right now is a good policing model," she said. "We will be working with what we have because it does work."

Huh?

What has made Watts such a rare and valuable politician in the past few years is that she has not been hide-bound to the status quo. She has shown repeatedly a willingness to move on to new approaches when the old clearly wasn't working.

How in any conscience can she claim in the face of the last two weeks of gang shoot-ups on our public streets that the current system of a dozen separate police forces is working?

Now read in its entirety Retired Justice Wallace Craig on the same subject.

TIME TO STOP BUCK PASSING

February 18, 2009

ON Oct.17, 2007, British Columbia’s inter-gang feuding went far beyond the pale of human decency.

Two innocent men, Ed Schellenberg and Chris Mohan, chanced upon an execution-in-progress and were immediately shot to death alongside four gangsters.

Premier Gordon Campbell and Attorney General Wally Oppal stood on the sidelines while the RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Team began a massive and glacially slow investigation that has yet to result in the arrest of any suspects.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Schellenberg and Mohan, the premier and his attorney should have acted swiftly to deal with this absolute circumstance: that gangsters in British Columbia are contemptuous of police and the judiciary; that they go about their dirty business with impunity with only the slimmest chance of being apprehended, convicted and ending up with a long and hard jail sentence.

Since October 2007, it has been business as usual for the street gangs with their feuding kept on simmer. But the heat was turned up between Feb. 2 and Feb.12 with a spate of shootings and shootouts, some of them involving the use of automatic weapons.

On Feb. 6, in Langley Township, a gangland shooting in a mall aroused the ire of Mayor Rick Green. “In some respects, you feel helpless, but Lower Mainland mayors have got to try and raise the level of our voices. We’ve got to absolutely stand up and say enough is enough,” said Green, who believes that federal legislators must write tougher laws.

In the same report in the Vancouver Sun of Feb. 9, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said that the violence throughout the Lower Mainland “shows how brazen these individuals are.”

After nine shootings in the first two weeks of February, Premier Gordon Campbell finally woke up to reality and talked tough. Flanked by two top cops, Vancouver Chief Const. Jim Chu and RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass, boss of B.C.’s massive E Division, Campbell promised 168 more police officers and a handful of prosecutors.

This magnum-force, Dirty-Harry impersonation by Campbell, coming just three months before an election in May, should be compared with his inactivity before and after the murder of Schellenberg and Mohan in October 2007.

The way I see it, Premier Campbell has ignored the solemn commitment in section 2 of the Police Act of British Columbia “to ensure that an adequate and effective level of policing and law enforcement is maintained throughout British Columbia.”

Campbell seems oblivious to the dysfunctional coupling of two distinct police models in the patchwork of municipal parochialism in the Lower Mainland – a coupling incapable of dealing with free-ranging street gangs.

And Campbell seems oblivious to the precarious state of the RCMP, so badly managed by an inept command structure that it must now endure the ultimate ignominy of working under the direction of a civilian commissioner.

Viewed through the lens of gang activity and rampant drug activity, we are revealed to be a metropolitan community that is far short of adequate and effective policing and law enforcement.

Compare the way policing is carried out in the cities of Vancouver and Surrey using two different models, and make your own assessment.

Surrey, policed under contract by the RCMP:

· no control over hiring, firing and disciplining of officers;

· a detachment commander who does not have the independence and authority of a chief constable;

· all members subject to the authority of the Deputy Commissioner in charge of E Division and the ultimate authority of the Commissioner of the RCMP in Ottawa.

The Surrey detachment is not bound to comply with the provincial Police Act and its complaint process; nor can the municipality govern it with an independent police board; and it is not responsible to the provincial minister in charge of policing in British Columbia.

Vancouver, policed by the Vancouver Police Department under independent command of Chief Const. Jim Chu:

· all constables in the VPD including its chief constable are hired, promoted and may even be dismissed by the Vancouver Police Board;

· the command structure is in constant change with promotions from the lower ranks;

· the force is firmly rooted in Vancouver and is capable of generating short and long term analysis of criminal activity in Vancouver, and the manner in which the justice system deals with offenders.

In keeping with an essential and traditional aspect of his responsibility and duty as chief constable, Chu is proactively engaged in public comment and debate on anything that interposes between his force and their goal of maintaining adequate and effective policing in the City of Vancouver.

My prediction is that mayors and councillors of Lower Mainland municipalities, policed by RCMP detachments, will continue to whine and complain about murderous gangsters while they cling to the status quo. The alternative is too tough for them to manage: to venture where they have never been before and work together to institute a metropolitan police force.

One thing they should do is to constantly remind themselves of the horrific murders of Ed Schellenberg and Chris Mohan by placing a small sign on their desks: The Buck Stops Here.

wallace-gilby-craig@shaw.ca

BAH, HUMBUG

The budget for security for the Games has been a secret.

Now, the federal government has announced that the figure is five times what it was originally declared to be. The number quoted is $900 Million.

Of course, none of that is to be believed.

When all is done and if the accounts are ever shown, the final tab will be well in excess of One Billion Dollars.

Whatever the numbers, this is clearly the largest amount of money ever spent in Canadian history on a peacetime security measure of any kind.

Now there is a photo on page 3 of today's Globe that I cannot find on the net to reproduce for you.

It shows elated and cheering Musqueam Chief Ernie Campbell (Don't get m started!), Gregor Robertson and Gordon Campbell are going mad-happy on the ice at the new Olympic curling rink near Q.E. Park.

My first reaction to the picture was I wanted to throw up.

Now that I marry that picture to the news that the tab for security will be in excess of a Billion Tax Dollars...well, now I really want to throw up.

Party on, Sheep.

NOT-SO-GLOBAL

Many of us will find ourselves watching the demise and self-destruct of Canwest Global with decidedly mixed emotions.

On the one hand, it is sad to see a large and once-healthy Canadian business go to the dogs. It is especially sad to see so many good journalists looking for other kinds of work.

On the other hand (as Tevye would say), it is hard to summons much sympathy for the Asper heirs who have been arrogant and unapproachable to say the least.

TONY & JAMES TAYLOR