SPEAK - ON YOUR OWN DIME

The Canadian Arab Federation gets public money to call public officials, like Immigration Minister Jason Kenny, whores.

They have called Harper and Ignatieff whores and accused Bob Rae of being a racist Zionist, pointing out that Rae's wife is, hold your nose, a Jew.

Here are some of the details taken directly from Margaret Wente's Saturday Globe column:

With a budget of more than $1-million a year, the Canadian Arab Federation depends heavily for its existence on taxpayers' money. It claims this funding is used entirely for programs that help newcomers adjust to Canadian society, and to fight racism and Islamophobia. "Our activity as an advocacy group has nothing to do with our political activity," Mr. Boudjenane says.

But the CAF's website tells another story. The home page urges people to join protests against the "massacre on Gaza." It links to dozens of anti-Israel articles, and gives prominent play to the winners of a recent essay contest on "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine." The website was developed with a grant of $60,000 from the federal Department of Heritage.

The CAF is a prominent sponsor of anti-Israel demonstrations, which feature people waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and people calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the planet. One video shows a woman pointing toward the camera and declaring: "Jewish child, you're going to f------ die. Hamas is coming for you."

For the record, the Muslim Canadian Congress doesn't get any public money. Neither does the Canadian Jewish Congress, the country's largest Jewish advocacy group.

Wente's argument is in the title of the piece:

Say what you want - just don't expect taxpayers to pay

And she is right.

We are a nation that prizes freedom of speech.

But where is it written that taxpayers ought to pay for hateful or incendiary commentary?

Keep in mind that every level of government puts tax dollars into this particular silo, as well as into the cigar boxes of a thousand and one aggrieved and entitled groups across the nation.

Welcome to Canada - Bite the Hand That Feeds You!

TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVES IMPEDE POLICING

Eleven municipal forces and 126 RCMP detachments.

This is the single glaring reason that Pickton avoided even the most cursory attention while he was busy killing women.

This is the single glaring reason that Olson was able to continue killing young girls and boys for so long.

And it is the single glaring reason that criminal subcultures called gangs are able to flourish here in the greatest place on earth (unless you get hit with a stray bullet.)

Yet, the mayors of every little burg and whistle stop in the region firmly and stubbornly resist the idea that Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu and former Chief Bob Stewart all champion - One Metro Police Force.

The argument from the Village Idiots is that they will lose that homey hoody personal touch that folks in Tsawwassen and Port Moody now currently enjoy. Or so we are told by the officials.

Maybe.

Former Vancouver Police Chief asks in this morning's Globe, "Can you think of any private business that would embrace such a self-evident dysfunctional structure?"

Here, for the record, are the sticks-in-the-mud on this issue: the mayors of Delta (Lois Jackson), Port Moody (Joe Trasolini) ans Surrey (Dianne Watts) to name just a few.

It's good to cover your ass...until it gets shot off while you're hunting for better yogurt.

Pay To Pee

Even Scare Canada hasn't sunk this low.

Yet.

Ryanair, Britain's lo lo lo cost flyer, is now talking publicly about charging passengers a one pound coin to get into and use the on board in flight bathrooms.

Ryanair's irrepressible CEO Michael O'Leary is known for getting lots of free publicity by airing these kinds of ideas, so we can't really be sure if he's serious.

But I have a better idea.

For every man and woman who has dreamed of in air assignations, how about a coin operated boudoir?

And in keeping with the rising sales of hand held video recorders, for an extra coin get the video memento of your moment over France.

"Fly me to the moon,
And let me live beneath the stars..."

The Comforts of B&B - From her "One Voice" Video

Not One Dime

Barack Obama's stimulus budget may or may not be the answers to the world's ills.

Who, beside the Republicans, are smart enough to say?

But his speech to Congress the other night was once again magnificent and inspiring. It was so refreshing to see a North American leader encourage citizens to do well and to be well and to aspire to something useful. Some serious and welcome change from the previous eight years.

Now, some of you may be right. Obama may turn out in the long run to be merely a great speaker. We shall see.

But Bobby Jindal as the Republican's best hope for the Presidency?

You must be joking.

It is a sign of how lost and foresaken the party is that it would take seriously Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal.

CBC Ya

The CBC is crying the blues again.

Now, in the face of low cash reserves (What world did it think it was living in?) it threatens to buy and show even more American programming.

Brilliant.

The CBC has long been a corrupt and rudderless organization.

When I worked in the building on West Georgia in the late '70s, the place was hopping.

Music, variety, comedy, drama and news were employing thousands of people and every part of the building was busy. Even so, management was a dick less disaster.

Now, the building is empty. What used to be a vibrant cafeteria had many times over been remade into a news room even though there are enormous now empty studio spaces underground that were perfectly good news rooms for decades.

The CBC should NOT be disbanded, but it should be fiscally responsible (It is NOT.) and it should cut at least half its administrative staff and it should be exclusively in the business of Canadian programming.

CBC Newsworld is very often excellent, first-rate. Give us more of that and no Jeopardy and Wheel.

FASHION

The current vogue in campuses across Canada is pro-Palestinian rallies.

Signs proclaiming the "Israeli Apartheid" are as commonplace as bank machines and Tim Hortons. The virus of anti-Israel sentiment is very much alive and well in our halls.

Of course, I hate these signs and I cry for the sheer blind stupidity of decent young people who want to show their concern for the world by hitching their outrage to a wildly mistaken and misinformed ideal.

However...

Until they yell at me something hateful - and they haven't yet, even though I have argued with them at the college where I work - I support, through gritteed teeth, their right to free expression.

How to get it done

On the other hand...

If you want to read a really positive story about reducing crime, read Jeffrey Simpson in today's Globe about the Winnipeg community of Point Douglas.

Here's a community that turned itself around from drug dealers and crack houses and street violence by the courage of first one man, then others, and a zero tolerance for bad behaviour.

Imagine such a thing in the DTES.

No News at all

Many years ago, I worked for CBC-TV News.

One morning, I was assigned to go to the Hotel Vancouver to cover some announcement by the Minister of Cups & Saucers, or was it the Minister of Bacon 'n Eggs?

I refused. My boss was aghast.

"That isn't news. It's a ritual, and our job isn't to be an arm of the government."

Of course, they put up with me for the rest of the year and mysteriously didn't renew my contract.

I haven't changed.

Nor have governments.

The press is all abuzz with Harper's public declarations of getting tough on crime.

Wake me when it's over.

And careful stepping over the bodies.

Heavier sentences for various ugly crimes may or may not stop bad guys in their tracks (NOT), but that's the least of our concerns.

Until police and prosecutors have real teeth in their powers to investigate and make airtight cases that will stand-up in court, and until judges are prepared to put the bad guys away without thousands of silly concessions for "time spent" and auto-parole and the like, business will continue as usual.

These photo ops are a big yawn. Too little, too late and without serious backup.

Tell me. Does one of you now feel safer?

Y & B - Good Combo

PECKING ORDER

In the past three years, 200,000 foul have been killed in the Fraser
Valley because of bird flu.

Vancouver City Council is proposing chickens in Vancouver's back
yards, It all fits, don't you see. Junkies on the way home from the
safe injection site to their free bachelor apartment can swipe a
chicken for dinner.

Victor Godin

Easy, Now

A proposed law that would formally recognize aboriginal rights and title in B.C. is also expected to set in motion dramatic changes to the structure of native governments in the province.

British Columbia's top native leaders are meeting for a special assembly in Nanaimo this week to debate the principles of the proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act. The law would not only turn back the clock on the Crown's 150-year-old claim to the province's land and resources, but also would set up a commission with the goal of reconstituting the existing 203 native bands in B.C. into 30 indigenous governments.

Premier Campbell is trying to get this into law in the next four weeks.

In theory, this is a wonderful thing.

Recognize native rights and claims and give natives the opportunities to control industries and resources.

In theory.

In practice? In recent history?

Just what we all need, 30 new governments.

And what will that cost all of us, including aboriginals?

And what corruption, pettiness and favoritism - which have been the watchwords of so much native governance in recent past decades - will those new bureaucracies bring?

Be careful what you wish for.

In his strange and mysterious desire to be the best friend B.C. aboriginals ever had, Gordon Campbell may just set in motion one of the worst boondoggles this boon-prone territory has ever experienced.

How Government Works

Indian Affairs is criticized.

So? Business as usual.

Indian Affairs deserves to be criticized. Heck, it barely deserves to exist.

So what does the federal government do?

Do they try to correct the problems.

Of course not.

They pay taxpayers dollars t hire Hill & Knowlton, Canada's largest and priciest PR firm to manage the spin.

This is how government works.

MINDING THE STORE - N OT

Nobody's home.

At least that's what federal auditors have found when it comes to their own government and the 2010 Olympics.

The auditors pointed out that the Winter Games face a range of potential risks, from funding to security to natural hazards, but a committee of deputy ministers struck to provide leadership on such matters in the run-up to the Olympics hasn't met since March, 2005.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

That is priceless. It is perfect.

And, of course, it is more than a blessing in disguise. It's an outright gift.

No doubt VANOC and Gord and everyone else couldn't be more pleased.

Just what they all need is some snoopy, loopy group of underemployed Ottawa mandarins to ask embarrassing questions.

So what if that's their job description?

Luge on!

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.