really big ideas

RCMP to avoid Taser chest shots

Hahahahaha...

You can't write material this funny.

This is a real headline in the Winnipeg Free Press and reprinted in the Province.

There's more:

"When possible, avoiding chest shots with electronic control devices avoids the controversy about whether ECDs do or do not affect the human heart," it said, suggesting Taser users instead aim for the abdomen, legs or back."

How about just play that famous parlor game, "Hit the Weenie!"

This week marks the second anniversary of the death of Robert Dziekanski. A death I call a murder.

Which makes this fatuous announcement an obscenity.

POT OF GOLD

By the way...

Wish me luck will you with my new Television program.

It's a Reality Show, of course.

It's about real Vampires (We have located several stashes of them in Surrey, Victoria and the DTES.) competing in a dance and losing weight contest.

Both CBC and CTV are so enamored of the concept that they are making me rich in a bidding war.

The only problem with the whole enterprise is that we can only film at night, of course (Vampires...I told you that.) so I am finding it really hard to get up in the morning.

The show is called "BITE! KICK! LOSE!"

But we're open to snappy suggestions.

LETTER FROM A FRIEND

Spanish Bank Stream is still of great interest to me and we are now eagerly awaiting the return of this years salmon.

We are not the only ones anticipating the return.

This fellow has been at the stream for one or two weeks.

I just got lucky this afternoon.

To be there; to see the critter; and to have a working video camera on hand.

A few years ago the stream at this spot was in a large wooden pipe several feet under a blacktop parking area at Spanish Banks.

In 1999 the stream was "day-lighted"

It is very comforting to know that given a chance nature is ready and willing to take over.

GOVERNMENT STINK BIG

When I wrote in this space yesterday about the eHealth money scandal, I hadn't read the front page story in the Vancouver Sun.

What I missed was quite a lot.

The headline alone gets the blood going:

Man at centre of health scandal was under house arrest when hired

He got job overseeing $9-million budget while prohibited from handling other people's money

Jim Taylor was hired as director of communications systems at the Fraser Valley health region in April 2000 -- a month after he was sentenced to two years less a day for defrauding the White Rock Sea Festival Society, which went bankrupt.

Kevin Falcon said he wasn't sure why Taylor was hired by Fraser Health when he had a fraud conviction.

Taylor is accused of fraud and breach of trust, former assistant deputy health minister Ron Danderfer of breach of trust and Dr. Jonathan Burns (foto above) of fraud and influence pedaling.

Danderfer oversaw the multi-million dollar electronic health initiatives.

Guess what?

His wife was a senior official at the Ministry of Children and Families and both his son and daughter are government employees.

Danderfer and his wife were both suspended two years ago.

Their salaries are all paid by your taxes.

Could this be any more corrupt?

All of those Board of Traders are convinced that the Campbell regime is so competent at minding the store.

Surpise!

This is an old story of government contracts awarded to friends, paybacks and kickbacks, jobs for family members, billing irregularities and over-billing.

This is what is happening in an almost identical scandal in Ontario.

This is what happens when governments and bureaucrats have access to unlimited public funds and very checks and balances around them.

This is tax money.

THINK LIKE US...OR ELSE!

The provincial government wants to come into your home and property to tear down any sign it may not like.

All in the name of the Olympics.

If you are not already offended by this, you should be.

Introduced this week, the proposed legislation would temporarily allow officials in Vancouver, Whistler and Richmond to enter a property with 24 hours notice to take down an improper sign or graffiti, a change from the current process, which officials say can take weeks.

The new powers to quickly remove signs would be in effect only during the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, officials said.

Suppose I put up a sign in front of my house or in my apartment window that said, "Let's face it, the Premier is an old poop."

Suddenly, the jack boots are breaking down my front door?

What gulag have we become all in the name of snowboarding?

City Councillor Geoff Meggs thinks all of this is benign.

“We don’t believe any of [the changes] will impact the right to freedom of expression or political expression at all,” he said.

“They will help us to uphold our obligation to stop ambush marketing and inappropriate commercial expression.”

How quickly they forget.

What if you put out a sign that says, "I don't like the Games."

Will that bring on the storm troopers? Will they be armed with tasers or staplers?

That is the question.

THE NOBEL

The folks at the Nobel committee must have a rule of some sort that prizes must be awarded each year.

I thought that, on occasion, if they didn't find a particularly worthy recipient, they simply passed.

Maybe I am wrong.

The other morning they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama.

He was gracious as always in accepting this honour with humility and, it seemed, a little confusion.

I am a huge Barack Obama fan.

I understand the award and its signal for a more hopeful world.

But I think the award was precipitous...uh, a little early for a fellow but nine months into his term.

It's hardly the worst thing that ever happened, but it is peculiar.

Carry on...

THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

There's an article in today's Globe about a woman named Danielle Smith.

She is an Alberta politician.

She may or may not be wonderful. I have no idea. I don't care.

The photo above is not quite as good as the one in the print edition.

In both, she is on her Blackberry.

In the print edition, the caption reads, "Never without her Blackberry...etc."

I think most Blackberry people are demented.

I think they are deranged aliens from a far away galaxy.

I'm hoping they'll go home soon.

eHealth...eGads!

The Province of BC has been busily spending hundreds of millions of dollars changing our health plans into computer info.

Great.

Except for the fraud now being charged against a doctor and a former top bureaucrat, who appear to have been helping themselves and their relatives to much of the spoils.

Where was the oversight?

At whose desk does the buck stop?

What is now called "eHealth" is all the rage in every jurisdiction in the western world.

Fine.

Meanwhile try not to lose all the money to home-grown crooks.

CHEAP GOODS

And speaking of the IOC (see below), while it is some kind of national crime to wear T-shirts that may laugh at the Olympics, it doesn't bother the IOC in the least that The Bay has done cheap and cheesy rip-offs of Cowichan designs in making their "official" 2010 sweaters.

The Bay says it is not a Cowichan sweater.

Yes, we can see that.

This is becoming downright Orwellian.

A sweater is only a sweater when we say it is.

LEAPS OF FAITH

We've been talking the past few days about that Uber-Government, the IOC.

Today, we can focus on how they trump everything, even the Canadian Charter.

Girls want to jump.

Boys jump.

Why shouldn't girls.

Jump, as in off ski hills. As in, at Olympic events.

But the IOC in its omniscience has decided that boys, while they cannot cry, they can jump.

Girls cannot, must not jump.

Why?

Because they menstruate?

Because they have small ankles.

No one knows except that great scientist, Jaques Rogge. He sidelines as the IOC boss.

The courts here in Canada have already decided that the IOC decision to keep women from ski jumping is unconstitutional.

But, as we all know by now, the IOC is a law unto itself. And it could care less what Canadian Parliament or courts have to say in its matters.

And their great defender now is allegedly Canadian, Dick Pound-it-up-your-ass.

BOOKS R US

Gordon Campbell likes the world to know that he reads a lot.

That's nice.

How then does he explain the following?

The Arts and Culture branch of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts has cut all provincial funding from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia (ABPBC), BC BookWorld newspaper and the B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP).

The amounts are minuscule ($45,000 from one agency, $31,000 from another), but they are enormous to the folks left holding the empty library bags.

The Olympics and all its obscene expenditures run on like a driver less Hummer in fifth gear, but support for books and publishing is gone without even a day's notice.

Gordon Campbell has become the Slum Landlord of the Mind.

If this man had any judgement whatsoever, he has now clearly lost it.

May we please elect another government.

Please.

DZIEKANSKI SUIT

Robert Dziekanski's mother has filed a lawsuit alleging excessive force and “cruel and unusual” treatment by the four RCMP officers who stunned her son with a Taser.

Zofia Cisowski is suing the four officers, the Canadian and British Columbia governments, and the Vancouver airport, where Mr. Dziekanski collapsed and died after being stunned by Mounties in October 2007.

The Crown did not charge the four RCMP officers who murdered Dziekanski, saying that they acted with reasonable force in the circumstances.

The famous Stapler Attack.

I approve entirely of this lawsuit.

The Goldman family found some small measure of satisfaction in suing that famous and beloved and innocent, non-killer, O.J. Simpson.

When all of the public officials involved in a clear miscarriage of justice walk away Scott free, a civil suit is appropriate and be the most reasonable remedy.

THE T-SHIRT REBELLION

I wrote yesterday in this space about how the Olympics are increasingly doing the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do - they are threatening core democratic principles.

Today we learn that the City of Vancouver has a by-law that is clearly complicit in stifling dissent and free speech.

Geoff Meggs is a bright and decent guy and a good addition to City Council, but he must be kidding when he defends this stupidity.

Everyone at VANOC and the world-dominating IOC and the City of Vancouver should all take a pill and try really hard to just relax.

The famous effing Games will come and go and some will have a great party and some will win medals and most will be shut out by not having an MP in their family who could get tickets, and some like me will go far, far away, and some will stay and protest.

And that's Life in the Big City, Kids.

By-Laws and fines for wearing a T-shirt?

Come on! It's a fucking shirt. Live with it. Get over it. Print your own funny shirt.

MAZEL TOV!

Major congratulations must be extended to Samuel Aparicio and his colleagues at the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at the BC Cancer Agency.

They have not found the ellusive "cure for cancer," but they have brought us all a lot closer.

Their breakthrough in genme sequencing may lead to faster, morse individualized and more effective treatments.

Read the story here and then ask your MP how we are doing in supporting research.

THE SANDS ARE RUNNING OUT, SUGAR

That tasteless crook, many times indicted, never convicted, Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, may be losing his grip.

Poor baby.

Italy's top court has ruled that the law he passed giving him immunity from prosecution is unconstitutional.

Lately, Berlusconi has, among other things, taken to making public jokes about President Obama's "tan."

How bad must all the other politicians in Italy be that this corrupt and creepy man has three times been elected to the highest office?

For the Man Who Has Everything - Or maybe Too Much

Fashionista bullet-resistant togs are all the rage in the Excited States.

Wear bullet-proof, but look cool and groovy. That's the way to go these days.

Of course, the market is also hot in Mexico, India, Hong Kong, Columbia and Thailand.

CANWEST

It would be too easy for those of us with 12 cents in our pockets to gloat at the demise of the Asper empire known as Canwest Global.

In truth, the whole affair is sad.

Watching the sons destroy the good and clever work of the father is hardly a new story, even here in Canada, where Eatons, Woodwards and Seagrams, among others, leap quickly to mind.

Arrogance and vanity are often at the core of these tales, and I think it is fair to say that these qualities have been noticeable here.

But in the end, it is sad to witness the death of a kind of family - the family enterprise. It is a type of living organism that, when it fails, is like a family brought to its premature end by divorce.

It is also sad to see the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of employees who have suffered and will suffer with loss of jobs and incomes.

I was one of 550 people "terminated" in late October 2008 because of the Asper financial woes. At the time I was being paid $200 to write a Province newspaper column every few weeks. Boo hoo.

Sadder still is what impact all of this may have on the city of Winnipeg.

The Aspers are at the corner of almost every activity in civic life. Their flagship building anchors the redevelopment of Portage and Main. They own sports teams, ball parks and community centres and they have been the lead backers of the rich cultural life that still thrives in a city with major social and economic problems.

May the bleeding not continue too long into the night and may the people involved not suffer wounds too deep.

THE BAD THINKING AND THE GOOD

Thanks to Janine Benedet, a UBC Law professor, for writing an excellent piece in this morning's Globe decrying the calls for legalizing prostitution.

Here's her opening paragraph:

"Supporters of the prostitution industry want us to believe that women would be safe if men's purchase of women for sex is legalized. In the name of women's security, they are arguing in an Ontario court this week that male johns and pimps have a constitutional right to buy and sell women. They are claiming that prostitution is women's work and that legalizing it would advance women's liberty. Opposition is dismissed as based on “moral panic.” A closer look at the violent reality of prostitution exposes the utter fallacy of these claims."

Her argument is simple and straight forward and right:

Legalization wouldn't make prostitutes safe

The violence in prostitution comes not from the law, but from male pimps and buyers

Read the entire column here.

SCIENTIST

Mazel tov to Willard Boyle, the Canadian scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for inventing the technology that led to the digital camera.

This technology is not only a great amusement for millions of families and shutterbugs all over the world. It also is now central in astronomy and microsurgery.

Boyd's story is Canada in microcosm.

A Nova Scotian, he did his great research work at Bell labs in New Jersey.

His triumph underscores our continuing lack of commitment in real dollars to science and research.

We continue to be a B Movie.

TERROR IN FULL SIGHT?

Christopher Shaw is a vocal and up-front highly visible critic of the 2010 Olympics.

The RCMP are now questioning his friends and relatives. The police show up at people's homes and places of work and school.

News flash:

Terrorists are very quiet.

They sneak about in the dead of night and under many innocent guises.

They don't advertise their opinions in front of the Art Gallery.

I don't know Mr. Shaw. Maybe he has a lab in his basement. Maybe, like me and many of you, he questions the enormous expense of these games in the light of more pressing issues on which public funds might be spent.

Thus he is acting as a responsible, thinking citizen.

For this, his friends and family should be harassed?

This Olympics has become an increasing tire iron in the spokes of democracy.

It is becoming an embarrassment.