Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. His most recent book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). He is also the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, theAtlantic Monthly, The Nation, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. A TomDispatch interview with him can be read by clicking here, and then here.
While industry ramps up environmental destruction, the British Columbia government moves to self-regulation while reducing royalties and increasing tax credits. Worse than financial gifts to the energy industry are blind eyes turned toward ecological damage from new production techniques. Check BC budget records, you will find that funding for the Ministry of Environment has been decreasing from year to year.
Forbes, a magazine popular with business people, ranks the happiest countries in the world:
"The five happiest countries in the world--Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands--are all clustered in the same region, and all enjoy high levels of prosperity.
"The Scandinavian countries do really well," says Jim Harter, a chief scientist at Gallup, which developed the poll. "One theory why is that they have their basic needs taken care of to a higher degree than other countries. When we look at all the data, those basic needs explain the relationship between income and well-being."
Interesting. Canada's ruling political parties, mainstream media and business supported think tanks all claim that the way to a better society is less government, lower wages and reduced taxation. What are those Scandinavian countries doing wrong? Or, could it be that the higher purpose people in the North American ruling class don't give a fratteratterpeggaloomer about happy citizens.
The RCMP paid a firm in Arizona more than $44,000 for "executive coaching" and other training for its top official, Commissioner William Elliott, as part of ongoing efforts to improve accountability in the force.
Elliott spent three days in Scottsdale in July for development of a "leadership action plan" with Malandro Communication, the same company the Royal Canadian Mounted Police intends to hire on a $220,000 contract to coach senior executives in leadership and accountability. . .
Sources tell us his golf handicap improved from 36 to 32.
The Prime Minister’s Office admits it has received complaints from senior RCMP members about Commissioner William Elliott allegedly being verbally abusive, close-minded, arrogant and insulting. The complainants include some of the force’s top officers, including deputy commissioners Tim Killam and Raf Souccar, the CBC reported Monday evening.
Perhaps Kommissar Elliott needs another three-day $44,000 golf weekend in Arizona. The first executive coaching session on leadership seems not to have worked.
July 28, 2010 Update
Elliott said the pace of change within the RCMP was responsible for making people uncomfortable but, according to the Toronto Star, that comment infuriated officers who spoke to the newspaper. One source said,
"There is supposed to be zero tolerance in the RCMP for managers who harass their subordinates and yet Elliott epitomized the bully boss."
Toews & MA
The Conservatives hope an investigation will provide a way out of the potentially explosive mess. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said,
“We are doing an analysis to see whether these concerns are merited, and if they are, what we do in respect of them.”
Government said an independent adviser, not yet chosen, will conduct an assessment but that report will not be made public. Instead, it will be stored in the room for inactive files at the public archives, joining Justice McDonald's Commission Report, David Brown's report on RCMP governance A Matter of Trust, Justice Major's Air India Report and countless pleas from former CPC Commissioner Paul Kennedy for changes in RCMP governance.
Toews told reporters that, since it is not yet 30 years since Justice McDonald's report, and little more than three years from Brown's report, it is premature to think government will soon embark on unplanned, haphazard changes to the national police force. Toews said:
"Conservatives are considering appointing a commission to review commission appointments and, until that measure is taken, Prime Minister Harper is not certain whether or not reports already on file should be read. There is a possibility that some information may be out of date and, besides, the reports are awfully long and nobody bothered to highlight the good parts. However, we know our duty and do it well. We will look like we're doing something, even while we're doing nothing."
Jonathan Miller, Foreign Affairs Corespondent, Channel 4 News:
". . . Systematic under-reporting of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Some of this is faulty reporting, some of it incoherent, some of it just incomplete. . . "
At least, teenagers today have straight teeth. I don't know about the other part.
In happy days of the sixties, I was transitioning from the earner to the ovice stage of being a teen and knew everything there was to know, or at least the parts I thought worth knowing. I could list every WW2 allied fighter ace, name the dambuster pilots of No. 617 Squadron RAF and engage a veteran for hours about the Battle of Britain. Strangely though, this vet was a lowly private, a tank driver, my uncle, original member of the Kangaroo Squadron. He wouldn't talk a word about the ground war. That death and destruction was too real, too personal. Instead, he gloried in air to air combat that he only watched, where men might give a respectful wave to the persons they aimed to kill.
I could instantly identify the make, model and engine option of any car on the road and recite, had anyone bothered to ask, up-to-date Vancouver Mounties baseball stats like Chuck Oertel's batting average, Howie Goss' Strikeout/Home Run ratio or George Bamberger's ERA. School was important mostly to visit friends and homework was for nerds, to be done only under duress and at the last possible moment. Getting a good laugh in class was always worth more than getting an A. I remember triumphant participation in a high school quiz-bowl on stage during a full school assembly. Afterward, a kid came up to me in the hall and said, "I. . . , I didn't know you knew anything!" I wasn't sure whether to be honored or insulted.
For kids in those days, radio was king. We were pals with the swinging men at 1410: Al Jordan, Brian Lord, Frosty Forst, Dave McCormick and Jerry Landa. At CKWX, Buddy Clyde did both morning and afternoon drive times and Jim Robson was the indefatigable sports guy, calling real or imagined baseball play by play until late in the evening but still at the microphone for scores and happy talk on the early morning show. No Vancouver radio station today can measure up to the powerhouse legends of the sixties. And, they spoke directly to us; no adults welcome.
In the week of September 1960, when my pioneer grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, I wondered how people could get to be that old. Rockabilly Queen Wanda Jackson was number one on the CFUN*Tastic 50 and number two on The Sensational Sixty at CKWX.
Reminiscences are fun, but in reality, the good old days depend mostly on faulty memory. Most of the music was utter crap, junk that today's golden oldies lists don't include. 'Running Bear' by Johnny Preston, for example. And, who today would listen to a wave of other teen death songs. Maybe, Ray Peterson who was still singing 'Tell Laura I Love Her' on the oldies circuit a few years ago. Or, Marilyn Michaels, artist responsible for the sensational Laura sequel: 'Tell Tommy I Miss Him'.
Much of that music was painful. Happily, one trait of human nature is to dismiss painful experiences and focus memories on happy times. We recall trepidation preceding the first kiss and grope sessions but those joyful terrors are worth remembering. Real suffering, we put away in private places, and mostly just keep them there, to ourselves.
Indeed, Canadian society in the sixties was much different than today. In my town, there were few visible minorities, apart from little known people on the reserve a few miles beyond the last bus stop north of town. There were no gay people and we had few 'subnormals' in our community. Handicapped or 'retarded' youngsters were mostly sent off to institutions, somewhere, where they could be better cared for while their families got on with life. A few lived at home but were strictly excluded from regular schools. Who knows, maybe Cerebral Palsy was contagious in those days.
Renovated and without window bars
Juvenile delinquents were occasional problems but they too got shipped out of town. There were dungeons for some at the Industrial School for Girls on Cassiar Street in East Vancouver. It housed female miscreants as young as ten and was called the House of Horror by the Vancouver Sun. The City Fire Chief repeatedly condemned unsafe conditions at the 1914 jail and officials were also persuaded by a riot involving 70 pre-teen and teen girls. At the start of the sixties, it was replaced by the slightly less oppressive Willingdon School for Girls.
Misbehaving boys, including one of my neighbors, could be deemed incorrigible and jailed at Brannan Lake 'reform school' near Nanaimo. Again, pre-teens mixed with older inmates. Children suffered all kinds of abuses: emotional, physical and sexual. Additionally, the lawbreaking skills that apprentice criminals lacked beforehand were quickly learned from more experienced offenders.
In truth, the good old days were good for already comfortable people, the folks well clear of society's margins. For those who didn't or couldn't conform with the ordinary, life was tough. In youth, and for years after, I never thought much about these issues. With age, I've lost a portion of my ignorance, at least, I hope, that willful disregard I used to avoid subjects that made me uncomfortable or allowed me to pretend I was not indifferent to others.
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As a special to A Guy in Victoria, here is a link to one of his old favorites:
As was common in those times, successful novelty songs gave birth to sequels and responses. Here is one answer to Napoleon XIV (NY record producer Jerry Samuels) by Josephine XV:
A person, one whose identity I could reveal, left a comment proving my suggestion about crappy music. He still listens to songs from the sixties and uses the same hi-fi equipment he used 50 years ago. This is it, along with part of his record collection. I kept saying, "Put those damn things back in their sleeves or they'll scratch." He never listens.
I actually grabbed a photo from his record library, which proves not only that the song exists but he owns one of the few remaining copies in the world:
Blogs such as this are personal forums but conventional wisdom suggests writers should not wander far from a continuing theme. I follow that standard, usually, but cannot resist occasional urges to step sideways. However, even this piece follows my oft-stated belief that we in BC today, are stewards for future generations.
I blogged a few days ago about the arrival of my fifth grandchild. He comes into a modern world, far different from the one his great-great grandfather came to 108 years ago. Nature and my grandfather, Jim Mahood, born James Alexander Sharpe in Gravenhurst Ontario 1885, were inseparable throughout his life. He claimed, probably correctly, that he never went past Grade 4 and received his life education from an old Indian woman near Muskoka Lakes.
He came to British Columbia still a teenager, first working as a cook for a survey crew and soon climbing over mountains and through virgin forests in lands unseen by white people. He retired a respected Forest Ranger in 1950 and lived 26 years beyond, keeping strong and active until the last few years. When he was 75, he decided to build a new house, next door to the family home. He had a helper, an old friend who was 78. I think the neighbors trembled greatly when the old buzzards were putting on the roof. My grandmother hated, hated, hated, the new house. There was no reason for it except that he wanted to build it.
A hobby that I work on in fits and starts is genealogy. At one point, I thought I would do something up to my own generation and then pass it on to my kids. However, genealogy doesn't interest many young folks so I've got a few decades before I need anything to turn over. Today, I was scouting the Internet and came across this article supposedly written by my Grandfather. I saw him wield saws, hammers, shovels, rifles and other things but never a pen. I suspect his oldest son, Ian Mahood, actually wrote this. That uncle and his three brothers were involved in BC forestry throughout their working lives. They loved the timber business and had little patience for people who would terminate logging. Ian Mahood said that loggers were farmers except the crop cycle was 75 years long.
I reprint this piece because it provides detail about our province and the industry that was its foundation. There is an addendum written by one of Grandfather's associates, a person not known to me. I hope you enjoy.
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Published by the Forest History Association of British Columbia
No. 79, Victoria, British Columbia, April 2006 FORESTRY IN THE CHILLIWACK DISTRICT
by J.A. MAHOOD
(date unknown)
I came to the Chilliwack Valley in 1902 on a visit to my grandparents, who had homesteaded near the present site of the Abbotsford airport. Farming among stumps four and five feet in diameter was difficult and unrewarding. The debris from logging had to be cleared off, brush removed, and grass sown for cattle feed. Getting the ground broken for crops was back-breaking, frustrating work that few people today remember. Being Irish, my grandparents knew how to raise potatoes and pigs. Without this skill, the people would not have survived to clear the land.
As a young man I went to the Yukon in the late stages of the Gold Rush days. In 1910 I married Miss Patterson, a Glasgow girl visiting Burnaby. This proved to be the most beneficial decision of my life . After soldiering in 1914-1918, I returned to the Fraser Valley as a forest ranger for the B.C. Forest Service.
In those days the Chilliwack Ranger District started just south of Lytton, extended to New Westminster, and included all the land from the U.S. border to the headwaters of the Pitt, Stave, Harrison and other drainages flowing into the Fraser River. This vast area was virtually undeveloped and unknown as to its forest resources. Before 1920, there was almost no forestry activity east of Hope. Westward, along the C.P.R. line, near Ruby Creek, Harrison Mills, and the Mission area there were some small sawmills cutting mainly railway ties.
Logging was mainly by horse and just to supply local demand in the course of land clearing. In the Rosedale area and along the sloughs to New Westminster, long before 1921, oxen had been used to skid logs to the river to supply sawmills downriver. I remember many old skidroads with cross stringers of logs that loggers had to paint with grease to get their skidding done.
In those days stumps were cut ten or twelve feet above the ground so that the flared butts would not dig into the ground in the skidding process. There were no power saws and the fallers had to balance on springboards to chop their undercuts and pull their long handsaws back and forth. It was a grand sight to see two big "Swedes" stripped to the waist moving muscles in rhythm to fall a big tree. Men worked together, in pairs, in those days. Also, there were not many fat men. They worked too hard.
In the 1920s, operators on Harrison Lake began to open up railway logging shows . P.B. Anderson went into Green Point and ultimately had many miles of railway in that area. South of Cultus Lake the Campbell River Timber Company, that operated from White Rock, logged Columbia Valley using a logging railway and moved the logs to their mill near White Rock via the American side.
Near Abbotsford, the Abbotsford Timber and Trading Company, which had been developed by the pioneer Trethewey family, was winding up a railway show that covered a large area south and west of Abbotsford. The Pretty family were active near Harrison Mills and shortly after Chehalis began a railway show. It is still an active area, with trucks of Canadian Forest Products, Ltd., hauling logs out of the hills west of Harrison.
In the late 1920s the famous Green Timbers area west of Fry's Corner was logged by the M.B. King Company. This was one of the last pieces of timber on the flatlands south of the Fraser in the area from Rosedale (in the east) to New Westminster (in the west). In those days, all over the valley, homesteaders were clearing land for agriculture and as rapidly as loggers completed a show the ranchers moved in. In the Langley area, chicken ranches replaced the forest. Near Chilliwack, formerly forested land near the natural farming areas was taken over for cattle grazing.
As a forest ranger, a great deal of my work was administering the Homestead Act. There were scores of small sawmills scattered throughout the valley that bought logs from the ranchers that cleared off the land that the big railway logging shows did not reach. Without a market for sawlogs the ranchers would not have had a cash income. Horse-drawn wagons moving the logs on crude dirt roads, mud up to the axles, were a steady event. In the twenties and early thirties, trucks, the forerunners of modern truck logging began operating. The early truck loggers used fore-and-aft plank roads – they were common in the Rosedale area up on Promontory Mountain.
Orion Bowman ran a sawmill at the foot of Promontory Road well before 1910. He provided a market for the ranchers' logs and cut lumber for them. Without this mill a lot of farms would never have been cleared. His sons, including Oliver Bowman, and a daughter carry on the business and I understand they have a fine modern mill. It is one of the oldest continually operating sawmills in the province.
Before the 1920s, near Stave Lake, the shingle men had a method of logging that is now but a memory. They built a flume to carry shingle bolts from the steep ground down to shingle mills on the flatlands. These structures were engineered to wind down the contours and carry water that floated the bolts. The hard work to build the trestles that supported the flume was expensive and difficult to engineer. In the modern era I don't think there are any men left that could build such flumes and not many fellows who would be willing to lift shingle bolts into a flume by hand.
Incidentally, the power saw was not yet invented and handsaws were used to cut the logs and wedges to split out the bolts. Chinese and Japanese workmen were used in the hills, and people used to joke that they never sent a payroll into the woods, just bags of rice. One of the big shows of the railway logging era was the Abernethy-Lougheed Company near Haney. Their log dump was at Kanaka Creek where it joins the Fraser River. The railway went north to what is now the Malcolm F. Knapp Research Forest of the University of British Columbia. The company finished its operations in Haney in 1928 and moved up the Coast, only to go out of business during the Depression of the 1930s.
That Depression set back all of the logging industry and for nearly five years almost nothing was done in the valley. The wheels began to roll again in about 1935 when B & K Logging opened up the Vedder River show. They built a railway that used the Vedder Canal dike and crossed the river at Vedder Crossing, then went up the south side of the Chilliwack/Vedder River nearly to Chilliwack Lake. Was a tough show in mountains and sidehills, but the bottom land turned out some of the best Douglas-fir peeler logs ever harvested.
Paul Jorgenson was the engineer that designed that railway location and the bridges. Albert Wells, one of the old-time loggers, was superintendent. In 1938, the year of the big fires, the Campbell River fire got all of the newspaper attention, but a much bigger and more costly fire raged up the Chilliwack River. It nearly wiped out the B & K operation and they withdrew from the valley to log the Vedder Mountain and Cultus Lake areas.
People will remember the big railway trestle that crossed the Cultus Lake road at Vedder Crossing. This was one of the last railway trestles ever built in B.C.
Also in the thirties, the Silver-Skagit operation flourished. This was one of the first really large truck logging shows. It was organized to clear out the areas in Canada to be flooded for the hydro development on the U.S. side of the border. The logs from the American side were moved to the Fraser River, west of Hope, over a high quality truck road. Huge specially designed trucks, with 20,000 board foot payloads, worked around the clock. Many of the methods, pioneered at great expense on that show, were transferred into practice that has evolved into the modern, efficient truck logging of today.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s Harrison Lake became a centre of operations and Earl Brett, the Clark brothers, and one or two other Chilliwack men developed logging operations on Harrison Lake. I remember flying in with Earl Brett in one of those early open cockpit machines he operated. Coming around a hillside we hit an air pocket that bounced a camera case out of the aircraft. It caught on the rudder and jammed the steering. Earl side slipped down the hill and manoeuvred to a hazardous landing o n the lake. I had to swim to the tail and pull off the offending strap so we could take off again. Earl not only pioneered logging but flying as well.
During the war years (World War II), all through the valley ranchers and loggers were busy getting out birch, cottonwood, and Douglas-fir suitable for plywood manufacture. This material, particularly the birch, was used in the manufacture of Mosquito bombers, one of the planes that helped to win the war.
All through my time in the Forest Service, fire control was a big part of the job. In the land clearing days, the settlers had the fires going steadily, and they used to flare up. Some of that land around Abbotsford was burned so many times, year after year, that I wondered if we could ever get people educated to be careful with fire. Then there were the big fires south of Hope near what is now Manning Park. These fires were caused by lightning – by the time men got to them the fires were out of control.
All my life I fought fires, and somehow or other we controlled them with hand tools, guards, and backfires. Nowadays the bulldozer builds the guards, roads are everywhere, and aircraft are used to drop retardant. Fire control is so much easier now that we do not have these big fires anymore.
I retired from the Forest Service in 1950 and since that time forestry has changed. Logging is no longer cut-and-get-out. Foresters schedule the harvest to have cut equal growth. Chilliwack centres the Dewdney Public Sustained Yield Unit. The allowable annual cut is about 60,600 thousand cubic feet. This can go on forever, provided reforestation follows logging.
This sustained yield unit has over one million acres. I am told that each 250 acres under forest management provides work for three people directly and indirectly. This means that the one million acres of public forest in the trade area of Chilliwack provides about 12,000 jobs. These, in turn, provide purchasing power that helps support the storekeepers, garages, carpenters, and all the people who work in our society.
As I look around, I marvel at all the second-growth forests, including plantations that cover the forest lands I have seen logged in more than eighty years. I worked at Parksville in 1918 and on the highway from Alberni, looking over the Parksville flatlands there was a sea of snags and slash. It was all reseeded and now there is a fine young forest that is ready for logging again.
Behind Mission, up the Sylvester Road and on Sumas Mountain there are now forests better than the old. I remember Sumas Mountain in the 1920s when much of it was clearcut and fire-blackened. At that time I despaired of ever seeing forests there again. I am happy to say how wrong I was.
After watching this valley develop I think that the people have one treasure they must never destroy. That is the forest. Happily, British Columbia has one of the best forest management systems in the world. The land is owned by the public and they benefit by the income that goes to the government, the jobs that provide the economy and standard of living. It is no idle comment that about 50 cents out of every dollar transferred from person to person, even in Chilliwack, stems from the public forest.
There are people who call themselves conservationists, who would like to take public lands out of sustained yield forest production. These people may talk about the need for recreation. There are acres and acres of recreation lands available and just because lands are used for forestry does not mean that they cannot also be used to provide recreation, wildlife, and fish. Our greatest resource is our productive land and if I learned anything in my lifetime it was that we must farm our forests. That we are doing this makes me proud to have worked my lifetime for the Forest Service. - END -
From the reminiscences of Jack Ker
The Mahood family was to have a profound effect upon my life . It was headed by James (Jim), who was the forest ranger with headquarters in Chilliwack. With his Scottish wife, Bessie, he had five [seven] children: Isabel, Ian, [Vivian,] Brian, and twins Ernest (Ernie) and Ray and Shirley.
Jim Mahood was my initial contact in forestry, when I learned in early 1935 that there were two job opportunities in forestry available that summer, for forest ranger assistants. It was Jim who arranged for me to have an interview shortly afterwards with Mr. Joe Smith, the forestry supervisor. I met him in his car in front of the barber shop in Sardis for that initial interview. The one observation he made that remained forever with me was: "I don't know your politics and I don't want to know, though this job is with the government, it is apolitical!"
I was to remember that word of caution in the years ahead! I often accompanied Jim Mahood on his rounds; he confided in me and became almost a father figure to me. He taught me many things about forestry and the B.C. Forest Service that would stand me in good stead later.
Jim was employed by the federal forest service in the days before 1930 when the federal government had jurisdiction over the Railway Belt, a band of land through British Columbia which extended a distance of ten miles on both sides of the Canadian Pacific Railway, that had been granted to the federal government by the province in return for construction of the railway. After 1930, when the Railway Belt was returned to the jurisdiction of the province, Jim became a provincial forest ranger with headquarters in Chilliwack. He thus had a wealth of experience and was probably one of the most respected forest rangers in the province. I was indeed fortunate to have him as a teacher!
I was to work as a forest ranger assistant in Chilliwack for three summers: 1935, 1936 and 1937.Recommend this post
Has anyone noticed that Global TV's Brian Coxford, formerly an award winning investigative newsman, is now doing infomercials in his reports for the News Hour? Finished the recent series for Kevin Falcon and private healthcare providers, Coxford is now putting roofing materials under scrutiny.
I watched News Hour Final expecting to learn about a small forest fire near North Vancouver's Northlands Golf Course, a few kilometers from home. Instead, we were treated to a story that mentioned the fire but switched almost immediately to become a segment on roofing material choices, complete with a torch wielding demonstration by the head of Penfold's. Ken Mayhew, the biggest advertiser in the local roofing business, was promoting their 'EcoRoof' product. It's called stealth advertising.
I wonder what it costs for a three minute infomercial on BC's highest rated newscast. I suppose that Global has high standards and doesn't do news-like material for advertisers cheaply. This is, after all, Canada's third largest market and Global is not like some small-market plodder trying to make ends meet.
Seriously though, this bunch has truly lost the direction that once classed it among the best local news operations in North America.
Recommend this post
Remember that BC Liberals promised us a rose garden. The pain-free HST would amp up the economy, create thousands of new jobs and lower prices through elimination of cascading taxes, greater business efficiency and reduced bureaucracy. I'll allow that it has barely been four weeks but has anyone noticed any price reductions?
A friend sent a note that demonstrates a price outcome slightly different than that promised by Assistant Chief Fustilarian Colin Hansen:
"Just thought you might be interested in another example of the bs about the HST having a positive effect for business.
"Before HST, the SeaWest Lounge was $10.00 to enter when traveling [by BC Ferries] between Schwartz Bay and Tsawwassen.
"I just paid $12 and the person behind the counter said, well, it was going to cost $10.70 so I guess they just took the opportunity to raise the fee!!!!!!"
I suppose it is win-some, lose-some for consumers. The Vancouver newspapers assured us that businesses would pass through saving through elimination of the old retail sales tax so at least those prices went down. Right? No, the single issue price went up 25%. What a surprise.
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Vancouver City Police face a difficult challenge policing in the Downtown Eastside. For as long as anyone breathing today can remember, the DTES has been a receptacle of misery. The reasons are many: alcoholism, drug addiction, physical disability, mental illness and incapacity and abject poverty, the one condition shared by almost all.
The VPD has been shamed by momentous failures in recent history. The 100 or so missing and murdered women collectively is the worst policing breakdown in the city's history and the inexcusable death of Frank Paul was probably the next most egregious. The man, a chronic alcoholic, was dragged by police out of the city jail and dumped in a dark wet alley to die of exposure. Compounding the negligence leading to death was the sustained effort of senior VPD officials, Chiefs Terry Blythe and Jamie Graham among them, to evade responsibility.
Those situations had one thing in common. Disrespect. Worse, racism. A large number of the dead and missing women were aboriginals. Frank Paul was Mi'kmaq. Many dispossessed of the DTES are First Nations people. This video demonstrates disrespect more than any single thing.
I believe that under the leadership of Chief Jim Chu, the VPD has made progress toward building a modern force that can be trusted by the entire community. Much is left to be done as evidenced by this video released by the BC Civil Liberties Association. Incidentally, someone is trying to have the video suppressed so I include screen captures in case the video disappears again.
I heard one retired police officer say that he was offended by the failure of the three officers to lend assistance to the fallen woman after she had been pushed over. I found the beginning of the clip most troubling because the three VPD officers, armed and armored, swagger down the street demanding that everyone clear the way. The victim in this piece, disabled with cerebral palsy, couldn't easily change directions so she was an irritant to be slapped away. What kind of attitude are the police trying to convey to street people? Are the egos of these officers so poorly developed they need to parade down a busy sidewalk intimidating or pushing aside any unarmed weaklings that get in the way? If constables behave maliciously in public, what might they do in private?
The behavior shown here lead some to wonder if there is a culture of steroid abuse among young male police officers. It is something for managers to consider as an explanation for hostile behavior. The constables involved here should be publicly identified and Chief Chu owes a full explanation of what he is doing to eliminate inappropriate violence against citizens, even those dwelling in the city's squalid corners.
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Almost four, grandson Shay points to his brand new baby brother, Tye, minutes after arrival. Twenty-month old Odin would rather be riding his bike. My babysitting job just got more ah-cute.
Salon.com presents a story by Jody Jenkins after innocent pictures taken on a family camping trip near Augusta Georgia were interpreted by an untrained photo clerk as child pornography. Jenkins said what followed "entailed a profound searching, an almost paralytic invasion of our deepest privacy." He says dozens of similar cases have been documented, including this:
A 33-year-old woman was charged with "sexual performance of a child," a second-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison, based on a picture of her breast-feeding her 1-year-old son. Although the district attorney dropped the charges in the case, the parents had to fight for weeks to get their two children back from the Dallas County Child Protective Services.
In cases such as that against the Jenkins family and their friends, despite evidence showing that no abuse of the children had occurred, records of the accusations and investigations will be kept on file for years.
British Columbia's government believes less in free enterprise than in assisted activities for approved associates. Entrepreneurs saw potential for a private power generation industry in the province but didn't want to risk their own money. Instead, they arranged with the Liberal government for the public to accept all risks and guarantee substantial profits to the schemers.
This was done by designing long term (25-40 years) power purchase agreements whereby BC Hydro was obliged to purchase power at values well above current market with prices additionally sweetened by annual consumer price index (CPI) escalators. To ensure a need for additional suppliers, BC Hydro was prevented from developing its own new sources. Will McMartin of The Tyee describes irony in the situation:
It is impossible not to see irony in how the City of Edmonton has unleashed its publicly-owned utility, EPCOR (and its subsidiaries) to expand operations and generate profits across North America, while the Province of British Columbia -- under Gordon Campbell's BC Liberal government -- has stunted the growth of our publicly-owned utility, BC Hydro and Power Authority.
(Supporters of independent power production in this province often argue that BC Hydro staff do not have the skills needed to build and operate clean or green energy projects. Can it be true that Edmonton's public-sector possesses the requisite skill-sets, but British Columbia's does not?)
Clearly, Edmonton's elected officials have not been frightened by the financial "risk" associated with public-sector power generation, transmission and distribution -- the risk that Campbell, Jaccard and the IPPBC so loudly decry in our province.
Indeed, in BC Hydro's most-recent clean energy call, EPCOR and its related companies continue to seek profit-making opportunities in B.C.
On March 11, an EPCOR-related entity, CP Renewable Energy (B.C.) Limited Partnership won a new, long-term energy purchase agreement from BC Hydro for a wind farm near Tumbler Ridge.
BC Liberals mistrust the capitalist concept of competitive markets where rewards are associated with risks. Instead, they scrambled to eliminate energy investor downsides. That makes no sense in honest government. Of course, Campbell's government has been called many things, but not honest. Perhaps, the methodology is revealed. For some years, we were sold the concept of endless growth causing insatiable appetites for energy, leading to unrestrained demand and ever rising prices.
In 1980, oil was in short supply, line-ups formed at gasoline stations and pumps ran dry. Experts predicted that oil reserves would be exhausted by the turn of the century. Thirty year later, the end of oil is not in sight, except in the eyes of pessimists who have been predicting the demise of oil throughout their careers.
So it is with electricity. We remember frequent brown-outs in the USA although it turned out that the smartest guys in the room were playing games to manipulate prices. Nevertheless, deregulation and dishonesty meant higher prices and uncertain supply. Citizens were programmed to believe that energy prices would rise dramatically and power would always remain scarce.
That consumer conditioning presented a perfect opportunity for profiteers in British Columbia. However, while BC Hydro rushes to contract for more export capacity, there is already surplus electricity that cannot be absorbed in the Pacific Northwest. Two giants, Babcock and Wilcox and Bechtel, have teamed to complete development of a small light water reactor, a modular 125 MW system that might be a power industry game changer during this decade. Another company, Hyperion Power Generation claims its refrigerator-sized Mini Power Reactor, capable of powering 20,000 homes, will be ready to license within a year. Japan and China are involved in advanced small scale nuclear generation programs. The BC Government is foolhardy to make 40 year purchase agreements with automatic price escalators. The only thing certain about these commitments is that they will create assured profits for the developers.
During the last three years, the building boom spawned by green energy mandates in Oregon, Washington and California doubled the generation capacity of wind farms in the region. By 2013, it's expected to double again.
That seems like great news. Plenty of carbon-free energy with no fuel costs. Jobs. Property taxes.
In the real world, however, the pace and geographic concentration of wind development, coupled with wild swings in its output, are overwhelming the region's electrical grid and outstripping its ability to use the power or send it elsewhere.
BC Liberals assume the grid will take all of the surplus power capacity they plan to bring on stream. Because wind generated or run-of-river electricity cannot be stored, the public will be stuck with high cost off-peak power that has no value. That is the risk the private producers didn't want to take. BC Liberals took it instead and passed it to you and me, leaving the private producers with rewards without risks. The people stuck with the bills have no say.
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Columnist Don Cayo is one of the Vancouver Sun's advocates for big business. In the nineties, he ran the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, a corporate-funded charity operating as a think-tank based in Halifax. Along with umpteen sister "charities" such as the Fraser Institute, Fraser Institute Foundation, Frontier Centre for Public Policy Inc. and the Canadian Constitution Foundation, it campaigns steadily for elimination of public health and other services and reductions in government spending and lower taxes, at least for higher income folks. Of course, while doing this, charitable donors supporting the voices of big business take advantage of generous tax rules that return millions of dollars in refunds. Bizarre, eh? Anti-government campaigners subsidized by government.
Think-tanks claim that markets, free of government regulation or interference, are the most efficient managers of economic resources. However, careful reading of their polemics demonstrates the call is for free markets, not competitive markets. Competition is destructive to business interests; it drives prices down, increases quality and improves service. Consumer needs may be served but those aren't the needs of business. The purpose of business is wealth creation and happy shareholders executives, not cheerful customers.
Cayo sees good news in recent newspaper deals. Postmedia Network Inc. is the new owner of the Vancouver Sun, the Province and other former Canwest Newspapers. In addition, Black Press acquired 11 publications from Glacier Media and gained ownership of the Red Deer Express in exchange for its papers in Canmore, Alberta. The move allows Black to immediately close five of the new properties in a move to reduce competition for Black's existing properties.
Cayo quotes John Hinds, who as CEO of the Canadian Newspaper Association is paid to be optimistic. Hinds says:
"Canadian newspaper markets tend to be more competitive than in the U.S., so Canadian media companies are more skilled at adjusting to change.
"The economic downturn seemed to enhance Canadian newspapers' role as a-reliable source of information. Readership is generally trending up after a period of decline."
Had I been asked, I would have said:
"Canadian markets tend to be less competitive than in the U.S. and newspapers here don't worry as much about radio and TV stations because, through concentration of control and cross-media ownership, advertising prices are kept artificially high in broadcasting. Canadian companies have been more skilled at gouging advertisers and reducing readers services so there is less need to change.
"An enhanced role for Canadian newspapers as a-reliable source of information? Oh, really?
‘And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
’Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew
Ride over your wives and you—
Blood is on the grass like dew.
‘Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood—and wrong for wrong—
Do not thus when ye are strong.
After the folks at Pavco completed the gold plated Vancouver Convention Center and kept the budget overruns down to a few hundred million dollars, they rewarded senior executives with bonuses and "incentive pay." That is unlikely to change this year despite the 2010 fiscal year seeing losses before government contributions rise from$16.9 millionto $61.1 million. These folks always do a fine job. And so might you, if you got to write your own targets. For example, instead of only reporting actual usage, they report the percentage that a facility was used compared to a target number. So, if you target ten days use and sell five days, that's 50% utilization.
Sean Holman adds interesting information to the mix with his Public Eye article titled Maple Story. It discusses the compensation for the Convention Center General Manager position.
When Barbara Maple left that job in April 2008, she was making $130,500 per year. By comparison, her successor Ken Cretney - the former general manager of the Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel - is making $205,400 a year, as well as having received a $100,000 incentive payment in fiscal 2009/10. That pushed the total value of his compensation package up to $335,347.
Premier-in-waiting Gordon Campbell - and many voters - wanted an anchor chain hung around the NDP's collective neck in 2001. Campbell would have ensured that three tarnished aluminum ferry icons were made fast to the links. With delays, cost overruns and break-in difficulties, the high speed catamarans were political hot potatoes drawing negative attention to the NDP government.
Glen Clark's government intended the catamarans to serve needs of BC Ferry Services and stimulate the marine construction trade in BC. Instead, they became symbols of misdirected and incompetent public enterprise. Feeling the heat and already suffering at the polls, Clark's successor Ujjal Dosanjh removed the vessels from the fleet and offered them for sale. That played into the hands of a cynical political movement willing to burn hundreds of millions to snap shut the trap into which their opposition had stepped. Gordon Campbell and his handlers were people prepared to poison the community well for political advantage.
Indeed, the ferry construction project was a disaster owned largely by the NDP government of Glen Clark. Ujjal Dosanjh's cabinet offered the ships for sale, a decision based on expert advice. They expected to realize more benefit from a sale than the next favored option, which involved modifications to reduce speed and improve fuel efficiency so the ships could be assigned to Langdale runs and supplemental service on the Nanaimo route. Consultants predicted that a sale would take two years.
However, the new Liberal government didn't want to sell the vessels on the international market or to modify them and put them into service. This was one disaster from which they didn't want citizens making a recovery. Leaving the ships idly displayed on the Vancouver waterfront as sharp reminders served a political purpose worth more than any alternatives. For that, Liberals needed cooperation of the Washington Marine Group who controlled berthing facilities in North Vancouver, a place with great visibility, especially compared to BC Ferries' own Deas Docks in Richmond.
Instead of allowing the sale process to run the recommended course, the Liberals sold the aluminum catamarans to Washington Marine, completing the sale little more than a year after the Wright report that counseled patience. WMG, owned by Montana based multi-billionaire Dennis Washington, paid under $20 million, less than the ships' scrap value. Naturally, the Washington family are large contributors to the BC Liberals. WMG sold the ships to the giant Abu Dhabi Mar Group for service in the Persian Gulf between the United Arab Emirates and Quatar.
Had he been advising Premier Clark, Sir Humphrey Appleby would have said the original fast ferry plan was courageous. Every ex post facto expert review concluded that while its execution was inept, the initial program itself was ill conceived. This is from the report by Fred R. Wright, FCA:
“Construction of the fast ferries started before the scope, schedule and budget for the ships was firmly established. Indeed, these critical elements of ship construction were not managed in a disciplined way throughout the project. It seems self evident, at least in hindsight, that first-rate project management techniques that mitigate risk are essential on any project of this magnitude.
“Additionally, the principles of project management are most needed, and most valuable, at the genesis of a project. A clear recognition of how scope, budget and schedule interrelate, together with appropriately precise estimates of these three elements, are essential to sorting out potentially successful projects from superficially attractive ideas that have little potential for practical success.
“Proven project management practices [should] be used on all significant capital projects.”
Perhaps readers are wondering where we are going with this old story. I think it is important because it demonstrates how little politicians remember from days in the wilderness, once they enter plush lounges of power and sit in swivel chairs behind the desks.
I've written here before about my former admiration for Finance Minister Colin Hansen. When he was Liberal opposition critic of the ferry services, he spoke about the need for transparency, accountability, consultation and systematic risk analysis. He talked extensively about the NDP failure to complete a comprehensive Business Plan before beginning ferry construction.
The 2001 Wright Report reminded the Liberals about these almost universal principles, including those shown above. So what happened when the Convention Centre budget spiraled out of control, growing massively from under $500 million to almost $1 billion, a growth even greater than the entire fast ferry program cost.
It turns out that the convention centre got built, like the ferries, without any comprehensive examination of underlying business assumptions. My own analysis may sound familiar:
Critical elements of construction were not managed in a disciplined way throughout the project. It seems self evident, at least in hindsight, that first-rate project management techniques that mitigate risk and are essential on any project of this magnitude were not employed.
Additionally, the principles of project management most needed, and most valuable, at the genesis of a project were disregarded. A clear recognition of how scope, budget and schedule interrelate, together with appropriately precise estimates of these three elements, are essential to sorting out potentially successful projects from superficially attractive ideas that have little potential for practical success.
Proven project management practices should have been used on this and other significant capital projects.”
That explains the almost $500 million cost overrun and also the failure to evaluate the changing market for North American convention facilities. Without doubt, the Vancouver Convention Centre is gorgeous. It is bigger and better but largely empty.
Here is the centre's bumf:
With our expansion complete, we’ve tripled our size to cover 1.1 million square feet (or four city blocks) for a combined total of 466,500 square feet of pre-function, meeting, exhibition, and ballroom space. The Vancouver Convention Centre now offers the ability to hold multiple simultaneous events, each with their own separate access and function spaces. Built over land and water, with floor-to-ceiling glass throughout that treats guests to phenomenal harbour and mountain views, our new West Building is a masterpiece of design, inspiration and sustainability. Our commitment to green technology can be found in every corner: the “living roof,” seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment and even fish habitat built into the foundation.
All well and good. Sounds great but where are the customers? Here is a calendar showing the convention centre's availability. Days in red show the times that no events are scheduled and announced. Rather than hosting simultaneous events, they appear to be occupying the most costly empty space in Canada. Listings are from the Events Schedule published by the Convention Centre July 9, 2010.
The esteemed Columbia Journalism Review, published bi-monthly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, gets involved in examining how Canadian media has addressed the G20 demonstrations and police counteractions. Craig Silverman writes Canadian Media in Crisis, including:
The media are also facing criticism for the quality and accuracy of their G20 coverage. The most common complaint is that reports—from TV news, in particular—focused on images of burning police cars instead of peaceful demonstrations, on episodes of violence rather than the widespread arrests of people, some of whom did nothing more than leave their houses at an inopportune time. . .
The criticisms of mainstream media coverage are, for the most part, not being met with official responses. Just as some members of the public feel as though those in charge of the planning and security of the G20 are not being brought to account, there is a segment of the population who express the same sentiment when it comes to the press. That lingering resentment found a focal point this week when bloggers and Twitter users accused Drolet and Global National of inserting misleading footage into a G20 report.
Silverman, being fair and balanced, quotes some of what I've written at Northern Insights and provides Mike Drolet's measured response on being held to account for Global work:
“This guy [Farrell] rants and raves like I’m trying to make it look worse than it was.”
". . . As if writing a satire or a piece of straight-faced ridicule, Globe and Mail writer Bill Curry , (front page, July 12) , for instance, reported on the search made by Stephen Harper to find a highly-qualified, ‘non-partisan’ (?) Governor General to succeed Ms. M. Jean. Curry’s report argues that the search was scrupulous and non-political.
"As Rick Salutin pointed out a few days earlier in his column, David Johnston, Governor-General-in-waiting, is a Stephen Harper hack. . . ."
Northern Insights has been a modest blog about political issues affecting Canada's west coast. So, it was a surprise two days ago when readers began arriving at an hourly rate measured in four figures. The draw was our catch of Global TV spicing a Toronto G20 report with footage taped too far away and too long ago. The story stimulating traffic at Northern Insights was passed around by Facebook, Twitter, bloggers and web referral sites. While not exactly going viral, it found a large Internet audience.
Through SiteMeter tracking, I see the locations of visitors, referring sites and pages reads, etc. Recent visitors have come from all over the world, mostly North America, but many from far afield. I am most intrigued when reviewing the referrals. Probably, the Global TV story is not about corporate POV but more about a news provider carelessly charging a report for dramatic effect. Whether news is corrupted by intent, through incaution or overburdened staff unable to cope with deadlines doesn't much matter.
Small elements of news reporting are vital. Video and word selections distinguish professionalism. In addition to the Vancouver footage inserted in the Toronto report, I find fault with reporter Mike Drolet's description of people calling for an official inquiry into G20 policing as "hardcore demonstrators" for a cause that is losing followers. People peacefully calling for an inquiry are hardcore demonstrators? All of them? That is unfounded opinion and saying they are losing followers is probably an incorrect conclusion given the broad discussions underway, a growing Facebook site of more than 50,000 calling for an inquiry, opposition MPs demanding one, rallies throughout Canada for civil rights and a class-action lawsuit launched. Drolet was a reporter, not an editorialist; he should be cautious of voicing unsupported conclusions based on his own point of view. That is not the role of a reporter.
Issues of media access, fairness and balance engage citizens of all political persuasions. When I go to web sites that are linking to my Global TV story, it is apparent they come from all sides and the non-political middle ground. Linking blogs are those of conservatives, progressives and even anarchists. Many are troubled by this example because their level of mistrust in media is high. The profession probably doesn't help because it tends to be defensive, self-protective, inattentive to mistakes and oblivious to lack of balance. More importantly, its editorial decisions often defer to commercial interests.
Some believe there is less a problem of left leaning bias or right leaning bias and more of an inclination to favor corporate goals. Modern business management is measured by relatively short term results. That means willingness to sacrifice long term values such as reputation and capability for quick gains in current period profitability.
This Global News story here was an undeniable error, even accepted by the broadcaster as a mistake. They pulled the offending newscast from their website and said, "We will also issue a correction/clarification to our viewers during our newscast on Saturday, July 17 and on our website."
I can't resist saying that correction/clarification is interesting wording. I guess the first is admission of a mistake by the broadcaster, the second admits only that the audience may have been too dull to understand so the TV guys will explain again.
Reddit, an Internet referral site, brought thousands of readers to Northern Insights in the last 24 hours to read about the Global TV News story. Reddit allows readers to comment about any referenced story. Many viewpoints are expressed, this one about the Global item made me smile:
Superp:
It would be nice if the media was self-correcting. Unfortunately there is very little competition in the mainstream and the only people striving for truth are on the comedy station.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
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