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Vancouver Council’s Sucker Punch

Dec 28th, 2009 by admin

A bloody stupid decision

A bloody stupid decision

Given what’s now known about concussions, there’s no excuse for approving extreme fighting.

There are some things I will just never understand. For a few hundred thousand dollars, OK maybe a million or two, we’ll leave the ill, especially the mentally ill without adequate health service but we can afford the billions on the Olympics. It says something about how much our society cares about its citizens. Not only do we not care about the less fortunate, we won’t even take minimal steps to stop bad things happening.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke of my watching Floyd Patterson, in 1960, knock out Ingemar Johansson in a heavyweight boxing match and how I was horrorstruck seeing Johansson out like a light for five minutes, blood streaming from his mouth and one of his feet twitching and how I instantly lost my enthusiasm for a “sport” I had always followed. What I finally grasped was that boxing had, as its primary object, concussing the opponent — in short, causing brain damage.

In the past few days, we’ve learned of a tragedy and complete insensitivity. I refer to the death of former NHLer Reggie Fleming, the comments by Don Cherry and the decision of Vancouver City Council to countenance extreme fighting or, as it’s now euphemistically called “mixed martial arts.”

Dr. Charles Tator, a neurosurgeon from the University of Toronto has studied the effect of concussions and has concluded, “Concussions used to be considered minor head injuries because we were taught in medical school that a concussion had only a temporary effect. It’s true that some of the symptoms are temporary, but the effects on the brain are often permanent,” he said.

“We can’t really speak any longer of a minor concussion. There is no concussion that is truly minor.”

After the autopsy, Tator correctly pointed out that the style or brand of hockey promoted by Don Cherry leads to head injuries.

Cherry didn’t deal with the issue, namely whether or not the hard-hitting, illegal-checking, fight-ridden game Cherry loves contributes to concussions but responded, “For this guy to come out and blame me for all the injuries I think is totally unfair,” and concluded that Dr. Tator was trying to get his name in the papers. This is, unfortunately, the sort of crap you’d expect of this mental midget who makes huge bucks promoting violence and bad mouthing European players. Continue Reading »

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Going Nuclear!

Dec 21st, 2009 by admin

Nuclear power plant in the U.K.

Nuclear power plant in the U.K.

Well,  at least inviting a hard look at nuclear energy as an option.

Batten down the hatches! Hide the good booze! Prepare for the worst! Rafe is going to talk about nuclear, hereinafter called N to preserve the sensibilities of readers!

First a bit of background as to why I would discuss this matter now having done almost nothing on the subject since the early ’80s.

We are facing several crises in Canada just as elsewhere. Fossil fuels are about as welcome as a cow at a christening. The thought of burning a litre of gas or oil, or a sack of coal, brings exclamations of horror, yet 30 years ago coal was the darling of fuels. Remember northeast coal project and the government of which I was a part making that big deal with South Korea? And how those mining and selling it out of the southeast sector gave the government hell for creating a favoured competitor? Which it did. Coal was all the rage as scientists worked on ways to cheaply convert it into gasoline while other scientists worked on making coal clean enough to burn for power.

Those theories would be considered madness now. Or would they, considering that in their stead we have the Alberta tar sands, which make coal and oil smell like lavender perfume by comparison?

When I was a teenager after the war (no, dammit, not that war, World War II!), atomic energy was seen by everyone as the answer to our power problems. I remember a teacher telling us that there was enough energy in a streetcar (yes, we had those then in addition to the coach and four and the surrey with the fringe on top) to power an entire city. Many countries went into N as did the province of Ontario but many others did not — by an amazing coincidence those that didn’t, had no need to. Continue Reading »

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Say It Ain’t So, Tiger

Dec 14th, 2009 by admin

His image was based on lies. Illustration: Adbusters

His image was based on lies. Illustration: Adbusters

I was your biggest fan. Now I say to your wife Elin, ‘Sue the bastard!’

He was one of the best ballplayers of all time. He played in the 1919 World Series for the Chicago White Sox and had 12 hits and a .375 batting average — in both cases leading both teams. The 12 hits was a World Series record. He hit the series’ only home run (this was the day of the “dead ball”), committed no errors and even threw out a runner at the plate.

Still, when a number of White Sox players were indicted for “throwing” the series to the Cincinnati Reds in what became known as the “Black Sox Scandal,” Joe Jackson was one of them. Even though he was acquitted by the jury, the new commissioner for baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned him for life.

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson became the subject for local writer Bill Kinsella’s book Shoeless Joe, the first book ever serialized by Sports Illustrated which morphed into the wonderful movie Field of Dreams.

When Jackson was arraigned in a Chicago courthouse, the story says that when he came out, a young fan came up to him with tears in his eyes and said, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Joe evidently acknowledged to his young hero worshipper that it was so, though in later years Jackson denied the entire incident.

I, an aging hero worshipper, say it now. “Say it ain’t so, Tiger.”

In my youth, which is to say until I reached 50, my unqualified heroes were the Montreal Canadiens. I despised the Toronto Maple Leafs, and on those rare occasions when they beat the Habs, I became doubtful of the Almighty since surely a just God would never allow this to happen. I happened to be in Toronto for the last game of the 1967 series between the Maple Leafs and the Habs, which the former won.

I was inconsolable. All the way home on the subway I felt sure people were staring at me in a combination of contempt and pity. Big Jean, Pocket Rocket, Dickie and Doug ‘arvee (as the Montreal announcer called him), how could this have happened? Don’t you understand the consequences? Continue Reading »

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NDP Doesn’t Hide Its Divisions

Dec 7th, 2009 by admin

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice

Carole James is no autocrat — and her party, for better or worse, lacks discipline.

Much note has been taken in the press of the conflicting speeches of Jim Sinclair and Carole James at the recent NDP conference, with Sinclair representing the BC Federation of Labour and James speaking for herself and those who support her. I was surprised that columnists don’t understand that this sort of thing is endemic to this party.

First, one should know about the NDP’s “mother,” the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation). The Canadian Encyclopedia says this: “the CCF was founded in 1932 in Calgary as a political coalition of progressive, socialist and labour forces anxious to establish a political vehicle capable of bringing about economic reforms to improve the circumstances of those suffering the effects of the Great Depression. The main impetus for the formation of the new party came from farmers’ organizations (including the United Farmers of Alberta, which governed that province), and a handful of academics… allied with both farmer and trade-union organizations.”

The Columbia Encyclopedia version of the founding convention of the NDP puts it like this: “The New Democratic Party (NDP), a Canadian political party, was founded in 1961 when the CCF reorganized itself and entered into close ties with Canadian labor unions, especially the Canadian Labor Congress (CLC). The CCF, formed in 1932, began as a largely Western Canadian federation of farm, labor and socialist groups with a democratic socialist program of increased welfare measures, moderate nationalization, and government economic planning.”

Clearly, then, the distinction between “labour forces” and “trade unions” is key to understanding the foundation of the New Democratic Party.

Coalitions, and covering up

In days of yore when I sat in the legislature, I was always amused by NDP members calling us Socreds “a coalition” — as if they weren’t a better example of that than we were! Continue Reading »

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Layton Needs a BC Strategy

Nov 30th, 2009 by admin

NDP leader Layton: New opportunities

NDP leader Layton: New opportunities

And here it is: campaign hard, with Carole James, on saving our natural environment.

We may be seeing what no person in his right mind would have dared speak of just a handful of years ago. I speak of the chance that the NDP may overtake the Liberals as the government in waiting. It could happen. Indeed it may already have happened.

The reasons are that Michael Ignatieff is a dud and won’t go quietly and the NDP is moving toward the centre.

Under Jack Layton the last three elections have show some promise for the NDP. In his first election he got 19 seats. This moved to 29 in 2006 and 37 in 2008. The fact remains that the NDP has a long way to go in order to be the opposition but with some luck and skill it could happen.

Jack Layton is a very decent guy who unfortunately reminds one of Terry-Thomas playing a used car salesman. Now, don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are used car salesman and you may believe that they are more to be trusted than, say, lawyers, politicians, broadcasters or writers. The problem is one of image. Remember poor old Gilles Duceppe and the picture of him wearing a hairnet when he visited a meat packing plant? Even though he was required to wear this, the media pilloried him as they did with Stockwell Day on a jet ski and poor old Bob Stanfield for tucking his trousers inside his cowboy boots. And who could forget Gordon Campbell’s plaid shirt? Somehow Pierre Trudeau got away with wearing ridiculous garb but Trudeau managed to get away with almost everything.

Layton faces an uphill struggle and if he’s to move up the ladder and pass the Grits he must do better in Quebec and Ontario, make headway in Atlantic Canada and really do well in B.C. In order to do that, the federal NDP must do better — much better — in rural B.C., which has become a Tory stronghold. This is where Carole James comes in.

In my judgment the mainstream media has avoided talking about the real issues in rural B.C., namely the environmental degradation of the province under the Campbell government. This appalling ruination of our heritage is catching people’s attention all over the province. Continue Reading »

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Just Don’t Call Me Right-Wing

Nov 23rd, 2009 by admin

Sorry, no right turn here.

Sorry, no right turn here.

I was raised conservative, but look where I’ve ended up!

Denouement: the outcome of a complex sequence of events.

As one whose lifetime has been involved in a complex sequence of events, my outcome has left me a bit bewildered at what I’ve become — a severe opponent of “big C” conservatism because I see it as destructive of much of what I hold dear.

(Before continuing, a man named David Field representing Citizens for Green Energy keeps calling me a “right-winger” in his attacks on my views which he’s been sending to community papers. The idea that I’m a right-winger will probably come as an unbearable shock to Premier Campbell who, having seen me campaign long and hard for the NDP last election, had assumed quite the opposite!)

My mother and father were Conservatives who always voted for Point Grey’s Howard Green — even when he supported the expulsion of Japanese Canadians from the B.C. coast in 1942. In fact, when my father “bought” a paper box company from the so-called trustee looking after selling the property of the internees at a 90 per cent discount, it was mostly seen as an act of patriotism.

Blame Trudeau

By the time I had reached university I was a Liberal. The CCF (Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, now the NDP) were not looked at seriously where I came from, and the Conservatives were so very, very British — opposing any efforts to diminish the country’s “Britishness.” I stayed a provincial Liberal until 1975 when I voted for myself, the Social Credit candidate for Kamloops. By that time, I was thoroughly fed up with Trudeau, especially over the so-called “Quebec Crisis” where it seemed to me that Trudeau and his government had taken leave of their senses.

Even though I didn’t like what I saw in the Progressive Conservative Party, it was better than the Grits. It helped me to know that my lifelong friend John Fraser was a Tory — a “Red” Tory who I could relate to. Continue Reading »

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SFU Profs Slam Campbell’s Energy Plan

Nov 16th, 2009 by admin

Goal: Sending our energy south for private profits

Goal: Sending our energy south for private profits

Hobbling BC Hydro so private firms can profit big is bad public policy.

Two Simon Fraser University professors, both experts in power issues, have written scathing critiques of the Campbell government’s energy policy.

First, they affirm the argument I’ve been making for over a year — that BC Hydro is being forced to buy private power at up to double its market value, sell it at a huge loss, and then, assuming that this idiotic government tubes Burrard Thermal as our backup power, it has buy back that power at high import prices!

Here’s how Professor Douglas McArthur confirms that opinion on his blog PolicyCentre.ca:

“Private hydro produces most of its power in the spring and summer when B.C. already has a surplus of power from BC Hydro’s already established plants. It doesn’t need more power in the spring and summer when the runoff is high. But the government is making BC Hydro buy the power from these producers at inflated prices, even though it will have to turn around and sell it into export markets at much lower spring and summer market prices. Then, in the winter, BC Hydro will have to buy very expensive power from producers in the U.S. The private hydro producers will make a lot of money, Hydro will lose huge amounts of money on the whole complicated deal, and BC Hydro customers will make up the difference in higher rates… [The] government explanations just don’t add up when subjected to scrutiny. If this was happening in India or Pakistan we would be raising no end of questions.”

Dr. Marvin Shaffer, an acknowledged power expert also from SFU, confirms this analysis, concluding that the Campbell government “force[s] BC Hydro to look only to the private sector to develop new sources of energy, no matter how costly and low in value many of these sources are, or what cumulative environmental impacts they have.”

What’s good about this deal?

In a nutshell, then, Campbell forces BC Hydro to buy all the private power produced on a “take or pay basis” at up to twice its value at a time when its not needed, meaning Hydro must sell it at half price into the export market and buy it back at much, much higher prices if they do need power.

How do they get away with it?

The Campbell government plays upon the public’s inaccurate understanding that the Burrard Thermal power plant is a huge despoiler of the environment — in fact, it uses relatively benign natural gas for power and it’s only used in rare times of emergency with a minuscule, short-term environmental impact. [By way of aside, hospitals and media outlets have this sort of backup, and what else would one expect? So do many citizens especially in Lions Bay where I live, which is subject to power losses more often than elsewhere. No, I don't take it personally! The environmental impact of these emergency backup arrangements is minute.] Continue Reading »

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Campbell’s Energy Plan: Music to Ears of Private Power

Nov 9th, 2009 by admin

Environment Minister Barry Penner and other officials at controversial Harrison Lake run-of-river project

Environment Minister Barry Penner and other officials at controversial Harrison Lake run-of-river project

Far be it from me to ruin the happy tune, but here are three key questions.

I can hear it now… Tom Jones is telling us about stepping off the train… the old house is still standing… there’s his Momma and his Poppa… and of course sweet Mary with hair of gold and lips like cherry… how good it will be to touch the green, green grass of home. At that point you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy about this cat — but then, it happens. It’s all a dream, and he’s about to be fried in the electric chair.

This reminds me of Premier Campbell. Spin a good story and hope that no one wants to hear the last stanzas or asks what really happened (which would be unlikely to make the mainstream media anyway). Now, I don’t say that women take their panties off and fling them at him when the premier sings — but still the style’s the same.

In his speech to the Independent Power Producers (IPP) Mr. Campbell produced — big time. Even more rivers are going to be ruined. Even more corporate despoilers will be amongst us. Even more money will go from you and me to the shareholders of corporate America. An even bigger burden will be placed on BC Hydro as it must pay more and more money for power it must accept on a “take or pay” basis, and then sold for half the amount that was paid for it.

Those poor frustrated IPPs

I just love this line, don’t you? “IPPs have been frustrated at times by protracted sales contract negotiations with BC Hydro, which have made it challenging to attract investor support for their projects.” Imagine our company — the power company that B.C. citizens own — bargaining hard for us so that we only have to pay the despoilers double what our energy is worth! Gadfrey Daniel! That is indeed frustrating when you were expecting those cash donations to the Liberal party to produce triple or quadruple.

I wouldn’t want anyone to get the notion that Mr. Campbell isn’t consulting people, because he is. He’s consulting all the corporations who have a piece of the action and want more, and with any more newcomers who want to do their charity work for us in this distant paradise whose government is clamoring to be stripped of its water, bears, birds, trees and money so that it can feed these corporate sharks as they keep California swimming pools warm and air conditioners cool. Continue Reading »

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Rafe on Talk 1410 radio, Nov. 2

Nov 2nd, 2009 by admin

Talk 1410 AM - the buzz of VancouverRafe Mair was a regular guest on the Simi Sara Show prior to Talk 1410 AM’s change of format announced on Nov. 5.

Click here to listen to an MP3 clip of Rafe’s final appearance on November 2. The topics of discussion are Burrard Thermal, river privatization projects, and MP Peter Julian’s call for an independent judicial inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye.

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NDP Is Right to Call for Sockeye Inquiry

Nov 2nd, 2009 by admin

Facing a sea lice gauntlet, and maybe a dam

Facing a sea lice gauntlet, and maybe a dam

The catastrophe doesn’t seem to concern Tories, Grits. In fact, they don’t want to know.

The NDP tread where the Conservatives and Liberals fear to go as NDP Fisheries Critic Peter Julian and MP hopeful Fin Donnelly call for an independent judicial inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye.

It should happen. It must happen. And it won’t happen.

On reason it won’t is that Fisheries Minister Gail Shea wouldn’t know a sockeye from a mud shark. Another is that the fish farmers contribute handsomely to Conservative and Liberal party funds. The third reason I’ll share in a moment.

Bumbling detectives

The sockeye situation is ludicrous. We know they’re gone but we don’t know all the reasons. However, we do know one reason — the migrating sockeye smolts (salmon babies) must run the gauntlet of the Broughton Archipelago fish farms, and the sea lice from those cages kill them. But fish farmers are contributors to the pockets of both governments. And the claims of independent scientists are ignored.

We also know that some smolts are eaten by escaped Atlantic salmon. What we don’t know is whether there are other causes when the smolts are maturing on the high seas. Indeed, in spite of what government lackeys and lickspittles are saying, we don’t even know if the high seas kill any appreciable amount. In blaming ocean predators and conditions, the lickspittles and company men reason that “because we don’t believe that lice from farms and escaped Atlantic salmon cause very many, if any deaths, we assume that these deaths are from causes unknown.” If police detectives reasoned like that, the jails would all be empty.

Moreover, the convenient “high seas” argument ignores the fact that pink, chum and sockeye from rivers not contaminated with fish farms, or in Alaska which bans fish farms, migrate to the same “high seas” and returned in abundant — and in some cases record — numbers. Continue Reading »

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