Boycott Bud: Save lives

Those not in touch with Vancouver-area news will not be aware that the city is currently witnessing a series of gangland shootings/murders, which the following op-ed reasonably links to one of British Columbia's largest industries: marijuana growing and distribution.
Boycott weed, stop gang violence. The market solution will put economic pressure on the gangsters running the marijuana trade - Ed Watson:

Another shooting in Greater Vancouver. Nearly everyone is demanding action by the government and police. News conferences are called to reassure the public. Sociologists and criminologists are trotted out to apportion blame for these shocking violent crimes.

You want to see who's responsible? Perhaps you should look in a mirror.


[...]
In corporate terms, the shootings are hostile takeovers in a multibillion-dollar industry. It's a business that has grown with the support, or at least tacit acceptance of many British Columbians. Businesses exist to serve a demand. Success is based on market share, effective distribution and a positive branding.

Police estimate British Columbia has thousands of indoor marijuana growing operations. Much of the product is exported, but the Centre of Addictions Research of B.C. reports about 680,000 British Columbians use marijuana at last once every year. And about 12,000 use other illicit drugs. It's a growth market and those consumers have a lot of influence.

Do you want to stop the killing and put pressure on the gangsters? Forget about another police task force. Let's try the marketplace solution any businessman will understand -- direct action by consumers. Let's boycott marijuana.



After the French refused to join the Iraq war, many Americans boycotted French wine. According to a study published by Stanford University, French wine sales in the United States declined 13 per cent during the first six months of the war. It cost the French wine industry $112 million in just six months.

The boycott didn't change the French position on the war, but it put significant pressure upon an identifiable group within the French economy. Why don't we grab B.C. crime bosses by the wallets and squeeze hard until they eliminate their dangerous behaviour?

One wonders how dearly your average pot smoker holds his weed, or if in any case he would be moved by a call to take on the kind of responsibility Watson suggests. Boycott or legalize, we need to cut the criminal gangs out of the picture.
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In any case, as goes a local joke, the International Olympic Committee needs to review its rules about athletes using cannabis. The 2010 Winter games will be in Vancouver/Whistler and it is rather difficult to walk the streets of these towns without imbibing some second-hand marijuana smoke. Here's a little Olympics-themed art currently on display at Burnaby City Hall:

Thoughts for BC Day

This being the holiday hereabouts designated as BC Day; and this year marking, in November, the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the Crown Colony of British Columbia by Governor James Douglas (though BC was not united with the colony of Vancouver Island until 1866)...

Immigrants at the Howe Sound
-Gretl Kraus Fischer

And when they arrived, blown to the shore from every continent,
They begged gifts. And silently through the years received them from the land.

On elemental ridges they stood
Kings over terror and the roaring dawn as they had willed
And clutched moments of sun and storm till requiem waters spilled
Their music from a myriad spires down to the living root.

Others craved shelter. As best they could
By the edge of their souls carved from the forest yet another day's bread
And held the constant care of earth and rain and harvested
To bear and wither and rise for a span, perpetual, tidal as the fruit.

Yet the morning on water and rock, nascent
In ecstacy, some drank from the deep. They walked the sand alone
Opened their palms to bless and saw the glow in tree and stone
And comprehending they grew one with it, and were content.

.............


But there is also that aspect of BC history that particularly impresses me: the engineering ingenuity, physical courage, time and massed resources that went into building the thin lines of communication that allowed for the exploitation of the province`s resources and the capitalization of our society. Camping the other night next to the Kinsol Trestle brought it home to me:

“The Kinsol is…an outstanding example of a time when there was no project too grand, or scheme too bold for us to achieve with hard work and innovation.
“There is more fundraising potential for an effort to conserve an important architectural treasure than there is for a hole in the ground where one once stood.
“With a length of 614 feet, it is the longest trestle in the British Commonwealth.
“Being 145 feet high (taller than a 14 storey building) it is possibly the highest wooden trestle in the world.” –Macdonald & Lawrence, timber framing specialists.

Kinsol Trestle, Trans Canada Trail, Vancouver Island BC Canada

Vancouver Lights -1941
- Earle Birney

About me the night, moonless, wimples the mountains,
wraps ocean, land, air, and mounting
sucks at the stars. The city, throbbing below,
webs the sable peninsula. Streaming, the golden
strands overleap the seajet, by bridge and buoy,
vault the shears of the inlet, climb the woods
toward me, falter and halt. Across to the firefly
haze of a ship on the gulf's erased horizon
roll the lambent spokes of a restless lighthouse.

Now through the feckless years we have come to the time
when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling delight.
Welling from Europe's bog, through Africa flowing
and Asia, drowning the lonely lumes on the oceans,
tiding up over Halifax, and now to this winkling
outpost, comes flooding the primal ink.

On this mountain's brutish forehead, with terror of space
I stir, of the changeless night and the stark ranges
of nothing, pulsing down from beyond and between
the fragile planets. We are a spark beleaguered
by darkness; this twinkle we make in a corner of emptiness,
how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress
will never in the range of her microscope find it? Our Phoebus
himself is a bubble that dries on Her slide, while the Nubian
wears for an evening's whim a necklace of nebulae.

Yet we must speak, we the unique glowworms.
Out of the waters and rocks of our little world
we cunningly conjured these flames, hooped these sparks
by our will. From blankness and cold we fashioned stars
to our size, rulered with manplot the velvet chaos
and signalled Aldebaran. This must we say,
whoever may be to hear us, if murk devour,
and none weave again in gossamer:
These rays were ours,
we made and unmade them. Not the shudder of continents
doused us, the moon's passion, nor crash of comets.
In the fathomless heat of our dwarfdom, our dream's combustion,
we contrived the power, the blast that snuffed us.
No one bound Prometheus. Himself he chained
and consumed his own bright liver. O stranger,
Plutonian, descendant, or beast in the stretching night --
there was light.


E.J. Hughes, Christie Pass, Hurst Island
Click to enlarge
(Source)

An example of Canadian freedom

Here's a story about a British Columbia school teacher, Chris Kempling, who risks losing his job because he has published, in various journals, critical comments on homosexual behaviour, and because he is a member of the Christian Heritage Party, a registered and legal political party in this country. The College of Teachers would rather protect us from hearing words critical of homosexuality than protect a professional's right to engage in public debate on basic questions of human nature and ethics. Because, you see, they already know what is right and wrong - they have seen the light hidden from Western culture for much of its history - and are freaked out by someone who thinks differently, someone with some small audience in marginal publications. Who do you want teaching your kids?

The teachers' College has, in effect, asked the courts "how can we continue to live among people who hold views critical of others, those others who today freely and openly do things for which people have been victimized in the past?" And the courts have been sympathetic to their cry. Because, it seems, we Canadians cannot be trusted to speak our minds, on our free time, without this freedom creating more victims, somewhere somehow. My ears hurt. Free speech must be sacrificed to the fear of (or is it a positive desire for?) more victims.

Not surprisingly, those who want to speak in public find it increasingly necessary to claim victimary status to justify their speaking position. Where can this mimetic cycle, fueled by a need for victims and victim status, end?

Here comes the sun

After feeling melancholy over the nonstop rain (well it certainly felt nonstop to me!) Vancouver has had lately, what a welcome relief it was to bathe in the sunlight bestowed upon us today.

Springtime in Vancouver... at last.

Memories of Sunny Days

We are having a relentlessly grey and wet month so far. Day after day of constant gloomy rain is starting to take a heavy toll on my mood, getting my spirits down. And keeping me from my weekend walks.

I therefore post these sunny photos taken on sunny days earlier this year, for the benefit of anyone who, like me, may need the encouragement that these seasonal clouds will pass, and that better times are waiting around the corner.

A clear memory of a pleasant past can often generate the promise of a welcome future, and help us persevere through the clouds of a troubled present.

Fallen Giants

Many of our parks and trails still show scars from those awful windstorms which struck British Columbia last December.

It makes walking through the woods an even more memorable experience than it was before, because now you can appreciate that these mighty giants are not going to be around forever... so we should savor the sight of them while we can.