LOONEY TUNES IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

What a LOONY TUNE week in British Columbia. I’ll try to be brief, but there are so many stories that give a citizen-reader indigestion, it’s hard to keep it simple.

How about that story of Briony Penn, (March 21) the full time environmentalist and sometime lecturer at UVIC? A denizen of the Gulf Islands, Penn has decided to dazzle the Ottawa lawyer riffraff with her PhD, by contesting the Grit nomination in the riding of Saanich Gulf Islands. She actually endorses Stephane Dion’s pledge to mandate 33% of federal Liberal candidates be women in the next Canadian election. Liberal? Dictating terms to riding associations, refusing to sign off on their democratically chosen candidates, sounds hard line Stalinist to me. Members are supposed to dictate policy, not let leader driven policy dictate the candidates. Ms. Penn was a Green Party activist until handed a sweetheart deal by top echelon party recruiters. She’s most famous for baring her activist tits in downtown Vancouver in 2001, in a protest of the environmental policies of … the Liberal Government. Oh, oh!

Her campaign website Briony.ca panders to her ideological home - the Green Party, and the temple of her ambition, the Liberal red. Hoping to have it three ways, (a little Tory Blue) she actually boasts of having supported herself for years as a small businessperson. Hardly. A quick scan of her online c.v. reveals she's enjoyed her full libation of academic $$Welfare and access to government seed money.

Crime stories are a staple here and I’ve said before, B.C. is the most fertile breeding ground in Canada for serial killers. It’s irrefutable. Everyone knows that our criminal courts have a “catch and release” policy, which does not intimidate the outlaws and it certainly doesn't impress the legion of victims. The ONLY justice we get is when the criminals kill each other or sometimes themselves. Case in point : March 20 - two “career criminals” died when their ride spun out in New Westminster. Michael Emmitt Reid, 30 and Michael William Arthur Laird, 42 were fleeing police in a stolen car filled with loot and house breaking tools. Laird had 27 registered convictions since 1983 (God only knows how many charges!) and was out on Statutory Release from a federal prison. Reid had convictions going back to 1993 (when he was 16!). Nothing but nothing, was ever going to stop that pair, certainly none of our sissyboy “I feel your pain!” judges. Thank cripes for telephone poles and culverts.

More to the point, (and who with even half a brain didn't see this coming?)... we read (March 21) that B.C. millionaire human rights victim Rupudaman Singh Malik, the O.J. Simpson of the Vancouver legal system, is now suing the government for wrongful prosecution and wrongful detention. I'm not even going to rehash the case. If you don't know, I've got no time for you.

Needless to say we're damned lucky the hapless horsemen didn't torture the bloke, because we already know how many millions $$ that's worth.

There was a time when I supported the concept of a Sikh homeland. That was back when India was still a client state of the Soviets, and messing with us. Geopolitics being as filthy as it is, I'd now settle for just cleaning up our own backyard.

R.S.M on the left, in his salad days.

Yesterday (March 24) THE VANCOUVER SUN revealed that a female border guard, employed by the Canadian Border Services Agency, is a Hell’s Angels groupie, or worse. Her co-workers have scoped her out a biker events and informed the CBSA internal investigation unit. Evidence culled from CBSA documents acquired by the Vancouver newspaper clearly indicates that the guard has been assisting in the smuggling of cocaine. Rather than fess up, CBSA officials have decided to brazen it out. The tainted guard has also worked at Vancouver International Airport and her name is matched to an older high-value drug smuggling case. The Agency refused to identify the woman, and she continues to be employed by the Crown interdicting overages of cigarettes and wine at the 49th Parallel.

And last, you can’t make this stuff up… the Globe and Mail reported yesterday (March 24) on the rotten case of Richard Young, an unemployed informant who lived in Victoria B.C. He was “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the RCMP” for information which they later discovered he simply made up. Rather than taking him to a back road and giving him a good thumping, the Mounties chose to reward Young. They paid an additional $130,000 in debts he had run up, and gave him a new identity under the Witness Protection Program. Pardon my cynicism, but it sounds like a couple of Horsemen wanted him shut up and safely out of reach of the press – thereby saving their careers and thick pension packets. Then Mr. Young, who knows this society and its justice system far better than most, elected to murder someone. The Witness Protection Program is better than James Bond’s license to kill. He can’t be identified and the courts can’t charge a “Mr. X”. Is anyone screaming foul? All I hear from Ottawa is some chin music about reforming the system. Since we don’t have a Reform government we aren’t going to get reform. That’s all folks!

UPDATE March 28 - It was great to see that Chad Skelton, reporter for the Vancouver Sun, stuck with the story on the tainted Canadian border guard. In an update yesterday the paper identified the woman by name, and gave further (incredible) details about what she has gotten away with over the years. Maybe in addition to ... ah... dating bikers, drug runners and people smugglers, she has also been a police informer. Something has kept her out of jail. In any case the SUN published an undated and tightly cropped photograph of Mindi Niedermeiser enjoying herself at a bash.

If she had worked for the U.S. Border Service it's likely she be doing time.

I see that a biker news Blog republished this photo today, so I will let Runagatesclub readers having a look. If I were her, I'd move to P.E.I.