RCMP Hunt for Son of Vancouver's Mayor - How hard are they trying?

Jinagh NAVAS-RIVAS is at large. Law enforcement across Canada and the U.S.A. are on the alert for Navas-Rivas and his partners in crime. This is the photo that accompanies the Canada-wide warrant issued by Richmond Detachment RCMP. Is the RCMP being coy? This man twice shared the stage with Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson (2008 and 2011) A wealth of sharp images are available... and RCMP have to cut a corner off a grainy snapshot for their Wanted Poster?? Navas-Rivas and four of his associates are potentially armed and on the run. The RCMP is asking for public assistance in apprehending this group of armed cocaine traffickers but not providing law enforcement across Canada with the best available information. Strange that.

This is a clearer photo of Jinagh NAVAS-RIVAS, age 21, foster son of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. The photo was taken at the Mayor's Victory Celebration on Nov. 19, 2011. Last night the Vancouver Mayor issued a carefully worded statement, from Hawaii, stating that Navas-Rivas left his family in 2009, when he came of legal age.

These are some of Jinagh Navas-Rivas' co-accused. They are also at large, and quite possibly armed with hand guns. Richmond RCMP provided sharper photos for each of these wanted men.

Fort Hood Massacre - "Workplace Violence" Claim seems Bogus

I usually devote about 30 minutes in the morning to read the overnight news. Starting with the DRUDGE REPORT saves me a lot of time, but it is just a launch pad, not the destination. This morning I was startled by a headline that referred back to the infamous Fort Hood Massacre, claiming that the Obama Administration had dismissed the massacre as an example of "workplace violence". The implication, nay the accusation, was that the Obama regime and its minions in the Defence Department were being painfully politically correct, avoiding the obvious... that the Fort Hood gunman is a cold blooded exponent of Islamic Fascism.

Well, as I often caution my students... check your sources before you quote. The DRUDGE link was to a Fox News piece (see below) and a Google News search indicated that everyone else was quoting the Fox article. Senator Susan Collins (Rep. Maine) yesterday testified in a Washington hearing on terrorism, and "referenced a letter from the Defence Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence". Heinous if true. But not. Collins either lied or misquoted her own report.

The report is called A TICKING TIME BOMB: Counterterrorism Lessons From the U.S. Government's Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack. It is archived HERE. The report is credited to Joseph I Lieberman, Chairman and Susan M. Collins, and dated for the record February 3, 2011. Much of the content is REDACTED, so don't expect to read secrets... just information you will not find reported by the commercial media.

The single reference to "workplace violence" in the Lieberman - Collins report is not a quote at all, but the authors' own characterization of DoD's intent. Further, there is no footnote for the alleged DoD position. What sloppy crap! This is the stripe of distortion all to common in the record keeping during this so-called War on Terror.

Launch of TAI YANG BAO- the VAN SUN publisher needs to lure readers of those pesky Chinese dailies which Hog all the Advertising $$$

Terribly trendy and eminently endangered, The Vancouver Sun , struggles to remain relevant in the 21st Century. Today Pacific Press launched a Chinese edition edition of the SUN which it is calling TAI YANG BAO. This is a screen capture from Vol. 1, day 1. Local Chinese readers can expect to read lots of puff pieces about real estate and plenty of propaganda from icky, sticky, tricky Vancouver City Hall.
There are many issues the TAI YANG BAO will not cover. It will not, for example, report on the crimes and misdemeanours of the "People's Government" (P.R.C.) or the Party, the C.C.P. The Chinese fleet could be off the coast of Vancouver Island, and you won't get any warning of it in the T.Y.B. For any insight in doing's in Beijing you might want to check out an alternative newspaper, the EPOCH TIMES. Here is a screen capture from today's edition. What! Didn't you know that Tibetans have been self-immolating in protest of Chinese military occupation?

The website for the English language EPOCH TIMES is here.

Chinese security police are shown here dragging out Tibetan resisters. Note the placards around their necks. The EPOCH TIMES regularly reports on Chinese repression in Tibet. The Vancouver Sun does not.

Television Documentaries on YOUTUBE - Taiwan Art Therapy and Cosmetic Surgery in the U.K.

Guardian Angel Wings, was a feature report broadcast in June, 2011 on the TVBS Taiwan magazine program "Taiwan Step By Step".

I only learned of the story of Taiwanese artist Chen Zirong because a kind friend passed the TVBS link to us. It's a moving story, and you don't have to understand a word of Mandarin to get it. Chen is a 28 year old woman suffering from amnesia due to a car accident at age 3, crash which also badly injured her father. Chen's case was rather hopeless until Prof. Zhao Si-Qiang came into her life. When introduced to Chen, Prof Zhao saw something in her which touched him deeply, and he became determined to try to help Chen regain some of mental function through Art Therapy. At first the protective mother was naturally leery of university professor offering to mentor a mentally challenged woman, but this is a story in which true generosity of spirit produces dazzling results.

When the story begins we assume that this will be another inspirational piece, where a character who was unfairly set back in life, is assisted to the point of learning to function and enjoy life. But it is more than that. Chen's routine became one of daily immersion in art lessons, followed by long hours of trial and error. She was at first a copier, as are all students, and then she progressed to experimenting with classical styles, Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. Some of the film recreates outdoor sessions in which Chen was taught to commune with nature, drawing the textures of tree bark, the grain structure of stones and the pattern of clouds as they scudded over the city of Taipei.

Zhao's diligence and Chen's hard work have paid off, and she has now reached the stage where her work is original, interpretive and a genuine insight into the active imagination of a woman coping with lost function in only a portion of her mind. Her work is now exhibited and it is selling. We are privileged to witness the birth of a genuine artistic talent in Taiwan, and also (not incidentally) of the restorative value of Art Therapy when applied by a sensitive and giving instructor.

In the story Guardian Angel Wings (TVBS Taiwan, 2011) we see the artist, coping with memory loss, progress from mere student to become a master of her own style and technique. The video is available only on You Tube. If the story moves you, look for two other videos on Ms. Chen, archived on You Tube.

The Perfect Vagina, a film by Lisa Rogers, uses this latex sculpture by Jamie McCartney as the title card. Rogers gets her "fanny" immortalized for the research.

Strangely enough, this story is not so repelling as it reads, except for the few chilling moments when a teenager gets her labia sliced off. I'm surprised now that it took me a week to get up the nerve to watch The Perfect Vagina, which is one a half dozen CHANNEL 4 TV Docs I had been meaning to view. Total sexual liberation in our time was bound to create casualties, and one of the negative effects was the sick desire to have a photogenic vagina. Lisa Rogers is brave and funny, which means she is admirably suited to tackling a subject which might repel many other filmmakers. More, she is prettier than any of the other women interviewed, so of course she becomes a character in her own film.

The demand for vaginal cosmetic surgery has exploded in England, and she set out to discover why. It's an admirable piece of reportage, and Rogers will certainly have persuaded many thousands of women by now to be satisfied with how they look. Watch for the story of the 19 year old Muslim woman, in the third segment. She has been bartered away in an arranged marriage, and her goal is to have her hymen repaired before the ceremony takes place. What she fears most, is not life with a man she doesn't love, but that her parents might learn that she lost her virginity. (An actress dubs her voice in the film.) "If they find out they will will kill me, and then kill themselves." The fourth segment covers a therapy session which Ms. Rogers believes will be "New Age" or silly, but which surprises her. This is a video in which the horror and the humour are swirling in the same bowl. Well worth the viewing.

The Perfect Vagina - This documentary is served in four parts, so don't panic when the screen goes black. Use your mouse to move the bar past the gaps.

I just found this Doc on VIMEO, and I see it's had over a million plays since 2008. The link to VIMEO feed is here.

Jamie McCartney's completed art work The Great wall of Vagina can be seen here. One panel is on display in the documentary, but the whole is massive.

Beast of Burnaby - the BCA behemoth swallowed its opponents whole

Official Results, 2011 Municipal Election, City of Burnaby, B.C. There are 146,123 registered voters on the Municipal list. Only 32,953 bothered to vote!! Clearly - No issues, no turnout.

Election Twins - Burnaby's free bi-weekly press - the NEWS LEADER and BURNABY NOW delivered their election editions to every home in the city on November 18, with wrap-around BCA - Corrigan advertisements. Very effective. Congratulations BCA!

BCA Sweep - All Candidates Victorious

Another civic election has come and gone. Results? A total BCA sweep. The BCA took the mayoralty, every council seat and every school board seat. In a democratic society that shouldn't happen... unless an angry electorate is throwing out a hated regime. But in Burnaby the opposite is the case. The electorate has returned a loved regime to power, rewarding BCA with a second total smack-down of the alternative civic party - TEAM Burnaby.

I don't object. I may not care for the council much, but I like Derek Corrigan, respect the job that he's done, and realize that we have the best mayor this side of the Fraser River. Still, democratic dictatorships are dangerous. The integrity of our mayor is the best hope we have of keeping individual councillors clean, and municipal spending within reason. The weekly press is not our watchdog, nor does it have to be. Vigilance is the responsibility of the individual.

TEAM is not a Team

"TEAM Burnaby" bills itself as a "non-partisan civic organization". The sad truth is that it is not a team, and it is not non-partisan, and that is why its candidates were destroyed on November 19th. Since its founding TEAM Burnaby has been hobbled by the fact that its power brokers (those who choose the candidates) don't even like each other. TEAM is composed of TORY and LIBERAL organizers who pummel each other during every Federal and Provincial election, and then make a token attempt at being friendly, in the hope of taking a few seats away from BCA. It's bizarre. Mismatched shoes will never become fashionable. The BCA prevails because it is an effective alliance of the local NDP machine, backed by the financial clout of the important unions. - You don't stalk a beast of that size unless you are packing an elephant gun.

I read in the BURNABY NOW today that "about 20 TEAM candidates and supporters" showed up at their Election Night Rally HQ to watch the results. The TEAM mayoralty candidate, Mr. Tommy TAO, didn't even bother to show up. Shame! Nor did perennial civic candidate Mr. Lee RANKIN. On the TEAM website today I read a promise to regroup and try again in 2014. That's one promise most of us hope they do not bother to keep. What is required, if we are to restore competitive democracy to civic politics in Burnaby, is a clean piece of paper, a new civic party, and hall full of people who stand for community and not tired old political allegiances.

23.3 % Voter turnout in Burnaby

The Burnaby NEWS LEADER, in its election post-mortem, reported today that VOTER TURNOUT on November 19 was 23.3 per cent. Only 34,035 registered voters in Burnaby bothered to cast a ballot on Saturday. The front page story on Friday was "Candidates pull out all the stops in the last days"(BURNABY NOW, Nov. 18) Maybe so, but clearly all of that pipe organ music did not draw much of a crowd. The truth is that there was no campaign to follow or to generate any interest among the electorate. Only some tub thumping among school board candidates created any sound at all. But that was all noise, and nothing resembling a march.

What comes next? You guessed it. Salary increases for mayor and council. The civic employees get their tickets punched. Taxes go up. Municipal fees increase. And TEAM goes back into its cave to hibernate for another three years. Somebody seal that den, while they're sleeping!

BEDBUGS - in Burnaby the vermin are German

We hit a new low in September when WALMART ran TV ads offering bedbug impervious sheets at its Vancouver area stores. I heard reports of The Bedbug Registry, but I was never curious enough to take a look. Actually I've never seen a bedbug, and I have no hankering to bump into one.

A SIX INCH BED BUG - courtesy of the Burnaby NEWS LEADER, Nov. 9, 2011.

I've been too busy of late to research Blog articles, or read local newspapers, but I couldn't ignore the NEWS LEADER delivered to my door on November 9th. You might have thought that the November 19th Civic Election would be the story worthy of page one.... but those of us who have been around a few years know that not until the protagonists and the antagonists start paying for large election adverts do the papers start narrating THE ELECTION STORY.

On P1 they printed a photo of a bedbug as big as a juvenile trilobite! A warning of such ghastly proportions simply could not be ignored. So I read the article. If you want to read "Avoiding the bedbug bite", its archived HERE.

Infestations at two of Burnaby's public libraries made the news recently, as did a report that BC HOUSING spent over $721,000 in one year fighting bedbugs "at 43 of 49 of its housing complexes" in Greater Vancouver. Lest you try to point a bony finger at "Welfare" tenants, I hasten to add that several were senior citizen buildings. Poverty and vermin don't necessarily go together. I spent much of my childhood on Welfare in Saint John, N.B. and we never once encountered lice, bedbugs or cockroaches. As my mother often said, "We're poor, but we're clean."

What did startle me in the NEWS LEADER report was one loopy comment attributed to a pest-control professional who said "the fall of the Soviet Bloc in the late 1980s and early '90s led to increased travel to and from Eastern Europe which had a nasty bedbug problem... Combined with the ease of travel today, it's led to a worldwide spread of bedbugs." I guess that in Burnaby the vermin are East German.

No, the spread of vermin including the rats which are also plaguing Burnaby, is actually due to the banning of chemicals and poisons which had largely defeated most of those ancient scourges by the mid 20th Century. When Environmentalism became a religion on this continent it lit candles to the Second Coming of Willard the rat and Benny the bedbug. Get used to it. The powers that be will not be arming for this war any time soon.

Finally I Googled the infamous online resource known as THE BEDBUG REGISTRY. I predict it going to become more popular than GAS BUDDY. You better have a look. You'll find that bedbugs are EVERYWHERE!! Feeling itchy?

A couple of typical reports on The Bedbug Registry. For a look at Burnaby Metrotown

infestation patterns go HERE.

UBC PERSONAL PROFILE - Screening the Internet Generation for Coveted Admission

Among friends, it's no secret that I prefer SFU's compact Burnaby Mountain campus to the sprawling UBC burbclave growing on the shore of Point Grey. It's not because SFU wins any prize for beauty. Most people I speak with agree that the grey concrete SFU campus is butt ugly. And though I live in Burnaby it's not civic loyalty at play. SFU has thrown a satellite campus into both downtown Vancouver and central Surrey, so it's now a stretch to claim SFU as "Burnaby's university". I guess it's really a matter of size and accessibility. Even folks who live in Vancouver find it a pain in the ass to commute into and out of UBC, and once you do get there you need GPS and good muscle tone to get around.

For years I have assisted students in competing for admission into SFU and UBC, as well as popular universities in other provinces and states. This past spring my assistance included helping a half dozen young people to write the new UBC "Personal Profile" online. All they had to was bring their laptop to my office and type what I dictated. (Dictating the profile saves me time.) I didn't think much of it. Just helping out. Imagine my surprise to catch the following story in this morning's Vancouver SUN:

"This year almost every direct-entry program at UBC Vancouver offered applicants the opportunity to submit a personal profile, and in total over 2,500 students were admitted on the strength of their personal profile, not on high school marks alone," James Ridge, UBC's associate vice-president and registrar said in an email.

Next year we expect all faculties will use [personal profiles], and the total number of admission decisions made this way will again grow significantly," he said."

Wow! I think I'm going to get a lot of phone calls next spring. I live near Burnaby's biggest high school. Read Tracy Sherlock's story here - UNIVERSITY ADMISSION. (Reading time - 2 Minutes)

To illustrate what the SUN is talking about, here is the description of the UBC Personal Profile clipped from the university admissions website:

UBC has added a number of other online innovations this year, many of which are an obvious attempt to jump on the "social networking" bandwagon. For example the IT boffins have posted a video on YOUTUBE which was created to help students use the new UBC BLOGS which were "launched" on August 11th. I like the fact that the term "cool" still pops up frequently in UBC campus chatter. The UBC Personal Profile is also "cool". I'm going to be writing many of them.

So this will be our future. "20 something" teachers, raised on a diet of Gerber's and Google, will not teach without a comforting screen of technology between themselves and the demanding mob they face everyday. Smart screens in the high schools, Wiki knowledge at a key stroke, our public school teachers are now lobbying to have the cellphone jammers switched off, so they and their squirming students can Twitter to their hearts content. (If curious, you may read the story HOW TWITTER CAN BE A GOOD THING in the SUN.) Here's a thought - Perhaps next year's crop of Grade 12 students might like to invest a Saturday morning in a two hour session of Creative Nonfiction, the sole subject of which will be their UBC Personal Profile.  I'm up for it.