Tactical Unprofessionalism

This morning as I lie in bed sleeping, I hear sirens go by. Not thinking much of it at the time, I noticed that I kept hearing them over and over again. Normally when a cop pulls someone over they have the lights and siren going until the person pulls over. Then they keep the lights on but turn off the siren. Especially in a residential neighborhood.

This was a random burst of the siren that kept going off over and over again. It was 3:30 AM when most people are trying to sleep. It started to get really irritating so I got up and went out to see what all the fuss was about. Police cars had a perimeter sectioned off with their lights on. Each vehicle would release a loud burst of their siren sporadically and repeatedly. It was impossible to sleep and it was really irritating. I started walking outside the perimeter hoping to ask a cop who isn’t in active pursuit what is with the sirens.

I walk by a few police cars on the outside of the perimeter and cringed every time the siren burst goes off wanting to ask them about the sirens but didn’t want to interrupt anyone. A female officer with a police dog is searching the area. I hear her say on her radio there’s a guy walking out here and another officer drives up to speak with me.

The cop asks me if I have seen anyone walking around about 20 minutes ago. I said no and pause for the awkward silence. I said obviously you’re looking for someone. What is the tactical advantage of the sirens? He said they want him to stay down. I assume that means they want him to stay down and hide as oppose to run away so they can find them with the dog. I walk over to a gassy hill outside their perimeter and sit down to watch the light show. The noise makes it impossible to go back to bed and sleep. I see the female officer with the dog on a very long leash searching all over and notice she crossed over and was walking past behind me.

Then all of a sudden I can hear her let the dog charge me from behind as I sit on the grassy hill watching everything. I raise my hands in the air and brace myself for the dogs teeth to sink into by back. Right before it attacks me the officer pulls the leash and shouts no then literally screams at me and shouts “What the F*ck are you doing here?!?” Those were her exact words.

I responded by saying I was trying to sleep then added I don’t understand what the tactical advantage of the sirens is. Then as she walks away I state in absolute bewilderment this is very unprofessional.

I watch her handle the dog from a distance. Pulling the dog shouting f this and f that. It didn’t look like the dog had a scent and was following it. It didn’t look like she really knew how to handle the dog either. Then she came up to speak to two other officers. One was in an unmarked car with a dog in it. He seemed a lot more calm and competent. She had calmed down considerably and they were discussing what she had seen.

As I just shook my head it made me think of a scene from the movie Men in Black where Will Smith was in a target practice drill. It was a funny scene from a comedy. Yet it showed that law enforcement does have a difficult task pursuing suspects in a world full of bad guys, good guys and innocent bystanders.

At first I thought, welcome to Surrey but then I remembered the Prince George lockdown and how this could happen in any residential neighborhood anywhere in Canada. It is important to be appreciative that the police are in fact willing to chase down bad guys. I do however think it’s important to address police arrogance and stress the importance of preserving the Charter of Rights in our society when the police are paid by civilian taxes to serve and protect them. Not to control, harass and abuse them. No one has the right to run around like Gestapo and trample our civil liberties.

Hells Angels in Germany and Spain arrested for human trafficking

The Guardian is reporting that on Wednesday “Police in Mallorca have arrested 25 members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang on suspicion of drug trafficking, trafficking in humans, extortion and running prostitution rings.”

The majority of those arrested are German and include leading members of the German and Spanish chapters. Frank Hanebuth, the 49-year-old former boxer and head of the Hanover chapter, is reportedly among those arrested. A local police officer was also arrested, according to press on the island.

The same source said that a principal source of the gang's income allegedly came from women coerced to work as prostitutes in clubs in Germany. Police also claim the gang frequently extorted money from foreign residents using threats of violence accompanied by photographs showing that they were familiar with victims' families' routines.

This is a huge bust. In involves a Germans President not some rouge member. Frank Hanebuth, a reputed Hells Angels boss from Germany, was among the 25 arrested by Spanish police at his multi-million dollar estate on the Mediterranean resort island of Mallorca in Spain.

A Spanish paper called the Local is reporting that “The Hells Angels planned to launder "a significant quantity" of money from its activities in Germany and Turkey in the construction of a Formula One race track in Mallorca, police said in a statement.”

“Operation Casablanca targeted alleged drug trafficking, extortion, money laundering, and running of prostitution rings by the Majorca chapter of the notorious motorbike club. Most of the club's members arrived on the island from Germany after authorities in that country cracked down on the group in 2009. The group raised money mainly by forcing women into prostitution across Germany and extorting cash from people they threatened to harm if they were not paid.

Threatening someone’s family is total low life. Yet these guys have been accused of showing women pictures of their family and threatening to harm them if the woman didn’t agree to become prostitutes for them. That is disgusting. They call informants rats, yet they are the rats. Reporting that to the police isn’t being a rat. Failing to do so is. These low lifes are rat shit.

In Fast and Furious 6 Vin Diesel said “Never threaten a man's family.”

Human trafficking targeting Nova Scotia women

CBC News is reporting that “A Truro woman is marching against what she calls one of Nova Scotia's dirtiest and darkest secrets - human sex trade trafficking. Lia Renaud said sex slavery starts in the Maritimes more than people think, so she and several supporters are planning to walk from Halifax to Moncton to raise awareness of the issue, taking the route where vulnerable victims are often picked up.”

Truro? That’s a pretty familiar small town involving an organized crime group we all know. Come to think of it, members of the Thirtieth Tribe that patched over to become the Halifax chapter of the Hells Angels where David Giles, Mike Christianson and Larry Pace (Lars) are from, were convicted of living off the avails. In fact, Right after the Darksiders move into Bridgewater, NS a new brothel was busted there. Imagine that.

RCMP Const. Sebastian Decaens said in most cases a predator will manipulate their victim to either fall in love with them or make them feel like they need to pay off a debt. "They would bring them to another city or another province to start dancing. Once again it's to create a habit, a need, and from that they would go to dancing to unfortunately the sex trade market," he said.

Renaud said that's exactly what happened to her friend Stacy. "She ended up meeting a gentleman. He was a well-respected businessman, also a high-ranking Hells Angel," she said. Pimped by a high ranking Hells Angel. Imagine that. I suppose Otis Garret isn’t then only missing link between the Hells Angels and prostitution.

Last month MSN News reported that “Twenty-two men were arrested and two children were rescued from harm after a major child exploitation bust in Atlantic Canada. The suspects range in age from 22-years-old to 63. Six of the people were from rural Nova Scotia and three were from the Halifax region. One of the charged men was a registered sex offender. Another worked with children. "The majority of our offenders are individuals who have never had a parking ticket,” said Purchase.” Fred Price, 52, of Fredericton, and Donald Martin, 48, of Miramichi, have both been charged with distributing child pornography.

According to C2C’s Investigative Report ““The media don't know anything about it. The Crown attorneys have all moved on to bigger and better things. The police officers have all changed. The political will has changed. So now it’s Canada's deep, dark secret if you will. The Russian mafia runs girls, the Hells Angels runs girls. There's a lot of Asian human trafficking going on, locally and from abroad. It's everywhere now.” Why that’s yet another source that claims the Hells Angels are involved in forced prostitution in Canada. How does a nice family man with young kids rationalize that? Kinda makes ya wonder what was really going on at the Pickton farm. Last September they had a human trafficking awareness walk in Toronto.

Spotlight on the BC Investment Management Corporation

I’m going to need more time to dive into this case more thoroughly but since two different bloggers have expressed a concern about it, I think it’s worth mentioning and looking into the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation.

A blogger at Northern Insight states that ethical performance is lacking at the BCIMC. He points out that the BCIMC is a substantial Enbridge investor ($657 million) and holds major positions in the world's nine largest tobacco sellers ($553 million). They are also arms dealers and have spread over half a billion dollars among almost every one of the top 20 public companies involved in the international arms trade. I’ve seen this blog before and the guy is pretty knowledgeable.

The other blogger owned a pristine campground in Tofino right by Long Beach. On May 25, 2010 they suffered a triple arson. Since then there has been numerous acts of arson and vandalism. Even the resort water system was destroyed. All of this made it impossible to run the campground and maintain a revenue to continue mortgage payments. Meanwhile, a dirty investment company kept wanting to know if he’s ready to sell yet. That investment company is BCIMC. The bank foreclosed the resort and gave the pristine campground to the BCIMC at a fire sale price.



If the owner did it himself, he would of had insurance. The last arson was on was Mar 9, 2013. A couple days later, this graffiti was written on a telephone pole outside the fire. Here’s the thing – the graffiti are characters from a First Nations alphabet. The middle character looks like a modified O used in the IPA (alphabet that's used to spell First Nation names).



There are many First Nation dialects and they are oral languages. This alphabet was created by French and British linguistics to record the oral native languages. It’s not a local alphabet. The person who wrote it must have known someone who had taken linguistics at University. Not something your typical crack head vandal would know.

There’s lots more for me to look into but for now I leave you with links to the Northern Insight and the Citizens United Against BCIMC blogs. More gang news on it's way.

Justin Bieber tours BC

It was nice to see Justin Bieber touring BC with his family in a RV recently. Justin Trudeau I mean, my bad. It’s hard to tell those two apart nowadays. Since Justin Trudeau voted in favor of doing away with the Charter of Rights his father left us with, it’s hard to tell who that guy is any more. I guess it’s all about the photo shoot now since no one cares about a politician’s polices. It’s all theatrics. Just a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage then is heard no more.

Gambling on Godzilla

OK the last post got too long so I’ll put the second part about gambling here. Yesterday I noticed two letters to the Editor that spoke in support of an editorial the Vancouver Province ran about the government’s addiction to gambling. The letters and the editorial are sound.

In the editorial, Brian Lee Crowley points out “Knowing that the industry preys on human weakness, governments sensibly used to make it hard to gamble. Casinos were only available in distant places like Reno and Las Vegas, or restricted to private clubs to ensure that low-budget punters didn't get in to squander that week's pay.” The “Governments' insatiable search for money, born of an inability to control their own spending, unleashed a wave of state-promoted gambling dens to relieve the credulous of their cash.”

“A lot of gambling has nothing to do with the Hollywood image of tuxedoed high rollers betting vast sums on a roll of the dice. Much of it is cheap and sordid, vulnerable people enticed to throw away the rent money in the eternal quest for the Big Score.”

That is the real issue on the table – exploiting the poor and vulnerable including seniors. Which of course brings us back to Godzilla and the Gateway Casino proposal for Surrey. The residents of south surrey passionately opposed the mega casino organized crime epicenter in their community so Dianne Watts decided to build it in Newton instead. It’s not the same mega casino but it is a casino with slots targeting seniors and the poor. The affluent in south Surrey say no so the poor in Newton have no say.

Just like in Langley. Everyone showed up to oppose it and council turned it down only to slip it in one the side when no one was looking. That is exactly what Dianne Watts and the Surrey First crew have done in Newton which is where many seniors live.

I was amazed at the number of young people that came out to oppose the casino and spoke up for moral principles. It was heart warming to see. Three of those speakers stood out. There comments are posted on youtube. One young lady submitted a petition from her high school and talked about the social costs of casinos and specifically mentions suicides from gambling debts.

The second speaker said he too was an immigrant to Canada and he opposes the Casino. The third speaker from Semiahmoo started off with a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci which states “Nothing strengthens the authority so much as silence.” He said that he and his friends from Semiahmoo were there to break the silence and voice their opposition to the Gateway Casino.

All of their concerns still exist with the Gateway casino in Newton. Let’s remember that Dianne Watts supported the project all along. When she was caught lying in the press after a representative of Gateway and a local citizen proved she was lying, the paper had to print a retraction. There had obviously been discussions with Gateway about the proposal before they bought the land.

That is why Rich Coleman freaked. Godzilla choked when she saw all that opposition to the Casio. She was the chair, she wasn’t supposed to have a vote. She just breaks the tie and it wasn’t supposed to be a tie. Some of her team flipped when they saw the angry mob so she had to vote to break the tie. Everyone cheered and said she listens to the people. Yet she still slipped it in on the side in an area where the more vulnerable will be targeted.

Clearly “there is NO such thing as luck. The longer and faster you play any ‘game,’ the more money the house guarantees you will lose.” When these slots are put near seniors on fixed income it is outright exploitation. Gateway casinos don’t launder drug money but the gangs do at all the casinos in BC. Supporting these casinos is supporting the drug related gang violence that has escalated out of control over the last few years.

When the RCMP put out that report about money laundering in BC Casinos Rich Coleman and the BC Liberals did away with the RCMP office that investigates money laundering in casinos. That was yet another criminal act.

Since Dianne Watts can’t censor this blog like she can council, let’s ask how Gateway casinos lost $1.5 billion? When Dianne Watts said that was false, she was lying. Again. The $24,500 campaign contribution Godzilla received from Gateway Casinos was perfectly legal but totally immoral. At least our youth in Surrey have more morals than Dianne Watts does. Maybe there is hope for this world after all. I hope those young people run for council next election. They have my vote.

Swearing an oath to the Queen

Before I catch up on other stories there are two editorials in today’s paper I want to comment on. On the front page of the Vancouver Province and all over the media everywhere is the news about William and Kate’s new baby. While I am happy for them just like I am happy for any other new parent, I really don’t see what all the hoopla is about. A few media outlets even went so far as to say “World Welcomes New Prince.” The world? Really? You think the Queen of England is the queen of the entire world? You’d think this baby was the freaking prince of peace for heavens sake.

I’ve got nothing against William and Kate. I think they are a very nice couple. William’s mother was the best thing that ever happened to the monarchy. I’m even happy for Charles. I think it’s romantic that he finally married the woman he wanted to marry. She wasn’t as young and pretty as Dianna but that was his real true love and I think it’s very noble that things worked out for him in the end. Tragic how Dianna’s life was cut so short but she left us with a lasting impression that will remain forever. Who knows, maybe in the hereafter she’ll be with her true love as well.

I just don’t get this hoopla about the monarchy. Don’t worry, I don’t get the hoopla about movie stars either. They’re all just ordinary people. Show me someone who’s done something to make this world a better place and then I really am genuinely impressed.

It reminds me of many years ago when I was working in London England during the royal wedding. The royal wedding - Charles and Dianna. The media was all over it. The radio was on at work and they were giving us the live play by play. Here it is folks. The moment we’ve all been waiting for. The royal bride is going to step out that door any minute now. There she is folks and this is what she’s wearing... and there the fashion designers go to reproduce her gown for the public.

I shook my head and said out loud what on earth is all the fuss about? You’d think it was the freaking moonwalk and man’s first step on the moon. A Caribbean guy I was working with chuckled but the manager from England got a little perturbed and said Oh but you have to understand this royal family is very important to us here in England. Yeah? Why? I don’t get it. They’re just ordinary people. Well, I still don’t get it.

So the editorial in today’s paper was about how some people object to have to swear an oath of allegiance to the queen of England in order to become a Canadian citizen. The editorial said that’s the way it is, get used to it. But is it really the way it should be? I never had to swear an oath of allegiance to the queen when I was born here. Sure the queen’s picture is on the money but so is the beaver, elk and loon. We can put any historical figure on our money we want. It doesn’t mean anything.

The article claims many Canadians support and appreciate our constitutional monarchy. Our constitutional monarchy? We don’t have one. England does. We are simply part of the common wealth – a loose association of countries that were once colonies before they became free republics. I suppose whether or not we really are a free republic is debatable and that’s why we need to address the issue.

Before we go there let’s talk about inclusion. It’s not just new immigrants who have a problem with swearing another to the queen. I’m pretty sure most Canadians of French ancestry have a real problem with it. That could be one of the reasons Quebec never signed the Charter. Swearing an oath to the queen would be a violation of their conscience. Before I went traveling I was considering joining the reserves. I was shocked and astounded we were supposed to swear and oath to the queen. I’ll swear an oath to defend a country or a constitution but not to a person. We all know there are good kings and bad kings. In our day the queen is literally just a figurehead but historically there have been many bad kings. I certainly wouldn’t want to swear an allegiance to a bad king or be treated like a traitor for not doing so.

The editorial said some claimed that swearing an oath to the queen would harm their right to the freedom of religion. That’s an interesting thought. In Ireland the Church of England persecuted the Catholics. In fact they persecuted other Christians as well who weren’t Catholic just because they weren’t Church of England. Since the queen is literally the head of that church we need to talk about it’s historical origin if we are going to swear an other to her title. (Did I tell you the story of George Buchanan? I’ll save that for another day so I will.)

Never in Israel’s roller coaster history of morality and immorality has there ever been a king of Israel that has actually taken over the church and made themselves rulers over it. Prophets have spoken out against bad kings in the past and many kings rejected the prophets and threw them in jail like they did to Jeremiah or in the case of John the Baptist, served his head on a platter for confronting the king’s immorality. Jean Baptise as our French friends would remember.

So in England we had the famous King Henry who was guilty of both adultery and murder. He was a Catholic and the Catholic church didn’t allow divorce so he kept beheading the wives he didn’t like so he could remarry without getting a divorce. Finally he started feeling guilty about being a murderer (after the Pope excommunicated him) so he decided to take over the church and make a new one that would allow divorce so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about murdering another wife he didn’t like. Low and behold King Henry becomes the head of the Church of England. If that’s not enough blasphemy for lightening to strike, I don’t know what is. I’m not saying the church shouldn’t allow divorce btw. I’m saying King Henry had no right and no authority to take over the church and make himself the head of it.

Other reformers like Martin Luther were good men. King Henry was not. He didn’t just create a new church and let it run. He created a new church and seized control of it. Adopted it as the state religion and persecuted everyone who didn’t embrace the new state religion. That is the problem with forsaking the constitutional freedom of religion and adopting any state religion. Kings and citizens have the right to join or leave any religion they choose. Adapting a single state religion is just as bad as abolishing all religion completely. It is a violation of civil liberty.

Historically, the Act of Supremacy of 1534 confirmed the King's status as having supremacy over the church and required the nobility to swear an oath recognizing Henry's supremacy. Gag. That act was repealed and restored many times since. Yet today the queen of England is still considered the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. So tell me, does swearing an oath to the queen also an oath recognizing the queen’s supremacy over the church? That is something I completely object to and I was born here. To be continued…

I will point out that before King Henry the Catholics church was even worse. During the Spanish Inquisition they killed and persecuted everyone who wasn’t Catholic. I guess that’s why they called it the dark ages when mankind was groping around in the darkness thinking the world was flat. Both crimes show why adapting a single state religion is just as bad as abolishing religion altogether. Both are wrong and one leads to the other.

Hells Angel crashes after Langley Party

Well Kim’s back from holidays. She’s reporting that a Saskatoon Hells Angel drove off the freeway near Hope on his way home from a party at Jaba’s palace in Langley yesterday. I certainly don’t wish misfortune on anyone. Kinda strange how he mysteriously drove off the freeway into a rock wall. I have no idea if they did blood work.

Kim’s reporting that it was five years ago at their 25th anniversary she started her blog and did a live play by play coverage of the event. She was the one that noticed Scott Jamieson’s hummer from Showgirls in Edmonton showed up at the party. Has it been five years already?

I’m sure she had her blog going just before I started my web site and blog. Now five and a half years later we’re on the verge of breaking our 8 million hits mark. June 2012 we just broke 4 million hits. That makes 4 million hits in just over a year. That’s kinda hard to imagine. I recognize that the success of this blog has been from the many contributors that have sent in pictures and tips. So thanks to the many contributors over the years who actually care about their community. It gives us hope for the future.

Spotlight on two great Surrey Restaurants

I have several stories to catch up on but since the topic of diversity and Surrey pride came up, I wanted to highlight two tiny resultants in Surrey that have awesome food. The first is Binghi's Reggae Café 13593 King George Blvd. It’s at King George and 108 Avenue. It’s tiny but the food is awesome. They even have a facebook page.

I think the owner is Indo Canadian but it serves Caribbean food. The guy with the hat is an awesome chef. I had some curry goat with some rice and peas along with a Guinness stout. Now that is what I’m talking about. It doesn’t get any better than that. It came with a unique salad and a Jamaican patty. He even put the rice in a timbale. Now that is old school. The sauce was fabulous.

The other restaurant I wanted to spotlight is right around the corner. A tiny Mexican restaurant called Taqueria Jalisco at 13646 Grosvenor Rd. It’s on 108 Ave and King George right behind where Caps Bicycles used to be many years ago. It’s tiny but the food is awesome.

Everything on the menu is great. It even has some old wanted posters on the wall from the 1900’s. They have their own web site. They even have an assortment of naturally sweetened pop from Mexico. The Jarritos is awesome. It’s lime flavor. Supporting small business is a good thing. Especially when they have such great food. Diversity is a culinary pleasure.

The Surrey Fusion Festival

I finally broke down and attended the end of the Surrey Fusion Festival today. I haven’t been in a few years. Ever since Godzilla started building her Ivory tower I haven’t been feeling very patriotic. My Surrey Pride has disappeared.

Yet tonight it was nice to see. It’s billed as a celebration of music, food and culture and that it is. As I walked in on one side there was ear piercing Bhangra and on the other side there was bone chilling country twang and I was left looking for somewhere else to fit in. It wasn’t really Bhangra it was something else and if they just turned it down a bit it wouldn’t have been so ear piercing. They did perform several pieces that were very nice as did the country group. They even finished off with like a rolling stone and I started feeling much better.

Tons of cultural pavilions and lots of food from many different cultures. It was like a world tour of cuisine. Many from Africa, Latin America and Tonga. I was interested in the Kangaroo burgers from Australia but settled on some chicken and rice from Bolivia and some vegetable pakora from India. It was really nice to see the celebration of cultural diversity.

A few hecklers on the blog previously made some outrageous statements denouncing multiculturalism and I saw a similar offensive letter printed in the Vancouver Province recently. Cultural diversity what being a Canadian is all about. That is the great Canadian Mosaic as opposed to the American melting pot. We can be Canadian but still retain our cultural heritage. A woman can wear a sari and a man can wear a kilt. That is freedom and that is multiculturalism. Diversity makes us strong. In fact there’s a group in Vancouver called gung haggis fat choy that celebrates Asian and Scottish culture together.

The Surrey Fusion Festival helped restore a little Surrey pride but also Canadian pride. After all, Surrey’s little oasis of cultural peace is a model of what Canada is all about. I’ve noticed my nationalism has slipped of late with all these attacks on the charter and the erosion of our civil liberties. Looking at the flag now makes me feel a bit diminished. Yet events like these help rebuild that tarnished image.

Not all Canadians are polite and tolerant. That is something we still have to work on. A friend at work went to Disneyland a while ago and saw a kid with a Canucks shirt on. He asked the family where they were from and the mother was really rude. He said ya know, I’m from Vancouver too. Everyone keeps talking about how rude Americans are but you are more rude than any American I’ve ever met.

My daughter had a friend visit from Texas several years ago. He said everyone here is so angry. Everyone wants to fight me. I said yeah, this is Surrey. He said people are more friendly back home. People are more friendly in America? Texas? That kinda blew away the previous stereotypes. It reminded me of how I was driving along a side street in Blaine and an old man waved his hand at me. I slowed down to see what he wanted and thought oh great, he’s gonna bitch me out for going too fast. Instead he just smiled and waved as I went by. He was just being friendly. Imagine that. Kind of unheard of in our society.

I’ve had a little bit of a conflict lately with some Punjabi pride so to speak. Pride as in arrogance. So here’s me cheering on the Vancouver Bhangra dancers eating vegetable pakora. Obviously there is good and bad in every culture. We need to embrace the good and shun the bad. My daughter works with a young Indo Canadian who is trying to follow the path of his religion. Another Indo Canadian girl comes up to him and says isn’t it hilarious and Vasakhi is on 420 this year? We can get baked and go to Vasakhi. Isn’t that awesome she said. No it’s actually dumb and very disrespectful to our religion was his wise response.

For me diversity means equality. It doesn’t mean we cheer louder for one group above another. The Punjabi Hindu conflict coming here concerns me. People are welcome to bring their culture here just make sure you leave your pride and prejudice at home because that has no place in the society we want to build.

I stopped in at the Palestine booth and looked at some of the beautiful pictures. They even had a poster of the doors of Jerusalem like they have for other countries. They still call it Jerusalem. Salam means peace in Arabic. I realize that conflict is very problematic because Palestinians in Israel are residents not citizens with a passport. Yet the Jews have a right to a home too. Not an exclusive right to the land but an equal claim to it which makes that whole mess very problematic

Some people claim that the Palestinians were there first and the Jews took over after England conquered it and gave it to them. Yet Jews were there before that. Then people claim that the Jews obtained that land originally by genocide. True, but the history of all land ownership has been one group conquering another at some point.

I picked up a hitch hiker on the way to Tofino who claimed to be the war chief from Flores Island and claimed that his uncle was the hereditary chief of that nation. He said that historically there was a conflict between their tribe and another much larger tribe. The larger tribe was greedy and wouldn’t let them hunt or fish in the same territory. They even killed their chief, gutted him and put him on a stick to warn the others.

They responded with a war that ended up driving the bad guys south to California and north to Alaska. He said it’s quite the David and Goliath story because they were a much smaller tribe than their aggressors. He said trading with the white settlers helped them because they got guns from them which helped them defeat their enemies.

Which kinda reinforces what I previously said about how the local natives in Fort Langley benefitted from trading with the settlers because they helped defend them against rival tribes that would raid them and carry them away as slaves. The point is, the Nation that now resides in Tofino conquered it from someone else. Claiming that the California tribe that tried to squeeze them out has a current legal claim on the land because they at one time resided there is a bit silly.

In Israel the Palestinians weren’t the original inhabitants of Gaza. They were the Philistines who were conquered by Ramses in Egypt. If anything Gaza would be better of as a part of Egypt then on it’s own but that conflict is much bigger than you and I. Palestinians have a wonderful culture as well and are welcome here. My point is celebrating diversity is good. Rehashing old disputes is not and the Surrey Fusion Festival is worth supporting.

They even had a really cool booth where you could get your picture taken with whatever background you wanted - the Eiffel tower, the leaning tower of Pizza, even Ayers rock. Come to think of it, there weren't that many European countries represented. They has Polish sausage and perogies from the Ukraine but nothing Irish Scottish, French, German or Swiss. The festival still has room to grow. It's a great place for local restaurants to advertize.