Steven Skinner arrested in Venezuela

CBC is reporting that "Venezuelan police have arrested a Nova Scotian man who left Canada shortly before being charged with murder in 2011. Steven Skinner, 43, faces a second-degree murder charge over the killing of 20-year-old Stacey Adams in the Halifax area. " I was wondering why the traffic on an old post I made about him was off the charts. A blog reader finally wrote in and said he was arrested. I'm not sure about his affiliations. He was a MMA fighter.

CBC is reporting that in 2006, two clothing stores owned by Skinner were firebombed within an hour of each other. One of the men charged with arson in the fires was Cory Melvin, the younger brother of Halifax crime figure Jimmy Melvin Jr.

The Chronicle Herald reported that "Melvin, a notorious Halifax crime figure, was arrested in July and charged with first-degree murder in the February 2009 shooting death of Terry Marriott Jr., who belonged to a rival gang." It doesn't name the gang but describe the feud between the Melvins and the Marriotts who used to sell crack together then split and became rivals.

The article states Jimmy Melvin Sr worked for the Hells Angels back in 1992 when he was caught trying to off load a spanish vessel loaded with three tones of cocaine. In 2000 a member of the Marriott family was charged with the murder of former Hells Angels associate William St. Clair Wendelborg. December 2001 Jimmy Melvin Sr was arrested along with Hells Angels members and associates when the Halifax clubhouse was raided for drug offences.

That would imply Skinner is a HA rival but Venezuela kinda sounds like HA protection. In the book Road to Hell, it claims Larry Pace (Lars) killed William Wendelborg in a contract hit ordered by Wolf Carroll’s associate Paul Wilson. Lars is the guy living in Kelowna now. So that hit was for the Hells Angels not against them. The HAs must be working with both groups in Halifax. Locals are under the impression Skinner got his HA patch in 2011.

Rental housing disappears in Metro Vancouver

Numerous media outlets are reporting that Low-cost rental housing disappears across Metro Vancouver. This is the first factor in the tent city crime plague. Housing is a genuine concern. Adding drug addition to that makes it untreatable. Global is News is confirming a Vancouver Province report that the high cost of housng is causing young families to leave Vancouver.

Tent city plagued by violence

The Times Colonist is reporting that "Victoria councillors have unanimously approved spending up to $113,000 in additional policing funds to deal with increasing crime and violence in the neighbourhood surrounding the tent city on the courthouse lawn. Acting Police Chief Del Manak painted a grim picture to city councillors of drug use, violence and intimidation in and around tent city because street gang members have infiltrated the encampment. 'The site is clearly not safe,' he said. Manak said police officers are regularly met with aggression at tent city; both residents and service providers are intimidated and many neighbours worry for their safety."

This is a common theme we are seeing repeat itself. Victoria, Vancouver, Surrey, Maple Ridge - all have areas where the street gangs are exploiting and brutalizing the homeless so they can make money from addiction that results in a huge amount of violent crime.

The Victoria police chief said both residents and service providers are intimidated and many neighbours worry for their safety. This is very true. Service provides is referring to sex trade workers like Dianne Rock and Janice Shore where the drug dealer becomes the pimp and take everything they make not just a percentage. There is nothing consentual about it.

There are two problems on the table not just one. Housing is a legitimate concern. Yet the cause is lost when it is overcome and exploited with open drug abuse. Hal Hannon from Breaking the code nailed it in a post he made entitled Why Tent City Has No Solution.

Hal states Addiction is relentless:

"Have you ever supported a drug habit? I have. I supported my ex-roommate’s addiction for fifteen years. It cost me between $3,000 and $5,000 a month, whatever I could make available. Had I made more available, she would have wasted that on drugs too. Multiply that by the masses who inhabit tent city and those waiting for a spot to pitch a tent. I can assure you that when a lifestyle is driven by addiction there is never enough money. Without enough money, tent city has no solution. Every effort to help them will be misused to support their drug habits I am not saying every tenter is an addict. I am saying that some ninety percent of them are."

Hal has a very valid point. However, I am saying there is a solution. Arrest the drug dealers exploiting the homeless not the drug addicts. Unless we do that we are enabling and supporting the violence exploiting them. Then we can devote some of the resources we spent on harm promotion on housing instead. People need homes not drugs.

Provincial government shafts Surrey Schools

The Surrey Leader nailed it. More specifically Kevin Diakiw did. I can't find the article online but the printed edition has an inspiring article that states residential growth in Surrey contributed $585M to BC coffers over last decade then points out they only devoted 18.4% of that to building new schools. It's not surprising that article isn't available online. It was quickly replaced with a Christy Clark Corporate spin and photoshoot announcing new schools. Better late than never.

Recently there has been a lot of hype in the media about how Surrey has to slow down it's new construction because there aren't enough schools. Then I start thinking wait a minute, building new schools is a provincial budget not a civic budget. Then we hear that some kids in Surrey might have to be bussed into Vancouver to go to school because there isn't enough room in Surrey. But we discover that Vancouver is facing the possibility of closing schools that are full. Why? To save money because of their being over budget.

Once again we see the ugly face of the BC Hydro fraud reveal itself. In Christy Clark's' fudge it budget she said she was going to balance the budget by extracting a dividend from BC Hydro knowing full well that was a lie. The Campbell government created the BC Hydro crisis and their ballooning deficit made it impossible for Christy Clark to extract a dividend to fix her fudge it budget. Instead they had to lend the money to BC Hydro to pay the dividend they didn't have to *balance* Christy's budget.

The real crisis was created by the one and only Gordon Campbell who privatized the power brokers that sell power to the public company at above market rates so his campaign contributors could literally make a fortune off the taxpayers back. If he hadn't done that, BC Hydro's debt would not be ballooning out of control and we could in fact have extracted a dividend from them to balance the budget and fund more schools. This is the same fraud that created the Greek Financial Crisis. What was public money became private then disappeared. Buyer Beware.



BC Hydro's Amazingly Bad Deal for Ratepayers

The Tyee reported that "Not only had B.C. Hydro agreed to buy three times the power requested in the tender, it had done so at locked-in prices far above projected market rates. We give big firms $15 billion. We get higher prices, no assets, no guarantee of supply."

Financial Fraud at BC Hydro

The Northern Insights bog reported that: "In fiscal year 2015, BC Hydro purchased 13,377 GWh of electricity from independent power producers for $1,064,000,000 ($79,540 per GWh). In the same period, BC Hydro sold 14,020 GWh to large industrial users for $748,000,000 ($53,250 per GWh). In other words, each GWh of power purchased from IPPs was resold for $26,290 less that it cost. However, the loss was not limited to $352 million since the utility had to pay distribution, administration and other overhead costs in addition to the power acquisition price."

How BC Hydro Wound Up $76 Billion in Debt

The Watershed Sentinel reported that "By 2015, BC Hydro had 105 operating projects on contract, nominally capable of 18,902 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy, with 3,098 GWh to come from 23 IPP projects still in development. In 2015 it purchased 13,377 GWh of energy at a cost of $1,064 million. That is 24 per cent of BC Hydro’s domestic supply at 76 per cent of its cost of power; $79.54 per megawatt hour (MWh), compared to $8.11 per MWh for power from BC Hydro’s dams. This describes the haemorrhage of cash which is now flowing out of ratepayers’ pockets through BC Hydro to IPPs. The contractual commitments add up to $54 billion over 56 years."

Note: If you move to Surrey and your kids can't get into a school they can always sign up for Surrey Connect online. Evidently it's called SAIL now - Surrey Acadamy of Innovative Learning. That would make a lot more sense then bussing it all he way into Vancouver every day.

Health Canada approves prescription heroin and GMO Salmon

It's pretty clear that the next criminal organization we have to deal with is Health Canada. It's bad enough that the methadone program has become grossly abused. Now they're going for the full monty. They're letting "doctors" prescribe heroin. I kid you not. Who's going to fund that - taxpayers? You can't get an MRI or cancer treatment but you can get free heroin? That is insane and evil. There is nothing compassionate about it. Bankrupting our sacred medical program to promote addition. That will burn tax dollars faster than a forest fire.

I'm not the only one that thinks Health Canada is a criminal organization. Like Vancouver Coastal Health, they have proven they have no regard for promoting health. They are simply engaged in harm promotion and enable addiction. People need homes not drugs. They should be handing out sandwiches instead of free crack pipes. Our good intentions are creating a lot of misery and funding the gang war. Handing out free heroin at Insite is wrong.

Dr. Colin Mangham lost his job for opposing the insanity surrounding Insite. Turns out there is big money to be had in harm promotion within the pharmaceutical industry. John Volken runs an amazing detox centre in Surrey where he not only helps people get off drugs but he also teaches them life skills and gives them a job at Price Pro as well. He can't get government funding because he helps addicts get off drugs instead of turning them into lifetime methadone addicts. For all the money the government is pouring into organized crime and harm promotion, they could be funding more housing instead. That would be a much healthier solution.

As for genetically modified salmon, give me a break. Anyone with a brain can see that is not good for you. I didn't even know what GMO was until I met a large group of locals in Kelowna objecting to it at Stephen Harper's visit. Injecting pesticide into food is not healthy. It's killing the bee population which is shooting ourselves in the foot. Well GMO salmon is worse.

The Council of Canadians opposes the approval of genetically modified salmon for sale as food in Canada. They are a credible NPO. If they approve genetically modified salmon for sale, they need to label it as such and let consumers decide. That is the only logical solution. Health Canada is a criminal organization working against the best interest of Canadian taxpayers.

Ip Man 2 Update: Mike Tyson in Ip Man 3

I just realized that not only has Ip Man 2 been released but it's also on Netflix. It's very well done. I made reference to the first Ip Man movie with Donnie Yen in a previous post. I like Wing Chun. I have mad harsh respect for the arts. The most stirring message from this movie is the importance of respecting the dignity of others. Nobody likes a bully. On that note I found two more inspiring quotes. The first is from one of Ip Man's students, the infamous Bruce Lee.



The other is from the Dalai Lama himself.



Update: I not sure how historically acurate Ip Man 2 is. It seemed more like a fictional remake of Rocky 4 where he takes on the Russian after Apollo fails only in reverse. Likewise in the first movie it appears that the big fight between Ip Man and a Japanese general simply never happened in real life. Ip Man went to Hong Kong in 1949 to flee the Communist uprising IRL becasue he was an officer in the rival political party, the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party.

I will note that both Ip Man movies are in Cantonese not Mandarin. Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong. Mainland China is trying to kill the language and replace it with Mandarin. Perhaps the hidden meaning behind the movie is to stand up to all bullies both foreign and domestic. Peace.

Yo! Mike Tyson is in Ip Man 3! David and Goliath hits the big screen. It's on DVD.



Whoa, it looks like Dr Smythe is right in that the Communist government of China had an influence in the production of the movie which may explain why it is so historically inaccurate. I was watching the opening credits for another Donnie Yen movie called Special ID and saw a very suspicious looking logo for the China Film Co Ltd. Wikipedia claims that the China Film Group Corporation is the largest and most influential state-owned film enterprise in China. According to Forbes it is a state monopoly that all imported films have to work with. I still think Ip Man is a great movie as long as you realize it is pure fantasy and is not historically accurate.

Burnaby fentanyl lab busted

The Surrey Leader is reporting that Delta Police busted a fentanyl drug lab in a Burnaby condo and seized over 16 kilograms of cocaine and heroin. They also seized nine firearms and two noise suppressors, over 100 kilograms of cutting agents, more than 4,500 oxycodone or oxycontin pills, more than a kilogram of methamphetamine, and 125 grams of pure fentanyl were seized. Well done. Fentanyl is deadly. Methamphetamine is crystal meth.

CBC posted pictures of how filthy it was. $1.5 million was also seized. Meanwhile back on the ranch, Surrey logged it's 40th shooting on Wednesday. Kevin Diakiw put out a thought provoking article on mental illness and drug addiction. It's an old series but I just noticed it and find it timely.

Fraser MacRae was a Rock Star

Yesterday I saw a cop on a quad outside the Front Room. Now that's what I'm talking about. Several years ago I was at Surrey central before they got rid of the crack dealers there and Surrey's awesome Police Chief at the time, Fraser MacRae, held a huge comunity policeing display right at crack central. He had a giant mobile command centre roll in with numerous auxiliary police officers on quads coordinating a concise community response to crime in Surrey. He was the exact opposite of Bill Fordy in every way.

Fraser MacRae was a Rock Star like John McKay, the VPD ninja was. Bill Fordy on the other hand is a flaming idiot. Bill Fordy was not an ace interrogator. He was a bumbling idiot on the Pickton investigation that was too busy sexually harassing Catherine Gallagher to do his job. He hasn't changed. He's one of the FOCERS - Friends of Craig Callen who is the root of the sexual harassment problem at the RCMP in British Columbia.



Bringing back the quads in Surrey is a good thing. Yesterday they were still kicking the cat in the sense that they were harassing the prolific offenders not the crack dealers but it is certainly better than doing nothing. I understand the math. A handful of prolific offenders are responsible for a majority of the crime. Harassing the prolific offenders prevents crime. I get it.

However, the real predators outside the Front Room on the strip are the crack dealer who brutalize the homeless on a daily basis. The prolific offender is stealing to pay back his dealer. If he doesn't do that, his dealer with beat the life out of him like they did to Janice Shore. If we really want to address the problem we get tough with the crack dealers not the addicts. Reducing the number of addicts reduces the crime and violence. That is the New York model. I saw it.

Royal Mail profits plunge after Moya Greene takes helm

The Scotsman is reporting that Royal Mail profits plunge after Moya Greene takes helm. Why does this not come as a surprise? Let me count the ways. Moya Greene tried to destroy Canada Post just like she did CN and Bombardier but by the grace of God we chased that crazy ass lunatic out of the country before she had the chance. She accepted the assignment to crash the Royal Mail so they could rationalize privatizing it. That was her mandate right from the get go.

I was a Letter Carrier with Canada Post. Moya Greene started screwing up Canada Post left right and centre. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing but claimed she knew everything. She was sent to Privatize the Post Office. The plan was destroy the profit margin and they'll be forced to privatize it. One of my coworkers said we're screwed. I said no we're not. She said yes we are. My husband worked for CN. They tried everything and nothing worked. There is no hope. I said you do what you gotta do I'll do what I have to.

So I took one for the team and we are both much better off. Canada Post and I that is. Canada Post is much better off without her. They're still turning a profit in her absence. So what happened to the Royal Mail and all the increased business revenue for delivering Internet purchases?



I made a website at moyagreene.com and posted her disasterous resume. I didn't say anything that was untrue. I didn't have to. The facts spoke for themselves. I posted a screenshot of the Bombardier stock along with the dates she started and finished working there. When she was there the stock completely tanked. I said if you believe Moya Greene is good at business then you've been conned. That's why we call her an ex con. Moya Greene is a fugative from justice. No Justice, No peace. She tied to sue me but telling the truth isn't defamation.

First it was Michael Manson from Smart and Biggar. Turns out that firm wasn't very smart or very big. Michael looked a little like Charles Manson around the eyes so I called him Chuckie for short. I said "Alright Chuckie, you might be a devil and it might be a sin but I'll take your bet so I will because a public Post Office is the best there's ever been." Record profits paying record dividends to the government. We weren't going to let a banker who derailed CN destroy that.

More of the story is in my free E Book. I kicked two law firms' ass. Then I got a little cocky and sent her and the Board of Directors a fake E-mail making fun of her. They traced the ip to my computer and fired me for sending the fake E-mail. Bad luck. Yet I am much better off. Then David Cameron who had an agenda to privatize everything under the sun including the schools and hospitals sees her and offers her a job at the Royal Mail. He wanted an axe murderer like Moya Greene to kill the business so they could privatize it and she eagerly acepted the oportunity. We were thrilled to get rid of her. Things at Canada Post have greatly improved.

Take a look at her picture. Every video she makes she looks like she's not playing with a full deck. No wonder her charity of choice is mental health. In the top picture she freaking wore the living room drapes and pretended it was a sari in a ridiculous video she made before she left.

Hey Moya, remember me? Finian is back so he is. I'm thriving in the private sector with no Union in a company that does everything you don't. They reward their shareholders, obey the law and treat their employees with respect. They keep growing and doing more and more business. They don't have time for your stupid games. They're too busy making money. They know what business revenue is. You don't have a clue.

So here I am. I'm still here. How do you like me now? My mother's ancestors were British. My father's ancestors were Scotch Irish. So hands off the motherland Moya Greene. They don't want your snake oil either. God save the Queen. Help stop Moya Greene.

Public sale of drugs in Surrey on the front page of the Vancouver Province - Update

The Vancouver Province ran a front page article yesterday with an in depth spotlight on the epicentre of drug related violence in Surrey outsode the Front Room. The article stated Drugs, sex and stolen goods: Population grows on vice-ridden Surrey Strip.

The Vancouver Sun also ran the article which explained "The two blocks of 135A Street between 106th and 108th avenues has long been a place where people who are homeless and addicted to drugs have congregated, mostly because it is close to medical services, food and shelters, and drugs are readily available." Drugs are readily available. They are sold in public and the police let them. That is why addicts go there. That is why addiction has spread like a forest fire consuming everything in it's path.

I have a lot more to say on this but just wanted to throw the links out there so people had a chance to read the article for themselves but I will say this. Note the picture in the Vancouver Sun article. It's a picture of a young woman smoking a crack pipe in public. Only it looks like a meth pipe since it has a round ball at the end. Crack pipes are normally straight glass tubes. This is all happening in full view outside the needle exchange which is no longer an exchange. They just hand out free needles for addicts to discard anywhere they want.

If we had a moral conscience we would support harm reduction not harm promotion. This is a place of exploitation. There are two reasons for it. One in the lack of affordable housing, the other is the public sale of crack. This brings us back to a crime prevention meeting in Surrey back in June 2008. Local residents complained that the police let people sell and smoke crack in public and they don't do anything about it.

The former owner of the Dell complained and said if someone lights up a cigarette outside his bar that person can be fined $2,000.00 and that fine can be enforceable. Yet the police drive by people selling and smoking crack and do nothing. That isn't right. Why am I the one having to live with bars on my windows? Mike Farnworth having to agree with the man's concerns shook his head and said all he could say to that was cite a quote from Charles Dickens and said "Sir, if the law believes that then the law is an ass." Indeed it is. Let's fix it while we still can.

Update - The Dianne Rock and Janice Shore Story:

It's important to remember how this desperate situation relates to the Janice Shore and the Dianne Rock story. Janice Shore was a homeless drug user that was found beaten to death at the end of this notorious Strip outside the Front Room in Surrey. The brutality of the Janish Shore murder outraged me. She was sexually assaulted and beaten to death. She was in a coma for two months from which she never recovered. I visited her in the hospital on Christmas morning.

One one side of her head her jaw had been literally caved in and on the other side of her head her temple was caved in. I wondered what could have caused those kind of injuries. It had to have been some kind of blunt forced trauma. A few months later while I was visiting the Front Room one of the patrons dropped a happmer out of his backpack. That's when the light went on. A hammer could have created those injuries.

Cpl. Bert Paquet from IHIT told a press conference Janice was involved in “high-risk activities” at the time of her death. He would not reveal whether she had been sexually assaulted or whether a weapon had been used. I spoke with him months later and he told me the police had no evidence Janice had been sexually assaulted. I said yes you do. She was found with her underwear pulled down around her ankles. You have the testimony of the witnesses that found her. In a court of law, testimony of witnesses is evidence.

Janice wasn't a sex trade worker per say. She was a quiet soft spoken panhandler. Like Dianne Rock she was forced into the sex trade after the addiction took hold to pay for the drug. If Janice shore was killed for a drug debt it couldn't have been a large one because she was a user not a dealer. Years later a former sex trade worker from the Strip outside the Front room contacted me and confirmed Janice had worked in the industry for a brief period of time. She said all the other girls hated her because they were trying to raise the bar and make some money. Janice would be gone half the day and come back with f*ck all.

That's when the investigation had a breakthrough. The former sex trade worker told me Janice was left beside that tree as a message to the other sex trade workers pay your debts or else. Everyone there knew that tree was where the drug dealers who supplied the sex trade workers demanded free service from them. Her murder was a message to the others. It is that kind of predatory exploitation that infuriates me.



Larry Mizen was the primary drug debt enforcer for that Strip. Everyone there knew about his brutality and was terrified of him for good reason. He was the prime suspect in her murder. If he did not do it, he knew who did. Not long after that information was made public he was found beaten to death in his rented home not far away. Larry Mizen worked for Len Peltier. The Hells Angels terminated Larry's contract and reassigned Lenny to Whitehourse.