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Wednesday, May 26, 2004 8 - Orono Weekly Times Basic Black Watch the borders! by Arthur Black The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. Senator Eugene McCarthy Senator McCarthy was, of course talking about American bureaucracy. Canadians can sleep soundly knowing that there is no way in hell our bureaucracy will ever occupy any sentence in the company of the word 'efficient'. As I speak, the so-called 'Air India' trial is crawling forward, millimeter by tortured millimeter, millimeter, in a Vancouver courtroom. It's a trial that has been going on for....gee; can it really be only ONE YEAR? One year, a platoon of two dozen mega-bazillion-dollar- billing. lawyers, a potential list of 1,000 (yes, 1,000) witnesses and no end in sight. That's obscene enough. What makes the situation truly vomit-inducing is that this is a trial for a cowardly mass-murder mass-murder that occurred in 1985. That's almost 20 years ago. Infant children of victims who died when Air India Flight 182 exploded off the coast of Ireland in 1985 are fully-grown adults with their own infants today. We all know that the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow....but 20 years to resolve a public crime where the perpetrators perpetrators are already identified and apprehended? Not the fault of bureaucrats - - the fault of lawyers* you say? A semantic quibble. What is a lawyer but a bureaucrat Who drives a more expensive car? Hemy Kissinger, a man who came to government bureaucracy bureaucracy relatively late in his career, nevertheless recognized the nature of the beast rather succinctly. succinctly. "Bureau-crats speak only in parts" he said. "It's as if you decide Picasso is good at legs, so you ask him to paint the legs. You have Gauguin do the torso, Renoir the hands, and since Matisse draws lovely heads, you get him to do the head. Then, when it's finished, you're astounded that you've produced a mess!" The people in charge of the drug abuse and prevention program program in the state of New Hampshire know what Kissinger was talking about. Just last month, they lost a $17 million dollar federal grant from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Reason? Their grant application arrived at the federal offices typed on pages with smaller margins than offi cially permitted. It didn't matter matter that the grant application was actually written by the drug-addicted patients affected, it was still rejected by the authorities. • Reminds me of the story of the Great Cross-Border-Drug- Scare of the late 1960's. This was a good four decades before . the post 9-11 cross-border paranoia paranoia we're familiar with today, but I remember it well. Formerly benign and easygoing easygoing border crossings between Canada and the U.S. unac- countably turned hostile and constipated overnight. Cars and trucks were mysteriously lined up for miles in both directions. directions. Ordinary cross-border shoppers were suddenly subjected subjected to unusually rigorous inspections. And it wasn't just the Canada-U.S. border. Word had it that people traveling from the U.S. into Mexico and vice versa were facing the same hostile hostile reception. U.S. Federal agents, armed to the teeth and grim as death, were checking everybody going in either direction. Reason? No one would say for sure,. but the rumour was the orders came from 'higher up'. Indeed they did. All the way from the office of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. Hoover was an iron-fisted, no- nonsense disciplinarian -actually -actually he was as batty as a braindamaged braindamaged cockatoo (the man liked to dress up in black lace bras-and fishnet stockings, but believed Martin Luther King was a card-carrying communist). No matter. 1 Nutbar or not, Hoover ran a tight ship. He insisted that all FBI agents be white-skinned, short-haired, male-gendered and perpetually clad in Brooks Brother's suit and tie. (Yeah, really hard to pick them out in a sailors bar.) He also kept his staff on a short leash. He would pore over every, memo issued by head office before it went public, writing writing caustic and cautionary revisions revisions in his trademark green ink. Once, when an otherwise unremarkable unremarkable memo went out con- =. ceming FBI procedure, Hoover took exception to the fact that the text of tiie memo was typed almost to the edges of the page. He took out his fountain pen and printed: WATCH THE BORDERS! J.E.H. The rest, as they say, is history. history. Advertisement AGENDA: 407 Highwy 407 agenda alive and well through Durham says Albert Werry of Enniskillen Ontario. By request and consent given, HarinderTakhar, our Minister of Transportation gave prime time on May 4th 2004 to meetings of discussion - At°Queen's Park the five gentlemen pictured above were in attendance of. large group for festivities of the day: Ron Mutton, Bowmanville (front) behind Mr. Mutton, from left to right - Don Frew - Lindsay, Pat Leddy - Bowmanville, Gerald Brown - Newcastle, John Wolters - Blackstock. Correction We must apologize to Mr. Albert Werry for misspelling misspelling the name of Ontario's Minister of Transportation, the Honourable Honourable Harinder Takhar in his ad for two weeks in a row. Last week's editon of the Orono Weekly Times included included a number of errors wich we sincerely regret. Clarington's Committee of council did not vote to move on to phase two of the Old. Bçwmanville Neighbourhood, Neighbourhood, Heritage Designation Designation plan as reported. They did however recieve for information the Bowmanville Heritage Conservation District District Background Study and will decide at the May 31st council meeting, how to proceed proceed with the plan. We had inadvertantly placed the Wilmot Creek east of Orono, when we all know the Wilmot has always flown west of the village. Garden P 5 r<y ^ Y'- J Bowmanville Museum / " x 37 Silver St. JOIN VS FOR OVR 1ST. ANNUAL PLANT The historic conserveratory at the museum is blooming with plants. Lots of choices including; Tomato, Green Pepper, Eggplant, Watermelon, Morning Glory, Herbs, Foxglove Stock your gardens at bargain prices and support your local museum May 29, 2004 10:00 am - 2:00 pm For more information call 905-623-2734 flwfffgcaH) Now available in Clarington only at RUSTV CHECK FRED'S AUTOBODY 163 Baseline Road, Unit 1 cctimatfs Bowmanville, Ontario L1C 3L4 • _ . ,. nc .•COMPETITIVERATES Tel; (90S) 623-6353 . 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