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Saturday, January 14, 2006
A sign of rot
Curtis Sliwa of the Guardian Angels came up from New York to Toronto this week. This did not please Toronto city officials, or the police, or the feds, who permitted him to visit for only few days.
It's easy to understand why everyone responsible for Toronto's safety doesn't like Sliwa. His visit, like the arrival of a vulture, is a sign of decay that highlights their own failure to control crime and the public's desperation for a solution.
Of course, vigilantism is not the answer -- but that is an inaccurate simplification of what Sliwa's group does. The presence of some visible authority on the streets of Toronto is a moral statement, the precursor to actually bringing lawfulness back to town. Of course Sliwa is a publicity-seeking media hound. But that doesn't differentiate him from, say, Toronto's mayor, premier or current prime minister.
Sliwa's apogee was twenty years ago, when New York was an urban war zone under mayors like Ed Koch and David Dinkins. When Rudi Giuliani cleaned up the city (a trend Mike Bloomberg has continued), Sliwa declined in prominence.
Perhaps that's a lesson for Toronto's 1970's-era criminologist-politicians: if you really don't want to share the media spotlight with Sliwa and his type, try cleaning up the city yourselves. New York is the perfect role model.
Here are a few beginner readings for Mayor Miller, with helpful titles like "How to run a police department", "Is there a right to beg?" and "Reclaiming the subway", published by the Manhattan Institute, one of the think tanks associated with the Giuliani/Bloomberg policing successes.
Oh, I know, I know. That means "police in our streets. With guns. In Canada." But I think this election's post-mortem will show that, apart from the Liberal party's self-immolation, the Boxing Day murder on Yonge Street was the watershed moment for Ontaro, when they decided to try Giuliani-style reality over Dinkins-style bromides.
Posted by Ezra Levant on January 14, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
This might work if Toronto had its own Giuliani. Unfortunately, right now they have their own Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London and a genuine moonbat.
Miller is thoroughly incompetent and unable to grasp the fact that he is mayor of a large North American city with all the attendant problems. Instead, he thinks he's running a hippie commune where social problems can be overcome with feelings. If Toronto wants to curb its downfall, then not only does Miller and the whole city council have to go, but the whole innocent mindset has to go as well.
I am not optimistic that this will happen. Tronna people are rich, lazy and stupid. The racial divide has been wide for a long time and getting worse. Only they can save themselves, which basically means they are doomed. I won't lose any sleep over this because they have rejected their abilities. They alone can bear the consequences.
Posted by: Scott | 2006-01-14 1:41:21 PM
Scott - mayor miller is indeed a moonbat in extremis, but for him, as for Martin, the return to the same old discredited and wholly ineffectual solutions involving gov't spending massive amounts of money (inevitably transferred at some or all levels by Liberal party cronies)is a win-win. He does not have to address uncomfortable truths about the ethinic politics nor the role their weak criminal justice system policies play in perpetuating and increasing the problem of rampant inner city violence. Plus, as an added bonus, all that spending gets to trnasfer through the cronies in the liberal party (the consultants, poll takers, general lowlifes who can't hold a real job because they have 0 to offer).
I suspect you've concluded that Miller is a racist in the past, and I think that it is arguably implicit in his, and Martin's, passive and wholly ineffectual reactions to the violence plaguing the black community in toronto (lets all have a group hug). After all, if you (surely knowingly, unless Martin and Miller are really dumb) advance ineffectual solutions and refuse to address this problem through the ample means at your disposal (ie actually enforcing crimnal laws and sanctions), it suggests that you are comfortable with the waves of dead young Jamaicans toronto racks up each week. in fact, you can use them as a prop to further your featehrbedding (cohorts and manipules of union socialogists at City Hall and liberal party parasites at the federal spending level). Are they racists? I don't know for sure, but this passive response to a growing problem the last 10 years suggests to me they bear a disburbing level of comfort with the regular toll of young balck men toronto's means streets claims each week.
Choose your canada indeed.
Posted by: GuyFoxe | 2006-01-14 2:48:44 PM
So .... there you are Robert McLooney. We thought you and the rest of the Loony Left reptiles were in hiding and waiting for the 23 Jan day of reckoning to pass. I just hope you can restrain yourself from spewing your anti-semetic crap anywhere but your own website. No one reads it when it's on your website ...... thank god.
Posted by: BCer | 2006-01-14 3:08:54 PM
GuyFoxe, I share your sentiments. I wrote the Mayor and got the usual off the shelf liberal platitudes with assurances that Miller/McGuinty/Martin and Mighty Mouse will save the day with handgun bans.
The real cause is that Toronto/Vancouver etc are now part of a complex global economy that includes sophisticated crime, which has high risk and high rewards. These young gang members aren’t interested in RRSPs. They’ll take high risk now as 15 year olds because they don’t plan to live long anyway. Our hyper-liberal leaders are incapable of acknowledging that changing demographics in a complex global economy causes these new problems. Plus Ottawa’s immigration policies no longer foster assimilation and they can’t acknowledge this fact because that would mean that we have inner city dynamics just like every other global city: which can’t be true because Canadians are nicer than everyplace else.
I’ve lived in Manhattan and Chicago. I watched NYC deteriorate in the late 70’s and be resurrected again by strong leadership from Giuliani who at the time was decried by liberals for being too tough. But now my family feels safe at night walking down the Avenue of the Americas with the kids whereas we won’t do that on Yonge St. at night anymore.
What we don’t need is more “central planning” by apparatchiks. We need an eagerness to reduce the rewards for gangs and we need to increase the risk for them by imposing severe punishment. Our courts need to be told by our soft-on-crime-liberal-leadership that they are not doing their job.
Posted by: nomdenet | 2006-01-14 4:52:33 PM
Did Martin announce this in Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler's Montreal riding today? If so, he's a smjrtyk. If so, he's still a smjrtyk. >>
Please, please tell me the man running our country is not this stupid:
"The Liberal Leader announced four proposals for increasing Canada's presence on the international scene, including establishing a Canada Centre for Peace and Democracy in the Middle East that would assist Palestinians in building a state founded on democracy and the rule of law." >>>
http://www.andrewcoyne.com
Posted by: maz2 | 2006-01-14 4:57:35 PM
Ahhh... oh yes he is; and your surprised?
Posted by: Richard | 2006-01-14 5:39:12 PM
See Ezra,
this is what you get for going on their network (CBC) and making a fool out of them for the whole country to see. You will now experience the wrath of the Natural Governing Party. Ah don't worry though, it's not like they are gonna pistol whip you or anything, just the usual drive by shhmears and like their leader, "taunts in the school-yard from a safe distance."
You've been pretty quiet as of late Roberta, haven't seen any of your posts here in a while. I'm sure you have been checking in though from time to time, trying to find an opening to fit that fat head of yours. Haven't had much to say as your ship starts to sink? You might want to get away as fast as you can from that behemoth before the undercurrent takes you down with it.
Sliwa is probably just following up on some of the leads from his failed assination attempt by organized crime. I'm sure he's just passing through on his way to Ottawa where the Librano crime family has its head office.
Roberta, are you insinuating that what happened to Sliwa may happen to our beloved Ezra? As I see it, Sliwa stood up against the organized crime families in New York much the same as Ezra stands up to the Libranos in Ottawa. Maybe you should grab your PJ's and that pink tie of yours Ezra and go into hiding. Yaaawwwnnn, or not.
Posted by: Lemmytowner | 2006-01-14 5:41:56 PM
Miller's no racist, but his city is. Whites are still in the majority and see the decay as being someone else's (i.e. non-white immigrants) fault.
The problem is no one wants to risk the controversy the solutions will bring. Giuliani's measures created intense opposition among many New Yorkers, not just the African-American community. His heavy handed measures led to accusations of police brutality (not a new thing for any city) and miscarriages of justice. Giuliani, to his credit, was willing to put up with it even at the risk of being unpopular. However, these measures yielded positive outcomes, and New Yorkers (however grudgingly) re-elected him in 1997 after he had turned a once-ungovernable city around. Even before 9/11 he had cemented his reputation as one of the city's greatest mayors. 9/11 just made him the greatest ever.
Miller, on the other hand, wants to be popular. The people's mayor, as it were. He is not willing to take the risks associated with a heavy-handed crackdown on crime. When a grieving mother needs support, he wants to help, not be accused of implementing the measures that led to her child's death. Unfortunately the rot extends further than him - the whole city council is like that, and so is the city for that matter. Stacked on top of each other, Toronto is ill-equipped to handle its decay. It's going to be fun to watch it die.
Posted by: Scott | 2006-01-14 8:34:51 PM
Curtis has a great radio show every weekday morning on WABC in New York . I listen when I am in the area . WABC is the biggest talk station in the whole country by the way.
Posted by: Quidnunc Savant | 2006-01-14 10:56:49 PM
If Tronna people are 'rich, lazy and stupid' then what's Deadmonton's excuse? Too many brain-dead Albertans?
Colby Cosh...
"...Toronto's 78 murders are not the most shocking Canadian crime statistic of the year, and the city cannot reasonably claim the title of Canada's murder capital. The icy, impassive City of Edmonton, which is a little more than one-quarter the size of Toronto, had 37 homicides in 2005. Calgary and Ottawa, each of which is more populous than Edmonton, reported only 34 murders between them. Even Winnipeg, a traditionally bloody municipality roughly Edmonton's size, did away with only 24 of its citizens. It would appear that according to the year-end murder counts, Edmonton's homicide rate exceeds Toronto's by about 75%."
And those dumbass racist Deadmontonian whites, still in the majority, see the decay as being someone else's (i.e. non-white immigrants) fault.
"Police issued Canada-wide warrants on the 11th for two Edmonton men wanted in connection with the case. [Justin Elliot Taylor Age 21. Gunshot.
...a body had been found on the Enoch Cree Nation Reserve just west of Edmonton] Facing charges of second-degree murder and possession of a firearm is Richard Merrick Gordon, 24 (left) while accessory after the fact and possession of a firearm charges await Jamaine Anthony Thompson, 26. Both men are *black* and are considered armed and dangerous."
http://www.lastlinkontheleft.com/e2000.html#060109
"The nature of Edmonton's energy-related boomtown economy plays a significant role in the city's crime statistics. Good times often attract a transient population, and with the area's metro population now surpassing the million mark, the provincial capital is no longer the sleepy frontier town it once was.
Second-generation immigrants now make up a large percentage of Edmonton's inhabitants..."
Just what are these Nazibertans implying? That there's some sorta correlation between immigrants and a rise in crime? Tar suckin' racist scumbags!
Posted by: DJ | 2006-01-14 11:23:48 PM
Hey DJ: What's a Deadmontonian to do if the stats tell you just what you said in your last two lines. Hard to argue with statistics...and remember Paul Martin did say that we are a nation of minorities...so that shouldn't be a surprise, eh ? By the way, what does DJ stand for ? Dumbass Junkie ?
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-01-14 11:46:12 PM
Naaahhh...ya think so Mark? Ya think it's hard to argue with stats? Ya think that Dr. Jared Taylor's Color of Crime, just chock full of stats, might be right?
"Blacks are just 13 percent of the population [in the US] but they commit more than half the muggings and murders in the country."
"The proportion of blacks... in an area is the single best indicator of how dangerous it is."
• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
• When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.
Oh and how about Stats Canada:
"Between 1991 and 2001, the Black population increased 31%, three times the rate of growth of only 10% in the general population."
"Blacks represented 7% of Toronto’s total population in 2001, the highest proportion among metropolitan areas."
Ya think there just might be a link between the growing black population in TO and increased crime? Naaaah it can't be. Ezra says it's rot and Scotty says it's those white racist bastards. How could two such intelligent people be so wrong?
Posted by: DJ | 2006-01-15 12:25:54 AM
From my perspective all that we are seeing are the gangs doing business.
Certainly, in Edmonton, with money laying in the streets, there is lots of cash for bling-bling, 4x4's (we don't drive no mercedes out here) and an all-around good time at the OK Corral.
Where there is money there is/are gangs. And in the world of gangs, business is done and settled at the end of a barrel.
Where we are different from Torrona, is that, that God, the killings have been kept between them and we don't have the problem of drive-by random shootings. It is still safe enough to walk the streets here and not be afraid of getting shot.
Ed the Hun
Posted by: EdtheHun | 2006-01-15 2:05:17 AM
EdtheHun, I agree with you that “it’s just business”. It’s not about racism. It’s highly lucrative business and with the risk of getting caught and severely punished low. The risk in Toronto had been between the gangs shooting each other and we didn’t care about that until --- Boxing Day. Then the equation changed. An innocent child was killed on Yonge St’s shopping district, that’s middle class territory, that’s our community. We won’t tolerate that. If we do, then Scott is right, we’re finished as a society. There are a lot of appeasing socialists on council who can’t grasp this problem. But thank goodness, some “get it”.
Therefore we, the middle class in Toronto, are now reacting and calling for an end to Liberal judges handing out lenient sentences. This will take new political leadership, starting in Ottawa and starting with no more abominable, Liberal appointments like Rosalie Abella to the SC of Canada.
As I said above, these gang members are from a globally connected culture whose economic time horizons don’t include RRSPs. They don’t expect to live past 30, which is when Canadian middle class youth finish university and think about starting a family, buying a house etc. The gang members don’t think this way, they are from a culture (and with multi-culturism all cultures are equal, right? So we can’t blame the culture, right?) that lives for the moment, trades illegal goods and does not put their illegal cash in an RRSP because there is no time horizon in their minds that call for old age, they don’t plan to live very long and they don’t value their own life nor ours. Their values are completely different than ours because their time horizons are different. This is not a racist comment, as Ed said, this is just a global business equation that even Canada the Good is now a part of.
What do we do? We can’t change global cultures, not even the self-righteous Liberals nor the UN can do that, besides they promote the continuation of warped cultures. But we can change the risk/reward business equation for these gang members. As many have said above, Giuliani figured out what needed to be done and was successful at it. So let’s just do it. In my mind there are a lot of votes swinging to the CPC on this issue, the middle class has had enough, they want the problem fixed and they know Liberals in Ottawa and Queens Park and socialist Mayor Miller won’t fix it. Either consciously or sub-consciously, since Boxing Day, this may be the biggest issue for urban voters in the election campaign.
Posted by: nomdenet | 2006-01-15 5:48:16 AM
DJ: Not that Scott needs me to stick up for him(have you read his comments before? I certainly do not agree with a lot of his rants), but his talk of "white racists" may be referring to the fact that the liberal types like the Mayor don't seem to mind so much when blacks are killing blacks, and only decide to act when the young white girl got killed.
As for Ezra, rot is appropriate and doesn't contradict the stats.(Not sure what offends you in his statements) More Police presence and get tough on the criminals, clean up the graffitti and neighborhoods. Toronto needs to do something, rather than spew the liberal multi-cultural line.
Anyway, sorry about the crack re: your initials, I was having a bad day.
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-01-16 4:30:25 PM
You don't get law and order from the good nature of human beings. Human beings by and large are self serving. The gangs and criminals in Toronto and elswhere are getting what they want at the expense of society in general because the people whose resposibility it is to keep the law and order are not doing it.
If it takes cops ont the streets with guns then that is what it takes. Most of the current crop of so called leaders don't have the stomach or the backbone to do the job. Simple answer is get rid of them and hire someone who will.
Posted by: PGP | 2006-01-17 1:36:35 PM
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