HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-07-08, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010. PAGE 5.
Astory I heard at my pappy’s knee, post-
World War II, went like this: One day,
circa 1940, the Nazi High Command
was sitting around discussing ways to destroy
Great Britain. The Blitzkrieg bombers were
being turned back by the RAF. The V-2 rockets
were only sporadically successful. Panzer
troops were too overextended for a cross-
channel invasion. How about, someone
suggested, blanketing the British Isles with
counterfeit money – ten-, 20- even 50-pound
notes as perfectly fabricated as German
technology could concoct, so fiendishly
accurate even monetary experts couldn’t
detect them?
The story went that Himmler shook his head
and murmured “No. That would be too cruel”.
The story was, of course, as phony as a
three-dollar bill. Nothing (certainly not an
illicit printing job) was too cruel for those arch
thugs of the 20th century. In fact, the Nazis did
launch an elaborate plot to blanket Great
Britain with impeccable quality bogus British
currency. We’ll never know how devastating
the scheme might have been because (a) the
Brits got wind of it and (b) the Nazis were
defeated before it was fully mobilized.
In any case, Nazis were Johan-come-latelys
in the forgery biz. Common crooks have been
tinkering with currency and tampering with
coinage pretty much since money was
invented nearly three millennia ago.
Nations have tried their hand at forgery
before as well. The Brits cranked out fake
Continental dollars to hamstring the
Americans during the Revolutionary War; the
U.S. Feds did it to the Confederate South in
the American Civil War. Ironically, the Feds
blew it. The bogus Confederate currency they
manufactured was easily recognizable because
it was infinitely superior to the ‘real’ thing.
Government counterfeiting still goes on.
North Korea – which, if it were a dog, would
be declared rabid – turns out virtually no
agricultural or industrial commodities for the
world’s markets. What it does produce are
illicit drugs, fake Viagra and sheets and sheets
of fake American hundred-dollar bills. Very
good ones. Kim Jong Il’s mob employs top of
the line Swiss-made intaglio printing presses
which only governments can purchase. North
Korean diplomats and other toadies then pass
the bills at overseas racetracks, casinos and
other venues that accept large bills without
question. American authorities estimate that
over the past number of years, North Korea
has slipped over $1 billion worth of fake
American currency into the world’s financial
bloodstream.
Not that counterfeit money always has to be
sophisticated. Police in Greensburg, Pa.
recently arrested a woman for ‘theft by
deception’ after she paid for some clothes at a
Fashion Bug store – with an American $200
bill.
You know – the one with George W. Bush on
the front? And the legend on the back that
reads “We Like Broccoli”?
As a forgery, the bill was just slightly more
high tech than Monopoly money. A
spokesman said that police were ‘unsure’ how
a clerk could be taken in by it.
And here in Canada? A couple of weeks ago
I got up to the cashier at a supermarket with a
buggy full of groceries, laid them on the
conveyor belt and presented the cashier with a
Canadian hundred dollar bill.
We don’t take those,” sniffed the cashier.
“What do you mean?” I said. “I just got this
from my Credit Union. Read the small print.
It says ‘Bank of Canada. This is legal tender’”.
My cashier shrugged loquaciously. Final
score: grocery store one, Black, nil.
Fortunately, I’m a generous man who
doesn’t hold grudges. I even let them put all
my groceries back on their shelves.
Later, I checked with a Mountie and she told
me that a lot of Canadian businesses routinely
refuse to accept Canadian $50 and $100 bills
these days. It’s probably because of a huge
counterfeiting ring that operated for a few
months near Windsor, Ontario back in 2001,
pumping millions of dollars worth of fake 50s
and 100s into the economy.
As for my shopping impasse, it could have
been worse, I suppose. Back in the mid 1990s
German police arrested a guy on his way to
our shores with nearly $11 million worth of
counterfeit Canadian currency in his knapsack.
Make that counterfeit Canadian Tire
currency.
I’m glad the cops nailed him before he got to
a Canadian Tire outlet on this side of the pond.
With my luck I’d have been standing in line
behind him at the checkout.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Phony as a three-dollar bill
It really felt like I was watching a movie, or
even some news coverage from some far-
flung, war-torn country, late last month as
the G-20 summit rolled into town. But no, it
was live and it was in Toronto.
As someone who grew up in the Greater
Toronto Area, I was shocked and upset by what
was happening to the city and as a police
officer’s son, I was truly saddened and angered
as I watched people kick the windows of police
cruisers, set them on fire and then applaud
when the inevitable explosion came.
My support for our police officers has been
no secret, so it was no surprise that I had to
forcibly pluck myself from news coverage in
order to collect myself and let anger subside.
Streets I walked for 15 years were filled with
people who felt their lives had been made so
difficult by police over the last few hours that
they would tear the city apart. In order to prove
whatever point they were trying to prove, they
inflicted millions of dollars in property
damage, endangered the lives of citizens and
police officers and as a result, the only
discussion they incited with the decision-
makers was who was going to pay to clean up
the mess.
Not only did they detract attention from their
own cause, but many peaceful protesters who
were there for real causes and went about
lobbying for their interests in a conscientious
manner also found their interests
overshadowed by Black Block-style protests.
After reading a quote by an “anarchist
organizer” in The Globe And Mail,I was
reminded of the movie,Fight Club.
When speaking of fellow protesters, he said,
“they are your co-workers and neighbours,
your teachers or students, your relatives.”
When the supposed cathartic activity of
fighting each other becomes too benign for
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in Fight Club,he
begins what is called Project Mayhem, a
guerrilla unit hell-bent on causing general
chaos in the world. He insists that the members
of Project Mayhem are not so different from
those they protest, they just want more respect.
“We cook your meals, we hurl your trash, we
connect your calls, we drive your ambulances,
we guard you while you sleep,” he says.
Black Block-style protests involved masked
people scurrying through the city in the
shadows, popping up through sewers to inflict
damage on a city that had done nothing to
them. And now that the world’s leaders have
left, it is we who are left to clean up the mess.
So when I hear stories of residents who may
have been wrongfully arrested for a few hours,
accidentally getting scooped up with
protesters, people who had to stand in the rain
while police conducted an investigation, they
were angry, saying they must have been in the
wrong place at the wrong time, I felt
something (someone) was getting lost in the
shuffle.
Unfortunately, police officers are never given
sympathy for being in the wrong place at the
wrong time. They are always expected to be
right, no matter what the circumstances.
Protesters (supposedly) had problems with
the thought of a world tax, which would lead to
world government and a new world order. And
because the police were charged with
protecting a city, a hatred for them grew within
protesters who attacked with rocks, ball
bearings, bottles of urine and clubs implanted
with fish hooks, simply for being police
officers and doing their jobs during a meeting
they had nothing to do with.
Talk about being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.
McGuinty needs to give voice to demos
Project Mayhem
Premier Dalton McGuinty needs to move
quickly to ensure people who
demonstrate in the streets to make their
views known are heard as much by his
government and the legislature as groups who
are better financed and organized and even
employ professional lobbyists, including most
of his former staff.
This would be a way of helping compensate
for his government’s glaring gaffe in which it
secretly changed a law to restrict
demonstrators and did not seem to know what
it meant.
Police revealed the law was changed and
said it banned and allowed them to question
and arrest anyone approaching closer than five
metres to the security fences surrounding the
G20 Summit and the premier seemed to agree,
but it turned out it banned penetrating more
than five metres inside the fences.
The confusion and secrecy have hurt
McGuinty’s image, although previously he
had expressed more sympathy for
demonstrators than any earlier premier.
McGuinty a week before, avoiding
provincial employees demonstrating because
they might lose their jobs through
privatization, said they were an important
reminder to proceed with caution.
“It’s important they be there,” he said.
“These are people. This is how they earn a
living and raise their families.”
Premiers usually have not been as charitable
to those who demonstrated against them.
Progressive Conservative Mike Harris was the
most demonstrated against, because he cut
jobs.
Demonstrators followed him in a bus in one
election and pelted him with food and an egg
splattered his pant leg. They invaded his picnic
in his hometown and Harris, who was not
short of answers, told them it was
unreasonable to do business on a Sunday. A
bomb threat was phoned to a hotel where he
was attending a dinner.
Children booed him when he welcomed
South African hero Nelson Mandela in
Toronto and Harris said he was disappointed
children were brought into a political
confrontation.
Harris said, “I don’t do demos” and almost
all the demonstrators against him were union
members probably paid time and half for it,
and “I am firm and determined and will not be
thrown off my agenda,” and rarely was.
Liberal premier David Peterson suffered his
most serious demonstration when he called an
election and an environmental activist seized
his microphone and took over most of his
press conference.
Peterson also had difficulty keeping his
temper and when a demonstrator called him
“the poverty premier” retorted “get a job,”
which prompted complaints he sneered at the
unemployed. He said he would “love to take a
swing” at another heckler, but refrained.
New Democrat Bob Rae faced
demonstrations particularly by well-financed
business groups, one of which erected a sign
picturing him as a jackass, which the
provincial transportation ministry forced it to
remove as a distraction to drivers.
Conservative William Davis in his first
election as premier was followed by crowds
protesting against his refusal to extend funding
to the end of Catholic high school.
Davis faced the biggest demonstration when
he announced he would ban teachers from
striking and they descended on the legislature
in thousands and changed his mind.
McGuinty has faced a few demonstrations
by environmentalists, farmers and truck
drivers, but nothing on such a scale.
One reason is he has built close relationships
with public sector workers by supporting
generous pay raises for them before the
economic recession, although this could
change when he has to get to grips with cutting
his record budget deficit.
McGuinty’s problem is not that people have
demonstrated against him, but that he sneakily
brought in a law to restrict demonstrators.
But he should have genuine sympathy for
demonstrators, because more affluent and
organized groups such as business, doctors,
accountants and other professionals meet
politicians in cozy receptions at Queen’s Park
regularly and often employ lobbyists.
Those who aren’t financed as well have no
similar inside track and are forced to march in
the streets and it is time the politicians
recognized this.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
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