by Jane Gaffin

While the Whitehorse business community seeks ways to keep the downtown core thriving, the city officials are intent on killing it. The latest insanity was the city's installation of squawk boxes perched on top of the traffic lights at Main Street and Second Avenue.

Oh, that city council and the traffic engineers are such a clever bunch, installing expensive and noisy high-tech gadgetry under the ruse of "assisting the visually impaired".

A partially blind lady, who has learned to negotiate the streets by listening to the sounds around her or occasionally asking for help, was perplexed the first time she heard the unnatural racket.

"What's that?" she asked the pedestrians around her. Nobody knew, but assumed a service club was selling something. It wasn't, which is a clear indication the parties responsible had never bothered consulting anybody.

A bunch of bozo bureaucrats, in cahoots with city council that approves wasting the public purse when it should be cleaning spit off the sidewalks, has plans to install identical noise pollution at every traffic light.

The distractive chirp-chirp-chirping sounds every time a light from either direction changes colour. However, it is impossible to discern the instructions given by the garbled phantom voice.

Big centres like Toronto install a nominal number of non-vocal sound systems at wide, busy intersections that notify pedestrians there is enough time if they run like the wind to cross before the traffic resumes its flow. Whitehorse is not Toronto.

Communities managed by people with gumption would hire students to guide people across the street or build walkways that go OVER the traffic as from Hougen's Department Store to Shopper's Drug Mart or UNDER the traffic a la Robert Campbell bridge. These features enhance safety for ALL pedestrians.

Local residents gather periodically to brainstorm various activities and fun schemes to attract and keep people downtown to prevent the main core from falling victim to a ghost-town facade.

Virtually every community across North America is fighting to survive as governments work at cross purposes and consumers are drawn to the outskirts by the rising clutter of sterile strip malls.

How can every single community in The Americas possibly come to the identical conclusion about what is best for such a diverse population living in various climes and unique settings?

Why would a small Northern community want to replace its distinct personality with the dull, boring features of Samesville, N.A.?

This tacky bureaucratic-imposed uniformity is called social engineering and is a Marxist-Leninist trick that has been oozing from the United Nations without your knowledge for many decades.

Small downtown businesses are forced to face a multitude of bureaucratic harassments and regulatory red tape from all levels of government and to compete with the encroachment of big-box nationals and multinationals.

As though all that isn't enough, now the city's exalted mission is to bring bureaucratic-created noise pollution out of the chambers into the public. Worse, residents really aren't paying attention to what is unfolding in slow motion.

Political author George Orwell warned back in 1940 that society is moving into an age of totalitarianism in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction.

"The autonomous individual is going to be stomped out of action," he said.

Under the guise of "sustainable communities", key bureaucrats are invited to attend big-city meetings called conferences. They are wined and dined lavishly. Groups of skillfully-trained manipulators carry forth these brainwashing sessions. The ultimate goal is to lure municipalities into dictating where and how people live, work, dress and think to bring residents into line with United Nations Think.

Decision-makers take the bribes. Millions of tax dollars and foundation funds are transferred in the form of "grants" to bribe cities and towns to accept and enforce guidelines that are often incorporated into legislation and regulations--and citizens are none the wiser as each initiative seeps into their communities. How do you think Whitehorse ended up with an unpopular bylaw that dictates to business owners whether their customers can or cannot smoke tobacco. But council didn't make any production about spitting on the sidewalks.

Instead of downtown cores being designated as free-market trade zones, politically-correct governments are banning together to blacklist those "holes" as homes of the black economy.

While residents and business folks try to offset the anti-business policies, bylaws and property tax hikes that the city council passes to conform with the will of the United Nations, the city has the audacity to bring about non-revenue-generating noise pollution that has the potential drive people nuts--or at least drive them out of the downtown core.

A good sling-shotist or pole shinnyist could easily slit the voice box's throat. Instead of vandalism, the deed would be more appropriately heralded as a community service and its author awarded with a medal. If a person stood on a street corner howling at the top of his lungs into a microphone at regular bursts, day in and day out in perpetuity, a complaint would be lodged about the nutbar disturbing the serenity of the public airspace.

The police would respond like they usually do when any citizen complains about a common nuisance, such as a neighbour's loud party that is a buzz of frustating nonsense to a non-guest.

Initially, the loud mouth might receive a stern warning to pipe down and move along. If he persists and the police have to return, he most likely would be hauled away and booked for disturbing the peace. Common sense is the fine line drawn between exercising the Right to Freedom of Expression and the Right to a Quiet Society.

Some years ago, the late Don Sawatsky wrote a column about an old grump who managed to talk Vancouver's town fathers into passing a law prohibiting the mobile ice cream dispensers from playing bells, chimes or other little tunes to attract kids to their trade.

If a six-member Right to a Quiet Society was successful in quelling the tinkles and tunes of the ice cream vendors, surely Whitehorse residents who are forced to live, work and walk in the vicinity of Main Street and Second Avenue can find a method to silence the offensive, high-pitched, chirp-chirp-chirping box. And, oh, by the way, the chirping grows louder in direct proportion to the traffic noise. Turning down the volume would render the squawking inaudible. So, what is the sense of this expensive, grant-driven piece of technical trash.

From where I stand on the street corner, this noise pollution comes under the category of the Criminal Code referred to as Causing Disturbance:

"Everyone who, not being in a dwelling house, causes a disturbance in or near a public place...is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction." Another section states: "Every one who commits a common nuisance and thereby endangers the lives, safety or health of the public, or causes physical injury to any person is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years."

The traffic engineers, city manager and municipal politicians are not physically present creating the loud-mouth nuisance. But they are definitely the guilty parties who are endangering the public by causing the noise to be present, and should be criminally charged accordingly.

Thwe ulterior motive behind these distractive contraptions is to eventually enable the totalitiarian elitists a mechanism to stop peons in their tracks for their daily brainwashing sermons and behavioural lessons.

To force compliance, film will roll from hidden cameras while everybody stands at attention. A gravelly voice will babble airy-fairy, neo-fascist nonsense from the microphones: "Big Brother is watching; the Thought Police are listening."

Next will come the three-minute Hate spiel vilifying downtown businesses as the black economy run by capitalist pigs.

"All together now, in unison," the gravelly voice will demand.

"Spit on them. Spit on the sidewalks where you stand and prove you cheerful helpers hate this disease-infested part of town. That's why the city council never enforces anti-spitting laws nor provided spittoons. We WANT you spreading germs by spitting on the sidewalks!"

The Hate spiel heaped on downtown merchants will be capped with: "Anybody caught making a purchase down here will mysteriously disappear." "The Voice" can utter any threats it wants with impunity. It is only a criminal offence for the peasants to threaten to kill another person. What an effective way for the city to slay the downtown commercial district and drive consumers to the other end of town where the socialist government will all businesses will have been expropriated without compensation.

This is why the skillful manipulators can continue wooing the political whores with bribe money. Municipalities are promised more GST-exempt money in their coffers and more authority by letting them arm their bylaw officers.

It is oooh, sooo Orwellian, it leaves the masters swooning with ecstasy.

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Copyright 2004 diArmani.com