THE ANTI-DEMOCRACY

The City of Vancouver has now become the head of the Anti-Democratic Movement.

Wanting desperately for all of us stupid annoying citizens with apparent minds of our own to "stay on message" during the BIG EVENT next winter, the City wants the right to remove signs and graffiti and billboards from private property AT ONCE and with no court order or grace period.

I guess this is what happens to otherwise reasonable men and women when they find a shard of power.

In this case, the closet Fascist is one Paul Henderson, director of Olympic operations for the City. He says these extraordinary powers are "required because of the need to act quickly during the limited time line of the Games."

He also wants new powers to put up huge Olympic images...huge, as in building-sized.

Keep in mind this is the same city that fought tooth and nail a group of home owners in the Lee Building at Main & Broadway because the building had a large billboard on their roof.

So...

Consider the meaning of this effort.

You must not disapprove of the Olympics. You must not voice that disapproval. You must not put a sign in your own front yard that doesn't SING THE COMPANY SONG.

The majority must rule.

The commonly held opinion must prevail.

O.K. Vision Council speak up.

Where are you on this detestable, dangerous attempt to suspend the central notions of democracy all for a downhill luge?

BURNED

Police are searching for at least three homeless people they believe may know how the Patullo Bridge was set on fire.

Are they kidding?

This local disaster, which has completely screwed up traffic in Surrey and New Westminster beyond endurance, is going to be blamed on the homeless and their pathetic attempt to not freeze to death?

A bridge made of wooden supports in the year 2009?

Where are we, Madison County, Maine, Connecticut, 1873?

Let's get serious for just one minute.

I have lived here for over 40 years. I have crossed that relic exactly twice. That was enough to convince me that, short of some national emergency, I would not find myself on that antique again.

Every provincial government for the past 40 years has had the opportunity to replace this Lego toy with a real bridge, or two.

None has acted.

I am sorry that the thing didn't burn utterly to a cinder.

That would have forced Monumental Gord to take his eye off the multi-million dollar 12-day superhighway to Whistler and build something that was actually useful and important to several hundred thousand tax-paying citizens.

Remember them?

OPENING ACT

The following text is taken from the Crooks and Liars website. It explains more fully the video below.

As we watch history unfolding before our eyes, one more anniversary: It was almost seventy years ago, on Easter Sunday in 1939, that more than 75,000 people come to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hear famed African-American contralto Marian Anderson give a free open-air concert.

Anderson had been scheduled to sing at Washington's Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution, a political organization that helped manage the concert hall, denied her the right to perform because of her race. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned her membership from the organization in protest, and Anderson's alternate performance at the Lincoln Memorial served greatly to raise awareness of the problem of racial discrimination in America.

SIGNS ALONG THE ROAD