Last Year's Runner-Up

The Bankrupt Party

Francis Bula has written a first-rate piece on the front page of the local edition of this morning's Globe.

In it, she chronicles the endless escalating costs of the famous Olympic Village. Read the full story for the numbers and weep. The final total cost will easily exceed a Billion dollars. The City of Vancouver is increasingly on the hook and pegging more and more of its limited resources on this one horse.

Of course, the officials, like City Councillors Louie and Meggs, insist alles iz gut and all will work out ïn the fullness of time."

Hey, Ray and Gregg...in the fullness of time, I will be a Hollywood movie star, my next-door neighbour will win the Nobel for particle physics and and the guy at the fish store won't start a conversation with "How about those Canucks!"

The irony of this story is that it sits on the page in the print edition smack up against The Culprit.

There he is waving from the window of a helicopter on his way to his re-election - Gordo, the Great.

The man who has brought you the $Billion housing project that is bankrupting the City of Vancouver.

Oh what rich comedy if he lost the election (He won't.) and had to sit out The Big Party.

We can dream, can't we?

It Won't Stop

Officers used reasonable force, police expert tells taser inquiry

Sergeant Brad Fawcett of the Vancouver police said because the officers believed Mr. Dziekanski was about to attack them or someone else with a stapler, they had reasonable grounds to use the stun gun.

HAHAHAHAHAHA....

To laugh is to cry is to spit is to throw up our hands in hopeless disgust...

End of an Era

My passion for NFL football has waned in recent years.

My enthusiasm for CFL football evaporated shortly after BC Place opened.

Now, John Madden is retiring from the broadcast booth (NBC Sunday Night Football) and his likely replacement will be the entirely limp Chris Collingsworth.

Over and out.

Maybe if Tom Brady comes back and leads the Patriots to another Super Bowl win...

He's 74!!! and He's Having a Time

That Old Time Religion

A couple want to elope.

Their loving parents don't approve.

The family "turns the couple in."

Turns them in to what?

To the villagers, who promptly have the young pair executed by firing squad.

Such is Afghanistan.

Such is the enlightenment of fundamentalism world-wide.

Savages armed with Good Books.

Canadian Trooper Karine Blais, age 21, was killed in Afghanistan on Monday. Her uncle says she died in vain. We concur.

Canadians are getting killed in a convoluted effort to...to do what?

Save the country of poppy lords and family firing squads.

Please.

Give us a better war in which to risk young Canadian lives.

Get out of Afghanistan.

Carpetbaggers

Global TV and CTV want the federal government to buy many, many ads on their failing rural TV stations.

No.

These feudal empires have behaved like cretins for decades, showing little or no interest in the communities they claim to serve and treating all their employees other than the executive suite like chattels.

The answer is no.

Sponsorship Scandal - 10th Year?

Groupe Polygone is in negotiations with the federal government to limit the press and the public to knowledge about their crimes.

The mere fact that the government would even for a moment entertain such a conversation is chilling.

These people, with the help of the Chretien/Martin governments, stole Canadian taxpayer money.

They are criminals and the press and the public have a very solid and important right to know.

The Dubai Story - From Victor

Hi David:


This article is about the United Arab Emirates (UAE) specifically Dubai. Several Vancouver planners, including former chief planner Larry Beasley, preen about bringing their sustainability credentials to the UAE. Well, it would appear some things are not being "sustained" in Dubai and the rest of the UAE. Things like human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, workers' rights. Does Larry Beasley include any of these things in his definition of sustainability?


Or what about his sycophantic friends in Vancouver's development industry? They went so far as to name a condo after him ( which isn't selling by the way). That would be like a brothel owner in Nevada naming a whorehouse after Nevada's Secretary of Health. Do the development goniffs include basic human rights in their definition of sustainability?


This article should have run in the Vancouver Sun with some hard questions for Snivelly ( sorry, Beasley) and the developers. But we don't do that sort of thing here.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

Dear Victor,

This is, of course, exactly what I have thought of Dubai since we first started looking at that obscene hotel shaped like a billowing sail. When I began to read about Tiger and Roger Federer playing their respective games in this oil-driven sewer, I was shocked and disgusted. Couldn't they see what madness they were supporting?

Two Geniuses at Work

Answer to a Friend on Gay Marriage

David, the issue of gay marriage is low on my priority list. It was made legal here in Canada and hasn't directly affected my life at all. And I wholeheartedly believe that gay couples should have all the same benefits, etc. of heterosexual couples.

But if I were given the choice to vote on it, I would vote 'No' for gay marriage. If you or your readers think this makes me a bigot then c'est la vie.

I heard someone recently suggest that all liberal democratic societies have a built-in self-destruction mechanism. Years ago I would have thought this to be nonsense but now I wonder if the concept of unlimited rights for everyone and a determination to never discriminate against anyone in any way is taking us down a very slippery slope.

Let me pose some questions to you, which I hope you will take the time to think about carefully before responding to.

1. Do you believe, in the interest of non-discrimination, that a man should be able to have any number of wives?

2. Do you believe, in the interest of non-discrimination, that an adult child should be able to marry their mother or father?

3. Do you believe, in the interest of non-discrimination, that a brother and sister should be able to marry each other?

4. Do you believe, in the interest of non-discrimination, that a 6'2" tall man, who states that he believes he's a woman, should be able to wear a dress & makeup and stand in the girls bathroom at a local school or swimming centre?

5. Do you believe, in the interest of non-discrimination, that the concept of separating boys and girls into different sports leagues is completely outdated?

I'm most interested in your answers. Please note that if you don't agree with all of these initiatives that more than a few people would call you a bigot and believe you to be absolutely wrong.

Dear Robert,

I don’t for a second believe that your opinions on this wildly divisive topic make you a bigot. I believe simply that we see the issue differently and that we disagree. How boring life would be if we all agreed about everything. This must be why neither of us is rushing to buy a townhouse in a “Del Webb Community.”

As for the five questions…

1) Keep in mind that at Passover – and this still is Passover – there are only four questions.

2) I don’t accept that any or all of those questions is germane to the subject of gay marriage.

Each of those questions is, in itself, mildly interesting, and might pass a few dull minutes under a summer sun at the beach, but to me they are stand alone issues unreflective of the discussion of gay marriage.

I cannot for the life of me see how Bob and Joe getting married or Gwen and Cathy getting married will have any possible deleterious effect on their immediate geography. I agree with the Iowa court decision that there is no constitutionally sufficient justification for the exclusion of such marriages.

I see no relation whatsoever between gay marriage and the union of people with their parents, siblings or favorite pets.

I think to suggest that some similarity exists, Robert, is to be uncharacteristically cruel (I do not know you to be such.) or unreasonable (I don’t know you to be such.)

Further, I hold no special holy status on the word “marriage,” just as I hold no special holy status on any other words, like “pineapple” or “hub” or “succulent.”

Language may or may not be God-given, according to your beliefs and world views, but for me, human life, God-given or otherwise, is a matter of free wills and it is we flesh and blood folk who have written these words and declared that they mean one thing or another.

At a time, the universe spun in submission around the glorious earth, the world was flat and all brown people were savages. Women had no business in the voting booth or boardrooms and visionaries were heretics whose evil could only be burned out of them, preferably in the village square.

Marriage is a human idea.

For a very long time, “until death do us part,” meant a few years. People died of an impacted wisdom tooth, in childbirth or run through by a sabre all before they celebrated their mid-twenties.

With the actuarial longevities projected today, the same phrase is a hideous condemnation to the torture of sixty or more years. Few would want it. Few could stand it. Few survive it.

Handing over this idea and this word – marriage – to a tiny handful of people who wish to spend their remaining days and nights together for solace, companionship, love and good cooking seems to me perfectly reasonable.

It’s only plumbing.

Susan Boyle Wows 'Em

O.K.

Here it is.

Now viewed by almost 3 million people on YouTube.

Not a dry eye among us.

Watch the cynicism and the cruel laughter dissolve on the first note and change in an instant to cheers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

This is a rare delight.

CLEAR CONFLICT

Did you know that the Police Chiefs of this country are beholden to the Taser manufacturers?

And therefore, we cannot believe a single word the police chiefs ever say about tasers.

Did you know that?

I didn't until I read the editorial in this morning's Globe, which reveals the gift of $75,000 from Taser International to Canadian Police Chiefs' Association.

Of course, the Chiefs have declared no concerns at all about the use of Tasers, in spite of the 20 deaths in less than five years.

Clear conflict of interest. Clear corruption.

The Winner! And Still Full of it

Look at this picture.

Look at it long and hard.

Get used to it. (Is that bottle of water in his pocket???)

You will be seeing a great many more of these pictures everywhere you turn.

Not only until May 12th, but long after.

Mr. Campbell will win his third term as Premier of the Province of British Columbia.

Carole James may win a few more seats, goodness knows, but that's it, kids.

And let me make a dreadful, small-minded confession.

I've come to hate the very sight of this fellow.

Especially when he has the chutzpah to pose on or in or near the new Canada Line.

For that project defines for me this man's moral deficiencies.

Built infrastructure - good.

But do it while riding roughshod over hard-working shop owners, causing millions of dollars in lost income and unbearable personal stress?

Campbell has come to represent for me all that is cheesy and single-minded and uncultured and mean-spirited about Vancouver, B.C.

Melbourne beckons.

Going boldly Nowhere

Check out this lead paragraph in the Globe this morning:

OTTAWA — Nearly all key Canadian staff working in Beijing at the Canadian embassy are incapable of reading a morning newspaper or understand the Chinese nightly news, says a former diplomat who was posted there twice and recently published an in-depth review of Canada's China policy.

Not only is it hysterically funny, but also it is grammatically incorrect.

It should say..."incapable of reading or understanding..."

Of course, that is minor quibbling. When did we ever claim we were above that?

The story itself tells it all.

This, of course, is exactly what the American mission in Iraq has been doing for years - hundreds of highly paid dunderheads, cowering in their ignorance in the Yankee compound.

It is the classic colonial mode of never truly interacting with the local population, except of course to fuck their women and make uncared for illegal babies.

The fact that never-ran-a-Popsicle-stand Stockwell Day is our federal Trade Minister should be just about all you need to know about how well we are doing.

Jet skiing on the Yangtze?

One Man's Meat

It is now worth $15 Billion.

And it celebrated its 200 millionth loser...uh, I mean, user.

I am proud to say that I have nothing to do with it or Twitter or LinkedIn or any of the other myriad so-called "social networking" tolls that litter the public moonscape these days.

I am please to day that I don't get it.

I am overjoyed to not get it.

There is no doubt in my crumbling old mind that with each incremental increase in these devil's toys comes double the inability for people to actually, really communicate. There has rarely been such a social disconnect in human history. Rarely been such untender self-interest and refusal to recognize The Other.

So Up your Wall, Facebookers, and text away RIMmers.

I plant myself firmly on my old John Deere tractor and whistle a happy tune.

From Gordon Campbell's Favorite Newspaper

Johann Hari from The Independent:

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

Because I don't know any Passover songs?

THE REAL THING

"Gomorrah" is not "The Godfather."

The distinction is important because this new film by Italian director, Matteo Garrone, has been called by some reviewers "the best crime movie" since that iconic Coppola masterpiece.

It is also important because this movie begins with the headline, "Martin Scorsese presents," an irony that becomes increasingly evident as the film ever so slowly unspools.

The first two Godfather movies are among the two greatest movies ever made. Year after year, they top everyone's all-time favorite lists, including my own (after "Lawrence of Arabia," of course!)

As they appear almost daily it seems on Peachtree TV or the so-called Arts & Entertainment channel, I find myself watching long sequences, repeating the dialogue now by rote.

"Don't you know, Kay, that I would never let you take my children."

"But I didn't know until now that it was Barzini all along."

But here is the distinction.

These two great films and anything by Scorsese, good and horribly bad, (Good to Great: "Raging Bull," "Taxi Driver," "The King of Comedy." Bad to Appalling: "Goodfellas," "Casino," "The Departed."), like all Hollywood films are romances.

The moment a Marlon or a Jack or a Leo or a Matt appear in the credits we are dealing with fantasy. That doesn't make it bad or dismissible, but completely an artifact.

Look at the spectacular choices by costume and set designers in"The Godfather." Look at the furniture, the color and exposure for the film stock; of course, the music.

These are glorious stories brilliantly told.

But never forget what they are. Romances. Heroic iconic movie stars play charismatic, fascinating mobsters who love their children and their gangs.

Now, comes this bleak, relentless film, "Gomorrah," about the criminals of modern-day southern Italy, Naples, in particular. It "stars" no one.

This is stripped-down, unglamorous, often painful movie-making. It is more docu-drama than crime movie.

Everybody is poor and stupid.

Everybody is armed.

Everybody lives in a government built tenement slum.

The aerial establishing shots of the apartment complex are themselves condemnation of shameful public policy. You look at this place and ask yourself, "How else could people be expected to live in this rat maze?"

The key figures in this sordid affair are children, boys with guns and boys with bad ambitions.

The movie begins and ends with acts of violence. In between there are long stretches of tension and boredom and more violence. After a while, the director succeeds in making you feel completely trapped in this universe of despair.

This is not a date movie, kids.

At the end, the script comes on the screen detailing the latest numbers of people killed by the Camorra, the local Mafiosa.

You might have been watching something about tribal warfare in a besieged African Nation, in Darfur.

You might have been watching something about the Lower Mainland.

Whatever it is, it is not your traditional amusement with guns. It is often difficult to behold, but it is a healthy reminder, even in the midst of Easter and Passover, that ugliness exists not only in the hearts of some people, but also in systems and communities where attention is not paid.

Getting Over It

“We are firmly convinced that the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective.” “The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

On Friday, in a unanimous ruling, the Iowa Supreme Court struck down a legislative ban on same-sex marriage using language uniquely direct and unequivocal.

Has it ever been more elegantly, more simply put?

How can limiting the rights of gay and lesbian citizens in any way improve public policy?

Gay and lesbian rights, including the right to marriage, are growing slowly each day as state after state in America allows for more inlcusion.

Some 30 states have still have legal or constitutional provisions banning gay marriage or civil unions. Most of these roughly correspond with the states that voted Republican last November.