Following the deluge of accolades being given to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, I feel it might be a good idea to reiterate some of the reasons the Olympics were worth critiquing. On Feb 12, 2010, several thousand, old and young, wealthy and impoverished members of the public, took to the streets to protest a variety of issues. Some were focused on the upcoming Olympics due to be held in Sochi, near Chechnya, while others protested issues such as those surrounding native land claims.

Admittedly, I may not be completely representative of the majority of the protesters there that day, in that I was not advocating stopping the games, but rather was protesting a number of worrying aspects of its implementation and wanting to draw attention to how the games should be improved. Given that Vancouver had voted approvingly on hosting the Olympics, and that I do genuinely enjoy Winter sports, I was about as interested as I usually am in the actual events themselves.

Whatever the reasons may have been for other people, these were mine. Some of these concerns turned out to be misplaced and some of these points were considerably reinforced by what actually took place.

1. Barring journalists like Amy Goodman. There were a number of journalists prevented from entering Canada on similar grounds¹ but Amy’s celebrity from her show on National Public Radio made the seriousness of the situation that much more pronounced. “U.S. journalist Amy Goodman said she was stopped at a Canadian border crossing south of Vancouver on Wednesday and questioned for 90 minutes by authorities concerned she was coming to Canada to speak against the Olympics. Goodman says Canadian Border Services Agency officials ultimately allowed her to enter Canada but returned her passport with a document demanding she leave the country within 48 hours.” ²

2. Restrictions on Free-Association and Free-Expression. We were lucky enough that this went largely unenforced, but that was certainly not clear at the outset of the games. The specific language of worry was neatly expressed here: “To meet its contractual obligations, Vancouver’s council recently passed an omnibus bylaw amending dozens of existing laws…Among the changes are the creation of so-called free-speech zones and blocks of the city (including David Lam Park, the main library’s precinct and the Vancouver Art Gallery) where no political pamphlets, leaflets, graffiti or “non-celebratory posters” will be allowed.”³

Another serious point of contention was that only after a “flurry of bad press”⁴ was a relatively banal piece of artwork, featuring frowning Olympic rings, allowed to return to an East Van art gallery. The removal of the artwork raised the real concern that anti-Olympic expression was going to be muzzled, even on private property.

3. Public Surveillance. The prospect of turning Vancouver into a modern Beijing or London, with their unprecedented and unscrupulous public surveillance systems, is not very appealing⁶ (I don’t want to digress too much in explaining my opposition to this, but I do believe surveillance hinders our ability to act naturally, can be a political threat, and is very often misused). Thus, when it was reported⁷ that we would be installing about 1000 cameras around Whistler and Vancouver, I was a little concerned. During the games that it was announced that many of these cameras would become part of some kind of “redeployable unit”⁸…whatever wonderfulness that entails.

4. Inauthentic – “The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.” As Canada’s poet laureate Brad Cran notes⁹, a meritable part of Vancouver’s history is its commitment to intellectual freedom: “I do find this to be an unjust attack on free speech but more importantly it shows that VANOC is misrepresenting Vancouver. Vancouver is the most politically progressive city in North America with a strong history of political activism which most Vancouverites are proud of. Rather than finding a way to celebrate these important attributes VANOC has gone the other way and tried to suppress them. As George Woodcock teaches us: our freedom as a city is a tradition that should be protected and we should not underestimate an attack on that freedom whether symbolic or otherwise.”

5. Spending Priorities – I can understand making room for the Olympics in the budget. But why is it acceptable for us to spend so much money¹⁰ on lavish displays for a small sector of elite executives and politicians while continuing cuts to various social welfare programs? “Total bill for Olympic tickets on the taxpayers’ tab: $3.3 million. And the government has still refused to say who’ll get ‘em and which events they’ll attend.”

I learned a lot from these Olympics but that is the subject for another article. There were a number of points that could have been made in addition to these, but I wanted to restrict myself to those points I felt most confident about. Whether or not the money spent on the Olympics could have been better spent elsewhere, whether or not taxpayers will get their money back in tax receipts and some degree of commercial trickle-down, and whether or not native land claims should have taken precedence over the will of the population, are questions I do not feel comfortable answering.

One thing is for sure, I have no regrets about protesting an Olympics that journalists are barred from and enjoying an Olympics that gave me two weeks off work

For those of us growing up in the 80′s, Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness was something special. These were nature documentaries that would easily give Planet Earth a run for its money. Lorne Greene had a touching and soulful way of talking about the animals that appeared in the 104 episodes of his show.

But looking around the Internet, you would think that these films are gone forever. You can order several episodes on VHS off of eBay and Amazon but that’s kind of pathetic. Where is the DVD box set?

To answer this question, I emailed CTV who previously had the syndication rights. They said the rights are held by Lorne’s son Charles, and there is no current contact information for this person. Try as I might, I was unable to locate any contact info for Charles Greene or his sister.

If anyone out there knows how to get a hold of these people so that we can politely request that they share these films with a new generation, let us know in the comments. Come on Internet, we can do this!

This was all just too true.

1. -I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.

2. -More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

3. -Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

4. -I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

5. -Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

6. -That’s enough, Nickelback.

7. -I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

8. -Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you may know” feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

9. -Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

10. -There is a great need for sarcasm font.

11. -Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f was going on when I first saw it.

12. -I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

13. -How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

14. -I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

15. • I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

16. -The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

17. • A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.
18. • Was learning cursive really necessary?
19. • Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.
20. • I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
21. • Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.
22. • My brother’s Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, “Cuz we beat you, and you hate us.” Classy, bro.
23. • Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.
24. • How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?
25. • I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
26. • Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”

27. -What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

28. • While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.
29. • MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
30. • Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
31. • I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

32. -Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

33. • I would like to officially coin the phrase ‘catching the swine flu’ to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: “Dave caught the swine flu last night.”

34. -I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

35. • Bad decisions make good stories

36. -Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

37. • Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?

38. -If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

39. -Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….

40. -You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

41. -Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

42. -There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

43. -I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

44. • “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

45. -I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

46. -I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

47. • I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

48. -When I meet a new girl, I’m terrified of mentioning something she hasn’t already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

49. -I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

50. -Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

51. • As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

52. -Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

53. -It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

54. -I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

55. -Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

56. -Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

57. -My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?

58. -It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

59. -I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

60. -I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

61. -I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

Ingredients:

Two jalapenos

Some garlic

Half an onion

Some chopped mushrooms

Diced Tomatos

Basil

Oregano

Sushi seaweed

——Pics!——-

Preparing to get wrapped!

Wrapped up and ready to serve - you might say "That's a wrap!"

So, you listen to me. Listen to me: Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth… Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real truth.

But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell. We’ll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, or that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker’s house, and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don’t worry, just look at your watch; at the end of the hour he’s going to win. We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds… We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! WE are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I’m speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF…

You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here, you’re beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God’s name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.

I had to repost this from Reddit (user: Pilebsa)

Reagan in a nutshell

Criminal:

• Iran-Contra treason.
• Lied about it.
• Likely encouraged Iran to keep US Embassy hostages until he was into office.

Fiscal:

• Supply-side economics.
• National debt tripled.
• $12 billion trade surplus –> $100+ billion trade deficit.
• Deregulated savings and loans, precipitated huge economic crisis.
• Tax raiser.
• Taxed the poor, cut taxes for the rich.
• SDI “Star Wars” boondoggle.
• Military spending increased to match imaginary spending in USSR.
• Deregulation caused oil bust.
• Broke air traffic control union.

Social:

• Gutted social welfare.
• Release of mental patients without recourse, homeless population up.
• Ignored AIDS crisis.
• Abstinence-only sex education.
• Strengthened ATF, banned automatic weapons, blamed Democrats for it.
• Increased spending for War on Drugs.
• National drinking age of 21.
• Underfunded NEA.
• EPA Superfund grants manipulated to help Republicans in local elections.
• Deregulated kids’ tv, initiated 22 minute toy ads.
• Killed energy programs.
• Crack in the ghettos. (? Due to support for Contras and Noriega?)

Foreign:

• Wars all over Central America, incl Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras.
• Promoted Iran-Iraq war.
• Sent Marines into Beirut, abandoned mission after terrorist bombing.
• Broke detente with USSR until Gorbachev personally made things better.
• Backed Contras in drug running schemes.
• Supported right-wing dictators and movements everywhere, including:
• Apartheid regime in SA.
• Marcos regime in Phillipines.
• Saddam Hussein and Baathist regime in Iraq, even after Kurds gassed.
• Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Manuel Noriega in Panama.
• Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

Concepts:

• Welfare queens.
• Trees cause pollution.
• Ketchup as a vegetable.

Appointments:

• 30+ convicted appointees.
• Ed Meese at Justice, porn freak.
• James Watt at Interior, idiot, corrupt.
• William Casey at CIA, religious nut, strikes into Uzbekistan. (? Uzb part of USSR, maybe mean Afghanistan?)
• HUD a corrupt mess in general.
• Politicised CIA.
• Robert Bork to SCOTUS (failed), segregationist and asshole.
• Antonin Scalia, same but he got in.

Personal:

• Unfit to serve due to Alzheimer’s disease by term’s end.
• Horrible excuse for a human being in general.
• McCarthyite.
• Neo-Conservative.
• Backed Moral Majority.
• Pardoned Robert Walker, who went on to kill his wife.
• Started presidential campaign at racist murder crime scene in Philadelphia, MS.
• Laid wreath and made speech at SS cemetery in Germany.
• Vietnam War a “noble cause.”
• Helped start right-wing noise machine. (? By promoting myth of liberal media?)
• Hated sex, made Ron Jr. feel like a sissy and quit ballet.
• Dumb as a stump.
• Believed in astrology and used it to run government.
• Innovated “talking points” cue cards.
• “I don’t recall” to weasel out of press questions.
• Confused movies with reality.
• Outlawed Russia forever, started bombing in five minutes.

One of the responses answered the next question: “And he has hero status why?”

A Reagan supporter once told me:

“Reagan didn’t take shit from anybody”.

Another supporter once said to me:

“You gotta admit, Reagan dealt a death blow to Communism”.

My simple interpretation: A lot of people (including smart people) liked Reagan’s style. Unfortunately, they were terribly ignorant of his actual policies.

In fact, even people who hate Reagan are often ignorant of the full scale of his damage. They just remember something that hit them personally, for example: (quote) “he cut my student loan”

Bottom line is presidential charisma + ignorant populace = reason #1

Reason #2 is a vast right-wing conspiracy that knows the truth but is trying to rewrite history. They’re the ones reponsible for plastering Reagan’s name on buildings everywhere, etc.

МенЯ На ПеревôдбІ ≈ “put me on the line”

Perhaps I was a little hasty with my post here. Zipcar solved my issue by going way above and beyond what they needed to. They refunded all the fees and only billed me for the time used. Given that a significant portion of this issue was my fault, that’s really quite amazing.

While we’ve all been fuming lately about the explicit tyranny of multinational oil and financial companies, the media’s role in our looming depression is just as criminal. Unbelievably, the gap between media coverage and reality seems to grow as their market share falls. You would think they would get it. You would think that they would begin to understand that they are being punished by their readers for telling obvious lies and having obvious bias. The coverage surrounding the Israeli/Palestine massacre is just the latest example of the corporate media’s commitment fascism. With this in mind, I felt it important to quote a list that offers some counter-arguments to the media’s axiomatic talking points about the nature of this conflict.

Top 5 Lies About Israel’s Assault on Gaza by Jeremy R. Hammond

Posted by: Amir Sahib In: Israel| Palestine| War

Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

 

Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets into Israel. These rockets are extremely inaccurate and thus, even if Hamas intended to hit military targets within Israel, are indiscriminate by nature. When rockets from Gaza kill Israeli civilians, it is a war crime.

Hamas has a military wing. However, it is not entirely a military organization, but a political one. Members of Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Dozens of these elected leaders have been kidnapped and held in Israeli prisons without charge. Others have been targeted for assassination, such as Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas official. To kill Rayan, Israel targeted a residential apartment building. The strike not only killed Rayan but two of his wives and four of his children, along with six others. There is no justification for such an attack under international law. This was a war crime.

Other of Israel’s bombardment with protected status under international law have included a mosque, a prison, police stations, and a university, in addition to residential buildings.

Moreover, Israel has long held Gaza under siege, allowing only the most minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies to enter. Israel is bombing and killing Palestinian civilians. Countless more have been wounded, and cannot receive medical attention. Hospitals running on generators have little or no fuel. Doctors have no proper equipment or medical supplies to treat the injured. These people, too, are the victims of Israeli policies targeted not at Hamas or legitimate military targets, but directly designed to punish the civilian population.

Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.

Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.

Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.

Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response by militants to the Israeli attacks.

Israel’s actions, including its violation of the cease-fire, predictably resulted in an escalation of rocket attacks against its own population.

Lie #3) Hamas is using human shields, a war crime.

There has been no evidence that Hamas has used human shields. The fact is, as previously noted, Gaza is a small piece of property that is densely populated. Israel engages in indiscriminate warfare such as the assassination of Nizar Rayan, in which members of his family were also murdered. It is victims like his dead children that Israel defines as “human shields” in its propaganda. There is no legitimacy for this interpretation under international law. In circumstances such as these, Hamas is not using human shields, Israel is committing war crimes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and other applicable international law.

Lie #4) Arab nations have not condemned Israel’s actions because they understand Israel’s justification for its assault.

The populations of those Arab countries are outraged at Israel’s actions and at their own governments for not condemning Israel’s assault and acting to end the violence. Simply stated, the Arab governments do not represent their respective Arab populations. The populations of the Arab nations have staged mass protests in opposition to not only Israel’s actions but also the inaction of their own governments and what they view as either complacency or complicity in Israel’s crimes.

Moreover, the refusal of Arab nations to take action to come to the aid of the Palestinians is not because they agree with Israel’s actions, but because they are submissive to the will of the US, which fully supports Israel. Egypt, for instance, which refused to open the border to allow Palestinians wounded in the attacks to get medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals, is heavily dependent upon US aid, and is being widely criticized within the population of the Arab countries for what is viewed as an absolute betrayal of the Gaza Palestinians.

Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been regarded as a traitor to his own people for blaming Hamas for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Palestinians are also well aware of Abbas’ past perceived betrayals in conniving with Israel and the US to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government, culminating in a counter-coup by Hamas in which it expelled Fatah (the military wing of Abbas’ Palestine Authority) from the Gaza Strip. While his apparent goal was to weaken Hamas and strengthen his own position, the Palestinians and other Arabs in the Middle East are so outraged at Abbas that it is unlikely he will be able to govern effectively.

Lie #5) Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths because it warned the Palestinians of Gaza to flee areas that might be targeted.

Israel claims it sent radio and telephone text messages to residents of Gaza warning them to flee from the coming bombardment. But the people of Gaza have nowhere to flee to. They are trapped within the Gaza Strip. It is by Israeli design that they cannot escape across the border. It is by Israeli design that they have no food, water, or fuel by which to survive. It is by Israeli design that hospitals in Gaza have no electricity and few medical supplies with which to treat the injured and save lives. And Israel has bombed vast areas of Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and other sites with protected status under international law. No place is safe within the Gaza Strip.

http://www.amirsahib.com/top-5-lies-about-israels-assault-on-gaza-by-jeremy-r-hammond

Why would a website about politics and philosophy be talking about Lotus Nightclub in Vancouver? No serious reason really. Just that I had an unfortunate incident with the staff at this establishment as I walked home from dinner tonight. The kind of incident that reminds you just how stupid and violent the club industry can be. Here is the letter I wrote to the police and to the owners. If you agree with it, link to this article. Soon it will be #1 for “Lotus Nightclub Vancouver” Payback’s a bitch aint it.

To whom it may concern,

I am a resident of XXXXXXXX near the Lotus nightclub located at Pender and Abbott. On the way home from dinner tonight I was stopped by the bouncers of said nightclub and informed I could not pass without their permission. Apparently I broke the “rules” by ignoring the velvet rope in the middle of the sidewalk. I asked them under what authority they controlled the sidewalk, to which they responded that they have a civil duty to make sure nobody crosses the rope without them moving it first. Apparently this is for my own safety – as I could trip over the rope.

Now I do not object to the idea that the police and the city may transfer some of their power to the nightclub in order to ensure an orderly nightlife for the city. What I object to is being humiliated in front of people when, as I walk away, I am referred to as “jackass”, and “fucking idiot”, for daring to politely ask questions about their power. I did not raise my voice or cause them any untoward disturbance. I would ask that the police and city look in to their agreement with Lotus Nightclub and whether or not the management and staff are sufficiently trained to handle interactions with the general public. Copies of this letter will be sent to the Vancouver Sun and Georgia Straight. Follow-up is expected.

Thank you,