This Saturday at 2pm the place to be in Vancouver is Science World, down by Quebec and Terminal. Why? Because this wild & crazy event will be held: FlugTag It should be an hilarious sight to see!!!
The Internet has sure made the world one small place at times. Yesterday I received a message - out of the blue - from a periodical connected with the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. They're doing a story on Downtown Vancouver and wanted to use one of my photos. Today, after seeing Kristi off at the airport, I decided to capture a bunch of new photos, some of which they may use. I thought some might like to see some of them here:
You can view many more shots of Vancouver here.
I just got back from seeing off my Chicago friend, Kristi, at the airport. I turned on CKNW and talk-show host, Bill Good, said that the final segment of his show was "open phones". So I called in and gave him (and his tens of thousands of listeners) a summary of Kristi's views of our part of the world:
I just spent the weekend co-hosting a "VT Meeting" of several travellers from around the world. It was lots of fun, combined with good food and great times. Besides the numerous local Vancouver members, we also had visitors from: Chicago, California, Saskatoon, England, and Jordan.
My friend, Kristi, and I went for Dim Sum on West Broadway. We then walked over to Granville to catch a bus to the North Shore. Just as we were approaching the intersection a man in an electric wheelchair rounded the corner. Without hesitation I said to her, "Let me introduce you to someone."
So I walked up to the man and said, "Mayor Sullivan, I would like to introduce you to my friend, Kristi, visiting from Chicago. Oh, and I'm Robert."
They shook hands and then I shook his hand too. She thought that I was joking around. After all, how on earth could she just walk up to the Mayor of Vancouver (it would never happen with Mayor Daley in Chicago) and how could the mayor possibly be a man in a wheelchair.
Only after several minutes, and me assuring her that he truly was our mayor, did it finally sink in! Then I realized that I didn't get a photo of the meeting!!
I was a lucky guy today to have, not one, but two lovely ladies visiting me from the U.S. Jo Ann (L) is from San Jose, California and Kristi hails from Indiana, though is so close to Chicago that we just pretend she's a Chicago gal. They both arrived around noon yesterday, which gave me plenty of time to hang out just with them and show them around Vancouver.
A letter I wrote was just published:
FEW HEAR THE EARLY BIRD
I stayed up late here on Canada's Left Coast to listen to your back-to-back interviews on Radio Australia. Great stuff! Your "problem" is that you just make too much sense. At least here in Kanuckistan, it's clear that your views are shunned by most. Not all of us, though.
In the hi-tech industry where I work, there's an old saying: "To be early [with an idea or product] is to be wrong." I pray that you're not too early with the clear messages you keep repeating. Otherwise our children are destined to wake up one day, find themselves in a very unhospitable world and ask, "Why the hell didn't you see it all coming and actually DO something about it before it was too late?!"
Robert Werner
Vancouver, British Columbia
MARK REPLIES: That’s true in the columnar biz, too. It’s a reliable motto that you don’t want to be right too soon.
"If you're the only sane one in a community full of insane people, does that make you antisocial?"
As you may have noticed, I've been closely following Mark Steyn's media tour down under. Here you can watch him on Australian TV, being interviewed by Tony Jones. He just keeps on making more & more sense!
You can listen to an excellent discussion between Australian talkshow radio host, Alan Jones, and global columnist, Mark Steyn, by clicking here. There's an excellent quote from Steyn early on:
We [in the West] are a culture that no longer believes in ourselves. We don't put it that way. We don't put it as obvious as that. We simply say, 'We are no better and no worse than any other particular culture.' It doesn't matter who you have to be. If you wanted to devise an enemy that would be the least appealing to the Western, progressive, liberal thinking mind, you couldn't have come up with better guys than these Jihad guys. They build stone walls to collapse on gays. They treat women horribly, including physical mutilation. They treat them like property.
If you wanted to create the perfect enemy for the Western liberal progressive mind it would have been these jihadists. And yet, when push comes to shove, in the end, we say, 'No, no, no, their culture is just as valid as ours.'
And that, in a nutshell is why we in the West may very well lose this struggle. It is NOT a struggle between Muslims and non-Muslims. Rather it is a struggle between terrorists who happen to all be Muslims, along with their liberal supporters and apologists vs. the rest of us who enjoy living in the 21st Century and don't feel the need to apologize for it.
David Ouellette, of Judeoscope, just published a stunning series of photos about the recent pro-Hezbollah march in Montreal. While watching the video, please keep in mind that Hezbollah is a banned terrorist organization in Canada. That is a fact that is not up for debate. Don't believe me? Then please click here.
As Canadians, are we going to follow the laws of this country or are we going to decide for ourselves which ones we follow and which ones we don't?
If you're still in the pro-Hezbollah camp, then would your feelings be any different if a bunch of white neo-Nazis took to the streets, shouting, "Death to the Jews! Death to the Muslims! Death to the Blacks! Death to the Asians!" This would be exactly the same thing!
Moral relativity is a very slippery slope and the current Israel-Lebanon situation has added a lot of grease to that slope, at least in the minds of many Canadians. I fear that we're heading into very dangerous times.
As the intelligent, thoughtful, well read person that you are, do you think you're immune from psychological manipulation? When you're watching, listening to, or reading the news, do you question the validity of the piece and contemplate the bias of the person presenting it? If not, perhaps you should start.
Reuters has just been caught red-handed publishing clearly doctored photos of various scenes in Lebanon. They were exposed by an astute reader of Little Green Footballs. Other phoney photos from Reuters are explained in depth here.
Mark Steyn has frequently said that journalism is not a profession, but rather just something that people fall into. This is further proof that much too often there's a lack of professionalism amongst so-called professional journalists.
Of course, the Hezbollah sympathizers will defend such actions as "just counteracting the Zionist controlled media". Once hate sets in, such emotions can easily be used to dismiss all reasonable logic and sense of fair play.
Last night I finally got down to the center of the action in English Bay to watch the fireworks. It was Mexico's turn, and their first time at the annual Vancouver fireworks show. Arriving just after 7pm, it was 3 hours before the show, but the beach was already quite packed. A quick stroll down Denman revealed thousands upon thousands of pedestrians had taken over the streets as well. Why some people still continue to try driving in such conditions is beyond my comprehension!
These young ladies were from HSBC, the main corporate sponsor. They were taking a picture, which one could download from their website later. After learning that they had a grand total of 10 minutes of training in how to take photos, I took one of them instead!
The police and rescue patrols were out in force. After it got dark no one was allowed to enter the water. This didn't seem to stop countless teenagers around us, many of whom were clearly drunk. A few men used the ocean as their personal toilet. Nothing quite so charming as doing one's business with 10,000 people watching from behind. I'm sure everyone watching thought, "I want to hire that guy!"
I just learned that today in Montreal a large protest march will be happening. Members of the Federal Liberals, the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, and many trade unions will be marching against Israel. Of course they will couch it in terms of a protest against violence but there's something more insidious at work. Over the past several years, have you ever seen these same groups marching against the countless rockets and suicide bombers launched againg Israel? Of course not.
Sadly, there's nothing surprising to me about today's protest. The Liberals are just playing the numbers - who they can get the most votes from. The NDP are absolutely despicable on this issue. In fact, I've never understood why there's such disdain from "peace loving" socialists toward Jews. Can someone explain this to me?! You do see this view everywhere. In the U.S. my Jewish Democrat friends must be feeling great internal turmoil over what's happening. On the one hand they can't stand Bush (their de facto position) but yet they know that if Israel were to follow the appeasement line, there'd soon be no Israel.
This evening on CKNW, Michael Smythe interviewed a guest named Greg Felton. What a hateful moron! You can read more about him here. Felton is the new breed of Neo-Nazi who is full of great blusterous rhetoric, making all kinds of false statements. At least he had the guts to admit a fundamental part of his truth, namely that Israel doesn't have any right to exist.
Several of Felton's fans called up, one of them an older woman who said, "It's too bad that the Europeans didn't finish off the [Jewish] monsters in World War 2." Please keep in mind that she was referring to Jewish prisoners of the German Nazis such as these:
Being half-German, I'm keenly aware of what can happen when people only focus on their own little lives and stop speaking out about what is obviously wrong. Everyone wishes that Israel didn't have to defend itself in the way it has. But anyone who says that they're deliberately attacking innocent civilians is either a liar or a fool.
Perhaps decades from now, historians will write the truth about how Iran is at the root of the current conflict, as well as much of the violence in Iraq. And maybe there'll be a footnote that many in Canada chose to ignore these facts, because it flew in the face of their pre-disposed hatred for America and Israel.
Wherever your political allegiances lie, I implore you to read this important article from Victor Davis Hanson. He makes the STRONG case that the world has returned to where it was 70 years ago, just before the Nazi Party, then of Germany - now from elsewhere - was about to push the world into great turmoil.
Has a secret decision been made by the Vancouver Police to no longer enforce traffic laws? In the past week, I have seen examples of cars doing the following: U-turns in the middle of the street and the middle of an intersection, running through stop signs, excessive speeding, and more. Unfortunately there wasn't a cop there to hand out a ticket, right? Wrong! In each of these cases, there was a police car there but they did NOTHING. To close the open season on pedestrians and bicyclists, I would wholeheartedly support an initiative whereby each officer personally receives 10% of the amount of the ticket added to their paycheque. Maybe that would incentivize them to ... wait for it ... actually enforce the law!
Robert W.
Vancouver, BC
Update: It was indeed published here.
I heard something very insightful this morning:
"If the Arabs in the Middle East were to lay down their arms tomorrow, there'd be peace. If the Israelis were to do it, they'd be wiped out."
Food for thought.
This evening I got to attend a special preview of the upcoming Disney friend, Invincible. Set in 1975, it's the true story of Vince Papale, a 30-year old man down on his luck in South Philadelphia. He loses his job and then his wife. With nothing to lose, he attends Open Tryouts held by the new coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Dick Vermeil. It's a very inspiring story, all the better because it is based on a true story. The filmmakers did a terrific job making everything look like it was back in 1975.
Entering the theatre, I experienced something new. Because this was a preview, the studio went to great lengths to keep the movie from being illegally filmed. They searched each of us with a metal detector and I [temporarily] handed over my camera, which I almost always carry with me. During the showing, one of the guards scanned the audience with a special device that detects operating digital cameras. They're doing this, of course, because of the rampant piracy of movies that later appear on sites like this.
This was the Czech Republic's first entry into Vancouver's annual fireworks show. I thought they were absolutely excellent, with some AMAZING synchronization between the music and the fireworks.
