I owe all of you a sincere apology for this recent posting. Actually, not for the posting itself, but for the title: Non-Fans Disgrace Vancouver
I added the “Non-” prefix because I honestly couldn’t believe, at the time, that real sports fan could carry out such violence. I was wrong.
Yesterday I spent a great deal of time on my own, reading various things, listening to various things, and viewing assorted videos. I eventually got to the point where the evidence against my original views was so strong that I could no longer deny the facts … as much as I wanted to.
Let me share with you the specific items that dramatically swayed my views:
Brian Hutchinson’s powerful first-hand account. It was posted earlier but worth another read. There was also this and this and this and this video.
Hutchinson was all over the place yesterday, including this podcast with Boston talk radio host, Michael Graham.
Roy Green hit a real chord with: Those who stand and watch are guilty too.
Charles Adler had outstanding coverage and analysis: Segments 1, 2, and 3.
The old adage, “The Truth Shall Set You Free”, is certainly apropos in this situation. I still have a sickening feeling in my stomach but in time it shall pass. I think what is most troubling me about all of this is how very fragile our democracy and law & order actually is, mostly held in place by a Thin Blue Line. One very recuperative activity for me was to take assorted photographs throughout downtown and post them in an album aptly titled, The Day After the Destruction.
Again, maybe not all that surprising it happened in Vancouver – while the Utopian seeking hippies were all sitting around singing Kumbaya, the Anarchists punks knew they would be unopposed.
It could have been worse, there could have been Luongo twins.
ron in kelowna: the utopian seeking hippies and the Anarchists punks are the same people.
Too bad you Canucks gave up your guns and individual rights during the liberal government years, and now, with a conservative gov’t in power, find yourselves too cowed by pc to root out the rotting parts of your society. Sadly, speaking as a US citizen, we are only a few years behind you, and ours will be vastly more bloody, because there are millions like me who won’t go quietly into the night. . . .
Saying that the rioters were not canucks fans is like saying the terrorists of 9/11 were not muslim. Not all muslims are terrorists, and not all canucks fans are violent thugs that mindlessly burn cars and loot shopping malls. However, a large number of muslims are either indifferent to terrorism, or even praise the terrorists. During the riots hundreds of canucks fans stood idly by and cheered on rioters. Vancouverites that refuse to admit that the canucks fans were involved only make their city appear more pathetic.
GEN Y morons.
There hasn’t been a more ignorant, self-centered and gutless generation of screwed up jack-asses in modern history.
Their generational cohort in China and India will devour their collective lunches out in the world.
They deserve a thorough life thrashing.
Vancouver has had riots for various reasons during its entire history i.e. regular anti-immigration riots during its first three decades of existence, general labour strikes and fisticuffs after the first World War and during the great depression. The Gastown riots of 1971 which prompted a judicial inquiry about police brutality and the riot during the 1972 Rolling Stones concert immediately come to mind as well as the Guns and Roses melee in the mid-90’s
Vancouver,despite its transformation during the last quarter of a century into somekind of multi-cultural yuppie burg, always had a hard edge to it. If journalists (and Canadians in general) were so ahistorical and everyone else buying into the “niceness of Canada”
image, I think that there would have been a lot less hyperventilating.
I have a real problem with those people suggesting that bystanders step in to stop the rioters. All day I heard sports talk host suggest that those who stood and watched were a guilty as those who partook. I’m not talking about those who cheered and encouraged but the innocent bystander who probably wish he was somewhere else. I didn’t notice any media types put down their microphone or camera and wade in.
For an individual to confront these boozed up or drugged up, or both, morons is to invite disaster. The majority of people there would have been family people who could ill afford to be injured (or even killed)and lose time off work etc.
All the rioters were Boston fans? Just asken.
Dmorris – aside from the anti police and anti police union statements aside, you have identified one of the natural consequences of Rousseau’s utopian Romantic view of mankind. Contrary to his view, there are bad guys out there that do bad things and who can have other bad guys come to their aid.
And I think you are right that governments generally do want us to be uninvolved in maintaining peace, order and good government in our society. They and the courts have eroded our rights and responsibilities as civilized people. But they are reflecting the left wing Romantic view of people’s nature.
I think that civilized people still have the right and responsibilities to try to maintain their civilization. They need to do so advisedly and not endanger themselves or act with excessive force. The Chinese flower store vendor in Toronto is an example of someone who acted correctly. Fortunately I think more and more people are realizing that the noble savage is but one side of a man and that ordinary people need to be able to protect themselves and their property against the acts of the nasty savage when he appears.
Phantom – do you agree that the motive does not turn the nasty savages acts into a noble enterprise? An accelerant is that both were subject to poor crowd management and both were subject to the 24 hour news cycle. SMS, e-mail, facebook post or whatever’ “Saw you guys on TV dude!” As xiat says, this type of behavior is likely to rise given the presence of mobile phones and social networking. It is time for those of us who care about our civilization to stand up for peace, order and good government.
its a bit hard to have sympathy for a city that with its city council has stood on the side of stupid on most of its decisions for better than two decades.
You can bet that the drug of choice that night was alcohol.
Hate to get all intellectual here, but have any of you talked with some of these young people lately? If the subject is at all intellectual or of a spiritual nature, or required any real use of the brain, these people can’t converse. You see their eyes glaze over as you are talking to them. They really are Eliotic “Hollow Men” and the women even more so. I doubt if any of them could recite even one of the Commandments, or had ever read the Beatitudes, or any of the Classics. They are all on FaceBook or Twitter or whatever, and they all think they are really “special” and they don’t give a damn about anybody else. (on the other hand, I don’t know who Jennifer Aniston is married to, or what Beyonce sings, or who Bieber’s girlfriend is) … but they do! By the way, you can be sure that left protest groups, the kind who vote for Robinson and the Tides foundation took advantage of the situation and were well prepared for it. That’s not to say most of these jerks weren’t so-called hockey fans.
I was in downtown Vancouver the night of the riot. I didn’t feel any compelling reason to get involved. In fact I chose not too. Roy Green might feel some obligation to confront rioters but Roy’s thought process is mostly flawed.
Many citizens showed up the next day to help with the cleanup. A nice volunteer civic effort.
As for the Canucks…..well the sisters simply arn’t tough enough to play a man’s game the way it is played in the playoffs. Bobby Lou isn’t totally at fault as the offense scored only 8 goals but true to form he gassed it as he always does in the ‘big game’. He lucked out in the Olympics-Sid Crosby saved his ass.
Your “thin blue line”, at least in the US, is the damnable swill enabling most of the evil. Even the “best” of them ignore their oath of office to “…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution…” on a daily basis. NOT ONE COP in Chicago, New York, or DC honors that oath. And throughout the rest of the nations, at best the so-called “good” cops merely look the other way as their brothers in blue flaunt that oath, all the while screaming in their best Sergeant Schultz imitation “I see nothing!”
And then there are the truly foul bastards that murdered Vicki Weaver, Eric Scott, Jose Guerena, Kathryn Johnston, and God only knows how many others. This is why I thank God every time he sends another pig to rot in hell for what they have done, for at least HE is truly just.
every year its the same thing, ka ka
I mean the rioting after big games same kaka every year its an excuse for idiots to be themselves. nothing more nothing less