Brett Beadle/Globe and Mail

So, the rough draft of demands for the Occupy Vancouver homeless campers has been delivered to the CBC and it is among the most amusing and ridiculous list I think we’ve seen since Al-Qaeda released their last video tape. Not only do they seem to desire a collapse to the entire economy, it seems pretty clear to me that they shoehorned every socialistic wish since the 60s. The only thing that seems to be missing is a call to arrest George W Bush and repatriate Omar Khadr.

The funny thing is that the first sentence of their first demand isn’t so unreasonable:

We demand that the wealthiest 1% pay their fair share by the closing of tax loopholes such as dark pools of liquidity and employer-side payroll taxes. Progressive taxation principles must prevail, income from capital must be taxed at the same level as wage income.

But it soon descends into darkness and lunacy. They demand the banks being nationalized and the board of directors crammed with union lackeys. They demand that all income tax be eliminated for those earning below a “living wage”, then fail to explain what that wage might be. They demand we pull out of NAFTA, which pretty much comprises 85 per cent of our trade, and enact protectionism. I wonder what the people who don’t earn a “living wage” are going to do when their household commodities suddenly balloon in cost under union-activated inflation.

Those are just the economic demands, proving that nobody in the Occupy Vancouver movement has ever attended an economics course. But then they move on to the political demands. And they are nothing if not ridiculous. The adoption of “Swiss-style direct democracy” and “Nunavut-style consensus decision-making” is just the beginning.

The occupiers demand we pull out of not just Afghanistan, but repudiate each and every ally we have in NATO. Then they want to strip the military of its entire budget and hand it over to health, education and housing. Which they’ll definitely need to do, given the fact they’re going to destroy the tax base by crushing the economy.

There’s specific mentions to the most popular of leftwing principles, such as ensuring the CBC remain a perpetual drain on taxpayers, reinstating the long-form census, and ensuring that climate change science is accepted as being settled. To make it even more farcical, the occupiers demand we begin an independent investigation of 9/11 with the specific intent of finding out that the U.S. government was behind the false flag event.

The eye-rolling nonsense continues:

28. We demand massage, dental and eye care be covered under the health care system.

At this point you have to wonder whether people in the developing world just think we’re assholes. Not only do have an extremely high standard of living, health and life expectancy, but goddamit, we want free massages, too. As I said before, the 99 percenters are sounding more and more like the top one per cent.

That’s not all. The occupiers also demand an end to drug control laws and that people be allowed to grow their marijuana more freely. They also want all harmless criminals let out of prison (which sort of contradicts their earlier demands that they want white collar criminals in banks arrested and jailed). And after the drugs are free and legal, they want the prostitutes legal, too (but not necessarily free).

And finally, there are significant environmental demands. They demand the oil sands be shut down without suggesting where the $6 billion shortfall to the federal treasury would come from. They demand we magically shift all energy sources from fossil fuels and nuclear power to wind, sun and ethanol.

In all, there are 59 very specific demands without a single coherent explanation of how any of this is affordable other than taxing the wealthy. In short, they’re asking for large-scale nationalization and collectivization, withdrawal from trade agreements and partnerships, withdrawal from military and economic alliances, alienation from our largest trading partner, a dismantling of our national defence forces, and adherence to conspiratorial theories about 9/11.

Any credibility the Occupy movement may have had before, is now as soiled as the grass in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

UPDATE

The Occupy Vancouver twitter account has proclaimed that the above list of demands was only made by a small group of their membership and that it doesn’t speak for the masses. Which could be true. But it does go to show what sort of company they’re attracting and keeping.

So, the jobless occupiers of downtown Vancouver, and cities around North America, have told the powers that be that they have no intention of picking up their North Face tent shanty towns and making themselves scarce. Not until their demands are met, that is. What those demands are, nobody has yet guessed, not even the occupiers.

At first, the occupy wall street protests were kind of interesting. There was some validity to the whole idea, after all. Rejecting corporate welfare, the concept of wealth disparity, and pointing out America’s abysmal failure to generate anything resembling “stimulus” with wasteful bailouts of the wealthiest and greediest corporations are all fairly valid things to protest.

But even the dirty hippies of the sixties knew better than to just sit on a street corner for a month straight and just simply whine about life. That’s not so much activist as it is deliberately choosing to be homeless.

At this point the occupiers have very much lived up to their names. There is a difference between a child who resists adult abuse of authority and a child who stands in one place and refuses to move, regardless of how much it is cajoled and coaxed. At a certain point the child ceases to be acting in defiance based on principle, and is just a petulant brat who needs his tantrum ended by force.

The occupiers certainly fall into that latter camp. There needs to be a point, beyond the very effective drain on the municipal budgets of the cities forced to clean up after these children, or else it’s simply an occupation of a hostile force with no intent to move. Ironically, these same aimless people are the ones who would most vociferously demand we’re not making Afghanistan peaceful fast enough, and we’re just pointlessly “occupying” it.

If anybody can claim to be pointlessly occupying anything it’s the able-bodied occupiers, who instead of using this time to go to school, take job training, or do anything remotely useful with their lives, have decided to blame forces outside their control, the so-called one percent. At the heart of this slacker ethic is a purely anarchist philosophy, which takes an ambivalent stance on prosperity or ruin, choosing simply to stand in one place and bitch about how awful the world is.

Of course, Vancouver’s favourite bicycle lane mayor has no intention of forcing the issue with the occupiers during an election year, least of all amongst his street-squatting base. Some of these ne’er-do-wells might actually take five minutes away from their self-imposed third world shanty towns to cast a ballot in the name of wishful thinking.

And what, really, do the occupiers expect politicians to do for them, even if they did have a cogent demand? What do they think the politicians can do about the world’s woeful state of affairs? For these people nothing will really satisfy. Short of getting out of Afghanistan, ending corporate America, freeing Palestine, solving world hunger and raising everybody’s wage to a “liveable” one, they’re not really going to be happy. Setting the bar at this level, the occupiers may as well register title on the streets of Vancouver and just stay there. That might actually bring the housing prices down to a reasonable level at least.

The frustrating thing is that while the city feels some kind of misguided obligation toward the health, safety and well-being of the occupiers, the municipal budget is bleeding with cost overruns for this unplanned contingency. I mean, you don’t think the occupiers are cleaning up after themselves, right?

What’s worse is that this takes services away from the people who actually need it. In other words, the people who are actually poor. The people who actually need help. Not the preposterous occupiers, idling their twenty-something lives away on some misguided misadventure to nobody’s apparent benefit.

Photo ©: Jeff McIntosh, Canadian Press

The worldwide protests over socialism’s favourite nebulous enemy, “corporate greed”, are well underway today from Rome to Vancouver. And the goals of the protesters seem to be as disorganized and discombobulated as the social media tools driving #occupywallstreet from New York City to cities around the world. What do the protesters want? Not even they seem to know.

The protests in Vancouver seem to have attracted a broad array of the usual suspects of complainers, from “free Iran” or “free Palestine”, to 9-11 truthers and “stop the tar sands.” Every leftwing movement has found a home in the big tent movement, since it revolves around the big business bogeyman.

What is perhaps most ironic, amidst ironies too numerous to list here, is that people who choose to live in Vancouver do so knowing it’s a high-priced and decadent sort of city, priced beyond the affordability for most people who earn the median income of a Canadian. Vancouver’s housing prices are highest in Canada, and one of the most expensive in proportion to income on the planet. But that has more to do with investors from the developing world than it does Bay Street.

But while Vancouver might be one of the priciest locales, it has also consistently ranked among the top three cities in the world for quality of life and standard of living. In fact, Vancouver usually ranks up there with cities like Geneva and Vienna for the kind of comfort, safety, security and enjoyment of wealth one can expect. Which is why the protests against corporate greed seem a little self-defeating.

It isn’t that I don’t acknowledge the disparity between the so-called one per cent of the richest people and the 99 per cent of the rest of us. But, as with most things, context is key. Certainly, the top one per cent own 99 per cent of the wealth, but then again that disparity is hardly absolute. The same disparity exists between the iPhone-carrying Vancouver protesters and the vast majority of the population of rest of the world who live in abject poverty.

Compared with people living in most parts of Africa, large portions of Asia, and parts of South America, we here in Vancouver represent the top one per cent. There are people in the world living on $100 USD a year, and much of that income is earned making things that we use and throw out over here. If protesters want to talk about disparity and greed, they could begin by looking in the mirror.

Having been to Afghanistan, albeit a whirlwind tour that didn’t give me a definitive impression of the country, I’ve seen the conditions of how people live in one of the poorest countries in the world. If anybody has a reason to complain about wealth disparity, it is the bare-footed, dusty-faced youths on the streets of Kandahar, gazing up in wonder at the million-dollar steel-plated vehicles rumbling by their tin and clay shanties.

That’s not to say that things are perfect here. Far from it. But this idea that corporations are the reason for the world’s misery is the fallacious wisdom of failed socialism. In fact, one could make a stronger argument that high taxes owing to the public’s insatiable appetite for social services is one of the greatest impoverishing agents in an otherwise high quality of life in Canada.

What’s worse is that we as Canadians are conflating our problems with America’s. We don’t have the same economy or attendant problems that the Americans do, since we enjoy a much stronger banking system and less predatory lending. But the same problems that afflict that country are avoidable by taking precautions against depending on corporations and living within our means.

If you can’t afford a home, don’t attempt to buy one when you know an interest point change will result in forfeiture. Don’t use credit cards to maintain a lifestyle you don’t make enough money to sustain. Don’t consume products and services you cannot pay back in a reasonable time period. Create a household budget and run your finances with a surplus and not a deficit. Take responsibility for your own success or failure, and don’t blame it on capitalism.

My household income is in the bottom one-fifth of Canadians, but I still feel as though I enjoy a high quality of life. Things could be better, but that’s part of what makes capitalism work properly: aspiring for better.

Don’t pretend you’re not guilty of doing it. Nobody will admit it, but anecdotal evidence shows that 90 per cent of people don’t understand the basic concept that the left lane is for passing and the right lane is for driving. No, I’m not exaggerating. I’m sick and tired of passing you in the right lane. You’re in the wrong lane. Move.

Not the kind of thing most people do sober.

I guess I do have something to say on the subject, after all. I’m only writing this because I haven’t heard anybody really talking about it, though it’s possible it’s been brought up somewhere.

In the sober days following the embarrassing downtown devastation of one of Canada’s prettiest cities, teenagers have come forward to admit their transgressions and plead for mercy from the general public. Those youthfully exuberant weapons-wielding teenage anarchists fuelled by liquid courage—or cowardice as the case may be—have now recovered from their booze binging and in the remorseful light of day are ashamed of their actions.

I don’t really have any sympathy for the people who, though admittedly caught up in the delirious excitement of destroying private and public property, decided to do things as stupid as stuffing a t-shirt into a police car fuel tank and light it on fire. There are some fairly predictable results to lighting things on fire, and even alcohol doesn’t mentally impair one to the extent that it isn’t obvious.

But who really didn’t see this coming? We here in Vancouver had been joking half-seriously about the 2011 riot for months leading up to the actual day. We knew the chances were that the Canucks would make the Stanley Cup final again, and that if they lost there would be a very high likelihood of violence and carnage.

It certainly didn’t help that Vancouver’s naive leaders decided it would be as harmless as the Olympics to invite hundreds of thousands of partisan fans downtown to witness their brutal Game 7 drubbing at the hands of the Boston Bruins. Whoever thought that was a good idea, or didn’t anticipate the worst possible consequences, should be given a desk job next to a public men’s room, considering everybody with an IQ hovering above 70 knew exactly what was going to happen.

Downtown Vancouver is the perfect storm for a riot, mainly because the choke points in the city make it almost impossible to quickly disperse large crowds. The south and western sides of the downtown core are only accessible by bridges, which means once the riot was underway and the only path out of the city was packed SkyTrain (buses were cancelled), the ensuing bottleneck of bystanders was inevitable. To figure that out all you’d have needed was a map.

But all of this has been dredged up before in recent days. What hasn’t been discussed as much is the exacerbating effects alcohol had on the whole affair. And despite the fact the police closed the liquor stores as early as 4 p.m., most, if not all, of the rioters were blottoed, blasted, blitzed and bombed.

If the Canucks Riot 2011 isn’t a glaring indictment of the harmful effects of alcohol addiction, I really just don’t know what is. The fact that close to 100,000 people went on a collective bender of self-destructive mayhem and carnage all had the common ingredient of beer or liquor is a fairly tell-tale sign that we, as a people, need to curtail our happy hours just a little bit.

When you consider the idea that the worst social aspect of the illegal drug marijuana is it makes people lazy, snack-prone and slow-witted, it still seems utterly benign in comparison to the kind of chaos that alcohol is capable of creating. I mean, this is something that is responsible for murder, assault, riots, vehicular homicide and rape on a fairly regular basis all over the world.

We could play the hindsight game and talk about the police presence, the lack of preparedness and a dozen other factors until we’re blue in the face, but what it really comes down to is that we, as a society, have a drinking problem. Canucks Riot 2011 was just the worst manifestation of it.

Photo: Elizabeth Hames

So, you may think I’m about to tell you what I think about the riot, but I’m not. I said everything I had to say on the evening it happened and it’s all still in my twitter record. But I do want to share something. CKNW host Philip Till had a great monologue this morning on the radio that pretty much sums up my thoughts about the whole thing.

Click on the link and fast forward to exactly 54:33. Enjoy.

(In case there’s any confusion, I don’t condone a single act of violence)

The latest update on the cultural inconvenience of people dying next door is in the Vancouver Sun today. The dubious complaint of condo owners, that a hospice lowers property values, sounds like a perfect reason to build more, given the fact an average home in the city costs $792,000.

Jung said supporters of the hospice have “logical” and “civilized” arguments, such as providing a haven for those near the end of life in a culturally- and resource-rich location. However, he also sympathizes with the Chinese residents protesting its construction due to cultural beliefs.

“The people who live next door are mostly newcomers from Asia,” Jung said. “This way of thinking is formed throughout our lives, especially in our childhood. Suddenly, you are asking them to accept Canadian culture.”

“Suddenly?” Uh, when you bought property in Canada you didn’t think that was the moment you should start accepting the culture?

The city of Richmond is renowned as one of the most “diverse” in Canada, but the term might be a bit of a misnomer. It isn’t diverse so much as it has shifted from the former homogeneous population of European immigrants to the current homogeneous population of Chinese immigrants.

According to the 2006 Census Data (the 2011 Census should represent a vastly different change from these numbers), just over 41 per cent of Richmond residents were born in Canada, while 57 per cent were immigrants. Of that number, at least 51 per cent came from mainland China, with 9,395 arriving between 2001 and 2006. Chinese immigrants represent the largest growing demographic in the city, and the 2011 Census is expected to show at least a 50 per cent gain from the previous number.

In terms of ethnicity, 78,790 people identified as being Chinese in the 2006 Census, or 45 per cent of the population. People who identified as being English, Scottish or simply Canadian combined to represent exactly one third of the population. Given the projected growth rates, ethnic Chinese people should represent a statistical majority when the 2011 Census data comes out.

All of this preamble is only my attempt to show and acknowledge that the city of Richmond is, for all intents and purposes, one that is largely Chinese in ethnicity and identified heritage. So it may come as no surprise, then, that this city operates as a Chinese culture bubble of sorts, in which shopping malls, medical services and other amenities are provided in Chinese. Equally unsurprising is that the residents, who are comfortable with that bubble, would seek only people who really belong there:

An online advertisment for an apartment rental in Richmond has sparked outrage after it stated “only Chinese” need apply.

The offending Craigslist ad was spotted by prospective renter, longtime Richmond resident and former school trustee, Patricia Whittaker.

Whittaker, who is of African origin, was checking rentals in the city centre when she came across the posting for the Mandalay building on Hemlock Drive, by Garden City and Cook roads.

But her disbelief when reading the “only Chinese” conditions quickly turned to anger when the realization set in.

“Chinese only? This is Canada for crying out loud,” said Whittaker, who runs the non-profit Centre for Integration of African Immigrants in New Westminster.

The importance of this advertisement shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, but nor should it be easily ignored, given that historically when such signs have been created by white Europeans, they were condemned for systemic racist and exclusionary attitudes. And although the landlord says she only phrased the advert in that manner because she can’t speak English, and so prefers Chinese tenants, it’s indicative of a multitude of failures in our immigration system.

First, in a city where not speaking English is of no consequence at all, where is the incentive to integrate and learn the mother tongue(s) of Canada? The situation wasn’t rectified by the landlord offering to rent to non-Chinese people, she merely moved it to a Chinese-only newspaper. That doesn’t help people who need to rent apartments, nor does it help the cohesion of a “diverse” society.

Second, where is the essential benefit to Canada of creating a separate and segregated society of Chinese people who don’t feel obligated in any way to adopt an attitude of openness to Canadians who, through no fault of their own, are not ethnically Chinese?

This should serve as a reminder to our government that language preference toward applicants for immigration to Canada should be given to those who will more easily integrate and assimilate into our country and its official languages.

Photo credit: Kristen Thompson, Metro Vancouver News

If you read this article you might actually think nihilistic rebel without a cause Jean Wharf was refused entry to the SkyTrain solely because of a button reading “F**ck Yoga” (without the asterisks).

But the truth is that the whiner was first caught trying to use the transit system without paying and issued a fine. Then when she returned with a paid ticket, she was informed she would have to remove the pin.

Well, there are two things that come to mind when I think about the pin incident, but it’s pretty clear to me that Wharf wouldn’t have been told to remove it if she hadn’t brought attention to herself by sneaking onto the train.

The first impulse might be to defend the free expression of thought as protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but even within that document itself is the flexible language that stipulates there are “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

And given that TransLink is private property, it’s certainly within their right to prohibit vulgar or offensive people that trespass their own rules. It’s the second rule, actually, in their list of 10 posted on their website.

Further to the point, even if I happen to agree with Wharf’s message pertaining to yoga, the use of vulgar language in public should be weighed in conjunction with the social responsibility not to pollute the minds of younger people — and I’m thinking of my 9-year-old son, who is an excellent reader, here — with hateful language.

But aside from all the debate about whether a person should be harassed for wearing a “F**k Yoga” pin or not, the bigger issue here is the fact that Wharf isn’t just telling yoga to fornicate with itself, she’s telling every taxpayer the same thing by jumping the fare. In fact, thanks to nihilists like her and others in no short supply in this city, TransLink is spending $170 million on smart card fare readers and toll gates.

Wharf is the kind of person who “rides for free” through life, assuming someone else will pay her way every time. And it’s probably not entirely her fault. After all, we live in the kind of society that tells irresponsible alcoholics and drug addicts that they’re victims of a disease instead of parasites on the working class.

It’s probably reasonable for Wharf to conclude that paying fares for public transit is something only the sheeple do on their way to their soul-crushing jobs. It’s also probably reasonable to speculate that Wharf doesn’t have a job, or if she does, it doesn’t involve dressing in a manner that requires social observances of things like respect, decorum and decency for others.

If you do want to dress like you hate the world and wear pins expressing your contempt for it, you should probably consider paying your fair way, lest the world turn around and say, no, “f**k you.”

Author’s Note — this post has been modified to remove a pejorative.

I have something in common with noteworthy American journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fame, Hunter S. Thompson. We both bombed our job opportunity with the Vancouver Sun. But Thompson did it in fine, epic style. Behold, a letter from October 1958:

I got a hell of a kick reading the piece Time magazine did this week on The Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my services.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley.

By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you.

I appreciate the fact Thompson informs the publication of his preexisting interpersonal peculiarities while using the cover letter as an opportunity to demonstrate his writing skill, albeit in a facetiously passive-aggressive manner. Wait, it gets better:

The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Some people burn their bridges after leaving a publication. Apparently Thompson preferred to burn them on the way in. But can you imagine sending a cover letter to the CBC in this manner? It’s a refreshing change from the grovelling, scraping form letters of praise predicting a fruitful and harmonious professional relationship filled with rainbow kisses and sunshine dreams.