First of all

First of all, this riot has been totally blown out of proportion. By all accounts and the fact that this story still leads many newscasts two weeks after the fact, one would assume that downtown Vancouver was reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble.

As far as I can tell the only person that hasn't weighed in on the riot is the dog catcher. We've heard from politicians, police, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, clergy, parents, CEOs, news reporters, their bosses and so on.

So why did it happen? Well theories abound, but most are offered in the form of excuses for the malcontents rather than anything factual.

Whose fault is it? Ultimately that lies squarely on the shoulders of the individuals that went berserk.

We will have an inquiry by the police, by city hall and one conducted by the Provincial government. They will all most likely come up with different reasons and possible remedies.

And at some point down the road, the same thing will occur and we will go through the same pile of BS.

My best guess is that the media probably set the groundwork for this event and Vancouver City council aided and abetted the final outcome. The media probably stoked the fires for a riot by reprising the events of 1994. They supplied a target to be eclipsed and it is obvious that many wanted to be a part of a new history. Vancouver City council helped things along by opting for free sites or party zones, if you will. No party zones would have led to a much decreased number of human bodies clogging the streets and made it much easier for the police to attempt to keep the peace.

The rest is history.

I don't know...

Our Society is a write off. People don't know or care about how much their world and their views are manipulated by the owning class. People are comfortable conforming, the consensus can't be too misled... If the media says this is democracy and technology will solve all our problems eventually, thinking about it, possibly disagreeing, and not fitting in is just too tiring. People will believe anything, virgins having babies or the transparent, crackpot excuses for exploitation that constitute mainstream economic theory.

Have fun in our golden cage, not long now before the guilding wears off.

Bang on

First, as noted by Mr. Cranky, this riot has been blown completely out of proportion, by the ruling elites and their media puppy dogs. because for two hours the mob ruled Vancouver and the loss of control. The fear by those of the mob is telling, as the mob will, in the future, decide our politics.

Secondly, there is a deep seated anger that boils under many peoples skin. Corrupt politician's, lying politicians, a corrupt mainstream media, a corrupt police and judiciary, have all combined to make the average person both vengeful and angry. Add a dose of drink and a great disappointment and voilà, a riot happens.

Our recent riot, measured a 3 on the Richter scale of riots, barely noticeable by anyone who wasn't at the epicentre.

Et erit dies una regimen multitudinis

One day the mob will rule and this is what makes the city and provincial elites pee their pants.

Hard Knowledge

Yes. We are disintegrating from the top down. Even rich kids know they cannot drink oil or eat money.

Society of trained seals

We all know that our "happiness" is dependent on our being able to acquire the latest and greatest of whatever is being promoted this week. We have a whole generation of consumers who's need for instant gratification can only be met by a purchasing that grossly overpriced hockey jersey or the J-pod, or whatever happiness is being sold this week.

This commercial quest for happiness is creating a frustrated out of place generation who's values are dictated by the marketplace.

Often said, and true "it's the simple things in life that bring the most happiness". Unfortunately that is not something marketable for a profit. Although there are some religious sects out there that could maybe prove me wrong.

Thanks for stating the obviuos Bill;

I wish more would raise their blinders; its the only way to get rid of rot!

Another good article

Canada can go down two paths; it can ignore global warming and suppress in internet or we can elect an honest, just government, and make sure it gets re-elected.

If global warming is not dealt with, our species could become very poor, rather quickly.

Rioting, I would suggest would then become the new normal.

Something that mystifies me is the NDPs attitude toward The Tyee. The Federal and Provincial NDP should be encouraging its members to read this site.

The Feds should be encouraging people in other parts of our country to set up Tyee-like sites.

It's all done; The Tyee is doing its job, so I would urge the Feds and the BCNDP do their's and tell the members about it.

upside down

As usual, the discontents blame the top for the corruption. Sorry, but it's a bottom-up phenomenon. You can castigate the lying and cheating politicians all you like, but the fact is that fewer than half the population take the trouble to vote, and an even smaller proportion do so as well-informed citizens. And I didn't notice any cabinet ministers out there burning cars.

Interesting number out this morning: the underground economy now hits $38 billion annually and is 2% of the GDP. Until we start laying blame where it belongs -- on all of us -- we'll never come close to fixing it. Blaming the pols (and the media, and the corporate robber barons)is just too easy and simple, and it avoids the unpleasantry of looking in the mirror.

Grumpy

That's why they have anger management. If this "rage" is the reason some individuals joined/initiated the riot then it will not be the last time rage will interfere in their lives.

There is a biological purpose for rage. It is used as a last resort to save ones life when threatened. If it manifests itself when there is no actual threat to life or limb then there's a problem. Treatment should be sought.

Well said

How do you expect the youth or masses to live lawfully, when the leadership in this country is disinegrating at a terrible rate.
How do you tell you children not to lie and steal, when the people running the govt, and businesses leaders do nothing BUT lie and steal to the very people held accountable in their regular lives, no, I dont see any current leaders I would trust my life with in a fox hole, or follow into battle, for fear they would sel me out

Rockin' Bill

"But why expect better behaviour from young people when the rot in our society starts at the top?" Bill T

Every once in awhile, you actually rock, Bill. :-)

And good comments by nearly everyone.

Upside down indeed

Finally someone said it. Thank you Bill. Children learn from their adults in society. Hardly any politician or public figure think of today about the fact that they are also role models as well as leaders of a country. Altough the word 'leader' is not deserved by most of these crooks, never the less they are. And you can tell how good a job they are doing and it is because we let them. Every single person who is able to vote should take this riot as a mirror. This is our society. No respect, no integrity, no moral and when it is done a simple 'sorry' may suffice. What a shallow society Canada has become.

I agree with blackie. It is upside down. The politicians, the crooks and the rich (often are the same) who rigged this country can get away with everything because voters let them. Because society is not standing up for anybody. If it is not in my backyard why bother. This is what a capitalist - or rather now plutocractic - society looks like. The next step from here will be anarchy or revolution - as life always want balance and right now it is out of balance - severly.

Thanks Bill for this article.

why must it always be someone else's fault?

in that regard, you are entirely right. Just like lame politicians, you're making excuses for the rioters by trying hard to point the finger somewhere else.

Anarchy or Revolution?

Not to worry we have the American Army that can step in to preserve law and order in the State of B.C. and at the same time protect their water, their logs, their minerals, their natural gas, etc. They can also insure a more stable local government as they are well practiced in rigging elections. Governor Christy would do well under President Harper.

Watch and learn.

The over-arching lesson young people can take from watching high-level corporate and government behaviour, both provincial and federal, is that crime pays and accountability means almost nothing.

Of course, regulations and laws can be reworked to make unscrupulous and undignified actions 'legal'. Decks can be stacked to create unfair advantage and to circumvent democratic process. Those messages are not lost on our youth. They watch and learn. We teach by example.

Greed, bullying, narcissism, lying, cheating, vilification, betrayal, sleight of hand, disrespect for others, contempt for norms of decency... OMG OMG where ever could they have learned that?

We should brace ourselves. It is going to be quite a ride.

nevermind

A Denial.
A Denial.
A Denial.
A Denial.
A Denial.

http://torontohearings.org/

I was arguing with friends

I was arguing with friends on facebook a week ago with basically the same point- what astounds me is the number of friends I have (who think much like I do in many ways) who have jumped on the "They should go to jail!!" bandwagon, with very little deep thought to the entire issue... One friend even attempted to diminish my opinion by stating that she has a teenage boy so she felt "justified" in her opinion. I don't have kids so apparently I had no say... nevermind that I'm a member of society, a critical thinker, a teacher, um... oh yeah, I've been a teen myself!!... I was stating how disturbing I found the vigilante attack on the polo player and his family to be. She stated she was now "scared in her own city"...???? Scared?! Has she had a blindfold on all these years? As above posters have stated (and this is one brilliant thread- thank god for thinking people), the rot has been there all along. These teens grew up under the leadership of a convicted drunk driver who went on to lead for another 8 yrs. If we want to set a good example for young people, we're failing pretty badly.

A bad ratio

The recipe for this riot is obvious, and blaming our political leaders is a huge stretch since a lot of the rioters couldn't pick Christy Clarke out of a line up.

Once the ratio of young males gets to a certain point in a summer time party atmosphere you have the gas poured and just need a match.

1994 Stanley Cup
Kelowna Regatta riots in the 80's
Penticton Peachfest Riots
Etc

And those are just the ones that got to the ratio where a riot occurred. There have been a lot of other events cancelled before it got to that point such as Wakefest.

The reason the magic ratio gets to where it does is the build up to the "epic party". With the annual events it takes year after year of stories coming back about the party and all the buddies claiming not to miss the next one.

With the Stanley Cup the build up is shorter but more pronounced but it ends the same with young males flocking to the epic party like moths and the rest of us wondering why we can't just have fun without it eventually being destroyed.

Maybe next time, play jazz.

Declining Civilizations

If there is anything to be learned from the study of crumbling civilizations, it is that it ain’t pretty.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Yep, classy all the way...

...and don't forget the "law & order" MLA who turns out to be a wife-beater or the various drunk driving MLAs, starting with the ex-Premier himself, who put countless lives at risk with their appalling lack of judgment.

What amazes me is how half of Vancouver ganged up online to "name and shame" the rioters. Yet most don't even bother to show up for elections or they shrug their shoulders & move on in the face of even the most horrifying failures, such as the case highlighted by the Children's Representative this week re the young girl with Down Syndrome abandonned by govt.

I had no idea that people paid hundreds of dollars for those silly fan jerseys or thousands of dollars to watch hockey games - these are the same people constantly preaching to us that they need to cut supports for disabled kids and adults because their taxes are too high.

I thought the riot showed the true face of Vancouver - the one no one wants to admit -- the stupid, ugly, selfish and destructive side we keep trying to bury under acres of glass towers and trendy shops, costly "best place of earth" ads, red mittens and Canucks paraphernalia.

Crumbling Civilization...

"If there is anything to be learned from the study of crumbling civilizations, it is that it ain’t pretty." dave0ferg

Which gets my vote, in a field of excellent on target observations, as the best one this thread. Though Fii's comment about our drunken Premier comes pretty close. :-)

That we are in a collapsing order of things situation, is an increasingly obvious conclusion that needs to be drawn. Gangsterism and various levels of "high level" and lesser greed abounds throughout the system... from the boardrooms of Lehman Brothers et al, down through to the very minimum wage levels of a great many peoples' lives, and the rot of poverty and homelessness so ever more evident on our streets... and in that prostitution and petty crime arena.

The old postwar "Social Democratic State of Capitalism" order of things that characterized the postwar and created the "appearance" of a human face to capitalism, is now ancient history in these free-market, bottomline, every man and woman for themselves, Devil take the hindmost times. We are ever more, drip by drip, back in capitalism as it was in Charles Dickenesque Industrial Revolution capitalism times, right up until the postwar period after the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This is not a new normal, but a very old normal reasserting itself.

And a blind rage that seems totally pointless is going to grow and manifest itself until folks finally begin to connect all the dots and channel the rage into a more productive end, such as working to overthrow the order and build for "themselves" a social, economic and political arrangement that is more appropriate, and over which they have a greater "democratic" influence at all these levels.

This is total crap, and the paired ingredients that will tap into a reaction to that really quick and emotionally is... booze and youth.

What we are witnessing in Greece is what's next... as the rage becomes politicized.

Well Said Bill

Well said Bill Tieleman AND Jerry Munroe.

It is indeed all of that, and more. We all now know the movie very well. Massive, systemic corruption, mostly at the top, but filtering down the line of command. When society's leaders are corrupt and without scruple or principal, people react accordingly. This is basic social science that was figured out almost 100 years ago.

It is an abject mess. No evidence it will get better. And leading to widespread collapse. It also happened to be perfectly predicted by Prof. Joseph Tainter in his seminal work Collapse of Complex Societies. Recently echoed by historian Gynn Dyer, whose insightful column was unceremoniously terminated by Canada's MSM (mainstream media).

Indeed, Greece is a harbinger of things to come. Get used to it.

While the MSM (as usual) ignores all of this, I remain thankful that we have a forum like the Tyee which will continue to speak the truth, even as we slide into barbarism.

blah blah blah

Are we perhaps over analyzing this riot a tad? It doesn't seem strange to me that the combination of too much alcohol (which Canadians seem to manage poorly), energetic young men, who in other times might be sent off to war or the army, a revved up hyped up sports event and a place for everyone to converge that is out of the norm, is a recipe for exactly what happened. I agree that there is lots of corruption and hypocrisy from high up, but when hasn't there been? I don't mean this in a cynical manner either - just that Lord Acton was right about power and corruption (would any of us be so different?). It is our job as engaged citizens to put limits on power (and thus corruption), but if we as the electorate reward said power and corruption by electing drunk drivers and undemocratically minded governments, then I guess we get what we deserve. That said, I'm not convinced of the link between the boorish Stanley Cup behaviour and the BC Rail scandal...

Who decided that profit from the Stanley Cup...

...promotion and all the partying would trump common sense? I don't believe for one minute that there was not one individual at the top who could not see this coming. So yes the corruption at the top is a factor. Now we have to spend out money paying a couple of the same elite to tell us what we already know. All those rioters are just learning form the folks at the top.

Enough! Cancel the review. Let Furlong and the other guy find meaningful work like the rest of us. Let's move on. We already know what to do next time. It has been analyzed to death.

@Bill Tieleman

Your article is bang on. AMEN! Keep up the good work.

Bill Tieleman back at the riot

Thanks for several kind comment - Jerry, Jeffrey, OhCanada, Skywalker, Alsil and more!

Blackie - forget the PAB smear - your points are fine. I don't "blame" the upper echelons - I just said why expect better behaviour when those folks are so deficient in moral authority?

Lastly - I don't "blame" Christy Clark or Stephen Harper or Francisco Aquilini for the riot - I suggest that their leadership examples don't encourage young citizens to behave appropriately.

I encourage more debate.

It's not that COMPLEX

'why would we expect exemplary behavior from young fans when everywhere they turn they see corruption and disrespect at the highest levels for the values we want them to respect?'

Everywhere? Including in their own homes? Is anyone here aware that what goes down in the home before you're five influences your character a Hel of a lot more than anything you see 'everywhere' as you meet the outside world? Where do people get the idea that one must do as one sees others do, if that choice stinks? Are we just a bunch of sheep, not accountable for our actions? How then can we ever send anyone down for murder, seeing there's killing going on 'everywhere'?

I think the hard part of this is acknowledging that some of our kids are screwed up, because that will force us to question how that happened, and this might be hard on our cherished paradigms of how damn good parents we are, providing all the material stuff and thus making our kids able to stick it to the losers or have-nots they might meet. Acquisition is not accomplishment, though, and cool things do not bolster self-respect. For that, you need to have received validation early in life, as in real attention from parents - not being handed over to people who conveniently can shelter you while Mom and Dad get all the cool stuff for you. I don't know how or when we got so twisted in the head. are we afraid of dealing with our own children on an equal footing? scared that we and our full attention will not be enough? Is this why we arm ourselves with the cool stuff? At any rate, it's grossly misguided. The only thing kids need to know is that they count for something, that they are not an afterthought or a liability or an expected fulfillment of the dreams of their parents, that's all. Maybe if we give them that, they won't develop into little monsters who 'pooh in blue', nor bigger monsters, who rip up stores and burn other people's cars...

Huh?

Robertson, Ballem and Chu are hardly on Tieleman's crap list. When has he ever been at odds with cops? Tieleman supports Gun Registry, notwithstanding the billions pocketed by RCMP in that scam.

For 2 weeks, the media has delivered the same - youth-are-crap - message, ad nauseum. Nobody is criticizing the Robertson-Ballem-Chu JUNTA, even in face of the fact that those coverup artists, pulled an report from Engineering that proves their gross negligence.

I have a copy of VanRIMS No.: 08-2000-20 (Stanley Cup Playoff Live Site Activation Costs).