Halle Berry Scantily Dressed during Filming after Vancouver's First Snowfall

Last night, we had our first snowfall in Vancouver and tonight at about 10 p.m., Halle Berry was running through the intersection of Hastings & Columbia, "half naked in a ripped dress" as one Downtown Eastside resident put it. As she ran, sixties era cars rushed at her, tires screeching.

The movie was set in California. I noticed California plates on one of the cars when I walked up Hastings. "There was bloody ice on the street," a Downtown Eastsider pointed out afterwards, laughing.

Photo: Note the snow on the roof of the police SUV which was in an accident on the block where the Halle Berry movie was being filmed. This photo was taken around 8 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 14, just a couple of hours before Berry was running through the intersection at the end of the block.

The Downtown Eastsider watched three takes of Halle running through the intersection. "Each time, the cars got faster", he said.

He was chuckling about the big afro hairdos on the Black guys trying to look like they were right out of the sixties. One guy with an afro whose job it was to walk toward the intersection during each take, told the Downtown Eastsider that Berry was playing a woman with a dual personality. He explained that during this scene, she had just switched personalities and was getting herself out of a situation her other personality had gotten her into.

Related Story: Real Life Police Crash at Halle Berry Film Set

Vancouver Police Crash in Real Life during Filming of Halle Berry Movie

A cop in an unmarked vehicle was doing a U-turn at roughly 7:30 this evening in the middle of the 100 block Hastings St., and was struck by the car behind. That's what Marie, a young aboriginal woman with long dark hair walking along Hastings St., said.

"I saw the whole thing," Marie remarked. "It was the cop's fault."

There were lots of people on the sidewalk, some coming and going outside Insite, the supervised drug fixing site and apres fix cafe. One guy gazing at the crash site joked, "It's hard to know what's part of the movie." I didn't see filming close to the crash but police had Hastings St. blocked off from Main St. to Carroll. I don't know if it was blocked off at the time of the crash. When I walked up Hastings again a little after 10 p.m., filming with Halle Berry was going on at Columbia and Hastings using sixties era cars.

The photographer who passed the photos along to us reports that when she was taking photographs, a young, tall, white male cop in a yellow jacket strutted over to her and said, "Technically I could seize your camera as evidence." The photographer thought he was trying to tell her in a coded way to stop taking photographs. "I have a Charter right to take photographs", she responded politely. He repeated, "I just want you to know that technically I could seize your camera as evidence." Then she held up her camera to take a photo which would include him. See how fast he turned around.

Standing on the sidewalk later, she said to a friend, "I thought he was threatening me." Her friend responded, "He was."

MP for the British Columbia Riding of Vancouver Moonbat Could Become Cabinet Minister

I read in the newspaper that my MP in Vancouver East, Libby Davies, is considered likely to become a cabinet minister should the Tory government fall and the Liberal-NDP coalition take power. I immediately thought of small dead animals.

They dubbed Davies, "MP for the British Columbia riding of Vancouver Moonbat". Kate, a writer at the small dead animals site in Saskatchewan, posted a video of Davies standing up in parliament and reading a petition on behalf of 500 people in her riding who believe that 9-11 was an inside job by the Bush administration.

I doubled over laughing when I saw the video.

I find it frightening that an MP who would not take a stand against the tampering with the free election process at her own organizing base could end up a cabinet minister but, even though I laughed at the video of Libby's 9-11 performance, I don't have a problem with her reading the petition. Commenting at small dead animals, Jeff Patterson wrote, "To be fair to her, does she 'have' to present a petition that is sent to her by her constituents, assuming it is properly formed?" I think she was just doing her job.

I know one of Davies' constituents who would be angry about her reading this petition though. Although I don't follow the 9-11 conspiracy story, I watched part of a video produced by the 9-11 Truth people and commented to this American ex-pat that some of the evidence seemed compelling. He jumped up and yelled at me, "You mean to say MY government, MY government....!!!!" He's lives in Davies' Vancouver East riding and if he sees this video of Libby, I can picture him yelling like Jackie Gleason:

TO THE MOON, LIBBY!!!!

Content of Secretly Recorded Tape used at Rally to Oppose Toppling Harper

Did I hear that right? I craned my neck over the crowd at the anti-coalition rally to see speaker Senator Jerry St. Germain, but all I could see was a black cowboy hat bobbing on the stage. I was at Saturday’s rally at Vancouver’s Library Square listening to people protest the new coaltioin of Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois to topple the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. What I heard St. Germain say surprised me.

He said NDP leader Jack Layton had made statements admitting that he had been planning a coalition of opposition parties to topple Harper for some time. This was the first I’d heard of Layton’s admission made during a conference call with MPs, a call secretly recorded by Conservatives in what a Liberal MP called “Nixonian” style. Layton was taped saying, “This whole thing would not have happened if the moves hadn’t been made with the Bloc a long time ago and locked them in early.”

Locked them in early. So the upcoming non-confidence vote to remove the Harper government was not a response to the recent fiscal update Harper presented, or it’s lack of an economic “stimulus package” in a time of global economic crisis. That was just spin.

That spin seemed obvious to Canadians who spoke at the rally, offering, “I’m not a politician”, as their credentials. One such person was Dave Prelazzi, introduced as an “ordinary person”. Prelazzi had been invited to speak at the rally after organizing Canadians Against Coalition Government on Facebook and collecting fifteen thousand names on a petition.

“I’m not a politician, I’m not a member of the party faithful” , Prelazzi told the crowd. But he pointed out that Harper hasn’t yet been given a chance to present his first budget. Harper was “not closing the door to a stimulus package”, just “proceeding cautiously”. This was no time for a no confidence vote, in Prelazzi’s view, with the last election barely over. “Our parliamentary system does accommodate these actions, but it’s too soon.”

Harper was governing with a “strengthened mandate” while the Liberals had just had their “worst election performance in history.” Prelazzi was starting to sound like a politician.

Elizabeth Patikan, another non-politician on the stage, called the coalition leaders “bandits, with their unscrupulous behaviour”. She came up with a Spanish label for the leaders which she explained combined the words trespass and bandits: “tres-banditas desperados”.

As both non-politicians and politicians spoke on stage, a few hundred people – the “severely normal” was how this crowd was described by tp of covenantzone.blogspot when I bumped into him there – stood in the intermittent rain listening, waving flags, and chanting “Harper! Harper! Harper!”

This No Coalition event was low tech compared to the Yes Coalition rally a few days earlier. No gigantic video panels on ballroom walls. Just a PA system, a small tent, and a flag. Even the speeches seemed less orchestrated. You didn’t hear speaker after speaker repeat the same catchy lines – “Harper is saving his job, not your job”– designed to push your buttons. Not that the No Coalition wasn’t pushing buttons:

“The separatist Jacques Parizeau is seeing his dream become a reality”, said Nina Grewal, a Conservative MP. “The Bloc will have veto power! Can you imagine that!?” exclaimed Grewal, who spoke in both English and Punjabi with a nod to French at the end: “Merci Beaucoup”.

Fears that the coalition would empower separatists was a recurring theme at the rally. Conservative cabinet minister Stockwell Day explained in his opening speech that the media’s persistent use of the label “Liberal-NDP Coalition” was misleading as this is in fact a "Liberal-NDP-separatist coalition and we will stand against this!" At the end of the rally, Day told the media, “The fact that this is a coalition driven by separatists has awakened people across the political spectrum.”

With or without separatists, there is nothing illegal about the formation of a coalition government in parliament. That fact was acknowledged by several speakers at the rally, including former constitutional lawyer John Weston, MP for “sea to sky highway country”. Weston told the crowd, “It is technically right to form a coalition, but what’s technically right doesn’t mean it’s right for the country.”

It was MP Randy Kamp who pointed to what so many Canadians are p.o.’d about, the fact that they had no idea when they cast their votes seven weeks ago that an alternate coalition system of government could be installed. “How many of you voted in the last election?, Kamp asked. Most people in the crowd put up their hand. I even put up mine. Many people here probably voted Conservative, some probably voted for other parties, he said. “I know that nobody here voted for the coalition.”

Supporters Chant "Harper! Harper! Harper!" at No Coalition Rally at Library Square

Today's rain didn't stop a few hundred people from showing up for an outdoor rally at Library Square to oppose the NDP-Liberal-Bloc coalition that could topple Prime Minister Stephen Harper. A number had traveled to the downtown Vancouver rally from outlying areas; the young couple standing next to me were from Abbotsford.

Stockwell Day, a Conservative cabinet minister, was the first to speak from a small stage under a white tent with a maple leaf on the roof. Then a number of MP's and three non-politicians spoke.
I'll post more on the rally later, but for now here are some photos.




"Don't Mess with Success" is the line at the bottom of this cut 'n paste poster.

Stockwell Day was accessible after the rally. People were walking up to the stage to offer a comment or a handshake.

But he soon had to give his attention to reporters.

Union Member Opposing Coalition Denied Access to Pro-Coalition Rally Organized by Unions

A union member showed up at the Vancouver rally organized by the ‘Yes Coalition’ on Thursday evening carrying a sign that said all the wrong things. He was denied entry to the ballroom where a rally was being held in support of a non-confidence vote planned for Canada’s parliament in January to oust Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. Unlike the roughly 1,000 people who jammed the ballroom in Canada Place, the dissident did not support the coalition between the NDP, the Liberals, and the Bloc Quebecois which would replace the Harper government.

The dissident stood in the lobby as people filed past him into the ballroom. He was incensed that he was being prevented from entering, explaining to members of the crowd that he is a member of the Public Service Alliance of B.C. which he said was an organizer of the rally.

People stopped to chat with dissident, including at least one reporter, as union security men kept a close watch. When I took a photo of the dissident’s sign, he asked in a friendly tone if I would like to see his other signs. “No”, the guy in the blue shirt and the red vest (far right of photo below) interjected firmly.

Did I mention that restricting democracy was what Stephen Harper was being accused of at the rally inside the ballroom?

Inside the ballroom one speaker after another accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of undermining democracy. Peter Julian, MP for Burnaby-New Westminster, said in a forceful speech: “Stephen Harper has usurped democracy. He has padlocked our Parliament.”

The obviously scripted line about locking the doors of parliament turned up repeatedly in speeches criticizing Stephen Harper for avoiding a non-confidence vote on Monday by requesting that the Governor General shut down parliament until late January. Harper got his wish and escaped a vote which would almost certainly have seen him toppled as Prime Minister. “Stephen Harper put the locks on the doors of parliament”, said NDP leader Jack Layton in a video-taped speech from a rally in Ottawa that afternoon.

Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. The need to invest in infrastructure as part of a “stimulus package” to fend off an “economic crisis” was a theme of the rally. Most speakers mentioned it. Infrastructure spending is, of course, code for union jobs.

“Out infrastructure is crumbling”, said Heather Deal of Vancouver’s center-left civic party, Vision Vancouver, adding that to get it, “We need another government in Ottawa.”

“We need to invest in infrastructure across this country,” said Herb Dhaliwal, former Liberal Minister of Fisheries & Oceans. But first he mentioned that Harper had “reached out and slapped the opposition in the face.”

Peter Julian said we need “to repair a sagging infrastructure that we see across the country.” And to do that, “We need an economic stimulus package.”

The event was heavy on symbolism. When I walked into the ballroom, the first thing I saw was a humongous Canadian flag hanging at the front of the room. There were three more huge flags, one on each of the gigantic video monitors at the sides and back of the room. Large Canadian flags hung from the railing that divided the seating area of the ballroom from the standing room only area at the back. At the beginning of the rally, people stood to sing the anthem, ‘Oh Canada’.

But the most striking symbolism was when the videotaped speech from Liberal leader Stephane Dion to this NDP-laden crowd malfunctioned. “Ohhhhh,” I could hear people seated around me saying in low tones. “It’s not cued up,” said the chair. When the video did come on a few minutes later, we could see Dion’s face but the sound didn’t initially work.

Dion said we are facing the worst economic crisis “since the great depression”. That left me wondering if he was telling the truth. I had just read Andrew Coyne’s column (hat tip to dag at covenantzone.blogspot) in MacLean’s making fun of the current panic about the Harper government not doing enough about the oncoming depression:

“How could the government be so blind? Can it not see that unemployment has soared to 6.2%? Why, that’s four-tenths of a percentage point above its recent, thirty-year low. And what about Canadians’ fears of losing their home, what with the proportion of mortgages more than 90 days in arrears standing at an all-time record 0.2%? Okay, it’s an all-time record low, but still. When will it realize there’s a Depression on?”

Ooops!

Canadians are taking the Harper vs. Coalition fight in Ottawa seriously, even though it’s eating into their Christmas holiday time. Heather Deal got surprisingly few laughs from the crowd when she asked, “Why aren’t you shopping?”

Even Santa, who was walking around the Canada Place lobby greeting people, wasn’t finding it so easy to get laughs. When two men who appeared to be rally organizers spotted a couple of young children sitting behind a pillar with their mother, they walked Santa over to greet them. “Ho, ho, ho!” Santa asked in a jolly tone, “So do you support the Coalition?” The young mother responded in a less than festive tone, “No.” Santa responded, “Neither do I.” Oh, Oh, Oh. Santa instantly moved on and the children, like most Canadians, were left asking questions about what exactly was going on.