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When Snow Melts: Vancouver’s Olympic Crackdown
News Flash: Winter Olympic officials in tropical Vancouver have been forced to import snow -- on the public dime -- to make sure that the 2010 games proceed as planned. This use of tax-dollars is just the icing on the cake for increasingly angry Vancouver residents. And unlike the snow, the anger shows no signs of abating. As Olympic Resistance Network organizer Harsha Walia wrote in the Vancouver Sun, "With massive cost over-runs and Olympic project bailouts, it is not surprising that a November 2009 Angus Reid poll found that more than 30 per cent of [British Columbia] residents feel the Olympics will have a negative impact and almost 40 per cent support protesters. A January 2010 EKOS poll found that almost 70 per cent believe that too much is being spent on the Games."
Officials are feeling the anger, and the independent media, frighteningly, is paying the price. Just as Democracy Now's Amy Goodman was held in November for trying to cross the border for reasons that had nothing to do with the Olympic Games, Martin Macias Jr., an independent media reporter from Chicago, was detained and held for seven hours by Canada Border Services agents before being put on a plane and sent to Seattle. Macias, who is 20 years old, is a media reform activist with community radio station Radio Arte where he serves as the host/producer of First Voice, a radio news zine.
I spoke to Martin Macias today and he described a chilling scene of detention and expulsion. "I was asked the same questions for three and a half hours in a small room. They told me I had no right to a lawyer. I went from frustrated and angry to scared. I didn't know what the laws were or how the laws had been changed for the Olympics. I kept telling them I wasn't going to Vancouver to protest but to cover the protests but for them that was one and the same. This is bigger than me. We need to ask who is exactly ordering this kind of repression. Is it the government? The IOC? Why the crackdown?"
Then insult on top of injury when they deported Macias and insisted he pay his own way out of the country. "They wanted me to buy a $1,300 plane ticket back to Chicago. I said ‘no way' and now I'm in Seattle."
Martin's story is not unique. Two delegates aiming to attend an indigenous assembly taking place alongside the games were also detained and turned away.
For people with just a passing knowledge of our neighbors to the north, it must all seem quite shocking. When we think of human rights abuses and suppression of dissent, Canada is hardly the first place that comes to mind. But there actually is a long history in Canada of this kind of abuse of power. The latest chapter in that history has been written during the pre-Olympic crackdown of 2010. Now as protestors and independent, unembedded journalists gather for the February 10-15 anti-Olympic convergence, as tax dollars go toward importing snow, the need to silence dissent becomes an International Olympic Committee imperative.
As Chicago's Bob Quellos, who entered Vancouver successfully after accompanying Macias, said to me,
"Walking the streets, residents here are very clear about who is responsible for the billions of dollars of Olympic debt they will be paying off for generations. They are outraged that the over $1 billion that is being spent on security has placed a cop on almost every corner of Downtown Vancouver. And they are outraged by the government's priorities. For example, while Vancouver's Downtown East Side struggles with poverty similar to third-world countries and social programs continue to be gutted, VANOC is spending an untold amount of money helicoptering in snow to the Olympic venue of Cypress Mountain that would otherwise be a mud hill due to the warm weather."
It's not hard to deduce why the snow is melting: it's the heat on the street.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllHang the games!! Let's do something of redeeming social value like end all wars, both overt and covert.
As long as we go on living under a dictatorship of money over the people, nothing will change.
I've lived in Seattle for 30+ years, and the border crossing began to be noticeably less civil several years ago...
Canada, in general, and Vancouver, specifically, used to seem like the 'clean' and 'small' versions of America, and Seattle...now, the similarities seem much more striking than the differences...
Why would I go to Canada when I can count on my crossing being, at the least, time-consuming and insulting, and, at most, arresting, in both directions?
Just because I was born, does not mean I am a bad man...why am I being made to feel that way?
Are we not still presuming each other innocent? I know...
BC, where the games are being held has a conservative government that calls themselves 'liberals'. They have increased secrecy, lied about tax increases and sold off billions of public assets. These 'games' are the last straw for many people, particularly those who live away from Vancouver and will see no benefit. Many people do not realize that the olympics are a private for profit outfit from Switzerland and that every olympics needs big bucks from the taxpayers to provide for the excesses that the IOC demands.
You are more than welcome to peacefully protest our games in Vancouver or Whistler.
Sold off billions in Public assets is hardly the word for what they did.
BC Rail was a GIFT.
Maybe I'm jumping the gun but I believe Harper is responsible for the denial of democratic rights to visitors and the consequent deportation of many individuals. He has played hard and fast with Canadians' rights to free speach and democratic representation. I dislike that man and his cynical attitude toward our way of government. He's out as soon as an election can be held. I aplogize to all those would be visitors who ran up against the strong arm of the fascist state.
Harper's destruction of traditional Canadian values has become so bad that the CBC ran a segment on "Is Harper the most pro-Israeli Canadian PM" last week.
I think we were either 1st or second to cut aid to Palestine after the democratic election of Hamas. The banning of George Galloway I'm sure traces back to Harper. After all his cabinet are not allowed to speak (or think?) without the PM's permission. Harper is acting more like a President that a PM. At least his annual pro-rogation of parliament has blown back in his face. He's in BC this week and due to visit the BC legislature, which is still in session.
I think our border response takes direction from the aftermath of 9/11 and Harper's pro-Bush stance. To those visitors who do get in, please enjoy our beautiful Spring in January weather.
Quite frankly.
I think it all started with NAFTA. With NAFTA we had to reshape our policies to more closely align with the USA. This was not limited just to trade.
Once we put all of our eggs into the NAFTA basket, NAFTA become the driving force of all policy.
NAFTA is why we sent troops to Afghanistan. NAFTA is why we helped support the overthrow of Aristide in Haiti. NAFTA was the reason Harper claiemd we should have joined the US In iraq.
One might ask..How can a trade agreement lead to a loss of democratic rights and a trend to fascism.?
The answer is how could it not? We SOLD ourselves to gain "access" to a "market".
"We need access to the US market so we should NOT piss them off...." The we was not "we the people..." the we was The CORPORATE we.
Nafta_Globalization_The erosion of rights and liberties.
All so the Corporations can make more profits. FASCISM.
GwNorth, profound words. Seriously. Canada is not really independent - because of NAFTA - and that is sad. It doesn't have to be so. With all these resources and a decent labor force - which obviously includes the immigrants, and with a research and technology base (though not so competitive lately), a small population, etc., Canada could have charted a different course.
Fascist Olympics.
Still, people are trying to pour into Canada to seek health care. But now with their Bush clone as President Canada is succeeding at sucking like the US. In Canada or US, time to fight.
So now the Olympics and all professional sports, especially football, is fascist to the core, and Canada is just as fascist as the US. Fuck the Olympics and fuck professional sports. Maybe if we all ignored these Nazis their little playgrounds would dry up and blow away, like ski slopes with no snow. Let the scalpers sell their tickets to beavers.
I've been working on setting up show/concert venues for the Olympics, and can vouch for a certain fascistic attitude prevailing. And the sheer volume of money being spent is a crime against humanity.
Unfortunately, while there is no shortage of critics or protesters, there is also no shortage of affluence-fueled shallowness and anti-intellectualism in Vancouver - the city known as a 'no fun zone' with its customary lack of entertainment events in a city of its size and relative affluence; a city just last week described by a couple of Spanish gentlemen as 'the most boring city on Earth' due to the colossal lack of pre-Olympic joie de vivre in the streets and parties. This is because of the fact that while Vancouver has increased development and immigration exponentially in the last two decades, and an unbelievably wide and deep river of money flows through, the population has not grown up to keep pace; it is developmentally arrested in the social dimension - a part of the reason that they don't rise up en masse and force an end to the appalling Downtown East Side situation, and they seem quite desperate to be seen as a 'world-class city' - hence the salivating over the Olympics and the panic to drop the enormous pile of money on it.
Granted, there is opposition, but that is being met with instant hostility and aggression by the $900 million security apparatus. And then there is the corporate ownership and relentless corporate prostitution. The so-called games are a corporate whorehouse, where any sport is marginal to the true purpose. They are the Security and Surveillance Games, in a world where the reactions to '9-11' have crafted an Orwellian new world, in which we are all expected to kiss the asses of the fascist security and military fetishists.
But just wait for the fallout. If Vancouver is not creating something to be ashamed of, and to be coughing up for, for a generation or more, I'll eat this goddamn computer.
The folks of Vancouver and British Columbia are angry, primarily at the cost of the Olympics. The security measures are but a partial reflection of the 'mood' that permeates international relations these days, the paranoïa over 'terrorist plots' being all over the map. Imagine what would happen if a major 'attack' occurred under Canada's supervision.
Yes, janeeliz, let's just skip the major source of excessive spending and end stupid wars once and for all. If only we did that, we may be able to continue the Olympics without all this fuss over security...
I feel bad for the BC taxpayer, but still hope that the games become the biggest flop since Montreal '76. I think Montreal took 30 odd years to pay off their olympic debt. With the added costs of security and the lack of enough snow, it looks like Vanoc will be hosing the people of Vancouver until the end of time. I know I'll not bother to watch the games, nor will I be watching any of the insipid opening or closing ceremonies.
I lived in Vancouver for a decade, it was too damned expensive, and the employers were far too miserly. The weather is nice, but with climate change the rest of Canada is warming up nicely. (which isn't really a good thing in the long run...)
Hopefully the money spent on these games will convince the BC voters to turf the 'Liberals'.
I know two guys that tried to go Vancouver last summer. They are in college, from California, and have long hair and beards. When they got to the border the guards searched their car and persons for a long time. Eventually they found a small roach on the floor in the back of the car. The kids were detained for 15 hours, threatened with criminal charges, then told they could go but could never come back to Canada. What the hell is going on?
It's the US that sets border policy for both sides. I was told this by a Canadian border guard. So you know what's going on: the same thing that's going on in all other aspects of US policy.
I voted against the Olympics, then pushed to have them cancelled to draw attention to the carbon footprint of these kinds of unnecessary spectacles - but here they are and it's not so bad. Sure I can't work or drive or park, but the seawall is full of clean friendly people speaking many languages and the great Bridges Restaurant on Granville Island has become Switzerland House and they're serving hot cheese on rye to any starving rube ready to line up outside.
Cherry trees are in blossom. The crocuses are up. The ski runs on the mountains to the North are mostly green. The snow they're 'coptering in goes to Cypress Bowl, out of view from the city. Can anyone confirm a rumor that they're trucking in hydrogen from Quebec to power the showcase Hydrogen Vehicles?
I'm just going to make popcorn, toast a bowl of purple kush, lay back and treat it like absurdist theatre.
Cities that host the "bread and circus" Olympics and cities that host Republican or Democratic national conventions are turned into high security Orwellian armed camps at least for the duration of the events. When games or conventions come to town, the Bill of Rights takes a back seat to the big bucks from business. The word OLYMPICS is just an acronym for "Overly Loud Yahoos Making Profits In Corporate Sports."
ED TANT
Athens, GA
www.edtant.com
For those commenting that Canada is now as bad as the US, as a recent immigrant to Canada from the US, I can assure you that it is not true. The border policy is absurdly bad, but that is set by the US for both sides, coming and going.
Yes, Harper is terrible, really terrible, but even if everything goes as bad as anyone can imagine, it would still take at least two or three generations for Canada to become as bad as the US is now. Canada is one of the few countries in the modern world that is virtually untouched by the global recession (for all the whining that goes on here about the economy, Canadians clearly don't really realize this, but it's true). There were no bank bailouts, there is still health care for everyone, here in Québec they will pay me money to go back to college and learn something else if I wanted.
The Olympic Games are clearly going to be a resounding failure that costs money for decades, and should therefore hopefully fuel anti-corporate sentiment here, just as Harper's latest political gambit is blowing up in his face. Another thing Canada has going for it is that people still get a real education here, and they tend to notice things like this.
The irony of it all is that the local political figures who are signing their city over for this think it will bring them international stature, when in fact the economic fallout of it will cement their place in global irrelevance as soon as the games have passed.
Oh as a Canadian I do not think it as bad here as it is in the USA.
But that just makes me angrier. Given that the USA has set such a bad example we should NOT be going that way and we should be rejecting the policies that will lead us that way.
That anger is inside of many Canadians and that anger does in fact act as a check on Stephen Harper.
Not enough anger; he's still in office, after all.
How sad to see Canada (monkey see, monkey do) turning into a US-style police state. It is so unlike Canada/Canadians. I am a naturalized Canadian and it hurts to see this happening. But when there is a Prime Minister who openly admits hating Canada...