Politics, Re-Spun

I Am a Free Speech Zone: No Mayor Can Waive My Charter Rights During the Olympics

Granted, I’m not a lawyer. I consider myself at best a pretend-lawyer [I prefer "lay-lawyer"] so when I dispense legal advice I add a standard disclaimer that I’m not real. We’re all lucky, though, that David Eby is a real lawyer, even those around here who have drunk the Olympics Boosterism Kool-Aid[tm].

But when it comes to my Charter rights, I don’t believe I need to be a lawyer to understand that former Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell doesn’t have the right to suspend my Charter rights, even if I gave him permission, which I would never do.

While the Charter includes right at the top a limiting statement making my rights “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” I don’t believe the intellectual and political sanitation of communication to appease the International Olympic Committee is a reasonable limit or a part of a free and democratic society.

So as I’m following the dance of lawyers and cops around what kind of free speech zones I’ll be able to express myself in, I found David Eby’s piece today interesting, particularly in that it informed me of the [sadly not isolated] grand act of hubris of Larry Campbell in pledging to the IOC that I don’t need all my Charter rights at all times in all places during the Olympics:

the 2003 contract signed by Larry Campbell waiving Charter rights in Vancouver for the Games, and the bylaws passed recently by Vancouver city council giving that contract effect.

via A tale of two papers: Olympic bylaw coverage | David Eby.

Check out Section 47 at the bottom of page 23 of the Vancouver-IOC Host City Agreement to review such limitations. And read Eby’s piece on Section 47 here.

I simply don’t accept this.

Free speech violations as part of a sanitization campaign for global PR is not an acceptable limitation of my Charter rights.

This is why I am asserting that I am a free speech zone. And I’m proud that as I read David Eby’s piece today, I also received today my order form for the “I am a Free Speech Zone” t-shirt and underwear from COPE.

So it’s time now to order your shirt and undergear to remind yourself and others that you won’t tolerate the Olympics Sanitation Machine to come to my country and tell me I can’t express myself when the world is watching.

And our test over the next 6 months is to wear these t-shirts to events where the thought police would have some interest in controlling expression: places where the premier or prime minister may skulk around, Olympic venue opening parties, you get the picture. It’s time to see if our Charter still means anything now that the IOC ghoul is haunting our communities.

So buy your t-shirts and underwear. And wear them proudly because the phrase is part of the creative commons, something the IOC would never understand.

“I Am A Free Speech Zone”: A T-Shirt for the Olympics

“I Am A Free Speech Zone”

Let’s put it on t-shirts to let VANOC know that citizens are in charge in a democracy!

What if we all wore them all around town during the Olympics as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card? Would it be like when I used to hand out copies of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to my grade 9 students upon their arrival in high school, and watch them stroll through life calling bullshit?

Maybe it’s more like an inoculation against the emerging police state.

Read some of the nonsense here: http://tinyurl.com/2010Daphne then go make your t-shirt!

Handcuffing a Community’s Resilience: Bata in the 21st Century

I first knew Bata shoes as a kid taken shopping to try on new shoes. As a teen I learned about the nexus of globalization and apartheid with Bata as a model, since they were operating in South Africa. Thomas Bata said, “We expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.”

Not only was it neoliberal globalization’s low-wages that lured Bata to they shift production overseas decades ago to take advantage of cheap labour, foreign competitors also helped force the closure of Bata’s domestic shoe production in Batawa in 1999.

But now Sonja Bata is trying to redevelop Batawa, Ontario into a post-industrial community, it is clear that she hasn’t read Jeff Rubin’s book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, on how peak oil will end globalization and force us to spend far more time developing bioregional social, economic and political communities.

She has partnered with design students from Carlton University, encouraging them to get all radical in creating a new vision of a community with artists, urban farms, research incubators and even a microbrewery. While these ideas reflect a healthy respect for a mixed community, since her model is post-industrial she may be in for a surprise when oil goes back up to beyond where it went last year and the global human supply chain constricts.

What will likely be needed in Batawa is for her to open her factory to make shoes again, not convert it into condos.

So, it is more than a little ironic that she is planning to miss out on developing some appropriate infrastructure for the community upon globalization’s decline.

While Bata is now in the gentrification business, the Globe’s Gordon Pitts correctly writes, “the region needs jobs, not fanciful ideas,” as a local Quaker Oats plant recently closed.

Ultimately, Bata’s vision and paradigm are hopelessly obsolete. In discussing the process of Batawa’s gentrification, she says redeveloping the factory is a symbol: “we have to get that done.” Destroying the factory’s capacity to manufacture products local certainly is a symbol, but it’s a symbol of a business model which will become more irrelevant every month the price of oil creeps back up.

But that’s not the only problem with paradigms involving Bata. Carlton characterizes its partnership with Bata as a university-community collaboration. Bata is a corporation with a real estate gentrification agenda. They are not a community. They don’t speak for a community. They are, in fact, hampering the Batawa community’s resilience to transform its local economy to a more sustainable one.

The relationship is really a public-private partnership with public university design students subsidizing the creative function of a corporation. It would be far more appropriate for the design students to be remaking Batawa in a way that will allow it to function in the transition we’ll be encountering when oil prices rise.

Instead, they are creating a community that will have no place in our near future.

They should be recognizing that bioregional social, economic and political units will be the sustainable size of communities since getting products from outside local zones will require expensive transportation. Bioregional communities will have to be as self-sufficient as possible to ensure that what they do trade will provide real value to justify the costs.

At 82, Sonja Bata may not be able to properly envision what our communities will require in a future with peak oil, climate change/breakdown, discredited deregulated and privatized neoliberal capitalism and declining globalization.

The key to managing such a profound paradigm shift is for all the rest of us to have more foresight than her. What the world needs now is the sweetness and light of sound community planning.

Destroying the CBC: Another Step Today

I’ve already written about the slow destruction of the CBC. And I’m at it again today.

The short list of what I wrote before:

• constrain funding to lose Hockey Night in Canada
• lose the rights to the HNIC theme song
• kill the CBC orchestra

And now: “the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. plans to cut up to 800 jobs as part of its strategy to make up for a $171 million shortfall in 2009-10.”

Defunding through manufactured crises is a core element of the neoliberal toolkit. Today’s 800 layoffs are not the first assault–it’s been going on for years under Conservative and Liberal governments. Corporate media and Canada’s neoliberal parties are cozy. A state-run media portal is unfair competition in a “free” market. It has to go, but quietly.

So the weak, unbelievable argument from Igg holds little credibility: “Even the private broadcasters understand the importance of a public broadcaster, so the question is what is the government prepared to do now to ensure that this national institution survives this recession?” Clearly, nothing. The recession is another bludgeoning tool for socialized media.

Another great neoliberal toolkit is selling assets to rent back, thereby providing an eternal revenue stream for anyone wealthy enough to buy a government asset…a revenue stream funded by tax dollars in a pretty straightforward corporate welfare scheme: “The public broadcaster will consider selling and leasing back some of its real estate assets to raise extra cash.”

If the government really believed this was a good idea, they’d be advising all Canadians to sell their homes and rent them back for a quick influx of cash and the privilege of renting for the rest of our lives.

So what to do?

In a world where megacorporations are floundering, they are even more desperate for public broadcasters to get out of the way and slide their assets over to the private sector.

It’s basically theft.

Taxes are how we buy things together. Our ancestors paid for the CBC. In a nation of concentrated corporate ownership of private media, public broadcasting offers some of the last best examples of a vibrant free press keeping leaders accountable in a democracy. It’s no wonder our right wing governments are dismantling it.

Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are interested in keeping it. A coalition government with the NDP in significant power or a better representative government mix in a new electoral system is pretty much a minimum for saving the last pounds of flesh from being scraped from MotherCorp’s tortured body.

Leaving the knife-wielders in power leads to the obvious conclusion.

via CBC to cut up to 800 jobs, sell assets.

No One Is Illegal – Ignite resistance ~ Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!

No One Is Illegal – Vancouver » Blog Archive » Ignite resistance ~ Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!.

In a world where the deregulated global market capitalist regime is imploding, there is wide open space to re-frame the local, national and global economy in a socially and economically just way.

An off-shoot of this progressive agenda is the celebration of authentic community where people/consumers/citizens can get out of their cocooned homes and participate in the cultures of community.

What better way to do it than in this event?

Details:

SATURDAY MARCH 21. rhizome cafe, 317 e. broadway

* 6:30 – 7:30 pm: artists of colour showcase. please bring $ and support their creations! (tshirts, crafts, prints, posters, art and more) Free food served during artists showcase (on us and Rhizome)
* WITH: Louis Cruz, Tania Willard, Afuwa Granger, Riadh Hashim, Angela Sterritt, Gord Hill, Kat Norris, People’s History of Kanada posters, Café Ramona and products made by Zapatista Mayan women, and more.

* 7:30 – 9:30 pm: wicked performances and inspiring words includes spoken word, storytelling, children’s songs, hip hop, comedy, musical performances, and talks! Enjoy dinner and drinks from Rhizome’s delicious menu
* WITH: George Ciccariello-Maher from OAKLAND!, Kat Norris, Aysha and Sahara, Carnegie Community Action Project Choir, Hari Alluri, Reem Alnuweiri, Ros Salvador, Sinag Bayan Filipino Cultural Collective, Priscillia Mays, Gupreet Kambo, Alaaeldin Abdalla, and Lindsay Bomberry.

The Backstage Lounge, 2002

So Virgin took over Crave 95.3fm in Vancouver recently, which had been Zed 95.3fm since 1991-ish. On Virgin yesterday afternoon they had Marianas Trench in the studio. They talked about compiling a band of folks who could sing really well, which shows because their vocal talent surpasses that of most popular bands in the world today.

They talked about how you spend you whole life on your first album and your goal is to not have your second album suck.

Then they sang some stuff.

This was all really interesting because 7 years ago my best friend lived on Dunbar and worked in a video rental store sporadically to pay off some custom golf clubs made by the store’s owner. So the store was getting rid of some old in-store TVs and I went with my friend to buy one. Josh sold me one of those TVs and my best friend said that he was in a band. Josh explained the band and as I had already been haunting the Backstage Lounge on Granville Island, I was pleased to hear they had a gig there.

The Vancouver Bach Children’s Chorus sure ended up being a useful part of Josh’s past.

They were part punk band, part boy band, spectacular 5-part harmonizers and an all around high energy wild night. 

So when I heard yesterday on Virgin that their album was iTunes top selling album last week, I was not at all surprised. If you run iTunes right now, you’ll see their album on its front screen.

The Backstage Lounge in 2002 was a grand moment in Vancouver’s recent music history with a number of incredibly talented musicians.

Beyond Marianas Trench inspiring grateful folks at the Backstage were Jon Arnot’s Echophone, Welkin, The Clumsy Lovers touring band and Jenny Galt, Sam Soichet and Vicky Sjohall in Cherrybomb.

Trench, Welkin and the Lovers are still going, Echophone and Cherrybomb have moved on. But out of all the great times there 7 years ago, it’s nice to see a well-deserving band contribute on a global level.

The Province Newspaper Flexes its Fear-Mongering Muscle Again

In their tradition of tabloid, sensationalist pseudo-journalism, The Province newspaper in Vancouver, pablum flagship of the CanWest media domination in town, described the Pemberton rock festival as “Rock ‘N’ Roll ‘N’ Chaos.”

Astonishing, this chaos. CTV news tonight said the RCMP kicked out a small number of people from the event over the weekend, considering there were 40,000 people there each day.

Chaos makes me think of terrorist attacks, total violent anarchy and a tone of unruliness that merits bringing in the riot squad.

As it turns out, it was just a rock show. No real news there for a paper that panders in fear when slow summer news weekends emerge. No carnage at the fireworks last night, I’ll assume, since no blood showed up on the cover this morning, just this photo of concert fans.

And it’s hard to see The Province as a legitimate media source when we read their own entertainment columnist end his last blog post tonight with this:

“Thanks are in order for all the concert-goers who kept it on the up and up, not turning any of the minor inconveniences into cause for misbehaviour and to all the hard-working volunteers on site. And, most of all, to Pemberton for letting us all come up and, admittedly, make a real mess all over someone’s farm and have a ball.”

Alas, no mass arrests there tonight either. Too bad because tomorrow’s headlines will have no gore to lead with.

Four Dogs, a Bone, Some Inner Truths and Rich Hilarity

Four Dogs and a Bone, playing at Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive
until Sunday, August 12, is an effortlessly funny play that has just
enough meandering through core identity neuroses for the audience to
appreciate the gravity of being, particularly the being of expressive,
artistic people. It quite simply succeeds.

As a movie producer, screenwriter and two hapless ingénues endure the
petty interpersonal dynamics and corporate demands of completing a film,
each ends up exposing their desperation as they try to find their
centre. Throughout, their base yet authentic struggles frequently leave
the audience in comedic bliss.

The play has the needling uncomfortability of enduring an evening in
Archie Bunker’s living room, complete with the rich circumstantial,
sometimes narcissistic, sometimes brutal humour that attends needy
people working out their self-acceptance. The intimate environment of
the seating in Havana’s theatre adds to the experience of being trapped
in someone else’s melt-down.

The characters drift through priceless, occasional moments of gaudy
caricature to a place of honesty. Like all of us, they each seek moments
of safety to share their truths with those who are worthy of listening
and supporting them.

Artists struggle with self-acceptance while balancing the need to be
vulnerable as individuals and performers. When they are thrust together
to create such a collaborative project as a film, the situation invites
the kinds of clashes that force each person to rise above their persona
and their character to achieve true human honesty. Their ineptitude,
though, is often just hilarious.

As Bradley, the psychologically and physiologically decomposing
producer, Michael Q. Adams embodies the physical manifestation of
pressure with grit and acute comedic suffering. Brenda, played by Olesia
Shewchuk, projects a pristinely false vulnerability within a struggling
superficiality that masks her particular neediness.

Lori Watt’s magnetic Collette, while at times almost glancing around for
Mr. DeMille’s closeup, carries her truths so close to the surface that
the others, if they were not so engrossed in their own internal
psychological minefield, would undoubtedly grow to know. Finally,
Gabriel Carter’s emotionally spent screenwriter, Victor, unknowingly and
ironically holds the central situational power despite the drifting
through the fog of his own emptiness.

While each character clashes with the others in their desire to be
heard, the audience ends up enjoying the comedy inherent in the human
soul as it clumsily seeks its surface. And the laughing flows—from
delightful physical humour to the guilty pleasure of chuckling at
caricatures that are trite masks for the struggle for truth that we all
face.

As the characters strive to make their art mean something—for itself and
for them—they show us how we all struggle to overcome our own masks to
find true liberation. And because so many of us are so bad at it, we
stumble and then get to learn the lesson of laughing at ourselves.

Four Dogs and a Bone reminds us of the necessity of exposing our truths
while keeping a healthy sense of humour about us.