The Beautiful Game: Football, Politics and Social Struggle
Is it any accident in the countries where sports teams are considered community institutions, publically owned and politically active, that their general social welfare situation is in much better shape? Is it not entirely fitting that in a country like Canada where even basic services like education and healthcare are increasingly becoming unaffordable and inaccessible to the majority of people, that things like pro sporting events have likewise become obscene luxuries?
Canadian Authoritarianism: Then and Now
Something has been rotting in the State of Canada for a long, long time.
Vancouver’s Livability Delusion/Denial
Vancouver’s website has a link to the civic themes we’re promoting at our pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The spin [see below] is almost totally unbearable. I take issue with the the city’s PR claims of sustainability, livability, an urban sanctuary and our awareness of our impact on nature. I don’t care what kind [...]
Harper, Toyota Show How the Public Is Eager to Be Appeased
Harper prorogues parliament, drops in the polls, then cancels House breaks, and rebounds. Toyota recalls a quarter million cars in Canada, apologizes and spins around the clock, then has a massive rebound in sales. The public is apparently very eager for excuses to forgive corporations and conservative governments. Does this eagerness extend to groups not [...]
Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 3.1.10: an Olympics Hangover Analysis with Budget Previews
Imtiaz Popat on “The Rational” and I, along with former Green Party Vancouver Parks Commissioner Roslyn Cassells talk about the Olympics, democracy, protest, animal welfare, and a provincial and federal budget coming up this week. The audio is weak in places, but the discussion is strong! The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista [...]
CBC Treats VANOC Like a Crazy Drunk with a Gun
Regardless of whether CBC should have put its logo on something that also had the Canadian flag, VANOC pulled out its big Tonya Harding stick and hit the CBC on the kneecap because people were taking the flags into the brand-sterile Olympic venues. “But we know that VANOC is very vigilant about anything related to [...]
Healthcare Before Olympics: Michael Moore-Style
We’re days away from the end of the $8 billion obscene Olympic party. Last year, BC’s health authorities were defunded by $360 million. Cut, cut, cut. Soon the 16-day bash will be over, the guests will leave and we’ll return the empties. Then we’ll walk around the house and tally up the damage. Holes kicked [...]
National Housing Strategy Rally in Vancouver: Bill C-304
Halfway through the Olympics on Saturday, February 20, hundreds gathered at the Vancouver Art Gallery to call for a national housing strategy. NDP MP Libby Davies’ private members bill C-304 lives on despite Stephen Harper’s cynical proroguement of parliament. Despite killing all his own pending legislation, the prime minister can’t kill private members bills by [...]
The Canadian Olympic Mentality: There is an I in Team
Canada is turning into a place I don’t recognize. The men’s hockey team just played a lame 1st period against the Americans. We’re losing 2-1 so far. Passing seems to no longer be a Canadian virtue. Players carry the puck past the blue line then try to score themselves. Where is the team mentality? Where [...]
Understanding Violent Olympic Protests
Friday’s anti-Olympics rally and march was a virtually fully peaceful event with some clear, powerful and coherent messages inserted into the global communication stream. But then Saturday turned violent. But it is really not that simple. Friday was the Olympics 2010 Welcoming Committee. Saturday was the 2010 Heart Attack, designed to stab the core of [...]
Protesting the Corporate-Debauched Olympics
I’ve spent the weekend reflecting on the success of various confrontations to the Olympic brand and the emerging global corporate feudalism. I’ll start off with a recognition that I’m sitting here in my “I am a free speech zone” t-shirt, having celebrated Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year and observed Vancouver’s Missing Women Memorial March, [...]
VANOC, the Party-Poopers
Once upon a time, VANOC’s idiocy was relatively new to us. Five years ago, they tried to prevent others from using the number 2010. You can read about its brush with the law here. VANOC is like the host of a party that you never meet. You have no say in how they plan the [...]
CBC’s Annoying Olympics Boosterism
Yesterday, the CBC’s annoying Olympics boosterism was complemented with weak reporting on agents provocateurs and missing an opportunity to nail the IOC on rule of law hypocrisy. I have only slightly more ability to tolerate the CBC over corporate media when it comes to promoting the Afghan occupation and how amazingly, incredibly awesome the Olympics [...]
The Olympics: A Failure of Legitimacy
There are many levels of debate about the value of Olympics: social, economic, cultural, political, etc. But one level seems to undergird them all: moral legitimacy, in which the Olympics is bankrupt. For me it began crystallizing in late September, 1988. Ben Johnson won Olympic gold in the 100m, then lost it just days later [...]
Olympic Threat Mathematics
Almost a year ago I wrote about how VANOC was exploring risks to Olympic corporate sponsors. People don’t like them because they have co-opted the Olympics and are pimping the athletes and glee-seekers for their own exposure, which is now most evident in Olympic logos all over the TV, skyscraper advertising condoms downtown and inane [...]
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