Politics, Re-Spun

The Olympics: A Failure of Legitimacy

Samsung Olympic ad on TD building

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 because of the drug thing. After years of national angst over the cost overruns of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and enduring boycotts in 1980 and 1984, it seemed impossible to have pure sport.

Fast forward to this young year when Mark McGwire quite easily announced he was lying when he said he was drug-free when chasing the home run record years ago. Whatever. Cynicism seems too natural.

While I value competition and, more so, seeking personal bests, I honour athletes who compete. Sadly the context of the Olympics and its corporate and political masters have spoiled the entire concept. Similarly, I have great respect for Canadian troops wherever they are in the world, but supporting the troops does not mean I have to support the politics behind any given mission they are sent on.

What has happened to erode the legitimacy of the Olympics? Simply, neoliberal commodification.

• corporate endorsements for players to fund their training as government reduce funding
• the participation of professional athletes to enrich marketing potential
• exclusive corporate sponsors who have quite effectively lobbied the welcoming IOC for extensive protections
• exclusive media sponsors impeding information flows outside of their media
• the IOC as an untouchable international organization that can suborn nations to abandon elements of their constitution as we can’t/won’t stop the IOC from discriminating against female ski jumpers
• litigious domestic Olympic committees protecting brands of what are already some of the most powerful corporations in the world
• The Canada Line transit route promoted to encourage an Olympic bid at the expense of the Evergreen line for the northeast suburbs already in the queue, with significant climate implications
• Lies: the marketing of a tunnel under Cambie Street for the Canada Line that turned into the cheaper cut-and-cover; only $176m pitched for security when previous Olympics security budgets were over $1b

The games are now about corporate marketing.

A core goal of VANOC was to literally monopolize all outdoor advertising during the games to resell to exclusive corporate sponsors. The global recession softened sales. Now the BC government is spending more of our tax dollars to buy up leftover ad space to advertise that BC is a great place. No longer “The Best Place in the World”[tm], mind you.

Here are some other examples of decayed moral legitimacy.

During the last Olympic games, RBC ran ads bragging about how awesome they were in 1948 as they paid for the Canadian men’s hockey team to attend and win Olympic gold. How long before corporations start fielding their own teams instead of nations? A corporation is running for Congress in the USA and in BC, the premier announced last fall that the government is studying allowing non-human corporations to vote in municipal elections.

Last week, after criticism VANOC took down one of its website videos celebrating the torch run across the country. They chose to use Nazi footage from the 1936 games. They felt it might be controversial, so they blurred out the straight arm Nazi salute that is so visually repulsive. Both were horrible decisions. Both reflect a mindset that is so out of touch with standards of moral legitimacy. But I can’t be surprised by all this considering the overall mindset of the Olympics.

The Bay department store ripped off the Cowichan sweater design from the First Nations who “own” it, so it could contract out sweater production.

In Vancouver this week, venues and key sites are under military lock down with layers of concrete barricades and fencing. Military helicopters and jets buzz the skies. Military and private security forces live on cruise ships in East Vancouver. VANOC cars cruise the city, flagrantly violating civic anti-idling by-laws. And in a ecologically symbiotic nod to this illegitimate event, El Nino has produced spring-like temperatures making the Olympic mittens gimmick useless.

Polls in the last few months show around only 9% of Canadians are very excited about the games and recently only half of British Columbians think the Olympics will be good for BC, despite the common sense view that as we get closer people will be more excited.

Another common sense goes like this, the Olympics is a fish bowl of groupthink. Nazi footage in a promotional film? Stealing First Nations craft designs? Erecting ugly prison security around venues? A $10m Canada pavilion that looks like a strong wind could blow it over, when the log structure in Turin in 2006 cost only $6m [and has since become an albatross, itself a telling irony].

Then there is a story in the Globe and Mail the other day about how VANOC has banned athletes from being in advertisements during the games because it compromises the purity of competition. Oh, unless the ads are for the sanctioned corporate sponsors. Or, if in VANOC’s subjective judgement the ad campaign has been around long enough. Tim Horton’s has recently run some ads with Sidney Crosby, but in the article we read they are voluntarily pulling the ads during the Olympics in case VANOC decides to come after them. The chill factor extends to even Tim Hortons!

The best irony of that article, however, exemplifies this whole debacle. The writer characterizes Tim Hortons’ Sidney Crosby campaign as one about patriotism. Tim Hortons is now owned by an American company. Marketing is global now.

Later this morning we will see the beginning of actions leading to a massive convergence of dissent later this week to coincide with the opening of the games. This culture of critique is pervasive.

When the Canucks are in the playoffs, there is a palpable sense of energy around Vancouver. People buy flags to attach to their car windows. There is honking in the streets when Canucks score goals. Even people not too bothered with hockey get excited. This vibe is absent right now.

In the surreal world of neoliberalism, unaccountable international organizations like the IOC, corporate welfare programs and rational and moral contradictions, there is no irony left.

Oh, and a Chicago company got the contract to build the Canada pavilion in Vancouver.

So when we see the pablum, sanitized feel-good corporate media fluff pieces on Vancouver, think about how much packaging has already gone into the big show and how motivated the corporate media sponsors will be to paint this a smiles-only event.

Then we need to think about the athletes afraid to use Twitter, what lack of snow will do to some of them, and let’s think about the social costs of cleaning up the mess of this party.

As it is, no one has done the body count yet. As billions of dollars have been diverted from social programs, health, education, etc., how many people have suffered or died early because money that could have gone into hip replacement surgery or mental health treatment was diverted to a luge track. It’s a ghoulish research project, so it’s one that no one wants to talk about.

All I know is that the police state that is emerging this week will change Vancouver and Whistler and BC and Canada forever. The hands are pretty much dealt now. All that is left is in the playing.

And in a few weeks, we’ll know what kind of symbol the Olympic torch really is.

Seeing Social Movement Theory in Christmas Movies

I’m hyper-attuned to building a social movement. In fact, I’m seeing it all over the place, from tight clusters of birds whipping around in their collective unconscious to Christmas movies.

Watching Polar Express tonight reminded me of my favourite part of the film near the end. Everyone’s waiting for Santa to come out and play. All the elves are standing around mumbling. Then there’s this converging anarchy of voices leading to an “ooooooOOOOOOhhhhhHHHHH yyyyyyYYYYYooooooOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…” that coalesces into “Oh, you better watch out,” etc. of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Many disparate voices joining together.

So I’m thinking about the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit for climate change a few weeks ago. Not surprising, really, when I think about it because the other day I was cutting some french toast in half [well 2/3 and 1/3] to see if my daughter would pick the bigger half. Game theory: the person who cuts is not the one who picks which half. I figured that was related to the realpolitik BS that killed Copenhagen.

So then I started reading up on the The One Degree War and how Evo Morales is convening a climate summit for social movements on Earth Day next year. The first begins a dialogue on solving a global crisis in an open-source, non-proprietary way; it feels quite cooperative. The second recognizes that a way past the 17th century political culture that killed Copenhagen is to convene a movement of movements.

I was thinking of that when I started Canada22.org on Earth Day in 2006, but I didn’t have the mobilization juice to scale it up to a provincial or federal level. But it’s nice to see now that organizations like TckTckTck.org have been able to hack together 15 million people to mobilize in advance of Copenhagen and we now have 11 months to mobilize before COP16 in Mexico next winter.

If we are ever going to get from zero-sum politics to positive-sum gains, we have to change the rules and deligitimize the old politics. And the people have to take control. And we have to see through the corporate greenwashing of Hopenhagen and realize their vibe contributed to the pablum document in Copenhagen and destroyed real movements for climate justice.

Social movements are a dire threat to political parties that still operate in the 17th century and maybe even the 20th century paradigm. Paradigm mechanics like TckTckTck.org and Evo Morales and George Monbiot are most able to pivot us into a new era. We have to get on board or our leaders will sell us down the tar sands river, starting with the Canadian prime minister.

Now I just have to figure out if Bert and Ernie [the cop and cab driver..which is which? and does it matter?] in It’s A Wonderful Life are really the inspiration for the Sesame Street characters and if there’s a nascent social movement brewing there. Then I’ll really have something.

Vista Video Arrives!

Politics, Re-Spun is intricately connected to the dgiVista.org nexus of expression. As much as my audio podcasts have been terribly fulfilling and well received [with hundreds of hits/month since mid-2006], it’s time to move into video.

My audio podcasts have been audio versions of my editorials as well as interesting chats with people I know being/doing/thinking/feeling interesting things.

And now that bandwidth restrictions are virtually passe, video podcasts are just so simple now. All my audio and video podcast conversations have extensive indexes of topics. See below for the first two video podcast chats to watch.

You can review past audio podcasts through searching here: http://politicsrespun.org/?s=podcast

You can also access past and current audio and video podcasts at the following sites. Even though iTunes isn’t terribly oppressive, I’m prefering Miro lately, as it’s open source:

iTunes

Pick it up straight in your iTunes at itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml.

Miro

Click subscribe below to keep up in Miro, the new wave of open source bliss:

The first video podcast chat is with Colin Mills and Ameena Mayer, followed by Rachel Marcuse.

June 2008 conversation with Colin Mills and Ameena Mayer, topics:

Introductions: Colin Mills, Ameena Mayer, Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Colin on…

- the process on his photography
- perfect versus meaningful art and paralysis
- accepting failure
- learning curves
- the problem with money in art
- 1 of 1 versus mass “production” and paralysis
- Stephen on the new Karsh self-portrait stamp
- truth is bullshit
- Princess Sophie as a beautiful person or a focus of security guards, and what is true
- painters’ freedom versus photographers’
- photography is not about truth
- impressionist photography
- Flickr mode
- Stephen on the Classical Joint in Gastown 20 years ago and watching/listening to jazz without glasses on and seeing a different colour aura over each musician’s musical contribution…and how it’s like Colin’s impressionist photography
- truth as crispy and blurry
- deciding how to photograph concerts in the moments and anonymity
- on Utah Phillips dying at 180

A critique of the absolute lack of community in North American culture by Ameena…

- GM popcorn sucks, organic popcorn is good
- disconnecting social networks
- let’s blame capitalism, the internet and our lack of valuing relationships [excepting romantic ones]
- and it’s not just her, it’s endemic
- addictions, social alienation undermining our tribal nature
- the growth of capitalism and globalization, the isolation of the individual consumer, workaholism, hyper-individualism, less selflessness
- Colin suggests we may be creating capitalism because we want to live this way: greedy; with some manipulation from Madison Avenue
- Colin on the 1972 40-ish hour documentary “The World at War”: fewer material possessions with depression followed by war
- friendship as less reciprocal
- younger adults are more workaholic than in earlier times
- we are busy because we have a hole in our lives
- Colin asks whether economic anxiety may be a social reality, not a choice
- technology and the internet are replacing more “traditional” human interaction, like the phone or having coffee with something
- we don’t make the luxury of time by choosing to forego distraction
- a tangent is vetoed
- it returns
- Colin on the self-consciousness of believing he grew up under a microscope
- difficult figuring out how to reconcile my relationship with the rest of the world versus self-obsession
- college students live in a fishbowl too, or is it just our trained narcism?
- the iPod generation is symbolic: I, I, I
- why don’t we have a sociologist in the room tying all this together

- beer break

Lack of community, continued…

- self-absorbtion is against our intrinsic human nature
- the nuclear family is bad
- we need ways of seeing the world beyond our solipsism
- our elders are also noticing less mutual human consideration
- Colin on CHiPs, Disney and Hymn Sing: how choice contributes to narcism and narrowing of awareness
- Stephen on why my.yahoo.com is bad, ultimately the celebrated entrenchment of ignorance
- freedom = ignorance
- hyper-specialization of interests leads to social dislocation
- wearing headphones in public
- how we actually talk to our neighbours on snow days
- socially, we are now less interdependent
- romantic relationships might be economic arrangements
- or is it avoiding alone-ness
- our absence of extended family cripples us as a spouse can’t fill all the needs that an extended family could
- yard sales as community building
- intentionally spending time with friends
- [drifting into the next topic, the Follies of Technology]
- female body mutilation, extreme makeovers, etc.
- all the flavours of feminism [many of which are mutually exclusive]
- What Not to Wear: fashion and sincere self-concept counselling, but is it feminist or anti-feminism?
- the Lululemon world
- how women’s poor clothing choices sadly can hamper their career success
- recognizing we can’t control other people’s impressions of us
- Ameena asks the boys how much sexual attraction motivates the desire to have a relationship

Ameena ties it all together: feminism, social isolation, community, marriage, different values, loneliness…

- the challenges to meaningful relationships create a desperation to be noticed [Letty agreed]
- communities of ideas have replaced communities of propinquity
- why arranged marriages can work, unlike how much we need to try so hard
- LavaLife: the solution to arranged marriages?
- folk versus popular cultures and how they affect us as individuals
- reflections on cyberpaths: socio/psychopaths stalking women in dating websites
- why Colin argues that we should be focussing blame more on individualism than societal features
- the cats show up: aren’t they precious

Technology, Facebook and video podcasting

- Ameena argues that video podcasting is kinda pathetic
- Colin argues that we don’t lament the absence of writers in our rooms when we read
- then we try to define what video podcasting IS in our culture, and what it is supposed to be
- we get a bit judgemental, I’m afraid
- what do Facebook “friends” mean to human connections?
- Facebook friends versus networking usefulness

December 2008 conversation with Rachel Marcuse, topics:

Rachel Marcuse, December 28, 2008, Foundation restaurant on Main Street at 7th Avenue in Vancouver.

- Coalition of Progressive Electors, a Vancouver municipal party

- youth engagement and facilitation

- grassroots community and political organization and development

- the whole Obama thing: top down versus people-centred; concern about overblown expectations and lack of populist follow-through; being a blank slate of “change”; participatory democracy and accountability; packaging over substance;

- reforming the political process in Vancouver, BC and Canada: ideas instead of personalities; re-framing citizens’ views of what politics is; apathy versus irrelevant effort; apathy versus electoral disengagement and indifference; apathy in middle aged people as opposed to the youth; why proroguing is not well understood

- break: the arrival of chocolate fondue

- beat boxers are so talented, Thundering Word Heard, Montmartre Cafe, Cafe Deux Soleils, the poetry slam, George Bowering versus T.Paul Ste. Marie

- democracy’s arrival in Canada with the end of majority governments: how this isn’t a constitutional crisis but a constitutional flowering, Stephen Harper’s lies about how the parliamentary system works in order to scare citizens enough so he can keep his job, anti-Quebec racism in western Canada, the Bloc Quebecois helps Quebec flourish as a culture without needing to focus on separation, the ease of stereotypes

- political populism, hope and progressive growth in Canada, Vision Vancouver, COPE, BC NDP, Venezuela: people deciding to lead; Jack Layton’s outside chance of becoming prime minister last month; Dion and Ignatieff; the Liberal ruling birthright/arrogance; electoral reform in Vancouver [ward system] and BC [proportional representation, BC-STV]; decentralizing politics to communities; electoral reform needing to happen at the right time; Social Credit in BC; Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention and timing

- social change through speaking to people’s self-interest in improving society: livable communities; improving society can’t happen with sound bites but by engaging people and introducing a new paradigm; Gordon Campbell pulling a Shock Doctrine response to the meltdown as if he used Naomi Klein’s formula; shopping to save the economy is unsustainable; re-education people out of blind obedience to Milton Friedman

- how do we mobilize and catalyze people to becoming more socially engaged: building relationships and visions; mobilizing youth and adults; Disney sweatshops; working with young people as a way to confront cynicism; youth who care about social change and resent previous generations’ mistakes they must live with; Craig Kielburger; how young people are disempowered, doubly so when they work for social change; losing builds resilience; David Chudnovsky; social change requires celebration to keep us going; work-life balance in activism and saying no; hope, common sense, pacing and self-knowledge; Greenpeace, protests, martyrdom; CCPA and Check Your Head and mentorship; Fraser Institute indoctrination programs

- the future: indulging imagining a functioning utopia and what we want our communities to look like; capitalism is not eternal, particularly because of finite resources; spanning communities to synchronize work for social, political and economic change; focussing on change that really matters right now while keeping a long-term plan; the value of being interdisciplinary; there is no real failure when groups engage with each other; the Open Space workshop model, its advantages and frustrations; Open Space as a metaphor for empowering citizens’ involvement in politics; Don Davies, Jack Layton and a community meeting at Collingwood Community Centre on politics and the economy;

- how the Foundation restaurant’s expansion is a good sign for culture and community on Main Street in Vancouver.

Logical Absurdities: Only Anti-Government Sentiments Are Political

So, US Iraqi war veterans who oppose the political mission, though presumably they support the troops [themselves, their comrades and friends], aren’t allowed to march in a Veterans Day Parade in Long Beach.

“They do not fit the spirit of the parade,” she said. “The spirit being one of gratitude for what the veterans have done. We do not want groups of a political nature, advocating the troops’ withdrawal from Iraq.” Parade coordinators work hard to keep the event free from politics.

This is the absurd double standard that plagues people cursed with an inability to understand paradoxes.

I remember the early 1990s and how hard it was to make it through the relativist paradox of elements of post-modernism. As an early post-modern zealot, I rejected absolute truths because I rejected any truth as being able to be absolute. I was trying to embrace that concept while rejecting the arguments that have supported the human misery that resulted from absolute truths: white supremacy, genocide in the Americas, heterosexism, two millennia of imperial Christianity.

But at the same time, there is the relativist paradox that rejecting absolutes is itself an absolute.

This inability to contend with the modernist-postmodernist tension shows up in the “support our troops” nonsense, whereby anyone who rejects Canada’s presence in Afghanistan doesn’t support the troops, even though the troops didn’t make the politician send them there.

It also shows up in the more single-minded culture in the USA. If you oppose the government, you are being political. Yet it is not a political act to support it. So a Veterans Day parade is for apolitical people.

It also shows up in this surreal Flickr group, America, America!

It is hard to fathom:

About AMERICA, AMERICA! 1200+ members & growing! **** WE ARE NOW A GROUP OF 1200+ MEMBERS! AWESOME! YAY! WOW!
GOD BLESS AMERICA, AMERICA! THANKS TO ALL OF OUR MEMBERS, OUR FAMILY!
****************************************************************************************
OUR PERMANENT THREAD IS FLAG DAY, PLEASE ALL MEMBERS POST ALL PHOTOS OF OLD GLORY IN THE “FLAG DAY” THREAD! We are building the biggest best collection of American Flag photos on Flickr!! Let’s do it together!!
****************************************************************************************
THESE THREADS ARE CURRENTLY OPEN FOR POSTING:
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL,
MY HOMETOWN;
SPORTS STORIES;
SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER!
PLANES, TRAINS AND MOTOR VEHICLES
FLAG DAY (PERMANENT THREAD)
Anyone who posts in any thread receives a special award and will be eligible for front page exposure!

GROUP RULES: NEW RULE, POSTING LIMIT IN POOL 1O PER DAY! Any pictures, photoart, digital art that depicts the good and positive things about America or any place that loves freedom! Photos and photoart that depict patriotism, the spirit of America, family life, and that which shows the ways God has Blessed America and the world. Please *NO POLITICS OF ANY KIND*, *NO CAMPAIGN PHOTOS FOR ANY PARTY*! NO AMERICA BASHING, NO rude or BAD LANGUAGE, and NO nudes. This is a wholesome family oriented group about America and the people who make her the greatest nation in the world.
If you have a gripe about something, write a letter to the editor at your local newspaper -THIS is NOT a forum for anger. Thanks and enjoy! Fantartsy AKA JJ

IMPORTANT NOTICE: ANYONE who blocks administrators will be banned from the group and all their photos WILL BE REMOVED!JJ/ administrator

GROUP MOTTO: FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN OR LOVE THE IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE FOR WHICH AMERICA STANDS. Thanks to each and every member for making this a great AMERICAN group! JJ and all the administrators and helpers!

Beyond the planes, trains and motor vehicles fossil fuel worshiping, the philosophy of the group is similarly blind to the reality that they themselves are expressing a political view of supporting the government, an act they ban by definition. I remember in the 1980s Bruce Springsteen said blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed.

The good and positive things about America or any place that loves freedom, however that is defined by the group leaders. Patriotism, the spirit of America, family life [defined again I suspect by the group leaders], how God has blessed America and the world [again, defined by the group leaders]. No politics of any kind shows they have no sense that their whole group is a political expression of rigid, uncritical conformity with the government line.

And yes, America is the greatest nation in the world. I’m always wondering what criteria people use to say that. Constant overt and covert invasions and subversion of other countries for over two centuries? Largest military expenditure? Only country to use nuclear weapons on civilians? Economic imperialist supporting multi-national corporations creating global feudalism with half the world’s 6.6 billion people in the world dying on less than $2/day?

Anger and “gripe” belong in newspapers. And while they have the right to have Flickr group that shows blind support of America’s junta, saying they brook nothing political is just silly.

They also say this for a current event:

fantartsy (a group admin) says:
04 Nov 07 – YAY!!1000+ members!!** .VETERANS’ DAY THREAD, open for 2 weeks only! Post a photo of the veteran you want to honor> ANYONE FROM ANY COUNTRY may post in this “special” thread!OPEN NOW! JJ/admns

I suspect that if Iraq Veterans Against the War members try to post pictures of events that are critical of the policy in Iraq, those pictures will be removed.

More on the Myth of Media Objectivity

What the evening news shows need is less “objectivity” and more analysis. The problem with objective journalism is that it doesn’t exist and never did. Molly Ivins disposed of the objectivity question for all time when she observed in 1993, “The fact is that I am a 49-year-old white female, a college-educated Texan. All of that affects the way I see the world. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to see anything the same way that a 15-year-old black high school dropout does. We all see the world from where we stand. Anybody who’s ever interviewed five eyewitnesses to an automobile accident knows there’s no such thing as objectivity.”

I’ve said it before and Molly Ivins has said it too [see above]. There is no objectivity in the media. Amira Hass has said it: being fair and objective aren’t the same thing.

If you don’t yet know who Keith Olbermann is yet, you owe it to yourself to YouTube him. Journalism with a soul. Don’t bother settling for anything less.

If you don’t believe what Ivins is talking about above, you probably don’t understand the multiple subjectivity of post-modernism and your value to a 21st century world is limited. Time to get with the program.