Vancouver

Megaphone Magazine has put out their Olympics Issue. It's well worth the read. If you're in Vancouver, you can find it on a street corner near you.

The Integrated Security Unit, which comprises the West Vancouver Police, Canadian Forces and RCMP, will make their presence known during their second training operation from February 9-13, one year before the 2010 Games. “The public are certainly going to see us," said Bud Mercer, assistant RCMP commissioner and head of the ISU.

Bob Mackin, one of Vancouver's best journos writing on the Olympics, recently broke the story about the "$44 million for six camps to accommodate 1,600 Canadian Forces personnel during the 2010 Winter Olympics."

It is telling that the violent death of Tracey, a homeless woman in Vancouver, who burned to death after attempting to keep warm after constructing a small fire in a downtown street corner, has resulted in national headlines while the freezing death of another unidentified homeless man in Montreal the very next night has resulted in only a passing mention in Montreal newspapers. It is beyond cynical to point out that when a homeless person burns to death, it is a national tragedy, whereas when a homeless person freezes to death, it is scarcely even news. But this case demonstrates that when Canadian media isolate one homeless death as opposed to reporting upon the increasing pattern of homeless deaths over the last two decades, it paradoxically allows politicians more of a free hand to sweep the poor out of the public's view.

The "Downtown Ambassadors" are a public/private security force funded by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and the City of Vancouver. In this video, a red-jacketed "ambassador" is caught in action in Gastown.

Vancouver's new Mayor Gregor Robertson has promised to scrap city funding for the program.

Dominion readers in Vancouver are invited to come to State of the Media, a discussion about alternative media, with folks from Coop Radio Vancouver, the Dominion, rabble.ca, Warrior Publications and AliveinMexico.

The event is on Friday, September 26 at 7 p.m., at 706 Clark Drive (at Georgia St).

There will also be food & music (& probably dancing too).

See you there!

Photo by Dawn.

Stéphane Dion spoke this evening to a crowd of over 400 students at the University of British Columbia.

During the question period, I asked him if he would support a Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia.

Dion (in English, he had previously answered in French):

"The question was about, uh, if we will accept a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. The way it was negotiated by the Conservatives we have no guarantee at all that the basic rights will be respected through this agreement, the workers rights, and so on. It [sic] is why we can not accept it."

For a bit of background on the Laibar Singh story, check out NOII organizer Harsha Walia's article from December.

[FYI...]

With Kanahus Pellkey from the Native Youth Movement and Dustin Johnson

With the 2010 Winter Olympics scheduled to occur on unceded Coast Salish, St'at'imc and Squamish territory in two years, the spectacle surrounding them continues to wreak havoc on Indigenous people, poor people, and the Earth. In the spirit of resistance to colonialism, with the 2010 Olympics as a main target, Kanahus Pellkey of the Native Youth Movement and Native youth Dustin Johnson are touring throughout the Great Lakes and East Coast in January and February 2008.

"By them choosing to have the Olympics here, it's opening up our land, our sacred sites, our medicine grounds," says Kanahus Pellkey. "We want investors to know our land is not for sale." Pre-Olympic fever occupies the province of BC, and the economic excitement has massively accelerated gentrification and the building of highways, resorts, and condos. The construction of infrastructure for the 2010 Olympics itself is adding to extensive destruction of traditional homelands of the local Indigenous peoples.

In October 2007, more than 1500 Indigenous people representing communities across this hemisphere held the Gathering of the Indigenous Peoples of America, on Yaqui territory in Vicam, Sonora, Mexico. They stated in their final declaration, "We reject the 2010 Winter Olympics on sacred and stolen territory of Turtle Island–Vancouver, Canada." This speaking tour is strengthened by this momentum, and by the knowledge that hundreds, if not thousands of Indigenous people now plan to attend the Olympic Games, not in celebration, but in resistance to the danger the Olympics poses to Indigenous lands, identity, culture, health, livelihoods, and to future generations.

This is probably the most inspiring bit of news I've heard in a long time. The deportation of Singh, who is paralysed, has only been stayed temporarily.

An attempt to deport a paralysed man back to India on International Human Rights Day fell apart after a grass-roots protest at Vancouver International Airport Monday literally halted traffic and prevented border and immigration agents from taking custody of him.

By mid-afternoon the Canada Border Services Agency halted its plan to deport Laibar Singh after it concluded that it would be too risky for its agents to walk out to a waiting taxi in which the elderly man was sitting. Between them and the curb were as many as 2,000 protesters, many of them members of an Abbotsford-area Sikh temple that had rallied in support.

The Tyee has published the first in a series about the 2010 Olympics.

People of Aboriginal identity accounted for 30 per cent of the region's homeless population, while making up only two per cent of the total population.

The ongoing closure of low-rent apartments in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has been dealt another setback, at least temporarily.

Back in BC just in time to welcome a pack of gold-silver-nickel-copper toting criminals in suits to the Vancouver for the Association for Mineral Exploration conference, known as Roundup 2007, which will take place from 29 Jan to 01 Feb at the Westin Bayshore.

The list of sponsors is a veritable who's who in the international mining world. I am working on a list with notes to leaflet with, for the moment, I'll pick just one: Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.

Quote of choice: "If we can force Ivanhoe out of Mongolia, that signifies that we are a democratic nation. If we can’t, we will become the next Burma" -S.Ganbaatar, Ulan Baator, 2006.