VANOC and Vancouver City Council go for the gold in homelessness

On Wednesday the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee issued its blueprint for how it will be the first Games to "leave a lasting positive social, economic and environmental legacy".

VP of sustainability for VANOC Linda Coady : "a report at the end of June will come from VANOC and the three levels of government because they carry the accountability for the social housing unit.”

Accountability.
She said VANOC has committed to providing 250 social housing units from the athlete’s village in Vancouver’s False Creek area and has budgeted $500,000 for shelters to deal with any spike in homelessness during the Games.

She then went on to boast that VANOC had saved some frogs by not running over them with bulldozers.

But a Freedom of Information request showed "head of the City of Vancouver’s housing department reveals that none of the 250 units of promised “affordable housing” are guaranteed to be available to people living below the poverty line".

This comes on top of the city voting in 2005 to eliminate the promised middle income housing in False Creek and cutting the social housing from 33% to 20%.

The same FOI request revealed documents showing that the City of Vancouver will make at least $64.5m profit on the SE False Creek development project

On Thursday Vancouver citizens presented four hours of submissions to council begging them to reject the bullshit VANOC-approved report, which revealed no new housing from VANOC despite the loss of 700 units to the Olympics so far and VANOC's own housing subcommittee report that 3,300 new social housing units would be required to offset homelessness caused by Olympic "urban renewal".

Mayor Sam Sullivan left during the second speaker.

Thursday night Vancouver City Council went for the gold in homelessness, voting 6 to 5 to approve the VANOC report, asserting that housing recommendations developed for VANOC are "not binding."

How the hell is this not actionable?

The 2010 Olympics were sold to us as the greenest most socially responsible Olympics evah in order to get a "YES" vote to satisfy IOC standards requiring public support.

Again, how is this not actionable?

More at The Tyee and Pivot Legal Society

That was then; this is now

The just declassified CIA documents from the late 40's to the mid 70's known as "The Family Jewels" reveal that the CIA spied on left-wing Canadians critical of the Vietnam War during the late 1960s and '70s.
In an operation that paralelled their domestic program of keeping tabs on left-wing activity on campuses in the US, Operation "MH Chaos" targeted anti-war poli-sci Prof. Mordecai Briemberg at SFU and other student activists.

Yeah, I know. Quel surprise.

Other declassified "Family Jewels" :

• Enlisting the mob to assassinate Castro with poison
• Testing LSD and other drugs on unwitting victims
• Wiretapping US journalists at home and at work
• Spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protesters
• CIA meetings leading up to the Watergate burglary
• Breaking in to the homes of ex-CIA employees
• The torture of KGB defector Yuri Nosenko
• Keeping files on members of Congress and 9,900+ Americans in the anti-war movement

More details.

So -- 9/11 didn't change that much after all.

We interrupt this pogrom...

"Disruptions?" "Barricades?" "Interruptions of service?"

We caused disruptions in the First Nation people's way of life for decades.
We put up barricades against their realizing their own way and their own wealth.
And we have not provided them with sufficient services such that interruptions would be notable.

CBC TV blots an otherwise great record in bringing us an hour a night every night this past week on the plight of FN peoples by asking whether tomorrow's Day of Action disruptions and barricades are really in the FN peoples' best interest.

Hey it's our shame, not theirs, that a Day of Action is even necessary.
While it is FN people who suffer, this is Canada's problem.
Support their action tomorrow, any way you can.

Five Ring Circus Spin

Organizers of the 2010 Five Ring Circus claim to have spurred the creation of 1,109 new units of social housing in Vancouver.

"But a Tyee review of the 1,109 units cited in the Olympic partners report finds shelter beds being counted as housing units, pre-existing units being claimed as new housing, and a double-counting of the 250 units of athlete housing at False Creek -- which will not necessarily become low-income housing after the Games."

The Tyee has also found that all but one of the remaining projects were approved and funded years before the Olympic bid was awarded in July of 2003.

You're really surprised by this news, I can tell.

Say, how much has VANOC set aside to give themselves raises again? Oh, yeah - $44 million.

David Eby from Pivot Legal Society points out that $44mil, along with the $64mil the city is expected to reap on the SE False Creek Project and the $250mil provincial housing budget, would be enough to build 3,200 units of new supportive housing. The 3,200 figure represents VANOC's own assessment of the number of new housing units required in order to ensure the Olympics would not contribute to rising homelessness.

The Olympics has been an insidious covert form of "urban renewal" for decades now. The Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimates that Olympic events in seven cities in the last 20 years has resulted in the displacement of over two million people.

Not entirely oblivious to the sullying of its reputation by corporate greed, the IOC has implemented an ethical review sytem to evaluate the housing situation in cities two years following the games. Having fucked up the opportunity to get the homeless off the streets by 2010 by providing them with shelter, VANOC and Sullivan and Campbell will presumably now need to resort to 'street cleansing', the further criminalization of the very people they have made homeless in the first place.

Bonus : Pretty Shaved Ape's Olympics rant.

The Great Canadian Freep List

CBC has been hosting The Great Canadian Wish List
Here you can vote via Facebook for your very best wish for Canada.

Out of over 400 possibilities so far - world peace; an end to poverty and hunger; environmental responsibility; justice for First Nations - more or less the wishes you would expect, how do you think the voting is going so far?

According to F-email Fightback, here's the top four as of yesterday :

Abolish Abortion in Canada
I wish that Canada would remain pro-choice
For a spiritual revival in our nation
Restore the Traditional Definition of Marriage

On Friday CBC noticed 1)a glitch in their software allowing for multiple voting, including over 900 votes for one wish in an hour, and 2) American IPs, resulting in their deletion.

Hence the following missive:

Dear readers,
Apologies for the error in the email note at the top of yesterday's news. Contrary to information we were previously given, the CBC Great Canadian Wish List contest is open only to Canadians. Foreign entries will be removed. However if you are Canadian and have not yet entered your vote in favour of the pro-life wish there is still time to do so. - LifeSite.

As Canadian Cynic says : Are we out of Cheetos again?

And if there's a sudden need to start submitting votes for wishes like "I wish Canada would remain anti-slavery" or "I wish Canada would continue to give women the vote", I'll let you know.
Silly freepers.

First of all I'd like to thank my cat...

Somewhere in between JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie kindly nominating me in early May for a Thinking Blogger Award (oh noes, not anuzzer memes!) and Big City Lib tagging me for it again yesterday, just about everyone I regularly read over on my sidebar - thinking bloggers all - is now sporting that thoughtful baby alien on their own sidebars. Oh, a few have managed to keep their little heads down so far, salting their nominations away in the backs of their sock drawers, but I think I'm pretty safely off the hook here now as regards having to pass it on.

Of course not all forms of award are such an unqualified success....

"Iran has stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie... Britain denied that the award was intended to insult Islam."

Harry Hutton figures the award is an insult to Rushdie.

He points out that to the British, "knight" simply means "famous dickhead in his fifties" or "fat crook who donates to the Labour Party" [Ed. - Take that, Conrad Black!]
Therefore due to the British inclination to knight aging popstars - Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Jimmy Saville, Sir Elton John - the writer Salmon Rushdie winds up sharing knighthood with the guy who wrote:

"Everybody has a summer holiday.
Doin' things they always wanted to.
So we're goin' on a summer holiday
To make our dreams come true..."

Heh.

SoCon and busted

From SoCon or Bust, the blog of John Pacheco, Catholic, homophobe and fetus fetishist, Family Coalition Party candidate and then independent candidate in the last federal election :

Belinda Stronach Has Breast Cancer

Please pray for Belinda.

We must still admit that for women taking oral contraceptives and having abortions, there is an increase in the risk of breast cancer. Check it out here. Keep scrolling down for the ABC link.
Posted by John Pacheco at 6/23/2007 07:11:00 AM
Labels: LifeStyle Choices

You utter worm.
You use the announcement of Stronach's breast cancer as an excuse to resurrect the utterly discredited link between abortion and breast cancer as promulgated by born-again anti-abortion British nutbar Dr.Joel Brind and his more recent American converts.

And by utterly discredited, John, I mean utterly discredited by the National Cancer Institute in the United States, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (and their U.S. counterparts), the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Breast Cancer Network as being entirely without merit.

"Label : LifeStyle Choices." What the fuck would you know of Stronach's personal history?

But that doesn't really matter, does it John, because your real message here is "It's your own fault, bitches."

JJ has a screen shot from Freeper Dominion of a strikingly similar but even more disgusting post from someone called "Paycheck".

Your imaginary sky monster must be just beaming with pride.

Unrepentant Old Hippie link from Skdadl via Bread and Roses

UPDATE : In comments Niles suggests it would be a nice gesture of support to Belinda to go to her website Spread the Net and make a donation/sponsorship to acquire UNICEF malaria nets for kids in Africa. They currently have 65,000 nets and are aimimg for 500,000. Each net is $10 and can protect 2 to 5 sleeping kids for up to 5 years. According to her site, an African child dies of malaria every 30 seconds.

Gun-Binkies for everyone!

April Reign has a post up about the Con's hand-picked firearm advisory panel, which appears to be stocked entirely with gun enthusiasts. Here's a quote from one of them :

"If even 1 per cent of the students and staff at Virginia Tech had been allowed to exercise their right to self defence, then this tragedy would have been stopped in its very beginning and dozens of lives would have been saved," Dr. Mike Ackermann, a Nova Scotia physician, wrote in a letter to the Ottawa Sun in April. "There are never any mass killings at shooting ranges; only at schools and other so-called `gun-free zones."

The other panel members consist of two firearms dealers, a firearms expert, an RCMP commish, two cops, three guys from sports clubs, an Olympic pistol shooter, an SFU prof renowned for his opposition to gun laws, and a guy praised by the president of the NRA for being "one of the beacons of hope in a room full of enemies determined to eradicate your gun rights."

Interesting that Dr. Ackerman should advocate giving guns to students.

The Canadian Mental Health Association reports : "Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people after motor vehicle accidents."

And wouldn't you know it, 60% of the time their instrument of choice is a handgun.

Note : The picture is from a spoof site advertizing Gun Toddler Products. As far as I'm concerned that picture would work just as well if you replaced the baby with an NRA member.

Water truckin'

You may remember Michael Byers as the UBC International Law prof who asked prior to the last election why extraordinary rendition wasn't an election issue and who also red-flagged our Afghan detainee transfer deal in the national press over a whole freakin year ago.

Byers has a book out - "Intent for a Nation : What is Canada for?" - and The Tyee has an excerpt :

"In 2004, the Canadian actor Paul Gross starred in a made-for-TV drama entitled H2O. Gross plays Tom McLaughlin, the charismatic son of a murdered Canadian prime minister, who takes over Canada at the behest of a group of international financiers eager to sell our fresh water to an increasingly thirsty United States."

Did you see this movie? I hadn't so I looked it up at IMDb. Some of the user comments about the unlikelihood of the plot's basic premise were kind of sad. At the time this movie aired, the GATT agricultural provisions regarding water were two decades old, and NAFTA, including the dreaded Annex Tariff Item 22.01: water: all natural water other than sea water, whether or not clarified or purified, had already passed its tenth birthday. Five years before this movie was even a twinkle in CBC's eye, the NDP were standing on the floor of the HoC demanding a clarification on water sovereignty under NAFTA - and it was denied.

While conceding that Canada's legal position on control of her water is at the very least muddy, Byer warns against setting any bulk water trading precedents:

"A single act of trading water on a bulk basis would arguably transform the resource into a tradable good that was legally indistinguishable from softwood lumber, potash or oil, rendering subsequent attempts to prevent or limit further exports illegal. For this reason, it is imperative that Canada takes water off the free trade table, quickly and decisively -- now, before it's too late."

Well another attempt was made two weeks ago, this time in the form of a motion asking the Cons to request a clarification from Mexico and the US on their position on Canada's water, and it was again denied.

Byers' excerpt concludes:

"On water, as on so many other issues, our conciliatory, don't-rock-the-boat approach to Canada-U.S. relations has failed. Unless we stand up for our own interests, Canadian fresh water could soon be irrigating crops, watering golf courses and filling backyard swimming pools in the south western United States.
It's time to dissuade Americans of the notion that we're going to rescue them from the consequences of their short-sighted, profligate ways by allowing them to mess with our environment, too. It's time to make it absolutely clear that bulk water exports are not covered by NAFTA."

In the meantime someone please let me know how that H2O movie turned out.

Tyee link from Jennifer at Runesmith's Canadian Content

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Great Reads

From the introductory essay of Linda McQuaig's "Holding the Bully's Coat", an examination of Canada's complicity in and subservience to the American empire :


"Although it received almost no attention in the Canadian media, the appointment of Gen.Bantz Craddock as NATO’s top military commander in December 2006 had a significance for Canadians. Craddock had been in charge of the U.S.’s notorious Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, where hundreds of suspected terrorists have been stripped of their most basic human rights in defiance of international law.

His appointment as NATO’s military chief meant that Canadian troops serving in the NATO mission in Afghanistan were being brought under the ultimate command of a U.S. general deeply connected to the worst aspects of American foreign policy carried out in the name of defeating "terror."

In fact, there has been a significant shift in how Canada operates in the world, as we’ve moved from being a nation that has championed internationalism, the United Nations and UN peacekeeping to being a key prop to an aggressive U.S. administration operating outside the constraints of international law."

The rest of McQuaig's essay can be read at the excellent Canadian monthly ColdType.
Offering free subscription in a downloadable pdf format, The ColdType Reader has attracted and published such writers as George Monbiot, Greg Palast, Chris Hedges, Robert Fisk, Robert Jenson, Norman Solomon, ... and Hugo Chavez.

Well, go on then. Why are you still here?

UPDATE : Oh good lord. Catnip links to an Independent article on Craddock's old Gitmo stomping grounds from July of last year.
In a review of the military's own documents, a Seton Hall University study discovered that :
"Only 8 per cent of prisoners are accused of fighting for a terrorist group, and that 86 per cent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani authorities "at a time when the US offered large bounties for the capture of suspected terrorists". "