The Olympics are upon us! As citizens of this beautiful country and city we are urged to put forth our best smile, politely extend hands to our international guests, sit down, shut-up and enjoy the games in docile positivity. This is our chance to shine and show the world what a wonderful place Vancouver truly is. I don't know what sort of media attention the local issues here have garnered internationally. I know that The Guardian has compared us to post-war Berlin, while the local right wing media editorializes this as the result of Anti-Olympic Nuts Infiltrating the Guardian. I live on the border (just West of Cambie street) of the Downtown Eastside, a notorious neighborhood for poverty, crime and drugs; "The Poorest Postal Code in Canada" - I have seen this area change majorly since I first visited Vancouver. Massive gentrification has displaced the existing community, marginalizing already marginalized people and pushing them out to other neighborhoods and cities - Surrey is notable, and even since last October, Commercial Drive has seen (in my subjective opinion) a massive influx of homeless people. This has been an ongoing problem in Vancouver that has only gotten worse since the 2003 Olympic bid. The issue is unneccesarily politically charged - while the number of homeless downtown has been on steady increase since the bid was won. VANOC has been bailed out by our government to an outrageous extent, saddling us with debt that may take 30 years or more to pay off, with no accountability thanks to VANOCs ability to skirt the freedom of information act. Meanwhile, despite the provincial governments election promise not to do so, a Harmonized Sales Tax is being introduced, under the guise of improving the economy, while our minimum wage is the lowest in the country, with an even lower pay scale, the so called "training wage" of $2/hr less ($6/hr) for 'First Jobs' and 'Entry Level' positions. The Vancouver Library (recently featured in Dr Parnassus Imaginarium), and branches must cover up their Panasonic DVD players, as the official Olympic sponsor is Sony. Hamburgers cannot be sold unless they are McDonalds hamburgers. More than 15,000 security personnell are in town - there is a cop on every corner, while private security such as the Downtown Ambassadors, under the guise of assisting tourists do their best to harass the homeless in my neighborhood and enforce a sterile, sanitized version of the city that I love. More distressing still is that no Olympic Protests have been granted permits to protest - essentially making all anti-Olympic protest illegal, unless it occurs in a designated free-speech zone. Good thing the VPD got an

>LRAD just in time!!! There is much more I could say - but I will stop the complaining at that. For those interested, the Georgia Straight has published a helpful calendar with information about planned protests. The Art Gallery protest tomorrow will hopefully be safe and not involve police violence. Heart Attack Saturday morning is likely to be a bit more tumultuous. Bring ear plugs, write your lawyers number on your body in permanent marker and let the games begin!

It always pisses me off when 'civil liberty' groups bitch and moan about less-lethal weapons. Yes, something like the LRAD needs to be tested by the police force and have protocols established before it is deployed, but I honestly kind of wish that some group would get overly violent during a protest of such devices, and get to watch a number of people take a bit of good old buck-shot.


If one of your first choices on how to address an issue you disagree with is to form a large and unruly mob and disrupt the lives of your fellow citizens, then you're doing things wrong.

Quote: Original post by Talroth
It always pisses me off when 'civil liberty' groups bitch and moan about less-lethal weapons. Yes, something like the LRAD needs to be tested by the police force and have protocols established before it is deployed, but I honestly kind of wish that some group would get overly violent during a protest of such devices, and get to watch a number of people take a bit of good old buck-shot.


If one of your first choices on how to address an issue you disagree with is to form a large and unruly mob and disrupt the lives of your fellow citizens, then you're doing things wrong.

Well, addressing it through creative expression is technically illegal here right now...

I believe that civil-disobedience should only be one part of a multi-layered approach to expressing dissent. Characterizing protesters as unruly mobs is nothing but xenophobia. I feel morally obligated to stand & march with others who believe as I do to provide solidarity.

I can not look at a graph like the one below without moral outrage.

Xenophobia? That has to be the loosest application of the word I've ever seen. Protests attract idiots who are there for no other reason than to BE unruly, and it is a rare protest organizer that does anything close to an attempt to keep such people from becoming involved. I have little pity for someone injured while 'protesting' after someone makes any kind of violent action.

Don't get me wrong, violent protests and uprisings have their place in society, but it annoys me when people jump to them so quickly before giving other options serious attempts.

Yup, it's a disaster. Everyone knew it would be when we put in the bid. Everyone knew it would be when we won the bid. Everyone knew it would be when we started development. Everyone knew it would be when development started going massively over budget (as everyone knew it would). Everyone knew it would be when the government steadily failed to do every single thing they promised they would (end homelessness? Improve transit? Fix anything?). Everyone knows it will be a disaster now.

But what everyone wants is not what multi-national multi-billion dollar corporations want. 'Everyone' refering to human beings which, despite what American law would have you believe, is a categorization that does not include corporations.

And like all the Olympics before it, no one will care because it's not their city, and they'll continue to bid and continue to get fucked by the rich men in the IOC who continue to swindle people into thinking they are good for something.

Hey guys, I hear the Olympics has athletes in it, or something. Shame you never hear about them.

Quote: Original post by djz
I can not look at a graph like the one below without moral outrage.

I do think it is somewhat unfair to not include the financial benefits of hosting the Olympics. You could see the building of new stadiums as an investment that could yield profit for many years to come. The construction of new roads or transportation systems might directly benefit the community too. And then there is the (perhaps short term) effect of attracting teams and supporters who will pour money into the local economy.

Now I'm not saying that this will result in a net profit, but it certainly something to take into account.

One of my favourite ongoing bits about the Vancouver Olympics is Canada's atrocious $10 million pavilion.

This is what it looks like:


Conversely, here's Quebec's pavilion:


And here's the Four Host Nations pavilion, which cost $6 million to the federal government's $10 million Shed World:


Here are some of the laws its $10 million construction violated:
Provincial labour laws
Wiring and fire safety codes

Is the rest of the Olympics more wasteful and idiotic than this? Yes, of course - BC in general and Vancouver in particular have passed up huge opportunities to reform the social and economic fabric of the province in order to get a quick burst of tourism dollars and some "prestige."

Are there long-term profits from hosting the Olympics? Historically, Canada is not bearing that theory out so far. Calgary got lucky with the '88 Olympics and eventually paid off their $910M in debts, but Montreal has only recently (as in 2006) managed to dig out of the debt that their 1976 Olympics put them under.

Even when the direct expenses of hosting are paid off, the lasting infrastructure debt remains - infrastructure that could have been implemented with the money that was blown on the Olympics. To use Calgary as an example again, the cost incurred at having to provide event security (and this is before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics) forced them to cut funding for their fledgling public transit system, eventually leading to a significant compromise in the design of their light rail system and contributing to its current state of unmanageable passenger load and skyrocketing maintenance fees.

Quote: The Olympic Stadium, a daring design of French architect Roger Taillibert, remains a lasting monument to the huge deficit. It is often nicknamed The Big O as a reference to both its name and to the doughnut-shape of the permanent component of the stadium's roof, though The Big Owe has been used to reference the astronomical cost of the stadium and the 1976 Olympics as a whole. It has never had an effective retractable roof, and the tower was completed only after the Olympics. In December 2006 the stadium's costs were finally paid in full.[5] The total expenditure (including repairs, renovations, construction, interest, and inflation) amounted to C$1.61 billion. Today, despite its huge cost, the stadium is devoid of a major tenant, after the Montreal Expos moved in 2005.

Corporations certainly see a major profit, I would imagine - I don't remember djz mentioning that the only credit card you can use in or around the Olympic grounds is Visa, which historically (in Canada at least) have traded cut-rate acceptance of bad credit risks in exchange for close-to-illegal interest rates.

The problem in Canada with major corporations making a profit is that very few of them actually live here.

Quote: Original post by Wan

Quote: Original post by djz
I can not look at a graph like the one below without moral outrage.

I do think it is somewhat unfair to not include the financial benefits of hosting the Olympics. You could see the building of new stadiums as an investment that could yield profit for many years to come. The construction of new roads or transportation systems might directly benefit the community too. And then there is the (perhaps short term) effect of attracting teams and supporters who will pour money into the local economy.

Now I'm not saying that this will result in a net profit, but it certainly something to take into account.

I'm not aware of any Olympic cities that have ever recouped the costs of the construction. This is the argument used, time and time again, but I don't think it's ever come true. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...

...can't get fooled again.