Posted by admin on Jul 4th, 2009
By Shiri Pasternak. 06/04/2009. Indypendent Reader
Indigenous peoples in Canada have marked the geographical limits of capitalist expansion through more than five centuries of permanent resistance. Due to the geography of residual Aboriginal lands, they form a final frontier of capitalist penetration for natural resource extraction, agribusiness, and urban/suburban development. While much of the focus of the economic crisis has centred on foreclosures and job losses in the manufacturing and service sectors, a renewed push for resources – e.g. tar sands, timber, fisheries, mining, suburban sprawl – may tread in the old vices of colonialism, but it has also been ushered in by a new political economy of indigenous dispossession, and with it, spurred a new phase of resistance.
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Posted by admin on Jun 24th, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, CBC News
Protesters opposed to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver said police are using intimidation tactics to keep them quiet, and they are threatening to take the police to court to put a stop to it. A group called the Olympic Resistance Network sent a lawyer’s letter to the RCMP unit in charge of Olympic security demanding it end what the group calls its abusive and unlawful conduct against its members.
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Posted by admin on Jun 17th, 2009
PDF available here.
The Authors are especially concerned that, to date, the following practices of VANOC and government partners have departed markedly from the commitments presented in the bid, including:
1 Pledging to increase bylaw infraction tickets given to the homeless in the 2008 and 2009 VPD business plans;
2 Installing hundreds of security cameras that may remain in place post- Olympics without public debate or discussion
3 Overstating threats to justify civil liberty violations against housing, environmental and anti-poverty protesters
4 A lack of consultation with inner-city residents
5 The access of homeless to essential services in restricted areas, in particular near Olympic venues such as GM Place
6 Lack of venue for complaints for the public against ISU members to ensure timely response
7 Lack of available due process for illegal evictions to make room for tourists
8 No funding for an independent watchdog group
Posted by admin on Jun 10th, 2009
By BOB MACKIN; June 10, 2009 – 24 HOURS
July 27-31 is the next big pre-Olympic military exercise. But it may not be anywhere near the Olympic city. That’s when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is hosting National Level Exercise 2009. The full-scale exercise “will be the first major exercise conducted by the U.S. government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery,” according to a news release on the Federal Emergency Management Administration website.
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Posted by admin on May 22nd, 2009
Andrew MacLeod, 22 May 2009, TheTyee.ca
The Vancouver Sun’s lead reporter on the Olympics, Jeff Lee, has over the years written some stories unlikely to please the International Olympic Committee or local organizers. But the IOC must not have minded his recent “Feeling the Buzz” piece on preparations for the games in Vancouver and Whistler. They paid for it and published it. “Feeling the Buzz” appeared in the January, February, March issue of The Olympic Review, billed on the cover as the “official publication of the Olympic movement.” The masthead says the 84-page magazine is published by the International Olympic Committee. It includes a foreward by Jacques Rogge, IOC president.
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