May 21, 2009 By BOB MACKIN, 24 HOURS

The Canada Border Service Agency will be doing much more than stamping passports for 2010 Winter Olympics visitors. The November 2007 Pacific Region Olympics operations plan and funding request, obtained under Access to Information by the Work Less Party, shows the agency’s Olympics Intelligence Unit coordinating a wide-ranging program of enforcement to combat perceived threats involving organized crime, sex trade workers, human trafficking and terrorism.

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May Issue of No One Is Illegal Razorwire. Full issue here.

In preparation for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, approximately 20 workers died, with as many as 1,000 injured, working on Olympic venues. Most of these were migrant workers. During the Beijing Olympics, approximately 3 million migrant and low-skill labourers were expelled from the city core. In the lead up to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver migrant workers are being similarly exploited.

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Resist 2010: Eight Reasons to Oppose the 2010 Winter Olympics. (HIGH RES) from BurningFist Media on Vimeo.

May 1, 2009, Briarpatch, Christopher Shaw and Alissa Westergard-Thorpe

On February 12, 2009, exactly one year before the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, the grim future of political freedom in British Columbia was on full display. Military and police flanked by helicopters rehearsed manoeuvres in Vancouver, where escalating harassment, intimidation and surveillance of activists had already begun. Those celebrating the event put aside concerns about the costly preparations for the Games. As the orchestrated magic took hold in Whistler Village, celebrants and athletes were swept up in the moment. They, like most of the mainstream media and all levels of government, were simply not going to think about the elephant on the slopes: security. Security has emerged as one of the largest single costs associated with the 2010 Olympics, and will carry significant costs for civil liberties as well.

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by Gwalgen Geordie Dent, April 29, 2009, The Dominion

With the Olympics less a year away, many pundits and officials have been musing about how the city is going to make good on its plan to “clean-up” Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) by 2010. One answer is both crude and sad: jaywalking tickets. Housing advocates of the DTES say ticketing for minor bylaw infractions are up. According to Nicole Latham, a staff member at the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), suspicions arose at the VANDU July 2008 AGM. “Someone asked how many people had been given a jaywalking ticket and half the room put up their hands.”

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