Watch the Americans come out dressing/looking crazy, our USA uniforms always suck.

I had forgotten about the winter Olympics. I used to follow it too.....used to love figure skating. Now, I probably couldn't name one current prominent skater....except Johnny Weir. PETA got on his ass for using fur in one of his costumes recently.

SUPRMAN said:

I hear that's what they're predicting.

I want Canada to bring in a couple of Gold's, including hockey, just so I don't have to hear anymore about how we've never won Gold at home.

Today is the 12th.

This morning the torch will run through my neighbourhood. The hilarious part? The Drive is full of hippies and lefties and dissenters, and is pretty much the epicenter for anti-Olympic sentiment in the city.

Oh, yes. There will be a protest. A big one, if I know my Drive folk at all. In addition to that, there's going to be a protest planned to coincide with the opening ceremonies. If I know my Vancouver folk at all, it should get into the thousands.

There are more planned protests than I can count organized for the coming weeks, and underground rumblings of non-sanctioned ones that may have the potential to turn violent.

People are pissed. VANOC and the IOC really overestimated how easily people are willing to swallow their bullshit.

meow85 said:

Pathetic.

But when all is said and done, I'm willing to bet that things will all go down without any real problems and the protests from the "pissed people" won't even make the national news.

meow85 said:

they're saying that? sweet.

just PLEASE let us get some gold in our own home... IN WINTER

JustErin said:

What's pathetic? There's a lot of sick, exploitative shit being done to the city and the province and the people who live here in the name of these Games and as much as certain factors would like it not be, we still do sort of live in a country where we have the right to let it be known we're not happy about being fucked up the ass.
[Edited 2/12/10 10:57am]

.
[Edited 2/12/10 11:06am]

matthewgrant said:

I saw that before the edit

matthewgrant said:

I didn't see before the edit.

You seem reasonably intelligent, so why, knowing all the negative social fallout the Olympics will and have already begun to cause, would you be for the Games? Is a lump of medal on a string around someone's neck really that important?


We're supposed to root for our athletes to bring in the Gold and "own the podium" as a matter of national pride, but how am I supposed to be proud of a country that's allowing people to starve, that's forcing people out of their homes, that's abusing the most destitute among our citizens, that's romanticizing and tokenizing a racial minority, that's put us into a surveillance state, and that's willing to put taxpayers into debt for 30 years for a bunch of Games we didn't even get any say on whether we actually wanted them here?

Gordon Campbell wants the world to believe we're "the greatest place on Earth", but just under half of the children living in BC live below the poverty line. A number that has been rising since we won the bid for these Games in 2003, due in large part to cuts to social services to pay for the Games.

meow85 said:

I blame the Greeks

I don't understand how anyone could not think this entire situation is sick and fucked up.

People's priorities are entirely fucking twisted if they think proving to the world we're the best at falling quickly downhill on a board or slapping a puck with some sticks is in any way so important it trumps everything else.

It's like saying, "Well, yeah. Hitler was a kind of a bossy guy. And yeah, so maybe he killed a few people here and there. But he was so good to his pet dogs! What a loving, lovely man."

kpowers said:

Don't blame the Greeks, Batsy, it's not their fault.

The Olympic ideal as it should be -a friendly competition between nations -is a great idea! And the modern notions of brotherhood and breaking down walls is downright awesome.


But the clusterfuck of corporate sponsorship, corrupt and questionable government policy, heavy police and military presence, nationalism, and greed? Yeah, I don't care for that so much.

if choosing your battles were an olympic event, you'd come in dead last...

I admire your passion but is there anything besides the Backstreet Boys and gay sex between Sherlock Holmes stars that doesn't ruffle your feathers??

meow85 said:

Resorting to violence is always, always pathetic.

But as I said, all those types of protesters' efforts are very unlikely to make any impact whatsoever.

thejason said:

Like I said....twisted priorities.

Am I supposed to happily sit and watch the ski jump and not think about the literally hundreds of people who have been added to this city's homeless population as a result of paying for the event?

People in this province are starving. The residents of the DTES are being even further marginalized. Massive cuts to social services, medicine, education, and the arts have happen to divert money to pay for this gong show.

In 2003, the Lower Mainland had 13 rape and abuse crisis centres for women. Now, due to government cuts to divert money toward poor, helpless, destitute VANOC, there is one and it's understaffed. To serve a population of millions. It's not an exaggeration to say women are dying at the hands of their spouses so we can have a few beer tends downtown.

What battle should I be picking?

meow85 said:

Troublemaker!!!!!


from Yahoo!: http://sports.yahoo.com/o...&type=lgns

Torch relay changed to avoid protest in Vancouver

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP)—Protesters have forced the Olympic torch relay to change course as the flame entered a troubled Vancouver neighborhood.

This is the 106th and last day of the relay. The Olympics begin with the lighting of the cauldron at Friday night’s opening ceremony.

About 150 protesters gathered in the Downtown Eastside area amid hundreds of Olympic fans waiting for a glimpse of the flame. A dozen mounted police stopped the placard-carrying protesters from surging ahead and confronting the relay. The convoy quickly changed the route and continued.

Earlier in the day, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger carried the flame in the city’s Stanley Park. He handed the torch to former track star Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 Summer Games.

JustErin said:

We've had seven years of peaceful protest, letter writing campaigns, quiet boycotts, and the like and for seven years those opposed have been ignored.

I'm not condoning violent protest. I don't think it's ever effective, to be honest. But something's going to snap. You can't ignore a population with a history of protest and dissent for that long and not expect some shit to go down. Riots have happened in the past, and it's not inconceivable it could happen again during the Games.

Again, I am not condoning this. But all it took to prevent violence was for someone at some point from the government or VANOC or the IOC to actually listen to people's concerns. It's not fucking hard to prevent a riot, so if one does happen it's something the authorities will have walked right into.

PurpleJedi said:

There were protests all over the city, including in my neighbourhood this morning.

Living here, I think it's pretty safe to say that last-minute route change was to keep the homeless people and addicts and prostitutes in the DTES off camera.

meow85 said:

I don't know..but I wish you'd find one and stick to it because at this rate you're gonna be worn out and talked out by the time you're 30...

I'm just making an observation from what I see of you here...it's like your entire life is a protest...like I said, your passion and intelligence is admirable and no doubt has been and will be put to good use...but don't spend your entire young life fighting battles and miss out on the good things that life has to offer...and post a pic every now and then too, 'cause you're kinda hot....

meow85 said:

This comment right here shows that you really do not have a grasp of just how complicated it is.

It is never "just do this and we won't do that.

thejason said:

Life has lots of great, awesome things to offer. Trust, I'm not missing out on them.

What can I say? I was raised to have a healthy distrust of authority. Not all authority, of course. But if something is wrong, if people are being hurt, I'd be fucking ashamed of myself if all I did about it was sit on my ass and watch Entertainment Tonight. BTW, I reject the notion that I'll be worn out quickly if I keep this up. Maybe you know a lot of people who wore out their ideals and gave them up, but I don't. If I'm at a protest I can be sure my middle aged mother, grandmother, aunts and uncles, teachers, and other associates will be there too. If none of those people got worn out, why would I?


As for pics? I don't have a camera. Tough going on that front.

JustErin said:

Yes, it is, actually. But it's a process.

The simplest and most effective way to prevent protest acts of violence is to listen to people. That's all. It's so easy a solution, it seems like there should be more to it, but no. That's it.

When people -especially when there are a lot of them -are voicing their concerns about something, they need to be listened to; to be acknowledged. Acts of violence come as a last resort, but they come as the result of pent-up frustration at being ignored.

meow85 said:

did you get that job??? if you did, with your first paycheck I want you to use half of it to save the world and the other half for a new camera...

thejason said:

I have better uses for my money than a webcam, but I'll take the suggestion as a compliment.

In other Olympic news:

A luger from Georgia has died after an accident during training on Friday. Regardless of my feelings about this corporate enterprise, I do feel for the athletes. I wouldn't have wished that on anyone.

RIP Nodar Kumaritashvili

meow85 said:

I had posted a picture of Ghandi and said the potential violence was pathetic

and you're right. I've said it before that the effects of the Olympics in pretty much every country is devastating. it's really sad. BUT i'm not enlightend enough to not tend to push the unsightly social ills to the back of my mind like the rest of humankind. my love for the olympic comes from a sentimental place. THE SYMBOL of games. I'm not big on sports but I following the opening and closing ceremonies. Hundreds of countries coming together in one stadium to 'war it out' in friendly competition. it's mushy, it's stupid but if this was Utopia these games would be the only wars we'd see.

my national pride is fun and games. i'm not going to lose sleep if Team Canada doesn't win big.
[Edited 2/12/10 13:24pm]

matthewgrant said:

I understand the sentimentality attached to it, but people are suffering for it. I can't get behind that.

Commentary courtesy of the Georgia Straight, a highly respected free local paper:



Isaac Oommen: Why Vancouver will welcome the Olympics with a massive protest

By Isaac Oommen

On Friday (February 12) at 3 p.m., thousands of people from Vancouver and around the world will arrive at the downtown art gallery for a massive festival that will march to the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Although the city, Olympic organizers, and security officials will brand them as protesters or demonstrators, they will be there to celebrate their right to be active participants, not just of their respective cities and neighbourhoods but of the world.

The convergence welcoming the Olympic torch in this way is made up of a number of groups that stand for everything from free-speech rights to the abolition of racist immigration policies. One thing in which they are all unified is their basic human rights, including the rights of expression and assembly.

For years, the Olympics have branded those that have resisted this $6-billion showdown as being “anti-Olympics”. Very rarely do we hear about everything that the Olympics stand against. From a historical opposition to women’s rights in sport to today’s Orwellian surveillance state, the Olympics move in and oppose everything that we as responsible people of the world are trying to achieve.

At the end of the day, the Olympic industry—via the International Olympic Committee, Vanoc, and the plethora of alphabet agencies with which it partners—wishes to turn the people of this city, as well as every city left devastated in its wake, into mere hosts to drain dry, all under the guise of sport and nationalism.

Criticize the Olympics, and you will get from Vanoc the glib “Why do you hate amateur sports?” No one in this convergence hates sports. Most of us play a wide variety of sports, but do not mercilessly monetize it. Most of us cheer our local and international teams with all our lungs and souls.

What the people that will be converging stand against is not sports or even the Olympics as an idea, but the way in which the IOC and Vanoc have gone about their business, both historically and in Vancouver. The IOC has drained the municipal, provincial, and national treasury of money that should rightfully go to schools, libraries, hospitals, and a range of other more vital programs. All the while, Vanoc-endorsed politicians trumpeted lies that the residents of this town and province would not end up paying much for the Games. The result of this spectacle, we were told, will be the long-term benefit of investment in the city, since no one but the IOC will actually reap the money from ticket sales and corporate sponsorship.

It’s not just the matter of what Vanoc does but also the cloak-and-dagger way it goes about doing it. The Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit has visited the residences, workplaces, families, and neighbours of dissenters in a blatant show of intimidation. Vanoc’s city-official friends enacted laws that tried to impinge dissent of any sort, whether it be signs in private homes decrying the Games or placards voicing protest against the IOC’s tactics.

The protest on February 12 will include people from all over Canada and the world that came to this city because they believe in democracy. What Vanoc and the IOC are perpetrating is the very definition of what Mussolini called fascism or corporatism—the merger of state and corporate power. It is the IOC that is anti-democratic. Everyone that stands against the Olympics is saying that they are a political participant and not a serf, and that they will not allow basic democratic rights to be destroyed so that the IOC can profit.

The Olympics may be here, but the people of this city are too and they will make their voices heard. They will also loudly tell other people of the world and Olympic host cities that we can together stop this behemoth from destroying entire cities under the obfuscation of “bringing the world together for sport”.

Isaac Oommen wrote this commentary on behalf of the 2010 Welcoming Committee, which is organizing the Take Back Our City festival and march on Friday (February 12).

http://www.straight.com/a...ve-protest
[Edited 2/12/10 13:32pm]

^ Check out some of the linked articles on that page as well.

It's amazing what a fantastic spin job the mainstream media has done in terms of representing the protest movement, dismissing people involved as a mere handful of dissenters, or more dangerously, calling them terrorists.

The protest that disrupted the DTES leg of the torch run was reported as maybe 200 people. 600 or so would be a more accurate number. The one planned this afternoon (a peaceful, city-sanctioned one FYI) is expected to be in the thousands.