Listening to the video, assuming that was you asking the questions, it seems obvious that you’re generally unfamiliar with Olympics or Canadian history. Are you really so ignorant of the plight of Canadian aboriginals?

Sincerely, Mr. Young and Optimistic.

Damn kids fooling about with their internets and tubes don’t know films.

Seems in a city with about 18% child poverty rate, spending billions on the Olympics and basically telling its own poor to f-off so it can be easier for all to pretend they don’t exist is enough to make them and perhaps other people with a conscience to be pissed have reason to protest.

It seems obscene to put on such events that benefit no one. Heaven forbid these athletes should actually have to go to school and get a real job like most of us strugging out there.

Given today’s slushy start, I’m gathering that karma has indeed taken over.

These games will be another money loser and the tax payers of Vancouver will be stuck with that bill for years to come. Just ask one of us Montrealers about that one. We just finished paying off our 1976–30 years later.

Thanks for the video work, I would have enjoyed being a live spectator myself. It’s irritating to see how in vogue kuffiahs have become as part of the ‘activist chic’ movement.

Anyway, in the mist of all that chaos you sifted through, the only concrete point that emerged from the protests was the debt issue, which is an understandable concern, but not something that, in my mind, can be evaluated properly until after the games. The surplus profit angle has gotten a lot of coverage historically as a way for protesters to put heat on the history of Olympic events given the past track record, but this strategy begins to make protesters sound like grubby capitalists as well as eviscerates the nuanced range of interests that exist from event to event, city to city.

Either way, I don’t see the use in reducing an Olympic event to a s
ingle value financial surplus and past games, like the ’88 Summer Olympics in Seoul, demonstrate that past host cities have realized the potential for the games to transform its international relations and national morale, while not necessarily incurring debt or generating outstanding revenue. What do you think?

What exactly is with the First Nations debate in Vancouver regarding approval from tribes? I’ve read conflicting information, not helped by Naomi Klein’s bit in the G&M about ski resorts.

For the most a sad bunch of deluded middle class kids pining for some altruistic utopia thingy or a bunch of losers and failures in life who can’t accept that their the pathetic position of their life so far is their fault.

Rather a tragic, pathetic lot, the lost rump of society, the failed flotsam of humanity.

Put the lot of them together and you’d get a couple of dozen working brain cells.