New Media » Vancouver politics

Violence is the First Refuge of the Incompetent

jnarvey — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:26:49 +0000

I described the protest movement against the Vancouver 2010 Olympics earlier as unable to articulate a unified protest platform to bring in the masses — despite a fairly wide groundswell of anti-Olympics feeling among the general public. This speaks not only to a lack of organization skills (they did have four years to prepare for this, after all) but also very shallow sympathy for the myriad causes stuffed into this counter-culture sausage-fest.

Having failed to win grassroots support, the vanguard has inevitably decided to resort to violence to get the attention they need just to sustain momentum among their relatively sparse membership. This desperation move is just alienating the rest of us even further, at least according to snippets from the local Twitter crowd:

@stephenfung: Olympic protesters are breaking shit downtown and scaring tourists. What’s your cause again? That’s the one I won’t be supporting. K. Thx.

@canucksgirl44: #Vancouver protesters are just a bunch of wannabe hippies anyway. Welcome to the West Coast, lol #realhippieslivedinthe60s

@MitchGarvis: @DanaEpp Yeah but the funny thing is the protesters are all white kids, and the natives are all involved with the games

@steaks: Also protestors damage cause of people they say they are helping. How NGO’s going to raise funds and lobby well when associated to douches?

It’s getting a bit uglier than I expected, given yesterday’s lackluster showing by the perpetually disaffected. But it seems a severely downgraded and ineffective version of the Battle in Seattle is the worst the IOC and the City of Vancouver has to deal with. For now, the Games go on unimpeded.

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This Protest March Brought to You by Mr. Fuck Canada Day

jnarvey — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:13:19 +0000

The upcoming Vancouver version of the Gaza Freedom March (which for some reason is not marching for freedom for Palestinians from Hamas thugs) appears to be organized and promoted with the help of UBC SPHR President Omar Amroosh Chaaban, formerly Omar Shaban, Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation.

As you’ll recall, Chaaban was called out by Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, for writing “Fuck Canada Day” on his Facebook profile. “This hateful attitude towards Canada is a direct result of how some politicians and police have refused to stand up to Islamists, either out of fear or for electoral expediency,” Fatah said at the time.

To refresh your memory, Omar says he resigned (rather than being asked to resign) shortly after the incident on July 1. CAF lost its taxpayer funding, in part for similar sorts of unwise comments, such as when Canadian Arab Federation president Khaled Mouammar called Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney a “professional whore”. But Mr. Chaaban (or Shaban) should certainly be lauded for his contribution to a chain of events that resulted in an end to taxpayer funding for an organization that seems to be inconsistent with “Canada’s best liberal values of tolerance and mutual respect”.

You’d think that a Palestinian group assumed to be looking for deeper support in the wider community would want a leader who is a little less of a potential liability on the public relations front. But then again, that depends on the kind of PR they really want to have. After all, we know what passes for rational discussion of Israel and Palestine on Canadian campuses.

As for the real march which now seems to have been halted on the Egyptian border (by pro-Zionist Egyptians, no doubt), that farce is brought to you by George Galloway, perhaps known chiefly outside the British Isles for this sort of disgusting conduct.

As for the goals of the protest march itself, there’s a fairly straightforward way of achieving the end of the blockade of Gaza that will go far beyond sending some crates of food and medical supplies once every three years. The Palestinians in Gaza must reject (and if necessary, overthrow) the thuggish Hamas regime. Rockets, terror and bombings against Israeli targets will not end their misery. Palestinians can win their freedom if they are willing to stand up to their oppressors.

UPDATE: Nazis for Gaza Freedom March in Toronto Thanks to Your Tax Dollars. Oh, God, this is good…

And more photos of sieg-heiling freedom marchers at Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy.

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CityView: Olympics to Vancouver City Hall, Thanks A Billion

jnarvey — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:31:04 +0000

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson had barely settled into his new desk at Vancouver City Hall when he had to disclose this bit of good news to citizens already awash in buzzwords like “economic downturn” and “real-estate crash”: city taxpayers could be on the hook for $875 million because of the Olympics construction.

The all-but silenced anti-Olympics types now have all the material they need to enshroud Vancouver in a retchingly-bad stink over this. And I can’t say I’m opposing them, either. As far as I’m concerned, all of Vancouver’s political parties — NPA, Vision and COPE — dropped the ball on this. Sadly, the ball was made of a unique money-sucking element that will cover all of us when it soon hits the grond.

As usual, CityCaucus.com has some excellent coverage on the real history of how Vancouver City Hall handed over the keys to the city, or at least the password to the bank account, to a construction company that seems to be out of control. See the Olympic Village Multiple Choice Reality Test.

If I invoiced a client for $875 million more than budgeted for the project, I imagine I’d have some difficulty getting new business. Of course, after the contract was done, I might not need any new business.

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2010 Olympics and Indie Media in Vancouver

jnarvey — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:57:10 +0000

When the 2010 Olympics come to Vancouver, will VANOC embrace alternative media, or will there be it be more of a fighting withdrawal to hold on to its traditional business model, which involves partnering with the media conglomerates? These are interesting times, with one company (interestingly, NOT a citizen news company per se, although that is part what they facilitate as web developers) acting as vanguard for the blogging and tweeting crowd (as reported here previously).

Olympics business strategy consultant and OlyBLOG author Maurice Cardinal takes issue with an allegedly overly critical characterization of alt-media’s Olympic citizen journalism organizing, by Financial Post contributor Jeff Lee. Cardinal writes:

In this latest article Lee described our group as follows;

“The plotters were ordinary people, young and old. Some had piercings and others, unusual shades of hair colour. Some brandished laptops. One had a tiny video camera. Others sat on the floor and simply listened.”

I don’t want to make a big deal of semantics, but not only is Lee’s characterization of our group skewed, once again he failed to tell the whole story. For example, there were also people in casual business attire at the meeting, plus I saw at least one UBC professor, and I think even an undercover police officer. Granted, people were sitting on the floor, but only because the turnout was so great.

Raincity Studios, where the meeting was held, is a hip working environment with long tables wired to support dozens of computers.

It’s a very cool heritage building, well maintained and stylishly decorated, but Lee described the room as follows;

“… four dozen people trudged up to the fourth floor of an old Gastown building mere metres from where Vancouver was born.”

Most of the info in his article was technically correct, and I concede that maybe a few people trudged, but Lee’s snarky attitude towards indie media journos is stuck in 2003, and ironically, this is exactly why we’ve bumped heads so many times in the past.

What’s the consensus out there? Was Lee’s report really a sign that the mainstream media as a whole is going to be at loggerheads with alt-meda even more as the Olympics draw closer? Or is there still time for the two sides to actually work together?

I’m convinced, due in no small part to Dave Olson’s evangelizing, that there are a whole lot of worthy Olympic stories out there that mainstream media never gets around to covering (not necessarily because of bias, but mainly because newsrooms have been heavily depopulated over the past 10 years — they just don’t have the human resources to cover all the great stories). When the big show comes to Vancouver in 2010, I expect Indie media to do an admirable, and unprecedented, job of filling in the gaps in the Olympic story.

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All Politics Is Local At CityCaucus.com

jnarvey — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:34:58 +0000

“If as the saying goes, all politics is local, then how come there is so little attention paid to the importance of our urban centres?” That’s the angle of CityCaucus.com, the new politics blog hoping to bring some much-deserved attention to municipal politics across Canada (although the first few days of the site going live appear to make it pretty Vancouver-centric).

Looks like an ambitious plan, and my hat’s off to the lot of them. Vancouver media maven Michael Klassen has an interesting write-up correlating Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertons’s thoughts (as advertised on Twitter) in the wake of the shake-up at city hall and the contentious firing of Vancouver city manager Judy Rogers, whose career spanned 20 years. Not sure I agree with Michael on this one, since quoting Twitter tweets may very well be the ultimate taken “out-of-context” medium, but the idea is pretty novel.

I love Vancouver’s vibrant political scene (although I’ll confess the partisan nature of it confused the heck out of me after moving here from the relatively sleepy city of Winnipeg). Frankly, this city is dealing with the big issues of the day, from homelessness and social sustainability to green urban planning and the big issues of how to host the Olympics, to name just a few. As a blogger with his pulse on the city scene, I’m happy to see such a promising new site that focuses on local politics. Looking forward to seeing what you’ve got, CityCaucus.

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Vancouver Politics Bloggers in “Bare-Knuckles Showdown” for 604 Blog Awards

jnarvey — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:19:56 +0000

The newswire is buzzing in the final hours of the campaign to win Vancouver’s Best of 604 Blog Award for Best Politics Site or Blog. Here’s the latest reporting I’ve found:

Politics Bloggers in Race to the Finish

10 December 2008 (VANCOUVER) – With less than 24 hours to go in the campaign, Vancouver’s politics bloggers are pushing hard to get every last vote.

The competition is fierce for the title of Best Politics Site or Blog at the Best of 604 Blogging Awards in Vancouver. Some observers argue its even stealing attention away from the larger political crisis happening in Ottawa. “Who cares what the Governor General has to say about that sweater-wearing dude or the coalition when we’ve got a bare-knuckles political showdown right here?” says Biff Toledo, author of the non-partisan political blog, BiffingtonPost.com.

Vancouver politics blogger Jonathon Narvey is Twittering and blogging like mad to get the vote out for his blog, Currents (www.jnarvey.com). “I’m in to win,” Narvey explains. “You know the old saying, when you’re in a blogging contest, you have to Tweet and Facebook-spam all of your friends and contacts to beat the competition? Well, it’s exactly like that.”

Narvey has big plans if he wins the contest. “Let’s face it, this is just one step away from being the mayor of Vancouver. Watch your back, Gregor.”

None of the other politics blog authors would go on record by press time, but one anonymous campaign representative actually denied there were any other campaigns operating. “I have no knowledge of any politics blog contest campaign, nor can I understand why anyone would waste their time with such an inconsequential endeavor,” the source explained.

It’s hard to say who’s in the lead for the competition, says Fraser Institute analyst Bikbik McGillicutty. “Some nominees in the category such as musical performer Matthew Good or the online newspaper the Tyee probably have a natural edge,” McGillicutty notes. “But when it comes to this kind of contest, can star power or a team of professional writers compete with a tenacious and unbalanced guerilla marketer? Hard to say.”

The Best of 604 Awards Reception happens in downtown Vancouver on Thursday, Dec. 11, hosted by 2008 Tech Woman to Watch Rebecca Bollwitt, better known under her famous blogging persona of Miss604. Voting at www.bestof604.com/category/best-political-site closes at midnight, Dec. 10

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EcoView: Vancouver, the Greenest City in the West

jnarvey — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:42:17 +0000

Ecodensity is happening. it’s real. Some argue that it has already made Vancouver the greenest and most sustainable city in North America.

The average Vancouverite will still see change happening very gradually. But the charter’s new LEED Silver green building standard for all new private developments in rezoned areas (retroactive to March 2008), changing to LEED Gold by 2010, gives Vancouver the greenest standards in our continent, says Vancouver city planner Brent Toderian…

For the full story, check out my latest CityView column in Granville Magazine.

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Vancouver police brutality caught on video?

jnarvey — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:35:26 +0000

Really, the only reason there’s a question mark in the title of this post is that I’m having trouble believing my own eyes.

Robert Dziekanski, the man killed by police at Vancouver International Airport, seemed almost relieved at the police presence – just before they taser the Polish national and pin him to the ground with a knee on his back. He dies moments later – after being tasered at least one more time while already rendered completely helpless.

Does the video really leave any doubt that the police acted like murderous thugs?

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BC traffic jams and roads to nowhere

jnarvey — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:34:00 +0000

If you build it, they will come. Sadly, this mantra applies equally well to roads and bridges as cheesey Kevin Costner baseball movies.

When traffic congestion builds, the obvious short-term solution is to build more roads. But in the long term, the roads fill up, necessitating more and more roads until you end up with Los Angeles-style freeways. Get Moving BC’s proposal (as detailed in The Livable Blog) to build more bridges to solve our bottlenecks is just more of the same.

Thanks to Beyond Robson blogger Sean Orr for the heads-up (This is one issue where a lefty and a righty can meet in the middle).

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Vancouver strike over! Now, about that refund

jnarvey — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:01:00 +0000

Eighty-eight days after the Vancouver strike started, we’ve finally reached a settlement.

Garbage workers will start clearing the streets of a surprisingly small pile of garbage tomorrow (most Vancouverites without private garbage collection have been throwing their trash into Burnaby’s fully-functioning dumpsters for months). The fruit flies that bugged us during Thanksgiving dinners have been given their eviction notices.

The question now is whether Vancouver City Hall will be refunding residents for three months worth of lost services. Not paying 5,000 workers for that long must have resulted in some cost savings.

A tax refund just in time for a little holiday shopping would be awfully nice.

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