TED Long therm thinking necessary in short term fire

U.S. photographer Anthony Suau wins World Press Photo contest

World Press Photo of the year 2008 was taken by American photographer Anthony Suau for a Time piece on the troubled U.S. economy. Following an eviction, Det. Robert Kole ensures the residents have moved out of their home in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 26, 2008. (World Press Photo)

Image of officer searching foreclosed home captures top photo prize

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/02/13/worldpress-photo-suau.html

Celebrated American photographer Anthony Suau, whose lens has captured tragic conflicts and human crises from Ethiopia to South Korea, is the top winner of the 2009 World Press Photo competition.

For its prestigious Photo of the Year prize, the World Press international jury chose Suau’s image of a Cleveland, Ohio, sheriff’s office police detective — handgun drawn — searching a looted, debris-strewn home after the owners had been evicted.
The jury, comprising international photography professionals, also named winners in 20 other categories, including:

Canadian winners include Kevin Frayer of the Associated Press, who won third prize in the general news, singles category.

“The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It’s a double entendre,” jury chair MaryAnne Golon said in a statement released Friday.

“Now war in its classic sense is coming into people’s houses because they can’t pay their mortgages.”

Hot Docs has $40,000 for best Canadian pitch

Last Updated: Monday, January 26, 2009 | 5:58 PM ET Comments0Recommend5

CBC News

Hot Docs, Toronto’s annual festival of documentary film, is offering a new $40,000 grant to the best Canadian pitch at this year’s Toronto Documentary Forum.

The forum, an international marketplace for the documentary industry held at the Toronto festival, allows filmmakers to rub shoulders from producers from around the world.

The best pitch award is part of the Canwest-Hot Docs Fund created last year to increase the quantity and quality of Canadian documentaries.

That fund has already handed out $584,000 to Canadian documentary makers.

Participants, to be selected by a group of industry professionals, will have 15 minutes to present their pitch to assembled financiers on May 6 and 7.

Hot Docs will also host the Good Pitch, a project by Britain’s Channel 4 and Sundance to link documentary makers interested in social change with others who might have the same interests.

The pitch process links filmmakers with NGOs, charities, ad agencies and media, as well as other potential sources of financing, to work toward a common goal.

The Good Pitch was created three years ago in Britain as a way of creating a market for films that would inspire people to give money, change laws or influence others.

“Films are the best medium for changing hearts, minds and lives, by bringing stories and issues to the widest possible audiences,” the Good Pitch website says. “Films inspire people to engage; with the characters, with the stories, with the issues.”

The Good Pitch is making its first tour of North America with the Sundance Institute and Hot Docs is its first stop.

bAng* bAng*

A Bid to Curb Violence Before It Is Learned

By MARC LACEY
Published: January 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/americas/11mexico.html?hp

MEXICO CITY — Over the Christmas holidays, Othón Cuevas Córdova, a Mexican congressman, had his life threatened, albeit in jest. His young nephew pointed a toy pistol that he had received as a gift at the lawmaker and said, “Tío, I’m going to kill you.”

Mr. Cuevas was not amused. He talked to the boy’s parents about the inappropriateness of giving a child a weapon, even a plastic one, in a country so overrun with violence. And he sped up the introduction in Mexico’s National Assembly of a legislative ban on the fabrication, importation and sale of toy guns and other warlike toys.

“The boy was so young he could barely say the words,” said Mr. Cueva, who is from Mexico’s southern Oaxaca State and represents the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution. “But from infancy, children are learning the culture of violence and we need to do something about it.”

Khoda by Reza Dolatabadi – http://www.vimeo.com/2074812

Music industry moves to disconnect file sharers in U.S.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2008/12/19/tech-music.html

The U.S. recording industry is shifting away from suing file sharers and toward working out deals with internet service providers that could see downloaders have their access cut off, but the issue in Canada is still muddy because of a lack of clear copyright law.

The Recording Industry Association of America on Friday said it was changing its approach to one it hopes will be more effective in persuading people to stop downloading music illegally. More than 35,000 Americans have been sued since 2003, but the percentage of internet users who pirate music has stayed steady at around 20 per cent, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Under the new approach, the RIAA will send an e-mail to an ISP when it believes one of the service provider’s customers is downloading music illegally. Depending on the deal set up with the service provider, customers will receive warnings, possibly followed by a slow-down in their connection speed and ultimately a cancellation of their access.

I Met the Walrus – the song remains the same

“Turn on, tune in, drop out”

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary in the 1960s. The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with “something snappy” to promote the benefits of LSD. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. This phrase urged people to cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. The phrase was derided by more conservative critics.

The phrase is derived from this part of Leary’s speech: “Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:

“

‘Turn on’ meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. ‘Tune in’ meant interact harmoniously with the world around you – externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. ‘Drop Out’ meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean ‘Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity’.

”

Disease, violence among perils for ‘uncontacted’ tribes

In this photo released by Brazil’s indigenous peoples’ agency Funai, ‘uncontacted’ tribesmen react to an overflight by agency officials. Funai warns that illegal logging and mining are putting such communities at risk of disease and cultural annihilation. (Gleison Miranda, Funai/Associated Press)

More than 100 indigenous groups live in isolation

In May 2008, Brazilian officials released photographs of what’s believed to be one of the last groups of indigenous peoples in the world who haven’t had face-to-face contact with outsiders.

Indeed, there are more than 100 such tribes worldwide today, according to Survival International, an advocacy group for indigenous peoples.

Most of these groups have had some contact — indeed, some are engaged in conflict — with outsiders, but are considered “uncontacted” because there is no ongoing peaceful communication.

They remain isolated sometimes due to rugged terrain, such as the rainforest of the Amazon. Often times, though, these tribes have fled violent encounters with the outside world in the past and now choose to live apart from it.

Some uncontacted tribes have numbers in the tens … or fewer. One Brazilian tribe consists of only a solitary Indian called The Man of the Hole. He is believed to be the last known survivor of his people and survives in a shelter dug out from the ground, away from outside contact.

The Amazon regions in Peru and Brazil are home to most of the world’s uncontacted peoples. But several uncontacted tribes live in a number of other places around the world, such as West Papua and the Andaman Islands of India.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/06/f-uncontacted-tribes.html

The Breakdown of Globalization

Special thanks to Mo for sending the link to this incredible lecture

alexander technique

Harper A Bilderberger

May 27 2006 | www.AmericanFreePress.net

Bilderbergers are nervous about their host for this year’s secret meeting near Ottawa, Canada.

But this is not the first time the new Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been part of this elite group of secret world leaders. Harper was photographed at the 2003 meeting in Versailles, France.

The Kyoto Treaty to reduce air and water pollution is a Bilderberg baby and Canada signed off on it years ago. Former President Bill Clinton, a Bilderberger, dutifully embraced Kyoto. But test votes showed it would be rejected overwhelmingly by the Senate if submitted for ratification. So it remains in White House files, much to Bilderberg distress.

The new Canadian prime minister may also be ruffling feathers among Bilderbergers.

HARPER ASSAILED

At UN climate talks that ended May 26 in Bonn, Germany, Canada said it is unable to meet a legally binding target to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2012 and that it will take part in an extension only if all nations agree.

“The Canadian government of Stephen Harper is trying to sabotage 15 years of international efforts to address climate change,” the Climate Action Network said.

Negotiators from 163 nations that have signed onto the UN’s Kyoto Treaty met in Bonn to discuss ways to extend it beyond 2012 to prevent climate changes they say cause heat waves, droughts and floods.

Canadian newspapers reported that Ottawa had instructed its Canadian negotiators, saying: “Canada will not support agreement on language in the work program that commits developed countries to more stringent targets in the future.”

Poor nations signed on easily because they are required to do nothing and are exempt from limitations placed on “industrialized countries.” For example, Mexico can build smokestack industries on its U.S. border. If the United States signed, even more U.S. industries would move to Mexico where they have no restraints and are not burdened with U.S. laws on ecology, minimum wages or required benefits, such as paid vacations.

But Kyoto was pushed by Bilderberg for the same reasons it wants a direct UN tax, favors NAFTA and the WTO and turned NATO into the UN’s standing army, among other actions: it is a step on the road to creating world government.

When Bilderberg gathers behind armed guards at the Brook Street Resort near Ottawa June 8-11, Harper will greet the 120 leaders in international finance and politics for the second time in his life. But even as they politely applaud, Bilderbergers will eye Harper with suspicion.

AFP correspondent James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who
spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Since1975 he has won widespread recognition, here and abroad, for his pursuit of on-the-scene stories reporting the intrigues of global power blocs such as the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission.

Deafening silence on RCMP scandal

April 3 2008 | www.thestar.com

Ottawa- If there’s any consensus here, it’s that the still unexplained RCMP income trust intervention was the turning point in a 2006 election that sent Liberals packing and brought Conservatives to power. So why is there near silence about one scandal that changed everything and so much noise about another, the Chuck Cadman affair, that changed nothing?

It’s a question that touches democracy’s sustaining legitimacy and needs to be answered before voters again exercise the sovereign right to choose who leads them through what increasingly looks like a rough patch. Sadly, fear of political embarrassment and the search for partisan advantage are stifling curiosity and the need to know.

As David Herle wisely argued this week, every political party as well as every citizen shares an interest in exposing Giuliano Zaccardelli’s shadowy actions to full daylight. Paul Martin’s campaign co-chair put it this way: If the federal force can defeat one government, it can defeat them all.

The problem is the parties also have reasons to perpetuate ignorance. In effect, if not necessarily by intent, they are holding broad national concerns hostage to their narrow worries. Instead of obsessing over what or wasn’t offered for Cadman’s vote, they should be demanding that the defrocked commissioner fully explain his motivation for ensuring an RCMP criminal investigation became public in the heat of the winter campaign.

Zaccardelli’s revealing refusal to co-operate with this week’s public complaints report can’t be left unchallenged. By not clarifying what happened and why, Zaccardelli is further eroding public trust in a crumbling icon while fuelling speculation that the force was settling old Liberal scores while making like-minded Conservatives come-from-behind winners.

Even by Ottawa standards, those theories are unusually toxic. They suggest Liberals, Conservatives and NDP prefer not to draw public attention to abuses more typical of Third World dictatorships than First World democracies.

Here’s what’s germinating in the space left by Zaccardelli’s missing evidence. Liberals who lost the most are so fearful of picking scabs off old internal wounds that they prefer not to revisit events that can’t be reversed. Conservatives who won the most don’t want to raise the spectre of a victory that might not have been quite fair or square. And the left-tilting NDP wants to forget its role in bringing to power the most ideologically right-leaning party in our history.

Two threads bind those theories. One is that Zaccardelli, a Jean Chrétien appointment, seized the moment to skewer Martin for ordering inquiries into the Quebec sponsorship scheme and the Maher Arar affair that his Liberal predecessor resisted and badly damaged the RCMP. The other, strengthened by Stephen Harper’s post-election visit to RCMP headquarters and budget generosity, holds that the force did what it could to elect a law-and-order government.

No self-respecting democracy can leave those hypotheses untested. If either is even partly true, Canada faces the threat of a politicized police force and the challenge of reforming a vital institution rotting from the top.

Urgency is added by a rapidly approaching election and by the risky Conservative decision to appoint a bureaucrat with old Tory ties to lead the RCMP. Canadians need quick and convincing proof the federal police force isn’t so partisan that it can’t be trusted to stay out of federal elections.

James Travers’ national affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

Harper announces 20-year, $30B plan to beef up military

May 12, 2008 | www.cbc.ca

The Tory government announced a 20-year, multibillion-dollar plan to strengthen Canada’s military, which includes the purchase of new aircraft, armoured vehicles, ships and helicopters, and a goal to expand the Forces to 100,000.

Referring to it as the “Canada First Defence Strategy,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the long-term investments in the military could reach costs of up to $30 billion.

“If a country wants to be taken seriously in the world, it must have the capacity to act. It’s that simple,” Harper said Monday at the Halifax Armoury, joined by Defence Minister Peter MacKay. “Otherwise, you forfeit your right to be a player. You’re the one chattering on the sideline that everyone smiles at, but no one listens to.”

Much of what was announced on Monday has been revealed before by the government.

“The newest thing about this announcement is that it is a long-term plan,” Harper said when asked by a reporter.

Harper said this strategy will focus on replacing some of the military’s core equipment fleets, including destroyers, frigates and different types of aircraft that will end their operational life over the next 20 years.

The plan will also seek to boost the strength of the regular Forces from 65,000 to 70,000 and the reserves from 24,000 to 30,000.

“Renewal of the Canadian Forces is the most pressing priority,” Harper said, adding the average age in the military is rising.

Harper said the plan will also improve surveillance of land and coastal borders, bolster support for civilian authority in the event of natural disasters, and provide security to major national events like the 2010 Olympics.

Harper said having a long-term plan for stable funding will create jobs and opportunities for tens of thousands of Canadians who work in the defence industry and communities with military bases.

Flaming Lips

Probably the  best concert I’ve ever been to. The lead singer (Wayne) should run for Prez.

Tories kill access to information database

Democracy took a major hit today in Canada……

Last Updated: Friday, May 2, 2008 | 9:19 PM ET Comments298 Recommend378
CBC News

The federal Conservatives have quietly killed an access to information registry used by journalists, experts and the public that users say helped hold the government accountable.

The Coordination of Access to Information Requests System, or CAIRS, is an electronic list of nearly every access to information request filed to federal departments and agencies.

Originally created in 1989, it was used as an internal tool to keep track of requests and co-ordinate the government’s response between agencies to potentially sensitive information released.

Now, users mine the database to do statistical studies, fine tune phrasing on new requests and discover obscure documents — often using the information against the government.

“It was really a tool designed to make government more open,” said CBC investigative journalist David McKie.

“Now that it appears as though this is no longer going to be available it is very disappointing indeed and people are really wondering what the real motivation is.”

Last week, a notice to civil servants from Treasury Board stated that effective April 1, “the requirement to update CAIRS is no longer in effect.”

A Treasury Board official confirmed to the Canadian Press on Friday that the system is being killed because “extensive” consultations showed it wasn’t valued by government departments.

Instead, “valuable resources currently being used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis of improved statistical reporting,” said Robert Makichuk.

Since 2006, McKie has operated a website that publishes the monthly reports released through CAIRS on a publicly accessible website, www.onlinedemocracy.ca.

He took over from Alasdair Roberts, a political scientist at Syracuse University in New York, who built a version of the database by requesting CAIRS electronic records through access to information requests and then updated the site with the monthly reports.

The online database allows the public to quickly search thousands of requests from over the years by typing key words into a search engine.

The documents are not available online, only the wording of the original access to information request, date, department, file number and general information about whether the requester was with the media, business, academic or other.

But users can then make a written request for a copy of the already released documents by citing the file number.

Monthly paper lists have also been made available since the 1990s for public consultation at a central federal office in Ottawa.

Public Works, which operates the database, spent $166,000 improving it in 2001. Federal officials in 2003 had been working on a publicly accessible online version.

“To do this now after the CAIRS’ usefulness has been proven over and over again is indicative of the extent to which government will go to stifle the access regime,” said Michel Drapeau, a lawyer who frequently uses the system and is a co-author of a reference work on access law.

“This is terrible and I consider this to be yet one more step in making records less accessible,” he told Canadian Press.

New Democrat MP Dawn Black also condemned the Tories for shutting down the system.

“It’s another example of the Harper government’s talk about accountability and transparency — they talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk,” said Black, who said her office often uses the database.

Burma asks for aid as cyclone death toll tops 10,000

CBC News April 12

Extra U.S. aid conditional

The Burmese government was in talks with international agencies to discuss aid requirements and how to get help to the worst-affected areas, Horsey said. The UN has been invited to send aid and expert help, news agency reports from Rangoon say.

Speaking in Washington, Laura Bush, President George W. Bush’s wife and the White House’s chief voice on human rights and political conditions in Burma, said the U.S. embassy in the Southeast Asian nation is providing an immediate $250,000 US in aid from an existing emergency fund to humanitarian organizations working on the ground.

Cyclone Nargis hits Burma at the Irrawaddy River delta around Rangoon. Cyclone Nargis hits Burma at the Irrawaddy River delta around Rangoon. (NASA/Modis)

The U.S. is prepared to send additional aid, but that is conditional on Burma allowing a U.S. disaster response team into the country to assess the needs, she said. The State Department said permission was denied.

Bush also criticized the ruling junta for deciding to go ahead with a May 10 constitutional referendum, describing it as a sham, and questioned why leaders didn’t warn citizens earlier about the storm.

“We know already that they are very inept,” she said.

Robotic vigilante hits street as homemade ‘Bum Bot’ patrols in Atlanta

Greg Bluestein, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA – Cars passing O’Terrill’s pub screech to a halt at the sight of a 136 kilogram, waist-high robot marked “SECURITY” rolling through downtown long after dark.
The regulars hardly glance outside. They’ve seen bar owner Rufus Terrill’s invention on patrol before – its bright red lights and even brighter spot light blazing, infrared video camera filming and water cannon at the ready in the spinning turret on top.

“You’re trespassing. That’s private property,” Terrill scolds an older man through the robot’s loudspeaker. The man is sitting at the edge of the driveway to a child care centre down the street. “Go on.”

The man’s hands go up and he shuffles into the shadows. Almost immediately, a group of men behind him scatters too.

The Bum Bot’s reputation, it seems, has preceded it.

The electronic vigilante – on the beat since September – has enraged neighbourhood activists, who have threatened protests. Street people say it’s intimidating. And homeless advocates question the intentions of its inventor, who uses the Bum Bot as a marketing tool and a political prop.

True Role Model… Mr. Eddie Vedder

Thought you could use some words of wisdom from one of the greats…

Some inspiration for Earth Day and beyond!

 

 

Canada’s military suicide rate doubled in a year, documents show

Last Updated: Saturday, April 19, 2008 | 5:54 PM ET Comments141Recommend162
CBC News
BY AMBER HILDEBRANDT — The suicide rate among Canada’s soldiers doubled from 2006 to 2007, rising to a rate triple that of the general population, according to data obtained through access to information requests.

Last year, the number of suicides among regular and reserve members of the Canadian Forces rose to 36, the highest in more than a decade, military police records obtained by Maj. Michel Sartori show.

Sartori, a Laval University doctoral student, has been gathering information about military suicides for years. It’s the subject of his thesis and a topic close to his heart, since five of his colleagues killed themselves after a tour of duty in Yugoslavia in 1994.

He believes the rise is linked to the intensification of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan when soldiers moved into the volatile southern region in 2006.

Sartori has been gathering information about military suicides since 1994.

Based on the military police reports, he found that the average suicide rate among Canadian Forces military members, both regular and reserve, between 1994 and 2007 was 16 per year.

Year Suicides Regular force & reserves Rate per 100,000
2003 14 86,937 16.1
2004

17 90,772 18.7
2005 17 91,285 18.6
2006 20 96,318 20.7
2007 36 87,000 41.4
But the number of suicides among members of the military rose to 20 in 2006 and then jumped even higher to 36 in 2007, or a rate of 41.4 suicides per 100,000 soldiers. That’s double the rate in the previous year.

Sartori says he was alarmed when he received the latest numbers.

“It was a shock, total shock,” said Sartori. “I almost fell out my chair.”

Starting in 2006, Sartori also noticed an abrupt change in the terms the military reports used to describe suicide in documents. The 36 suicides in 2007 were listed as sudden deaths, with 12 clearly marked suicide and 21 cases listed as “investigated.” National Defence officials did not dispute that the document is a suicide list, but did not respond to requests from CBC to explain the new categories.

The 2007 numbers put the military suicide rate at triple that of the general Canadian public. Over the past two decades Canada’s overall rate has ranged from 11.6 to 14 suicides per 100,000, though recent numbers are not available.

Dr. Greg Passey, a former military psychiatrist and head of a post-traumatic stress disorder clinic in Vancouver, says the spike in military suicides is “disturbing” but not surprising. He says he believes it’s related to what he calls the “increased tempo” of the Afghanistan mission, which began in 2002.

“We’re now a number of years into that mission and the frontline, the combat soldiers, and even the support staff are having to do multiple tours,” he said.

The psychological stress of those missions is cumulative, he said, and Sartori’s discovery may be the wake-up call the military needs to deal with the issue.

Veterans Affairs says that the number of vets experiencing some kind of operational stress injury, such as PTSD, has tripled in the past five years, and they expect it to continue rising with Canada’s mission in Afghanistan likely to last until 2011.

Roughly 2,500 Canadian soldiers are serving in and around Afghanistan’s Kandahar region, where they are battling Taliban insurgents.

Free Energy? That’s Absurd

The term perpetual motion, taken literally, refers to movement that goes on forever. However, perpetual motion usually refers to a device or system that delivers more energy than was put into it. Such a device or system would be in violation of the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can never be created or destroyed, and is therefore deemed impossible by the laws of physics. The most conventional type of perpetual motion machine is a mechanical system which (supposedly) sustains motion while inevitably losing energy to friction, and air resistance. -www.wikipedia.org

News Flash: The ‘laws’ that define physical reality and reality itself have changed…

In physics, quantum mechanics is the study of the relationship between quanta and elementary particles. Among other relationships the valence shell electrons and photons are quantized. Quantum mechanics is a fundamental branch of physics with wide applications in both experimental and theoretical physics. Quantum theory generalizes all classical theories, including mechanics, electromagnetism (except general relativity), and provides accurate descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena such as black body radiation and stable electron orbits. The effects of quantum mechanics are typically not observable on macroscopic scales, but become evident at the atomic and subatomic level. -www.wikipedia.org

Who would benefit from free energy? Every human being on earth and the earth itself.

Who would suffer? The Machine. (who impose the current system of energy dependence)

Why then are all our resources committed to technologies that destroy and enslaved and not technologies the enrich and liberate? We have arrived to the next step of human evolution with our potential technological capabilities; our social/spiritual evolution just needs to catch up. If you are human you should work towards humanity (ie. your own personal happiness) and by doing so stop this apocalyptic machine. If your not human then you a tool.

~Nims (special thanks to Ocean Kapono for the youtube link)

Vancouver groups to file complaint to United Nations over housing shortage

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Tourist dollars are trumping local needs, resulting in hundreds of evictions and violating international human rights, three Vancouver community groups are alleging in a complaint being filed to the United Nations.
The three groups say the ongoing evictions from single room-occupancy hotels in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will only get worse as the city’s real estate market continues to explode in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
More than 1,000 rooms have already been converted from low-income use or closed altogether since Vancouver won the bid for the Games in 2003, according to a tally being prepared by Pivot Legal Society, one of the groups filing the complaint.
“Looking at the amount of money that’s being spent on the Olympics, looking at the public relations that’s being done around the token efforts towards dealing with the homeless problem, we feel it’s time for some international scrutiny to come to British Columbia and Vancouver about the Downtown Eastside,” said David Eby, a lawyer with Pivot.
The complaint, which will officially be filed next week, alleges that the right to housing is being violated in part by a loophole that allows tenants to be evicted while landlords carry out renovations to buildings.
Since most of the people living in low-income rentals don’t have the option to move somewhere else, it kickstarts a cycle of homelessness that’s a clear violation of international protocols agreed to by Canada and dozens of other nations, said Am Johal, the founder of Impact on Communities Coalition, another one of the groups involved in the complaint.
With more than 200,000 people expected to converge on Vancouver for the Olympics in 2010, the situation is only going to get worse, he said.
“There are options for cruise ships and homestays, but this is going to place an incredible burden on the existing rental housing stock and without closing these loopholes, even for a temporary period of time, its our view that there will be thousands of evictions,” he said.
In 2006, a U.N. committee described the state of homelessness and inadequate housing in Canada as a “national emergency,” and in the fall of 2007, the U.N. special rapporteur on housing took a two-week tour of Canada and recommended a national large-scale project of social housing.
The complaint also alleges rights violations connected to the failure to provide safe housing, police protection, accountability to displaced people and the failure to involve the inner city in development plans for the neighbourhood.
The province, the city and Vancouver Olympic officials have all launched initiatives designed to mitigate the potential social impact of the 2010 Games on the city.
Olympic organizers committed to leaving a legacy of 250 beds for social housing and the city of Vancouver has bought up 17 single room-occupancy hotels, effectively placing them out of reach of private developers and promising to build social housing units on a dozen other sites.
But Eby said those 17 purchases represent only 20 per cent of the stock of homes in the community.
“We’re concerned about the remaining 80 per cent,” he said.
“That’s full of about 5,000 people who are on social assistance, who are desperately afraid they are going to end up on the streets before the Olympic games come.”
Once the complaint has been filed, it will be reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission and, if judged valid, Canada and the province will have to answer to international community on the concerns raised, Eby said.
The process will likely take a year and a half to resolve, coming to a head just in time for the 2010 Winter Games.

Vancouver housing activists take rights complaint to UN

Christina Montgomery , Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, April 13, 2008

VANCOUVER – The battle over social housing for Vancouver’s poorest residents is moving to a new battlefield – the United Nations, which will be asked shortly to weigh a human-rights complaint against Canada for failing to protect the low-cost rooms.
Housing activists will focus the complaint to the UN Human Rights Council on the ongoing conversions of low-cost hotel rooms in the Downtown Eastside.
The move is based on a study by University of B.C. students Gayle Stewart and Mike Powar, who took a walking tour of the poverty-stricken neighbourhood last fall as part of a class in global politics and international law.
Michael Byers, their professor, arranged the tour and challenged them to apply international issues to the grim social scene.
Powar and Stewart took up the challenge with an analysis of whether Canada is fulfilling its international commitments to ensuring adequate housing for citizens.
The complaint will be launched formally by the Pivot Legal Society, the Impact on Community Coalition and the Carnegie Community Action Project – activists who have been critical of the impact of the 2010 Olympics on the supply of low-cost housing.
Most recently, the groups have applauded efforts by the city and the province to purchase and preserve 17 low-rent hotels in the area. But they’ve taken aim at the failure to find a legal way to prevent owners from legally evicting tenants of the hotels.
Their work was spurred on by a visit in October by Miloon Kothari, a UN official who reports on adequate housing.
Kothari visited shortly after a provincial announcement of $41 million for housing initiatives, including 24-hour emergency shelters, rent supplements planning money to fast-track approvals for housing on 12 sites donated by the city.
Despite the plans, Kothari noted he had heard stories of “hundreds of people who have died as a result of Canada’s nationwide housing crisis.” His preliminary report says a recent review by the UN found Canada’s homelessness and inadequate housing were a “national emergency.”
“Downtown Eastside hotels are the homes of last resort for low-income people,” said Jean Swanson, Coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project. “Almost half are already closed, at risk, or charge too high a rent. If the city and the province don’t act now, the rest of the hotels could push low income people out on to the street.”
Vancouver Province

Beijing Olympics & press repression

December 10, 2007 – Posted by Deborah Jones

Here is the press release from Reporters Without Borders:

MONTREAL, Dec. 10 /CNW Telbec/ – A large flag showing the Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs was unfurled outside the Liaison Office of the central people’s government of China in Hong Kong today by five Reporters Without Borders representatives, including secretary-general Robert Ménard, in a protest to mark Human Rights Day. Two days before Chinese authorities refused to give visas to members of the press freedom organisation.
“We had initially planned to stage this demonstration in Beijing, but the authorities refused to give us visas,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We know that some of us are blacklisted by the Chinese immigration services. At a time when the government is compiling files on foreign journalists and human rights activists in advance of the Olympic Games, this refusal is evidence of its determination to keep critics at a distance.
“The Chinese authorities are clearly not prepared to let people remind them of the undertakings they gave to improve the situation of human rights and, in particular, press freedom when they were awarded the 2008 Olympics in 2001.
“We have to do something as we are just eight months away from the start of the Olympic Games. In view of the International Olympic Committee’s silence and the Chinese government’s refusal to keep its promise to improve respect for rights and freedoms, we have a duty to draw attention to the disastrous situation for free speech in China. The Chinese government must take firm action before the games, starting with the release of the hundred or so detained journalists and cyber-dissidents.”
Reporters Without Borders added: “We are not trying to spoil a major sports event, but who will be able to say these games have been a success when thousands of prisoners of conscience languish in Chinese jails overshadowed by these sports stadiums? Who will be able to believe in the ‘One World, One Dream’ slogan of these games when Tibetan and Uyghur minorities are subject to serious discrimination?”
The five Reporters Without Borders activists unfurled the 15-square-metre flag outside the Chinese government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong at 2.30 p.m. local time. The image on the flag, the Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs, and the accompanying words, “Beijing 2008,” refer to the terrible situation of free expression in China.
In a previous protest, four Reporters Without Borders representatives, including its president, Fernando Castello, its vice-president, Rubina Mvhring, and Ménard gave an unauthorised news conference outside the building of the Olympic Games Organising Committee, the BOCOG, in Beijing on 6 August. They were arrested later the same day at their hotel and escorted to the airport.

The world’s biggest prison for journalists

China is the world’s biggest prison for journalists (33 detained), cyber-dissidents (49 detained) and free speech activists. In all, about 100 of them are currently serving prison sentences in appalling conditions after being convicted on charges of “subversion” or “disseminating state secrets.”
Although the Chinese media, now subject to the law of the market, have been evolving rapidly, the Propaganda Department and the political police continue to monitor, censor and arrest recalcitrant journalists.
In January, the authorities eased the regulations governing the work of foreign journalists because of this year’s Olympics. Since then there have nonetheless been at least 60 cases of police detaining, manhandling or otherwise obstructing foreign correspondents in the course of their work. In one recent case, a Swiss TV reporter was hit and detained for seven hours by officials in a village near Beijing.
After Beijing had just been awarded the 2008 Games in Moscow in 2001, a representative of the Beijing Candidate Committee said: “By entrusting the organisation of the Olympic Games to Beijing , you will help the development of human rights.” Six year later, Reporters Without Borders has not seen any durable improvement in press freedom or online free expression.
Chinese journalists continue to push back the limits of censorship but the authorities monitor and punish the most critical ones. In November, the Propaganda Department banned the Chinese media from carrying “negative” stories on matters such as air pollution, a dispute over Taiwan’s inclusion in the Olympic torch relay, and public health issues.
The Internet is also controlled. Chinese Internet users are prevented from accessing thousands of news websites based abroad. Chinese cyber-police and cyber-censors scrutinise online content looking for criticism. Around 20 companies, some of them American, had to sign a “self-disciplinary pledge” in August undertaking to censor the blogs they host in China and to ask bloggers to reveal their real identity.

The IOC’s silent complicity

All over the world, concern is growing about what is happening with the 2008 games, which are being exploited by a government that refuses to take action to guarantee freedom of expression and respect the Olympic Charter’s humanistic values.
Reporters Without Borders has written several letters to IOC president Jacques Rogge asking him to intervene. He has never replied personally, but his close aides regularly point out the IOC is not a “political” organisation and cannot put pressure on a “sovereign state.”
The IOC is constantly trumpeting the progress being made with the work on the Beijing games infrastructure but it has not made any public statement of concern about the lack of freedom of expression, which will undermine the work of the media and the transparency that is needed for the games.
In a letter to Rogge on 29 November, Reporters Without Borders wrote: “It is your silence that has unfortunately made all these abuses possible. We continue to think that the IOC should do everything it can to influence the policies of the Beijing games organisers towards Chinese and foreign journalists. A failure to rise to this key challenge would represent an enormous setback in the history of the Olympic movement.”

Grains Gone Wild

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: April 7, 2008 “New York Times”

These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.

 I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

There have already been food riots around the world. Food-supplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, leading to angry protests from farmers — and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.

How did this happen? The answer is a combination of long-term trends, bad luck — and bad policy.

Let’s start with the things that aren’t anyone’s fault.

First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.

Second, there’s the price of oil. Modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of B.T.U.’s go into producing fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil persistently above $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up agricultural costs.

High oil prices, by the way, also have a lot to do with the growth of China and other emerging economies. Directly and indirectly, these rising economic powers are competing with the rest of us for scarce resources, including oil and farmland, driving up prices for raw materials of all sorts.

Third, there has been a run of bad weather in key growing areas. In particular, Australia, normally the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought.

O.K., I said that these factors behind the food crisis aren’t anyone’s fault, but that’s not quite true. The rise of China and other emerging economies is the main force driving oil prices, but the invasion of Iraq — which proponents promised would lead to cheap oil — has also reduced oil supplies below what they would have been otherwise.