2010 Olympics

As a resident of Vancouver and critic of big business, I feel obliged to post this letter about the 2010 Winter Olympics.  It seems like the Olympics are a microcosm of global economic forces, blind to the possibilities of human life which fall outside the guidelines of the “pursuit of profit” or “development.”

Statement on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

The Council of Canadians, one of Canada’s largest public advocacy organizations, with members and chapters across the country, views positively the Olympic goal of friendly international competition between athletes who excel in their respective sports. We understand and appreciate the pleasure and enjoyment so many around the world share in the spectacle and achievements of the Olympic Games.

However, we are gravely concerned by the increasing evidence that these worthy aspects are being overwhelmed, if not totally supplanted, by an “Olympic industry” focused on real estate development and massive corporate marketing opportunities. An “Olympic industry” founded and based in undemocratic and unaccountable national and international structures, implicated in numerous corruption scandals that undermine everything a truly noble Olympic movement should stand for.

In particular, the Council of Canadians believes the February 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and Whistler will leave a negative legacy contrary to the goals set forward during the application and approval process to host the games. There is now no doubt that the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) and its affiliated partners will fail to meet their commitments with regard to the environment, social programs and fiscal accountability.

The Council of Canadians is committed to working with activists who are highlighting the negative aspects of the 2010 Games, especially the fact they are being held on un-ceded First Nations territories and are providing mining, resort, real estate and energy developers with opportunities to continue expansion of projects on indigenous territories throughout the province.

As well, we are concerned that the civil liberties of local communities and those who have a critique of the Games are being undermined by an unnecessary security presence. The security budget for the games has ballooned to $1 billion, while security and law enforcement agencies have identified protest groups as the most significant threat to the Games. Over 4,500 Canadian military troops will be deployed to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics – twice the number Canada has in Afghanistan.

Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association have both raised serious concerns about the threat to fundamental rights to privacy and protest arising from the installation and introduction of new surveillance and security measures. Almost a year before the start of the Games surveillance cameras are being installed in Whistler and Vancouver and, according to several credible reports, harassment of protesters has begun.

Residents of Whistler, site of the nordic and downhill venues, are already living in what amounts to a “security zone,” which is only expected to escalate as the opening date approaches. Critics of the Games, including a Council of Canadians board member, have allegedly been placed under surveillance, while hikers and mountain bikers find favourite wilderness trails blocked by mysterious military operations.

As with Beijing 2008, there are plans to suppress legitimate dissent, including restricting demonstrators to areas far away from venues, visitors and the media. The Council of Canadians is concerned for the civil liberties of those who challenge the negative impacts of the Olympics and asks: Will those who ignore such undemocratic limitations be pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed and arrested? Will they be labeled “terrorists” and face global travel bans for exercising their democratic rights?”

As an organization focused on global justice we are especially concerned that the 2010 Olympics are providing a prime “green-washing” opportunity for corporations involved in the most egregious threats to the survival of humanity and the earth through their active participation in the privatization and commodification of water and massive environmental degradation exemplified by the exploitation of the tar sands.

A Worldwide Olympic Partner, Coca Cola (also a sponsor of the Torch Relay), is notorious for depleting groundwater in areas of India and Latin America with scarce water resources. Furthermore, Coca Cola is a leading promoter of water commodification as one of the largest producers of bottled water in the world. The Council of Canadians is actively promoting bottled water bans in communities across the country, and has grave concerns about the impact of Coca Cola’s sponsorship on public water infrastructure support in Vancouver and Whistler.

EPCOR, an Official Supplier for the games, has been working to privatize the water utilities of municipalities across the country, including BC. Epcor tried to bid on the privatization of waste water treatment in Whistler in 2006. The bid was successfully overturned as a result of efforts by the Council of Canadians and community members in Whistler. General Electric, another Worldwide Olympic Partner, is a major financier of private power projects in BC, including the enormous Bute Inlet proposal through its subsidiary Plutonic Power. The Council of Canadians has taken a stand against private power projects in British Columbia through the ‘IPP’ model.

The Royal Bank of Canada and Petro Canada, both National Partners for the 2010 Games, are directly involved in the Alberta tar sands, one of the most environmentally destructive projects in the world. The Royal Bank is a major financier of tar sands projects and is also a sponsor of the Torch Relay. Ironically, their ad campaigns for the relay ask individuals to make a “green pledge” by volunteering to carry the torch. The Council of Canadians is campaigning for no new approvals in the tar sands and a halt to any development infrastructure designed to increase the capacity of tar sands exploitation.

Dow Chemical is also an Olympic sponsor. Currently Dow is suing the Government of Canada for $2 million, through NAFTA’s Chapter 11 investor-state dispute process, as part of a  challenge to a Quebec ban on the use of lawn pesticides. Dow claims that the ban has amounted to an unfair expropriation of Dow’s Canadian pesticide business. The Council of Canadians has long campaigned against NAFTA and Chapter 11’s harmful impact on public regulation.

At a time of economic crisis when federal, provincial and municipal governments should focus on public projects that create a lasting positive social and economic foundation the 2010 Games appear set to leave a legacy of social and environmental destruction and massive debt that will hobble our ability to make positive change and respond to the serious challenges facing communities across the province and the country.

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Harjap Grewal

BC-Yukon Regional Organizer

Council of Canadians

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Wendell Berry to Jail?

I am hardly up-to-date on much of the current discussion about the food economy in the United States, but I found this bit particularly interesting:

Wendell Berry Picks Jail Over NAIS

The NAIS is short for the National Animal Identification System.  In an effort to be able to trace diseases back to their source, the NAIS would require every single livestock animal in the US to be tagged, regardless of the size of the operation.  The problem, or so it is argued, is that the diseases exist because we have made it a standard practice to house a huge number of animals of the same species together in relatively small spaces.  In these conditions, they are often fed food that is not consistent with their natural diet and because of the resulting health problems, they are treated with huge amounts of antibiotics.  Basically, the antibiotics keep the animals alive because they would otherwise die in the conditions they are currently existing in.  Sounds good, eh?

In a small farm with crop and animal rotation, such as Joel Salatin’s Polyface, Inc., the animals tend not to get sick because they are treated as they should be – that is, as they were created.  The website explains that one of their guiding principles is “Nature’s Template”:

Mimicking natural patterns on a commercial domestic scale insures moral and ethical boundaries to human cleverness.  Cows are herbivores, not omnivores; that is why we’ve never fed them dead cows like the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged (the alleged cause of mad cows).

And, as this principle shows, it is not just the animals who are treated well, but we humans also get to live well by recognizing the ‘moral and ethical boundaries’ of our role as caretakers of God’s creation.  This is the stuff of real life.

Back to the article, quoting Berry:

The need to trace animals was made by the confined animal industry – which are, essentially, disease breeding operations. The health issue was invented right there. The remedy is to put animals back on pasture, where they belong. The USDA is scapegoating the small producers to distract attention from the real cause of the trouble. Presumably these animal factories are, in a too familiar phrase, “too big to fail”.

This is the first agricultural meeting I’ve ever been to in my life that was attended by the police. I asked one of them why he was there and he said: “Rural Kentucky”. So thank you for your vote of confidence in the people you are supposed to be representing. (applause) I think the rural people of Kentucky are as civilized as anybody else.

But the police are here prematurely. If you impose this program on the small farmers, who are already overburdened, you’re going to have to send the police for me. I’m 75 years old. I’ve about completed my responsibilities to my family. I’ll lose very little in going to jail in opposition to your program – and I’ll have to do it. Because I will be, in every way that I can conceive of, a non-cooperator.

I understand the principles of civil disobedience, from Henry Thoreau to Martin Luther King. And I’m willing to go to jail to defend the young people who, I hope, will still have a possibility of becoming farmers on a small scale in this supposedly free country. Thank you very much. (applause, cheers)

This is the stuff of real life.

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Jacques Ellul on Economic Catastrophe

This is taken from an interview with Jacques Ellul held in 1983.

Ellul: I think we will see a series of economic catastrophes, of bankruptcies.

Sichel: Are you saying that corporations like IBM, Exxon, or AT&T can go bankrupt?

Ellul: Yes.  When they become too big there will come a point where they will collapse.  We are not too far away.  When you observe the number of countries which have such important debts to them, if at any time one were to assess the cash balance of these companies, one would find a series of imminent catastrophes within them…

Sichel: We are one year before 1984 and seventeen years before the year 2000.  What are your predictions for man and society?

Ellul: I think the most probably thing is that we are going towards a crisis, a break.  The most likely, in my opinion, will be bankruptcies…

Of course IBM and Exxon have not gone bankrupt, and it seems as if this interview was held immediately before the breakup of AT&T into all of the “Bell” corporations.  But Ellul was spot on with his prediction that if anyone were actually to look at the books of some of the major multinational corporations, the findings would show that they are nothing more than a house of cards.  What happened with LTCM, Enron, and MCI WorldCom (among others), many of the major investment banks,  and the ponzi scheme with Madoff, is simply the cover-up of the true financial situation these companies were in.  Through illegal corporate transactions, deceitful accounting practices, and stock price manipulation, many of these companies were able to fool investors that they were perfectly viable businesses.  The truth of the matter is that they were black holes of investment capital unable to produce the profits they claimed.  Once someone actually looked at the raw numbers, however, the immanent catastrophe was clearly visible.

Whether Ellul was right in predicting the current economic crisis is arguable.  But his insistence on the untenable nature of huge amounts of debt was clearly a warning to our current economic situation, both personally and corporately.

*Full interview can be found at “New Hope for the Technological Society: An Interview with Jacques Ellul,” Et Cetera 40, no. 2 (1983): 192-206.

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