Prime Minister Stephen Harper Sez Welcome to Canada's beautiful tar sands
And how was YOUR weekend? Canuckistan’s Glorious Ruler posed for a picture with some cuddly Alberta wildlife, while his obedient servants created a website apologizing to the world for the mortifying homunculus who sits, slavering, atop Parliament.
We messed up.
We know you look to us as one of the last great strongholds of common sense in a swirling sea of crazy on this big ol’ crazy planet of ours.
Decriminalized marijuana, same-sex marriage, our peace keeping force, universal health care, education, our stance on environment, human rights, and religious freedom made us look pretty darn awesome.
Now we’re realizing that those things that made us awesome are being taken away from us, and it’s not just us Canadians who are paying the price.
Turns out some of us thought it would be a grand idea to put this fucking guy in charge.
Well, actually, it wasn’t so much that we put him in charge as it is we failed not to.
We goofed. We took our stick off the ice. We pulled a real boner. For that we apologize.
But, hey. 2015 is just around the corner. Hopefully, we’ve learned our lesson, and we’ll do better next time.
We’d better, assuming he doesn’t pull a coup and off the Governor-General, and I wouldn’t put it past him or his alien leaders.
The government of America’s hat announced it will repeal a 1938 law that prohibited citizens from publicly posting election results before all polls closed across the country. Since social-media sites feature real-time discussions, it has been nearly impossibly to enforce the rule despiteElections Canada’s hardline stance.
Someone who’s suddenly not having a great weekend is Greyhound bus driver Donald Ainsworth, who kicked 13 OccupySD protesters off his bus just for supporting Occupy. He thought he’d show them.
That guy looks totes familiar. Oh right, I think I saw his face on the wall of the Post Office…
United as One Divided by Zero
The likeness is uncanny.
The guy in the photograph wasn’t on 4chan, though, he was at Grandview Park. Perhaps I’d better back up a day or so.
Occupy Vancouver, which had been Occupying the plaza north of the Art Gallery since its inception, was Injuncted by the City, with the result that they had to move house off that specific site. So they did: to a block South, the extremely beautiful and extremely under-utilized Robson Square Plaza outside the Provincial Courthouse. I used to work there, and that plaza is a gorgeous, multilevel space of considerable desolation, since nobody ever goes there.
Now, I was not and am not a fan of allowing Occupy Vancouver to be moved: as I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not Civil Disobedience until you Disobey something.
No one rules if no one obeys. Your moment of Zen
but of course, I wasn’t camping, so I didn’t feel I had the right to decide that for the people who were, and those people decided to move to Provincial land, which the plaza is.
It’s also well-covered over a fair bit of its area, with concrete cubbyholes where a tent can be snug and protected, which turned out to be very important when that night saw winds up to 90 km/hr. I picked up my camera around 2am (after washing all the dishes in the house and doing some darning as a procrastination measure) and headed over to the old site to view the wreckage, of which there was some but nowhere NEAR as much as I expected.
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As you can see from the slideshow, it was nonetheless desolate: cratered, soaked, the wood chip surface dissolved into a decomposed, ice-cold tea, which had necessitated the use of recycled pallets to elevate the tents out of the muck. No longer necessary, the pallets were stacked here and there by the paths, so if anyone wants some free firewood, here ya go.
Ashleigh‘s memorial is still on the site, but the umbrella that sheltered it is gone. At least it’s still protected by fluorescent posts and Caution tape.
I got shots of the entire chalk mural along the East wall of the stairs, and it is beautiful and of course impermanent, so that made me happy.
There was someone sifting through the fountain basin with a flashlight and bag, but when I asked him what he was looking for he turned his back and left. Some people are so touchy.
There was one tent left, but it was full of rubble: I’m nosy. I looked.
Then I went over to the new site and interviewed Cameron Bode of Occupy Vancouver‘s media team on how to do the livestream under circumstances like that. If that part of the livestream is embeddable, it’s news to me, but I’ll try. We did a walking tour of the Robson Square site and then went over to the old site for a trip down nostalgia ave. The umbrella blew out and completely wrecked near the end, and at that point we lost the ability to livestream because you can’t do that in a downpour without shelter of some kind, so oh well, we went back to the site and did this interview.
Shots from the new site:
After spending the night in the relative snuggity of the new site, Occupy Vancouver (having proved they could be shoved around and displaced, like a powerless vagrant) was moved along again by another injunction. Premier Christy Clark tweeted her heartbreak that Occupy Vancouver was obeying the injunction:
Very disappointed to learn that the spirit of the court's ruling is being ignored. #occupyvancouver— Christy Clark (@christyclarkbc) November 22, 2011
Of course, injunctions don’t have spirits or souls, and neither, apparently, does Christy Clark, for in the middle of some of the worst weather all year, she ordered her staff to stay up all night getting the new injunction. And then boasted about it.
Poor babies. Tell me, were they doing it in the middle of a public plaza during a wind and rain storm? No? Didn’t think so.
Christy Clark called for A BLANKET INJUNCTION, we are calling for "Injunction Blankets" to keep us warm! Can anyone crochet?…— Occupy Vancouver (@OccupyVancouver) November 22, 2011
And as predicted, they got their injunction. At about 4pm, Occupy Vancouver packed up again and moved to what they assumed would be a welcoming new home in the heart of EastVan.
But EastVan ain’t what it used to be. There were tweets saying residents showed up with signs telling them to leave Grandview Park (that was fast work, guys, very fast work) although when I got there no signs at all were in evidence, just one flag with which I could use some help: what the hell is it?
UPDATE: The flag of the free republic of Cascadia!
It ain’t Lebanon, that’s all I know.
Relations with the cops were…bipolar. But we hugged it out.
Occupy Grandview Hug
The chaos didn’t stop some really profound things from going on at the GA:
"This is the first thing to give me meaning in my life, but we're also getting the shit kicked out of us." #OccupyVancouver— Occupy Vancouver (@OccupyVancouver) November 23, 2011
After about an hour of photography I left, but in the meantime saw some interesting things including a media scrum with a woman from City Government of palpable importance whom I don’t recognize (I should watch tv news more, I guess). UPDATE:
Dr. Penny Janet Drury Ballem,[1]MSc, MD, FRCP is the city manager for the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and served as a member of the VANOC board of directors, corporate director for Bentall Capital G.P. Ltd., as well as a senior adviser to RPO Management Consultants.[2] She is a physician and clinical professor at the University of British Columbia Medical School in the department of hematology and bone marrow transplant.[3]
She reaffirmed that Stanley Park was leased by the City, provincial or not, and that if there were ANY structures put up in it, they’d be removed by the City. When I asked her about Musqueam and other First Nations territory, she was visibly relieved to say the City had no authority there. So…something for future reference. Another friend says the land under and around the South end of the Burrard Bridge is Coast Salish, which would be very, very interesting indeed as a site for Occupy Vancouver.
…organize a fake protest flashmob. When the police show up, they should say they’re not protesting, they’re just impersonating protestors. See if Bloomberg still orders the police to beat up some reporters and Iraq war vets, just out of habit. Of course, then he’d say he’s only impersonating a mayor telling the police to beat up reporters and Iraq war vets. It’s all very meta.
Post-postmodernist, and almost certainly not prosecutable. Suddenly, 2pm Monday afternoon looks a lot more interesting.
Remember, Remember. Make sure Wall Street never forgets!
Yes, it’s November 5th, Bank Transfer Day.
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, guy, t’was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England’s overthrow.
By God’s mercy he was catch’d
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.
And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!
Guy Fawkes- the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions. (Old but apt on Bonfire Night)— Jemima Khan (@Jemima_Khan) November 05, 2011
Who is this Thomas Jefferson guy? He sounds like a filthy dirty hippie.
Don’t look now, but there’s something going on at the bank over there, George!
Occupy your own wallet by taking all your funds out of the Big Banks, putting them into your local credit union. You’ll get better service and better protections, you’ll own stock in a community business, and you’ll be helping make the world a better place.
Along with over one million Americans and counting:
That’s already about twice as many as switched from banks to credit unions last year, and when that video was made it wasn’t even November 5th yet! More switched in the month of October, 2011 than switched in all of last year.
“These results indicate that consumers are clearly making a smarter choice by moving to credit unions where, on average, they will save about $70 a year in fewer or no fees, lower rates on loans and higher return on savings,” said CUNA President Bill Cheney.
Scott Warren opened an account at JP Morgan Chase Bank in 2009 to receive unemployment payments.
Scott Warren mailed his statement to Chase after switching to a credit union. It said 'Dear Chase, Occupy Wall St., from your ex-customer.'"
“Chase was the only one that set it up for you,” said Warren, who was a quality supervisor at Unisolar in Greenville before being laid off. “I went to the unemployment office, they gave me my paperwork. I go to Chase, they set me up, and, right away, they’re trying to get me to sign up for a credit card.”
Warren was stunned. And it happened every time he went into a branch, he said.
“They knew why I was there,” he said, referring to his unemployed status at the time. “I told them I didn’t think that was smart. This tells me that they are not in business to serve my needs. They intend to make money off of my failures.”
In light of corralled girls and teargassed wheel-chair bound women and articulate youth and the hashtag #occupy showing up here, there, everywhere, does Vancity have something to offer? Yes, this vid gives a glimpse of a better way. It’s inspiring.
But it’s not a manifesto, and if ever a ballsy manifesto (nothing pretty, please! and no slick marketing!) was needed from a financial institution, one whose DNA is still gritty and radical even if tamed over the years, it’s needed now. Is a credit union something more than a kinder, gentler bank? I’m listening. And I hope about 99% of Canadian citizens are too.
Between September 2008 and March 2009, Canadian banks reduced their holdings of domestic residential mortgages from $486.1 billion to $434.9 billion according to Bank of Canada stats; on a net basis.
Where did those mortgages go, you ask? Did 10% of Canadian homeonwers sell their homes and move into rental accomodation enmasse during a six month period?
Of course not. The federal government created a unique program through CMHC specifically targeted at allowing Canadian chartered banks to move tens of billions of dollars of assets off of their balance sheets. The reason? Canadian banks couldn’t raise sufficient and/or cost-effective funding from their traditional sources – primarily other global financial institutions – and needed Crown intervention to keep the wolf from the door. By mid-November 2008, the federal government had agreed to take $75 billion of mortgages from Canadian banks.
Assuming the risk-weighting of these assets was 20%, the feds essentially put $15 billion of capital into the Canadian banks that participated in the $75 billion CMHC program.
Bank Transfer Day: Ah, remember how it all began!
More money for you, less for “Too big to fail” corporations that would no longer exist if your tax dollars hadn’t been used to prop them up when their own machinations dug a grave for them. No tie-dyed, herbal-tea-stained, smelly hippie radical protester fingerprints on any of it.
Taking back your own wealth while sticking it to The Man, making more money, and saving fees?
As of this writing, somebody’s posting to Facebook every 30 seconds that they ditched their bank in favor of a credit union…The campaign has caught on and credit unions reported a $4.5 billion surge in assets in October alone…
Should you wish to go about your business today or any other day wearing an Anonymous-approved Guy Fawkes mask, but hesitate to participate in consumerism by buying a mask copyrighted by Warner Brothers, you can print out a paper pattern for a 3D mask here, and you can find instructions on making an origami mask at the bottom of this post.
You may have seen some of the right leaning newspapers carry the news that up to 90% of the tents outside St Paul’s for the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest are empty at night.
The newspapers are making the point that these protesters aren’t trying, that they don’t really care and that the tents are just a nuisance tactic that should be removed.
The newspapers used a thermal imaging camera to scan the square in order to reveal heat sources inside the tents. On the surface it sounds like a really smart idea. It’s an effective way to see which tents are occupied and which are empty that does not involve disturbing anyone.
Sounds logical, right? Sure sounded that way to the Vancouver firefighter I spoke to early this week, who said they’d done exactly the same thing here, and found most of the tents completely empty. Of course, the firefighter I spoke to a day later, the one with many more, very shiny badges that I couldn’t read because I’m all about the myopia, stated unequivocally that the Vancouver firefighters hadn’t used their infrared camera, although every truck has one, because “well, we just don’t want to KNOW some of what’s going on, and you can see absolutely everything with those cameras.” It’s true, nobody wants to inadvertently videotape the moment of Tent Baby‘s conception; hippie/hipster/crunchygranolaactivist/unionleader porn is not a genre with a great future ahead of it.
Now, I don’t think either of those men were lying, but only one can be right: either Vancouver Fire and Rescue used the infrared cameras or they didn’t. I asked the second firefighter if he’d be willing to put them to a test, which was when he brought up the fact that he for one wasn’t going to authorize the invasion of any tent dweller’s privacy, and kudos to him.
Whatever they are.
Anyhoodle, that’s not exactly what I had in mind. I had in mind something like this:
Following all the media hype (Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express) about ‘empty tents’ at OccupyLSX we decided to check out whether their thermal imaging evidence was true.
We got hold of *exactly* the same thermal imaging camera and showed that – surprise, surprise – you can’t tell when people are in their tents.
So don’t believe the lies – come down to OccupyLSX and join the vibrant community of people working for a better world. http://occupylsx.org
So today’s serving of some more paperwork on OccupyVancouver is particularly timely; they must have known I was working on this post! Awwww. I got a copy to digitize, which attempt failed when I couldn’t get Cathy Browne‘s scanner to work (I think it must be a 1%er; Canon is a huge company) but I took some pictures, so here are some.
which reads:
Order (Pursuant to Vancouver fire by-law no. 8191) to:
As a Representative of Occupy Vancouver, Grounds of 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2H7 [wait, Occupy has its own postal code? That feels somehow validating!]
The premises Occupied by you to wit, Assembly located at 750 Hornby St Vancouver, BC, legally known as Plan 15322, New Westminster Land District, blks 51, 61 & 71 DL 541 PLN – 14423 Assessment includes improvements on 026-602-124-04 & 12 & 14 & 1-6 & 56 026-604-124-24 (exc. leased) Inspected on the 03 day of November 20011.
THE INSPECTION REVEALED THAT:
Vancouver fire by-law, Sentence 1.4.41.(1) – it is the opinion of the Fire Chief a condition exists at 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC which endangers life and poses a risk of injury or loss by fire due to;
1. The lack of secure and safe means of egress and access ways within any large tarpaulin structure containing secondary tent structures.
2. The use of open flame and/or flammable heat source.
3. The storage and use of propane or other fuel sources.
THEREFORE, pursuant to the authority vested in me in accordance with Clauses 1.4.4.1.(1) and Article 1.4.4.2.(1)(d), 1.4.4.2.(1)(e), 1.4.4.2.(1)f), 1.4.4.2.(1)(g) and 1/4/4/2/(1)(j) of Vancouver Fire By-law No. 8191, you are HEREBY ORDERED TO:
1. Remove all tarpaulin enclosures or erect overhead tarps as canopies providing full visibility and appropriate egress and access routes.
2. Provide, alter or improve a continuous path of travel to all individual tents within all tarpaulin structures.
3. Identify for Fire Safety Inspectors all tents that are occupied.
4. Remove all unoccupied tents.
5. Provide appropriate spacing between the tents to reduce/eliminate fire spread and smoke exposure.
6. Remove all open flame and/or flammable heat sources.
7. Ensure no propane or other fuel sources are located on this site.
8. Comply with any other provision of Vancouver Fire Bylaw 8191.
The work involved in this Order must be completed on or before: Immediately.
John McKearney, General Manager/Fire Chief
Both sides are probably going to be pissed at me for putting the Anonymous mask anywhere near this document, but what can I say? It does liven things up a titch.
Now, our old friend Rumour has some things to say, but first we’re going to hear from me, because it’s my blog and Rumour will just have to wait his damn turn again.
I was there the night the fire lanes and access paths were built, and people cooperatively moved tents. Yes, it was a pain in the ass, but nobody wants to die and nobody wants the Occupation to get shut down, so people cooperated. Generally, the firefighters other uniformed personnel have been pretty cool. There’s no hostility, and at the General Assembly you can generally find several paying close attention not because they’re conducting surveillance, but because they’re actually interested. I tried to donate a railway lantern, and everyone just said NO, are you KIDDING? because they have actually been very good about no flames in Tent City. The issue of the big Uber-tarps over a whole cluster of tents was raised Wednesday, so it’s no surprise that this was coming. The firefighters were firm about the danger; not only can they not tell when a tent inside the superstructure is on fire, but there are really no clear ways out in case of danger. I can attest to the fact that the media tent’s door is so well-hidden that it’s going to be my LAST choice of exit in case of emergency.
The meditation tent even has those electric votives, by the way.
Okay, back to Rumour. Rumour says that this morning firefighters found not only had tents encroached on the fire lanes and accessways, but also there were several propane tanks sitting out in the open right in one of the accessways.
Prize for the stupidest Occupier has just been won, methinks. At least he lost those tanks, and they’re not that cheap.
About the man who overdosed this morning: all I know at this point is, he OD’d in a tent and isn’t dead at this point, although his condition is either serious or critical. Someone very smart on Twitter said that it’s a good thing it happened in Tent City, because if he were in a less public, less collectivist space he could well have died. This is the city where my co-op put up seven foot high steel fences to keep people from OD’ing in the playground, because they choose isolated places to shoot up, and then people never find them in time. I’ll report back on that when I know more. There were apparently (according to Rumour) serious talks only yesterday about drug use, in particular smoking drugs in the plaza and at the GA. People are particularly concerned because there are young children living here. No resolution one way or the other as far as I know.
