http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Vancouver_Summer_Olympics_On_Tr.html
Be Well.
David
VANCOUVER SUMMER OLYMPICS ON TRACK FOR FEBRUARY 2010
Only foreseeable glitch: these are supposed to be Winter Olympics
By William Thomas
As monsoon rains continue to pelt down and Daffodils compete with flash-floods on slopes across BC, the next sound heard will be the frantic tapping of keyboards as travel agents cancel flight and hotel reservations for planeloads of opted out Winter Olympics visitors whose ski slope apparel does not usually run to snorkels and bathing suits.
“There is no need for panic,” declared a panicky vice-president of sport for the Vancouver Olympic Games Organizing Committee as 95 million liters of water-turned-into-expensive-snow since last November reverts to its original state.
The Olympic downhill skiing and snowboarding events scheduled for Cypress Mountain have already been cancelled. Skating on increasingly thin ice, VANOC admitted that the ice-fishing and snowmobiling events are also in jeopardy. Temperatures hovering above 45-degrees F are expected to remain balmy until after this looming fiasco.
Organizers blame increasingly frequent El Nino events linked to global warming - not hubris and greed - for a fiscal shipwreck that should have seen the building of arks instead of a $1 billion Olympic Athletes Village, which was plagued by scandal and cost overruns almost as soon as ground was broken on the south shore of the aptly named False Creek. [Vancouver Sun Nov 7/08]
First People say their lands aren't the only things being stolen for Olympic profits. The hot-selling, $350 hand-knit Olympic sweaters flying off store shelves at The Bay looks very much like the genuine native sweater. It's not.
"We believe they are not very good knock-offs of the genuine Cowichan sweater," Cowichan Tribes general manager Ernest Elliott said. “Anything that tries to resemble a genuine Cowichan sweater is a fake.”
And a rip-off.
Once an icon of colonial exploitation and Canadian retail pride, the Hudson's Bay Company has lost even more of its luster after being sold to American owners. Cowichan Tribes officials accuse the USA retail giant of stealing their iconic sweater design after rejecting their proposal to produce Cowichan sweaters for its line of 2010 Olympic clothing.
"I can't describe what we would have felt if all the Canadian athletes walked into the opening ceremonies with genuine Cowichan sweaters," Elliott said. [Vancouver Sun Oct 8/09]
ARMED INTERVENTION AND POST-KATRINA-STYLE RELOCATION ARE OLYMPIC EVENTS
“The good news is, all those homeless people we turfed out of fleabag hotels to sell to developers on the east side may be relocated to the Olympic Village if it remains vacant throughout the games,” declared VANOC's Useless Eaters Relocation chief.
But police and paramilitary units vowed to call in NATO airstrikes if angry residents ignore special “protest pens” set up for their inconvenience far from the myopic media eye.
“For sure, anyone flying a small plane toward the Games will be shot down,” blustered the NATO commander in charge of Olympic Air Defense.
As uniformed gunmen prepare to clamp down hard on the city of Vancouver, setting up armed checkpoints on every street corner, harassing locals and strip-searching every visitor to the Games, the “total security” price tag is expected to top $1 billion - a figure left out of Vancouver's Olympic budget.
Since ignoring climate specialists who repeatedly warned of no snow for 2010, the Vancouver Organizing Committee has hastily hired armies of weather experts and set up dozens of weather stations to - what? Fix the weather? Not even the American chemtrail tankers crisscrossing BC skies can make snow.
“So far, all VANOC has to show for its investment is bad news,” ABC News reports. Expensive forecasts predict no new snow before the Games kick off February 12th. [ABC News Jan 22/10; Canadian Press Jan 20/10]
SKI THIS
VANOC - named after an extinct dinosaur - insists that rumours of the world's top downhill skiers hurriedly practicing for freestyle swimming events are exaggerated. “There is nothing wrong with skiing on wet grass,” insists VANOC head Barry Blindsided.
After dominating three days of speed racing in Austria with her lower left arm in a brace following an earlier crash, reigning World Cup champion Lindsey Vonn confirmed that she is waxing a custom-built slalom water ski for her upcoming Olympic bid.
But Vonn expressed concern over attempting to slide anything over the straw and plywood now being used instead of snow to build up the courses. Even if it's painted white.
“That may have some effect in terms of dumbing the course down a little bit,” agreed Peter Judge of the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association. [Canadian Press Jan 20/10]
Not to mention keyed-up contenders facing torrential rains and ski-jumps fashioned from wet straw.
around the globe...
VANCOUVER TO SUBSIDIZE THE WORLD
“The running tab for the Games and Games-related projects is somewhere between $6 billion and $7 billion,” calculates Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer.
“For the Sea to Sky Highway, figure $1 billion…
“For the Canada Line [new subway to echoing international airport], another $2 billion, not including possible compensation to outraged merchants [suing the city] along the route.
“Add $1 billion for the wildly over-budget convention centre project, plus renovations to B.C. Place [which will not be ready on time]…
“Say $1 billion for security until the federal and provincial governments see fit to share a more precise number with the public.” [Vancouver Sun Jan 12/09]
SORRY, WE LEFT THAT OUT
"Most economists who are not working for the sports leagues or working for the event managers always come up with numbers that are a fraction of what the event organizers promise," concludes Victor Matheson, an economics professor in Massachusetts and one of the authors of a study on oversize Olympic baths.
"It's basically going to be a subsidy to the rest of the world, if you want to think of it that way, for hosting that event," said Rob Bauman, an economist who worked with Matheson on the review of the 2002 Games.
Stressed out BC politicians stress that given the current economic/greenhouse climate, any benefits provided to their hotel and construction cronies is well worth hosing taxpayers for years to come. Especially after their megaprojects have spent the province into a $740-million deficit for the next two years.
They forget to mention that this deficit would be only $20 million without their Olympic-size expenditures.
MONEY IS DEBT GOLD MEDALISTS
In 1976, Montreal's Summer Olympics ended up $1.5-billion in debt. Its white elephant Olympic Stadium - dubbed the Big Owe - was just recently paid off.
Lillehammer got hammered hosting the 1994 Winter Games: 40% of its hotels went bankrupt and two new alpine facilities were sold for $1.
In 2002, Salt Lake City treated the world to pretty, photogenic events as this reporter watched TV cameras hastily reframed away from the chemtrails over the slopes. That city ended up with a $1.2 billion dollar deficit.
In 2004, Athens took the Olympic Gold Deficit Medal, losing $17 billion on their gamble after athletes were nearly forced into building their own accommodations.
In 2006, Turin threatened bankruptcy only two months before their big games.
After missing its Olympics tourism target by - Oops! - 22%, Beijing's bill will top $50 billion.
[OlyBLOG Jan 10-22/10]
FISH AND SHITS
Now the engineers of Britain's current fiscal FUBAR are having second, third and final thoughts about hosting the Summer Olympics in 2012.
"Even the government is going off the Olympics," declared a recent headline in the Guardian newspaper. "Is it too late to give them to the French?"
So far, a fourfold escalation in the budget for the Games and related follies has seen projected costs balloon from less-than-$5-billion to the current guess of $20 billion - give or take a few hundred million.
And that's before the entire world embarks on a Mayan acid trip in late December of that year.
"I cannot make sense with the approach of national austerity to continue to pour crazy sums of money into two weeks of sport," wrote columnist Simon Jenkins. "Even Nero would have balked at so much circus at a time of so little bread." [Vancouver Sun Nov 30/08]
BACK TO THE FUTURE, FULL SPEED AHEAD
“Fewer People Travelled To China Despite Olympics,” reported a story hidden deep inside the Globe and Mail. “The number of travellers to China dropped by two million in 2008 in what was supposed to be a banner year for tourism but became one dampened by Olympics-related security measures and the global economic crunch.”
And this while staging the Summer Games, which are a much better draw than the (usually) chillier winter version. [Vancouver Sun Jan 12/09]
Best-case scenario for Vancouver taxpayers?
Residents will be left holding the bag for nearly $1 billion for the bailed out Olympic Athletes Village. Add maybe another half-billion for the costs of security harassment not covered by Ottawa. [OlyBLOG Jan 10-22/10; Vancouver Sun Jan 13/09]
This seems a lot for a 10-day blowout most Vancouverites can't even obtain tickets for.
Unfortunately let out of jail after his arrest in Hawaii soon after becoming premier of newly renamed Brutish Columbia, “Gordo” told the fawning press, “Don't worry about it. Even if nobody shows up for the Games, buying this many votes among the big shots will have been worth it.”
“But what about the Olympic-size deficit?” asked an impertinent radical journalist before being pepper-sprayed, tasered and clubbed to her knees by police, who later said they were “just practicing.”
Gordo was unfazed.
“We've already screwed tens of thousands of ferry riders by constantly hiking fares to pay for the Olympics,” he announced.
“Now we plan to cover the next big 2010 shortfall by shutting down all ferry services on the coast. If this moves the riffraff off the islands and into the city's drug-infested slums so much the better. The only ones we're going to keep giving welfare to are the corporations stripping this province to the waterline.”
Stay tuned sports fans.
PROTESTS UNDERMINE OLYMPIC HYPE
Anti-Games enthusiasts are responding with a mix of glee and outrage. In Toronto, the Olympic torch relay was delayed and forced to take a different route to the city centre after a crush of protesters blocked Yonge Street, shouting “No!” to the Games.
"The Olympics Torch is about colonial theft of indigenous land, corporate profit grabbing, ecological destruction, militarization and migrant exploitation," said a naughty release titled "No 2010 Olympics On Stolen Native Land." [cbc.ca Dec 17/09]
Citing environmental and social destruction, indigenous groups across Canada continue to protest the events, which will be held on unceded Salish, St'at'imc, and Squamish territory.
While the British Columbia Supreme Court agrees that more than 90% of British Columbia lands were stolen from their original occupants without treaties or conquest, it has repeatedly ruled that this is “irrelevant” to native land claims.
After all, only successful crooks write history.
Meanwhile, members of the Native Youth Movement Kanahus Pelkey and Dustin Johnson are speaking out strongly against the games.
“It opens our land, our sacred sites, our medicine grounds,” Pelkey said. “All these big corporations are going to see the potential in our land, and we want them to know that our land is not for sale.”
In Vancouver, anticipation of the 2010 Olympics has seen drastic rent increases and the replacement of desperately needed low-income housing with upscale condos. Johnson said that hundreds of people have been evicted from low income housing since 2003.
“It has created a more sterile, white, corporate environment,” he added. [mostlywater.org]
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