The JIG is up. 

An RCMP “joint intelligence group” —  comprised of federal, provincial and municipal police — infiltrated activist groups prior to the G20 and Vancouver Olympics in what they call ”one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history.”

Constable Bindo Showan of the Ontario Provincial Police, one of the two principal undercover Ontario spies, is a stunning example of their intelligence at work.

Earlier this fall, Showan told the court about how he attended a meeting prior to the Toronto summit. There, a protest-planning group that included several of the 17 main G20 defendants was discussing whether to lend their support to a First Nations rally.

Adam Lewis, one of the 17 accused conspirators in the G20 case, interjected, “Kill whitey!” The group chuckled. Lewis, like all but one of his co-accused, is white.

When a Crown lawyer asked the officer what he thought Lewis meant, Showan said in complete seriousness, to “kill white people.” 

Apparently we do not have the right not to be spied and reported on by morons or covert operatives pretending to be morons.

This 2009 RCMP “joint intelligence group” statement defines their mission:

“The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville … will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power … 

“The important commonality is that these ideologies … place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society. 

In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First nations’ resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc.“

And it is apparently still in operation :

RCMP records suggest that the reconnaissance continues. Report logs indicate at least 29 incidents of police surveillance between the end of the G20 summit and April 2011 — more than nine months after world leaders departed Toronto.

The same document indicates that the RCMP-led intelligence team made a series of presentations to private-sector corporations, including one to “energy sector stakeholders” in November 2011.

Good to know.

After millions of dollars and 70,000 pages of Crown evidence, conspiracy charges have been dropped against the 17 activists held in jail or under house arrest for the last 18 months, but 6 of them will serve jail time for counselling mischief, with an additional charge of counselling to obstruct police leveraged against Alex Hundert and Mandy Hiscocks

Toronto Star: Behind the G20 plea deal

Below is a message from the So-Called “G-20 Main Conspiracy Group,” below. And their written statement regarding the charges can be read here. 

Memo to Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu: idiots and anarchists are two different things. I know being a political scientist isn’t a prerequisite for becoming a cop, not even the top cop, but playing the “anarchist” card last week, as you did in defending your force’s handling of the Stanley Cup riot, was not only unseemly but dumb — at least as dumb as some of what went on the day before.

“Even with those assets in place,” you told a news conference on Thursday, apparently referring to the many Vancouverites who assisted in deterring the rioters, “our city was vulnerable to a number of young men and women, disguised as Canucks fans, who were actually criminals and anarchists.” And then you held up for dramatic effect . . . a mask! Unfortunately for your purposes it didn’t have “Official Anarchist Mask” written on it — instead, it had some kind of skull thing happening — but apparently we were meant to take this as proof that those nasty Bolsheviks who’d smashed some windows in the run-up to the Olympics were back.

The problem is, Police Chief Chu, that wearing a mask and smashing things doesn’t make someone an anarchist — it makes them a vandal. Anarchism is a coherent political philosophy that actually has more to do with organizing at the most local level possible than it does with breaking stuff, though there is, of course, a wing of it that believes property violence is, under certain circumstances and within clear limitations, necessary and acceptable. Whatever you may think of that, those few anarchists who are occasionally violent do what they do with a political purpose. But there was no political purpose behind the vandalism in Vancouver last Wednesday — just a lot of beer.

“These were people who came equipped with masks, goggles, and gasoline — even fire extinguishers that they would use as weapons,” you said. But that doesn’t make them anarchists either — it just makes them well-organized hoodlums. No, not the same thing. “We recognized some of those same criminals among them as those who took part in the vandalism during the Winter Olympics,” you added. But even if some of the same people were involved — and I guess we’ll have to take your word for that — they weren’t acting as anarchists this time. There is absolutely no political argument to be made for smashing the windows of The Bay because the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup. They were just being morons. Or criminals. Or moronic criminals, take your pick.

But not anarchists. As Garth Mullins, one of the organizers of last year’s Olympic protests, told The Tyee: “If anarchists are attending an event where there’s going to be a police crackdown, you bring legal observers, you bring medics, you use your cell phone for communication, not for taking photos of yourself and putting them on Facebook.”

Now, I actually thought your department reacted with smarts and restraint to the riot, Chief Chu. Maybe that had something to do with not having enough cops available for the size of the crowd that showed up — maybe you wouldn’t have acted with restraint, given your druthers — but if the result was to keep the head bashing to a minimum, that’s just as well. I realize I might not feel that way if I was one of the business owners whose premises got ransacked, but as you said yourself, “With apologies to business owners who became the victims of these criminals, our plan and our priority must always be the safety of the public over the safety of builings and property.”

The funny thing is, even the most radical anarchists would draw the same distinction, between violence to property and violence to people. Maybe you have more in common with them than you know. In any event, please choose your words more carefully in future. It would be nice to think the Vancouver Police Chief understands the difference between ideology and plain old hooliganism.

A year-or-so after the Winter Olympics torch got snuffed out, community spirit is back in Vancouver, thanks to the Canucks. Where the many official attempts to reignite our sporting fervor failed, a simple hockey playoff series has done the trick. Greater Vancouver has decided it will party when it wants to, not when it’s strongly encouraged to.

And boy, were we strongly encouraged. Advertisers shoved the anniversary of the Olympics on unsuspecting BC residents like Viagra commercials, but the results were less than spectacular, especially given the many opportunities to get involved. Anniversary organizers suggested we have breakfast with John Furlong, see the cauldron relit, play street hockey in downtown Vancouver on Granville Street, check out the Olympic medals again at the Royal Canadian Mint Boutique, and skate in Robson Square. Or we could head up to Cypress Mountain to watch such things as “banner raising ceremonies.”

CTV offered the sedentary among us the “Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Anniversary Special” and the documentary 17 Days. No one I know will even admit to watching either. February 26th was the unofficial anniversary party, and while there was a definite sputter of community joy and fun, ultimately it smoldered and died.

Then Vancouver celebrated its 125th birthday, as did the Vancouver Parks Board, the Vancouver Police Department, and Coca Cola. Again, the parties fizzed.

But now the patriotic sea of red and white that once blanketed the city has been replaced by blues and greens. The Inukshuk has been succeeded by a Haida orca. Children who once toted Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi stuffies on their way to school instead clutch fuzzy whales. Walk into almost any Tim Hortons and, in place of grumbling about the Olympics’ ridiculous costs, you’ll hear fury over Luongo’s unpredictable play, the Canuck penchant for long series, and those damn Sedin twins.

But we love the Canucks a little more with every game they win. As with the Olympics, my children and I can’t afford to attend the games and so we watch them on TV. Or we enjoy the spectacle online; even kindergarteners have started broadcasting their hometown pride:

I was amazed, after the Canucks’ Game 7 win over the Blackhawks, at the size of the crowds in the streets. And this was in the suburbs! I had a meeting at work on the night the Canucks played the Nashville Predators, in what turned out to be the final game of that series (2-1 in overtime for the local boys). It was sparsely attended, and we managed to condense the whole thing into 26-and-a-half minutes before rushing out to our vehicles to catch the last period. The streets were eerily quiet — just as they were during the Olympic hockey final last year.

True celebration originates when people choose to care about something — not from forced attempts to encourage pride. And it’s more fun that way, too.

Hello India. Canada here. Just chiming in to say, in a spirit of Empire solidarity: Ignore the critics of your upcoming Commonwealth Games. The keeners who arrive early will always find something to gripe about.

We speak from experience. In the days before our Winter Olympics, all sorts of rude people, who don’t know it’s appropriate to show up fashionably late, decamped to Vancouver and, boy, did they have a lot to say. It was rainy. That was one complaint. It was foggy. That was another. The fact that they were in Vancouver in Winter did not blunt their Vancouverfreude.

There was no snow, the kvetchers kvetched. All right, that was a reasonable concern, given that these were the Winter Olympics, but eventually the snow arrived.

We had no more control over that than you do over the fact that your monsoon season has been the worst in 20 years. Then a luger was killed during trial runs. That really was a serious story. But the questions raised about our competency in constructing the track led nowhere, just as the ones about the collapse of your pedestrian bridge leading to the main stadium, and some tiles falling off a ceiling in the weightlifting venue, likely won’t either. Shit happens. I understand you know that better than us.

Actually, that was a cheap shot. It’s based on the notion that cows are running all over the place in India, crapping on things. Silly. Hence the emphasis given to the story of a photo showing a dog defecating on a mattress in the athletes’ village. My theory is that outsiders’ reports immediately emphasize their greatest fears about the place. In our case, that they’ll expire of rain and boredom. (Reporters also complained early on that Vancouver had no street life.) In yours, that animals have the run of the place and people who live in shanties can’t build bridges. Shameful.

So, ignore them and get on with your preparations. You’ve still got 10 days to go and, unlike us, plenty of people to do the work. (We had to bring in Mexicans to finish the job for us.) Then have a good time. After all the kvetching, you’ll deserve it. And, if our experience is anything to go by, it’s the fact that you’ll be flat broke after the games are over that you really have to worry about.

Already the patriotic glow has started to fade for some, but not for the 60,000 people who filed into BC Place Stadium for the Paralympic Opening Ceremonies.

My 12-year old daughter, disappointed at our not being able to afford the $175 minimum price tag per person for the Opening and Closing Olympic Ceremonies, was delighted when I told her I had ordered tickets for the Paralympic Opening via the internet. At $30 per ticket, including free transit, it was the proletariat’s dream price tag, despite the fact I figured we’d be perched at the highest row of the proceedings. I told her we could watch it on CTV the following day: at least we could be in the audience for the live event.

Standing for half an hour across from the outdoor Robson skating rink to pick up our tickets, my concerns were further confirmed by a former Olympic volunteer wearing the much-prized turquoise jacket. She felt the $65 tickets were the best viewing options: not too high and not too low. After all, she said, the expensive seats at the Olympic opening had no view of the whales on the floor, just the spouting water. That wouldn’t do. My tickets, she commented, would have us hanging off the ceiling. By the time I reached the ticket counter and saw the “sold out” next to the $30 and $65 price range tickets (the next available were $95 and $175), I didn’t care if we were swinging from the light fixtures. I’d ordered tickets that were now sold out: consumer bliss.

It was tough to know what to wear: the sea of red has thinned considerably since the Olympics. The week following the closing ceremony, we had a Spirit Week at the Greater Vancouver high school where I teach, of which Day 3 was athlete and mathlete day — the day to wear one’s favourite team jersey or dress like a geek. Sure enough, after only two weeks spent proudly wearing Team Canada jerseys and Vancouver 2010 hoodies, not a one was to be seen in a school of over 1800 students and 100 staff members. I brought my Team Canada jersey in a bag but ended up wearing my Vancouver Canucks shirt. A typical Canadian, I didn’t want to stand out.

However, for the Paralympics, my daughter and I decided to take the risk — to an extent. She wore her Canada-red jeans and t-shirt emblazoned with “Made in Canada” across the front, while I wore my patriotic red shirt and a white jacket. I didn’t wear my Olympic red mittens: I didn’t want to risk over-patriotism. It was easy to pick out the Paralympic ceremony-goers on the skytrain. Against the backdrop of drab usualness were telltale red toques, Olympic shirts, and Sumi keychain stuffies. We flowed into BC Place, through the speedy security check, and joined a few unapologetic red mitten wearers.

Our seats were actually above the dignitaries’ section, and only half way up the top level: perfect. Gift bags were taped to each chair and commemorative books waiting for us, complete with “Oh Canada” in Braille and the inscription “one inspires many.” We shook our white pom-poms with the flashing red lights, put on our white ponchos while others put on their green, blue, or white ones, and flashed our gold cardboard cards. Then, as the pre-ceremony rehearsal began, we practiced sign language for the word “inspire” and learned our cues to wave lit or unlit pom poms and gold cards.

Then the unpretentious, inspiring opening ceremonies of the 10th Paralympics, the first such games held in Canada, unfolded. Children emceed and danced, athletes strode or wheel-chaired in proudly, and we cheered each country on. We saved our most deafening roar for the Canadian Paralympians, as the host country entered last. But it wasn’t until we watched the visuals of Rick Hansen’s Man-in-Motion journey through four continents in his wheelchair, and then listened to CTV anchor Lloyd Robertson recount the story of Terry Fox’s Marathon Of Hope across Canada, and Fox’s charge, when he was unable to go on, for Canadians to continue his marathon, that my patriotism finally kicked in.

Sure, I participate every year in the Terry Fox run at work, but as I sat in that stadium, images of Fox’s one-legged gait playing across the arena floor, I was reminded that Rick Hansen and Terry Fox are more than just great athletes; they’re a part of my history. As a child, I gathered with my parents around the TV set in our Victoria home to hear the latest about Fox’s journey. My parents rarely watched TV, and never the news, and yet there we were, every day. We cheered Terry on, and cried when he became so ill he had to stop. We hoped for his recovery. When Rick Hansen headed out into the world, we again followed through the news coverage. These heroes lived in my lifetime. And thanks to their example and courage, people continue to be inspired.

The Paralympics are amazing in their own right, as are the Paralympic athletes. My son and I are going to a semi-final game of sledge hockey, and this time, I’m going to wear my red mittens. Proudly.

The Olympics are over, but the memorabilia is here to stay. Vanoc reported that, by midway through the 2010 Games, it had already reached its $50 million sales goal, double the amount that merchandising brought in through the entire 2006 Winter Olympics.  Three million cute red Olympic mittens alone were sold by the Hudson’s Bay Co. A few days before the closing ceremonies, a friend of mine and I watched a woman enact a scene reminiscent of Cinderella’s stepsisters with the golden slipper. Standing by the last remaining bin of Olympic mittens, children’s size small, she desperately and unsuccessfully attempted to force her adult hand into the tiny glove. My friend commented to her, “Maybe if you chop off a couple of fingers, it’ll fit.”  The woman did not look impressed.

Maybe she later found what she wanted on eBay: on the day of the closing ceremonies, eBay had 2,154 pairs of Olympic mittens for sale.

I happened to be in Zellers on what was likely the final release day of the mittens, and so many were available that I picked up pairs for both my children (I got them the adult size small — perhaps that’s why there were so many remaining children’s sizes) and me. Then, as I’d recently had a conversation with my mom, who lives in snow-happy Saskatchewan, I decided to pick her up a pair as well.  After paying more to post them than for the mittens themselves, I was happy to hear she’d received them before the games were through.  Even better, she had walked to her mailbox gloveless and freezing in –27 degree weather, and returned in wooly warmth.  Funny: I brought mine to a soccer game this weekend and it was too warm to wear them, yet here is where the Winter Olympics are being held.  Canadian weather, eh?

Olympic pins are another rage: just ask the pinheads.  The Simpsons episode in which Lisa falls prey to pin collecting and ends up wearing nothing but as she busks in downtown Vancouver, trying to get enough money for the next pin, wasn’t far from the truth.  Lines were everywhere: six hours to get a glimpse of the Olympic medals at the Canadian Mint, another line-up for CBC Olympic pins.  High school students of mine asked a man dressed in Russian attire to pose with them, and instead walked away with memories of a strong Russian accent and a gift of Russian pins.  In their excitement, they didn’t realize until later that he’d avoided having his picture taken altogether.

Coke set up pin-trading centres in the Bay store and in a hut at the Yaletown LiveCity site.  Several pin collectors sat amidst the throngs in downtown Vancouver, calmly displaying their collections.  According to Dan Presburger, a high school history teacher from Thousand Oaks, California, pin-trading is a good way to meet people. Dan has 150,000 pins in his collection, and especially loves to trade Olympic pins. He and his nine-year old son, Aidan, walked around the streets of Vancouver in smocks spotted with pins. It was Dan’s 11^th Olympics, and Aidan’s second. And pins are worth more than one may think — Dan managed to get into the Russia vs. Latvia game by trading a handful of pins for a ticket.  I wonder how many pins it would’ve taken to pay for the final USA vs Canada game?

While I didn’t embrace pin collecting, I did have my eyes peeled for other Olympic memorabilia.  I’d read that Olympic condoms were going to be handed out by Captain Condom and other superheroes .  I hoped to press one or two into my Olympic photo album, but my high school students and I weren’t handed any, nor did we see any of Captain C’s safekits being distributed. Apparently, as with red mittens, Vancouver ran short and had to import condoms from other parts of Canada .  A look on eBay was fruitless: the best it had to offer was an Olympic shirt with five condom rings, courtesy of a creative thinker in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Instead,I was handed two Olympic pamphlets: “The Way to Happiness: A Common sense Guide to Better Living” and “Gold Rush Vancouver.”  The former is chock-full of happy advice courtesy Ron Hubbard, and the latter is from Answers in Genesis U.S.A. If “Gold Rush Vancouver” sounds appealing, I bet there are still several discarded copies of it lying where I last saw them in downtown Vancouver, a few steps from where the smiling volunteers handed them out and not far from where the Canadian Mint queue once stood.

As the Olympic athletes head home with their medals, the rest of us also have something to cling to — everything from Coke bottles that glow, Olympic wear, pins, and pamphlets, to stuffed Quatchis sporting little red Olympic mittens. Go Canada go.

For the last week, Canadians have been shaking with excitement over Canada’s triumphs in the Olympics in Vancouver. And over the past few days, I’ve found it difficult to have a conversation with anyone that doesn’t involve talking about hockey. Today at the grocery store a complete stranger cornered me in the produce section to share excitement about Canada’s gold medal win in hockey. “We won!” Her grin made me pretty uncomfortable.

“Horrible news about Chile,” I said, “just awful.” Obviously, I’m not much of a hockey fan. She hadn’t heard a thing about Chile.

On Saturday morning, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake shook central Chile causing mass devastation. An incredible 90 aftershocks, all of magnitude five or higher, have continued the devastation with over 700 dead (and the number continues to rise) and an estimated 1.5 million people affected by the quake. Less than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, it’s like deja vu as I sit in my living room watching images on the news of people digging through the ruins of collapsed buildings in search of survivors. And yet I have to channel surf relentlessly to find a station with coverage of the disaster in Chile, as the Olympics hog the airwaves.

Maybe I don’t get it because I’ve never been a huge sports enthusiast: I don’t have a team or own a jersey, I’m not competitive by nature, and I can’t name name any players other than Todd Bertuzzi and Steve Moore (and that only because I read about them on CBC.ca).

I didn’t watch any Olympic events, not because I am boycotting, though I was tempted to, but because I’ve got things to do, and simply can’t devote hours of my day to curling or speed skating. My Olympic jones has largely been satisfied by reading Facebook status updates. It’s nice to see Canadians uniting and being proud of their country and its athletes, and I appreciate the history of the Olympics, but I don’t quite understand the level of emotional involvement and time commitment so many people are willing to put forth. And I certainly don’t get why Olympic coverage trumps world coverage.

“The competition is exhilarating,” a co-worker told me.

Maybe so, but there’s nothing exhilarating about a country devastated by an earthquake competing for news coverage, and losing to the Olympics.

McDonald’s is the official 2010 Winter Olympics fast food sponsor, as evidenced by their ubiquitous billboards and TV ads showing Canadian Olympians about to consume supposedly performance-enhancing food. But while games-goers may enjoy collecting the Olympic mascot toys and drinking from the official Olympic water bottle, their eating preferences are, literally, all over the map.

One of the biggest food successes is the Japadog, a plump pork sausage dressed with such unique toppings as dried fish flakes, cabbage, and teriyaki sauce. According to a local TV report, people have been lining up at Japadog stands for as long as an hour to enjoy the homegrown delicacy. Another hot item is British Columbian Chinese food. Beijing may be tops in the opening ceremonies category, but we, ironically, best them in this one. Writes Mark Schatzker in the February issue of Conde Nast Traveler: “I would say I’ve eaten Chinese food all over North America and in China and the best I’ve eaten in the world was in Vancouver. Hands down.”

Invented closer to home, though not exactly nearby, is another British Columbian favourite: poutine. A Quebecois creation, this cheese curd, french fry, and gravy delight can be enjoyed locally at most Burger Kings and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. Apparently, it’s now also entered New York cuisine as “disco fries.” But be warned: it can be dangerous, and not just for one’s arteries, especially if you fall face first into it.

Nevertheless, poutine has been proposed as Canada’s national food, a welcome possibility considering Canadians are unsure what else would even be in the running: is maple syrup a food? Many Olympic partiers were disgruntled to discover private downtown liquor stores closed by 7 pm on Saturday and Sunday on the first weekend of the Olympics. Maybe they’d vote for beer.

And while some British Columbians might argue that smoked salmon should own the podium, the same could be said of beaver tails, which originated in Ottawa. No beavers are injured in the making of these mini-pastries, though a lot of BCers might wish otherwise, given that the rascally rodents have a nasty habit of reproducing in large numbers and making dams. That’s why we cull them hereabouts. But maybe we should consider marketing them instead. After all, if John Burey of Australia figures he can sell that country’s nuisance cane toad to to the Chinese, what’s to stop us from convincing those partying New Yorkers that nothing goes better with poutine than a side order of beaver meat?

Canada offers such a mosaic of food offerings, we’ll probably never come up with a national food that everyone can agree upon. But that appears to be just fine with our visitors. Perhaps the best option is to join them in wholeheartedly sampling the Olympic offerings, and, as the Star‘s Paul Watson does in this mouth-watering video, “eat our way around the world.”

Hmm. What is this doing on the website of our public broadcaster?

Vancouver protestors fall silent.

The article I have linked to on the CBC site is a product of its agreement with The National Post to jointly cover the Olympics. It appeared in the Post first, and from there was syndicated to the website they have collaboratively created for the games, Vancouver Now.

As a piece of reporting, it is precisely what we expect from The National Post: a commingling of news and political purpose — in this case to deride the Olympic protest movement. It does so using the usual tactics: a snide tone, imputation of motives, loaded language. (The anarchists who broke windows are “thugs” and “the rabble.”) And, of course, contained within the pages of the Post, it’s relatively harmless, as we know this is the sort of thing they do.

But does the CBC really mean, in its turn, to host an article mocking public dissent, not just of the florid kind, but in its genteel, middle-class, let’s-have-a-march-but-keep-it-polite iteration also? Bob Ages, a spokesperson for the Olympic Resistance Network and member of that well-know radical cell, The Council of Canadians, tells the Post‘s reporter/pamphleteer Brian Hutchinson that the ORN has “an agreement not to criticize each other in public. That’s not to say there isn’t internal criticism, but we’re not going to dump on the young people.” This is used to suggest that the protest movement has “unravelled” and is beset by “internal dissent” (the hed on the Post article, which, mercifully, does not make it over to the CBC site).

Is this the CBC’s stance towards the exercise of democratic rights? If so, it places itself in a league with Fox News. If not, is it paying any attention any more to what ends up on its website? Of course, the CBC is just as welcome as any other news organization to host strong comment, as it does. But Hutchinson`s piece wasn`t conceived as comment, and sticking it into the Blogs section of the Vancouver Now site doesn`t make it so.

So, fellow taxpayers, your money is now being used to tell you that the next time you think about getting uppity, you`d better think twice. This probably isn`t what the CBC intends. But it is, I`m afraid, what it is doing.

On Valentines Day, 2,000 to 4,000 people marched through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in the annual Women’s March for Missing and Murdered Women. A memorial march — not a protest — it is organized and led by women of the DTES to remember the hundreds of aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades. With no other competing agendas represented, it is the very essence of a respectful and focused peaceful grassroots march, and only by chance coincided with the other daily Olympic protests here.

CBC’s coverage of it on “The National” notwithstanding, doubtless this is the first time many people outside of Vancouver have even heard of it.

The previous day, a few hundred people took to the streets to protest an interwoven range of complaints highlighted by the Olympics — stolen aboriginal land, environmental destruction, tarsands, corporate greed, Gordon “Red Mittens” Campbell, Harper, poverty, homelessness, etc. A couple of idiots threw a Province box through a window of Olympics sponsor Hudson’s Bay Co., while others threw paint, overturned trashcans and traffic pylons, spat on police — who showed admirable restraint throughout — and insulted onlookers. Thirteen were arrested and four charged.

The media here and around the world immediately ate it up of course, and thousands hit the “agree” button in the comments section of the CBC story, endorsing those who thought the protestors should be strung up.

Many progressive bloggers were swift to distance themselves from the vandals. They pointed out that such violence only serves to alienate potential supporters. The notoriety that comes with being a self-aggrandizing asshole will only hurt the given cause, they said.

And yet something about all this outrage directed at a few brats has been bothering me ever since. We’re talking rudeness and minor property damage here, right? They spat and broke stuff. When I walked past the broken window a few hours later, it had already been replaced.

Compare this with when Robert Dziekanski, in sheer frustration at his own helplessness, broke up furniture at YVR — it did not stop us from identifying with his plight. When the very few and vastly over-reported stories of property damage in Haiti came to light, we did not condemn the frustrated perpetrators for their actions. Indeed, we thought it remarkable in the face of being denied the basic necessities of life, displayed but refused them, that such incidents were so few and far between. So why the double standard for the Olympics vandals?

It takes hope and solidarity and strength of purpose to witness, non-violently, year after year, as do the Sisters in Spirit marchers. Twenty years now, the core of them have been waiting for action on their missing sisters. They march while waiting for the rest of us to catch up and claim their cause — which includes continuing murders and disappearances — as our own.

I think the angry hooligans from the Olympics protest just don’t think they have the luxury of that kind of time to protest peacefully while waiting patiently for the rest of us to catch up to their sense of urgency about the world. I worry that our rush to condemn them means that we imagine we do enjoy that luxury.