Vancouver has staged an opera about Fallujah. Not about the massacre of its people as the US invaded Iraq, where civilian refugees were forbidden to flee from the incoming assault, where entire families were shot from helicopters as they tried to escape across the river, but the human tragedy of what the genocidal US soldiers had to endure. PTSD. That’s apparently what’s commemorable about the war crime of Fallujah. That “Fallujah”.
http://www.billionpeoplemarch.org/
Denver
https://www.facebook.com/events/1630747410519445/
New York FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2765?affiliate=1000019
LA Macarthur Park
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2775
Minneapois
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2767
Vancouver FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2768
Buenos Ayres
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2773
Oslo FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2781
Istanbul, Taksim Square FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2771
Vancouver’s Adbusters Magazine sent the initial callouts to occupy Wall Street, to be the natural successor to unfinished revolutions in Tahrir Square and Madrid. Quickly enough it escaped their grasp. Adusters has issued two dozen “Tactical Briefings” since before September 17 to advise the growing rebellion, to be interpreted coming from a valued mentor, albeit an outsider, technically now, a non-occupier. The distinction was never more obvious than when one of their briefings advised striking the camps and waiting out the winter. But their briefing #25 offers more than retreat, it sets OWS sights on the joint NATO-G8 summit to be held in Chicago this May, against which very large demonstrations are already being planned. No specific advice on the other hand for local occupies, wisely perhaps, where tacticians can add no more to the strategy than hold your ground, by definition, occupy.
ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #25
Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,
Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.
And so will we.
On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.
And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.
And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.
And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear.
Jammers, pack your tents, muster up your courage and prepare for a big bang in Chicago this Spring. If we don’t stand up now and fight now for a different kind of future we may not have much of a future … so let’s live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens …
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
The publishers of Car Busters have proclaimed every September 22 to be WORLD CAR-FREE DAY. Consider taking the bus, riding a bike or walking to work today. Where possible, the World Carfree Network suggests you walk in the middle of the street where the automobile-dependent will get the point. It’s not your fault the MSM hasn’t told everyone we have a chance today to rethink the sustainability of how to get around.
Apropos to how to get people out of their cars, Vancouver scholar Patrick Condon has released a text about Design Strategies for a Post Carbon World, titled Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities, published by the University of British Columbia Press. The table of contents offers talking points enough:
SEVEN RULES FOR SUSTAINABLE, LOW-CARBON COMMUNITIES
1. Restore the Streetcar City
The Streetcar City as a Unifying Principle
Urban Form and the Pattern of Walkin and Riding
Continuous Linear Corridors, Not Stand-alone Nodes
Buses, Streetcars, Light Rail Transit, and Subways
Streetcar as an Urban Investment
Cars, Buses, Streetcar, or Heavy Rail?
Case Study of the Broadway Corridor in Vancouver
What Is the Optimal Transit System?2. Design an Interconnected Street System
Challenges of the Denritic Street System
Four Types of Interconnected Street Systems
Ideal Block and Parcel Size
Road Width, Fire Access, Queuing Streets
The Corner, Lanes and Alleys
Greenhouse Gas and Street Pattern3. Locate Commercial Services, Frequent Transit, and Schools within a Five-minute Walk
Sense of Place in Corridors
Transit, Density, and the Five-minute Walk
Designing for the Bus or Streetcar
The Walk to School4. Locate Good Jobs Close to Affordable Homes
The Historic Relationship between Work and Home
Metropolitan and Community Scale5. Provide a Diversity of Housing Types
The Influence of Building Type on GHG Production
The Sustainable Single-family Home
Build and Adapt Neighborhoods for all Ages and Incomes
Buildings with a Friendly Face to the Street6. Create a Linked System of Natural Areas and Parks
Fredrick Law Olmsted and Linked Natural Areas and Parks
Ian McHarg and the Greenway Revival
Case Study at the Regional Scale:
The Damascus Design Workshop
Case Study at the Neighborhood Scale: Sustainable Fairview
and the Pringle Creek Community, Salem, Oregon7. Invest in Lighter, Greener, Cheaper, Smarter Infrastructure
Watershed Function
Four Rules for Infiltration
Green Infrastructure for Parcels
Impervious Paved Infiltration Streets
Since the overt militarization of Pax Americana, US citizens traveling the world are advised to pretend they’re Canadians. It only took this week’s unexpected team USA victory over Canada in men’s Olympic hockey, to ignite anti-American feelings. Even before the games began, the USOC’s USA House was the only hospitality venue whose address was not made public, conveniently too because it was safely not open to the public. Now visitors leaving USA House are reminded not to wear or behave in any fashion that would distinguish them as Americans as they make their way to their accommodations.
Security warnings didn’t lessen even as Canada took revenge with a win against the US in Women’s Hockey. Canada’s speed skating victory wasn’t helped by Apolo Ohno’s complaint that his disqualification might have been owed to the supervising judge being Canadian.
Will a Canadian victory in the finals be enough to ameliorate feelings against Americans who dominate every other aspect of North American culture so obnoxiously? In either outcome I foresee American visitors and athletes taking their leave with as little fanfare as possible.
Just as McDonalds is uncontested as it pretends to speak for all Olympic athletes that their toxic McNugget is the “favorite of Olympians,” so is the American war machine able to coopt US athletes for their imperialist message. Critics of the Olympics are ridiculed for politicizing the games, yet militant nationalism pervades the ceremonies.
The television announcers remind us that the USA hockey players have been paired with beneficiaries of the Wounded Warrior program. Each stick-wielding, armored, helmeted ice warrior thus plays for the honor of an actual US soldier. A recognition I believe of America’s undying desire to have a second chance to kick ass.
I don’t know anyone rooting for Team USA, the finals rematch would seem to be an extraordinary opportunity for Obama-spirited diplomacy. These athletes are all NHL players of mottled nationalities, probably most Canadian as much as they are American. What better chance to let the victory to the host. Can you imagine the US asserting its dominance over its coalition partner? What could come of that?
Americans have precious few fans outside the homeland. Oh, they tell us, “we love Americans, just not America.” But in Vancouver this week, that was not true. Imagine Canadians added to the list of world people grown tired of the idiot American brute. Canada will take the sympathy of the rest of the Commonwealth with them.
After two weeks of patient cheerleading against US Olympic supremacy, suddenly I’m jumping up and down for a US win!
It’s just a game. The white man’s war on the world is not.
The US media ranks the US ahead in the Vancouver Winter Olympics based on most medals won. The non-American consensus rates competitors according to their gold, Germany often leading. If your average win is silver, it does seem queer to declare yourself in first place. Not to mention that total wins appear irrevocably linked to the size of the teams fielded. Inspired by 538 giving 2010 odds based on statistical analysis, I thought about other likely predictors. Number of athletes and population size are both outweighed by Per Capita Income as the deciding factor for final rankings.
| Gold Medals |
Total Medals |
Country |
Team Size | Population | GDP per capita | Prob. Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 32 | USA | 215 | 309m | $ 46k | 1 |
| 9 | 27 | Germany | 153 | 82m | 39k | 3 |
| 8 | 20 | Norway | 99 | 5m | 77k | 4 |
| 8 | 17 | Canada | 206 | 34m | 39k | 2 |
| 6 | 11 | South Korea | 46 | 50m | 16k | 9 |
| 6 | 8 | Switzerland | 146 | 8m | 66k | 5 |
| 4 | 13 | Austria | 81 | 8m | 45k | 7 |
| 4 | 10 | China | 90 | 1,336m | 3k | 10 |
| 4 | 8 | Sweden | 106 | 9m | 43k | 6 |
| 3 | 14 | Russia | 177 | 142m | 9k | 8 |
Rachael Flatt is neither fat nor homely, but it doesn’t take an Olympic judge to downgrade her prospects in figure skating. Embarrassingly, sports commentators were poised to preempt confused TV viewers from sitting up in alarm. Who is this stout little duckling flailing, albeit with precision, among our swans? The awkward freshness of Flatt’s execution made it look all the more miraculous, but I think the between-the-lines verdict was that Flatt flunked her screen test.
Words like graceful and beautiful pepper the usual skating play-by-play, but not when Rachael Flatt was on the ice. Compare their stilted discomfort to her airtime to their effusive fawning over everyone else. No sooner was it Rachael’s turn than announcers began to interject praise for her great personality and high intellect. I doubt not a few of Olympic competitors are very bright, but apparently Rachael runs a deficit of qualities for which the color commentary must over-compensate. It seemed as much to apologize for whatever freak accident of competition left the door open to Flatt, as to prepare the audience for the judges’ swift condemnation.
Were they surprised when Flatt skated flawlessly? Apparently it’s not enough to be the athlete, Olympic skating requires a ballerina. I thought that’s what Ice Dancing was for.
It’s no coincidence that Olympic faces are only the most beautiful, all with straight white teeth. Colorado Springs High schooler Rachael Flatt is imperfectly lovely, possessed of a photogenic quality all her own, if not theirs. Did you know the Olympics mean to celebrate only humanity’s televisible champions?
Presenters and judges alike know what they are after. The Olympics are a showcase for the epitome of our ideals, not merely athletic feats, but our aesthetic aspirations. It’s a 4-H meet for eugenics.
Amtrak Station 1150 Station Street
Apple Store at Pacific Center, 701 West Georgia Street
USA House at Level, 1022 Seymour Street
Hilton Metrotown 6083 McKay Avenue
Olympic Tent City protest encampment, 58 West Hastings Street
Adbusters Magazine Culture Jammers, 1243 West 7th Avenue
RED THREAD marks the 2/13 demonstration against Opening Ceremonies. Protesters assembled at the Vancouver Art Gallery, marched down West Georgia Street, south on Homer Street, around Public Library and unto Robson Street where violence erupted as they were blocked from reaching BC Place.
How do you give formal recognition to journalism merit in a media landscape adulterated with propaganda? Award the dubious distinction to the pseudonym for commercial disinformation: anonymous! This year a Polk Award went to the unknown Youtube videographer who captured the death of Iran “Green Revolution” martyr Neda Soltani, a wrenching sequence which transcended exploitation to give iconic status to Iran’s election discontents. Fitting, while another snuff film is circulated to drum up interest in the Vancouver Olympics.
The Wide World of Sports used to loop the famous ski jump wipe-out, but we were assured the skier escaped without major injury. If he’d died the footage would have been buried like that of race care crashes. But that was another age. Now a fatal luge accident gets played again and again, the pretext being to compete with Youtube, but obviously it’s to amp interest in what has traditionally remained a lackluster Olympic category.
What’s the point of awarding nobody? Time Magazine did it when they named you as Person of the Year. It’s called pandering to everyman, this time as a bald excuse to give Neda another chance to incite anti-Iranian sentiment.
With television viewers transfixed by the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, US Marines in Afghanistan are undertaking an explosive Fallujah-class opening ceremony in Helmand Province against the little town of Marjah, a so-called Taliban stronghold. Thousands of Afghans who couldn’t get out in time have been cast as burning stuntmen for this remote reenactment of western expansion via genocide; a nod, if not an acknowledgment of the remnants of Vancouver’s native resistance. Will Marjah be lit up on cue with the arrival of the Olympic torch, spectacle-wise?
As a professional drug pusher, I have seen the worst abuse with drugs comes most often from the doctors. Society doesn’t seem to much mind that though, because these doctors are considered esteemed members of society. On the other hand our Christianity influenced hate filled world does despise ‘self abuse’, whether it be masturbation, self medication for depression (often called alcoholism), or filling prescriptions without a doctor’s order. As a result of this madhouse way of thinking, people’s heads are being decapitated (in Mexico and other countries) and little babies and small children are getting shot down through apartment building walls. Is there not another approach other than the ‘Christian’ one of punishment?
Yes there is, and Vancouver, BC seems to be at least partially taking a different route toward winning the ‘Drug War’. It has declared Peace! Vancouver’s Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies Good for them! For their approach to truly win the ‘War’ though, it must be made national, and not just local. Otherwise junkies in Canada will just migrate West until they reach Vancouver. Hey, they did that for years even before the change in local law! Even junkies like good scenery, it seems. And good Chinese food, too!