Category Archives: Social Studies

With Olympics Come New Laws to Sweep up Homeless

In an article for October 14th edition of The Tyee, Katie Hyslop describes how four recent Olympic host cities passed laws that criminalize homelessness and links this shameful portion of Olympic history to the Assisting to Shelter Act under consideration by the British Columbia legislature.

Here’s a sampling from past Olympics:

1988 Winter Games, Seoul: 48,000 buildings housing 720,000 people were destroyed between 1982 and 1988 for the purpose of building highrise apartments and commercial buildings;
1996 Summer Games, Atlanta: City officials in Atlanta used a combination of new and old legislation to criminalize homelessness in the city. From 1995 to 1996, over 9,000 homeless people, predominantly African-American men, were arrested for crimes such as sleeping in a park or on the street;
2000 Summer Games, Sydney: The Homebush Bay Operations Act and Regulation passed in 1999 to cover Homebush Bay, the site of the Olympic Village and Park. Police and other officials were given the power to remove people from the area for vague reasons such as causing “annoyance or inconvenience” or using indecent language;
2004 Summer Games, Athens: Law 2730/1999 concerning the planning, development and construction of Olympic works gave the government the power to expropriate land for Olympic use. Anyone living on this land was supposed to be given 24-hour notice to vacate, or face eviction. Houses or businesses on expropriated land were given up to 10 days to vacate the area.

The 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver has produced The Assisting To Shelter Act, which would allow “governments to clear the streets of the poor, homeless and addicted just in time for the tourists and cameras to arrive. The act would give Vancouver police the power to force a person to seek shelter when an extreme weather alert is issued. If there is no room at city shelters, people will be put in a jail cell.”

Of course, the BC government says they’re just concerned about the well-being of people who live on the street. You can read more about the proposed BC law here.

The 2010 Olympic games have prompted a series of laws aimed at undermining the civil liberties in the name of corporate profits and convenience, including bylaws that outlaw signage critical of the Olympics.

Check out the 2010 resistance groups at no2010.com and riot2010.com

The NFL, idiot fascism, and the future of America

The latest issue of Rolling Stone (RS 1089) is highly recommended (even if Bono is hamming it up on the cover). Skip the fawning piece on U2’s current US tour (it’s mainly about their mega-stage and luxury airliners) and read the bits by Matt Taibbi.

The former sports editor for The Moscow Times (Russia not Idaho) gives us a gonzo take on the opening of the NFL season, which includes a report on the new Dallas Cowboys stadium that merits quoting because it is the best paragraph to appear in on a “sports page” in the 21st Century:

Dallas’ opening home game against the Giants, in which their hideously commercialized mall palace known as the new Cowboys Stadium was unveiled to the world, was a genuinely terrifying broadcast event of a kind not seen since the premiere of Triumph of the Will. This was like a debutante ball for America’s new idiot fascism. Still, there was something weirdly compelling about seeing 100,000 Texans cheering historical footnote George W. Bush as they christened what promises to be about 490 years of municipal sales-tax payments, all so that Jerry Jones can see a 160-foot wide image of his own surgery-tightened face on the world’s biggest HDTV. At the home opener, ticket-holders got to see Tony Romo throw three interceptions against the backdrop of multiple corporate billboards lining the field. Then there was the specter of 100,000 people watching a giant taxpayer-funded TV while sitting at the live event. If this is the future, could America be any more fucked?

Taibbi’s writing sits well along side Guy Debord and Raul Vaneigem.

Taibbi also adds this tidbit on the Detroit Lions, biggest losers in the NFL:

If Lions rookie QB Matt Stafford busts, the city of Detroit will collapse under the Earth’s crust, forever, to be spoken of in the future as a mythical lost place, like an Atlantis full of shuttered Ford plants.

The birthplace of the Rouge Forum deserves better but my advice to Bill Blank and the gang is to get outta there.

Fair use vs. “libertarian” scholar’s pocketbook

From: E Wayne Ross
Subject: Re: copyright violation
Date: October 4, 2009 2:52:22 PM PDT
To: Joel Spring
Cc: Naomi Silverman, William Pinar

Joel,

I put the first two chapters of your book and the epilogue on my course blog for the students in my doctoral seminar to read in preparation for your visit to campus and meeting with the seminar on Wednesday, Oct 7.

With such a short lead time before your visit—about 3 weeks from when I heard you were going to be on campus and available to meet until next week’s seminar—I felt the most practical approach for students to have a common reading of your work was to post something to the blog.

The course blog is very low traffic (see the attached pdf of Google Analytics for Sept 3-Oct 3, 2009). The blog is for my current students and I take all posts down at the end of each term. My belief was/is that this was a reasonable and educationally justifiable approach considering the circumstances. My actions were motivated by a desire to have students engaged with your most recent scholarship and to be prepared to make the most of the rare opportunity they have to meet with you.

As long time colleague and friendly acquaintance I am disappointed by your legalistic, tattling response. (Why not a share your concern in friendly or even inquisitive way.) I wonder too just how your response to this pedagogical situation jibes your long standing scholarly interests in maximizing individual liberty and social harmony.

So, of course, I’ll take down the link; would have done so at the slightness indication of concern on your part.

Best,

Wayne

On 2009-10-04, at 8:03 AM, Joel Spring wrote:

Dear Wayne, An article in today’s New York Times about illegal sharing of books on the internet led me to do search of my books.

Unhappily your course appeared as a violator of international copyright laws for posting, for anyone in the world to download, 41 pages from my book.

Please remove link from your course website for the copyrighted material.
This is very upsetting.

Naomi will be sending link to Informa.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/ewayne/2009/09/cust-601-globalization-of-education-a-discussion-with-joel-spring/

Joel

Joel Spring
Professor
Graduate Center and Queens College
City University of New York
Series Editor
Routledge Publisher

E. Wayne Ross
Professor
Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
University of British Columbia
2125 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Canada
604-822-2830
wayne.ross@ubc.ca
http://www.ewayneross.net

Critical Education: www.criticaleducation.org
Cultural Logic: www.eserver.org/clogic
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor: www.workplace-gsc.com

Analytics_blogs.ubc.ca-ewayne-_20090903-20091003_(VisitorsOverviewReport)

Pilger: How We are Prepared for Another War of Aggression

In a piece titled “The Lying Game: How We are Prepared for Prepared for Another War of Aggression,” journalist John Pilger compares the current drum-beating for war against Iran, based on a fake “nuclear threat”, with the manufacture of a sense of false crisis that led to invasion of Iraq and the deaths of 1.3 million people.

Obama is giving us what he promised: war in Afghanistan. The expansion strategy and the public’s distaste for ware are nearly mirror images of the run-up to Bush’s fiasco in Iraq.

Obama’s “showdown” with Iran has another agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic the media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war. The US/Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal says 500,000 troops will be required in Afghanistan over five years, according to America’s NBC. The goal is control of the “strategic prize” of the gas and oilfields of the Caspian Sea, central Asia, the Gulf and Iran – in other words, Eurasia. But the war is opposed by 69 per cent of the British public, 57 per cent of the US public and almost every other human being. Convincing “us” that Iran is the new demon will not be easy. McChrystal’s spurious claim that Iran “is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups” is as desperate as Brown’s pathetic echo of “a line in the sand”.

During the Bush years, according to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a military coup took place in the US, and the Pentagon is now ascendant in every area of American foreign policy. A measure of its control is the number of wars of aggression being waged simultaneously and the adoption of a “first-strike” doctrine that has lowered the threshold on nuclear weapons, together with the blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons.

All this mocks Obama’s media rhetoric about “a world without nuclear weapons”. In fact, he is the Pentagon’s most important acquisition. His acquiescence with its demand that he keep on Bush’s secretary of “defence” and arch war-maker, Robert Gates, is unique in US history. He has proved his worth with escalated wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. Like Bush’s America, Obama’s America is run by some very dangerous people. We have a right to be warned. When will those paid to keep the record straight do their job?