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Mass protests in Vancouver skew Olympic torch relay route
Published: 13 February, 2010, 10:56
Edited: 23 February, 2010, 01:11
People shout slogans as they attend an anti-Olympics rally in central Vancouver, BC, Canada ahead of the opening cermonies for the XXI Winter Olympic Games on February 12, 2010 (AFP Photo / Yuri Kadobnov)
(3.5Mb) embed videoTAGS: Sport, Olympics, Protest, Vancouver-2010
The Olympic torch has finally arrived in Vancouver, the venue for the Olympic Winter Games, after a 106-day cross-Canada relay. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger carried the traditional symbol of the Games.
Crowds gathered at the Vancouver’s waterfront Stanley Park to meet the celebrity. Schwarzenegger handed the torch to the chairman of London 2012 Summer Olympics, Sebastian Coe.
Click for enlarge
But as the flame passed through Vancouver, organizers were forced to change the route at the last minute to avoid the street protests. Around 150 anti-Games protestors crowded the Downtown Eastside area. A dozen mounted police stopped the placard-carrying protesters from surging ahead and confronting the relay. The convoy had to take alternative route and continued.
In total, thousands of people marched across Vancouver on the opening day of the Games. And as Dave Zirin from The Nation Magazine says, protestors are finding wide support among the local public.
“An astonishing poll number shows 40% of the residents of British Columbia support the protestors. It really says something about this collision that has taken place between the global recession and the Games,” he told RT.
13.02.2010, 08:58
2 comments
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Colin Smith I do share your views of Gordon Campbell and Prime Minister Harper: both are right wing reactionaries. And these games have been used to mask land grab and corporate misuse of the public money. I have never denied that. what I do object is RT’s deliberate focus on finding something bad to say about Canada and Vancouver Winter Games but hardly saying anything about the similar processes taking place in Sochi and other cities which hosted these corporate games. And yes, despite the homeless and cutting down public funding to education and healthcare, BC residence have higher living standards than those living any city in Russia and the United States. There is no city in Russia today with the quality living standards of British Colombia. The reason is simple. In Russia, the rich and the powerful have near monopoly in power and they often misuse the resources of the people. Recently, I saw documentary about Siberia which was aired at RT. I what I found shocking is that outside the oil built modern cities, ordinary people living in villages lead lives of abject poverty. Why this utter disparity in living standards of the majority of the Russian people is tolerated in Russia while billions of roubles are poured into Sochi games? How much real freedom Russian citizenry has to depend that the immense wealth of the nation be used to rebuilt the social infrastructure? Perhaps, RT needs to bring some of reporters to Canada rather than pumping U.S fluff day in and day out. This is hard for some of us who often come to RT to escape from the same U.S propaganda only to be served with the same U.S propaganda diet by RT.
Absolute rubbish! I'm tired of this 'right to protest" argument. Canadians and especially British Colombians, and certainly Vancouverites object to these games because we and the homeless, sick, drug-addicted, aged and poor cannot afford it, and know it to be an act of self-aggrandizement on behalf of Premier Gordon Campbell and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Both are extreme right-wingers who have no time for the poor, or even the middle class. For a growing underclass life is very grim and uncertain. Campbell and Harper are bearing down on the poor and now one in five children lives in poverty. The biggest transfer of wealth in modern history, which began in Canada with Prime Minister of Brian Mulroney in 1979 has continued with tax breaks for the rich which has been funded by increased consumption taxes and a massive reduction in public services which is not over yet. Further privatization, which will eventually include our universal single-payer health care, is on the list. If Katrina can't protest in Sochi, then she should fix that in Sochi, not level down everyone to Sochi's level. Further, I can guarantee you will never see an Olympic athlete signing a petition on Care2, or doing anything but daily obsessing over shaving a tenth of a second of their time and getting a medal for themselves. Their "dream" is about themselves, not humanity or a better world or an end to the seal-hunt or other cruelties against people and animals. These self-obsessed people are very bad role models for children. They are also vehicles for the perpetuation of patriotism, what GBS said is the conviction that a place is superior because you were born there, and for which the politicians have persuaded us to die. Nationalism almost destroyed the human race during the Cold War on at least 15 occasions. It is a redundant concept.
I want to make it clear that I do support the 2014 Sochi games despite billions of public money has been used to bring these games to Russia. This is because these facilities will serve future generations well. I feel the same way about the Vancouver games. In 2006, Turin games, Canada won 24 metals, 2/3 of the Canadian metals in Turin came from athletes from Alberta and Quebec. These are two provinces which hosted Olympic Games in the past. In the same way, these facilities will serve future Canadian athletes. I also want to say that rather than this singular focus in finding all the things which went wrong with the Vancouver Winter Games, I do hope that RT offers its readers reports about the landscape and the culture of the people of Vancouver and British Columbia.. I was hoping that RT would showcase how Canada and Russia can build new future based on travel and tourism and commence. Instead, RT has focused on all the things which are wrong with the Vancouver Winter Games. I can appreciate the Sochi games are at the background of this. However, please go beyond the protest, homelessness-which is a greater social problem in Moscow than in Vancouver.