Mighty Poseidon ravages our lands with his fury, decimating the snow and wreaking havoc with the climate. Aided by his upstart child with the Latin temper, El Neeeeen-yo, he has kept the temperature balmy. Our streets ache and crumble, parched from a lack of snow. The citizenry are frantically eating the drywall and drinking the gasoline from their own cars, desperate to stave off the embrace of death one more day.

The situation is so dire that the streets are now flooded with polar bears. Despite the insistence of Greenpeace, polar bears actually like warmth. Noted dignitary Al Gore had come to visit the city, thrilled with the new wave of these noble creatures. In a momentary lapse in judgment, Mr. Gore ran out into the streets to commune with these noble beasts.

I am sorry to announce that Al Gore was eaten by polar bears. It took six of them to drag off his carcass, leaving behind a putrid stench of entrails that could only be properly cleaned using recycleable materials–mostly pages from Earth In The Balance.

We would have used anti-Olympic pamphlets, but apparently those are illegal. After chasing down a story about the fellow who was denied entry into Vancouver and I came across a ditty about the Games. In it they talk about the by-law that prevents negative signs and campaigns against the Olympics. That’s can’t be true–this is peace-loving Vancouver! We have signs advertising that we have no nuclear weapons, and no one complains about those. Up on the City of Vancouver website, here’s what they say in the FAQs:

The December 2009 by-law, passed by City Council and amended from an earlier July 2009 version, is emphasized to show that they are merely clamping down on commercial advertising. Here are the stipulations for allowing any kind of signage to be put up:

Celebratory Signage
The new by-law provisions allow celebratory signage to be installed around the City leading up to and during the 2010 Winter Games provided:

* The signage is non-commercial in nature.
* The signage is celebratory in nature (for the 2010 Winter Games).
* A City permit has been acquired for the signage.

So Joe’s Fix-It Shop cannot post “Boo to 2010″ even if he doesn’t make the sign commercial and somehow manages to get a permit for it, just because it’s negative. The by-law then was changed to allow trademarks “to allow trademarks and other symbols of Olympic sponsors on celebratory signs.” Pamphlets and flyers were also included under commercial activity, likely because any anti-Olympic organization would either be incorporated, or the act of spending money alone to print the flyers would constitute “commercial activity.”

Now, the prospect of about a million Tide samples during the Olympics clogging the waste bins is purely logistics, but these rules are never enforced in the same manner at any other time. We even get free Vancouver Sun papers now and then–which seem to have nothing but glowing editorials for the Olympics anyway, so they will be covered as celebratory. Whether they fall under the “pamphlet” category is debatable–but just not among the public at large.

There are certainly concerns about security and civil order that would need to be addressed while the Olympics are in town, but the smaller details are also being lost in terms of our liberty. If an event has the capacity to close the entire 99 Highway to the public during peak hours (the only path getting to Whistler out of Vancouver) as well as nine other major routes in and out of the city, and establish their own “free speech zones”, there’s no reason that City Council couldn’t pass something more insidious in the future. They even wanted to shut down the city altogether at one point except to Olympic vendors.

Apparently dreams can go well beyond a gold medal. Sometimes they just involve dry runs for what governments can do the people, all at the request of the IOC.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 3:06 pm and is filed under 2010 Winter Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.