We are imagining a kind of sanitized, Canadian version of a McCarthyist witch hunt happening: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a 2010 Olympics critic?”

But why aren’t people angry? Why aren’t people in the streets? Why is this situation so normalized?

The state of exception that has been created by the Olympic circus could not be conceivable except for the unfortunate qualities of our society that it reflects — a series of relationships and systematic interactions which normalizes the practice of limiting the rights of certain citizens arbitrarily. The tools of public relations and corporate communications have covered up the practices of publicly funded government institutions like the Integrated Security Unit and VANOC with words like ‘balance,’ ‘sustainability’, ‘ brand protection’ and the need for ‘security.’ The citizenry is in slumber — most people are deactivated spectators unable to intervene or exert pressure on the endless web of political and bureaucratic systems of inertia that have been created by the Olympic machine. A culture of governmentality has, unfortunately, taken over.

In the process of organizing something as large as the 2010 Olympics, it certainly provides a kind of snapshot of a country’s political culture and its society. Below are some early observations, diagnoses and characteristics that have been identified about Vancouver’s political and social culture over the Olympic years by friends, acquaintances and researchers, informally over beer and coffee in random conversations in the city over the past eight years:

1) An Underdevelopment of the Public Sphere

For some reason, we can’t seem to have considered and complex debates on public policy matters without devolving in to ideological boilerplate, partisan bickering or without framing critics as frothy-mouthed neo-Marxist traitors to the country. Increasingly, it appears that there are fewer and fewer spaces to have these critical discussions. The media, political parties, academic institutions, art and cultural institutions and civil society have all failed the public in developing a space where ideas can be contested, where debates can be shaped and where dialogue can happen in a rigorous way.

The 2010 Olympics, particularly, have led to a contamination of the public sphere to such a degree, that it isn’t possible to have a rational conversation about them until they are over. In contemporary Vancouver, the Olympics have become the opium of the masses and have distorted the central role of many institutions in society which are meant to act as critical safeguards for society.

2) The Epidemic of Politeness

As outsiders visit Vancouver and see the stark contrasts of a downtown filled with condominiums and intense poverty mere blocks away, they become angry. They don’t understand why people are not on the streets clamouring for change. This culture of politeness does more harm than good. It masks the urgency of a situation that is costing lives. We should fear this culture of politeness and the damage that it causes.

3) The Deference to Public Institutions

Canada does not have a questioning culture — even in Britain and United States, the heaviest influences in historic political development of Canada, there are more considered debates on public policy. Canada is a colonial country that basically has no history of revolutions. Sadly, the people only rise up during intense hockey games. The development of a liberal democratic order of government has largely been contracted out to an elite class of politicians and bureaucrats without very much participation from Canadian citizens. When those same institutions do not keep up with contemporary norms, trying to change them is an arduous task.

In most places around the world, the phenomenon of police investigating police wouldn’t even be considered, but we are still having that debate today in British Columbia.

Canada has signed on to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In a country where we should be talking about the right to adequate housing for everyone, we are still having debates in the Supreme Court about the right of citizens to sleep outside.

4) Parochialism

Tied in to the deference of public institutions, is the series of relationships that define decision-making processes in the City of Vancouver. The culture of parochialism that has infected the city amongst its various partisan interests has led to a de facto seniority system in the processes of political will formation. Civil society is largely dead in the city, nor is there an economy that could resurrect it as an independent watchdog of society. The myriad funding relationships needed to build robust institutions has meant that organizations which traditionally played this role, have largely become appendages of the government, the health board or other institutions. When those closest to the ground are no longer in a position to speak out, we are all diminished — the public sphere becomes restricted, voices of dissent wither, conversations that need to happen don’t occur. The life of the city is no longer a public conversation in the public domain.

5) The Rise of Central Communications and Lack of Public Engagement by Political Parties

Post-war political communications has spread like a terrible disease that by end of the 20th century, content has become a casualty. The rise of central communications, polling and positioning on issues has resulted in marketing campaigns to capture market share in the independent, undecided areas of the political map, largely in the center of the political spectrum. This has unfortunately driven out those looking for more substantive policy reforms and has resulted in a lower voter turnout at every level of government elections. Party discipline and caucus solidarity also take away those who colour political life with independent directions and new ideas. By cultivating a culture of spin and media grandstanding, politics is no longer viewed as a place of big ideas, interesting discussions or a place of rigorous debate. It is viewed by the vast majority of the public as an overmanaged stageshow operated by communications hacks.

Politics as a profession is viewed as terribly as being a lawyer or a journalist.

6) Academic Disengagement from the Issues of the Time

In Vancouver particularly, academic institutions like SFU and UBC have been profoundly disappointing in engaging with the public on the issues of our time. Particularly striking is the fact that the geographic separation of the institutions from the City with UBC in Point Grey and SFU on Burnaby Mountain, it is particularly noticeable. Despite a presence downtown at UBC Robson Square and SFU Harbour Centre, both institutions have not harnessed their capacity in bringing reasoned debate, dialogue and research in to the public realm.

While homelessness has more than doubled in the city since the Olympic bid process began, very few academics have waded in to the debate with analysis nor have they played the kind of substantive role they should have with civil society organizations in the city.

7) Economic Development as the Highest Value of Society, More Important Than Other Values Like Human Rights

As the city’s engineering department takes the belongings of homeless people and moves them along every morning, it is difficult not to look at the systems and practices of everyday life which have become codified and normalized. The assumptions that are built in to these practices are as complex as the intent is to be practical. A human rights audit needs to be done of city practices because it says something about the kind of society we unfortunately are — that the need for economic development has a higher value than human rights. The planning for security, the city’s bylaw package for the Olympics and the police ticketing of Downtown Eastside residents in the lead up to the Olympics are only some of the examples of this form of poverty cleansing that happens below the radar.

8) The Need for Democratic Reform

The City of Vancouver has no election spending limits. Right now, it’s the best democracy money can buy. That tends to mean developers. Successive political parties have promised change and nothing has happened. Until citizens rise up and demand democratic reform, we will be left with the illegitimate, corrupt and unsustainable system we have today.

9) The Proliferation of Inoperative Forms of Political Engagement

Vancouver has a great reputation as a place of progressive politics. This is where Greenpeace started, where the Downtown Eastside Residents Association fought for community assets in the 70′s and 80′s and the fight for a safe injection site was successfully waged.

Vancouver has increasingly become a place of political posturing, hipster disengagement and a fetishizing of spirituality that borders on flakiness. The substance behind the politics has eroded and real progressive gains have been limited. Though there is a place for yoga, meditation and doggie biscuit bakeries, there is still work left to be done on the ground.

10) An Illogical Fracturing of Social, Environmental and Labour Movements

At a time when climate change is putting civilization at risk, when homelessness is doubling and there is mass unemployment, one would think it would be rational for these movements to work together and set differences aside. Unfortunately, these movements are as fractured as ever.

The 2010 Olympics have been treated with kid gloves by the labour movement. Civil society has felt betrayed by the silence and underfunding by the labour movement. The climate change movement has not been inclusive in their processes and methods of organizing.

Without real sustained work to break down these divisions, all three will continue to suffer setbacks in the coming years.

The Impact on Communities Coalition, the Pivot Legal Society and the Carnegie Community Action Project, with the help of Professor Michael Byers and student Mike Powar, are arguing that the specific articles of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights have been violated by Canada and its obligations to provide the human right to adequate housing.

In essence, neo-liberal policy-making, without effective public policy intervention, directly violates human rights—in this case, the right to adequate housing.

Early on during the Olympic bidding process, games organizers and government partners made promises that evictions would not occur in the inner-city neighbourhoods. Concerns were raised as early as August of 2001 that evictions similar to Expo 86 would occur when a thousand people were evicted during the World’s Fair.

A plebiscite on the Olympics passed with 64% support in 2003 largely due to assurances that Vancouver would host the first socially sustainable Olympic Games.

A vaguely worded Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement was signed but did not include specific numbers despite the protestations of community groups at the time.

After the Bid Corporation morphed into VANOC after Vancouver won the bid in 2003, no civil society representatives were appointed to its Board. After several years of piecemeal attempts at consultation, VANOC’s own housing table recommended building 3,200 units of social housing and closing tenancy loopholes which were allowing long-term low-income tenants in Single Resident Occupancy hotel housing to be evicted easily.

As the rapid pace of gentrification resulted in dilapidated property quadrupling and quintupling in value in a few short years, it placed low-income inner city residents at risk. City Hall and the provincial government turned down requests to place a moratorium on SRO conversions.

Since the Olympic bid process began, over 1,000 units of affordable SRO housing units have either been converted to other uses or shut down permanently. This imperfect housing stock often times represents the housing of last resort for low-income people. Furthermore, the increase in property values has now led owners to move to double-bunking in some 10 foot by 10 foot rooms, often infested with bedbugs. Though this is not illegal, it raises serious public health concerns in a neighbourhood with third world health indicators.

In an October 2007 visit by UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Miloon Kothari stated, “You have in government a legacy of misguided policy decisions which have led to this massive crisis in housing and homelessness. We didn’t hear this in other places—the decrepit nature of SROs, the conditions of the buildings that people are living in, the very poor health. As has been the case throughout our visit, I was repeatedly struck by the contrasts in such a beautiful city. Because there has been so much investment, it is striking that a few blocks from million dollar condominiums there is such immense poverty.”

In a January 2008 visit to Vancouver by Dr Kris Olds, a member of the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions Advisory Committee on hallmark events, said, “These events magnify existing development paths, they are implicated, but they are not the only factor. They are a key acceleratory mechanism to spurring on change, particularly since the 1970s. There is clear evidence that they have played a role in generating evictions from place to place. Is it the only force? No, but an event of this magnitude does play a role, it is implicated, absolutely.”

Despite forwarding the recommendations from COHRE’s June 2007 report on hallmark events, no level of government has taken initiative or leadership in a way that is changing the facts on the ground. Despite the province’s purchase of 17 SRO hotels, their inability to close tenancy eviction loopholes leave open the reality of economic displacement in the housing of last resort. It is this housing stock that is the essence of the human rights complaint.

The idea that the poorest, most elderly and most vulnerable people are being thrown out into the street as a result of property speculation, aided by the hype of the pre-Olympic environment, is an embarrassing footnote to the first “socially sustainable Olympic Games.”

The Toronto-based Wellesley Institute released a report card in early February which raised the issue of growing housing inaffordability—a leading cause of evictions and homelessness. Renting costs outpaced renter incomes in six of the 10 provinces. There are estimated to be between 200,000 to 300,000 homeless people in Canada.

Nations such as Canada that sign on to optional treaty protocols such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights often invoke the term “progressive realisation” to justify the time lag between domestic policies meeting international standards. Scott Leckie of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions has written that progressive realisation is used as “an escape clause from the obligations generated under the Covenant.”

Canada, along with other G-8 countries, has openly worked within the international system to deny a complaint mechanism on optional human rights protocols related to economic, social and cultural rights.

The Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights contend that, “As in the case of civil and political rights, States enjoy a margin of discretion in selecting the means for implementing their respective obligations … the burden is on the state to demonstrate that it is making measurable progress toward the full realization of rights in question. The State cannot use the ‘progressive realisation’ provisions in Article 2 of the Covenant as a pretext for non-compliance.”

Canadian law professor Craig Scott has written, “Canadian governments have long invoked averages and medians as adequate accounts of the state of human rights enjoyment in Canada, thereby showing how little understanding (or sincere attempt to understand) there is of the very nature of human rights. … That Canadians on average are not homeless, on average have adequate nutrition, on average go to adequate schools, or on average raise their children in a dignified way says nothing at all about whose human rights are being respected and whose are being violated.”

The federal government has been cutting housing policies since the early nineties. In 1993, the government cancelled funding for new co-ops and non-profit housing and capped its expenditures at two billion dollars annually, according to the Wellesley Institute.

As IOC head Jacques Rogge rolled in to Vancouver a few months earlier in 2008, he effusively praised VANOC for its socially sustainable legacy. Despite little or no opportunity for civil society organizations to be at the table, despite the obvious gentrification and displacement being exacerbated by the Olympic project, the head of the IOC had the audacity to praise’ VANOC.

Public relations and marketing have trumped reality in pre-Olympic Vancouver.

VANOC turned down requests for a $1 homelessness levy to be charged on Olympic tickets and merchandising that would be matched by the provincial and federal governments. VANOC and government partners turned down their own housing table’s recommendations of building 3,200 units. They have pointed fingers at one another as people get evicted from the inner-city virtually every month. It takes a lot of people working in unison to produce the sheer inertia of this unprecedented incompetence.

Added to that, an uncritical pre-Olympic media environment has distorted Vancouver’s public sphere in a way that has delegitimized critical discussion of the issues and forced many mainstream civil society organizations from publicly expressing their criticism for fear of losing their funding.

Rather than invite civil society organizations to the table, VANOC has shown an arrogant, fortress-like approach to community engagement.

There are 200,000-300,000 people expected to come to Vancouver in 2010 where there are only 27,000 hotel rooms. Even with homestays and cruise ships, that will still leave thousands of spaces still unaccounted for and will place pressure on the existing rental market. Without government intervention, a few thousand people will likely be evicted.

There is not one person at VANOC or any level of government that has addressed this question in a public way. Even calls for temporary legislation to protect tenants have been spurned.

The UN complaint is a strong and damning indictment of Vancouver’s pre-Olympic housing environment and the use of the term “social sustainability” as a marketing and public relations term by VANOC.

Am Johal: You were in Israel for 14 years altogether. How did you found Bustan and the context in which you came?

Devorah Brous: When I first went to Israel, I went to learn more about my roots and culture, my traditions, to learn about my historical connection with the land of Israel. During the journey, I got very involved with the struggles of the peoples of the land. I did extensive research on land rights. I spent most of my time walking the land and speaking with a vast range of people about what makes the land holy, what makes this parcel of land so different than any other? I queried people from different ethnicities, classes, faiths and traditions, what makes this land such a powerful vortex, that compels one to grab rapaciously at a piece of this land for themselves, and if land for both Jews and Muslims is referred to as God’s land, than why this maddening hunger for ownership, and this need to possess it as their own?

What context did you start Bustan?

I started Bustan with the understanding that there is a need for Jewish and Palestinian people to come together. For years I was engaged in a variety of peace projects that make participants feel good. It took me time to see how these efforts focus more on the people as peacemakers that are ‘making peace’ than the issues, and largely aim to cull photo-ops and band-aid problems by distracting media and funders from core issues. After seven years, I learned that cosmetic dialogue projects are effective at avoiding controversy and assuaging guilt of the participants. I wanted to go beyond the overly cerebral and distractingly dry discourse at conferences that never leads beyond more glossy reports or the occasional catchy bumpersticker. I also felt disillusioned with protests. You leave in the morning to spew venomous rage against the Israeli Occupation and by the afternoon you’re slipping back into the familiar power differential. It’s a form of masturbation — you have the moral high ground over family or neighbors as you return from a protest, you know you’re on the right side of history. But once you return to your comforts without creating anything sustainable aside from pacifying your consciousness as you step out of being a passive bystander — you begin feeling increasingly powerless. Protest in a war zone doesn’t allow for transformation of the crazy asymmetry in conditions. For the most part, it also doesn’t affect the causal roots of conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I felt pulled to engage in processes that are more tangible, believing that small steps can make a big difference. I found myself intrigued with the transformations that can happen when people start and finish projects and organize collaboratively together. I was organizing a Rainbow caravan of 250 people that included Israeli and Palestinian activists. We went from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and crossed over the border to plant several hundred trees in Jordan. During this two-month journey we faced breathtaking peaks and bleak valleys both literally and metaphorically and many of the gaps I experienced in other peace building activities were filled in through experiencing this process. Just after this caravan, I founded BUSTAN in 1999.

Can you describe the way that you worked with the concept of restorative development?

Essentially, we were inspired to peacebuild with two principles in mind, 1) participatory democracy — working with civil society in a way that participants would tangibly benefit from both process and outcome by actively engaging as both students, and as teachers. This was explicitly designed to inspire more of the people to step forward and become involved, instead of a ‘first-track diplomacy’, exclusively engaging polished politicians. 2) Striving to meet a tangible, physical need was our strategy for addressing land rights violations. BUSTAN’s first action was in an unrecognized village to build a playground with recycled materials We worked with the village council’s leadership to create some infrastructure for the children, who, unlike Jewish children, are unable to receive this infrastructure from the Israeli state because the area is not zoned or recognized by the state so it falls outside of state planning processes. The villagers are living in an area that is referred to as unrecognized, in the Negev, outside of the State’s ‘democracy.’ Over the past 40 years, Israel has engaged in the wholesale relocation of its Bedouin citizens from 45 unrecognized villages into smaller a series of urban enclaves, or government-planned townships.

We could sit with a couple of donors and purchase some ready-made red, yellow and blue swing sets, or we could work with lots of different people from the community and build something with materials we could find near the village. We chose the second option and spent one year meeting to plan for an un-plan-able event of some 500 activists, artists, clowns, and educators to engage in the process of pioneering the first festival in an Unrecognized Village. Over three days, we constructed a playground, we worked with Arab and Jewish women who offered a range of workshops on traditional weaving, plant medicine, crafts. We worked with a solar engineer and a permaculture luminary to design a solar oven for the local school, as the village was off the grid. We shared music by the fire, and ate delicious food. Our focus: this is not a top-down process, each person could bring their own strengths, passions, and skills to contribute.

Much of the village was involved in the closing ceremony. It was an opportunity for Jews and Arabs to resist discrimination and reveal a message in a new way.

One year later, the Second Intifada began. BUSTAN shifted its aims to restore the integrity of built or natural environments to challenge discriminatory policy and where possible to facilitate revitalization. After setting up a school, and organizing the green building of a medical clinic to serve 6,000 Bedouin in a village that is overexposed to high levels of pollution and contamination as it is entirely surrounded by industrial and military infrastructure, including the region’s toxic waste incinerator. A team of 22 Arab and Jewish Israeli doctors with the help of some 80 med students who were volunteering, today our clinic is no longer necessary. In December 2006, nine years after the villagers appealed to Israel’s High Court, the Israeli government brought medical care to Wadi el Na’am. Today, these citizens are able to receive government medical care. They are working hard to see where they can be relocated and fairly compensated. Our proactive work to put these issues onto the national agenda was successful. There is still a long way to go.

What are today some of the issues in the Negev and with the Bedouin particularly? Some newspapers were openly worrying about a Bedouin intifada?

Three major issues are dominant today in the Negev in relation to the land dispute between the 160,000 Bedouin and the Israeli state. One: The state consistently refuses to recognize the land rights of its Bedouin citizens, some 3,300 claims to the land are outstanding. The Israeli government is trying to relocate villages by extinguishing rights. It is a large-scale relocation project. Large scale home demolition operations and other tactics and measures such as the denial of basic services in order to pressure this population to move off of the land and into cities. This requires Bedouin citizens to relinquish their land claims in exchange for a home in an urban township with access to government services, electricity, water, health care and sewerage.

There are about 72,000 Bedouin who are unwilling to accept the government’s offer. Many realize if they move from the rural Negev, some living off the land as shepherds and pastoralists, that if they give up their connection to the land, they will lose access to its resources. (Today, shepherds must go through a bureaucratic maze to obtain heavily restricted permits to graze their livestock.) Many of these families would have to sell off their herds once they move into a government-planned township. This would mean essentially disconnecting from their culture, their traditions, and their roots to the land.

Is there also still home demolitions and spraying of crops by the Israeli government?

Due to Israel’s relocation policy, home demolitions have intensified. One village was demolished for the 10th time recently. The Regional Council of the Unrecognized Villages led efforts to protest, called for negotiations and final settlement, which would recognize land rights and end the measure of house demolitions.

The second disturbing trends that we are noticing today in the Negev is the settlement plan of the Jewish National Fund (JNF-KKL) and the Israeli government in partnership with the Or Movement and Daromato settle the Negev. They argue, “Only 8% of the population is living on 60% of the land base of Israel. We need to redeem these lands and to stop further Bedouin encroachment. We need young pioneers to settle Israel’s ‘Last Frontier,’ to preserve Jewish contiguity throughout the land, and break apart the contiguously linked territorial belt between Bedouin communities inside the enclosure zone where Bedouin take up 22% of the Negev.”

The “enclosure zone” where Negev Bedouin live, is a 2% territory of all the Negev. Today there are efforts to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, significant money coming from Canada and the US to support the Blueprint Negev plan to mobilize 25 new Jewish communities, with plans to bring some 500,000 Jews to inhabit the Negev by 2015.

Recently, some people have floated land claims processes such as Canadian and Australian models. Would this be relevant for the Bedouin population or the other unrecognized villages within Israel?

Yes. There is a lot to learn about the strategies and tactics of indigenous peoples to wage their struggle for land and access to resources worldwide. Just now, we spent a good amount of time on our BUSTAN tour with indigenous resisters to learn how they wage their struggle. What seems to me is that many of the nations and the tribes that we encountered are nations that have been uprooted within the last 200years. They have gone through the cycle of dispossession, this is now happening to the Bedouin. They are losing access to their resources and the semi-nomadic agrarian lifestyle. BUSTAN is eager to join forums where grassroots activists and organizers can exchange discourse about strategies that have been effective. The Israeli government is not shy about learning from the US how t build a reservation-like system to contain the Bedouin. . Despite elements of sovereignty, people in North America struggle against the restriction and living in encircled enclaves without equal access to state resources. A reservation might actually provide some element of protection to Bedouin that currently have no sovereignty inside their ‘enclosure zone,’ due to excessive infrastructure — a nuclear site in Dimona, military and industrial zones, residential expansion, and mines, quarries, a prison, and an airport. There is much to learn about how other indigenous peoples have fought and continue to advocate for sovereignty, compensation and rights.

The third prevalent trend today is the Israeli government is trying to ‘solve’ the ‘Bedouin problem’ by creating a new municipality that will ostensibly govern the 11 previously unrecognized villages as they merge into new townships. The problem is, the government-planned townships are widely criticized as a failed experiment. They have the highest rates of unemployment, school dropout, crime, and drug use on Israel’s socio-economic indicators. Large neighborhoods inside the government-planned townships are not connected with sewage systems; they end up serving as nothing more than dormitory communities have.

The cream of the crop manage to get jobs in urban centers, but the majority of people stay at home and accept welfare hand-outs to make more babies. The new municipality has an Arab name, Abu Basma. It is run by Jewish politicians, with some cosmetic Arab leadership inside the municipality. It is conceptually an improvement on the seven government planned townships but we have yet to see if there are ample budgets to provide the villagers the same level of services as the neighboring Jewish towns. There have been six villages over the past 6 years that have been recognized nominally. On the outside, it sounds good. When you speak to different villagers, when you ask them if they are satisfied, most will rant with frustration. The state has begun to grant some services (education) without recognizing these lands where the villages are situated and they could have a school. They could be receiving municipal services. They are recognizing the villagers, but not the village. They are recognizing the access to services, but not on the land between villages. Essentially, the basic premise is that they can get services if they cede rights to the land and give up claims to any land between neighboring villages.

Israel is marketing this relocation project as getting a piece of the desert for one’s own possession, helping “redeem” the, desert to make it bloom to use Israel’s first PM David Ben-Gurion’s words.

Recently, a beautiful village named Um el Hiran was uprooted. There was solidarity and more media coverage than ever before. Groups like ICAHD did some rebuilding, and many organizations that Bustan works with were involved in bringing this issue out to their own constituencies. There are families that live 2km away from this village in single-family ranches, with access to 800km of land, on an organic farm practicing agriculture in the desert, inside homes which have been torn to the ground in order to convey a powerful message that this land belongs to the Jewish state. Riyad Abul Giyan, on BUSTAN’s Negev Unplugged Tour, a story he told captures the irony of what is going on in this region that is invisible to the international community. He has served in the Israeli army for six years, when he received a call to reserve duty, he also received a notice on the same day that his house was up for demolition. The next day his home was demolished and got a second notice that it was time to serve for his reserve duty. He told us, “I don’t understand what the Israeli government expects from their Bedouin citizens. They expect us to fill the same obligations as citizens of the state but do not give us the same rights as citizens.” His village was uprooted to create a new Jewish community, to be called Hiran. Today, the JNF is fundraising for the construction of villages like Hiran. Will the new residents of Hiran know the story of the history of this parcel of land when they immigrate to the Holy Land, and settle the Negev “wasteland” in the middle of the desert in order to make it come alive? Will they learn that this land was not adjudicated in a court of law, those who will settle in the future? Will they learn what has happened to the Bedouin who have inhabited the region for over four hundred years?

What are some of the issues with oil shale extraction in the Negev?

BUSTAN works to raise awareness that 72,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel don’t have access to the power grid in Israel. Israel’s energy policy is becoming increasingly exclusive. We see four different processes in the Negev, 1) the construction of a shale oil refinery an extremely expensive technology, that requires the extraction ofkerogen from rock highly water-intensive process, this is being toted as Israel’s new Green Alternative. Secondly, the privatization of the Israeli Electric Company, several of the turbines have already been sold off in Haifa and Ashdod. There is little discussion of privatization, there is continued destruction of the public system and people are being forced to live off the grid. Thirdly, plans to create a nuclear power plant are moving forward. Lastly, natural gas is being developed, slightly less expensive than coal that is imported from as far away as Australia to Israel. But all of this will require significant resources. We’re concerned about what needs to happen in order to provide access to energy for Israel’s 72,000 Bedouin citizens in the unrecognized villages.

There is a human rights problem across the Middle East, including in Israel. How are the UN, the US and EU interacting in Israel related to human rights?

I happen to agree with the criticism that Israel should not be singled out as the only country perpetrating egregious human rights violations, but where I’m coming from is that Israel should be held to a standard, irregardless of the human rights violations committed in other countries in this region. Violations are happening inside Israel, and inside the occupied Palestinian Territories. It is grossly unacceptable. The UN is role has been substantial in terms of having an impact. Policies are passed around the decorate the back pages of newspapers but don’t percolate in to the roots of the power structure of Israel’s military, Israel’s government, so I wish the UN Special Rapporteur could do more, that the framework for international human rights should be respected. Any pressure from the US, from the Jewish allies and groups, generally tend to nullify the scathing criticism that comes from European countries, it levels out the playing field, and nothing is achieved for those who need their rights protected. People seem to be wholly cynical about the formal peace process that is upcoming.

Mainstream Israeli society seems to look down on civil society due to the criticism it levels at the state. Even the peace movement seems to be split between its enabling, moderate and more critical elements?

A simplistic answer would be that the mainstream of Israel is the backbone of the IDF. It is a country where the population for the most part is serving in the military or is in the reserves. There is a growing movement to resist, or refuse to serve, but for the most part, Israelis are supportive of a military approach. The Israeli mainstream believes that Arabs only understand the language of power, the peace movement always has been a marginalized force and has been a movement of limited influence through the mainstream. It seems that this time in Israel’s history, the country’s politics will not be strongly influenced by the peace movement. For the most part, there are many peace movements, until the various peace movements are able to coalesce, they will remain peripheral, not be a strong force to be reckoned with compared to the mainstream apparatus of the state that has taken such a hawkish position.

Anything else?

We ask the international community to pressure the Israeli government to negotiate with Bedouin leadership from the RCUV (Regional Committee of Unrecognized Villages), and to recognize agricultural villages with fair access to the State’s resources. Israel must strive to be a real democracy, and not an ethnocracy for its Jewish majority.

On two fronts, Bedouin are seemingly trapped. From one side, they are staving off pressures from rapacious development and the State’s land grab, and from the other side, they’re faced with economic pressures from the global industrial machine to urbanize in order to have public resources. BUSTAN is continuing to challenge disputes over resources, with a proactive and novel approach- promoting stewardship and sustainable resource use across the ethnic divide as a way to challenge strident wars over ownership. Bedouin are yet another threatened indigenous community in need of strong solidarity from the international community.

Am Johal: Can you talk a little bit about the lead up to the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City? What were you promised on the front end? What ended up happening in reality?

Glen Bailey: In Salt Lake City, it was a very similar experience to what I’ve been able to gather is happening in Vancouver right now. There were fairly grand promises being made at the beginning, about 7 years before. Everything was possible. The Olympic Committee was in sales mode. They made an initial $10 million dollar original commitment to housing. It didn’t come through. The CEO at the time, Tom Walsh, figured that was what was needed to put in to affordable housing. It was supposed to be ancillary housing. There was no specific plan, however.

We talked about housing for media, and we kind of kept pushing them to follow through on those proposals. They did it very slowly. They were actually blowing the opportunity by not moving aggressively as they should have. So that kind of eroded over time and eventually very little happened. There were something like 360 affordable units in one of the units, but 40-80% of median income, it was not low-income housing but working class housing. Then they talked about 470 relocatable units, pre-manufactured homes to be set up as social housing.

Then there was a plan called City Front. Some units that were marginally affordable, but even that didn’t hold up. For the Olympics, only 156 marginally affordable units were developed in the Gateway. Of the 470 rolocatables, they developed 42.

SLOC [Salt Lake Organizing Committee]’s housing legacy in terms of developing new units was virtually non-existent. Housing SRA, quasi-governmental bodies, some units were produced of marginal affordability, on the higher end of what’s called affordable housing. It had nothing to do with SLOC, they had nothing to do with it, there was no support.

In terms of evictions, another big area, SLOC was not at all helpful in the long-run, we would have been much better off working with City Hall. The city government was interested in setting up a homeless shelter which was immediately full. It was partially because of the City. Not because of SLOC. They did play a coordination role but it was not helpful in terms of stopping evictions.

Marginal properties that were typically used by low-income tenants, did some window dressing renovations and jacked up the rent. They were turned permanently in to a higher end use. They weren’t necessarily hotel or motels, but landlords evicted apartment dwellers to make higher profits. SLOC did virtually nothing. They were not relevant to stopping what was happening, but they were the cause of it.

AJ: What were some of the specific situations related to rent increases?

GB: But basically what we found is that rents went up significantly in ways that displaced people who typically would live there. We found that shelters did fill up despite what people said — that it was unnecessary.

We found one case, a basement apartment from $550 to $2500 month for that one month that the Olympics were on. We found that there were condos where the tenants were told that they had to be out for January 10th to accommodate the FBI. The landlord backed off after pressure. There was 175 units, some of those were to house secret service, they were paying $500-$700, they would improve the property and then charge higher rents after the Games. That was one kind of conversion.

There were folks pressured, property owners had multiple building, then there were 20 units that went to FEMA, after a bunch of bad press, which is eventually what worked, the owner backed out of the FEMA contract. There were numerous ones where we didn’t even know that it happened.

It went from $180 week to $105 night at Zions Motel, $12 night to $200 Night at a hostel, All Star Travel Inn, a shabby place went from $38.70 to $187 a night. The Colonial went from $195 week to $168 per night. After the Games, they went up to $245 a week. That was really common upgrading and then opening at a less affordable rate later. The Capital went from $40 night to $125 night, the Gateway went to $125 night when it used to be a weekly. In all of these places, low income tenants got evicted.

Well there was an awful lot of public funding going in to the Games, but very little to deal with their impacts. There was local spending by Utahans, but also federal dollars. Lots of spending on transportation in a relatively small amount of time. It was largely argued that it had to be done for the Games. A lot of highway and freeway expansion. A guy named Earl Holding, owned the Little America Grand Hotel in the run up to the Games and had a lot of the Olympic royalty stay there. He was on the Executive of SLOC which was a 501 C non-profit and organized like a charity. Yet he got a 13.8 million contract for his ski resort, he had two other developments through public policy that benefited him including a highway to his resort, he of course is making good use of it now. There was a favourable land swap where the federal government swapped to Mr. Holding to get better base facilities for the Games. The land was developed for housing and development that he benefited from.

AJ: Mitt Romney is now a Republican Presidential candidate. What about his role in Salt Lake City during the Olympics?

GB: He was the third CEO of the Games. Tom Welch was a salesman, he left in a cloud. Frank Joklik, a South African, was like a corporate CEO. When they had the scandal and people realized how we got the Games, Romney was brought in. People were ordered to right the ship, to appease the Olympic Organizing folks, they brought in Mitt Romney, son of a former governor of Michigan, George Romney. He was an investment banker in Massachusetts. He was an active Mormon and was very well thought of in the Church. He did a lot of things to restore confidence in the Games. He reorganized the Board. He went around to groups that had concerns. He appeared to be responsive. He did a lot of spin control, because of his background and spoke to a lot of constituencies. We were on the right track. That worked within the Mormon community.

There was a reporter working for a television station that was interviewing me. She said, “I hope this doesn’t ruin the Games.” I thought it was inappropriate for a reporter to be saying that about the scandal. They were so biased and so concerned about the impact on Utah. It was just odd. I realized that the media, was heavily invested in making a lot of money out of the Olympics. They didn’t want to do anything to discredit that agenda.

AJ: How did the media treat you as a critic of the Games?

GB: They were really two voices that were consistently critical. One was a guy named Steve Pace who refused to go away. He was constantly in their face. The other was our coalition. Weirdly, we were the only two groups that stood out. We did get a lot of people talking to ourselves. We were marginalized though. Our coalition was harder to ignore because we had a base of support, we were presented as being against everything by the media anyway. We were careful not to take those hard positions. I was attacked on talk radio, not just by the right wingers, but also moderate ones. I became their target for the day.

There was some work we did after the Games. They wanted to create an Olympic Legacy Park which is frequented by the homeless. We thought it was a bad idea. “You guys have been against everything,” is what one of the media told us at a press conference. That was the attitude that was there.

AJ: You visited Vancouver in 2002 after the Olympics. Despite taking an early approach, the situation is being replicated here in a large scale way despite Olympic promises. Is the Vancouver situation familiar?

GB: I’m alarmed by what I’ve seen about the housing situation in Vancouver. It’s not like you didn’t warn them and they have that whole Expo experience with evictions. The Olympics are a project to quicken the gentrification, it happens with a deadline so it’s more abrupt. There is no transition time at all. The other thing it reminds me of the near West side of the city in Salt Lake City. They built a shopping mall. The land value has skyrocketed near the railroad track. It was supported by public investment. The low income people are placed under pressure.

Then government people say, “well, what can we do with market forces?”

Well, it was the public investment which created the market forces.

When everyone’s on the rah-rah bandwagon, you can get isolated pretty quickly. Hopefully, groups can get together and form a common agenda and not be divided by bureaucrats or politicians or you will continue to see more evictions in Vancouver.

This week former UN Stephen Lewis, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, was invested as Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe – a knighthood which is Lesotho’s highest honour.

Am Johal: First of all, congratulations on the honour that you received yesterday in Lesotho. How do you feel about it and what are some of your reflections now that you have been away from the UN position for the last 9 months?

Stephen Lewis: I don’t think there’s any new revelations about the 5 and a half year that I had that role. I tried to chronicle and document it in the reports on the country visits at various meetings and gatherings. There was clear evidence of improvement in terms of anti-retroviral drugs and pediatric drugs for children. There is a continuing focus on prevention which has been increasingly encouraging over time. But, to be honest, there’s a huge amount left to be done. There are aspects of that job that continue to prey on the mind. There is too little improvement towards women and their disproportionate risk to violence and sexual violence from men. Addressing this issue continues to be central to dealing with the pandemic.

There are also many orphans and that has by no means been responded to in any adequate way. I think that it’s almost unconscionable. Countries are now trying to implement birthing programs, when it should have happened years ago. Things moved painfully slowly at the beginning. The failure of the G-8 to respond to the crisis, which only now British Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledges, will hopefully lead to the honouring of their commitments in Gleneagles in 2005.

There are hopes that stir in treatment and prevention. Kenya’s prevalence rate is down to 5.1%. There are empty beds in some of the hospitals. There is an accelerating rate of treatment. There has been a major dent in the pandemic, but there is a world left to conquer.

AJ: What is the kind of work your foundation is undertaking right now?

SL: The Stephen Lewis Foundation in Canada is engaged in grassroots community projects in Africa with grandmothers, orphans and we are funding many, many projects.

We are engaging in unusual and inventive work. There has been great solidarity between Canadian grandmothers and African grandmothers. Other organizations have been instrumental. I honour them and salute them. Global fund money is important but small organizations on the ground are doing the most interesting work. The large organizations are doing invaluable work, but they rarely get to the ground.

I am still moved by the resilience and strength of communities, the sophistication and intelligence at the grassroots. In the aftermath of the pandemic, we must continue to do the advocacy. A small team is creating an AIDS-free world. We need to now take a strong focus on women and disabled persons which has been neglected and an opportunity to get some money to the grassroots advocacy of these activities so the issues can be adequately articulated.

AJ: What are your thoughts about the International Narcotics Control Board’s positioning related to HIV/AIDS and harm reduction? Could you talk about what happened after the Toronto speech where you spoke about Insite, North America’s only supervised injection site, last year?

SL: The INCB is a highly problematic organization which should be challenged on every front. It should be fought at every level and the UN agencies should publicly stand up to their agenda which is ultimately dangerous.

Harm reduction is a viable health intervention — the INCB’s position, on the other hand, is abominably indefensible given that they continue to depreciate harm reduction. It is morally problematic what they are doing.

They shouldn’t act like a branch plant of American drug policy and what worries me is that the Government of Canada could close down the Insite facility (safe injection facility) if they don’t sign the exemption at the end of this year. Drug addicts are desperately in need of help and support and are open to further infection if they can’t access health services. It is the height of irresponsibility and to make Canadian drug policy a mirror of American drug policy doesn’t make sense — it would really be a step backwards and the INCB fuels that paranoia.

I don’t have much friendly feelings towards them to say the least. When I spoke in Canada, in support of harm reduction and having alternatives available such as Insite, the Executive Director of the INCB called me up the next day and said, “Don’t you know that places like Insite are opium dens?”

I’ve been to Insite — it’s absolutely the appropriate way to deal with this issue in that particular context.

The INCB is a terrible organization, and when it comes to AIDS, it should be placed under intense public scrutiny.

AJ: In which way should the INCB be reformed so that it realistically acknowledges harm reduction and what would be your message to the Harper government [in Canada] regarding Insite?

SL: The Harper government should extend the exemption which they’re perfectly entitled to give.

In terms of the INCB, as an organization, it should be open rather than closed. The positions of the various participants should be known and not kept secret. There may be legitimate issues of drug trafficking, but public reports should be subject to public scrutiny. It should be open to public exposure. We’re dealing with life and death here.

Drug addicts are not criminals, they are victims. Why should they be subject to the transmission of the virus and be criminalized? It will result, ultimately, in the prevalence of AIDS.

AJ: Is harm reduction being implemented properly in Africa?

SL: Africa is just at the beginning of taking harm reduction measures. There is more injection drug use occurring now. The virus is overwhelmingly transmitted heterosexually. It is being talked of more widely now.

The International Aids Conference in August 2008 in Mexico will give more focus on harm reduction which is crucial. Harm reduction must be a central theme — it must not be an afterthought. The world has to awaken.

The spread of HIV/AIDS is a huge risk in Asia. There must be an expansion of harm reduction principles and their implementation.

For Canada, to now beat a retreat is ridiculous. The INCB is a pawn in the chess game for American drug policy — this is not acceptable in this age.

AJ: What is your view of Canadian foreign policy today in places such as Africa and Afghanistan?

Canada’s unwillingness to set a timetable for investing 0.7% of GDP for foreign aid. This is international delinquency. We, unfortunately, have a militarization of our foreign policy. The development side of the foreign policy agenda has been undermined. You won’t achieve anything if you are not doing work in development when there is such a large military intervention.

Regarding Afghanistan, in early 2009, the situation will be virtually the same as it is today when the current mission ends. Harper seems to have an interest in Latin America and there has been a shift in emphasis — a terrible mistake in judgment on purely humanitarian grounds. We are making mistakes based on underestimating what we’re capable of.

The capacity of Canada to trade wouldn’t be accomplished by gutting development dollars. You shouldn’t do one at the expense of the other.

There is on the development side where there is nowhere near sufficient attention as evidenced by the reduced level of GDP going to development. We must honour the obligations that the other G8 countries such as Britain, Germany, France and Italy have set.

Canada is waging a campaign against making poverty history.

We’re losing our place in the world. The dilemma we’re facing in Africa is largely because of a naïve negotiation. Canada has a disproportionate burden militarily in Afghanistan. We are not sophisticated in the decisions we make.

Under Brian Mulroney, a Conservative Prime Minister, we had a higher rate of foreign aid than any other Prime Minister when it reached near 0.5% of GDP. Why can’t we set a target to reach 0.7% now?

AJ: You have recently been talking about the need for a women’s agency at the UN. Could you explain why this would be necessary and what it would accomplish?

One of the most crucial factors at this moment in time before the UN General Assembly is to create an agency for women. I feel strongly the need for this at every front. How can you marginalize 52% of the population and think realistically about achieving social justice?

An opportunity to create a new agency with an undersecretary general to do targeted work in countries on the ground is long overdue. Then you could do something about maternal deaths, HIV/AIDS, incredible vulnerability and predisposition to violence, an agency that advocates for change like UNICEF does for children.

There is a tremendous job ahead. There is sexual violence in Eastern Congo; there is a need to compile the litany of early alarms and comments that are being made and to document the horror stories that have etched the landscape of public commentary and how much worse it has to become before we end this war on women.

The international system only deals with this on the occasional press release. Instead of a strong women’s agency, the issues get lost as only part of the broader violations of human rights. They are without precedent. Soul destroying. We don’t have an organization to speak about essential human rights components like these. It’s an idea whose time has come. It is only one of the components. You’ve got to create the agency and give it the support that has been abysmally denied. There are occurrences of female genital mutilation, international sexual trafficking, we need powerful voices who feel strongly about these issues to get the resources they need to articulate these issues and push for reform on the ground. There is no sexual autonomy for women right now. It is very much a major factor in the spread of the virus.

AJ: You’ve said that, at the heart of Western ambivalence toward health and human rights in Africa, that racism was at the heart of it? Have things changed over the years… is the situation just as dire now? Are there things to be optimistic about?

SL: One of the things that worries me is that there is still some kind of subterranean racism at work. When I try to describe to people about Rwanda when 800,000 people get killed in a genocide and then, a few years later, comes Darfur.

We haven’t been able to protect the basic human rights of people in Africa, but how come it happens in the Balkans, NATO responds immediately? And there are ambiguous responses to HIV/AIDS and why, when it comes to this continent, there is no need to engage in an emergency response. This is the equivalent of the Black Death. I don’t think people are conscious.

This continent is expendable to most political leaders — but it is sophisticated and intelligent at the grassroots. There is incredible resilience here. They are not asking for neo-colonial responses. They are saying, “give us the technical support, we will ourselves rout the violence.” The G-8 needs to meet their development goals.

Why are countries not allowing for debt relief; it is unjust given the need for health resources. Even Jeffrey Sachs says it’s crazy not to provide the dollars when those dollars have been pledged. The current British Prime Minister is flummoxed. We can’t make promises, the turn them in to pledges and then make them broken promises.

It is embarrassing how appallingly bad the whole thing has become, this issue of promises being dishonored. The emergence of Gordon Brown in Britain is very significant. This is one of the pivotal moments of hope related to international support for development in Africa. He cares more about poverty and disease than his predecessor and if the Democrats win in the US, there could be the possibility of a natural affinity to move on some of these policy matters. It would be a much happier coalition of principle than what it has been a cynical alliance between Blair and Bush.

Join to that Sarkozy and Merkel in France and Germany, despite their conservatism seem to be genuinely interested in African development, there may be changes forthcoming – a real change in development and human rights. I foresee that Brown and a new American President will do much to fix what is happening on the ground.

They must, however, understand the need for a women’s agency within the international system. Brown understands that 2015 is only a few years away from the original millennium development goals, but we are a million miles away. Gordon Brown has taken a strong stand — it is a complete change in tone and emphasis. This is a complete shift in how the G8 will be seen if they actually act on their commitments.

AJ: What are the deficiencies of the international system today?

SL: If I look at the system of multi-lateralism which includes peace and security, development and human rights, I would say that Secretary-General and Security Council place to great an emphasis on the area of peace and security, to the detriment of development and human rights. They simply don’t get enough attention.

We need to make certain, individual agencies perform as they should and are intended to be doing. We need to ensure that the tremendous contribution they make is actually felt on the ground.

Multi-lateralism is not performing as well as it can on the development side. We need to move more forcefully in improving the lot of humankind. We need to keep hammering away at the Millenium Development goals.

I’ve always been an apologist for the UN, and have always believed that it could make a huge and profound difference. But its constant plodding and misdirection can make people cynical, but one of the elements to keep it in check comes from civil society — a role that is desperately needed.

Civil society should not write polite letters and engage in diplomatic games, but should take on institutions directly. It should be insistent and uncompromising. Without civil society, we would not have brought the South African government to acknowledge the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Civil society is absolutely more vital than it has ever been. The world is on the knife’s edge. The tremors of climate change are terribly disconcerting unless there are profound changes brought about by civil society. 30,000 kids that die every day from preventable causes.

Civil society has to root out the problems and bring intelligence to bear on the great international debates. With a strong civil society, governments must shift their public policies. We are ushering in a terrible area, where we will inherit the whirlwind of disease, poverty, war and climate change. There is no excuse in the world on why we should sit back.

How can we afford to fight wars in Afganistan and Iraq and not invest in development? Our priorities are twisted and are out of whack.

AJ: Would you ever run for politics again in Canada?

SL: I am going to continue advocacy on the AIDS portfolio. I was in politics for 15 or 16 years in Ontario — it is sufficient penance in an individual’s life. I honour the process and I am a lifelong social democrat, but I am not interested in a return to politics.

AJ: Any thing else?

SL: As tough as the AIDS struggle has been, as slow as the progress feels, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the end game. We need more and more funding, we need to make male circumcision more widely available and respond to these vexing problems creatively. Every day we lose lives. We can’t lose our willingness to confront the pandemic. Every government needs to know this. I recently met with the Minister of Health in Kenya and in Lesotho — I know how hard they are struggling. They need encouragement and support rather than dismissiveness and passivity from international leaders.