Not everyone is clock-happy

Not everyone is enamored with the Vancouver 2010 Countdown Clock.

Yesterday's Vancouver Art Gallery ceremony to unveil the 2010 Winter Olympics countdown clock began late because protesters scuffled with Vancouver police officers.

"Whether it's homelessness, further cuts to social program(s) because they need money for stupid bullshit events like this, or encroaching even more indigenous territory, these are the real effects of the Olympics," said Jill Chettiar, who was among 100 anti-Olympics protesters in a noon-hour crowd of more than 1,000.

Despite dozens of uniformed and undercover police, a masked man as well as veteran protester David Cunningham, Chettiar's partner, accessed the stage. The masked protester grabbed host Renee Smith-Valade's microphone and shouted "f--- 2010" while Cunningham chanted "homes not Games." Police dragged them off-stage. As many as eight were arrested.

Tempers flared earlier when police removed a protest banner suspended by helium balloons. Const. Howard Chow said some protesters threw paint-filled balloons and papier mache-wrapped rocks. Protesters shouted during 'O Canada' and jeered VANOC executives, politicians and Four Host First Nations executive director Tewanee Joseph. Others erected their own clock counting down to a predicted homeless population of 6,000 Vancouverites by 2010.

And they even opposed the First Nations representative (for us Yanks, that's a "Native American" or "Indian" person, depending upon your level of political correctness). Does that make them fascists or something?

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