News Editor ICBC and the Vancouver Police Department recently announced a new program to catch car thieves in action. Beginning this past September, the Vancouver Police bait car program was started to combat the high auto theft rates that have been plaguing the city. The bait car program works by essentially trapping thieves until police can arrest them. Cars are left in target areas until a thief gets inside. The thief is videotaped and E-Comm (Emergency Communications Southwest BC) is notified. E- Comm then sends police after the car, using a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) system. When police have the car in sight they order E-Comm to disable the car’s engine, and arrests can be carried out. Student and car owner Tom Mellish doesn’t necessarily feel that arrests make car-theft situations any better. “I think that it’s a mental health issue,” he said. “If someone steals my car, they must be mentally ill. Now, I believe that law enforcement should be taken out of the hands of the militia, However, bait car programs in cities like Minneapolis, Minnesota and Hamilton, Ontario have been reporting success in catching thieves. ICBC reports that Minneapolis’ program resulted in a 40 percent drop in auto crime over a three-year period, and that Hamilton experienced a 24 percent drop in the first year of the program. According to an ICBC press release, auto theft rates over all of British Columbia have risen, up 12.5 percent this year com- pared to 2001’s rates. In the year 2001, approximately 5,200 vehicles were reported stolen in the City of Vancouver alone. The bait car program is a partnership program between E- Comm, ICBC and the Vancouver Police Department. They have enlisted the volunteer help of the Vancouver Police Citizen’s Crime Watch Program, and that of corporate sponsors such as CanWest Global, EasyPark, Securiguard, NavLynx Technologies (Canada) Inc., and Oakridge Mall. To see video footage of real bait cars in action you can visit and placed into the care of the medical community.” Naomi Klein Speaks about the Future of Anti-Globalization Kevin Groves British Columbia Bureau VANCOUVER (CUP)—Before she could address the sold-out theatre in downtown Vancouver, Naomi Klein had a confession to make about elec- toral politics. “My relationship with it is frankly less than cordial,” Klein said to the laughing crowd. “I have friends who eat their ballots and while I don’t go that far, I do have a similar visceral reaction to voting.” Nevertheless, Klein, who has become a leading anti-globalization activist in recent years, was in Vancouver to speak at a fundraiser for the Coalition of Progressive Electors, a left-leaning slate gearing up to run in the Vancouver municipal election this November. Klein said she supported the group because she sees it as part of a global movement providing an alternative to “McGovernment,” or current neo-lib- eral politics. “Many of us are now thinking about creating an intersection between our activism at the local and international level and our antiquated, discredited, tired, corrupt, democratic institu- tions,” she said. Klein’s 45-minute speech to the silent crowd focussed on the issues that have been raised in the globalization debate since No Logo was published, her groundbreaking book addressing how corporate control of the public sphere has limited global democracy. Building on the theme of dissatisfac- tion with electoral politics, Klein said many in Canada no longer want to voice their dissent through the ballot box, and she argued that this trend is spreading around the globe. “Now we are trying other tactics, such as surrounding governments from all directions,” she said. “If this continues to go on internationally we're going to be uncontainable.” Still, Klein warned that it’s far too early for activists to pat each other on the back. Citing the upcoming three-year anniversary of the WTO protest in Seattle, Klein said “the movement” really needs to ask itself what it has to show for all its mobilizing. “At the political level I know I don’t have to tell you that it’s ugly out there,” she said, referring to North America’s lurch towards the right since the US election in 2000. “We have in no way reversed the flow towards more privatization, let alone stopped it.” Klein added that she’s tired of talk- ing about the space, choice, jobs and freedoms that today’s society doesn’t have. She said her focus now is to find a way to steer the anti-globalization movement into a new phase, away from being what she has described in her new book Fences and Windows, a collection of her speeches and newspa- per columns since 2000, as a group of meeting stalkers following the trade bureaucrats around as if they were the Grateful Dead. To accomplish this about-face, Klein argued that what the movement needs to do now is turn into thousands of local movements, fighting the way neo-liberal politics are playing out in communities. “We have to show them that there is no fence big enough to contain the kind of grass-roots mobilizing that we're all seeing,” Klein said. At the same time, Klein argued that these local movements need to link their campaigns into a larger global movement, one capable of showing where their particular issues fit into an international economic agenda being enforced around the world. “It’s a demand for self determina- tion, a knowledge that we actually have the ability and the skills to solve our own problems if we are given the resources and the power to do so,” she said. With Fences and Windows complete, Klein said she is now working on a film about Argentina's pro-democracy movements. ne} @)